A/N: So I don't know if this has ever been done before, but this is a fanfiction for a music video. XD I recently got into My Chemical Romance's music and found the video for "The Ghost of You" on YouTube. No, you don't have to know of MCR or see the video to get the gist of what is going on in this fic. :D

While the video is obviously based on D-Day, this is my tribute to the war in the Middle East. So enjoy, fellow Americans!

The Ghost of You

Gerard licked his dry, cracked lips, looking out at the audience of people in the auditorium. He swallowed, throat parched and mouth dry as sand.

There was his mother, his father, his wife, and beside them an empty chair with an Army uniform and a pair of glasses on it. The lump in his throat grew in size.

What was he supposed to do again? Oh, yeah—speech. He had the speech in front of him and he was supposed to talk and accept an award of something-or-other for...

For Mikey.

Vision blurred by tears, he found his voice and looked down at the speech on the podium in front of him as two hundred eyes gazed up expectantly. "All of us know someone involved in the war that still rages on," he began, voice cracking a bit from nervousness and grief. "Some of us here now were, or still are, directly involved in it. For my brother and I, the war was just something other people talked about until our uncle was killed. To make up for his absence in the family, M-Mikey... Mikey and I enlisted in the Army."

His gaze swept the crowd again, and he could see his mother's face buried in his father's chest, his father whose face shone with tears.

"We thought it would be easy, thought that we were smarter and could look out for each other, could avoid the bombs and explosions and gunfire and survive, and maybe we'd even get a medal for bravery for saving an entire city or something like that." Gerard had to wipe a few tears from his cheek. "We didn't know that it would be so hard.

"Every day, we watched someone else die. Every day, Mikey and I held some poor soul's hand as he screamed from the pain of a lost limb, or from bullets embedded in his body, from the medic trying to get them out. We watched the blood pour from him like a river and his life ebb away." He wiped away tears again, furious that they wouldn't just stay away.

"Mikey and I were always confident, always sure that it wouldn't be us. So when the others died around us, one by one, men with families and children and—and kids who dropped out of school to defend their country... we watched them all disappear. I tried to make a list of all the ones I knew last night, to write letters to their families... But I couldn't.

"We thought we'd at least make it out. We didn't have long to go. A month and we'd be home. But that last day... Mikey and I were walking down a dirt road. I don't even remember what we were doing. All I remember is a sudden explosion and... and he... we were lying on the ground all of a sudden..." His words started to jumble together and his wife was suddenly onstage next to him, holding him, comforting him.

Gerard gripped her hand, looking back at the speech he'd so carefully prepared, blinded by his tears. "I couldn't feel anything except pain, and I looked over at him... I-I could hear gunfire... Mikey was lying on the ground, th-there was a big red spot on his uniform on his stomach... I was screaming, I remember that, but I couldn't hear myself... All I could hear was the guns and the sirens. And I could hear Mikey screaming, shouting for me... His glasses were b-broken..." He wiped his eyes and let out a choked sob. "He was just lying there on the ground, that big bloody spot on his stomach growing larger every second. Someone pulled me away, held me back in the safety of a ditch and... I didn't even get to hold my brother's hand as he died. I just watched as I'd watched countless others die... watched the blood flow away like a river... watched the life ebb away to leave nothing but a blank... empty... shell... of my brother. He was screaming, crying for me... and I could do... nothing... to ease the pain."

Gerard looked up to see tears glistening on the faces of everyone before him. Mikey's high school sweetheart got up and ran out of the auditorium, sobbing uncontrollably.

"I woke up in the hospital and they told me they were sending me home. I remember speaking. I didn't ask, 'Where's Mikey?' Not 'Is my brother okay?' Not even, 'Why did my brother have to die?'" He swallowed, throat dry. "I said to them, 'It should have been me. I should have died. Not him. Not my little brother.'"

Gerard's gaze swept his audience again and he bowed his head, signalling the end of his speech. Lindsey led him off the stage and into the seat next to the empty one reserved for Mikey's spirit, the broken glasses sitting atop the neatly-folded uniform with the dark brown stain.

"You're here, aren't you, Mikey?" he whispered, placing a hand next to the uniform. "I can feel you... at least, the ghost of you."