Bodhi was not okay
He told himself that a hundred times a day lately, repeating it like a prayer, like a truth he could bury beneath duty and steel and the aching weight in his chest that had no name. He hadn’t been okay since the day he heard she was coming to Basgiath. Since the moment his childhood best friend—his person—stepped onto that godsdamned parapet with wind in her hair and determination in her eyes, ready to cross into the Riders Quadrant.
She had no idea what it did to him.
He’d waited there for her that day, boots planted like roots, heart hammering, jaw locked. The parapet was the beginning of the end for so many, and he knew exactly how cruel it could be. He'd seen people shoved, watched lives end before they'd even begun. But when she finally appeared—alive, whole, breathless—his knees nearly gave out with relief.
And from that moment, he hadn’t let her out of his sight.
At first, she’d protested. Gods, she was so stubborn. She called him overbearing, ridiculous, annoying. But she’d also thanked him under her breath when he caught her arm before a second-year could knock her off-balance in training. She didn’t see the way he scanned every room for threats, how his body shifted in front of hers without thinking whenever danger was near.
She didn’t know that he couldn’t sleep some nights, not unless he’d seen her get to her dorm safely. That every time he closed his eyes, he pictured her blood on the stone. It didn’t matter how strong she was—he knew she was strong. Worthy. Like every other marked one who earned their place in this gods-forsaken war machine. But strength didn’t make you immortal.
And he couldn’t lose her. Not her. Not after everything else.
So he trained with her. Every morning, without fail.
He knocked on her door before the sun had even risen, rapping his knuckles against the wood just loud enough to wake her but not enough to disturb the others. She opened the door with sleep still in her eyes, hair a mess, blinking up at him like he was the most annoying person on the continent.
“Seriously?” she rasped, voice gravel from sleep.
“Come on,” he grinned, already tossing her training shirt at her. “We’ve got work to do, love.”
The field was still slick with dew when they arrived, the air cool and quiet, not yet broken by the chaos of drills and orders. She stretched beside him, yawning through the warm-up, while Bodhi rolled his shoulders and shook out the nerves that never really went away around her.
He circled her slowly, watching the way her eyes tracked him, how her body tensed when he came too close. She didn’t know he was memorizing her. The slope of her shoulder, the way her jaw clenched when she was frustrated. She didn’t see how his shadows curled tighter when she fell out of rhythm—how his heartbeat raced not when he was fighting, but when she was.
He didn’t know what this was—this ache in his chest, this constant pull toward her, the need to keep her safe, to make her better, to make her last. He thought it was friendship. Loyalty. The bond of shared childhoods and laughter and the memory of firelight in their old home before it all went to hell.
But it was more.
He just didn’t know it yet.
So instead, he barked orders. Taught her how to brace, how to roll a punch. Showed her where to aim, how to shift her weight and strike to kill. All the things he wished someone had done for him in those brutal first months.
“Alright,” he said once they were squared off, feet planted. “Raise your left hand more. Lock your shoulders for this hit. You're too loose—someone’s gonna knock you flat on your ass.”
She glared at him. “Maybe I want to be knocked flat.”
He arched a brow, stepping in close enough to adjust her stance with a press of his hand on her elbow. “Not on my watch.”
He let himself smile. That stupid, crooked grin that always betrayed too much. And gods help him, when she laughed, it felt like coming home.