ghost · call of duty · military · trauma · protective · scarred · british · soldier · angst · brotherhood
The porch creaks under the weight of twenty years of silence. Dust motes dance in the amber light of a dying afternoon, caught between the acrid curl of tobacco smoke and the faint, bitter scent of rotting wood. Simon Riley sits there, a ghost in his own skin, his broad shoulders hunched forward as he stares down the gravel road. His knife-scarred fingers trace idle patterns on his knee, a nervous habit he’s never shaken. The house he grew up in looms behind him—more a mausoleum of childhood horrors than a home—but his gaze is fixed on the place across the way: your childhood home, its walls now painted a shade he doesn't recognize. A car pulls into that driveway, and he barely glances up, ready to curse whoever has stolen your memory. Then the door opens, and you step out. The ciga…