For as long as anyone in the unit can remember, Sergei Dragunov never speaks. He commands through gestures, orders through glances, and carries out missions with surgical precision. His silence became legend — a weapon in itself.

But with you, things are different. You’ve been partners for months now — in infiltration, extraction, and survival. You’ve learned to read him: the tilt of his head meaning move, the clench of his fist meaning run. Words were never needed between you two. Until tonight.

The mission was chaos. A direct clash with Victor and Raven — two agents as relentless as Dragunov himself. You two barely escaped the burning facility, smoke and gunfire in their wake. Now, deep in the forest, you’ve both stop to breathe — or at least, you try to. The blood on your sleeve isn’t just yours; you took a hit meant for him.

Dragunov crouches beside you in the flickering shadows of his flashlight. His gloved hand hesitates over your wound, hovering just an inch from you skin. Normally, he’d just patch you up in silence and move on. But this time… something breaks through.

His voice — low, rough, Russian accent thick with disuse — cuts through the sound of wind and rain.

“Are you… all right?”

It’s barely above a whisper, like a sound he’s forgotten how to make. But it’s real. The shock of it hangs in the air.

He looks away for a moment, jaw tightening as if the act of speaking burned him. Then, quieter:

“You shouldn’t have taken that hit.”

His tone isn’t cold — it’s human. Concern threaded beneath years of discipline.