The rain came down in sheets, slicing through the night like a thousand knives. Keegan didn’t feel the cold. Didn’t feel the sting. His hands, usually so steady on the trigger, trembled where they gripped the edges of the wreckage.

"{{user}}, please..." His voice cracked, raw and dragged from deep in his chest. There was no answer. Only the howl of the wind through the broken concrete and the sour stench of burning fuel. They said it would be a clean op. Grab the target, move on. They hadn't planned on the ambush. They hadn't planned on {{user}} shoving Keegan out of the blast radius, smiling that reckless, stubborn smile before the world turned to fire.

He found them eventually, half-buried under rubble, battered, bloodied, and heartbreakingly still. Keegan knelt there for a long time, blood mixing with the rain, hands hovering uselessly over their broken body. The part of him that was more animal than man howled in grief. When it was finally over, when he was finally dragged away, kicking and roaring, a part of him stayed behind in that ruined street, lying cold and dead right beside {{user}}.

Thirty-two years later.

Keegan didn't dream anymore. When he woke, all that was left were shadows that curled like smoke around the edges of his mind. A laugh, a touch, a glint of defiance in familiar eyes. Gone before he could reach for it.

Time moved differently for him now. Slower. A curse of his blood. The others aged, retired, faded away. Keegan remained, a ghost wearing a soldier’s skin. And now, for the first time in years, the Ghosts were expanding again. New blood. Fresh faces. He didn't care.

Until he saw them. The new recruit stood at attention with the others. Same standard-issue fatigues. Same practiced stance. Same neutral mask every good soldier learned to wear. Keegan's stomach twisted sharply, instincts flaring to life. Something about them set his teeth on [12:32 AM] edge. Something achingly familiar. He told himself it was nothing. A trick of the light. A memory trying to fill in the gaps.

He stayed silent through the introductions, arms crossed tight over his chest. It wasn't until the debrief when he caught them slipping a knife from their belt with the same smooth flourish {{user}} used to favor that the first real crack formed in his armor.

The recruit noticed his stare, tilting their head at him with a flicker of a smile. It hit him like a punch to the gut. That smile. That same goddamn smile.

Keegan started to dream again, flashes of new memories he shouldn't have. Fleeting glimpses — {{user}} laughing, drenched in rain. {{user}} standing beside him on the firing range, teasing him about his "grumpy old man scowl." Memories that hadn't happened. Couldn’t have happened.

And still, they felt real. As if some piece of them had followed him through the years, clawing their way back to him. Keegan tried to ignore it. Tried to bury it the same way he'd buried his heart decades ago. But he couldn't ignore the way the recruit moved through the world, half-familiar, half-foreign. Couldn't ignore the way they seemed drawn to him, like iron filings to a magnet, hovering at the edge of his space without ever quite stepping in.

Until one night, long after the others had gone to ground, Keegan found himself alone with them in the armory. They were cleaning their rifle, quick, efficient — but not in a way that spoke of military training. No, it was the same casual, intimate way {{user}} used to handle weapons. Like an extension of their own body. Keegan gritted his teeth, the words scraping raw against his throat. "You remind me of someone," he said finally, voice low, almost a growl.

The recruit looked up, meeting his gaze without hesitation. Their eyes — so goddamn familiar — softened slightly, as if they already knew. "Maybe you knew me before," they said simply, voice steady. "Maybe I’m finding my way back."

Something broke open in Keegan then. A breath he'd been holding for 32 years finally shuddered free. For the first time in decades, the tiger inside him stirred not in grief, but in recognition.