“Hey, Grandpa, why don’t you take a seat?” Kyle said, his tone dripping with fake sweetness.
“Oh wait, I forgot. You don’t have a reserved spot for war heroes here.”
His friends laughed.
Richard at last raised his eyes. His gaze, gray, biting, unflinching, settled on Kyle’s face.
They thought he was weak. They thought he was just an old man.
But what they did not know was who was waiting for him at the next stop.
The metro doors hissed open to a packed train full of the typical rush-hour mix. Office workers with their faces buried in their phones, college kids talking in hushed tones, and an old man sleeping in the corner.
The air was thick with apathy.
In the middle of all this, Colonel Richard Dawson stepped inside.
He was retired now, a war veteran from another life, another time, another world most people on that train would never understand. At ninety years old, he no longer drew attention like he used to.
His uniform was gone, traded for a tattered military coat buttoned tightly around him, as if he were still shivering against the cold wind of a battlefield.
His chest carried a line of medals, faded but still shining under the cold train lights.
No one gave them a glance.
His walk was slow but purposeful, and the tap of his wooden cane against the floor was rhythmic as he navigated through the car looking for an empty seat.
But there was not one.
No one offered him one.
A sudden jerk of the train nearly knocked him off his feet, but he gripped a metal pole and steadied himself.
He had been in tighter spots.