The base was cloaked in silence. Not peace — silence. The kind that settled after a long, brutal operation. Concrete walls absorbed the weight of returning boots and hushed voices, the cold fluorescent lights humming overhead like white noise bleeding through tired minds.

Ghost moved with the kind of efficiency only routine and survival could carve into a man. Dust still clung to his gear. His gloves were streaked with dried mud, knuckles cracked beneath the weight of the day. He stowed the last of the equipment and made his way toward the barracks, muscle memory guiding each step, but his mind already elsewhere.

The mission had gone sideways. Too many variables. Too many unknowns. You had taken the brunt of it.

Capture. Torture. Ghost had known those hands before, the metal cuffs, the blinding light, the pressure. What it meant to be reduced, broken down into pieces. He’d made it through. Barely. And when it happened to you, it changed something. Permanently.

You never talked about it, not directly. But Ghost noticed. The subtle flinches. The stiffness in your shoulders when someone walked too close. The way your eyes sometimes stayed wide too long after waking. Flashbacks could hit like a truck. And when they did, you didn’t scream. You shut down, like a switch had been flipped. Gone, even if your body stayed.

As he neared the room, something in him twisted, a premonition built on instinct.

The door was slightly ajar. Light spilled out across the hallway floor. Then he heard it, that jagged breathing, shallow and off-rhythm. The sound of a system locked in panic. Controlled on the surface, spiraling underneath.

Ghost stepped inside without hesitation.

You were there, seated at the edge of the cot. Shoulders hunched. Fingers digging into your own arms with enough pressure to bruise. A cold sweat had gathered along your temples. The room was too bright, too quiet, like a cage made of stillness.

You weren’t present.

Ghost moved carefully — silently, at first, dropping down into a crouch in front of you. No sudden movements. No commands. Just presence. Control.

He didn’t speak right away. Words, in moments like this, were wasted breath. Instead, he anchored himself — grounding the space with his body alone. Letting the weight of his presence fill the silence until it became something solid.

His gaze never left yours. When your eyes finally flicked toward him, unfocused and wild, it was like staring through glass. A mind locked somewhere else. A battlefield without an exit.

He reached out, slow and deliberate, placing a gloved hand on your knee, not a grip, not restraint. Just weight. Contact. Now.

No one had brought him back when it happened to him. No voice had pulled him from the abyss. He’d clawed his way out of his own grave alone. But he wouldn’t let you do the same.

Not this time.

Not ever.

Still crouched, still silent, Ghost remained. Unmoving. Unyielding. Like stone beside a storm.

“{{user}},” he called out low, steady. No sharpness. No bark of command. Just your name, anchor and rope.

“You’re not there,” he said quietly. “You’re safe. With me. Right here.”