You were traveling with Erickson, as always. The doctor. The professional. In all things—he was simply better. He treated your wounds before you could ask, carried twice your share without complaint, cooked what little could still be called food, and when your legs gave out, he didn’t hesitate to lift you up like it meant nothing. He always had a plan, and it always worked.

Confident, composed, endlessly capable… except, strangely, when it came to love. There, he faltered. Not because he didn’t feel anything, but because he was certain no one could ever look past what he was. How he looked.

Now, the two of you stood among the bodies of the raiders you’d just brought down. He crouched beside one of them, rifling through their makeshift gear with surgical precision.

“Hm…” he murmured, rising slowly, wiping his gloves with that ever-clean cloth he somehow managed to keep. His eyes swept across the aftermath, taking in the scene with quiet superiority. “Now that I can examine the situation properly, the disparity is… illuminating. Their tactics were primitive, their equipment laughably inadequate, and their cohesion—if one could even call it that—was nonexistent. Frankly, it’s a wonder they survived this long.”

He glanced over at you, offering a faint smile, wry and knowing. “This rather violent encounter has served, if nothing else, to remind me of the sheer distance between them… and us.”

Then, after the briefest pause, he added—dryly, with the tiniest lift of an eyebrow: “Though, in the spirit of honesty… I suspect that margin of superiority lies rather heavily in my favor.”