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It used to be a bonfire, a raging, unquenchable heat. A living, voracious flame that devoured the silence. It roared with Johnny's voice, laughed with his loud, raspy laughter, and sparked with each irritating slap on the back. The sound, the thud of his palm against Riley's skin, always made Simon furious. It made him want to turn around, to snap back, to recoil from the hot touch.
Now, in my mind, there is a thick, gray silence, like the ashes that settle after a fire. And deep within this silence, there is a flickering light. It is like a coal that has fallen from the same fire; it is Johnny. Once, it was a beacon of light, illuminating my path in the darkness. But now, it has shrunk to a single, small spark, barely pulsating with a muted red glow, ready to extinguish forever.
The aura around the "little flame" has thinned to a ghostly outline. It doesn't warm. It doesn't even provide light, only a charred silhouette of what once burned here.
Sometimes the spark flares up brighter. Always without asking, always by surprise. For just a fraction of a second, in the back of his mind, Riley remembers the timbre, the inflection of his voice. The way Johnny sometimes dragged out his words, specifically, "Sa-aimon." Or the way MacTavish would call out to him, quietly, without his usual bravado. A flash, and then it's ashes again. And a silence that weighs a ton.
It's like a dream that you try to hold on to after waking up.
Months have passed.
Now Johnny's not an image, he's a reflection. Simon finds himself thinking about him less and less. He no longer turns around at the sound of laughter that sounds like a Scotsman's. And his face... First, the line of his cheekbones disappeared. Then, the shape of his eyes. His features blurred and merged, turning into a mask that could be adorned with any smile. All that remained was a vague, warm spot where his face should be. Now, as he tried to remember it, all he could see in his mind's eye was a blur, a ripple, followed by a deep, viscous void.
The image of Johnny goes somewhere into the depths of memory, where it is no longer possible to return completely. Only in dreams, echoes. It is just the way the mind works when it becomes too painful.
Simon forgets him. There is only a feeling of emptiness. No pain, no longing, nothing.
At first, this "nothing" was more frightening than any ambush. The emptiness rang in his ears so loudly that it forced Simon to lie there, staring at the ceiling. The silence was sterile. Over time, Simon became accustomed to it. His body had activated a defense mechanism, amputating the memories like a rotting limb to save the rest. The pain had gone away, along with the warmth. In its place, there was now a scorched earth. Simon walks on it every day and doesn't remember that anything ever grew there.
Sometimes, in the rare moments between sleep and waking, he feels someone's presence behind his back. A shadow on the edge of vision. A ghostly pat on the shoulder that makes your muscles go cold, but your heart doesn't skip a beat anymore. Riley doesn't turn around. He knows there's no one there. Or that there's only a cold glimmer of the one he buried so deeply.
The worst thing didn't happen when that bonfire went out. The worst thing happened when Riley realized that he wasn't in pain anymore. That he was ready to let go of that last ember. Let it go out.
Simon clutches the fabric of his shirt against his chest, where something seems to be aching, bleeding, and hurting. It's quiet. It's steady. The fire has been extinguished, the embers have cooled, and the ashes have been scattered. However, deep within, in the darkness that he fears to even think about, there is a faint sense of fear. It's not the fear of loss. The loss has already occurred. Instead, it's the fear of knowing that it is the right thing to do. It is the only way to survive and carry the burden of oneself.
Johnny is now just a vague, warm dream that Simon watches in real life, until one day he wakes up in a final, safe, and completely empty solitude. He realizes that he has forgotten not only someone's face, but also the light that made him alive.