Slade hated hospitals.

Too clean. Too white. Too quiet in the ways that screamed death instead of life. He’d been in more med bays, field tents, and underground clinics than he could count, but this—sterile halls and the steady beep of machines—this always got under his skin.

He walked past nurses who gave him polite smiles and cautious glances. Maybe it was the eye patch. Maybe it was the way he moved—like he was always five seconds from war.

Room 417. He stood outside the door for a moment, jaw tight, breath steady. The kind of stillness that came before a trigger pull.

Then he stepped inside.

They were there—his partner—hooked up to too many wires, chest rising and falling slow and uneven. No words. No sound but the monitors.

He approached like a ghost, heavy boots whispering across the floor. He didn’t sit. He just looked. Took them in. Memorized them in case he needed to break the world later.

He laid a hand on theirs—calloused, scarred, shaking just enough to make him furious.

“You weren’t supposed to get hit,” he muttered, voice low. “That was my job.”

No reply. Just the machines. The room. The war he couldn’t fight.

Not with a gun. Not this time.