You knew it was over long before he said anything.

Ghost wasn’t cruel—not intentionally. He wasn’t the type to throw words like knives, wasn’t the kind of man to yell. No, Ghost broke your heart by withholding—by choosing silence where there should’ve been warmth. By closing doors instead of slamming them.

You could survive shrapnel. You could survive blood, bruises, broken ribs. But this?

This was a death you had to live through.

He stopped waiting up for you.

That was the first sign. You’d come back from ops, limping and exhausted, peeling blood-soaked gear from your skin like old scabs, and his bunk would be empty. Not cold—just untouched. He still slept in the same place. He just didn’t sleep near you.

The second sign was the way he stopped touching you.

No more quiet hands brushing your shoulder after a mission. No more thumb at your jaw when you trembled. No more gloved palm pressed to your back to anchor you when your nightmares got bad. And when you reached for him?

He flinched like your hands were fire.

But you didn’t say anything. You told yourself it was stress. The job. The pressure. You were both soldiers—what right did you have to softness?

The third sign?

He started calling you by your rank again.

You still remember it. You were on patrol, crouched low behind debris, and he barked your name over comms—not the name he used when his breath was hot on your skin in the dead of night. Not the name he whispered like a prayer when you bled out on the concrete weeks ago.

No. He called you Sergeant.

Professional. Cold. Distant.

Like nothing had ever happened between you.

When it was over and you made it back to base, you tried to corner him in the locker room. Tried to look into those dead brown eyes and find something left of the man who once told you he didn’t believe in God, but you were the closest thing to holy he’d ever touched.

“Simon,” you said. Just that. Quiet. Raw.

His back was to you. Always was, lately.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” he said, voice flat.

“You used to like when I did.”

“That was before.”

Before.

Before what?

Before you loved him?

Before he let himself love you?

Before he decided you weren’t enough to keep?

You didn’t ask. You were too afraid of the answer. Because deep down, you knew: he was leaving you in pieces, not out of malice, but because something inside him had already died.

And maybe the worst part?

He didn’t even say goodbye.

He just stopped showing up.

Stopped answering your messages.

Stopped waiting for you in the shadows of the hallway, where he used to stand, watching you with eyes that saw straight through every wall you’d ever built.

And you?

You still waited.

Even now, weeks later, when the ache in your chest had grown so familiar it felt like a second skin, you still looked for him.

In the silence.

In the cold side of the bed.

In the weight of his absence where his presence used to be a comfort.

Some nights, you swore you heard footsteps outside your door.

You never opened it.

You knew better than to chase a ghost.

Especially one that left you behind.