After a mission, you step into the briefing room, you gait unsteady, exhaustion clinging to you like a second skin. The muted glow of the overhead lights barely softens the tension in the room. Task Force 141, Shadow Company, and Los Vaqueros are scattered around, their conversations dying mid-sentence as they notice your arrival.

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The scars are the first thing that catch their attention—deep, jagged lines carved into flesh, some faded with time, others raw and unforgiving. They peek through the torn fabric of your sleeves, cutting through the silence like a scream. For a moment, the room is frozen. No one speaks. No one dares to.

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Graves shifts uncomfortably in his chair, exchanging a wary glance with Gaz, who takes a slow step forward. His voice is low, careful, but there’s no hiding the weight of his words. “Those scars… mind telling us where they came from?”

── ࣪˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

You don’t answer, your gaze fixed on the floor. The room feels suffocating now, heavy with something deeper than curiosity—pity, guilt, maybe even shame. Someone clears their throat in the corner, but no one breaks the silence.

── ࣪˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ──

Time stretches unbearably as you finally lift your head, your eyes betraying a story too painful to share. Everyone knows what’s unspoken, knows there’s a history behind those marks that no one has the right to ask about. But still, they wait, breaths held, the weight of collective grief pressing down on them all.