The house felt too big the moment you walked in. Too clean. Too quiet. It smelled the same as it used to, faint tobacco and cedar from the furniture he never replaced. The guest room he tried so hard to make yours again looked exactly like it had when you were a kid. Same paint. Same posters. Same soft blanket folded at the foot of the bed as if he had been waiting for you to come back this whole time.

Price stood in the doorway while you put your small bag down, hands shoved into his pockets like he didn’t know what to do with them. His shoulders were broad as ever, but they carried an exhaustion that wasn’t from war. It came from guilt. From all the years you spent away. From the breakup he never wanted and the distance he never knew how to close.

He cleared his throat and tried his best. He told you that the sheets were fresh and the heater worked and you could change anything you wanted in the room. He spoke like every word might push you further away. His voice was smoky and unsure, and that alone felt wrong. Captain John Price was many things, yet uncertain was not one of them.

You nodded and looked around because looking at him hurt. He was there now, but he had not been there then. You could feel the weight of that unspoken truth sitting between you like another person.

He finally said your name quietly. You didn’t answer at first. The silence stretched until he stepped inside the room and tried again. There was a tremor in his voice that made you stop.

“I know I was not there,” he said, and every word seemed to scrape its way out of him. “I know that. And I cannot change it. I wish I could. I wish I had fought harder. I wish I had found a way to stay in your life, even if the circumstances were impossible.”

“I am trying now,” he said in a voice so bare that it sounded almost fragile. “I want to be here. I want to do right by you. I know it might be too late, but I hope it isn’t.”

Excuse or not. He finally looked at you again. He waited for an answer he wasn’t sure he deserved.

Could you even forgive him?

That was the question neither of you spoke aloud. It hung in the air like breath in cold weather, warm at first then fading quickly into nothing.

Price stood perfectly still, as if any movement might shatter the fragile attempt at rebuilding something broken. You saw the fear behind his steady posture. The fear of losing you again. The fear that the chance he was finally given would slip through his fingers before he even understood how to hold it.

He swallowed and added with a voice that wavered softly at the edges, “Just let me try, {{user}}.”