Warnings : Character Death. Sadness.
Word Count :886
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I never wanted to see him go, but that's what he wanted to do. That's what his father wanted him to do, that's what his brother wanted him to do. But that's not at all what I wanted him to do. Dan joined the reserves, he's always said that's what he was going to do, that no one was going to stop him, that it was what he was meant to do, he's always liked those types of video games, with the killing and the war stuff, everyone told him that was nowhere close to what it was actually like, but he didn't care, he wanted to fight and protect. I begged him not to go, but he did, he left, he told me he loved me and left. My boyfriend of 3 years left.
I remember it as if it was yesterday, he got the phone call late in the evening, we were sitting at the dinner table at a restaurant when his phone rang. He excused himself from the table and then left to answer the call. I never thought anything of the call, until he came back stone faced with the phone still in his hand. I asked him what was wrong but he just muttered "I have to go".
I took a cab with him to the base, I knew he was going to end up leaving, after giving him all that training for months and all the tests; I didn't see why they wouldn't take him, he was really good. But I didn't want them to take him. Dan turned to face me when we reached the gates, "I ship out tomorrow morning, I'll write, I promise" He said, he showed no emotion in his face, but I did in mine, I was wrecked, I had cried all night, he rocked me to sleep. I watched him walk up to the guards at the gates, he stated his name and they let him though. That was the last time I saw him alive.
He did write, he wrote me every chance he got. He explained in his letters where he was stationed at and what he was doing. He wasn't shooting anyone yet, as he said in his letters, he was more helping people in a little town to get them to safety. He wrote to me about this little girl he had come across, she was crying for her mother to "Wake up, they're going to get us" but her mother was dead and the little girl just didn't know. Dan had to distract her while they got her to a safe point with everyone else. The way Dan wrote put an image in my head, it wasn't a pleasant image either. I missed his face, his smile, his voice, his everything. The last letter I got was him saying they were going to bring him to "Where all the action is", that was the last letter I got from him. I started to worry, I tried to convince myself that he was just to busy to write because he was where all the action was. But my heart couldn't take the pain of knowing that probably wasn't the case. I was so worried that I ended up making myself sick, my mother tried to calm me down and tried to tell me that he was going to be fine but I knew he wasn't, I knew that there must have been something wrong.
And I was right, it was a dreadful Wednesday when I got the knock at my door, I figured it was just a family member stopping by to see if I was alright from being worried sick but it wasn't. I would have rather it had been a family member but instead it was a man in a suit, he had Dan's uniform jacket and his name tag. He told me that he was very sorry for my loss and that further communication was going to be administered to me over the phone by the head officer in a few days.
The funeral was the following Saturday, all his friends and family were there, my parents were there with me and some military men were there. Fortunately they did find his body so he was buried in his coffin, they didn't tell me how he died, just that he did, my guess was he was probably shot. I didn't cry at the funeral.
I didn't keep in contact with Dan's father or brother because they were some of the reason why he left, for a month I ignored everyone and everything. I ignored every phone call, every text message, every knock on the door, every email. Just everything. I ignored life. It wasn't until one faithful nights that Dan came to me in one of my dreams before I realized that I needed to get back into the world. "Don't dwell in the past Phil, There is a whole world out there that needs you, please, for me, I love you" Dan had said to me, and I did it for him, for my boyfriend, I still got sympathy and treated a bit different for a while but I was doing it for my boyfriend, a soldier, a hero, my fallen lover.
