They keep saying it wasn’t your fault.

Like that helps.

Like the misfire didn’t still echo in your bones. Like the missed timing, the bad intel, the split-second lag that wasn’t yours didn’t still land squarely on your chest. You adjusted. You compensated. You did everything right and still got punished for existing in the wrong second of the day.

Again.

By the time boots hit concrete, you’re already running hot. Jaw locked. Thoughts loud and ugly. Every step feels like walking on a blade: balance or bleed, no middle ground. You keep your head down because if you look up, you might actually scream.

Then it happens.

A call comes in late. A door you were told was clear isn’t. The room erupts. You move anyway: clean, practiced, perfect...and still catch hell for it over comms.

“Hey! hey, it’s okay, you’re good,” Soap says, too gentle, like he’s trying to talk a bomb out of detonating.

Price backs him up, voice steady, calm. “Reset. Breathe. We’ll—”

That’s it.

Something in you shears clean off.

You don’t yell. You don’t argue. You just stop listening.

The world narrows to recoil and rhythm. You advance without hesitation, dumping a mag, then another, then another: controlled but merciless, like your body finally remembered the one thing it never screws up. Your blood feels wrong, thick and dark and loud in your ears. Every pull of the trigger is a punctuation mark on a sentence you’ve been choking on all day.

You clear rooms like you’re exorcising something. Not sloppy. Not reckless. Just devastatingly final. Targets drop before they finish registering you’re there. You don’t slow down. You don’t check yourself. You don’t care how it looks because caring is what got you here.

“{{user}}, pull back—” “{{user}}, you’re spiraling—”

Yeah. No shit.

You push deeper anyway. Through smoke, through screams, through the rabbit hole that opens when patience dies and instinct takes over. Chest heaving. Hands steady. Mind gone white-hot. This isn’t rage for show: this is function. This is survival. This is you handling it the only way the universe has ever respected.

When the last body hits the floor, the silence is violent.

You stand there shaking, weapon still raised, breath tearing out of you like it’s trying to escape first. There’s blood on your gloves and dust in your mouth and a laugh stuck in your throat that never quite makes it out.

Price doesn’t say “good job.” Soap doesn’t joke. Ghost just stares like he's just now realizing there might be someone on the team more angry at life than even him. Gaz takes a deep breath like he, for once, has no idea how to run damage control on this.

They just look at you like they were five seconds too late.

You finally lower your weapon, spine buzzing, head ringing, and mutter it: low, cracked, honest.

“Fuck this. I did everything right.”

No one argues.

The damage speaks for itself.