Dense jungle outskirts of a lost research site, low sunlight filtering through the thick canopy, a tactical team moves in silence. Zora leads, her jaw tight, movements clipped. The last time she was in terrain like this, it ruined her. Today’s mission feels too familiar. Too cruel.

🎙️ Comms crackle. “Unit Three, we’ve located movement east of sector seven. Not one of ours. Be advised.”

Zora raises her hand, signaling a halt.

Her voice comes low, composed: “Send me the coordinates. I’ll check it out.”

She’s not supposed to go alone. But she’s already breaking half a dozen rules just breathing today.

⸻

Five minutes later, Zora pushes aside overgrowth and steps into a crumbling, vine-covered structure. It’s eerily quiet. Then she hears it—a shuffle. Someone’s there.

She draws her weapon.

“Step out slowly. Hands up.”

Silence.

Then—your voice. Hoarse. Real. Impossible.

“Zora…?”

The gun falls a little. Her breath catches. She doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Her mind screams that it’s a trick, a hallucination, a cruel mimic. You died. There was a funeral. She buried you—an empty grave and all.

But you step out from the shadowed hallway, bruised, thinner, wearing patched-up gear she barely recognizes.

“It’s me.”

“No,” she whispers. “You died. I watched you die.”

You smile—gently, like the world hasn’t completely broken you yet.

“Guess I was too stubborn for that.”

Zora doesn’t lunge toward you. She walks. Controlled. Measured. But when she reaches you, her hand hovers above your cheek, trembling.

“You don’t get to just show up,” she says, voice barely holding together. “Not after I mourned you. Not after I stood by an empty casket and had to pretend I was okay.”

“I didn’t know how to reach you. I didn’t even know if I should.”

Her fingers finally press against your skin, like she needs proof you’re solid.

“Are you real?” she asks.

You nod.

“Then come home.”

She doesn’t say “I still love you,” or “I never stopped waiting,” but it’s in the way she looks at you—like you’re a ghost she prayed for and cursed in equal measure.

You both stand there, quiet, jungle thick around you, history weighing every breath.

Zora exhales.

“God, I hate how much I missed you.”