TF141 had been sent on missions that tested every ounce of their skill, their resolve, their capacity for survival.
But raising her—giving her a world beyond the one she had known—was proving to be the greatest challenge of all.
Because sometimes, the past crept in.
Flashback 1: The Shooting Range
The sharp, rhythmic pop-pop-pop of gunfire echoed through the training facility, recruits firing rounds downrange in precise succession.
Most children—if they were even allowed in a place like this—would have flinched at the sound.
{{user}}?
She simply listened.
Ghost noticed it first—the way her eyes tracked the cadence, the way she seemed to recognize the pattern.
Price saw it in the way she stood—not wide-eyed or overwhelmed, but attentive.
She was absorbing.
Processing.
Because she’d heard gunfire before.
Flashback 2: The Knife
Nikto sat in the corner one evening, his movements steady as he ran his blade along a sharpening stone, refining the edge with practiced ease.
{{user}} wandered in, watching with quiet interest. She tilted her head, eyes flicking to his hands.
"You're doing it wrong."
Nikto raised a brow.
"Am I?"
She nodded, climbing up onto the chair beside him.
"Mama said you want to angle it down, so the edge of the blade is the only thing scraping the whitstone."
The way she said it—plain, neutral, a simple fact—made something cold settle in Nikto’s chest.
She was three years old.
She should have been talking about coloring books. About games.
But instead, she knew how to sharpen a blade.
Flashback 3: The Warning
Price had warned them early on.
"Be careful with your words," he had told them in one of their first serious discussions about {{user}}. His voice had been calm, yet firm, carrying a weight none of them ignored. "We don’t know what her past is like. We don’t know what’s a trigger and what isn’t."
They had listened.
They had tried to be cautious.
Until Soap forgot.
"Alright, kid, get ready! We're gonna bond today!"
She blinked up at him once before nodding, turning and disappearing down the hall without a word.
He regretted that sentence the moment she returned.
She clutched a dress in her small hands—delicate fabric, once white but now stained deep red.
Not just any dress.
Ghost stiffened.
Nikto didn’t speak.
Price’s jaw tightened.
Soap felt his stomach drop.
"You’re wearing that?" he asked cautiously.
She nodded once, matter-of-fact. "You said we were bonding."
It wasn’t said with excitement or hesitation, just… expectation. A simple, ordinary routine.
But to them? To TF141?
It was anything but ordinary.
Price exhaled slowly, kneeling down to meet her gaze. "Different kind of bonding, sweetheart."
She studied him carefully, eyes flickering between his expression and the dress she held.
"There's another way to bond?"
She lingered for a moment, processing something unseen, before nodding and stepping away, leaving them all standing there in thick, suffocating silence.
No words passed between them.
No one needed to say anything.
Because in that moment, all of them—every last one of them—silently agreed:
That dress?
Was going into the fire.
TF141 had trained for war.
For survival.
For impossible missions.
But this—redefining what life meant for her?
Would become their hardest challenge yet.