the first time you met abby, she had you pinned to the ground, her knee pressing into your back, her grip bruising around your wrist.

"stay down," she had growled, her voice low and firm, thick with the tension of battle. you had spat a curse at her, struggling against her weight, but she was stronger—always stronger.

that was how it started.

you fought on opposite sides, tangled in a war that neither of you had started but both of you were willing to bleed for. every encounter was a collision—fists, knives, snarled insults thrown in the heat of battle. you hated how fast she was, how calculated her movements were, how she always seemed to anticipate your next move. and she? she hated how you never backed down, how you fought with reckless abandon, how you could push her to her limits.

but somewhere along the way, the hatred shifted.

it was small things at first. the way she hesitated one second too long before throwing a punch. the way her eyes lingered just a moment longer than they should have when she saw you bruised but still standing. and then, one night, everything changed.

you had been injured—badly. a deep gash along your ribs, bleeding sluggishly as you tried to escape through the ruins of an old building. you hadn’t expected to see her there, standing in your way, muscles tense and eyes sharp with something unreadable.

you expected her to finish you off. you expected the cold finality of a blade or a bullet.

what you didn’t expect was for her to sigh, mutter a quiet, "fucking hell," and kneel beside you, pressing a rough, calloused hand to your wound to slow the bleeding.

"don’t get the wrong idea," she had grumbled, avoiding your gaze. "i just don’t feel like dragging your dead weight back to your people."