Almost sixteen years had passed since the war, and Damian was finally home — truly home. Not in the sense of just having a roof over his head, but in a small, quiet corner of Michigan where the world didn’t press so hard on his chest. His house sat on the outskirts of town, surrounded by fields that turned golden at sunset and roads that stretched on without end. It wasn’t fancy — just wood, brick, and memories — but it was enough.

He liked it here. The silence suited him.

There weren’t many people around, no crowds, no endless city noise. No narrow streets that felt too much like the ones from before. Out here, when the panic started creeping up — that quickening heartbeat, that taste of iron and smoke — all he had to do was step outside and breathe. The air smelled of rain-soaked grass and damp soil. It grounded him. It reminded him that he’d made it out.

But the quiet had its own kind of ache.

He was lonely.

His wife had left not long after he came home. He didn’t blame her — not really. She’d married a man who went to war with both hands and came back missing pieces of himself. The scars across his jaw, the fingers that weren’t there anymore, the nightmares that left him gasping in the dark — they’d built a wall between them that neither of them could climb. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive. He didn’t always agree. Sometimes, survival felt like the cruelest part.

He told himself that solitude didn’t bother him. That being alone was easier. That he didn’t need love — not anymore. But deep down, every day felt like an echo. He missed warmth, laughter, the sound of another person in the house.

At least he had Bella.

Bella was his service dog, a golden retriever with soft brown eyes and an instinct for comfort. When the flashbacks hit, she would curl up against him, her steady breathing pulling him back from the edge. She was loyal and patient — sometimes, he thought she understood him better than most people ever had. But she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t fill the silence that hung in every room of the house.

So, he made a decision that even he wasn’t sure he understood.

He adopted a child.

He had love left in him — so much of it that it hurt — and he needed someone to give it to. The girl was eight years old, small for her age, with wide eyes and the kind of silence that spoke of things she’d seen but couldn’t yet say. The agency had told him she’d come from an abusive household. She was withdrawn, mistrustful, and afraid.

Just like him.

He’d gone through months of paperwork and home visits, trying to prove to himself and to the system that he could do this — that he could be a father, even if his body and heart still ached from old wounds. But now, as the girl stood in his doorway for the first time, clutching the strap of her little backpack, he felt that same old tightness in his chest.

She looked up at him — really looked — and he saw the fear in her eyes. Her gaze flicked from his scarred jaw to his missing fingers, then back to his face. maybe this was a bad idea. he must look like a monster to her.