There was no war.The tarmac, the gunfire, the chaos—it was all gone.Stripped away like it never existed.Like it never was.
And in its place, there was something else.I knew it before I saw it, because the smell hit me first.
Cold earth and pine and smoke.
Home.
It wasn’t the one I built, nor the one I bled for.It was my first home.
Snow crunched beneath my boots.They were small boots, much smaller than what I was used to wearing.
I looked down again.My hands were smaller too.They wereclean, unmarked.They carried no scars.There was no violent history written into the skin.
I knew where I was.I knew when.
I was a young boy again.Before everything.
The forest stretched out around me, quiet and vast, trees towering overhead like sentinels.The sky above was pale, the light soft and diffused, like the world was holding its breath.
“Archie.”
I turned.He was there.
Rasputin.
He wasn’t not or bleeding.He was whole again.He was alive and perfect, the way I remembered him when I saw him last.
He was leaning against a tree, arms folded, watching me with that same intent look he always had—like he could see right through me and didn’t care either way what he found.
“You took your time getting here, brother,” he said.
I huffed a short breath, half a laugh catching in my chest.
“Had things to take care of.”
He nodded like that made sense.Because it did.
We stood there for a moment.There was no rush, no urgency.Just the quiet companionship between two brothers who understood each other better than they understood themselves.
Then they came.Not all at once.One by one.Faces that I hadn’t seen in years.
Men I lost.Men I buried.Men I couldn’t save.
They stepped out from behind the trees like they’d always been there, like they’d just been waiting for me to catch up to them.
And they weren’t angry.They were not accusing or judging.They carried no wounds, no blood on their hands.They were not ghosts clawing for answers.
They were just there.Whole.At peace.
Something in my chest loosened.For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was carrying them.They were not a weight.They weren’t a debt.They were just… part of me.Part of my violent past.
Rasputin watched it all, quiet.
“You did what you could,” he said.
I nodded.Because that was the truth of it.It was never enough.But it was everything I had.
The wind shifted, a soft breeze.Carrying something with it.A voice.Faint at first.Then clearer.Closer.
