Disclaimer: I don't own anything at all, I'm just translating :)

This chapter is dedicated to my first reviewer PokemonSoulMaster93 ;) and to anyone who is still interested in reading this fic, thanks guys!

Chapter 1: GHOSTS

Operation "Iraqi Freedom"

100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Headquarter

13 km north-east from Mosul,

Iraq,

2004

The only sound you could heard, into the room, was the one of the pen running trough the paper sheet to leave its mark. Grade, surname, name, manuscripts of the Arial's preprinted letters on the document. How many other inner dispositions did she still have to print, before the coming of the driver put an end at this torture?

The knock at the door made her hope.

"Go ahead" she said to the unknown, while she was putting the last paper just marked at its place and spinning the pen to close it.

Unfortunately, the feature which compared wasn't the one of her driver, instead it was one of her men. She watched him while he stands on the attention and introduced himself, then he put on the desk a paper sheet. Another one, she couldn't help but think about that.

"I need your signature on the license permit, Major" said the guy, rigid on his position that was good to use while talking to a superior. She looked at him for a while, hands clasped on the desk.

"This could have also been done by the next responsible, Sergeant. No one would have left you without your license." A slide grin appeared on her lips.

The other one struggled " I just wanted to be sure, sir."

"Take a sit" she told him, while she read the document: she never signs without reading first. The soldier sits down, letting his gaze wondering around the room: the timber library, which reminds of the previous owner of this place, that right now is owned by the 100th Battalion; the decorations on the ceiling, the Iraq's map, behind the Major, there were a lot of X and arrows multicoloured. And then, next to it, a small handbag. The young man looked up at the figure in front of him, wearing not the simple camouflage suit -like the one he was actually wearing- but an official one: the grey/green shirt, on which was put a tie of the same colour and a jacket buttoned on the chest, where could be seen the degrees and the name.

"So it's true, you are going away." He couldn't help but ask. Two emerald eyes crossed the blue ones.

"Seems so." She answered him. And before he could ask for more she anticipated his next question. "Tikrit."

"Crap" the other one said " in the Sunni triangle."

She just nodded.

"It's pretty a mess there" kept the sergeant as if he was thinking aloud.

"Not more that there is in other zones, Bassora, Fallujah, Kirkuk. Mosul itself. If God forgets about you, He doesn't makes exceptions" said with a bitter smile on her lips.

"When are you going to set off, sergeant?" She said moving the topic from herself to the other one, who seems to brighten up.

"Next Monday."

"How long?"

"Tree months."

She looked up and saw the soldiers eyes bright of joy. When he kept talking she understood why.

"I just got married, I've been more time in Iraq than with my wife!" He said laughing.

"It's a condition common to many." She said smiling a bit. She spins the pen to sign, having almost finished reading.

She didn't know that fragiles embankments had been broken.

"Can't wait to see her again, she is my family obviously" started again the sergeant, "she's a doctor, you know, Major? A researcher doctor, being precise, I met her..."

God, when is my car coming? She thought being less tolerant to the Amarcord of the sergeant in front of her. It would have been almost better signing a stack of sheet, she ended sighing, while the other kept talking... "and she accepted! Oh then there is my..."

Then she lifted up a hand, and he immediately stopped.

"Did I ask you to tell me your whole life, sergeant?"

The guy slightly blushed, then lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry Major, I was just so happy."

She signed the sheet and then gave it back to the guy.

"I understand that, I forgive you. Now, don't take as an offence, but my car should be there anytime, so..."

The other one just nodded, standing up from the chair, holding into his hands the precious piece of sheet. On the door, though, suddenly turned around to look at the Major, who was still sitting on her desk. The heels of the amphibians touched each other and the hand went to rest on his forehead.

"It has been an honour having been under your orders, Major Tenou. Hope to see you soon."

She sighed, when she was the only person into the room. She sands up and after loosening a bit the tie knot, she put the hands into the trousers pockets, and she went toward the window, putting her forehead on it.

No family was waiting for her to come back. The Army was her only bond. The Duty and the Honour of her brothers. There was nothing else, beside the army, the hated uniform. She saw into the horizon a 4X4 appearing. She stands up, tiding her tie, she put those thoughts on a remote side of her mind, where she used to keep them, and after taking the necessary documents, she took her handbag and went out from that place, which had been for the last 10 month, the most similar place to home she has ever had.

Portsmouth, Virginia

April 2008

When she woke up, the first thing she did was to open her eyes and have a look at her clock: the digital numbers kept telling her that it was 6:32AM. She stayed in the bed, putting aside the sheets which fell on her chest, and sighing she brought her palm on her face. She had been sleeping for almost three hours. And the bad dreams came back. That always happens when that day was coming closer, that day.

She stands up and, taking an old sweater left on the chair next to the door, she went toward the bathroom. When she watched herself at the mirror, she said:

"God Michiru, you are a rag..." she muttered, to the aqua haired girl and blue eyed rimmed by deep eye bags. She hoped that a shower could help her and below the warm water, she started to think about a way to delete those ugly eye bags: no, this wouldn't have been enough, this time. She thought about her oil tempera. So she got dressed gathering her hair in a towel, looking forward to drying them later. Walking towards her flat, she gathered clothes and random objects, trying to tidy up a primordial disorder. She turned on the kettle and while she was waiting for the right time for the water to warm up, she took a yoghurt and an apple from the fridge.

Considering she still have some time before someone would decide to wake up she entered into the room near hers and took her music sheets with a pencil. She came back into the kitchen and she started drinking her tea while eating an apple, she started reading the melody in the sheets, thinking about correcting any eventual mistake.

She was getting on the car, the babies voices greeting their mums, when her phone rung. She smiled seeing the known number:

"Good morning, doctor Chiba."

She could almost see he smile at the other side of the phone. "Hey Michiru, am I bothering you?"

"Of course not. I was just heading back home." She leaned against her car putting her phone between chin and shoulder, starting to search for her chains in her bag. "What's the honour?"

"Usako and me would like to take you for a dinner."

Michiru smiles. "And you call me at 9:00 am to tell me that?"

"You know Usa, she would have make my head a balloon if I hadn't done it before lunch, so I decided to put you at the top of the list of calling for today."

She shook her haed, "Stop that, you love her just for the way she is."

"Hey don't psychoanalyse me, remember I'm still a superior!"

"You were" she suddenly corrected him while she climbed into the car "anyway, it's ok I'll bring some whine, it has just opened a whine bar near my house so..."

"There is still something else, Michiru."she heard him interrupting her. And she didn't like the tone too. " I'd like you to come here, in hospital, just some minutes."

"When?"

"Right now, if you can."

Michiru stayed quiet. "Mamoru, I..."

"I just want to talk to you about a thing, it won't last long."

Michiru thought about that. Than she sighed. "It's ok."

The Military hospital "Edward Dewenish Veterans Affair Medical Centre", settled in Portsmouth, was very near to the beach. To come in it was necessary walk toward the block position, something really boring but strictly necessary if you didn't want to finish in custody of beefy soldiers of the US navy, who often considered their turns to the Military Hospital like their Purgatory. Points which would have brought them to their Paradise: the Iraq. Or the Afghanistan. Or whatever it was, but anything which will preserve them a place on a war ship, singing the American sings, hand on the heart.

Why they were seeing the Iraq as a paradise, she still couldn't understand. She understood their duty, the loyalty towards the USA. And the patriotic feeling born from the ashes of the World Trade Center, that 11 September a lot of years before, which brought a lot of them to the army. But that desire of go away, of going to an hot front like the Afghanistan, or the Iraq... for a lot whom she had been talking she understood they thought it was a kind of proof, initiation rite. As in certain primitive cultures, where young people face ferocious beasts to earn the status of man. For many, going down there was really becoming - and finally - man, looking into the eyes of the beast that was the war.

"Documents please."

Michiru stopped at the guardroom's bar and handed the Identity card to the white-headed boy with a shaved head who had asked the question. There were no more Stewart and Johnatan, the two cadets who let her through after showing the internal doctor's card. He wondered how many things had changed.

"Doctor Chiba is waiting for me," she told the soldier, that was writing fast her dates, but he still didn't stop. After a while she sees him looking up at her, handing her back her identity card and a card.

"When you go away you have to give me back this" he said and smiled.

"I know, I've been working there too."

Then Michiru went to a big car park, where she found a place with ease: a military hospital never had the workload of a civilian equal. At the entrance she found that nothing, at least at the structural and furnishing level, had changed. The windows in the atrium let the spring sun come in, illuminating it in its entirety. She walked towards the elevators, directed to the wing E: the psychiatric ward. When the elevator doors opened, she headed for a salon where they were passing two nurses and a boy with a drip in his arm. A young patient in a wheelchair looked at her as if she had an alien crouched on her shoulder, whistling her his own appreciation. Michiru shook her head, and took a long corridor that ended in a white door, like everything else around her. She ran a hand through her hair and knocked, before entering. The view opened to the familiar office, and to the equally familiar figure of the man with short black hair and blue eyes that now looked at her.

"Michiru! You're fast." Mamoru greeted her standing up from the chair and hugging her. When they sat down Michiru could see some sheets and on one of them there was written Confidential.

The mind returned to the entire days spent in that same office, she, Mamoru and all the staff, discussing the most delicate cases or how to face yet another cut of subsidies. She tried not to think about the last time he had been in that room, but it was inevitable. She heard Mamoru speak, but did not understand what he had asked for.

"What?"

"I just asked you how are you."

"Oh I'm great!" She lied. And the other one didn't believe her.

"Define 'great'?"

"Ehi now who psychoanalysis whom?" Michiru answered before making him smile. Then she sighed.

"I'm playing a lot, lately. My concert is just next week. I can't complain, it takes my mind busy."

"I'm glad." He said genuinely smiling her, " instead what abo-"

"Listen Mamoru, go straight to the point," said Michiru, "tell me what you wanted to tell me."

The other one kept quiet fro a moment, they could only hear they sound of the 'tic-tack' of the clock on the wall. "I'd like you to come back working for me."

Michiru tried to hide her surprise, but failed "eh?!"

"It just came a case which has the maximum priority, at home, with a letter from Washington, at 5am."

The girl was even more surprised but she started to give a sense to that 'Confidential'. Especially when Mamoru put it between them both. He took a sheet of paper putting it in front of Michiru who started reading.

"Tenou Haruka" muttered "this name isn't unknown to me."

"His father is the General Takeshi Tenoh." He answered her.

Ah now that's clear. So that's the reason why they crashed into your house in the early morning, with a letter of daddy directly from the General Staff."

"It's not a simple recommendation, if that's what you think. Who do you think I am? You know I do not easily bend these things, "Mamoru burst out, and Michiru nodded, if there was one thing she could be sure of, it was the moral integrity of Dr. Mamoru Chiba, head of the psychiatric ward. now, and he could not put one on it, but both hands on the fire. She felt guilty for thinking of it.Mamoru handed her another sheet. From the header and the date on the top left, she interpreted it as the current medical record of this Tenou.

"Is he already recovered here?"

"Yes, he is."

"Crap!"she told when she read the administration of the medicines " this would end a bull in a coma!"

"Tenou doesn't sleep, in the night. And when he does it without those, he shouts."

Michiru shook her forehead but didn't answer. Mamoru kept talking "we aren't talking about a daddy's child, we're talking about a person who is very ill."

Michiru came back on the first document Mamoru handed her. "He's a graduated, a Major." The other nodded.

"Hundredth Battalion?"asked the girl

"He led the 100th in Iraq?"

"Yup." Mamoru understood the implications of this question and quickly added: "but it's not sure that they have known each other, do you know how many others had been there too?"

Michiru didn't feel better. But she regained her colour. "No. I can't do it, Mamoru."

She threw the paper on his desk, rising from her chair as if it had been glowing. The man is raised in turn. "Michiru, yes, you can do it, I will not give you such a delicate affair if I do not believe in your ability." He put his hands on her shoulders, and he felt her tremble. He looked for it.

"Why me?" Mamoru heard her asking him.

"Because you have to react, because you can not continue to blame yourself."

"I do not blame myself!"

"So why did you leave?" Michiru bit her lip, without answering.

"You know why, I had the little girl to think about." They tell him after a long moment.

"How much time has passed, three years?"

"Two years and eight months." It was the girl's automatic response.

"So I think it's time for an affront, Michiru." Mamoru returned to the desk and tidied the file on Tenou. Then he handed it to his friend.

"Read it all."

"I can not read it, it's confidential, said, pushing the file to the man in mid-air between them.

"I know, but I want you to read it all the same, and then, knowing the facts, you will give me an answer that I will accept without objecting." Mamoru gave her a bright smile as she dropped the file into her hands, and opened the door.

"You can go to your old office, no one will disturb you. See you in a pair of hours."

It was already done one o'clock at night, and the apartment was immersed in silence except for the fast typing of Michiru on the keys of her laptop. The light of the screen illuminated her face, and that together with a small lamp placed on a low table next to the sofa where the girl sat, constituted the only two sources of light in the dark room. Next to her, scattered on the sofa, lay the sheets of the file on Major Haruka Tenou. Michiru stopped writing and rubbed her eyes, then reached for the same table where the lamp was and grabbed a portable recorder. It had taken all afternoon to find him. Resting her head against the back, her gaze turned to the ceiling, she pushed the red button of the recording. "Michiru Kaioh, 1.12 am on April 19, 2008. In a few hours I will return to the Portsmouth Military Hospital, to take care of a case after almost three years, as Mamoru did to convince me, it's really a mystery." She smiled, in the dark, before continuing. "The patient is Haruka Tenou, born on 27 January 1980 in Washington DC, United States Army Major, who returned from Iraq on 12 February this year and resigned from the" Edward Dewenish Veterans Affair Medical Center. "after a successful surgery, without major problems ..." Michiru paused, and lifted one of the photos of Tenou's file with one of his free hand: one of those attached to the Virginia Beach Police Department report. "Mamoru says this case will also help me." Therapy in therapy. He also said that it will be stimulating, from a strictly professional point of view, because with Tenou nothing is what it seems." She closed his eyes, before concluding his first report. "But if I have to be honest, I think I'm making a big mistake." That night Michiru could not sleep. And in the only moment when she fell asleep, she dreamed of Mitsuo.

Author's note: Ouch, that really was tiring, 3k words! XD I'm happy! Anyway I know this chapter seems quite boring, but it's important to understand future explaining, I think I can be proud of the looong work of writing I did today, and of course hope you liked it too.

Of course in this chapter we learned just the basics to the next happenings, which will surprise us for sure, but I won't tell you anything more! Thanks for reading, until next time, this is Milla23 ;)