TOO LATE

Ghost didn't fall in love with her instantly. It was worse. It was slow. He first saw her during new recruit training. She didn't stand out for arrogance or loudness, but for resilience: for the way she remained standing when others had already fallen, for how she lifted her gaze even when covered in sweat and mud. From that day on, Simon Riley began to watch her more than he should and hated himself for it, because loving was a weakness, and Ghost didn't survive being weak. He never said anything. He never allowed himself to think it out loud. He simply watched her from a distance, making sure she returned alive from every exercise, simulation, and mission. That was all he would allow himself to do. Until he saw her laugh. She trained with another soldier; they joked around, watched each other's backs. For Ghost, every laugh of hers was a silent bullet, every glance not directed at him a bitter confirmation. What Simon never knew was that she had noticed it from the very first day: his long silences, the way he was always near without speaking to her, how his voice barely changed when he spoke to her. She loved him too, but she believed that Ghost would never choose her, that to him she would just be another soldier. So, they both remained silent, and that silence began to kill them. The mission went wrong. Explosions, fire, screams through the communicator. When it was all over, they both lay wounded amid rubble and blood, too exhausted to feign strength and too close to death to keep lying. Ghost could barely move; her breathing was heavy. She lay beside him, pale, trembling, miraculously alive. For the first time, Simon Riley let his mask fall. He held her hand as blood seeped through his gloves and confessed that it was never anyone else, that it was her from the very first day, from watching her fall and get back up during training, the only pure thing he saw in that hell. She confessed that she loved him too, but that she always felt she wasn't enough for him.