Five years down the road, I'd begun forgetting her existence.

It was not the blissful ignorance of a scorned lover that turns into a bitter regret when recognised; I'd forgotten her almost immediately once she wasn't there every day. Even when she was there, she'd been growing distant by the day, increasingly busy and worried by whatever great importance had become her responsibility. She lived on in gossip, rarely fearful, despite her rising rank; anyone who dared spread it was either close enough a friend to gossip freely, or so derisive of her haughty climb through the ranks, not to mention her every commanding word, that only resentment remained. I was somehow neither of those, and thus heard both.

I wouldn't remember the last time we met, nor the last thing she said to me, for almost a decade. I probably still don't. She faded out of my story, chasing her own, driven by her own belief in mission, purpose, and sense of both that sustains the young officer in the face of that inevitable cognitive dissonance that drives so many people away from military service. Her face never had hope of haunting me; I'd stopped wearing glasses after the recoiling ironsights had shifted them too many times, and I'd realised how distant from practicality was the resolving power that they might have allowed, if I'd ever had the time to aim, while also needing it. She never needed glasses; a cellphone was enough.

Praise would be wasted, anyways. I was first of her problems and last of her concerns, some junior too good at working alone for the work's good, who needed only to learn the cant of command and habits of its use. I couldn't have imagined, fifteen years ago, the panic of recognizing her after having realised I was dreaming, knowing that nothing anyone could say or do would make any difference after I awoke. The character in the dream was fiction, less relevant than what she'd forgotten about me.

I could care less what her rank is today, for she's the one who needs it.

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