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.
