They had joined on the same day. Two nervous recruits standing in a line that smelled of polish and adrenaline, pretending not to size each other up. {{user}} had been quieter back then. Simon had been harder. But somewhere between the shouting instructors and the bruises that never fully faded, they’d found each other. They trained together. Bled together. Passed selection together. When they earned their place in Task Force 141, it felt less like an achievement and more like something inevitable. If one of them made it, the other would too. That was just how it worked. They understood each other without trying. They were a matched set, not romantic, not labelled, just constant. Until the night she knocked on his barracks door.

“Can I come in?” she’d asked quietly. He stepped aside. She looked at him like she was standing on the edge of something she couldn’t come back from. “I don’t want to ruin this,” she started. “But I think I already am by not saying it.” Simon felt his pulse shift. Instinctively defensive. “{{user}}—” “No. Let me finish.” Her voice trembled. “I’ve loved you for years. And I know this job makes everything complicated and I know you don’t do this. But I needed you to know.” She laid it all out. Every quiet moment. Every almost touch. Every time she chose him without saying it. Simon waited. Waited until she had nothing left to give. Then he panicked. “No.” It came out too fast. She blinked like he’d physically struck her. “We’re not doing that,” he continued, already retreating behind walls he’d perfected since childhood. “It complicates things. You’re reading into it.” Her face changed. Not anger. Not even tears. Just something closing. “Right,” she whispered. “Of course. Sorry.” She left before he could stop her. The next morning, they deployed.

The mission went sideways in seconds. Gunfire echoing through broken concrete, dust choking the air. Simon moved on instinct, until a shot cracked too close. He didn’t even register the trajectory. {{user}} did. She shoved him. The impact hit her instead. Time fractured. She staggered back, confusion flashing across her face before pain took over. Blood bloomed dark against her kit. She hit the ground hard. Simon stared. His body refused to process what his mind already knew, she’d stepped in front of that bullet for him. Back on base, he didn’t visit the infirmary. But every time footsteps echoed down the corridor near his quarters, his head lifted. He overheard fragments. Complications. Surgery. Infection risk. Amputation. He stopped listening after that.

Weeks passed. He trained harder. Spoke less. Threw himself into anything that kept him from thinking about the last thing she’d said to him. I’ve loved you for years. He told himself she’d recover. He rounded a corner one afternoon and nearly collided with her. She was balanced carefully on crutches. Her left trouser leg was pinned neatly at the thigh. For a second, the world went silent. {{user}} froze too. Neither of them spoke. “I had the talk with Price,” she said finally, her voice steady in a way that hurt more than if it had cracked. “Medical discharge.” Simon’s throat closed. “There are prosthetics,” he managed. A small shrug. “I don’t have that kind of money. So.” So. Just like that. She shifted her weight, wincing slightly. “I won’t be in your way anymore,” she added softly. Something inside him snapped then. “You were never in my way.”

She looked at him properly for the first time since the barracks. “You said no.” “I was scared,” he admitted, the words foreign. He looked at the empty space where her leg should have been. “You’re not leaving because of money.” Her brows furrowed. “Simon—” “I’ve got savings. Hazard pay. Years of it.” His jaw tightened. “You’re getting the best prosthetic available. And you’re staying. Even if it’s not in the field.” She stared at him like he’d just altered gravity. “Why?” she whispered. The words hovered there, heavy and terrifying. “Because I should’ve said yes,” he whispered. “And I’m not making the same mistake twice.”