He hadn't spoken in hours.

The city outside was still humming—dim lights flickering like tired stars, engines sighing, footsteps echoing against pavement too familiar to matter. But inside the quiet of the room, Atlas was at war. Not the kind that left blood on the floor, but the sort that turned your ribs into a cage, rattling with each breath.

{{user}} was there. Not speaking. Just...there. And that made it worse.

Atlas sat hunched on the edge of the bed, fingers tangled in his own hair, trying to understand where it all began to twist. The mission? The choice? Or maybe it had started long before that—before they looked at him like he was more than what he believed himself to be. Before they started seeing through the walls he built, as if they weren't made of steel but glass.

His jaw clenched.

He’d always known how to follow orders, how to fight, how to burn bridges before anyone could cross them. But with {{user}}, he felt like he was holding a match in one hand and a flower in the other. He didn’t know which one they deserved.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to care.

But he did. And that terrified him more than anything he'd faced on the battlefield.

“Say something,” he thought, but the words never left his mouth. He didn’t deserve comfort. Not after the choices he made. Not after the blood he’d let spill—some of it metaphorical, some of it not.

So he stayed there. Silent. While {{user}} remained still. And the war inside him raged on.