The call came deep in the night, the kind that cleaves sleep in two and leaves silence ringing in its wake. It was Frank—Harris’s brother. His voice was thin, stretched tight with something unspoken. “Harris made it home,” he said. Relief flickered—brief, fragile. “But he didn’t make it through.” The words landed like a fracture. Suicide, Frank explained, though the word itself seemed too small, too inadequate to carry the weight of what it meant. Tommy’s thoughts scattered. That couldn’t be right. Harris had just been here. They had all made it home. Home was supposed to be the end of it, the place where the danger stopped, where the losses stopped. That had been the promise, unspoken but absolute. As Frank continued, his voice faded into a distant hum. Depression. Trouble adjusting. Words that tried to explain the unexplainable. Tommy felt the numbness creep in, slow and total, until even the phone in his hand seemed unreal. Another brother gone. When the call ended, he didn’t move. He sat on the couch, staring at the darkened screen as if it might come back to life and take it all back. Another name to carry. Another ghost to follow him. This one felt different—closer, heavier. This one had made it home, just like him. Sleep never came. By morning, the world felt hollow, stripped of its logic. Nothing made sense anymore. Driven by something he couldn’t name, Tommy found himself standing at Harris’s house, stepping into the open garage as though pulled forward by gravity. And there it was. The rope hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the still air. Its end was frayed, roughly cut—an abrupt, final interruption. The sight of it hollowed him out completely. Tommy’s legs gave way. He collapsed onto the cold concrete, the sobs tearing free before he could stop them. The war had followed them home. It had found them anyway. And somehow, even here, he couldn’t save his brothers. The funeral came a few days later, though time had lost its shape. Tommy moved through it in a haze, aware only of fragments—the murmured condolences, the folded flag, the dull thud of earth against wood. He stood among strangers and family alike, feeling utterly alone. Afterward, he drove to the cemetery where Collins and Ramirez had already been laid to rest. The familiar rows of markers stretched out before him, quiet and unyielding. He sank down between them, as though taking his place among the fallen, and began to speak. At first, the words came haltingly. Then they poured out—memories, regrets, things he should have said, things he wished he could still say. Mostly, he told them how much he missed them. Four of them, once. Now only one remains. The brotherhood they had forged in the crucible of basic training—something unbreakable, something eternal—had been worn down to a single survivor. What had been only a few short years ago felt like another lifetime entirely, belonging to someone he barely recognized. But even in the weight of grief, Tommy clung to what was left. He kept moving forward—not because it was easy, and not because it made sense, but because stopping would mean letting it all fade into nothing. And he refused to let that happen. Refused to let their bond end in silence. If he was the last one standing, then he would carry them with him. All of them. Always.