The horizon rose as Charon plunged downward. She curled up, arms wrapped around her head. "Sorry, Phantom." And she was sorry. Sorry that their time together had been so short. Sorry that Mick had never found his Guardian. Sorry that so much was left undone, and her Light was about to go out.

"I'm not losing you like this!" Phantom's voice rose to a scream. His spark burst into flame. Light washed through her as he restarted her Super.

A Titan's protective energy shield flared to life in a bubble around her. She hit the ground inside the shield, which absorbed the shock, and bounced.

Not far away, the jumpship hit the ground at the same time.

Charon and the ship bounced, tumbled, rolled, until she thought that the crazy metallic crashing was somehow coming from her. The shield caught her over and over. Each time her body collided with it, strange images flashed through her mind.

Phantom was holding her. He was pure Light, his essence grown beyond his ghost shape, overexerting himself, desperate. Behind him loomed the Traveler, watchful, witnessing this in silence.

She bounced again, the breath driven from her lungs. Phantom was crying out to the Traveler. She couldn't quite understand his words-

Another impact. She caught a snatch of Phantom's voice. "Let me take it all - I can bear it -"

The Traveler replied. Its voice resonated in her bones, shocking her very soul. It was awake and aware, more aware than any human, aware of the motion of atoms, the shifting of photons, and the great, slow surges of gravity throughout the universe. And it was sad. She felt it for a nanosecond. The Traveler bore deep grief for what it was witnessing.

Another impact. Phantom was there, close as her own heartbeat, attacking the black flowers, uprooting them, supplanting them. But it was wrong, somehow. He was killing himself.

A final impact. The shield vanished. Charon rolled to a halt and lay on her back, panting, staring up at the blue sky. She wasn't dead. She wasn't even hurt - the wound in her side was healed. Everything seemed strangely quiet and peaceful.

She scrambled to her feet. "Phantom!"

No answer.

She held out a hand and tried to summon him. "Phantom, come here!"

It wasn't exactly an answer, but she felt him. He was nearby - phased and invisible. It almost felt like he was inside her, somehow, tangled in those awful black flowers.

Her ship had come to rest a hundred feet away, crumpled and shattered. Darkness bled from it. She had no desire to go near it, even to see if the Shadow was dead. She knew he wasn't. The assurance lay in her own black wounds, siphoning her life away, healing the Shadow.

But it wasn't her life being siphoned. It was Phantom's. He was entwined with her, their Light overlapping. It felt wrong and deadly, like she'd been wrapped in smothering plastic.

She sank to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees. She had to concentrate, had to blot out the world and find Phantom. The Traveler had been there a second ago. She had felt it and Phantom communicating. Surely she could reach it, too. She was one of its Guardians. She focused on that impression, both of Phantom and the Traveler watching.

Her Light opened her awareness. Part of her was sitting on the bare earth, hugging her knees. The other part stepped into a meadow of black flowers.

A woman was there - a fellow Titan in white and gold armor. But it was cracked in the same patterns as the Traveler's shell. She leaned on her sword and watched something.

Charon looked. A ghost was caught in the black flowers. She could not have said how she knew he was a ghost, because in this place, he was pure Light, and no shape she had ever seen. But in a glance, she knew he was a ghost. She had given him the name Phantom, and it fit his true shape.

Three flowers had pierced him like spears. They held him immobile, their greedy roots sucking away his essence, their black petals ruffled by the breeze.

Charon ran to him. "Phantom! I'm here, little light. How do you have my wounds?"

"I took them for you," he said. His voice was slow and weak with weariness. "You were going to die."

She tugged at the flowers, but as before, they were hard as wire. Phantom made a wordless sound of pain. "Don't."

Helpless fury rose within her, fueled by sick fear. She whirled to face the Traveler Titan who watched and did nothing. "Help him!"

"He took your Darkness on himself," said the avatar. "My dear ghosts, always attempting the impossible."

"Will he die?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps?" Charon repeated. "Look at him! It's killing him!"

The avatar met her eyes. Charon caught her breath. She felt that she was standing on the edge of an impossible gulf, staring into depths she hadn't known existed. It wasn't the Void - it was too full of life for that. The Traveler could erase her from existence in a second, if it wished. Her life was tied to its life.

"You could save him," the Traveler said, "if you hadn't caged him."

Guilt pierced Charon like a blade. How did it know? But of course it knew. It was the Traveler, sustainer of her Light.

She turned to Phantom, who looked up at her, his eye shining from the midst of his Light. Its movement was agonizingly slow. "What's the Traveler talking about? I'm not in the cage anymore."

She knelt beside him, touching his Light. That wall in her heart felt miles high and thick as a mountain. She cowered on the far side of it, afraid of any more hurt. She could almost look Phantom in the eye and not care that he was dying.

Almost.

He reached out to her and struck the wall. It stood between them like an invisible force field. "Oh." He flinched, drawing back. "You ... you shut me out?"

"Phantom, I ..." She tried to explain, tried to mitigate the hurt in his expression. But the words wouldn't come. The wall held them in.

"Charon ... " He struggled against the flowers. The words came slowly. "I tried to heal your spark when we bonded. But I can't heal your heart. I've tried ... Charon, I've tried. I've made you laugh. I've been there when you were sad. I've tried to be your strong ghost. But I guess ..." He looked at the flowers binding him and laughed weakly. "I guess, in the end, I can only die for you. All I have left is my life."

Charon reached for him and hit the wall of her own building. Every stone of it had been laid by her hands.

"It's from when I lost Simon," she blurted. "It broke me. I lost my confidence. My strength. I miss him, Phantom. I still miss him. I don't talk about him in front of you, because I know it hurts you. But I had to shut down my grief when you came along, and ... now it's a wall."

She was crying, tears dripping onto the red earth. And she was crying in the vision, looking down at her injured, dying ghost.

He was crying, too, tears of Light that he couldn't afford to lose. "I'm sorry, Charon. I've been an insensitive jerk. I knew you were still grieving. I felt it when we bonded. And I managed to ignore it like the selfish jerk I am. I helped build the wall. It's not just you. Please forgive me before I go."

Charon tossed a fearful glance at the Traveler. Now she knew why the avatar was waiting, leaning on a sword. It was going to take Phantom.

She leaped to her feet, facing the Traveler. "You can't."

The avatar's face might have been carved out of marble for all the expression it showed. "If I don't, the Darkness will consume him."

Charon drew her own sword, which she didn't know she had until that moment. "I'll kill you."

The Traveler gazed steadily at her. "I am not the enemy. Your ghost asked for your forgiveness. Will you grant it to him?"

Charon turned back to Phantom. She gripped the sword as she stood over him. "I forgive you, Phantom. And I love you." She gazed at the blade, running with Light and razor sharp. "And I ... I can't let you die this way. Do you trust me, little light?"

He eyed the sword, slow and sad. His voice was despairing. "Are you going to kill me?"

"I'm going to kill the flowers."

He smiled - and in his essence, it really was a smile. "I trust you, Guardian."

Charon swung the sword. The flowers shuddered to their roots. She hacked at them, tearing off petals, cutting through the stems that were braided and woven like steel cables. Phantom shuddered, each blow rocking him. First one flower died, then the second, then the third. They withered away into dust.

Phantom leaped into the air, shimmering with fresh light and regaining his ghost shape. He again tried to fly to Charon, and bounced off the invisible wall. He laughed and wept at the same time. "The wall's still there."

"I know." Charon stared at him desperately.

He gazed at her. "We'll both live, but forever cut off from one another. We'll look fine on the outside. But inside, we're still dying. Years of dying together." He made a shuddering, gasping sound, his spark curling in on itself. "Charon ... if you want me to leave ..." The words tore out of him in an anguished cry. "Then I will. I'll go away. Give you space. And you can ... can grieve. The way I've kept you from doing. You can heal without me trampling all over your emotions. But I'll still love you. I'll be alone, but I'll never forget. I'll roam the wilds again. Waiting. For years, if it takes years. And maybe, one day, you'll call me back to you. And I'll come."

This picture slashed Charon with unbearable pain. She pressed a hand to her face. "Don't make me go through it again. I can't lose another ghost, Phantom. If you leave - Light, if you leave, the grief will kill me. Simon died in an accident, but this would be me driving you away. I couldn't live with myself, Phan. Please stay - please give me another chance-" She tried to touch him, but the wall was still there. She traced it with her fingertips and found that it began in her heart, spreading out from there.

"I won't go unless you ask me," Phantom said unsteadily. "But - but I love you enough - to give you up."

"Please don't," she begged. "I need you to help me heal."

She slowly turned the sword, aiming its metaphysical blade at her heart. "I need to feel this pain I'm been hiding from. Losing Simon. Being severed. It's the only thing that will break the wall."

Phantom gasped. "Charon, don't, I'm not worth that-"

Charon fell on her sword.

It pierced the wall in her heart with pure pain. Inside the vision, she screamed. So did Phantom. Outside the vision, she still sat, hugging her knees and sobbing. The wall had been breached. Memories of Simon flashed through her mind - her snarky companion who she still missed ever so much. All the times he'd healed or resurrected her, all the times she'd tried and failed some battle move, all the little moments together, the in-jokes, the long years together.

Phantom saw her memories. He went quiet and still, shamed. He appeared beside her as the vision faded, emerging from that other place. His black shell was hideously scratched in root-like patterns, but he was alive. He floated beside her, his eye downcast. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I keep trying to help you, and all I do is make things worse. Now you're hurting again, all because of me. I should just ... leave." He turned, as if preparing to fly away.

She caught him out of the air and hugged him. "Oh Phantom, my little idiot. You stay right here." She pressed her cheek against his shell. "I'm not going to pretend that Simon didn't exist anymore. You'll have to get used to hearing about him, because that's the only way this wall will come down. Don't you dare go anywhere. I need you too badly."

He burrowed against her tunic and made a sound like a sigh. She held him for a while, stroking his shell, still feeling that sword of pain in her heart. "You got rid of the infections," she whispered. "It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"It hurts me," he whispered. "I still feel them. But ... I think they'll heal over time. As long as you still want me."

"Of course I still want you." She cradled and stroked him for a long time.

Somewhere, she knew, the Traveler's avatar was still watching.

After a long while, Charon said, "I guess we're stranded here."

Phantom looked up at her. "I guess we are. But you still have your rifle. And your Light. And me. We'll get by." He floated out of her hands and faced the wrecked ship. "But we do have a Shadow to take care of."

Neither of them spoke about walls or grief anymore. Charon had to think about something else or lose herself in the pain. And Phantom was weary, weary beyond expression, ashamed of himself, hurting for his Guardian. Dealing with the Shadow seemed small and manageable compared to the wall that still lay between them.

Charon got up. Drawing her rifle, she picked her way through the ship's scattered wreckage, looking for the Shadow.

The Shadow lay alongside the cockpit, his hand cannon still gripped tightly. One of the cockpit's metal struts had impaled him, passing through his body and a foot into the ground. He couldn't have gotten up if he tried.

He'd pulled off his helmet, and Charon saw his face for the first time. He had dark skin and jet black hair. His eyes gleamed with pain. The earth beneath him was soaked with blood. His boots were encrusted with Hive chitin - he was the Shadow she had seen in Old Chicago.

"You're still alive?" she said, incredulous.

"Yes," he wheezed. "You're feeding me life."

The black flowers. Charon bared her teeth. "Not anymore. I purified those wounds."

The Shadow's smile vanished into a snarl. He struggled to lift his hand cannon, but it dropped back to the ground. "I'll kill you," he gasped. "Kill you and take your Light."

Charon raised her rifle, but didn't fire. "You're dying. Don't you think you should be trying return to the Light?"

He laughed a little. Blood ran down his chin. "Death is power. The Light is weak. Lets the weak survive ... who should die. Being must be undone for true existence to begin."

He was spouting Hive philosophy. Charon glanced at Phantom and thought, "What do you think?"

Phantom didn't answer. Instead, he turned and gazed over her shoulder. After a moment, he said, "Look who didn't want to go to the Last City."

Mick flew toward them in his brown shell. He had abandoned the Fallen skiff, and now flew alone once more, back to Charon. He scanned the nearest wreckage, then caught sight of the Shadow.

The Shadow saw him. His eyes narrowed. The ghost stared at him.

Charon's heart caught. Could this foul man be Mick's Guardian? By the Traveler, let it not be true. This Shadow would kill the ghost out of hand.

"Is ..." She could barely force herself to ask the question. "Is he your Guardian?"

"Not anymore," Mick replied.

It took a moment to process this strange statement. Then realization hit Charon like a crashing jumpship.

"Hello, Raul," said Mick. "It's been a long time."

"Mick," the Shadow spat. "I told you never to come back. And don't call me that. Raul is dead."

Mick studied him from a safe distance. "What a strange fate brings us together again, one last time. I've been looking for another Guardian. But I guess it was always your spark I was tracking."

Raul glared and started to speak, but coughed instead, his body convulsing painfully around the spike in his middle.

"I could save you," Mick said softly. "It's not too late."

"I don't want your Light," Raul snarled. "Ghosts don't have enough, anyway. I want Guardians. I want her." Again, he struggled to raise his hand cannon at Charon. But it fell from his shaking fingers and clattered onto the ground, just out of reach. He stared after it, the breath rasping in his throat.

"Raul," Mick said again. "It's not too late. The Darkness lies. You can always return to the Light, no matter how far you've gone."

"I don't want it," Raul whispered. "I don't ... need it. I don't ... need your ... pity." He shuddered one last time. His head slumped to the ground, his eyes staring at nothing.

Charon stood there a long time, watching the dead man. Mick and Phantom floated beside her.

"Will you raise him?" she asked Mick.

"No," said the ghost. His voice was heavy with regret. "Our bond was so thin, I doubt I could have even healed him." He turned to Phantom. "The Darkness will try to cut you off from your Guardian. It divides and isolates. In isolation, it consumes. In the end, there is only death." He gazed at the sad wreck of his Guardian. "He was a good man, once." Then he turned and flew off, playing his scan beam over the rocks, as if giving himself something to do. Behind him, the Shadow lay dead beside a stolen jumpship.

Charon salvaged what she could from her ship. Most of her gear and rations were still in the lockers, but the Shadow had taken all her ammunition and the best food.

She left Raul beside the ship. But she took his corrupted hand cannon and buried it five feet deep.

After that, she put several miles between herself and the ship wreck. The Fallen would return to investigate eventually, and she didn't want to be anywhere near.

She didn't expect Mick to accompany her. But that evening, as she built a tiny campfire, she looked up to see the brown ghost floating nearby, watching.

"Can we play guessing games?" he asked.

She looked at Phantom. He emoted a smile.

"Of course we can," she said.

That night, Charon lay in her recovered sleeping bag under the stars. Phantom lay in the crook of her arm, asleep as soon as he landed.

The wall she had built in her heart was nothing compared to what Raul had built against his own ghost - miles of spiked fences and barbed wire. But in a way, they were the same. By cutting herself off from Phantom, she had cut herself off from the Light, itself. She had been walking a thin line without knowing it - the line where Guardians began a slow descent into Darkness.

"I'm sorry, my Phantom," she thought to him, even though he was asleep. "I promise I'll work through this. With you. And things will get better."

His eye blinked on, then off again. "Love you," he murmured sleepily in her head.

She leaned down and kissed his shell. "Love you, too."

She dozed off feeling comforted and freer than she had in a long time.

One day, after being alone for six weeks, Charon looked up from the Australian bush and saw a Guardian jumpship flying overhead.

"That ship is hailing us," Phantom said. "It's ... wow, it sounds like Peach."

"Ambrose?" Charon said in disbelief. "Answer them."

The ship circled and set down a short distance away. Charon strode toward it, flanked by Phantom and Mick. "Looks like we're headed home, boys."

"I'm ready to leave," Mick said. "I want to look elsewhere for a Guardian. Maybe Venus."

"Good," Charon said.

The ship's door opened and Ambrose stepped out, grinning. The Awoken wore fancy Hunter gear, good leather armor, and a cloak that had seen better days and several owners.

"What are you doing here?" Charon asked, shaking his hand.

"Giving you a lift, of course," Ambrose said. "The Vanguard made a fuss about training me as a Guardian or some such. Wouldn't let me return for you until I'd graduated. My apologies for the long wait." He bowed and stepped back, indicating the ship's door. "Might I invite you aboard my humble jumpship, m'lady?"

"I'd be delighted," Charon said, climbing aboard.

As she strapped herself into the copilot's seat, she asked, "How did you get a ship so soon, if you just graduated?"

Ambrose settled into the pilot seat. "Several other Guardians expressed concern over your inadvertent marooning. Beside Lowanna, who was furious, by the way, there was Nathan, Ariana, Grant-4, and Muriel, along with their ghosts. They chipped in to help me buy a ship and outfit it to locate you."

Charon's eyes blurred with tears. Her baby Guardians had cared about her. She'd thought they'd go off on their own and never give her another thought. After living alone for a month and a half, resigned to calling Australia home, the idea of being remembered and cared for overcame her.

Ambrose glanced at her, saw her tears, and pretended not to see. "Your fireteam was anxious, too. A fellow named Ashton threatened to knock holes in my head if I came back without you."

Charon laughed a little and wiped her eyes. "When we get home, I'm taking every last one of you out to dinner."

"Excellent," Ambrose said. He cleared his throat. "And maybe ... I might reciprocate. Later."

Phantom nudged Charon and giggled in her head.

She smiled at Ambrose. "That sounds lovely."

The end