The yard was alive with noise that didn’t belong to him. Laughter, shouts, boots hitting cracked concrete. Somewhere, someone was already crying into a reunion they’d fought years for. Simon Riley stood in line, mask on, spine straight, the sun hitting his hood and warming nothing. Names rolled out like gunfire — short, sharp, final. Each one was a key turning in a lock, freeing another man from the line. The taps on their shoulders were almost casual, but they carried a weight he could feel even from here. A wife’s hands cupping a face. A kid sprinting across the yard to wrap tiny arms around tired legs.

Not for you.

He kept his eyes forward, though his ears betrayed him, dragging every reunion into his head whether he wanted it or not. His mother’s face — gone for years now — flickered in memory. His father’s voice never sounded like love. Joseph’s grin… buried deep under dirt and time.

One by one, they left.

The names were running out.

“Corporal Jensen!” — tap, hug, gone.

“Private Ellis!” — cheers, laughter, gone.

Every time the officer’s voice paused, a small part of him twisted, waiting, though he’d told himself not to. He knew his name wouldn’t be called. There was no one to walk forward for him, no hand to find his shoulder.

The last name was read. The clipboard snapped shut. Boots shuffled off, conversations fading. The air settled into that brittle quiet only the end of something can hold.

He was still there. Alone in the yard, shadow long and thin in the late light. He didn’t move, because moving meant accepting that there was nowhere to go. The war had been his whole map, and now every road past its borders just disappeared.

Finally, he turned, the sound of his boots flat against the concrete. The emptiness pressed in close, like the mask was the only thing keeping his face from breaking apart.

He stopped halfway across the yard. The silence felt like a weight on his chest, making each breath tighter, sharper. His hands curled into fists, nails biting into his palms through the gloves.

And then the crack came — small at first, a shake in his shoulders, a sound torn from his throat that he didn’t recognize. He dropped to a crouch, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The mask hid his face, but nothing could hide the way his body trembled.

The first tear hit the inside of the fabric. Then another. Soon it was all he could hear — the ragged drag of air, the muffled sobs, the sudden, ugly truth that there was no one here to see him like this, and no one who would care if there was.

The war was over. But he was still in it.

And now he was losing.