((You made me do this. I have no remorse for the destruction of your feels. It sounds silly but I actually cried while writing this thing, so... Congratulations, you brilliant bastard. Inspired by your "My muse is dead. Tell me how yours is dealing with it" reblog.))
"Hey Gabe."
"It's me again. Yeah, I know. Same old, same old shit, right?"
"Lizzie graduated last week. Sorry it's taken me so long to get here, but between travel and all that shit, I'm sure you understand."
"I got her picture here for you. Figured it'd be nice for you to have. Valedictorian, lookit that, huh? She didn't tell me about it, I guess she wanted it to be a surprise, didn't want me to tell you beforehand. She made it into a real good school, too. Between what you put away for her, and what I've kept adding to it, she's gonna be able to go without any worrying about loans or anything like that."
He straightened, having finished tacking the small picture of a smiling young woman with black hair and tear-brightened eyes to the little marble and steel square, where it would take it's place alongside a handful of other small pictures. The same girl, at age ten, at thirteen, blowing out the candles on her cake at her sweet sixteenth birthday party. Reaper bit his lip hard for a moment, blinking away tears that always threatened but never fell whenever he came to that quiet vault, lined with rows and rows of the names ODSTs fallen on drops, most of which contained nothing but a set of tags or a handful of small token mementos within to show that someone had once existed. A proper burial in a proper grave was damn near unheard of.
"... I miss you, Gabe." He sighed, shoulders slumping as his military posture broke for a moment, as he pressed his forehead against his arm leaning against the cold steel and stone. "Sorry it's been so long since the last time. I'll... try to visit more often. It's just that between saving up my time to try and make sure she's got a halfway decent person in her life that knew her papa, and the service, it's getting harder. But I ain't gonna let you down. Least I can do, all things considered, make sure your little girl grows up right."
Sometimes, people would ask him why he did it. Why he kept torturing himself, wasting his time over a guy who'd been dead and gone for years now. And he never could answer them, never would. He'd swear, or shout, hell he'd even been his share of fist fights over it, sick and tired of dealing with their bullshit questions and their nosy prying into his business.
He closed his eyes again, and this time the tears fell, tracing their way down his cheeks before he could stop them. It should have been him in that quiet vault, not Hoffman. No body gave two shits about Damien Reaper, no one would've cried over him, and he certainly didn't have any kids out there to wonder what kind of a man their father had been. Hell, he didn't even know what had been the catalyst of that act of brilliant stupid heroics - how many times had they talked about it, that Damien was an island in a sea of people, alone and with no one to mourn him? But Hoffman had made his choice, leaving the harder task of living and trying to do the right thing to Damien instead.
"... Sometimes I wish I'd never met you, Gabe."
"Sometimes I wish I'd told you the truth, because maybe you'd have been so fucking pissed off at me that you wouldn't have pulled this shit." Damien wiped hard at his eyes, pushing himself away from the wall of nameplates and looked down at his friend's final tribute, not even a proper resting place.
"... I'll be back in an hour, brother. Gonna pick us up a bottle of Jack, drink til we can't feel feelings anymore."
"See you soon."
