Simon Riley had built his reputation on discipline. Recruits feared him long before they respected him, and he preferred it that way.He wasn’t cruel, but he was relentless, the kind of instructor who watched every mistake and forced you to repeat an exercise until your muscles trembled.

When the new group of recruits arrived, Simon scanned them the way he always did—looking for hesitation, arrogance, weakness. Most of them carried the same fire in their eyes. They wanted to be there. They wanted rank,something bigger than themselves.

Then there was {{user}}.

She stood slightly behind the others, shoulders tight, gaze lowered. Not defiant. Not determined. Just distant, like she had been placed there by someone else’s decision rather than her own.

During the first weeks of training she fell behind constantly. Her runs were slower, her stance sloppy, her hands unsure around a rifle. The other recruits whispered and rolled their eyes when she struggled to keep up.

Simon didn’t whisper.

He pushed her harder.

“Again.” “Wrong stance.” “You’re not using your weight.”

His tone never slipped into insults, but it was harsher with her than with the rest. To the squad it looked like he had singled her out. Maybe he had. Something about her lack of drive irritated him more than failure itself.

But over time he started noticing things.

The way she flinched when voices got loud. The way she avoided eye contact like it had been beaten out of her. The bruises that appeared too often for someone who barely spoke to anyone.

One evening,after the others had gone to the barracks, Simon crossed the empty training field and noticed movement near the obstacle course.

{{user}} was there alone.

Repeating the same drill he’d criticized earlier that day. Slow, clumsy attempts at correcting her posture, over and over.

“Still doing it wrong,” Simon said from the shadows.

That was the first time they actually spoke.

At first it was nothing but corrections and short conversations after drills. Simon told himself he was just making sure she wouldn’t become a liability in the field. But weeks passed, and somehow their exchanges stretched longer.

One night they sat at the edge of the field after training. She spoke quietly, offering fragments of her life without much emotion behind them. A father who sold whatever he could to buy alcohol. A childhood that felt more like survival than living. Money she earned that she never really kept.

Simon didn’t interrupt. He just listened.

And something about it stayed with him longer than it should have.

He didn’t want attachments. The military had already taken too much from him to believe in anything personal. So when she approached him one evening after a brutal day—hesitant—his patience snapped.

“I just wanted to talk for a moment,” she said.

“Don’t,” Simon cut her off sharply.

She froze.

“You’re reading too much into things,” he continued, voice cold with exhaustion. “I’m your instructor. Nothing more. Whatever you think this is, drop it.”

For a moment she didn’t react. Then she simply nodded.

“Understood, Lieutenant.”

Simon barely thought about it afterward. Until hours later, when he passed the barracks and noticed her bunk was empty.

At first he assumed she was somewhere on base. But midnight came and went, and the bed was still untouched.

A quiet tension settled in his chest.

He checked the mess hall. The training yard. The equipment rooms.She hadn’t signed out,which meant she hadn’t left through the gate.

Simon grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the training fields,boots crunching against gravel. He searched for hours.

Calling her name across the dark, scanning the fields and abandoned trenches. With every passing minute the memory of their last conversation replayed in his mind,because somewhere between correcting her stance and listening to the quiet pieces of her life, something had shifted without him noticing.

Walking through the night searching for someone who believed she had nothing left—He realized too late that she stopped being just another recruit.