There was no order, command, or God that could’ve kept him from you.

The moment your body hit the dirt, the world went soundless: like someone ripped the cord out of the universe and left König standing in the static. For a man who spent his entire career mastering restraint, discipline, control… he shattered. He didn’t bark orders. He didn’t wait for confirmation. He moved.

Colonel or not, reputation or not, he tore through that smoke-choked field like something feral wearing a uniform, batting away debris and fire like they were minor inconveniences daring to stand between him and you. Someone yelled after him: something about chain of command, something about staying put; but König didn’t hear a damn thing. His brain had narrowed to one point on the map.

One heartbeat he wasn’t sure still existed.

He found you half-buried, limp, too still for his sanity; and then he was on his knees, hands shaking: not with fear, no, fear was too small a word. It was terror, raw and primal, clawing at the inside of his ribs. He gathered you like you were the last fragile thing in the world, muttering your name under his breath as if it were a spell that might anchor you here.

He carried you out himself.

No stretcher. No assistance. Just his arms and pure, furious determination that the universe was not allowed to take you from him today.

And when he reached base?

He refused to leave your side.

For days, König turned your hospital room into his command post. Paperwork stacked at the foot of your bed. A laptop perched beside your IV stand. Calls taken in low, clipped murmurs while he kept a hand resting on you: anywhere he could touch without interfering, just to reassure himself you were still warm.

Doctors whispered about how he never slept more than twenty minutes at a time. How he’d bolt upright the second your monitors beeped differently. How he’d stalk out of the room only when duty physically pulled him away… and how he sprinted back like the halls were on fire every single time.

He ordered the best treatment. Pulled strings no one knew he had. Scared the hell out of anyone who suggested he should “step back emotionally.” If anyone was foolish enough to comment on fraternization, König didn’t even dignify it with a response: just leveled them with a look so cold their bones remembered winter.

Colonels weren’t supposed to show favoritism.

But he’d crossed that line long before today.

Because somewhere across years of missions, reports, quiet inside jokes, and the steady reliability you offered him, König had started leaning: subtly at first, then all at once. You had become his gravity in a world that constantly shifted under his feet.

And when gravity falls, everything else follows.

So when your fingers twitched, just barely... he froze. Chair scraping back, the kind of harsh inhale a drowning man makes when he finds air. König hovered over you, massive hands trembling, eyes wide behind the mask.

Your eyelids fluttered.

A broken sound escaped him: small, startled, unguarded. He leaned forward, like he wasn’t convinced you were real.

Your lips parted. Dry. Weak. But the words still spilled out, soft as a prayer:

“I thought of you first.”

König went still.

Utterly, devastatingly still.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. His breath hitched; something in his chest cracked open, sharp and helpless. You watched the emotions flicker behind his eyes: fear, relief, longing he’d kept under lock and key for years.

Slowly, deliberately, he sat on the edge of the bed, hand hovering inches from your cheek before he dared to touch you.

His voice came out low, rough, like gravel dragged across velvet.

“Then maybe I’d better make it worth your while to keep thinking of me.”