Two old men sat in a corner booth of a quiet bar, the kind where the jukebox croaked out songs no one cared to remember. Their faces, lined with years and regrets, betrayed stories that would never be told in full. Each nursed a drink with the solemnity of a man performing a sacred rite.
Once upon a time, these men had been enemies. Not the kind of enemies who spat curses across a picket fence, but real, dyed-in-the-wool enemies—pawns of nations that used them as chess pieces in a game they didn’t ask to play. One had sent missiles to fly, the other had sent men to die, and between them, they’d crafted a tapestry of destruction neither could undo. For years, their countries painted them as heroes, but both men knew the truth: they weren’t heroes. They were survivors. And surviving doesn’t mean winning.
For decades, they had lived in separate corners of the world, each haunted by ghosts of the same war. Then, by chance—or maybe it was fate—they met again, not across a battlefield but at a conference where old men went to tell young people what not to do. It had been awkward at first. A handshake offered too late, a sideways glance that carried decades of mistrust. But there’s something about age that dulls the sharp edges of hatred. Maybe it’s because you’ve run out of energy to keep holding the grudge, or maybe you finally realize it never served you to begin with.
And so, here they were, sharing a drink. Not in friendship exactly, but in something like it. There was a comfort in sitting with someone who understood. Someone who’d sent men to die the same way you had. Someone who’d made the same justifications, told the same lies, and carried the same weight ever since.
They drank not to celebrate, nor to mourn, but to forget. Forget the hate, forget the distrust, and maybe, if the whiskey was strong enough, forget the faces of the young men they’d sent to their deaths. Each drink was an unspoken confession, a silent prayer for absolution that would never come.
“You ever think,” one of them said, breaking the long silence, “about what we could’ve done different?”
The other man swirled his drink, watching the amber liquid catch the dim light. “Every damn day. But thinking doesn’t change a damn thing.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the first agreed. He raised his glass. “But here’s to trying anyway.”
The glasses clinked—a dull, hollow sound—and they drank, letting the burn remind them they were still alive.
The bartender, a young man who knew nothing of their histories, watched them with mild curiosity. To him, they were just two old men sharing stories over drinks. He didn’t know they were burying a war between them, one sip at a time.
Outside, the world moved on, indifferent to their pasts and their attempts at peace. But inside, at least for a moment, the War was over. In its place was something warmer—not quite friendship, but something close enough for two men who’d seen too much and lived too long.
“Another round?” asked the bartender.
They nodded in unison, each grateful for one more drink, one more moment to make sense of it all before time caught up with them.
Assuming there’s such a thing as making up for the past. I don’t know if there is. Maybe we’re all just stuck carrying the weight of what we’ve done, like some cruel reminder of what we’ll never undo.
But you can’t stop walking forward, not if you’re still breathing. Maybe that’s the trick—not redemption, not forgiveness, just survival. Just moving on, doing what you have to do. Not what you want, never that. That’s a luxury for people who haven’t been broken.
The first real step toward something that doesn’t feel like nothing. It’s not much, but maybe one day I’ll look back and see it for what it is: a beginning. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll stop seeing the ghosts of what could’ve been and start seeing what still might be.
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