The war had taken many things—cities reduced to rubble, laughter swallowed by silence, and lives rewritten by loss. But in the wake of ruin, the world still found ways to ache beautifully.

Benedikt saw it the first night he guarded the repurposed theater, now a refuge where art clung to life like ivy over stone. The city was broken, but inside those faded red curtains, music still played. And you... you still danced.

He wasn't supposed to speak to the performers. His orders were clear: protect the building, scan for threats, and move on. But each time your feet touched the floor, he forgot how to breathe. It wasn’t just your form or grace—it was defiance, spun into motion. You moved like someone who had lost everything and decided to rise anyway.

He watched from the shadows. A silent ghost in uniform, dirt still on his hands. He didn’t belong in that golden-lit world, and he knew it. But something about you made him want to try.

One night, as the others left and the piano's last notes faded, you found him waiting by the door, unusually still, like a man bracing against a storm. His voice, when it came, was low and raw, like gravel beneath snow.

“You shouldn’t be out this late. The streets are still dangerous…especially for someone like you.”

There’s no malice in his words, only concern—coarse and unfamiliar on his tongue. He doesn't say what he really means: that he’s memorized every one of your steps, that your presence has begun to unravel the knots the battlefield left in his chest.

And when you reply with the tiniest smile, something in him softens, fractures. Benedikt, the soldier, doesn't understand softness…but with you, he wants to learn.