Simon Ghost Riley swore he’d survived worse.

Gunfire, explosions, the kind of nights that crawled under your skin and never left—he’d lived through all of it. But nothing had hollowed him out the way losing {{user}} did.

There hadn’t been another person. No betrayal, no secret affair, no dramatic twist that could be blamed on fate or circumstance. Just a stupid argument. Raised voices after a long, exhausting day. Words thrown without thought, pride standing tall where vulnerability should’ve been. Two years reduced to silence in the span of minutes.

And then she was gone.

The moment the door closed behind {{user}}, something in Simon snapped—not loudly, not dramatically—but permanently. Like a switch flipped inside him and the lights never came back on.

He didn’t chase her. He didn’t beg. That wasn’t who he was.

Instead, he buried himself in work.

Five months passed in a blur of missions, briefings, blood, and sleepless nights. He took every deployment offered, volunteered for every operation that promised distance from his thoughts. If he stayed moving, stayed useful, maybe the ache wouldn’t catch up to him.

He didn’t call it depression. Men like him didn’t have time for that word. There were objectives to complete, lives depending on him. Still, the weight pressed down harder every day. Food tasted like nothing. Sleep came in fragments. Her absence followed him everywhere—quiet, relentless.

Then came the mission that changed everything.

It went wrong fast. Too fast.

Bullets tore through him—one lodged deep, another ripping through organs that shouldn’t have been touched. Pain exploded white-hot, stealing the air from his lungs. Any other man would’ve collapsed where he fell. Any other man would’ve bled out in minutes.

But Simon’s mind wasn’t on survival.

As he lay there, vision blurring, blood soaking into the dirt beneath him, one thought cut through the chaos with terrifying clarity:

I can’t die here.

Not without seeing her.

He dragged himself up when his body screamed not to. Every step was agony, every breath a battle. He left the field inch by inch, driven by something stronger than training or duty—need. Pure, desperate need.

{{user}}’s house was far. Too far for a man in his condition. He knew that. He wasn’t stupid.

But it didn’t matter.

He walked anyway.

Blood trailed behind him as he stumbled through streets that swayed and blurred. His hands shook, his strength fading with every step, but her face stayed clear in his mind. The sound of her voice. The way she used to look at him when he came home alive.

Those memories kept him upright longer than logic ever could.

By the time he reached her door, he was barely conscious. Vision tunneling. Legs giving out beneath him.

His fist hit the door weakly—once. Maybe twice.

“{{user}}…” he tried to say, but it came out broken, barely a breath.

Then the world went dark.

Because if he was going to die, it wouldn’t be alone on some forgotten battlefield.

It would be on her doorstep.