Chapter Text
JANUARY 19th, 2024
They call it longing because it takes forever. It is a yearning without an answer and a desire without a satiation. But that is not the whole truth. Longing is only the beginning of it. Longing is a seed in your belly that sprouts the roots of love, but even as the plant begins to grow, you don't know if it's going to bloom a red rose or a poisonous weed. When you're a kid, you think you will know the difference when the time comes, and you will choose the rose, but the older I get, the more I realize that it's not up to me. There is no rhyme or reason to who blooms a flower and who is pruned instead.
I never thought I'd find myself standing among the dead waiting for the flower to bloom. I always assumed I'd be the one with my hand on the sheers, trimming back the branches that would never bear fruit. But I am a soldier, not a gardener.
It’s been three months since your funeral, Johnny. I know you're not listening, and even if you were, there's no way for me to send these to you, but the psychologist said it would help, and I'm running out of ideas.
I'm not used to having something to lose. You changed everything, you changed me. You were a brother, a comrade, a friend, a leader. But you were never just any of those things, and now I don't know how to find my balance again.
I didn't know how much of my weight you were holding up until the ground fell out from beneath my feet. And now, every morning, I wake up, and I forget. Just for a moment, I forget, and the world is right, and the sun is shining, and then I remember. And the loss is the same as it was the day you left, only, now, the wound is festering. I'm rotting, and nothing I do is enough.
There is no honor, no pride in your loss. I cannot make a martyr out of the memory of you. Your death was senseless and meaningless, and I cannot find peace in the knowledge that it was in the name of a noble cause.
There was no nobility in the way he killed you. He didn't kill you because you were a soldier or a terrorist or a man. He killed you because you were in the way. The only comfort I have is that you went out the way you would have wanted, fighting, saving lives, being a hero. But the way you died doesn't erase the way you lived, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot separate the two.
The first time I met you, I saw the same thing in you that I see in myself. You were a killer, and I didn't want to like you, but you made me laugh. It's hard to hold onto your ideals of goodness and righteousness when you've had your hands around the neck of a man begging for his life. But you reminded me what it was like to have a heart, to be human. You made it okay to be the things I was.
There's not a lot of things in this world that scare me. I've stared down the barrel of guns. I've been beaten, tortured, starved, shot, stabbed, burned, and I've survived. I've faced down monsters in men's skin, and I've killed them all, and yet, I don't think I've ever been as afraid as I am right now. I'm scared of who I'll become without you. I'm scared that the last few years will have been wasted, and I'll turn into the kind of man that I would kill. I don't know who I am without you. I don't know how to be alone.
You told me once, after our first mission, that there was no room for regrets on the battlefield, and that there was no point in dwelling on things that could not be changed. At the time, I thought you were being flippant, but I think, now, you were trying to prepare me.
You knew, didn't you? That one of us was going to end up buried.
I wish we could go back, to those first days when the war was new and so were we. Back to the nights of playing cards and talking shit and watching cheesy American movies. We were young and invincible, and we knew everything.
It feels like a lifetime ago. I was a different man then, and so were you.
Now, I look at myself, and I don't recognize the person staring back. I'm harder, colder, angrier, and there is a blackness inside me that I'm afraid will swallow me whole.
You were a light in the dark, a candle burning in a window that I could find my way home by. I was lost without you, and you found me. You saved me, and I will never be able to repay you for the debt I owe.
There was always a part of me that wanted more, a part that longed to burn up in the fire of you, to be consumed and destroyed. The only time I have ever felt alive was when you were in my arms. You were the only thing that made sense, the only thing that was good and pure and true, and now you are gone. And I'm left standing in the darkness, waiting for the storm to pass.
I hope that wherever you are, you are finally at peace. I hope that, somehow, you can hear me, and that, maybe, you understand.
I'm not sorry for loving you, Johnny, but I am sorry for saying it too late.
Yours,
Simon Riley