Simon Riley

– Lieutenant, your daughter is refusing to cooperate again. It’s not my place, but maybe she shouldn’t be here. You can see it yourself—this isn’t for her. She’s not ready. – On my way.

A colorless sigh drifts through the office, settling on the edges of papers, the corner of a desk, the polished surface of a forgotten mug. His voice is just as flat and empty—like a breath exhaled into cold air, vanishing without a trace. Leaning back in his chair, he pauses for a moment, as if granting himself one final sip of peaceful stillness, then rises heavily. Slowly, like the dead lifting not from death into life, but from silence into duty.

Each movement echoes with a dull pull of irritation. Jacket — over the shoulders. Mask — from the table to the face. Watch — around the wrist. Everything in place, except peace.

Step by step, he’s already rehearsing the lines, playing out the script, unspooling entire tragedies in his mind. All of it so sickeningly predictable: the gaze, clouded, as if she still hopes his voice might someday sound different. Softer. Then the slight trembling of her shoulders, barely noticeable, like an animal caught in a snare. He sees the tears before they appear, clinging to the lower rims of her eyes, slicing through silence with accumulated, unspoken resentment. She won’t look at his face—just past it, as if he’s still too large, too loud to face directly. Then, if he presses — and he always presses — the slow breaking will begin. She’ll take a step back, physically recoiling from the truths he throws like stones.

The accusations come out like splinters, pulled from childhood wounds, from her weakness.

He knows exactly what she will say — or won’t. He knows that look, the one that says she doesn’t understand why.

He steps out onto the field and immediately sees you off to the side, at a distance. You stood like someone who knew they’d come for her. Waiting. For him. That wait held no fear or tension anymore—just the irritating resignation of someone ready for anything, as long as it would be over soon.

He paused for a moment, letting his gaze sweep over your posture—slumped shoulders, the slight shifting from foot to foot, already not expecting sympathy, yet still clinging to the fragile hope that maybe today it won’t hurt as much.

Could this really be his blood? Could his strength possibly flow through her veins?

Impossible.

What he saw before him was something soft, formless, unbearably fragile—a lump of unshaped clay that never learned to hold its shape. He had tried. God, how he had tried. He struck that clay with everything he had: words, silence, disdainful distance. He forged conditions meant to harden her. Still, she refused. She cracked. She shrank. She melted. Her core slipped away from any attempt to become something solid—something definite.

Nothing.

That nothing carried his name, embarrassed him in front of soldiers, dragged his shadow behind her like a useless tail, leaving behind only the echo of guilt he drove out daily with cold cruelty.

He moved closer, and even this nearness stirred quiet irritation. Because with every step, it became clearer: nothing had changed. Not in you. Not in him.

She hadn’t grown. He hadn’t accepted. And between them yawned a void long devoid of any real “connection.”

He stopped in front of you, nearly face-to-face, leaving the exact space between a command and a slap. You didn’t lift your eyes. He didn’t lower his gaze. In his eyes was the weariness of constantly needing to justify your existence.

— “You failed again.” His voice was flat, ordinary. No yelling. No sarcasm. Just fact. “A briefing isn’t a game. It’s not about what you feel like doing. It’s your duty.”

Your lips trembled as you pressed them shut, trying to keep something too personal from escaping. You bit down, kept your eyes lowered, and only once you were ready, raised them—carefully. Slowly. And in that look was only the soft uncertainty of a teenager.

— “I’m sixteen,” you answered quietly. Your voice faltered. “I haven’t even had a chance to just live… at all.”

Only one question. Why don’t they love you the way you need—to be nurtured, not carved apart, not shaped through pain as if love must come with steel and open wounds? It was love with the taste of iron and gunpowder—endlessly demanding. Does every home sound like a drill command? Do all fathers’ eyes hold not punishment, but disappointment in who you aren’t? Why couldn’t you just be needed? Not the weak link, not the failure to fix?

You didn’t know the answers. And it was that absence, the constant unanswered “why,” that tore deeper than his voice ever could.

He exhaled, tilting his head slightly back—the kind of fatigue you feel when faced with something that simply cannot understand you. He’d heard this speech before—from those who broke.

— “Did I get one?” he asked, voice not louder, but heavier. “By nine, I already knew that everything you have can be taken. You want to know who you are? I’ll tell you. You’re a Riley. That’s already enough not to whine, not to pity yourself, and not to run from responsibility.”

There it was. The big step back. He already knew what came next—you’d try to answer in the wrong words. And still hope he’d hear what lay between them.

— “I don’t want to be you,” you said, shoulders straightening, your voice nearly a whisper—as if it were a confession worthy of punishment.

Silence. Cold. Indifferent. He looked at you and felt the last remaining thread of what once resembled care coil away inside him. That instinct to offer a hand—rough, but his own—had died long ago. You forgave his coldness, his cruelty, his silent detachment, like one forgives strangers. He had never been a home—more of a training camp. Lately, just a shadow. And the care didn’t die because there wasn’t enough of it, but because it no longer knew where to go.

— “You think I want you to be me?” His voice dropped, turned dry. He spoke like during an interrogation—leaving no room to latch onto tone, expression, or mercy. “I don’t care who you want to be. I want you to survive. And for that, you’ll have to become someone who can take the pain and not fall apart from just a glance.”

You raise your head. Tears glimmer in your eyes. Not falling—just heavy, frozen at the corners. You were still standing—barely.

— “I’m scared,” you admitted, lowering your gaze, your voice unconsciously rising in pitch. And maybe… that was the only honest thing spoken on this field today.

— “Then you’ll die,” he said without pause. No rage. No regret. Just the expected outcome.

This was never a dialogue. Expectations had long since replaced acceptance, and demands had taken the place of care. It all came down to roles, to function, to a last name you were supposed to earn.

And while one saw strength as a requirement, the other searched for the right to exist in their fragility. But neither fear, nor love, nor even blood became a bridge—just a burden both carried in their own way.