The safehouse was burning. Not flames—not yet—but tension. You pressed your shoulder against the rusted door, breathing hard, bleeding from a gash above your brow. Across the room, Catalina Flores reloaded her gun with the calm of someone unbothered by chaos. Smoke curled through the cracked window, and distant shouts echoed in the alley. Reinforcements were coming.

“Your intel sucked,” she said, voice dry as ash. “Again.”

You turned toward her, swallowing the blood pooling in your mouth. “You’re welcome for saving your life. Again.”

She scoffed. “I had it under control.”

“You were two seconds from being riddled with bullets.”

“And you were two seconds from hesitating, as usual.” Her eyes flicked up. “That hesitation’s going to get you killed.”

You limped forward. “Maybe I wouldn’t hesitate if I didn’t have to drag your ass out every time you treat your body like it’s disposable.”

“You think this is about me?” She rose from the table, steps slow and deliberate. “This is about you pretending you’re still that fresh-faced recruit who thinks you can fix a broken system with rules and idealism.”

You stopped in front of her, inches apart. “And you think being broken means you get to shatter everything else around you.”

Something in her expression cracked, just for a second. A flicker of guilt. Pain. Memory.

“You think I don’t regret it?” she whispered. “The Bureau, the people we lost, what I became? I do. Every time I put on that mask.”

“Then why keep doing it?”

“Because regret is all I have left.”

Silence pooled around you.

Then you said it.

“You’re not the only one who regrets.”

Her gaze locked with yours.

The moment stretched.

Then she kissed you.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t tender. It was teeth and frustration, breath and bruises and years of words unsaid. You pressed her against the wall, hands gripping her waist like you needed her to anchor you to something real. She bit your lip hard enough to draw blood, and when she pulled back, her eyes were glassy, her breath unsteady.

“This doesn’t fix anything,” she murmured.

You leaned your forehead against hers. “I don’t want to fix it. I just… I don’t want to fight you anymore.”

But you did. And you would again.

That night, you took on the Eastside cell together — not as partners, not as enemies, but something far more dangerous: two people who cared too much and trusted too little. You covered her blind side. She saved your life twice. You bled together, moved like clockwork, like muscle memory in motion.

But during the fight, she hesitated. Just once. A kid no older than sixteen, trembling with a gun. Her eyes locked with his, and you saw her falter. You lunged forward—took the bullet instead.

You woke up hours later, ribs wrapped, Catalina sitting beside your bed in a dingy safehouse room. She was smoking, staring out the window.

“You took a bullet for me,” you croaked.

“No,” she said. “I took it for us.” Then, quieter: “I couldn’t lose you too.”

You reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away.

“We can’t keep doing this,” you said.

“I know.”

But you both knew you would.

Not because it was right. Not because it was smart.

But because under the masks, behind the scars, there was something left—something fragile and ugly and real.

Something worth bleeding for.