Archie
The air felt different. Colder. Still.
I stood. Or I thought I did.
And he was there.
Rasputin.
Exactly as I remembered him.
Tall and unmoving, a mountain of a man. Watching me like he always had—as though he could see straight through whatever mask I was wearing and into the mess beneath it.
“You look like shit,” he said.
I huffed a breath. Maybe I did. Or maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t be certain.
“I feel like it, too.”
His gaze shifted slightly, something almost amused flickering there. “You always did have a talent for getting yourself killed.”
“I’m not dead yet, brother.”
“No?”
Silence stretched between us. I looked at him.
“Then get up,” Rasputin said simply.
Like it was that easy and I had a choice.
Maybe I did. I wasn’t sure anymore.
Everything felt distant, like it was fading. But her—her voice—it was still there.
Calling me back. Dragging me back toward something that was quickly fading.
I clenched my jaw and forced air back into my lungs.
Pain exploded through me. Which was a good thing. Because pain meant I was still here. Still breathing. Still fighting. Because I wasn’t done yet. Not when I still had something to live for. And as the darkness tried to pull me under again—I fought it. With everything I had left.
The pain was gone. There was no heat in my chest. No weight crushing my lungs. No blood in my mouth.
There was just quiet. It settled around me slowly, like snowfall. Soft and endless.
I breathed. For the first time since I could remember, it didn’t hurt to do so. There was no edge and no fight. I didn’t struggle for air.
I looked down. There was no blood staining my chest. There were no wounds or battle scars on my crisp white shirt.
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.
“Don’t you want to be here when your son is born?”
Everything stopped. The forest. The air. Me.
I turned. The light was there now. Not blinding or harsh. Just… present.
A path I hadn’t noticed before stretched out ahead of me, glowing faintly, pulling me forward with a quiet kind of certainty.
But behind me, that voice stretched, suspending time.
Antonella.
Her voice cut through everything.
I turned back. And for a moment, I saw her. Not clearly. It was just a glimpse. But she was standing there, watching me. Her face was streaked with tears. The sound of her breaking gutted me.
And the words… ‘your son’.
My chest tightened. Confusion flickered through me. A son. Mine. Ours. The thought landed heavy, strange, impossible.
I took a step back toward her. Toward her voice and the life I didn’t know I had waiting for me.
Rasputin didn’t stop me. He just watched. Because this part was mine.
The pull behind me was strong. Pain. Weight. A life unfinished.
But the light, it called differently. Not with urgency, but with peace.
And I realized—I already knew. If I went back, it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be this. It would be pain. Blood. Fighting for something I might not ever win.
And Tone - she’d carry it anyway. She’d survive it.
My chest ached, but it wasn’t pain I felt. It was a sense of loss. Finality.
I looked back one last time. At the shape of her. At the life I didn’t get to live. At the future that existed without me in it.
“I had you,” I murmured.
It was enough. It had to be. Because even in the shortest time, she gave me something I didn’t know I could have. Something that wasn’t built on violence or survival. Something real. And I carried that with me. Wherever this went.
I turned. Faced the light. And this time—I didn’t hesitate.
I walked. Slow at first. Then steady. Each step lighter than the last, like the weight I carried my whole life was slipping away piece by piece.
Behind me, the world faded. The noise. The pain.
The voices. But not her. She stayed with me.
Not as grief or regret. As something else entirely.
My permanent, mine for all time. She didn’t end here.
Because I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that this wasn’t the last time we would meet. Not for us.
One day—somewhere—we’d find each other again. And then, we wouldn’t be torn apart.
The light stretched out ahead of me, endless and warm. And I walked into it. Finally, at peace.