Felltree Marsh i was in darkness

Her response left Ghost with more questions then it did answers. I'm not sure, well, that wasn't much of an answer. Perhaps she was avoiding the truth, perhaps she just didn't want to tell him why she pitied him. Regardless, Ghost had not been trained to question. That was not his role. His role was to carry out the commands of The Officer — always performed without question, without a shadow of doubt. Here and now, Ghost projected that reality onto Banner: he took her response without doubt and did not give voice to the questions he'd considered. He had no need for curiosity, he reminded himself. He'd forgotten the sound of The Officer's voice over the months that Ghost had been wandering, haunting, but the forceful reminders in the bleak echo of the voice he could no longer remember was enough to remind Ghost of his place in the world. Lost. Low.

The furrow of his brow had smoothed out when he noticed that she offered him a soft tug of her lips upwards. A smile without cruelty, a smile that did not promise of the pain that was going to come. It was just a simple gesture and yet Ghost struggled what to do with it. Return it, perhaps, but he couldn't fathom the last time he'd smiled. Or if he'd ever smiled. Surely he had, once, in a lifetime that The Officer had erased, but that was a bygone era and Ghost was who and what he was. He felt the pressing need that he should say something, that he should break the silence, to reach out to her verbally but he didn't know how when he wasn't reciting practiced lines.

His silver gaze lowered to the crane, then to the muck between them and then to his paws — the fur spiked from the muck and water before — upon his dry patch of marshland — he reclined back upon his haunches, his gaze flickering back to her where it rested with inquisitive silence.