The house had never been this quiet.

Simon noticed it before he'd even shut the front door. It wasn't silence exactly; the refrigerator hummed somewhere beyond the hall, the old clock Johnny had insisted on keeping ticked obnoxiously from the living room, and rain tapped intermittently against the windows. The house itself was making all the same sounds it always had. It was only missing one.

The door clicked shut behind him. Simon stood there with a small black urn held against his chest.

Three years.

Three fucking years, and somehow this was what Johnny MacTavish had been reduced to. Something Simon could carry through the front door with one arm. No wheelchair scraping against the frame because Johnny had refused to wait for Simon to widen the bastard thing properly. No familiar Scottish voice announcing their arrival to an empty house like the neighbors needed to know they'd made it home. No complaints about the weather, the hospital, Simon's driving, or whatever else Johnny could find to bitch about simply because silence had never suited him.

Just Simon and the urn. He eventually moved toward the living room and set it carefully on the shelf beside the television. Simon stared at it.

"No." He picked it back up.

The kitchen counter seemed worse. Too ordinary. Johnny would've complained about being left beside the fucking toaster, and Simon could practically hear him doing it. The dining table wasn't right either. Neither was the mantelpiece. He carried the urn into Johnny's bedroom before immediately turning around again because absolutely fucking not.

Back to the living room, the shelf. Simon lowered it carefully. His fingers remained against the smooth surface for several seconds before he pulled his hand away. There, fine.

He turned toward the kitchen. There were things to do, dinner needed making. Simon washed his hands, opened the refrigerator, and began pulling things out without consciously deciding what he was going to cook. His body knew the routine better than his mind did. Three years of repetition had reduced evenings to muscle memory: something filling, nothing Johnny would complain was too bland, vegetables Simon would inevitably be accused of sneaking onto the plate like Johnny was a fucking five-year-old.

He reached for two chicken breasts. The second landed on the cutting board beside the first. Simon didn't notice.

Oil into the pan. Potatoes out. Knife against wood. The movements came easily, mechanically, and for the first time since that morning Simon's head went pleasantly blank. He didn't have to think about the hospital room. Didn't have to think about paperwork or signatures or the unbearable weight of Johnny's family clinging to him after everything was finished. Didn't have to think about the crematorium employee asking whether Mr. Riley was ready to receive the remains.

Didn't have to think about the promise.

Don't bury me, Simon. Johnny had been unusually serious when he'd asked. He'd hated cemeteries. Hated the thought of being shoved beneath a stone somewhere while everyone else went home. Cremate him, he'd said. Take him somewhere beautiful. Somewhere high enough that the wind would catch him. Get me up there one last time.

Simon had promised.

The knife stopped briefly against the cutting board, then started again. He'd do it. Just not today. Thirty minutes passed like that. Simon cooked because cooking was something he understood, and because somewhere beneath conscious thought his entire body was still following a schedule that hadn't changed in three years.

Then his phone began to chirp from the counter. Simon didn't even look at the screen, he knew that alarm. His hand wiped automatically against his trousers before reaching for the phone, thumb silencing the noise while his other hand opened the cabinet above the sink.

"Yeah, yeah." The words left him quietly, irritated through sheer habit. He pulled down the plastic organizer, evening. Simon popped the compartment open and tipped the tablets into his palm. His other hand reached for a glass. Filled it halfway. Not too much, because Johnny always complained Simon filled the bloody thing like he expected him to drink an entire reservoir before bed.

Phone into his pocket. Tablets in one hand. Water in the other. Simon walked toward the living room.

"Johnny, meds." Two steps through the doorway, then Simon stopped. The wheelchair sat beside the sofa. Empty.

For three years, that chair had almost never been empty. It had been Johnny's legs, his independence, his favorite weapon whenever Simon's ankles happened to be within ramming distance. There was still a tartan blanket folded over one arm. The headrest remained angled slightly to the left because Johnny hated it perfectly straight. One of the stupid little stickers he'd convinced Gaz to bring him was peeling at the corner near the controls.

The charger was still plugged into the wall. Everything was waiting for him. Except Johnny.

Simon stared. The tablets sat in his open palm. His phone vibrated once in his pocket, the alarm reminding him it hadn't been marked complete. Simon looked down at the medication, then at the chair. Something in his expression shifted.

"No." It came out barely above a whisper, his fingers slowly closed around the pills. He looked toward the sofa as though Johnny might somehow be there instead. Toward the doorway to the garden. Toward the hallway. Nowhere. His eyes returned to the chair.

"Fuck." Simon put the glass down too hard. Water jumped over the rim and splashed across the table. He stood there for another few seconds, shoulders rigid, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. He'd spent a lifetime learning how to swallow pain before anyone could see it. Torture. Gunshots. Graves. Names crossed from rosters. He knew how to keep breathing when something inside him was screaming at him to stop.

This was different, because at eight o'clock every evening for three years, Johnny needed his medication. Tomorrow morning at seven, he'd need another set. Breakfast after that. Washing. Getting dressed. Repositioning. Physio on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Appointments. Prescriptions. Food. Water. Shaving. Transfers. Checking his skin. Adjusting that fucking pillow because Johnny would insist Simon had somehow placed it wrong despite it being exactly where it had been the night before.

Simon had spent three years being needed every hour of every day, and now he was standing in the living room holding medication nobody would ever need again.

His hand began to shake.

"What the fuck am I meant to do with these?" Silence. Simon stared at the chair. "What the fuck am I supposed to do, Johnny?"

Nothing, of course there was fucking nothing. The glass hit the wall before Simon realized he'd picked it back up. It exploded, water and shards scattered across the floor, and something inside Simon went with it.

"THREE FUCKING YEARS!" The pill organizer followed. Plastic cracked against the opposite wall, compartments bursting open and sending tablets skittering beneath furniture. Simon grabbed whatever came next—a mug, maybe—and hurled that too. "I DID EVERYTHING!" A chair went over. His forearm swept across the kitchen counter, sending a plate crashing onto the tiles.

Every medication on time. Every appointment. Every fever watched through the night. Every cough that sounded wrong. Every fucking hospital admission where Simon sat beside the bed and refused to leave because Johnny always came home. He always came home.

"You fucking bastard!" Something else shattered, Simon didn't know what, didn't care.

"You said we'd—" His voice broke and that made him angrier. "Fuck!"

His fist struck the cupboard hard enough to split the wood near the handle. Pain shot through his knuckles and disappeared beneath everything else. Three years of exhaustion, terror, frustration, love, and the constant knowledge that someday this might happen ripped through him all at once, and there was no mission to finish, no enemy to kill, nobody left to drag out alive.

Johnny was dead. Simon had done everything right, and Johnny was still fucking dead. "What am I supposed to do now?!" His voice tore through the house. "Tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to do!" Nothing answered.

Simon stood among broken glass and scattered pills, chest heaving, staring at the empty wheelchair like he hated it for refusing to contain the man who belonged there.

Then his eyes caught the urn.

Small. Black. Still sitting exactly where he'd left it. The rage vanished so quickly his knees nearly gave beneath him.

"Johnny..."

A knock sounded at the front door. Simon didn't move. He wasn't entirely certain he'd heard it, but then it came again, three careful knocks. His head lifted. For several seconds he simply stood there, breathing hard in the wreckage of the kitchen, one hand bleeding from split knuckles and his face wet with tears he hadn't noticed falling.

Another knock.

Simon turned toward the front of the house. Through the narrow window beside the door, he could see someone standing on the step. {{user}}, the neighbor, Johnny's neighbor, really. The one he'd call greetings to whenever he spotted them outside. The one Johnny somehow knew enough about to ask how their week had been despite Simon barely having managed more than the occasional nod or brief conversation in three years. Johnny had always been like that. Simon had always kept his distance.

Now Johnny was gone, and {{user}} was standing outside his door, concern visible through the glass.

Simon stared at them. For once, there was nobody behind him to yell that he ought to answer it.

.