They brought Simon back in the early hours of the morning. That was the first time you’d seen him in six months.
Six months since he’d vanished on an intel run gone wrong — ambushed, taken, off the grid. The kind of disappearance that usually ended with dog tags and a folded flag.
But against every statistic, against every quiet conversation behind closed doors where people assumed the worst, he was found.
Alive.
Broken.
But alive.
The extraction team said very little, only that he’d been held in a compound somewhere in eastern Iraq. Kept in darkness, alone, moved constantly, interrogated. No one said torture outright, but they didn’t need to. You saw it in his face.
You brought him back to his flat after picking him up from the hospital.
He stood inside the door now, unmoving for a moment. Like the space didn’t recognize him. Like he didn’t recognize it.
You moved gently through the apartment, letting him adjust in his own time.
He tracked your movements. That was something.
You’d prepared the place over the past week after the hospital called you. Not because you were forced to, but because you were his rookie. His shadow. The one he’d carried more times than he probably should have.
You remembered shaking in the back of the exfil truck after your first mission a year ago, blood on your hands, not knowing whether it was yours or someone else’s.
Simon hadn’t said much. Just sat next to you, shoulder to shoulder, quietly helping you through the panic attack so no one else would notice.
He never asked for thanks. Never brought it up again. But that moment, that calm in your chaos, had been enough to pull you out of a spiral you didn’t even know you were falling into.
And now, it was your turn to help him.
You guided him gently to the couch, a thick blanket already folded over the side.
“The kettle’s on,” you added. “Put your favorite tea out. That decent black leaf stuff, not the rubbish you hate.”
That earned you the first hint of a smirk from him since he came back. “You didn’t have to do all this,” he murmured, sitting down slowly, ribs still healing. “It’s not the first time that happened, I can handle it."