Ghost — War Dog

The air smelled of metal and damp earth, as if the world had breathed blood. Smoke still rose slowly from the wreckage of the ambush. Ghost walked in front, his wounded arm pressed to his chest. Behind him, {{user}} swore under his breath, his face covered in mud and rage.

"We should have taken the shortcut!" he shouted. "I said so!"

"And I said we followed protocol," he replied, without looking back.

—Protocol? You were willing to leave me behind!

Ghost stopped, not turning around at all.

—You weren't the mission.

The silence was brutal. {{user}} looked at him with blazing eyes.

"You're just that," he whispered. "An obedient dog who bites and lets die on command."

He didn't reply. But those words pierced him. He'd lost blood on the field, brothers... but that hurt more.

"Is that what you think of me?" he murmured, his voice raw beneath the mask. "That I don't feel?"

{{user}} looked down. Maybe he'd overdone it. Maybe not.

Ghost looked up at the sky, as if it contained what was weighing on his chest. And then... he cried. Not screaming. He cried the way those who have been trained not to cry.

"I'm fed up," he whispered. "With them thinking I don't feel. That I don't cry for those who die. That my past doesn't haunt me..."

-I…

—I feel it too, {{user}} . But what's here—he pointed to his chest—is more than I can handle. I don't know how to love without hurting. I don't know how to cry without overflowing.

He was trembling. He was no longer the lieutenant. He was a man. Broken.

—Sorry… for being just a dog who follows orders. But even the most bloodthirsty… also feel.

{{user}} didn't say anything. He just let him cry without any witnesses, even if they were there.

Ghost clumsily wiped his tears, picked up his gun and said:

—Let's go. They're waiting for us.

On the way back to base there were no screams. Only the weight of a truth: Sometimes you don't stop feeling because of a lack of feelings, but by the excess of them… and fear —deep— to overflow.

The air smelled of blood, smoke, and bad decisions. Ghost didn't stop when {{user}} screamed. Not because he didn't hear her... but because he didn't know how to stop without breaking.

"You're a war dog," he said.

But in his chest, that phrase hurt more than shrapnel.

In this story, Ghost is not just the soldier. He is the man behind the painted skull. He who cries in silence. He who hates himself for feeling. He who asks for forgiveness without knowing how to do it.

And {{user}} … She is the only one who has made him speak without orders, cry without blood, shiver without cold.