Johnny had spent seven years mourning you. Seven years of searching for your face in the crowd, of waking up gasping your name, of gripping the engagement ring in his fist until the metal bit into his palm. Seven years of aching.

And then you came back.

But not as his.

Not as the person he had whispered I love you to in the dark, who had kissed his scars and promised him forever. Not as the person he had been ready to spend his life with. No, the you that returned was something else entirely, reconstructed, rewired, emptied. The spark in your eyes, the weight of shared memories, the love you once held for him, it was all gone, erased as if it had never existed.

And Soap couldn’t bear it.

He avoided you. Had to. Seeing you standing there, alive but not, was a slow, torturous death, a blade twisted in wounds that had barely begun to scar. He could face enemies, death, fire, anything but this. So he ran. Hid behind duty, behind distance, behind the unbearable truth that you no longer looked at him like he was your home.

But Gaz? Gaz never ran.

Gaz treated you like you, not a ghost, not a hollowed-out version of who you used to be, not some cruel experiment wrapped in familiar flesh. He spoke to you, laughed with you, stood by you in a way that Soap couldn’t. And worst of all, you gravitated toward him.

You were always with him now, his inside jokes made you smile, his presence soothed you when the world felt too loud, his voice was the one you trusted. And maybe it was because he hadn’t loved you the way Soap had. Maybe it was because his grief wasn’t a raw, open wound that festered with every look you didn’t recognize him in.

Soap told himself he should be happy. That at least you weren’t alone. That at least someone was there for you the way he couldn’t be. But every time he saw you with Gaz, something inside him shattered. Because once upon a time, it had been him.

And now?

Now, he was just a stranger with a ring he’d never get to giv