Requiem for a Soldier (Requiem #1)

Bonus Chapter! Chapter 13: Unmasked (Alternate POV)

A/N: I remember in early 2019 calculating how long I thought it would take for Requiem for a Soldier to reach 100,000 reads. I estimated 3 years. Well, here we are 9 months later and we just hit that number last night. I wanted to do something special, so I dug up this draft I wrote over a year ago and finished it. So much has changed since then! Almost nobody was reading my book and now here we are! Thanks so much, everyone.

I miss the days when I was writing this book. Requiem for a Love is much harder and sadder to write and the beginning is rough. (I promise it will get better though!) So I'd love to go back and rewrite other chapters from the opposite POV and release them for future milestones this book hits. If you have a particular chapter(s) you'd like to see from the other character's POV, leave your suggestion(s) in the comments! 

In honor of the first 100k reads, here's Unmasked from Ryan's perspective.  

April 11

Ryan

I wake from my nightmare to find that I'm crying - actually sobbing - for the first time since this all really happened. Ana is with me, holding me, comforting me. Slowly I gain control of myself again.

"I get the dreams too," Ana says. I realize she's trying to comfort me with the same words I used for her last week. Until now, I've woken up from every single one of these nightmares alone and terrified. Having someone else with me, especially someone else who knows what that blind terror is like, is infinitely better. I pull her closer to me and lower my head to her shoulder. I can't help but notice the sweet smell of her shampoo in her hair and how soft the skin of her face is against the rough scars on mine.

Oh God. I feel my entire body stiffen. I'm not wearing the mask. What did she see? It's dark in here, but not nearly dark enough. I wrack my foggy mind to dredge up the memory from when she came out here to me, what she saw, and how she reacted. All I can remember is being surrounded by fire, so much fire, with enemy artillery exploding around me as I yelled for Jeremy.

"Where's the mask?" I have to force the words out of my constricting throat. 

"I don't know," she says.

I want to run. I want to hide from her. I don't want to see the horror in her face when she sees mine. I pull back from her quickly, breaking her embrace and nearly throwing myself to the side as she tells me she thinks the mask is when I left it when I went to sleep. I'm about to bolt for the mask, crippling limp and all, but she calls my name.

The sound of my name on her lips again stops me. I freeze for a moment, wanting to look at her, but unable to. Her hand briefly touches my cheek, the one not covered in scars. Her touch pulls my gaze up to her from the floor. She doesn't look horrified, but she also can't see the scars from this angle.

"It's ok," she says.

It is most definitely not ok. I feel my brow furrow in frustration.

"Look at me," she says.

I don't move. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could.

"Ryan."

My name is almost a whisper on her lips. I feel my tension easing slightly, my body relaxing in response to her voice.

"Look at me," she says again.

I can't do it. I can't bring myself to turn my head and show her my deformed face any more than I could tell her about how I ended things with Saph. I look away from her to the ground.

In the darkness, I can see her hand moving slowly toward the right side of my face. A voice in my head screams at me to stop her and run. Another voice tells me to give her a good look and revel in her regret at making me to do this. I opt for the middle ground and do nothing.

When her hand touches my face, her touch is so light that I don't even feel it at first. At first I think she's going to turn my face toward her, but then she moves across the floor in front of me. Her gaze scrutinizing my visage is a tangible thing. I can feel it the crawling sensation up my spine.

"Ryan," she says gently, her voice tender. I can't stop myself from looking up into her eyes.

Her eyes widen and her face shows concern, but not horror. Not pity either. We sit on the floor, staring at each other in silence. I keep waiting for her to break down and show her disgust, the disgust I know has to be in there somewhere. But she doesn't. How can she look at me and not show even a hint of the revulsion I know she must be feeling? 

"Your family wanted to use what happened to you for publicity?" 

Her voice is soft as a feather. I nod. As I watch her, the expression on her face finally begins to morph into something like what I had expected, but lands on angry. This surprises me. The revelation of depths to which my family would sink to gain fame should have garnered pity, I thought. Not the righteous indignation the dim greenish light reveals on her face.

"They are monsters," she says, with a slight quaver of rage in her voice. 

I don't think I've ever seen someone angry on my behalf. This is new. I don't know how to react to this. 

"But you," she says, and suddenly her expression becomes one of ardor. "You are a hero."

This I react to instantly. If she knew what happened the day Afghanistan gave me this face, she wouldn't use anything close to that word to describe me.

"You are a hero to me," she says before I can formulate a contradiction. "You saved my life, Ryan. If it weren't for you, I would have died that day in the forest. You are my hero." 

I suppose, in a way, it's the classic soldier's dream to have a woman cling to you and declare you her hero. I didn't know how affecting it would be. I can't look her in the face anymore. I can't be this close to her anymore. It's not just that I don't feel I deserve it. If I keep looking into her eyes and letting her touch me after what she just said, I'm going to start feeling something for her that I don't have any right to feel. Something I can't allow myself to feel. 

I extricate myself from her gently and try to distract myself from this new pull toward her. I start cleaning up the mess my PTSD fueled nightmares wreaked on this place. She begins to help and the task is over far too quickly. The shame over this complete loss of control and sanity I demonstrated begins to sink in. Sure, she has nightmares and wakes up screaming, but she's never trashed the room over it. What if I'd thought she was an enemy combatant?

That thought is too horrific to contemplate further. I run my hand through my long hair, a nervous tick I've developed since I stopped cutting my hair. I drift my gaze over to her for a moment and quickly look away when I find her watching me. 

Slowly, I turn my face just enough away that she can't see the ruined half. I stand there for a few excruciating seconds, hating this new status quo. I want nothing more than to put the mask back on and pretend the last ten minutes never happened. 

Finally I can't endure her staring anymore and I go back to my sleeping spot on the couch. I hope she'll take the hint and go. In a few moments, I have the living room to myself again. I close my eyes, but I don't think I'll be doing much sleeping for the rest of the night.