Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ghosdeeri was not meant to interfere with mortals.

She was created by Ghostwalker to do one thing, and one thing only. Observe over all the Inphernals and their activities, and to record it. She was carefully crafted with an endless memory. She watches over everything.

All alone in her library.

It wasn’t always lonely of course, inphernals came and went, but none ever stuck around for too long. It was eerie to some, but to Ghosdeeri it was home. A place of endless records, where history was written, catalogued, and shelved long after the ones who lived it had died.

And in the heart of it all stood Ghosdeeri.

Her antlers brushed the rafters when she moved. Her heels clicked softly against the marble floors. The library was her domain and her duty. She wrote, she watched, she waited. That was the way it was meant to be. Her purpose was to witness, not to touch.

So when the door creaked open that afternoon, Ghosdeeri expected another brief interruption, another inphernal passing through like a shadow. She didn’t even glance up from the scroll she was writing.

Then she heard a cough. Rough, deliberate, and edged with smoke.

“Nice place you got here.”

Ghosdeeri’s ears twitched. She lifted her gaze.

There, standing just inside the doorway, was a man who looked as though he had almost wandered in by accident. His jacket was worn, his hair wind-tossed, his eyes half-lidded with the lazy calm of someone who seemed to be on cloud 9. A thin trail of smoke curled from the cigarette balanced between his fingers, drifting up toward the ceiling.

“This library is not some tavern,” Ghosdeeri said sternly, her voice cold like a blizzard. “You cannot smoke here.”

Traffic quirked an eyebrow. “You sure? Place feels like it could use a little haze.”

His grin was smug, but also chill and disarming. He chuckled and stubbed the cigarette out against the heel of his boot, tucking the rest of the pack into his pocket. “Relax, I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“No one ever is,” Ghosdeeri murmured, turning back to her scroll.

When she glanced up again, he was still here. Instead of leaving, he wandered further in, hands shoved into his pockets as if he owned the place. His steps were casual, aimless. Where other inphernals walked respectively between shelves, he strolled, tilting his head back to eye the ceiling, the endless stacks of books and scrolls.

“Big place,” he said. “Kinda empty, though.”

“It is meant to be empty.”

“Huh.” He trailed his fingers along the spine of a book as he passed, careful not to pull it free. “Seems like a waste.”

The words pricked at her, sharper than they should have. Waste. As though centuries of preserving knowledge, of holding history safe, could be reduced to emptiness. As though her duty, her existence, were nothing more than dust on forgotten shelves.

She straightened, antlers catching the light. “It is not for mortals to decide what is wasteful.”

Traffic stopped then, glancing back at her. “Fair enough. Guess you’re the expert after all,”Traffic shrugged and dropped onto one of the reading benches, stretching out like a man who had no intention of leaving anytime soon.

“You may not linger here,” Ghosdeeri said, more firmly now.

“Why not?”

“Because this is not a place for—” She stopped. The words caught on her tongue. Not a place for what? For mortals? For shelter? She had said such things countless times before, sent countless intruders away. And yet…

Traffic leaned back, folding his arms behind his head. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch your fancy books and stuff. Just need a place to chill for a while. Been walking all day,” he yawned.

The ease of his tone unsettled her more than defiance would have. He treated the library not as a sacred place but as a quiet shelter, no different than a roadside inn.

And yet, she made no move to kick him out.

The hours stretched.

Ghosdeeri tried to focus on her work, cataloguing, recording, shelving. But her ears caught every shift of fabric as Traffic got comfortable, every sigh of smoke as he lit another cigarette, outside this time per her request.

Most mortals faded quickly in her presence. They grew uneasy under her gaze, their bodies stiff with anxiety. But Traffic… Traffic treated her as though she were any other person.

It was infuriating. And yet—

It was oddly soothing.

When she finally closed her scroll and turned toward him, she meant to tell him to leave. Instead, she heard herself ask, “Why are you here?”

Traffic cracked an eye open, grinning almost smugly. “Why not?”

“That is not an answer.”

He chuckled softly, sitting up on his arm. “Alright, alright, you win,” he quipped, glancing up at her. “People consider me a traveler, always moving, never in the same place as yesterday. I’ve been all around the Inpherno. While I was walking back from the lost temple I found my way to Crossroads and then stumbled across your place. Figured you’d be nice enough to let me crash since it’s a public library,” he explained lazily.

Ghosdeeri tilted her head, watching the faint smile that touched his lips. A traveler huh? A man who had no home, no roots, no permanence, and yet he carried himself with an ease she couldn’t mimic even if she tried.

“You do not fear being forgotten?” she asked.

Traffic shrugged. “People forget. That’s just what they do. Doesn’t mean the moment wasn’t worth it.”

The words struck deeper than she expected. For centuries she had clung to permanence, to memory, to records and archives. But here sat a man who drifted through life unanchored, and he made it sound… lighter.

Dangerously lighter.

She folded her hands around her. “You shouldn’t return here.”

Traffic grinned, hoisting his bag over his shoulder as he stepped one foot out the doorway. “Yeah? Guess we’ll see.”

And though she told herself she would not allow it, though she reminded herself of her purpose, her duty.

She knew he would be back.

And for the first time in centuries, Ghosdeeri found that she didn’t dread it.

Chapter Text

The next morning, when Ghosdeeri opened the heavy doors of the library, she half expected him to be waiting.

Traffic wasn't.

The long marble hall stood empty, beams of morning light gently spilling through the windows. The silence was loud. She told herself she was relieved. She told herself the strange flutter in her chest was nothing more than the settling of peace.

She was lying to herself.

By noon, she had busied herself to reorganize a few of the books. Some mortals loved to stick them in places they aren't meant to be. Suddenly, she heard a familiar sound: boots scuffing the stone, the faint flicker of a lighter, the soft cough of a man who smoked a bit too much.

"Morning," Traffic said, as if the two of them had arranged this.

Ghosdeeri placed a book back slowly. "You have returned."

"Told you I might." He strode past her, making no effort to walk softly as mortals usually did in her presence. "Hope I'm not late."

"Late?"

"For our little study session." He dropped onto the same bench as yesterday, lounging across it like he owned the place.

Ghosdeeri's antlers glinted a faint blue tone at his words. "I do not need to study what I already know."

Traffic shrugged. "It's always nice to read with a friend y'know?"

A friend?

Ghosdeeri had never met someone she had considered a friend. She wasn't allowed to do that. She wasn't built for connections or relationships. She was built to observe. How could this man that she had met just yesterday have waltzed into her life and completely flipped it upside down?

And why was she not as against it as she should be?

He wasn't reading. He wasn't even pretending. He sat with his boots propped against the edge of the bench, hands folded loosely across his stomach, cigarette unlit between his fingers.

The library had never felt more alive.

The days became a rhythm.

Traffic came and went as he pleased. Sometimes he wandered off for two or three days, only to stumble back in with new stories about towns he'd passed through, cheap food he'd eaten, people he'd met and forgotten just as quickly. Sometimes he appeared at dawn, sometimes at dusk, but he always returned to the same bench, the same lazy sprawl, the same unbothered grin.

"You are not meant to be here," Ghosdeeri told him one evening as she filed away scrolls from a forgotten dynasty.

"And yet," Traffic said, smoke curling around him like ribbons, "here I am."

"Hm."

They spoke, slowly at first, then more easily.

Traffic talked about the road, about long stretches of highway where the sky seemed to go on forever. He talked about sleeping under bridges, about sharing cigarettes with strangers whose names he never got, about the strange freedom of never knowing where he'd wake up next.

"You live without anchor," Ghosdeeri murmured one night, more in observation than judgment.

"Anchors drag you down," Traffic said simply. "I just float."

"And yet you return here."

He smirked. "Guess you're the exception."

The words still lingered long after the smoke faded.

For her part, Ghosdeeri shared a little about herself. She told him about what she was. What her duty is. She told him about ghostwalker and all the other watchers. She talked about the library and how it had been around longer than crossroads itself. Traffic listened with an attentiveness that surprised her, nodding along, sometimes asking questions, sometimes just listening to the way her voice carried through the empty hall.

"You sound lonely when you talk about your story," he said once.

"I am not meant to be anything else."

"Yeah," Traffic muttered, taking a drag. "Sounds lonely to me."

It was not a single moment but a series of them.

Traffic dozing off on a bench with smoke still lingering on his lips.

Traffic laughing at his own awful jokes until even Ghosdeeri felt a smile tug at her mouth.

Traffic leaning back to watch while Ghosdeeri writes.

Traffic leaving, always leaving, yet always coming back.

Ghosdeeri felt it building like a storm she was powerless to stop. The awareness of him. The way her ears caught every sound he made. The way his presence shifted the stillness of the library into something much warmer.

She had endured centuries untouched. But now, with every cigarette flicked into the ashtray and every lazy grin thrown her way, she felt the dangerous weight of wanting.

She had never wanted anything before.

One evening, when the library was closing for the day, Traffic sat cross-legged on the floor, cigarette glowing faintly between his fingers.

"Y'know," he said, exhaling smoke toward the vent in the ceiling, "I think I like it here."

"You should not."

"But I do." He glanced up at her with half-lidded eyes. "Feels different. Like the world outside can't reach me in here."

Ghosdeeri's hands tightened around the book she was holding. "That is because it cannot. This place is not meant for mortals."

"Guess I'll just have to be the exception again."

Her throat caught. For a long moment she said nothing, torn between her duty and the ache blooming in her chest.

Finally, she whispered, "You will not be here forever."

Traffic smiled faintly, flicking a spark which died out into the ash tray. "Doesn't have to be forever. Just has to be now."

And though every racing thought told her to send him away, though every instinct warned her of the pain to come, Ghosdeeri let him stay.

Because for the first time in centuries, the now felt like enough.

Chapter Text

The library had never been so noisy.

It wasn’t that Traffic was loud, though he had a habit of whistling off key and dragging his boots over the marble floor. It was that he was present. A kind of presence that filled silence, made it feel like something actually lived there.

Ghosdeeri had grown used to silence so heavy it seemed to press against her chest. Now, silence arrived only in the spaces between his words.

He sprawled across the bench as if it was made for him, smoke curling upward toward the rafters. He never touched the books without asking, but he peppered her with questions:
What’s the oldest thing in here?
What’s the weirdest?
Have you read them all?

She answered patiently, though her voice sometimes caught when he grinned at her like a man who knew he was wearing down her reserve.

One evening, Traffic wandered behind her desk as she wrote in her book. “You ever get lonely here?” he asked, cigarette dangling from his lips.

She did not look up. “We’ve had this conversation, have we not?”

“That’s not an answer,” he said with a raspy chuckle.

Ghosdeeri paused, pen poised above ink. “I used to.”

Traffic hummed and tapped ash into a tray. “What changed?”

She returned back to writing, trying not to think too much about her next words. “I met you.”

There was a gentle silence after that. Nothing except pen tenderly touching paper and the scent of tobacco.

Days blurred. Weeks, perhaps months. Time was harder to measure with him around.

Traffic made himself at home in ways that should have irritated her. He brewed tea with a battered kettle he’d brought in from the road, filling the air with an earthy scent that clashed with the dry scent of paper. He napped openly in the reading hall, jacket bunched under his head, smoke-stained breath rising and falling in lazy rhythm. He even convinced her to move one of the benches closer to the tall windows, “so we can watch the weather roll in.”

We.

She caught herself repeating the word too often.

One late night, when the lanterns burned low, she found him sketching aimlessly on a sheet of printer paper. Circles, arrows, rough, poorly drawn maps of roads and towns.

“Do you plan your travels?” she asked.

Traffic grinned. “Planning ruins the fun. These are just places I remember. Not… destinations. Just… memories.”

He pushed the paper toward her. She traced the jagged line of a road that wound through nowhere, ending abruptly. “You left this incomplete.”

He lit another cigarette. “Yeah. That’s where I met you.”

Her hands froze on the page.

Traffic leaned back, exhaling smoke. “Guess I didn’t feel like moving past it yet.”

Ghosdeeri folded the paper carefully, as though it were part of her archives, though she knew it was nothing more than bad doodles. Yet when she set it aside, she did so gently, as if afraid it might break.

They grew close in ways she could not name.

Traffic teased her into answering questions she had long since locked away. He pressed her for stories of factions she had seen rise and fall, and though she rarely indulged, sometimes she found herself speaking much past her bedtime.

And she, in turn, found herself watching him. Watching the way he dragged his cigarettes, the way he hummed tunelessly when he thought no one heard, the way his eyes softened when she grew quiet.

It was dangerous. She knew it was dangerous. She had watched countless mortals wither and fade. She had sworn never to interfere, never to bind herself to what time would take from her.

But the library felt warmer now. Alive. And every time Traffic left, her heart felt restless until he returned.

A storm broke out that rattled the entire Inpherno.

Rain hammered the high windows, rattling the panes. Ghosdeeri had pulled her shawl closer, watching the sky split open in flashes of white.

Traffic sat cross-legged on the bench, smoke curling from his lips as though he were unconcerned with the world outside. “Good thing you let me move this bench,” he murmured. “Best view in the city.”

She gave him a look, but he only smirked.

The thunder rolled again. And beneath it, another sound.

A sharp knock. Desperate. Then another, heavier this time, almost out drowned by the storm.

Traffic blinked, flicking ash into the tray. “You get visitors this late?”

“No.” Her voice was confused.

She rose, heels clicking against the marble as she crossed the hall. When she opened the heavy door, wind and rain lashed into the library. And standing there, drenched to the bone, was a child.

She was small, thin, her eyes wide with fear and exhaustion. She wore a helmet but it had a big crack in the center. Clearly couldn’t block much rain. Her clothes clung to her, torn at the edges, her hands trembling at her sides.

Ghosdeeri froze. She’s never had an interaction like this before.

The child before her looked so tired and scared, and instinct rose up before thought. Ghosdeeri extended her arms, guiding the girl inside, shutting the door behind her.

Traffic’s eyes widened. He quickly stubbed out his cigarette and stood, rushing to the kids side. “Whoa. Hey, easy there.” He shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders without hesitation.

The child blinked up at them, shivering. “I… I just needed to get out of the rain,” she whispered.

Chapter Text

The storm clawed at the windows.

Inside, the girl stood dripping on the marble floor, her wide eyes darting between them. She clutched Traffic’s jacket tight around her body, clinging to it like a lifeline.

She didn’t speak.

Ghosdeeri lowered herself slowly, her robes pooling around her heels. She kept her voice soft, careful not to let her height or her antlers make her seem like a threat. “You are safe here,” she murmured.

The girl only flinched at the sudden thunder.

Traffic crouched a few feet away, his cigarette long since stubbed out. He smiled gently, the way a man might coax a stray cat. “Storm’s nasty, huh? You’re lucky you found this place kid.”

The girl’s lips parted, then closed again. She nodded once.

“What’s your name?” Ghosdeeri asked.

Another pause. She could hear the storm roaring in the silence between them.

Finally, almost inaudible over the storm outside, the girl whispered, “Lightblox.”

Traffic’s grin brightened softly. “That’s a nice name.”

Lightblox blinked at him, confused, but the edges of her mouth twitched into a small smile as though the words had caught her off guard.

Ghosdeeri placed a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. “Lightblox. You may rest here until the storm passes.”

The girl’s body relaxed, though she kept her eyes low.

They settled her by the candles in a tiny book nook. Traffic busied himself boiling water in his portable kettle, whistling nothing in particular as steam filled the air. Ghosdeeri fetched a blanket from her private quarters, an old, soft thing, worn smooth with centuries of careful keeping. She draped it over Lightblox’s shoulders.

Lightblox sat timidly at first, but as the warmth seeped in, she curled beneath it, only her eyes peeking out.

Traffic returned with a chipped mug of tea. He set it down in front of her, then sat down on a nearby bench. “Carefull, don’t burn your mouth off.”

Lightblox glanced from him to the mug, then back again. Her hands emerged slowly from the folds of the blanket. She carefully picked up the mug and brought it to her lips.

The first sip made her flinch. Too hot. She quickly sat it back down.

Traffic chuckled softly. “Couldn’t even wait.”

Lightblox ducked her head deeper into the blanket, hiding the faint embarrassment on her cheeks.

Ghosdeeri watched in silence, she felt an emotion she honestly hadn’t felt before. Sure, she had sheltered mortals before, briefly, in emergencies, but never like this. Never has she cared for a child.

Hours passed. The storm howled, then eased, then rose again, but inside the library the three of them made their own quiet.

Traffic talked, filling the space with stories. Not the wild ones he told Ghosdeeri of roads and strangers, but smaller tales: the time he dropped an entire box of cigarettes in a puddle and cried about it, the time a crow stole his sandwich, the time he tried to sleep in an abandoned shed only to be chased out by raccoons. Silly ones, just in attempt to lighten the atmosphere and make Lightblox a bit happier.

She didn’t laugh, not out loud, but her eyes flickered brighter each time, betraying the amusement she couldn’t hide.

Traffic eventually caught her looking and called her out. She got flustered again and hid back into her blanket.

Ghosdeeri brought out some snacks she had in the back saved for Traffic. She placed them within reach but didn’t force Lightblox to take anything if she didn’t want it. It took nearly an hour, but eventually Lightblox’s hand crept from the blanket to take a slice of apple. She took small bites, but she did eat, which Ghosdeeri was pleased with.

“See?” Traffic said lightly. “Told you this place had the best snacks.”

Ghosdeeri arched a brow at him. “You told her no such thing.”

“Mm whateverr” He stretched his legs out, leaning back on his elbows. “Snacks are snacks.”

For the first time, Lightblox made a sound that wasn’t a whisper. A small, soft hff—half laugh, half breath.

Both of them stilled.

Then Ghosdeeri allowed herself the smallest smile. ”I guess you’re right.”

As midnight neared, the storm softened into steady rain. Lightblox’s eyelids drooped, a soft yawn escaping her. Her body was heavy with exhaustion she stubbornly tried to hide.

Traffic noticed first. He leaned close, voice dropping. “Hey, Lightblox. You’re safe, ‘kay? You can sleep.”

The girl shook her head quickly, clutching the blanket tighter.

“No one’ll bother you,” he said. “Not while we’re here.”

Still, she resisted.

It was Ghosdeeri who finally rose. She gently sat down on the bench next to her, being sure to keep distance.

Traffic caught the cue. He got up and sat down right beside Ghosdeeri.

They sat on the bench in silence, hoping that maybe, somehow, their presence could ease the girls nerves just a little bit.

It did.

Lightblox eventually fell asleep on the soft bench. Traffic had gotten a bit too sleepy as well because he passed out on Ghosdeeri’s shoulder.

Not that she minded.