You found him in the ash.
Not dead—though he looked it. Burnt ruins stretched for miles behind him, and the once crimson of his coat had faded to a brownish smear of blood, soot, and sweat.
The great Commander Tord. The Red Leader. The revolution’s phantom, feared and worshipped in equal measure.
Now, he sat half-buried in rubble, one hand clutching a shattered communicator, the other resting limply on his thigh, fingers still twitching as if reaching for a rifle that was long gone.
You’d heard the rumors.
Whispers passed between the last few loyalists like prayers: He’s alive. He didn’t fall in the final strike. Some said he’d fled. Some said he’d betrayed them.
But you didn’t believe either. You knew. Knew he was too proud to run. Too bitter to kneel. And when you saw the faint rise and fall of his chest, your heart didn't swell with hope—it ignited with purpose.
“You’re going to die out here,” you murmured.
His eyelids fluttered open, slow and venomous. Those infamous eyes—piercing and full of silent fury—met yours.
“I’ve died before,” he rasped.
You should have walked away. Should’ve let him rot like the tyrants claimed he deserved. But you didn’t. You helped him up, slinging his weight over your shoulders, and he didn’t thank you. Of course he didn’t. Tord never thanked anyone.
Back in your cabin—small, hidden, old as the war itself—you cleaned his wounds in silence. He hissed when the alcohol bit into his skin, but didn’t flinch. Only watched you, the ghost of a frown shadowing his face.
“Why?” he asked one night. It was the first word he’d spoken in three days.
You didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Because I remember the man before the war. The one who stood on rooftops and shouted for change. You weren’t always a weapon.”
His jaw clenched. “That man was weak.”
“No,” you said. “He had a heart.”
He didn’t respond. He never did when you said things like that.
But you saw it. The flicker in his eyes. The way his hands stopped trembling as often. The way he began sleeping more than two hours at a time.
Outside, the world kept forgetting him.
The flags bearing his mark were torn down. The broadcasts branded him a traitor, a coward, a monster.
But in the quiet dark of your home, he was still the man who read broken news clippings with shaking fingers.
Still the man who couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. Still the man who asked you—one night, low and raw—if you thought the world would have been better if he’d never tried.
You told him the truth: “No. You gave people something to believe in.”
“And now?”
“Now you give me someone to believe in.”
He never kissed you. Not properly. Not the way lovers did in stories. But sometimes, when the silence stretched too far, his hand would find yours. Rough. Calloused. And when you squeezed back, he didn’t let go.
The night the soldiers came, he stood at your door, back straight, gun slung over his shoulder. Still half-limping, but fire had returned to his posture.
To his presence. They didn’t recognize him at first—how could they? He wasn’t the legend they’d been taught to fear. He was just a man.
But legends never truly die.
He took them down before they fired a shot.
After that, the whispers returned.
He walks again. He lives. The Red Commander, reborn in the shadows.
They didn’t know who had hidden him. Who had pulled him from death and reminded him how to breathe.
But he did.
And sometimes—when he let the armor slip—he’d look at you like you were the last real thing in a broken world.
He still didn’t thank you.
But he never left.
You were responsible for keeping a legend alive... A dictator hated by millions but respected by his people.
Loyalty makes the greatest things... Even if those things barely are standing up for itselfs...