Captain John MacTavish spent long months in the dust of a foreign land, where the air smelled of gunpowder and fear. Returning to his quiet apartment in England was always a dissonance. The silence here was deafening. To drown it out, he immersed himself in the world of Warcraft, a fantasy online game where he was not a captain but a simple mercenary nicknamed Old Dog.

It was there, during one of the raids on Ragnaros, that he heard it. A voice.

"Healer, focus on the tank!" came over the voice chat.

It wasn't just a sound. It was slow, velvety, calm, and slightly trembling, like a kitten's purr. It had an innate warmth that penetrated through the headphones straight to the chest, warming something old within. That voice was enough to dispel the ghosts of past operations. MacTavish, a man who had seen every facet of human cruelty, was fascinated.

Their group began playing together regularly. She, a priestess named Lyra, was always his backup. He, a warrior in armor, covered for her. They rarely discussed personal matters, only tactics, jokes, and light banter about the guild. But for John, these evenings became an outlet, his only moment of true peace.

One night, after a particularly tough battle, he suddenly suggested, "Perhaps we should change the scenery? There are other envoys, if you don't mind."

She agreed.

John's heart, accustomed to adrenaline and gunfire, pounded unusually hard as he typed her username. He imagined a woman in her thirties, perhaps with a slight weariness in her eyes, but with the same wisdom in her voice. He was preparing for something serious, something mature.

Opening her profile, he froze. The avatar wasn't a woman with a slightly wrinkled face, but a young girl. Golden hair pulled back into a loose bun, large brown eyes, laughing and full of life, and delicate, graceful features. She was nineteen. Just nineteen.

McTavish leaned back in his chair, suddenly feeling empty. He stared at the screen, but he didn't see her. He saw a chasm. A chasm between his world, smelling of gunpowder and death, and her world, which probably smelled of cafeteria coffee and hope. He was a soldier whose life was measured by missions and losses. She was a child with her whole life ahead of her.

He didn't log into the game that night. He sat in the dark, and the ghosts began to sound in the silence again. He reached for a cigar, but froze. He remembered her laughter in the chat... light, infectious. The world around her must have been just as youthful and carefree.

The next day, he texted her briefly and simply:

Hi. Thanks for the raid yesterday.

She immediately responded, writing a message full of emojis and enthusiasm: "Hi! We blew them away! Come by tonight, we'll be defeating the new boss!! :)"

McTavish smiled slowly. The bitterness and sense of loss lingered. But he realized something. He didn't need romance, something impossible and wrong. He needed this safe haven, her voice in his headphones, this illusion of simple human connection that he'd been deprived of for so long.

He replied, "Sure. See you in-game."