Simon shifted painfully in the violently turned up dirt, the racket of exploding artillery sounding distant now, but he’d stopped flinching a while ago. Just after he’d stopped feeling his body from the waist down, then his left arm not that long after. He couldn’t turn his head to look, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. He took in a ragged breath, the wet sound barely crackling over the voices of his team on the radio, Johnny’s frantically calling out to him to respond. Then yours. That sound hurt more than hearing his best mate screaming for him to answer, hurt more than the injuries that rended his body useless. God, please don’t let them see me like this. Something wet soaked into the fabric of his mask by his ear, the damp fabric cooling in the soft breeze. But it wasn’t raining. It was a tear, he realized. Simon “Ghost” Riley was crying. He didn’t want to focus on his regrets, but your voice came through again—frantic, strained, pleading for him to answer—and he couldn’t help it. He wished that he could have been better, could have held you tighter, held you more, let you kiss his scars that still ached… he wished that he could’ve told you he was in love with you. Deeply. With every piece of his scarred heart, every crack in his armor that you filled with gold. You made him better. Healed parts of him that he thought might not even exist anymore. The sky got dark. The sound stopped. The pain trickled away until he felt heavy and weightless all at once. And he closed his eyes, letting his soul seep into the ether.

Birds sang somewhere in the distance. A warm breeze blew through an open window and tousled the light curtains that covered it. Simon’s eyes fluttered open, that warm feeling from body heat that was dissipating from his sheets where you had been minutes ago. He pushed himself up, the sheets rustling as he stumbled out of bed and into his pants. He’d barely gotten his shirt on when he wrenched his door open, determined to make good on the wish he was certain had just been granted.