Step. Step. Step.

One foot in front of the other. You'd think it'd be simple, but after a point it's really not. Your legs feel like wood. And when you have a weight on your back, well, your back starts to burn and ache too. Your shoulders kill.

It was the end of Hell Week. Sixty hours without sleep, and a ten-mile ruckmarch to seal the deal. There was an instructor at the front, and instructor at the back, and me God only knows where. I could see a few other recruits ahead of me, but that was about it. It was all blurry, and not just because of the heat. Sweat and lack of sleep combined so that I could barely see ten feet ahead of me. The trail was dusty, yes, but I knew at the end was a bottle of water, and a warm cot.

Well, that's what I kept telling myself.

"You're right," a female voice called from my left. My head whipped around, and there she was. Except, she couldn't be. So, I told her so.

"You can't be here."

"Why not?"

"It's not possible."

"Apparently it is, John."

I shook my head, looked back at her. My rather unrequited love stood there, in ARPATS with a rucksack, rifle, helmet...the works. Hell, I could see pokes of indigo hair coming out the back of her helmet. She wasn't even breathing hard. Not a drop of sweat.

"This isn't real," I told myself.

"I disagree, but if you don't want the company..."

I shut my mouth. Talking to myself was bad. Talking to a hallucination of the most beautiful woman I had ever met was hardly any better. So I kept my limp up, trying to focus on a hurt at a time. Shoulders. Neck. Knees. Thighs. Feet. One foot in front of the other, chin up, rifle held tight. I went on like this for about ten minutes, I think. I don't know, it was just miserable and I had no sense of time. No sense of place.

"Your absence is the morning,your presence is the night..."

She was singing. That same song, from the time I got so drunk I almost died, from that night where she cradled me until I was done upchucking red. The memory was hazy. I was hazy.

"You sang that to me, once."

"Grad night, yeah. Surprised you can remember that."

"I can't forget it."

"You've come a long way since then."

"I'd like to think so, but here I am."

"Chin up, John."

"Easy for you to say, you don't exist."

If anyone had seen me pointing and arguing with a ghost, there was not a word spoken of it afterwards. I must have looked like a lunatic.

"Really, now? I'd like to think I'm the embodiment of all that goodness in you, in the form of what matters the most to you."

"What hurt me the most."

"Well, maybe. You've had worse relationships than a good friend that you love."

"Touche."

"If you're the angel on my shoulder, where's the devil?"

"Looking for a Faustian bargain?"

"Just curious."

I glanced around. Surely enough, no man with horns, no goateed and greasy lawyer with a pen of blood.

"No dice, at any rate, " I grumbled to the phantom.

"Well, you've come this far on nothing, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have. So?"

"Only a mile to go."

"Liar."

"You can see the gates from here."

"I looked up, and through the haze, I saw Murray from my section stumble through the gates. An MP handed him a bottle of water, and gave him a pat on the back. Beyond him, other recruits sat on rucks, leaning on one another and trying to hydrate themselves.

"I'll be damned."

"Not yet. Push."

I did. Step after step, limping, gritting my teeth, her words in my ear, until I staggered up to the gate, where an MP's hand stopped me.

"You solid, solider?"

"Yes Master Corporal!"

At that point, I suddenly was staring at the sky, two MP's and her face. I heard yells for a medic, saw her smile, and only darkness. She had done her job.

A/N: Song is 'Smaller God', by Darling Violetta.