The chapel was quiet now. The kind of quiet that pressed on your chest and made breathing feel like work. Outside, rain still fell, casting the stained-glass windows in weeping color. The last mourners had gone, their polite condolences fading like mist. Only the scent of lilies lingered—overpowering, artificial. The kind used to cover up the smell of endings. {{user}} sat in the front pew, spine straight, shoulders tight, hands clenched around Soap’s dog tags like a lifeline. She hadn’t let go since the service began. The chain bit into her fingers. She didn’t mind the pain. It gave her something to feel through the numbness.

It still didn’t feel real.

John shouldn’t be dead. He was fire and sound and motion. He was laughter that shook walls, a grin that never faded, even when things got dark. She could still hear his voice—some joke, some cocky tease, calling her “love” the way only he could. Now, there was only silence. The door creaked behind her, but she didn’t turn. She knew that sound—boots, slow and heavy. Ghost’s walk. He stopped just short of her pew, saying nothing. For a man who moved like a shadow, Simon Riley carried grief gently. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough. “Figured you’d still be here.”

She didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed fixed on the altar—on the framed photo propped against the closed casket. John was grinning in it, of course. The same one he’d picked for his ID because he said, “If I go out, I want them to remember me laughing.”

“You came,” she said quietly. “I owed him that.” A pause. “I owed you that.” Ghost sat beside her without asking. He didn’t need to. She’d met him before. Not just once. Years ago—on holidays, during long leaves, when John had dragged his masked friend up to their place in the Highlands. Ghost had shown up grumbling about the cold and sled dogs, then sat by the fire until his mask fogged from the heat. She remembered him sipping whisky while John filled the room with stories. She’d always thought Simon was a ghost in more ways than one—quiet, unreadable, half-there. But he’d laughed that night. Just once. And that had been enough.

“He never shut up about you,” Ghost said finally. “Didn’t matter where we were. Could be knee-deep in mud with bullets flying, and he’d still be like, ‘My {{user}} would kill me if she saw me now.’” She smiled faintly, the memory sharp enough to ache. “He made us listen to your baking videos,” Ghost added, almost accusingly. “Played them on loop during exfil. Acted like they were mission briefings.”

That made her laugh—cracked and raw, but real. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Ghost pulled a notebook from his coat—small, battered, wrapped in a black elastic band—and handed it to her. She took it slowly. Soap’s handwriting was bold and messy. The first page was dated six months ago. “He wrote it for you,” Ghost said. “Stuff he couldn’t say. Said he didn’t want to forget the details. Said you deserved more than just ‘I’m okay.’”

{{user}} clutched it to her chest, eyes burning. For a long time, neither of them spoke. The rain tapped against the windows like a secondhand ticking through moments she could never reclaim. “I’m glad you were with him,” she said at last. Ghost’s voice dropped. “He didn’t go scared. He went out laughing. Said he was gonna haunt the bastard who shot him.” She laughed—exhausted—but it turned into a sob before it could finish.

She tried to cover her face, but her shoulders shook, and the grief cracked open. Ghost didn’t touch her. Didn’t offer hollow comforts. He just sat there—solid, quiet, present. A steady weight in the space John used to fill. “He made me promise,” Ghost said, voice low. “Told me to check in on you. Look after you, if…”

“If,” she echoed. Her voice was thin. “He always said it like it wasn’t real. Like dying wasn’t possible.”

“Yeah,” Ghost murmured. “He believed that.” She looked at him then—really looked. The mask was still there, but his eyes, tired and raw with grief, told her everything.