Everyone is born with it.

A small black circle on the inside of the wrist. No bigger than a coin. No explanation. No cure.

Some stay empty forever. Some fill and fade. Some change everything.

Johnny MacTavish never put much stock in his.

Hard to believe in destiny when your daily schedule includes breaching doors and getting shot at.

⸻

Tonight’s mission is supposed to be clean.

Extraction. Hostiles entrenched. Multiple civilians.

Task Force 141 moves like a weapon — Price issuing orders, Ghost covering shadows, Gaz locking down exits.

Soap takes point.

Flashbang detonates.

The room erupts.

Gunfire cracks like splitting bone. Plaster explodes from the walls. Someone shouts in a language Johnny doesn’t care to translate. He moves on instinct — controlled aggression, precise shots, clearing corners in seconds.

Then he sees {{user}}.

Bound to a chair near the far wall. Wrists cinched tight with plastic restraints. Rope biting into skin. Eyes wide — not hysterical. Focused.

Alive.

He crosses the room as another hostile drops behind him.

“It’s alright,” he says, already kneeling, knife in hand. “We’ve got ye.”

Bullets punch into the doorway behind him. Someone returns fire. The air smells like cordite and dust.

Johnny hooks the blade under the restraint at {{user}}’s wrist—

And stops.

The black circle on their skin is changing.

Not flickering.

Not imagined.

Color bleeds inward from the edge. Slow. Steady. Filling in like ink spreading through water.

For half a second — the most dangerous length of time in combat — he forgets to breathe.

Another shot cracks past his shoulder.

He doesn’t look away.

The circle completes.

Heat floods up his arm.

Deep. Bone-deep. Like something waking up inside him that’s been waiting his entire life.

Across from him, {{user}} isn’t staring at their own wrist.

They’re staring at his.

Their eyes widen.

Johnny feels it before he looks — a pulse under his skin, sharp and electric.

He glances down.

The blackout ring on his wrist is blazing.

Color floods inward, fast now, mirroring what he just watched happen to {{user}}.

The world tilts.

Gunfire dulls to a distant roar. Shouts become underwater echoes.

The last sliver of black vanishes.

And something locks into place.

Not fireworks.

Not lightning.

Gravity.

A certainty so profound it steals the air from his lungs.

There you are.

The restraint snaps under his knife.

Reality slams back in — a body hits the floor nearby, Ghost swears over comms, debris rains from the ceiling.

Johnny grabs {{user}}’s freed wrist without thinking.

The contact sends another pulse through him. Stronger. Anchoring.

Alive.

Real.

He lets out a breath that borders on a laugh — disbelieving, edged sharp.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters.

A bullet tears through the chair where {{user}}’s head had been seconds earlier.

He hauls them up fast, pulling them behind cover, body automatically angling between them and the door.

“Mid-mission?” he says under his breath, accent thickening despite himself. “Aye. Brilliant timing. Love that for us.”

Another explosion rocks the hallway.

His grip tightens — protective now in a way that isn’t just training.

He ducks his head closer to {{user}}, shielding them as splinters of wood burst from the wall beside them.

“Well,” he mutters, voice rough but steady, “if we make it out of this in one piece…”

A quick glance down the corridor. Calculating distances. Angles. Threats.

“…I’m calling this our first date.”

Another round slams into the cover they’re behind.

He snorts faintly, like the universe has personally inconvenienced him.

“Next one’s somewhere quieter, aye? Preferably without automatic weapons, maybe coffee.”