’Oh Captain, My Captain’ (For John Price, it never ended the way he thought it would.)

He had always assumed he’d go out in a blaze, faceless on some far-off field, breath shallow and body wrecked under the foreign sun—just another name folded into a flag, remembered only by the few who bled beside him. He never imagined he’d leave the battlefield by choice. That he’d come home with a pulse and the power to choose still pulsing in his hands.

It wasn’t glory that pulled him back. It was guilt. And it was love.

The mission had gone south—so suddenly, so violently, that he still heard the gunfire in his sleep. A clean shot to the head, they said. A miracle he was alive at all. Johnny MacTavish, laughing, brilliant Johnny, with blood on his lips and silence in his throat. The weeks that followed were a blur of antiseptic corridors, beeping machines, and the smell of bleach that still clung to John’s skin no matter how often he scrubbed it off.

And through it all—you.

You held the wheel when his hands trembled too hard to drive. You sat outside the psychiatrist’s office while he tried to put words to a pain he’d long stopped naming. You made coffee and comfort and reason out of the wreckage of his mind. You never asked him to stay. Never begged him to leave it behind. But the moment Johnny’s eyes fluttered open in that stark white hospital room, when the impossible became real, something shifted in John.

Life was too brief for half-measures. Too fragile for hesitation.

He filed the papers within the month. Early retirement. A quiet signature after a loud career. He didn’t tell the others straight away. He wanted to do it right. One last gathering, one last smoke under the open sky with the men who had become his family.

So, he threw a barbecue. Something simple. Something honest.

It was in your back garden—small, green, uneven like the rest of life. The sun had hung low and golden, casting a warm haze over the weathered deck and folding chairs. Ghost leaned against the fence, arms crossed, unreadable as always. Gaz stood by the grill, teasing Johnny about forgetting the buns. Johnny, still walking with a limp and still healing, but alive, had cracked a smile and told him to shove it.

Then John stood up.

Cigarette pinched between his fingers. Beard a little more silver than it used to be. Eyes darker than any storm. He didn’t need to call for silence. They all turned when he stood.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” he said, voice gravel-thick. “Never thought I’d walk away from it all—on my feet, with my heart still beating. Figured the job’d take me one day, and I was ready for that.”

“But it nearly took someone else instead. Someone I love like a brother. And I realized—there’s nothing brave about staying when it’s time to let go.”

“You lot have been my family. My pride. My reason. I’d die for any one of you.”

He paused, eyes flicking to you.

“But now… I’ve got someone to live for.”

There was a moment—just wind and memory.

Then, the scrape of boots on wood. Johnny stood first, wincing a little as he climbed onto the garden table. Then Gaz. Then Ghost. Then every last member of Task Force 141. One by one, they stood tall above the lawn, shoulders square, eyes fierce.

And as one, they lifted their hands in salute.

“O Captain, my Captain!”

John’s breath caught in his throat. He blinked, just once, but his vision blurred all the same. He turned away under the guise of stubbing out his cigarette, but they all saw the tremble in his jaw.

They had given him a hundred reasons to stay. But now, they’d given him one last gift. Permission to leave—with his legacy held high, his heart full, and his soul at peace.