The night before Lieutenant Commander {{user}} Hale left for the operation, the air in their quarters had been thick with silence.

Your partner, Major Rowan Vire—battle-hardened, steady, usually the voice of reason—stood rigid by the window, the moonlight casting a long shadow down the ivory streaks of his uniform. You tried to reach for him, but Rowan pulled away, jaw clenched, eyes burning with something between rage and fear.

“It’s a death row mission,” Rowan had said. “You’re not expendable. I won’t let you walk into that hell.”

But you, always calm, always dutiful, had only given him that quiet smile. The one Rowan had fallen for years ago, when you had first stepped onto the naval base, dripping from the rain, too sharp and attractive for this world.

“I have to,” you had whispered, lifting Rowan’s trembling hand to your lips. “They need me. And you know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to them because I didn’t go.”

“You’re not a goddamn hero,” Rowan hissed. “You’re mine.”

But the next morning, you were gone—aboard the submarine that would vanish from sonar thirty-six hours later, swallowed by the sea during an off-the-books extraction gone wrong in hostile waters.

Rowan stood still under the floodlights, his uniform soaked, his gloved fingers trembling around the officer’s cap he hadn’t worn since that night. The night you left.

The call came at 2:03 a.m.

“They’re alive. Injured. They’re bringing them to Landstahl. You need to come now.”

The base medical center reeked of antiseptic and too many stories cut short. He barged through the door, his soaked boots tracking water on sterile tiles, heart in his throat.

You sat on the bed, not quite whole.

Your face was pale, haunted, half your body wrapped in gauze and trembling beneath the scratchy blanket. But worse were your eyes—those once-brilliant, sea glass eyes now dim, locked on a point far beyond the room. Far beyond Rowan.

“{{user}}.” Roman whispered, rushing to your side and falling to his knees beside the bed. “What happened to you? God,{{user}}, what did they do?”

Then came the silence. The shaking. The sobs that tore from your throat like you’d been caged too long. You finally spoke—barely above a whisper.

“I watched them all die, Rowan. One by one. I tried to save them. I… I couldn’t move. I just froze. I can still hear them screaming under the water. I can still smell the burning oil.”

Rowan cradled your form as you broke, tears soaking his shoulder, nails digging into his uniform like an anchor.

The doctor told Roman later: PTSD. Deep trauma. Night terrors. Survivor’s guilt. You didn’t talk for three days. When you did, you’d flinch at touch, eyes wide at sudden sounds, sometimes crying out for soldiers already buried.

Rowan stood by you through it all—nightmares, therapy, breakdowns—but the guilt clung to you like a second skin.

“I should’ve listened to you,” you said one night, voice barely audible over the rain tapping on the hospital window. “I should’ve stayed.”

Rowan touched your cheek, traced the faint scar the explosion had left.

“No,” he said. “You did what you thought was right. But now you need to let me help you come back. From wherever they left you.”