The door to his apartment clicked shut, sealing him back into his world of silent, strategic solitude. But the silence now was different. It was filled with the echo of her laughter, the warmth of her tea, the profound, aching nearness of her.
He didn't turn on the light. He stood in the center of the dark room, the ghost of the almost-kiss still burning on his lips. The careful, controlled existence of Matthias Vogel suddenly felt like a suffocating costume.
What if?
The thought was a dangerous, seductive poison. It slipped through the cracks in his armor, whispered in the voice he'd just spent hours listening to.
What if he wasn't the Ghost? What if Karl Vorlender had truly died in that warehouse, and the man who came back was just… Matthias? A technical writer who enjoyed quiet evenings, good books, and the company of a beautiful, kind doctor across the hall.
He pictured it. Coming home from a day of writing mundane manuals to the smell of her cooking. Sharing a bottle of wine at that small table by her window, talking about their days—his fictional, hers real and full of purpose. Waking up not to the cold weight of a pistol on the nightstand, but to the sound of her breathing beside him. No shadows, no past, no constant calculation of threat angles. Just… a life.
The image was so vivid, so painfully beautiful, it made his chest physically ache. He could almost feel the simplicity of it, the profound peace. He could give her that. He could be that man for her. He could bury the Ghost so deep he would never surface again.
But then the other images came, unbidden and bloody. Nightingale's cold smile. The heart-shaped gun. The seven men in the motel parking lot. Anya Petrova's warning: If our paths cross, one of us doesn't walk away.
He could not bury the Ghost. The Ghost was not a persona; it was his skin. To try and shed it would be to die. And anyone standing next to him would die too.
Elara's world was one of healing, of light. His was one of endings, of shadows. To drag her into his world wouldn't be love; it would be a death sentence. Her kindness, her normalcy—the very things that drew him to her—would be the first things to be extinguished.
The fantasy curdled, leaving behind the bitter taste of reality. He was not a different person. He was the Ghost. And the Ghost's only future was one of vengeance or a bullet. There was no room for apple cake and goodnight kisses. There was no room for her.
He walked to the window, looking out at the sleeping city. Her light was off across the way. She was sleeping the untroubled sleep of a woman who saved lives, who wondered about the fate of a patient she'd lost track of.
She would never know how close that patient had been. She would never know he loved her apple cake, or that he'd almost kissed her goodnight.
It was the only way to keep her safe. To keep the last good thing in his world untouched by the darkness that followed him. The longing didn't vanish, but he encased it in ice, a frozen, perfect memory of a life he could never have. He turned from the window, the Ghost once again fully in command, the man named Matthias receding back into the shadows where he belonged.