The room was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that wrapped around {{user}}’s shoulders like a weight, pressing down on her chest. She stared at the sterile white walls of the infirmary, the scent of antiseptic thick in her nose, the muted beep of the monitor beside her pulsing with the same rhythm as the ache in her ribs.

{{user}} lay still her body a battlefield of bruises, gauze, and quiet agony. She couldn’t remember hitting the ground. Not really. One second she was moving through drills with her usual precision, the next—darkness. Slipping on slick concrete during a live simulation, striking her head on a steel beam as she fell. Her ribs took the brunt of the landing, cracking like wet twigs. Internal bleeding, the medic said. Disorientation. Dizziness. The concussion made everything fuzzy. The painkillers didn’t help much. She’d thrown up twice in the last hour. They were watching her closely, muttering about possible pressure behind her eyes, about “keeping her awake.”

But that wasn’t what had her clinging to consciousness. It was him. Ghost. Gone on a mission he never should’ve been on. A mission meant for her. Price hadn’t told her until after the training accident. She’d woken in the med bay with an oxygen tube up her nose, a splitting headache, and blood drying in her hair. And then the words fell like cinderblocks onto her chest: “Ghost volunteered. Told me there was no chance in hell you were going. Took your spot. Left before your incident.” She couldn’t stop crying. Not just from the pain but from the raw, unbearable fear that she might’ve traded her own death for his.

Now she lay there, heart pounding erratically on the monitor beside her, barely able to move her neck without the world spinning. Every creak of a door made her flinch, every footstep in the hallway had her chest seizing up with desperate hope. Then—footsteps. Slow. Steady. Familiar in a way she didn’t dare believe. The door creaked open. Her vision blurred again, not from the injury this time, but from emotion. There he was. Covered in dust and blood, uniform torn, limp in his left leg, but standing. Alive. {{user}}’s breath punched out of her lungs in a gasping sob.

“Ghost?”

He stepped forward, slower than usual. His eyes, tired, haunted, locked onto her the moment he saw the bandages wrapping her head and chest. “Christ, {{user}}…” She didn’t wait. Despite the tangle of IV lines and sensors, despite the wave of nausea that hit as she sat up, she tore the oxygen tube from her face and shoved the blankets away. “{{user}}—wait—!” Too late. The blood pressure cuff screamed in protest as she yanked it off, her bare feet stumbling against the cold tile. She swayed, hard, but Ghost was already moving.

He caught her mid-fall, arms locking around her like armour. She broke. Her body curled against his, weak and shaking, every inch of her trembling from adrenaline and pain. Her bandaged head pressed to his chest, and she sobbed, raw and broken. “I thought you were dead,” she choked. Ghost swallowed hard, one hand cupping the back of her skull with terrifying gentleness. “I thought you were gonna be fine,” he whispered. “Didn’t know I’d come home to you in a mess.”

“I couldn’t breathe when you left,” she rasped. “I—I thought I’d traded my life for yours, and I—” “Shh.” He pulled her in tighter, careful of her injuries, voice a whisper of steel and fire. “You didn’t. I came back.” Her knees buckled. “I’m here,” he murmured. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“You scared the hell out of me,” she shot back, laughing through tears. He eased her back toward the bed, carefully helping her lie down again. She winced in pain, fresh tears streaking down her cheeks, but didn’t let go of his hand. “I’d go on a hundred missions,” he whispered, “if it meant not watching you get hurt like this.” She stared at him through fevered eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“Then don’t ever scare me like this again, yeah?” The machines beeped around them. Her heart was still racing—but it was steady. And so was he.