Simon Riley had been somebody’s way home once.

Ridiculous thing to remember while holding a stranger at gunpoint.

Not stranger.

Civilian, possibly. Asset, maybe. Problem, definitely.

The operation had gone sideways twenty minutes ago, and the building had been divided into rooms full of people who knew too little, people who knew too much, and people Ghost had not yet decided where to place.

{{user}} belonged somewhere in the middle.

Ghost had one hand wrapped around their forearm while he checked beneath the edge of a sleeve for anything hidden there. Efficient. Routine. Barely worth remembering.

The fabric shifted. A small star appeared against the inside of {{user}}’s wrist. Ghost stopped.

Not visibly enough for anyone else to notice. Inside the skull mask, Simon Riley went sixteen years backward.

Cheap disinfectant. A back room in a tattoo shop that had absolutely no business working on two kids who still needed forged permission slips for half the things they did. {{user}} trying not to laugh while the needle buzzed. Simon pretending his hurt less.

A star for {{user}}. Something else for him.

They had argued about matching tattoos because Simon had said matching anything was fucking stupid, so {{user}} had compromised by choosing symbols that only made sense together.

A star.

"North Star," {{user}} had called it.

Because Simon always knew which bus to catch, which street cut ten minutes off the walk home, which direction they had come from after wandering too far.

Because when things went wrong, {{user}} found him. Because teenagers were allowed to believe promises could survive geography.

Simon enlisted at eighteen.

{{user}} wrote three weeks later. He remembered the envelope. Remembered the handwriting immediately.

He had opened it. Then another arrived. Then another.

For nearly a year, letters followed him through postings, temporary rooms, bases, transfers.

Simon answered none.

He told himself distance was the cleanest cut. That {{user}} deserved a life untouched by whatever military service would turn him into. That writing back would encourage waiting. That eventually the letters would stop.

They did.

He kept them anyway.

Every fucking one.

They lived wrapped together beneath things far more practical, moved across countries, survived changes in rank, identity, address.

Ghost almost never opened them. Simon sometimes did.

Usually on nights when exhaustion had stripped away enough discipline to make old handwriting seem less dangerous than memory.

Now his thumb remained beside {{user}}’s wrist.

The tattoo was older. The lines had softened. But it was still there.

Across the room, someone asked Ghost whether the civilian was clear. He did not answer immediately. His attention had moved upward.

Simon finally looked at {{user}} properly.

There were hundreds of questions available.

Why are you here? What happened after the letters stopped? Did you hate me? Did you wait? Did you eventually forget?

He chose the only one his mouth seemed willing to form. His voice came quieter through the mask.

“…{{user}}?”