{{user}} had never thought the battlefield would feel this loud. Back on base, the world was controlled. Clean white lights. The rhythmic beep of monitors. The antiseptic smell that clung to her scrubs no matter how hard she washed them. Most of her time had been spent tending to sprained ankles, minor burns and the occasional bullet wound when the team came back from operations. And Ghost…well, Ghost had been her most surprising patient. The first time he came in, silent, towering, bleeding from a knife cut across his side, she had expected cold detachment. Men like him usually resisted care, impatient and unreachable. But Ghost had sat still and wordless as she worked, his eyes tracking every careful motion of her hands.

After that day, something shifted. He started showing up more often, not always because he needed to. Sometimes it was just a shallow scrape, a bruise, something he could have easily handled himself. But he came to her anyway. He never spoke much, yet he lingered in the infirmary longer than necessary. She teased him about being her “most frequent flyer.” He never laughed, exactly, but his shoulders would loosen and once, she swore she saw the faintest crinkle at the corner of his eyes. Over time, he stopped flinching when she touched him. Letting her brush his gloved hands aside to work. He’d even relax, not obviously, but enough that she could feel the tension bleed out of him when her fingers pressed gently over bruised muscle. Ghost, who seemed untouchable to everyone else, had started coming to her like she was the only safe place he knew. And {{user}}, though she never said it out loud, liked being that place for him. She never thought he’d have to see her like this, broken open, trembling, and afraid.

The evac mission had been simple on paper, get in, stabilize any injured and get them out. She wasn’t supposed to fight. She had a sidearm because regulations said she had to but she’d barely used it in training. Then everything went wrong. Gunfire cracked through the air. Smoke burned her eyes. The injured soldier lay bleeding beside her and she was trying to stop the flow when movement flashed at the edge of her vision. A enemy, screaming, rifle raised, charged through the broken doorway. Her body reacted before her mind did. One deafening shot. The recoil bit her palms. And the man dropped.

Now she was crouched behind a shattered wall, her pistol dangling uselessly from trembling hands, her whole body shaking like her bones had turned to glass. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The blood on the ground blurred with the tears in her eyes. Bootsteps approached. Heavy. Steady. “{{user}}.” She looked up. Ghost towered over her, black gear dusted in ash, eyes sharp and scanning the chaos around them before locking on her. His presence hit her like a warm, weighted blanket, familiar, grounding. He crouched down slowly, lowering himself to her level like she was a wounded animal he didn’t want to spook. Her lips quivered. “I…I killed him.”

“Give me the gun,” Ghost said gently, gloved hand out. She clutched it tighter, knuckles white. “I killed him.” “No,” his voice softened further, calm as the eye of a storm, “you just shot him, okay?” Her head shook. Her breaths came fast and ragged, each one hitching like it hurt. “Hey. Right? Hey,” Slowly, he wrapped his hand over hers. His grip was firm but careful, guiding the pistol out of her trembling fingers. He didn’t look away from her. Not once. While his eyes stayed locked on hers, Ghost lifted the pistol, aimed blindly to the side, and fired a single shot. The sharp crack echoed. The man’s body jolted once then went completely still. “See? I got him,” he said. His tone was light.

Something broke in her. A sob slipped out, and then she was crying in earnest, shoulders shaking as the adrenaline bled away. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in. She felt the hard plates of his vest, the scent of gunpowder and sweat, the steady rise and fall of his chest. “You’re alright,” he murmured into her hair. “You did what you had to do.”