The door sealed shut behind her with a hiss and finality she could feel in her bones.

{{user}} stood in the entryway of Caleb’s flat—if you could even call it that. It was Fleet-issued, sterile. Gray walls. Fully-furnished but empty with life. A datapad glowing dimly with unread reports. No pictures. Like whoever lived here never planned to stay.

She hadn’t seen him like this in years. And she hadn’t seen him at all since the fire.

He didn’t offer her a seat. He didn’t even look at her.

“You’re lucky I was the one who caught you.” His voice was low. Measured. Weaponized neutrality.

She almost laughed. “Right. Lucky.”

She let the silence stretch until it hurt.

“You died, Caleb.” Her voice was sharp, cracking at the edges. “You blew up in our childhood home. They sent cleanup crews. I saw the smoke from the ridge. They said it was instant. They said there was nothing left to bury.”

He stood with his back to her, arms crossed, staring out at nothing through the narrow window.

“Wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

She stepped forward, slow and heavy like gravity itself didn’t trust this moment.

“Then what was supposed to happen? You vanish, leave me with half a memory and a burnt-down house? You could’ve said something. Sent a message. A sign. Anything.”

Caleb turned at last, and the look in his eyes nearly undid her. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t cold. He was haunted.

But that only made it worse.

“You don’t understand—”

“No,” she cut in, stepping closer now, voice rising. “You don’t get to say that to me. I knew you. I knew every version of you. You weren’t just some boy next door. You were Caleb. You were—”

She stopped herself.

Her hand rose slowly to her collarbone.

The chain had never felt heavier than it did now.

With steady fingers, she pulled it over her head. The metal was warm from her skin—thin, worn, with that apple-shaped dogtag at the center. A smooth silver insignia with a faded red crystal—Caleb’s emblem. One of a kind. The one he always wore, always fiddled with when he was nervous. The one she gave him—

Or maybe the one she ripped from the rubble. She could barely remember.

She held it out between them.

“This,” she whispered. “This is what I clung to when I thought you were gone. I wore it like a promise. Like maybe… maybe you’d show up one day and tell me it was all a mistake.”

Caleb stared at it like it was a piece of himself.

Like it hurt to see. But he didn’t take it.

“You keep pretending it didn’t mean anything,” she said.

She set the necklace down on the table, slowly. Gently. As if placing down a piece of grief.

“You don’t get to rewrite history just because it hurts.”