It's nice for them all to be able to glorify the war – his life – as easily as they do. A soldier of fortune and a bringer of peace; a saviour to them all. But it wasn't like that (isn't like that); it wasn't an adventure in mysterious lands and exotic countries: it was a battlefield, each change of scenery as disturbing as the last. The sounds of gunshot and clashing of metal against metal – against flesh – don't let him forget as he tries to sleep each night.
They call him a living legend, but he just calls himself a modern day tragedy, feeling there's no emphasis on his part. After all, he got himself into it all with his stupid, childish determination to prove himself, and now he has the loss to go along with it. The faces of all the men he knew – good, honest, normal men, with people to mourn for them – are blood covered in his mind and oh so empty, and no! they just don't deserve any of it.
Being a soldier is never easy, whether you fight for a superpower or a rebel organisation—he should know; he's worked for both. And sometimes it was harder fighting for Shinra, even with their well funded forces, powerful artilery and superior numbers. It was all the rules that got him; the codes of conduct that he never quite understood.
For example, why should one man – while he himself is wounded - have to carry him on his back to safety, only to be murdered? He watched that soldier – no, his friend – as they gunned him down until his corpse only moved with the thunder of bullets. He watched, and did nothing. Call it mako poisoning, post-traumatic stress or whatever you will, but he did nothing.
And why should one girl, more innocent than he dared describe with words, be taken from this world when not even the Lifestream had decided her fate yet? He was the hero, and she was the martyr. No, not a martyr. She was just a scared little girl who wasted her life in fear and persecution, only trying to better herself for others; in truth, she smiled often but was happy rarely.
There was no way he could even begin to comprehend peace anymore.
There was only comforted in those silent ghosts and lingering memories.