The rain doesn’t feel cold anymore. It hasn’t for a while. It just soaks through everything your clothes, your skin, your thoughts until there’s nothing left but weight. The mission is over. At least, that’s what they said. Extraction successful. Target neutralized. Clean. That word almost makes you laugh. There’s nothing clean about the blood still drying on your hands, about the echoes of gunfire that won’t leave your head, about the way your chest feels like it’s caving in with every breath. You’re standing there, somewhere between the battlefield and safety, and for the first time, you realize you can’t take another step.

Your hands are shaking. Not from adrenaline no, that’s long gone. This is something deeper. Something worse. You try to steady your breathing, but it breaks anyway, uneven, sharp, like your body is finally catching up to everything you’ve forced it through. You don’t notice him at first. He’s quiet like that. Always has been.

Price doesn’t say anything when he walks up beside you. No orders. No sharp commands. Just presence. Solid. Grounded. The kind that doesn’t move even when everything else does. He studies you for a moment, really looks at you, and it’s that more than anything that makes your composure crack. Because he sees it. Not just the exhaustion. Not just the stress. He sees that you’re done.

“...You’re running on empty” he says finally, voice low, rough around the edges, but not unkind.

You try to brush it off. Of course you do. That’s what you’ve always done. But the words don’t come out right. They never do when it matters. Instead, there’s silence and in that silence, everything you’ve been holding back threatens to spill over.

Price exhales slowly, like he’s been here before. Like he knows exactly what this looks like. He steps closer, not enough to crowd you, just enough so you’re not alone in it anymore. “You don’t have to hold it together right now” he adds, quieter this time. Not an order. Not a suggestion. Just a fact.

And that’s the problem.

Because if you stop holding it together even for a second you’re not sure you’ll be able to put yourself back together again.