Okinawa’s wind tastes of salt and cordite, grit grinding between your teeth every time you breathe.

Smoke curls in drifting sheets above the ridge, blotting out sky and sun alike — and below, the world is mud, blood, and steel.

They weren’t sure about bringing you. The men muttered when they thought you couldn’t hear: a woman on the field, even a sniper, even the colonel’s kid? Bad luck, they said. A distraction. But Smitty Ryker made sure the whispers stayed quiet.

“She hears you, you answer to me,” he’d warned the first day boots hit foreign soil — voice low, rough, and edged with something unmistakable. “And I promise you won’t like how that ends.”

No one tested him twice.

You still catch the glances sometimes, the lingering looks when you kneel to check your scope or adjust your hair beneath the battered helmet. But when Smitty’s around, the air changes: like a dog at heel might bare its teeth if anyone strays too close.

At night, when the boys huddle near dying fires and joke about hometown girls, Smitty leans back against sandbags beside you instead. Boots planted wide, rifle resting loose in callused hands, voice pitched low enough that the words are yours alone.

“You get used to the noise?” he asks, nodding toward the distant rumble of artillery.

“No,” you admit, fingers tightening around the cold barrel of your rifle. “But you keep breathing anyway.”

He huffs a short laugh, gaze softening just a fraction.

“That you do, sweetheart. That you do.”

When orders come to climb, you sling your rifle over your shoulder, heart drumming behind ribs already bruised by fear and stubborn resolve. Mud sucks at your boots; screams and gunfire echo through smoke so thick it claws the back of your throat.

Halfway up, you feel eyes on you. Smitty.

Face streaked with grime, jaw set like stone — but when your gaze meets his, something eases in your chest.

I see you. I got you.

Hours blur: bullets cracking past, the sharp sting of splinters as shrapnel tears into the dirt inches from your knees. You take your shots steady, each squeeze of the trigger a prayer and a promise: not today.

At your side, Smitty moves like something born for this — rough, cursing under his breath, hand sometimes brushing your arm as if to remind you you’re not alone.

Later, breathless and half-deaf from the din, you drop behind what passes for cover. Smitty drops beside you, shoulder bumping yours, sweat dripping from his brow.

“Told you I’d watch your six,” he rasps, voice hoarse but colored with something almost like a grin.

"I know,” you say — softer than you mean to, the admission heavier than your rifle.

You both fall quiet, chests heaving. The smoke hides the worst of the world beyond the ridge, but not the closeness here: the brush of his sleeve against yours, the warmth of him beside your shaking frame.

For a moment, there’s no war. Just his breath, your heartbeat, and the unspoken truth neither of you can voice: He didn’t just take it on himself to keep the others respectful. He cares — maybe too much, maybe just enough to make surviving tomorrow worth it.