The mission hadn’t gone wrong in any way that could be easily named. The enemy simply anticipated the team’s arrival.

Something about it stayed lodged under the skin, impossible to ignore the longer Simon sat with it. Details that surfaced too soon. Movements anticipated with just enough precision to feel wrong. Information that had slipped into the open before it ever should have had the chance. Simon didn’t trust things that felt off.

He trusted patterns, instinct, the quiet sense that something wasn’t lining up even when everything appeared intact. It had kept him alive longer than most. It had kept the people around him alive, too. So he did what he always did.

He pulled the mission apart piece by piece, long after everyone else had moved on from it. He stripped it down until there was nothing left but fragments and the truth hiding somewhere underneath. And eventually, inevitably, it led somewhere he hadn’t expected.

You.

Not in any way that was obvious. Not enough to condemn on its own.

Just present in the wrong places, at the wrong times. Small inconsistencies. Threads that, when followed, kept circling back to you no matter how many times he tried to redirect them.

He didn’t accept it at first. Couldn’t.

You were someone he’d worked beside long enough to understand without speaking, someone who moved in sync with him in the field like it was second nature. You didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter, didn’t give him a reason to question you.

You never had. That was the problem. Because trust, once given, didn’t leave room for doubt without tearing something open on the way in.

And Simon could feel it happening in real time, something splitting beneath the surface every time your name surfaced again where it shouldn’t have been. He handed it off. Quietly. Off-record.

The kind of questioning that didn’t make it into official documentation. The kind that pushed harder, dug deeper, stripped things down until there was nothing left but whatever truth could be forced out under pressure.

He told himself it was necessary. Told himself it wasn’t personal. Told himself a lot of things that didn’t sit right no matter how many times he repeated them.

He wasn’t there when it started. He made sure of that. But he heard enough. Saw enough.

The way you pleaded. The way your voice started to wear thin under the weight of being doubted by the very people you’d trusted with your life. They didn’t break your answers. But they wore everything else down anyway.

And still— you didn’t give them anything. Nothing useful. Nothing that confirmed what he was starting to believe. It should have been enough to make him stop.

It wasn’t.

By the time he finally allowed himself to see you, the damage had already been done. Not the physical kind. Something quieter. Worse. You didn’t look like the same person who had stood beside him in the field.

There was a stillness to you now, a kind of emptiness that hadn’t been there before. Not fear—not exactly. Something more hollow than that. Like whatever had been steady and unshakable in you had been worn down, piece by piece, under hands that were supposed to be on your side.

Your eyes found his, and for a second—just a second—there was something there. Not guilt. Not fear. Betrayal.

It hit harder than anything he’d uncovered in the investigation. Harder than the inconsistencies. Harder than the doubt. it meant one of two things.

Either you were better at lying than he’d ever given you credit for. Or he had made a mistake he couldn’t take back.

Simon held your gaze a second longer than necessary, searching for something he could anchor to—anything that would make this make sense in a way that didn’t leave him standing here, questioning everything he thought he knew.

He didn’t find it.

His eyes were heavy with everything he wasn’t saying. Everything he couldn’t afford to say—not yet, not without risking more than he already had.

Because if you were innocent… Then this wasn’t just a breach of trust. It was something worse. Something neither of you would walk away from the same.