CHAPTER 24: A DREAM

It’s time to leave...

Before dawn could brush the sky with its first pale streaks of blue, Richard slipped out into the cold silence, the weight of urgency clinging to him like a second skin. The air still held the quiet warmth of the night before, but he didn’t look back. He never did. Not when duty called. Not when The Division’s orders echoed louder than his own heartbeat.

Yet later, when exhaustion coiled around him after another relentless mission, he would close his eyes and let himself drift into a place he could never touch while awake. A world built from longing. A world he could only visit in dreams.

In that dream, everything fit. Every piece of his life that reality had torn apart slid back into its rightful place. He wasn’t an operative, a weapon shaped by shadows and secrecy. He wasn’t the man burdened by missions scribbled in classified files. He was just Richard, a son, a brother, a man trying to love and live without fear.

The dream unfolded gently.

Morning light spilled across a small wooden dining table. His mother hummed softly while arranging food, the melody familiar and warm, something ancient from her childhood. His father sat by the window, reading the newspaper with a quiet pride he rarely showed. His siblings teased each other, laughter bouncing off the walls like echoes of a life without hardship.

That alone was enough to make his heart ache.

But then Ahce entered the picture.

She moved toward him with sleepy grace, drowning in one of his old shirts. Her hair was tousled, her eyes soft with the mornings they used to imagine but never lived. When she smiled, the whole room brightened as if she carried the sun behind her ribs.

He could almost feel her fingertips brushing his cheek, anchoring him in a dream that felt more like home than any place he had ever been.

The home itself was modest. Wooden floors that creaked in the kindest way. Shelves packed with books and framed photos.

Sunlight poured through white curtains that swayed like gentle breezes. A small garden outside, nothing extravagant, but full of color because she’d insist on tending to it every weekend. There would be laughter, real laughter, and enough peace to drown out a lifetime of chaos.

In that dream, he finally became the man he once vowed to be. A pilot, not a soldier. A dreamer who touched the sky instead of crawling through the undercurrents of war.

He saw himself standing on the runway in a crisp uniform, helmet tucked beneath his arm. Engines thundered behind him, a symphony of power and freedom. His family watched with awe. And Ahce stood among them, not impressed by the uniform or the machine, but by the boy who had grown into the man he promised her he’d become.

He imagined returning from flights to her waiting arms, her perfume still the scent he’d recognize even in the dark. They would sit together on the couch, sharing stories, sharing silence. The kind of silence that didn’t suffocate, but soothed.

It was heaven, pure and simple.

But when his eyes opened, the dream shattered into metal and cold.

The world around him was steel, concrete, flickering lights, and the mechanical hum of machines built for war. The Division didn’t know warmth. It didn’t understand peace. Every hallway echoed with distant footsteps. Every door hid classified truths. Every mission demanded sacrifice.

In this world, he wasn’t Richard the Dreamer. He was Richard, the operative. A shadow. A blade.

Days blurred into each other. Missions stretched into weeks. He forgot what date it was. Sometimes he forgot what it meant to be human. He moved like instinct with bones. He breathed in adrenaline and gunpowder. He slept with his back against the wall.

He told himself he was doing it for the future he wanted. For his family. For Ahce. But each time he pulled the trigger, each time he watched another life fall, the dream he held onto slipped further away.

He’d wanted to fly above the chaos. Instead, he’d become part of it.

Still, he couldn’t stop. Not after everything he’d given. Not after everything he’d lost. If he quit now, then the sacrifices, the blood, the lies, the nights spent praying for dawn would mean nothing. So he endured.

He told himself the pain was an investment.

A down payment for the life he hoped to build.

A path home.

A path back to her.

And in the rare stillness between missions, when the world seemed to hush for a moment, he remembered a night long before life twisted into shadows.

He and Ahce sat beneath the halo of city lights, legs dangling over the edge of a quiet rooftop. The stars were faint, smothered by neon, but she didn’t mind. She loved this kind of night. Loved talking about stories, tropes, and the strange romanticism of flawed people.

"If I had to choose between the hero and the villain," she said suddenly, eyes thoughtful, "I’d choose the villain without a doubt."

He stared at her, startled. She wasn’t joking. Her gaze was steady, certain.

"Because a hero will sacrifice himself and the person he loves to save the world," she said, voice soft but fierce. "But a villain... a villain is willing to destroy the world for the happiness of the one he loves."

Those words had lingered in the back of his mind for years. Back then, he didn’t understand. He thought she was being poetic, dramatic. But now, after witnessing the brutal arithmetic of war, after being forced to weigh lives on scales built by governments and ghosts, he finally understood.

Heroes gave themselves away until nothing was left.

Villains fought for the one thing they loved, even if it meant burning everything else.

He wondered where he stood between those two extremes.

He saved people for a living. He followed orders. He prevented disasters. But he also hid behind lies. He also abandoned the one person who had given him a heart capable of breaking.

If Ahce knew the truth, would she still choose him?

Would she choose the man shaped by missions and moral compromises? The man who kept secrets not out of betrayal, but necessity? Would she still love someone who couldn’t even save their own relationship?

The thought twisted inside his chest.

Alone in the barracks, he let out a quiet, bitter laugh. His hand ran through his hair, fingers trembling with exhaustion and memory.

"I still couldn’t choose you this time, Boss," he murmured, the nickname slipping from him like a prayer. Boss. The first leader of his heart. The woman who shaped his courage even before he learned how to fight.

His next laugh was softer. Sadder. Half grief, half surrender.

Because even now, after years of silence and scars, she was still the center of his world. Still, the dream he whispered into the dark. Still, the reason he wanted to become someone worth loving.

And yet, when the moment came, he hadn’t been able to choose her.

Not then. Not now.

Maybe being a hero wasn’t about glory or sacrifice.

Maybe it was learning how to live with the ache of every choice he failed to make.

And for Richard, that ache would always, always carry her name.