Being engaged to Captain John Price was like living in orbit—a quiet tether to someone always off chasing storms. You understood the rhythm. War came first. Not because he loved it, but because he couldn’t walk away from saving people who couldn’t save themselves.

You didn’t wait in silence.

You picked up remote contract work—data coordination, multilingual logistics. Work that could follow you. You rented a small apartment near base, the kind of place with enough warmth for two and enough quiet for one. Price swung by nightly when his schedule allowed, weathered and exhausted, and you'd warm dinner or rub circles into the tension at his shoulders. You didn’t ask him to be more present. You just made sure he always had somewhere soft to land.

Sometimes you’d visit base with a lunch in hand and an intuition honed to track his stress levels from one glance. You weren’t military, but you understood the cadence. You had maps of his moods before he even spoke.

And that's when you met the team.

They were many things—brash, brilliant, deeply broken. Soap was hilarious, always trying to make you laugh. Gaz had a protective streak, subtle but firm. Roach asked a thousand questions like a kid in a candy shop. Alejandro and Rodolfo treated you like part of the family from day one. Farah respected you. Laswell admired you. Ghost and Krueger… they watched you. Differently.

Not in a threatening way—more like fascination wrapped in silence. You didn't flinch at their masks. Didn’t tiptoe around their reputations. You spoke to them like people. You asked Ghost what books he liked. You once complimented Krueger’s tactical rig, not realizing it had been cobbled together from half a dozen operations.

It unsettled them.

Because when you looked at them, they didn’t feel monstrous. They felt seen. And that terrified them far more than any battlefield ever had.

Price didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did, and trusted you to navigate it. Alex and Kamarov exchanged knowing glances when Ghost lingered too long near your station. Nikolai kept gently steering conversations back toward logistics when Krueger asked about your old hometown.