um, idk

‘missed you,’ you say, sort of, more a muffled collection of consonants pressed against his throat, his short stubble scratching over your mouth as it opens, closes.

‘yeah?’ jack asks, dry and amused as he shuffles you awkwardly back into the kitchen, your feet balanced on the toes of his boots.

he drops the keys onto the table, his bag landing heavy next.

‘yeah,’ you confirm, maybe whine.

you’re next to go. lifted up bodily onto the kitchen table, your knees opening on instinct, creating space between your legs that jack immediately takes up, hooking your ankles behind his thighs.

‘you miss me?’ you ask, looking up at him through your lashes, mouth curling up at the corners.

jack hums like he’s not quite sure, mock debating, before tilting his head down and kissing you stupid. the kiss is long and sweet, and perfectly wet, his tongue sliding in to taste you for just a second before it retreats.

when you try to follow, hungry, tugging on his curls as you press yourself against him, he tilts his head, kissing your jaw instead, that little spot below your ear that always drives you crazy. the scrape of his stubble makes your toes curl in your socks.

another kiss and then he abruptly interrupts the spell he’s put you under, huffs a self-deprecating laugh, says, ‘i had a long night and i smell like hospital.’ there’s a pause as your brain struggles to comprehend the sudden loss, then the next words are exhaled quietly into the space between your neck and shoulder. ‘i’m gonna shower.’

‘what? no,’ you complain as jack pulls back, managing to dislodge your hands from his hair, and if the protest is a little too loud, a little too petulant for a full-grown woman, well, everyone is allowed their small moments of weakness you suppose.

and can’t he see you’re horny? that you need him to take care of you?

you pout. ‘i like the way you smell.’

it’s not a total lie. he smells stale and a little metallic, like the sweat and blood have accumulated in thin layers beneath his scrubs. that and also the cigarette he most definitely snuck during hour four or five. but underneath it all, it’s still jack. still your favorite person in the world.

jack’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘i think you need your head checked.’

you pout some more.

he rolls his eyes, extricating himself from between your legs to sit heavily in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. he bends down, starts undoing his boot laces.

‘you eat anything today?’ he asks.

it’s your turn to roll your eyes, annoyed at the very un-sexy turn this conversation has taken. ‘yes.’

he lifts his head to pin you with a look. ‘with protein?’

you lean back on your hands, legs swinging. ‘not everything requires protein, jack.’

‘you do,’ he says, pulling off his left boot. ‘your brain does.’

you sniff. ‘my brain is just fine, thank you very much.’

right boot next, foot of his prosthesis slipping free. jack just shakes his head. ‘hand me those, will you?’

you slide off the table, walking to grab his crutches from where they were leant against the far wall, prosthesis expertly doffed by the time you return. the bare skin of his residual limb is a little red and irritated, but no more than usual after twelve grueling hours on his feet.

you worm your way back into his space before he can push himself to standing, fit yourself between his legs in a mirror of your earlier position, hand sliding into his hair, watching the grey curls slip through your fingers.

‘i missed you,’ you say again but with more intention this time, more need, a small furrow appearing between your brows.

‘i missed you too,’ he says, blinking up at you, but there’s no heat behind it, just a tired air, exhaustion set deep into the lines around his eyes.

you lean down to kiss him and he turns his head, your nose and mouth meeting scruffy cheek.

‘baby,’ he says, and the endearment is fond but also so exasperated it makes your ears flush hot with embarrassment. ‘you gotta give me some space.’

you can’t help the frustration that bubbles up in response to his rejection, your stomach twisting itself into knots as you step back. the logical part of your brain that knows he’s well within his rights to ask for space warring with the much louder, much less logical part of your brain that wants to sink your teeth into his trap muscle until he cries out.

and really, it’s his own fault anyway, you think, annoyed, the way he’s got you trained—pavlovian response, like a damn dog—to expect his undivided attention as soon as he walks through the front door. sweet kisses and sweet words; much, much less sweet words also, but you love those just the same, and maybe even more so, coming from him. from jack, from his filthy mouth and his big hands all over you, pulling you close, pulling your hair, wanting you. wanting you so much sometimes, like he can’t breathe if he doesn’t have you. the type of wanting that’s intoxicating, overwhelming. the type that’s more than easy for a girl to get used to.

throw a dog a bone enough times and the dog comes to expect the bone. flash an empty hand, the dog still bites. it’s just learned behavior.

‘i don’t want to give you space,’ you snipe, as he stands, forearms and hands braced on his crutches. ‘i want you to bend me over this table.’

jack raises an eyebrow at you. ‘good to know it’s only what you want that matters in this relationship.’

you flush even hotter, the skin on the back of your neck prickling. ‘that’s not what i’m saying.’

‘no?’ he says, beginning to navigate his way through the kitchen and out into the hall. you follow after him. ‘then what are you saying?’

you struggle for words, good words, convincing words, but come up empty. all you manage is a childish, ‘it’s not fair.’ like you’re a toddler who doesn’t want to share her favorite toy, one second away from throwing a tear-filled tantrum.

‘life’s not fair,’ jack snorts, infuriatingly so, back muscles shifting beneath his scrub top with each careful step. ‘if it was, then i’d still have two whole legs. but that’s not how any of this stupid shit works.’

maybe you’re ovulating, you haven’t checked the app in at least a week. too busy with work and endless emails and the podcast you remember to tune into just enough per episode to follow whatever tangent the hosts have gone off on this time. or maybe jack’s just turned you into the type of depraved person who sees her boyfriend come home and can’t stop imagining humping his leg long enough to have a single, intelligent thought. such as, not bratting a man who was in the military for six long years.

‘yeah, well,’ you say hotly, stupid and brazen, ‘that IED might as well’ve blown your dick off too, for all the good it’s currently doing me.’

he pauses, actually pauses with his left foot just past the threshold of the master bedroom, whole body going unnaturally still before his head turns to give you an incredulous stare. it pins you in place, socked feet to the hardwood, freezing you like a deer in headlights.

jack’s silent for a long moment, long enough that you can hear the way your pulse has quickened beneath your skin, jumping and skipping at your carotid. the clock on the wall, too, suddenly audible in the room, the thin hand, the tick, tick, tick as the seconds pass.

finally he says, low and clear, ‘for your sake, i’m going to pretend i didn’t hear that. i’m going to take a shower and when i get out, if you haven’t fixed your attitude, i’m going to fix it for you.’

he disappears into the bedroom, leaving you to chew on his parting words, standing alone now in the hallway. you, the clock, the sound of the birds chirping happily in the magnolia outside the window. and there’s something deeply wrong with you, possibly on a fundamental level, molecular, because the warning just makes you shudder, makes your cunt messy between your legs.

while jack showers, you cook him breakfast. you’ve never been particularly good at cooking, but eggs have always liked you, flipped right in the pan, yolks intact before you plate. eggs, toast, some sausage that gets an uneven color but will taste just fine regardless. you debate for a few uncertain seconds if you should bother cutting up the strawberries gone soft in the fridge when the water pipes groan to completion.

you shut the fridge door, anticipation zipping up and down your spine in unsteady bursts. you can’t keep still. you open the fridge door again and grab the pitcher of water, fill up a glass and chug it. then you put the used glass in the sink, lip down, return the pitcher, and shut the fridge door again.

you’re standing next to the table where you’ve set everything down when jack reenters the kitchen. he’s damp and clean, and somehow better looking than when he last left it. which is, by all standards, deeply unfair, you think. a drop of water clinging to the curl beneath his right ear falls to his shoulder, blooming on the fabric.

you avert your gaze, teeth sinking into your bottom lip, and focus instead on the tops of your pink and white socks where your toes are once again curling, this time against the floor.

‘wow. this all for me?’ jack says, settling himself down in the empty seat.

you nod at your toes. they’re very interesting. all ten of them. big toe, pinky toe, the ones in between.

‘baby,’ jack says.

you look up at him. he’s peering intently at your face.

‘this all for me?’ he repeats.

you blink, momentarily confused, before you realize he wants you to speak. ‘yes, sir.’

jack continues to scan your face for a few more seconds then, seemingly satisfied, he pulls out the seat next to him. ‘that’s very sweet. you want to sit with me?’

you glance towards the empty chair and a vivid memory, in fine detail, flashes across your vision. wrists tied securely behind your back, stomach settled in his lap, large hand tracing the hot skin of your ass cheek, his voice going, ‘oh, that’s a really pretty color, sweetheart.’

you swallow, throat dry. ‘no, sir.’

he quirks an eyebrow and you fiddle with the hem of your sleep shirt, thighs squeezing together.

‘yes, sir, no, sir,’ he mocks softly, ‘being so polite, someone might get the impression you want something.’

your whole body warms. it’s such a casually cruel comment. it makes your cunt throb.

god, you just want him to touch you.

you open your mouth. nothing comes out. you swallow and try again. ‘can i sit at your feet?’

‘sit or kneel?’ jack clarifies.

you bite your lip. ‘kneel.’

he nods his head toward the living room. ‘get a pillow.’

you scurry off and grab the closest one off the couch, bringing it back with you. you set it down next to his bare foot on the tile and begin to crouch down.

jack reaches out and takes you by the chin, stilling you. you blink owlishly up at him.

‘hands,’ he reminds you.

you clasp your hands behind your back, maintaining eye contact with jack as you slowly settle down, knees on top of pillow, ass on top of heels, head level with his left thigh.

‘good,’ jack says, tapping once beneath your chin before he draws his hand back.

he picks up his fork and knife and starts to eat.

you’ve kneeled many times for jack over the course of your two-year relationship. you’ve kneeled in costume, in heels so high they’ve questioned your ability to walk, completely bare, after work, before work, on christmas, on his birthday, on your birthday (three times), and, of course, like now, whenever you’re feeling absolutely desperate to receive a single crumb of his measured affection.

in relation to jack, it’s one of your favorite places to be. second only to being folded up like a pretzel and made to take his cock as slow as he wants to torture you with that day, your knees bracketing your ears. his face hovering above your face, watching every tense and subsequent relaxation of your expression, the lines that smooth out as your eyes go glassy, your mouth slipping open, a little wet, a little dumb. for him, always for him. but it’s a close second, that’s for certain.

he smells good, clean like his body wash and the fabric softener he picks up on the way home when you tell him the container’s running low. dye-free, for sensitive skin, for yours, the way it’s always acting up in the winter time. brutal and dry pittsburgh january’s. something beneath that too, that’s innately jack, a scent you could find blindfolded, upside down, spun in circles until you were sick.

you feel yourself tilting forward but do nothing to prevent it. it feels inevitable, magnetic, this tilting. and when your forehead settles against the solid bulk of his thigh, thin fabric of his sweatpants bleeding warmth, you let out a tiny sigh of relief.

he doesn’t chastise you, just settles his big hand on the back of your neck, slots his thumb into that space behind your ear. grounding you so you don’t float away on him, up to the ceiling like a balloon. by nature, you’re not overly-romantic, but it is something you’ve always appreciated. his weight, the configuration of his body in its relation to yours. as though you were two pieces from different puzzles that impossibly fit together.

after some time, you feel his hand start to smooth over the back of your head, stroking your hair. you keep count of the number, reveling in it as it ticks ever higher. jack pets you like you’re a sweet animal nuzzled up against his leg. like you’re something he collared and brought home. his to keep, his to play with. the thought has your cunt clenching down around nothing, disappointingly empty as it was.

you let out a quiet moan and his hand pauses.

no, no, no, no, no, you think as you suddenly freeze, breath held tight in your chest, don’t stop.

after a tense moment, jack’s hand resumes its soothing repetition, delicious pressure over your hair, the back of your head, your nape if you get lucky with his pinky.

you exhale, your shoulders dropping, press your forehead firmer into his thigh in silent gratitude.

minutes pass. you can tell from the way the birds have gone mostly quiet outside the window. tinkling bird call replaced with the soft sound of your breathing, the shifting and settling of the kitchen chair as jack adjusts his weight, never perfectly still. it’s a minute thing, a tiny ephemeral space in a big, complicated world that could blink out in a moment’s notice or less, but selfishly you think you could live down here, on your knees with jack’s hands on you, turning your brain syrupy and slow.

his hands are just so damn big, is the thing. you don’t know how anyone could have a taste and not become addicted. addicted to the feeling of them holding you, caressing you, tracing the dimples at the small of your back. the feeling of them prying open your mouth, your legs, the hot, slick mess of your cunt when you’re needy for him. you are, if translated into a perfectly divided piechart, much more often than you’re not. data doesn’t lie, not about your feelings, or the unshakable truth that you’re obsessed with jack abbot’s hands in a way that would be concerning, if you cared to consider truths like that. but there have always been much worse obsessions, when it comes to him, such as his voice, or how far his cock reaches down your throat if you’re eager enough to try, so you won’t worry too much about this one just yet.

times stretches, first long and then short. like a rubber band that’s reached its limit, snapping back, reminding you of your physical existence in space, on the floor, in your touch-deprived body. you tilt your head so the next pass of jack’s hand sweeps over the sensitive skin of your ear, callused palm cupping and warming it. a light shiver courses down your spine, makes your belly momentarily tense and then release. you can feel him in there, a familiar background noise that crisps and clarifies when he’s close enough to hear, to swallow in through your mouth and hold in your stomach. this phantom tug at your core, reminding you of the coiled tight desire that’s scratching at the walls, rabid, for release.

you want him badly enough that the want is creeping in at the edges of your vision, tunneling it. a focus that sharpens as much as it dulls, diverts your attention exactly where it needs without distraction. one simple line from point a to point b. you see him in your mind’s eye and he’s sitting there above you still, but he’s now looking down at you, tilting your head back; his hand’s wrapping around your throat and he’s telling you to open, to take what he wants to give and drooling straight into your open mouth, making you swallow his spit; calling you his filthy little girl, his perfect wet hole, shoving his thumb in directly after.

oh, god, please. yes, please please please.

you tilt your head further to the side, temple to thigh, so the next pass of his hand grazes your face. his fingers barely pause, thumb brushing along your cheekbone, stroking back and forth. and you’re pushing your luck here, you know that, but you need direct contact, as much skin on skin as possible because otherwise you’re going to lose your damn mind.

he can tell, right? he can tell you’re teetering on the edge of disaster? nervous system collapse, or worse. a black hole swallowing you up from the inside. and he’ll take pity on you. he’s never done it before, of course, but this time will be different. this time he’ll take one look at your big, wet eyes and the shameful mess you’ve made between your legs and he’ll give you exactly what you need. he’ll take care of his sweet baby. you need him to take care of his baby.

you take his thumb into your mouth the next time it’s swept too close, like an untrained, nippy dog who’s just been brought home from the pound. your head turning and your mouth sucking it warm and deep, cheeks hollowing out in your naked enthusiasm. his finger is now exactly where it should be. inside you. there should always be part of him inside you. you know this. you know. you suck his thumb like you want it to be something else because you do. you want jack to push the waistband of his sweatpants down and fill your mouth up with his cock instead, pull you forward until your nose meets his pubic bone, the length pushing past your gag reflex and into your throat.

you moan, around it, around the soft salt taste of his skin, more than familiar on your tongue, your knees shifting restless beneath you on the pillow. maybe he’ll really do it, maybe he’ll let you suck him off. hold your head as he grunts and comes straight down your throat, into your tummy. you’re good at it. you’re really, really good at it. he’s told you so a hundred times or more. sweet baby and her sweet mouth, almost as sweet as her cute little pussy when it winks at him, so desperate for his tongue to be shoved deep inside.

jack suddenly grips the bottom of your chin and jerks it upward, meeting your startled gaze.

‘i didn’t say you could do that,’ he says.

the whiplash makes you whimper, the hard split between reality and dream, like a bucket of cold water turned over your head, making you tremble and shiver on your knees.

you’re caught between jack’s fingers and he’s currently looking at you like you’re a gasping fish he’s not sure if he wants to keep or throw back, dangling you off the edge of his boat.

he presses his thumb down into the muscle of your tongue and makes sure you feel it.

‘what happened to my polite little girl, hm?’ he says, thick condescension in his voice. ‘where’d she go? i liked her.’

you blink at him, uncomprehending, your brain processing on a slight delay, yanked from your fantasy and fuzzy with denial.

jack clicks his tongue. ‘i forgot. your cunt gets wet and you stop thinking.’

he drops your chin, thumb slipping from your mouth, and picks up his phone instead, like he’s done touching you. like he’s regarded you and found you entirely unworthy of further consideration.

no!

‘please,’ you beg, scrambling for some sort of excuse that doesn’t exist, not really. ‘i didn’t mean to, sir, i just—,’

‘just what?’ jack says, sounding deeply unamused, ‘thought you could take what you want without asking? that’s not polite. that’s greedy.’

‘i’m sorry,’ you plead and your voice is quickly rising in pitch, edging toward the upper limits of its range. ‘i won’t do it again. i promise.’

when jack doesn’t spare you a glance, you rub your face against his thigh, whining high and pathetic. begging him to pay attention to you.

‘please, daddy, i promise! i’ll be so good for you. a perfect angel.’

he snorts, scrolling through his phone. ‘i don’t believe you, baby.’

a frustrated noise escapes past your teeth and if you could stomp your foot while kneeling, you would. he’s just being so mean, so unfair. it’s not like you’re asking for very much. just a tiny bit of attention, a tiny bit of pressure. he could give you his leg, you could rub your pussy against it, hump it until you orgasm, get his pant leg all wet. fuck it, at this point, your own fingers would suffice, you should just—

you move to slide your hand between your thighs and jack says, flatly, ‘touch that cunt and regret it.’

you freeze, your fingers a hair’s breadth away from your waistband, close enough that you can feel your clit pulse in proximity to the heat.

your vision zooms out, and you find yourself standing on the top of a familiar, grassy hill. you’ve been here before, agonized about the exact same decision, devil and angel sitting atop your shoulders like old friends and debating whether you should take that final step forward, uncertain of the consequences that lie below at the bottom, the one you can’t quite see from here, from all the way at the top. whether your feet will out last the journey or fold beneath you, ankles twisting, flimsy ligaments that send you sprawling, face first, to compacted earth. the promise of how good it will feel before that, if it even happens, how regardless of anything, of the fall, of the bruised scraped shins, flimsy ankles, the exhilaration is guaranteed, is a kite that lifts up, suspended wind below your hair and body.

the devil wins, as usual, the house always wins, and you step. you step forward, down. your thoughts and you both running, or half running, half falling, legs carrying you faster down the familiar hill than the rest of you can keep pace—relentless, fearless, this symbolic equivalent of a wheel that picks up speed the longer it rolls, gains traction and blurs to nothing.

touch yourself and daddy will be mad. he's already mad but if you touch yourself he'll be really, really mad. if you touch yourself, daddy will punish you. if you don't touch yourself, he won't punish you. but if daddy doesn't punish you, he's not going to touch you. and you need him to touch you. you need him to touch you or you’re going to combust. you’re going to lose your mind. if he punishes you, he'll definitely touch you. he won’t be nice and he might make you cry but he'll touch you. daddy will touch you. daddy will touch you. daddy will—

your feet fail beneath you, knees buckling, and you slide your hand beneath your waistband.

jack pushes his chair back and the sound of wood on tile is so loud it startles you sideways off your pillow, out of your head. you throw out your free hand to catch yourself before you topple over and brain yourself on the table leg.

‘stand up,’ jack says, voice clipped.

your heart is thumping in your chest, hair wild in your face as you stare up at him. at where he’s carved space between himself and the kitchen table.

a small muscle twitches beneath his left eye, and it looks involuntary. ‘don’t make me repeat myself.’

you scramble to your feet.

jack surveys you for a long, agonizing moment as you stand there. scans you from head to toe and back up again, taking stock of your body like it belongs to him, like he’s making sure his things are in working order. you shift nervously beneath his scrutiny, heart going a mile a minute. the weight of his gaze is as heavy as fingers where it lands, dragging along your skin, speeding up your breathing and making you pant. when it catches on the space between your legs, where you’ve darkened the cotton fabric of your panties, you squirm, a phantom hand between your legs knuckling your clit, teasing you. you can’t help but squeeze your thighs together, think about how you dressed this morning thinking only of him, of jack in the wake of your intense, erotic dream, in the hopes he would pull your panties to the side and have his wicked way with you.

he tilts his chin down. ‘strip.’

you hook your thumbs into your ruined panties and tug them down your legs, shivering a little when they pool at your ankles, revealing your pussy to the room, to jack. jack, who's just sitting there and watching you, appearing totally unaffected as you step out of the leg holes. like you’re the world’s least enticing stripper. like he’d rather be doing anything else.

you bite your lip, your stomach swooping, then tug your shirt off as well, your nipples immediately pebbling in the cool air. though you would be convinced it was just as equally, if not more, from the weight of jack's eyes on them, on you. your bare tits moving in time with your rib cage, the short, rapid breaths of a prey animal. then you’re standing in the kitchen in nothing but your birthday suit and your pink and white frilly socks.

you bend to remove those too and jack stops you. ‘leave them.’

you pause, bent naked at the waist. in your mind's eye you can already see it, your body laid out across his lap, little socked-feet kicking in the air as his palm cracks down on your ass, like a little girl punished for not doing her chores, for letting her room get too messy, for not making her bed. the sound of his hand on your ass almost as loud as the sounds coming from your mouth, your begging and your pleading. it’s sick. it’s disgusting. it makes your cunt so fucking wet.

jack motions to the gap between his legs. ‘come here.’

you straighten, stepping forward into his space and moving to get into the proper position, stomach to thighs, when he stops you again.

‘oh no, sweetheart,' he says, mouth turning up at the corner, ‘not this time.’

you blink, and jack twirls his finger in the air.

‘turn around.’

you do as your told, confused, and face away from him. you jump a little when he grabs a palmful of your thigh, his big thumb pressing in at the bottom curve of your ass cheek, pushing it open to expose your twitching hole, your wet pussy from the back.

jack huffs a quiet laugh, like the view of your drooling cunt amuses him a great deal. unfortunately, for you, this just makes it drool all the more. you’re not sure if it’s pavlov or stockholm you should be thanking for that reaction.

‘cute,’ he says, digging his thumb into the line where your ass meets your thigh before letting go. ‘sit down.’

you gage the distance and sit carefully down in his lap, knees touching, and jack immediately wedges his hand between your legs to yank them apart.

you fall back against his chest, your precious balance disrupted, and gasp as he props each of your legs over his thighs so you’re spread wide. cool air kisses your wet cunt as it’s exposed, puffy clit visible now between your folds, peeking out from behind its hood.

‘there we go,’ jack says, dragging a warm hand up and down the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. ‘comfortable?’

‘i—,’ you say, nonsensically.

you're so confused as to what's happening, and momentarily distracted by the sensation of jack touching you so close to where you need it. his big hands on your body, teasing you, callused fingers catching a little with each pass. has he been planning on... edging you this whole time? that would certainly be unexpected.

you swallow, and say, much clearer, ‘yes, sir.’

jack takes his free hand and slides it over your chest to wrap around your throat, holds you with his fingers pressed in right under your jaw, making sure not to cut off your air supply. it’s an oddly safe feeling, being held like this, by jack.

‘good, that’s really good, sweetheart,’ jack says, nosing at your temple, hot breath ghosting over your ear, ‘'cause we’re gonna be here for a minute.’

holy shit, he’s really going to edge you. you squeeze your eyes shut, shuddering. your mind is miles ahead of you, already feeling him there, fingers sliding through your slick folds to press at your hole, remind you of where he’s about to put them.

mmffuck, please touch my clit, please please please touch my clit, daddy.

his intense body heat slowly seeps through the layers of his clothing and warms all the naked skin it touches, in utter contrast to the temperature of the room, your hard nipples pushing out, begging for attention, begging for his mouth. the dichotomy makes your head spin, makes your pussy gently weep between your legs.

you need him. you need him to touch you there. you lift up your hips, hopeful.

then jack says, direct and low, nipping at your earlobe, ‘i’m gonna spank this disobedient cunt until you’ve learned your lesson.’

you suck in a sharp breath, eyes flying open. your heartrate immediately skyrockets, jackrabbiting in your chest. oh fuck, oh jesus fucking christ. you have completely misread the situation. a risk calculation so terrible, so far outside the estimated score window, that it's actually embarrassing. you feel so fucking dumb.

‘how many do you think it will take?’ jack muses, his fingers walking up and down the crease of your inner thigh, like he's talking about something inconsequential. the weather, a baseball game. ‘ten? twenty?’

yeah, nope. no, thank you. you start to struggle in his hold, knees drawing up in an attempt to get your feet under you and run, but you have no leverage. when this doesn’t work, you try and use your core to barrel forward out of his lap.

‘wow, you’re so right,’ jack says, winding his thick arm around your waist and locking you into place, imprisoning you back against his chest. ‘thirty is a much better estimate for a petulant brat like you.’

‘no!’ you exclaim, trying to find somewhere for your palms to push against, to dig your nails into until he lets you go, but jack just squeezes your throat in warning and huffs a derisive laugh against your ear.

‘you want to keep fighting me? go ahead,’ he says, ‘i personally cannot wait to learn how high you can count.’

you freeze, horror setting in at the implication, then go utterly limp in his arms. ‘no, wait, i’ll be good. i’ll be good. please.’

‘yeah?’ jack coos. ‘you’re sure?’

you frantically nod.

‘you’re gonna take your punishment like a good girl?’

you nod again.

jack hums against your temple. ‘what’s your safeword?’

‘pringles,’ you murmur.

he pinches your side. ‘what was that?’

‘pringles,’ you say louder, cheeks heating, embarassed as you always were that your under-developed brain had chosen the stupidest safeword on the planet and it had stuck like glue.

jack unwinds his arm around your waist to hover his hand an inch above your pussy. and despite all logic, your fear hasn't dampened the impact of the last thirty minutes. your clit is still more than eager to be touched, perking up at the heat radiating from jack's palm.

‘every time i spank this bratty cunt, i want you to thank me,’ jack tells you.

your teeth sink into your bottom lip, muffling a whimper.

jack meanly pinches your thigh. ‘do you understand?’

you wince, shifting your weight in his lap as much as you can.

‘yes, sir,’ you quickly say.

'good,’ he says and spanks your cunt.

there’s no warning, no advice to take a slow, deep breath or to count down from three. he just spanks your pussy like it’s the ending punctuation to his sentence.

your eyes blow wide at the sting and you squeak. fuck!

jack laughs. ‘what a cute sound, baby.’

he smooths his palm along the inside of your thigh and you try and swallow the pool of saliva that’s collected in your mouth.

‘let’s try some real words next time, okay?’

he spanks your cunt again, harder.

fucking fuck! you squeeze your eyes shut against the pain, trying to block it out, and barely manage the shaky, tight ‘thank you’ he requested.

jack rubs your inner thigh.

‘oh, you’re so welcome,’ he says, like you’re having a normal conversation.

he spanks your cunt again, barely pausing, and it hurts just as much, if not more, as the last. your pussy is getting sensitive, his big hand evenly distributing the sting from clit to hole, making the entire area hot and angry.

‘thank you,’ you repeat, between gritted teeth, pain sweat gathering at your palms, beneath your arms.

your stomach tenses in anticipation as jack raises his hand between your legs again and then rains down three hard spanks in quick succession. you can't stop the cry that tears itself from your throat, your hips trying to scoop inward and away from his hand, belly and thighs shaking.

jack makes a cooing noise in your ear, ‘aw, sweetheart, does that hurt?’

the cruelty of the question combined with the burning, aching skin of your cunt makes your eyes well up with tears.

‘yes,' you choke out, your voice thick with emotion.

jack hums, sounding pleased. ‘what do you say to daddy when it hurts?’

you swallow around the lump in your throat, a tear slipping down your cheek. ‘thank you.’

jack spanks your cunt again. ‘that's right. disobedient brats say thank you when they’re punished.’

between this spank and the next one, the rest of the tears spill over, flow without interruption down your cheeks and over the hand jack has wrapped around your throat. you whine and sniffle the entire time he’s spanking you, like once you un-stoppered the emotion, it turned out to be bottomless.

after the twentieth time his hand comes down between your legs, your thighs automatically close on reflex, a survival defense, knees drawing up to protect you against the pain, the stinging blows.

jack tuts, tapping your knee. ‘open your legs, little girl.’

a pathetic sob bursts from your chest. you don’t want to. it hurts so bad, he’s making you hurt so bad. he’s being so mean to you. you hate it. you hate it even as you listen, as you open your trembling legs to reveal your abused cunt, the blood that’s risen to the surface, lips all puffy and swollen.

you can feel your clit pulse with each heartbeat, a metronome between your legs.

‘ouch,’ jack says, in faux-concern, and then starts spanking your cunt again.

there is a point that's reached during your punishment where the required ‘thank you’s dissolve into mindless apologies, where instead of thanking him, you start blubbering and asking for forgiveness. barely comprehensible ‘i’m sorry’s chanted each time his hand comes down.

you’re an utter mess, inside and out. you feel raw in every way a human being can possibly feel raw. it's horrible and painful and humiliating but it also functions as a successful release of all your pent-up emotion. by the end of it, you feel like a wet rag jack has diligently wrung out with both hands.

jack lets go of his hold on your throat and drags his blunt nails up the inside of both your thighs, making your belly twitch.

‘mm all done, baby,’ he says, inhaling a slow, deep breath at the crown of your head. ‘punishment's over.’

you sniffle, coming down, your heart still pattering in your chest like hummingbird wings, quick and flighty.

jack rubs the stretch of skin just below your navel. ‘say, thank you, daddy, for teaching my bratty cunt a lesson.’

‘th-thank you, daddy, for teaching my bratty cunt a lesson.’

jack kisses the top of your head, and then your temple, wraps both his arms around you in a bear hug. ‘see? you can be a good girl, baby. daddy just has to remind you sometimes.’

you make a rather pitiful noise at this that has jack shifting you, arm sliding beneath your knees to settle you sideways in his lap. he returns his mouth to the top of your head and rocks you gently.

‘okay, baby,’ he says, ‘shh, it’s alright. you’re okay.’

‘i’m sorry,’ you whine, sniffling, rubbing your tear-stained face against his collar, wishing you could climb underneath it, hide inside his shirt.

‘hey, none of that now. no more apologies,’ jack says, ‘you did good. took your punishment so well for me.’

the praise sinks warm into your skin and you nuzzle closer into his chest. ‘i did?’

jack gives your head another kiss. ‘yeah, you did. you were so brave, and you listened the entire time. i’m really proud of you.’

i’m really proud of you. the words make you glow and you can’t help the smile that stretches across your face, so you adjust in his lap a little and tuck your face into the crook of his neck to hide it. jack lets you, running a hand up and down your spine.

‘you’re daddy’s favorite girl, you know that?’ he says. ‘no one drives me up the wall quite like you do.’

a surprised laugh bubbles out of your throat and you hiccup into his neck.

You like to dress up whenever the two of you go out, while Jack loves the way you look whenever you do.. you stress him out every time by taking so long to get ready.

As you walk into the living room, Jack gets a glimpse of the dress you’re wearing and it immediately makes a warm feeling spread in his chest. You look beautiful.. you always do, but whenever you dress up like this it’s like you take your beauty to another level.

“Look at you..” Jack places a hand over his heart. “Gorgeous,”

A smile spreads on your lips as you see him look at you with nothing but adoration and love in his eyes. It doesn’t matter that he’s seen you dressed up a thousand times before, it takes his breath away every time you do.

“Let me get a picture of my girl,” he says before fishing his phone out of his back pocket.

You watch him squint as he looks at the screen while holding up his phone. It makes you want to chuckle every time you see him using his phone, there’s always something he struggles with.

“Nope, that’s the front camera.” he mutters before tapping on the screen. “There we go,”

You give him a smile as you look at his phone, causing an immediate smile to grow on Jack’s lips as well. He takes a few pictures before putting his phone away again.

“Man.. I sure got lucky,” he tells you before closing the space between the two of you and grabbing onto your waist.

“Don’t you forget it,” you send him a quick wink before feeling him press his lips against yours.

⊱✫⊰

“Fuck.. me,”

Jack watches you walk through the room, wearing a red set of lingerie. You barely have time to acknowledge him as you’re busy getting yourself ready to go out with your friends.

“This dress,” you hold up a black one. “Or this one,” in the other hand you’re holding onto a dark green one.

“Sweetheart.. I can’t focus on the color of anything right about now,” Jack speaks up, eyes taking in your half-naked body.

“Jack,” you groan, not having the time for him to be distracted like this. “You’re not helping.”

“Hmm..” he hums, not hearing a word as his gaze is burning onto your skin.

You roll your eyes at his actions before deciding yourself, picking the black dress and shoving yourself into it. The spell Jack was under is broken a little, making him more aware of the current situation.

“M’gonna work my entire shift with that image in my head.” he sighs before moving to sit on the edge of the bed so he could put on his prosthetic.

“Good,” you say after turning around to face him. “That way you know what will be waiting at home for you in the morning.”

“Yeah?” Jack arches a brow before standing up, giving himself a moment to adjust to the prosthetic before walking over to you. “Or it’ll be like last time,” he says. “You’ll be knocked out, snoring like a sailor, breath smelling like the take-out you always end up eating when drunk.”

“Alright,” you glare over at him. “That’s uncalled for.”

Jack chuckles and wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you closer. “Have fun.. be safe, if anything’s wrong call me.”

“I will,” you say, smiling at him before leaning in and pressing a soft kiss against his lips.

“What do you say when guys hit on you?” he asks, one hand moving down to rest on the curve of your ass.

“I say..” you look up at him through your lashes. “I’ve got a boyfriend at home who’s an ex-vet and will kick your ass.” you tell him. “Also, he's super old so you’re not my type anyways.”

Jack breaks into a laugh as you add that last line, shaking his head softly before looking back in your eyes.

“Atta girl,” he mumbles before giving you one more kiss.

⊱✫⊰

“Where are my goddamn glasses?”

Jack is walking around your shared apartment, newspaper in one hand and cup of coffee in the other.

You look over at him from the kitchen where you’re making breakfast for the two of you. Amused at how stressed he is about the fact he can’t find them. You need to hold back a laugh when you spot them buried in his salt and pepper curls.

“Aww, grandpa can’t read the newspaper without his glasses.” you tease.

“Don’t start,” Jack turns his head to give you a warning look. “I swear.. I just had them..” he murmurs before taking another look around.

You chuckle before moving yourself from behind the kitchen counter and walking up to him. “You’re a step away from me putting you in a nursing home,” you tease before you grab the glasses out of his hair.

“They were on your head, were you put them like five minutes ago.” you tell him, looking up into his eyes.

“Oh,” Jack furrows his brows, slightly concerned that he genuinely forgot they were there.

You put the glasses on, making sure they’re sitting right behind his ears. “There you go,” a smile rests on your face before you lean in to press a soft kiss against his lips.

“Hmm,” Jack smiles as you pull back and look into his eyes. “No need for a nursing home when I got myself a sexy woman at home who aids me.” he tells you.

His words make you chuckle, rolling your eyes before watching him pucker his lips as he wants another kiss. You lean in and give him a soft peck before taking a step back.

“Need to get back to my eggs,” you tell him before moving to the kitchen again.

⊱✫⊰

“This is so sad,” you pout your lip as tears burn in your eyes.

You’re currently watching The Notebook with Jack, it’s late at night and you’re curled up beside him on the couch.

“Baby..” Jack turns his head and checks up on you. “Are you actually crying?”

“Yes,” you sob as you sit yourself up some more, unable to stop yourself from letting tears roll down your cheeks.

“It’s just a movie,” Jack tells you, moving to grab your hand in his to try and comfort you.

“I know that,” you sob before turning to look back at the screen where the elderly couple Noah and Allie have both just died, holding hands as they lay together in bed. “It’s just so sad,”

Jack can’t help but be amused a little as he watches you cry, he thinks it’s adorable how emotional you can get from time to time. He pulls you into his side, holding you close and pressing a kiss on the top of your head. “S’okay, sweetheart.”

“No,” you sob. “It’s not.” you look up into his eyes as tears burn in yours. “I just realized you’re going to die before me and then I’ll be all alone.”

That tugs on Jack’s heart strings.

“Sweetheart.. no,” he pulls you into his lap so he could hold you even closer to him. “Don’t think like that.”

“But that’s how it’s going to be,” you cry as you rest your head against his shoulder, feeling his big arms wrapped around you.

Jack presses another kiss on the top of your head as he holds you close to him, feeling a little helpless in this situation as he realizes that’s eventually how it’s going to be. It hurts him to think about it.

“Why do you have to be so goddamn old, huh?” you scold him softly, giving a slight nudge against his chest which makes him chuckle.

“Hey,” Jack grabs your chin between his fingers, so he could make you look up into his eyes. “I promise I won’t die that quickly.”

“You can’t promise me that.” you tell him, looking up at him with sad eyes.

“I know..” Jack sighs softly, thumb brushing over your cheek to wipe away some tears. “But I can promise to love you every day until I do.” he says.

Those words make a soft smile tug on your lips, they go straight to your heart. “Yeah..”

Jack smiles as he watches your eyes light up again. “My sweet girl,” he mumbles before leaning in and capturing your lips in a kiss.

────────⊹⊱✫⊰t⊹────────

a/n: if you ended up loving this, would you want more???? Let me know!

Likes or reposts are always appreciated. Comments even more, I love hearing you guys.

Also, requests are open :)))

The first light of dawn filtered through the heavy curtains, casting a warm glow across the chamber. Vera stirred, consciousness gradually returning as she felt the solid warmth of Aemond's body curled protectively around her. His arm lay draped across her waist, his breathing deep and even against her neck.

For a moment, she simply savored the sensation—the weight of the Valyrian steel ring on her finger, the pleasant soreness in her muscles from their passionate consummation, the knowledge that she was now, truly, Princess Vera Targaryen.

She shifted carefully, turning within the circle of his arms to study his sleeping face. The sapphire gleamed dully in the dim light, nestled in the scarred socket.

As if sensing her gaze, Aemond's eye fluttered open, immediately focusing on her face with characteristic intensity.

"Wife," he murmured, the word carrying a note of possessive satisfaction that sent a pleasant shiver down her spine.

"Husband," she replied, her lips curving into a smile as she traced the sharp line of his jaw with gentle fingers.

His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer until their bodies were flush against each other. "I could stay here all day," he growled, his voice rough with sleep and renewed desire.

"As tempting as that sounds," Vera replied, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before pulling back, "We're expected at mother's chambers."

Aemond groaned, burying his face against her neck. "Must we?"

"Yes," she insisted, though she made no immediate move to leave his embrace.

With obvious reluctance, Aemond released her, watching as she slipped from the bed. The morning light caressed her bare skin, highlighting the marks his passion had left on her body—evidence of their night together that sent a surge of primitive satisfaction through his veins.

Vera caught his appreciative gaze and smiled, a knowing look in her dark eyes as she moved to the washbasin. "If you keep looking at me like that, we'll never make it to breakfast," she warned, splashing cool water on her face.

"Would that be so terrible?" Aemond asked, though he too rose from the bed, stretching his tall frame with feline grace.

They dressed with the easy familiarity of longtime lovers, helping each other with fastenings and clasps. Vera chose a deep blue gown that complemented her olive skin, while Aemond donned his customary black attire.

As he settled his eyepatch back into place, Vera approached him from behind, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek against his back.

"I worry about what comes next," Vera confessed, her voice muffled against his back. "Aegon may feel betrayed. And poor Lady Floris..."

Aemond turned in her embrace, his hands settling naturally at her waist. "Let them be angry," he said, his voice low and certain. "There's nothing they can do now."

Vera's dark eyes searched his face, vulnerability showing through her usual composure. "I don't want a life of constant battles, Aemond. Not for us, not for our children."

"Our children," he repeated, his expression softening at the words. His hand moved instinctively to rest against her flat stomach, the gesture both protective and hopeful.

He moved his hand, and cupped her face between his palms. "Whatever happens in the upcoming days," he told her, his gaze intense and unwavering, "just trust me. Can you do that?"

Vera gave a small nod, her heart swelling with a mixture of love and apprehension. Without words, she pulled him down to her lips, pouring all her emotions into a passionate kiss that left them both breathless when they finally parted.

"Everyone must have heard about the wedding by now," she said softly, her fingers absently adjusting the collar of his doublet.

Aemond's lips curved into a satisfied smirk. "Good," he replied, taking her hand in his and leading her toward the door.

As they made their way through the corridors of the Red Keep, servants and guards they passed bowed respectfully, though Vera couldn't help but notice the curious and excited glances some cast at their intertwined hands—and particularly at the matching Valyrian steel rings that gleamed on their fingers.

Two maids huddled together, their heads bent in whispered conversation. As Aemond and Vera passed, one nudged the other, her voice carrying just loudly enough to be heard.

"Finally! I knew it," she whispered excitedly.

Aemond's smirk deepened, a hint of smug satisfaction crossing his features as he squeezed Vera's hand. She felt a blush rise to her cheeks but couldn't suppress her own smile at his obvious pride.

When they approached the Queen Dowager's chambers, two Kingsguard knights stood at attention outside her door—Ser Willis Fell and Ser Richard Thorne. As the couple drew near, both knights' formal demeanor softened slightly, their lips curving into genuine smiles.

"Prince Aemond," Ser Willis greeted, bowing his head respectfully before his gaze moved to Vera. "Princess Vera. Good morrow to you both."

"Good morrow, Ser Willis, Ser Richard," Vera replied, her voice steady despite the flutter of nerves in her stomach at being addressed by her new title for the first time in the light of day. "News travel fast."

Ser Richard's weathered face creased with amusement as he opened the door for them. "News travels quickly in the Red Keep, especially good news," he replied warmly. "Particularly when it involves our niece."

The knights chuckled as they ushered the couple inside, closing the door behind them with a soft click. The Queen's outer chambers were empty, but voices drifted from a side room—the small solar where Alicent often took her breakfast when she desired privacy.

Vera and Aemond moved toward the sound, finding Gwayne lounging on one of the plush couches, his boots propped casually on a footstool as he gestured animatedly while speaking. Beside him sat Daeron, his youthful face bright with amusement at whatever tale his uncle was spinning. Helaena perched on a chair nearby, her fingers absently braiding and unbraiding a section of her silver-gold hair as she listened.

When they entered, Gwayne broke off mid-sentence, a wide grin spreading across his handsome face as he spotted them.

"Ah, the happy couple!" he exclaimed, rising to his feet and crossing the room in a few long strides. He embraced Vera warmly before clapping Aemond on the shoulder. "I must say, the two of you look rather well this morning. Marriage clearly agrees with you."

Vera felt heat rise to her cheeks as she caught Helaena's knowing smile. She allowed Gwayne to guide her toward the couches where the others were seated, Aemond following close behind.

Daeron leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I should warn you both—they're expecting us all in the dining hall later. Aegon will be there, and..." He paused, frowning as he tried to recall the name.

"Lady Floris," Helaena supplied softly, her dreamy eyes focusing briefly on her younger brother's face.

"Yes, her!" Daeron snapped his fingers, nodding gratefully to his sister. "They'll be waiting after we finish here."

Aemond hummed thoughtfully, his violet eye gleaming with barely suppressed amusement. "Have you seen our brother this morning, by chance?"

Daeron's face transformed into an exaggerated mask of terror. "Gods, no. I'm not going anywhere near Aegon if he already knows about the wedding." He shuddered dramatically. "I value my life too much for that."

The sudden sound of the bedchamber door opening and closing made them all fall silent. Heavy footsteps approached, followed by Alicent's lighter tread. The group exchanged glances.

"Aegon knows," Otto's voice carried clearly through the gap. "About the wedding."

Vera's heart jumped into her throat. She reached for Aemond's hand, finding it already extended toward hers. His fingers closed around hers with reassuring strength.

"And Lady Floris?" Alicent asked, her voice carrying a note of resignation.

"I haven't seen her yet," Otto replied. "Only Aegon. And he is... angry, to put it mildly."

Alicent sighed, the sound both weary and satisfied. "At least you managed to distract him long enough to let them marry."

The rustle of fabric and clink of glass followed as Otto apparently poured wine for himself and his daughter. "Now Aegon will have to agree to one of my plans," he said. "Either betroth Daeron to Lady Floris, or provide a position at court for one of Lord Borros's other daughters."

Vera glanced at Daeron, whose violet eyes had widened with horror at the suggestion of his betrothal to Lady Floris. He shook his head frantically, mouthing "NO" with exaggerated panic, causing Gwayne to stifle a laugh behind his hand.

Alicent's voice lowered, carrying a note of maternal protectiveness that had always been reserved for her children. "Father, I would be far happier knowing none of Lord Borros's daughters remain at court. Especially Lady Floris. Her presence here only creates unnecessary tension."

Otto sighed, the sound carrying the weight of political calculations. "Unfortunately, Lady Floris must stay for a little longer. I need to send a letter requesting a meeting with Lord Borros before she can be sent back to Storm's End. The situation requires... delicate handling."

"So Lady Floris will have to remain here for now, thanks to Aegon," Alicent replied, her voice tinged with annoyance. "His insistence on this match has created quite the complication."

"Indeed," Otto confirmed, the single word laden with disapproval for his eldest grandson's impulsiveness. "And it seems that I am indeed at fault for this." The soft clink of goblets touching preceded Otto's response. "I'll think of a plan," he said, his voice contemplative.

A long silence followed. Vera held her breath, hardly daring to move lest they reveal their presence to the Queen Dowager and her father.

"I've made mistakes," Otto finally said, his voice so quiet they had to strain to hear it. "Aegon has not become the king I hoped he would be."

"No," Alicent replied softly. "He never was."

Otto's voice dropped even lower, barely audible through the gap in the doorway. "I know you are disappointed by the succession."

Alicent's reply came after a moment's hesitation. "You know where my vote is."

"Aemond is the second son," Otto reminded her, his tone carefully measured. "We couldn't skip Aegon."

"Aegon never wanted this," Alicent said softly. "The throne."

"Wanting it was never the requirement," Otto replied, his voice carrying the weight of ancient tradition. "Being firstborn was."

In the solar, Vera's hand tightened around Aemond's, her dark eyes finding his face. She watched as his jaw tightened, his violet eye fixed on some distant point, unseeing.

Alicent stared into her wine, the silence stretching between them like a taut string. "And yet Aemond would have carried the burden willingly," she whispered.

Otto did not answer immediately, the absence of his voice more telling than any words could have been. When he finally spoke, his words were carefully chosen. "Perhaps. But that road was closed the moment Viserys died."

Alicent shook her head slightly, a gesture of frustration rather than denial. "I still do not understand it. Viserys. He spoke Aegon's name. He spoke of the throne. But if he truly meant to change the succession from Rhaenyra... why Aegon? Why not Aemond?"

Aemond sat perfectly still while Vera looked at him, her expression a mixture of concern and curiosity. Across the room, Helaena nodded lightly, as if confirming something only she could see. Daeron and Gwayne exchanged glances, a silent conversation passing between uncle and nephew.

"I do not know," Otto finally admitted, the words seeming to cost him something precious.

Alicent let out a breath, the tension in her shoulders easing slightly as she placed her cup down with deliberate care. "Gwayne and the children should be coming soon. Join us?"

Otto nodded, his expression softening as he glanced toward the doorway. "Better here than with Aegon."

Alicent gestured for her father to follow as she led him to the adjoining room. She pushed the door open, only to find her children and brother already gathered there, rising from their seats

"It seems you have heard everything," she said, realization dawning on her face as she took in their guilty expressions. She moved to Vera first, pressing a warm kiss to her cheek before turning to Aemond to do the same.

Daeron shifted uncomfortably, his youthful face flushed with embarrassment. "We didn't mean to... but you two did speak near us so..."

Alicent nodded slightly, understanding rather than anger in her green eyes. Vera moved over to Otto, kissing his cheek.

"Congratulations, dear," Otto said softly, his normally stern features gentled by affection.

"Thank you," Vera replied, her dark eyes bright with gratitude.

They all settled around the round table, the tension of the overheard conversation gradually dissolving into the comfortable familiarity of family. Daeron positioned himself carefully between Vera and Helaena, his violet eyes darting nervously between his mother and grandfather.

"Mother? Grandsire?" he began, his voice slightly higher than usual.

Alicent hummed softly as she selected a ripe pear from the fruit platter, her attention seemingly focused on the fruit as she waited for her youngest son to continue.

Daeron swallowed visibly before blurting out, "Please, do not force me to marry Floris."

Aemond's lips curved into a knowing smirk, while Helaena offered a small, slightly amused smile. Vera and Gwayne exchanged an amused look across the table, the corners of their mouths twitching with suppressed laughter.

Otto's eyes twinkled with rare amusement as he studied his youngest grandson. "Why not? I'm sure you two will get along."

Daeron's expression transformed into one of theatrical horror. "No, we will not. And if it will be forced on me, I will be returning to uncle Ormund."

Gwayne pointed an accusing finger at his nephew, his voice sharp with mock indignation. "You are not leaving me here."

Alicent's lips curved into an amused smile as she watched her family's antics, the weight of her earlier conversation with her father momentarily forgotten.

"Perhaps we should focus on the matter at hand," she suggested gently, though her eyes still sparkled with amusement. "We have a wedding to announce, and a rather angry king to face."

Aemond straightened in his chair, his violet eye gleaming with anticipation. "I'm looking forward to seeing Aegon's reaction," he said, his voice carrying a hint of satisfaction. "The expression on his face should be... memorable."

Daeron leaned back in his chair, studying his brother's expression with a knowing smirk. "You're enjoying this, aren't you? The thought of Aegon's face when he learns what you've done."

Aemond hummed, the sound rich with satisfaction as he traced the rim of his goblet with one long finger. "Perhaps."

Before Daeron could respond with another teasing remark, a sharp knock echoed through the chamber, drawing all eyes to the door.

"Enter," Alicent called, her voice carrying the regal authority that came naturally to her.

The door opened to reveal a young maid, her face pale and her hands trembling slightly as she dipped into a deep curtsy.

"Forgive me for interrupting, Your Grace," she stammered, her eyes fixed firmly on the floor. "But the King... he demands for you and Prince Aemond to come to the Council chambers. Now."

The room fell silent. Otto's eyes narrowed as he exchanged a meaningful glance with his daughter.

"Just the Prince and the Queen Dowager?" Otto asked, his voice deceptively calm.

"Yes, my lord," the maid confirmed, her voice barely above a whisper. "His Grace was quite... insistent."

Alicent nodded, her face composed despite the tension that had settled over the gathering. She rose gracefully from her seat, smoothing her skirts with practiced elegance.

"Very well then," she said, her voice steady. "We shall continue with this after."

Aemond's hand found Vera's beneath the table, his thumb tracing gentle circles against her palm before he reluctantly released her. He stood slowly, his tall frame casting a long shadow across the table.

Without another word, Aemond followed his mother from the room, his stride purposeful and unhurried. The maid scurried after them, careful to maintain a respectful distance.

As the door closed behind them, the remaining occupants of the solar exchanged uneasy glances. Daeron was the first to break the silence.

"Well," he said, reaching for a piece of bread with forced casualness, "that went about as well as expected."

Vera's gaze remained fixed on the closed door, her fingers absently tracing the Valyrian steel ring on her left hand. The metal seemed to warm at her touch, as if responding to her anxiety.

"He'll be fine," Gwayne said gently, noting her concern. "Aemond has never been one to back down from a confrontation."

"It's not Aemond I'm worried about," Vera replied softly, her dark eyes troubled. "Aegon has always been... unpredictable when he feels slighted."

The heavy oak doors of the Small Council chamber swung open as Aemond and Alicent entered. The room was dimly lit, with only a few candles casting flickering shadows across the polished table. Aegon sat alone at the head, his slender form rigid with barely contained fury. His violet eyes, bloodshot and hollow, fixed first on his mother.

"Mother," he said, his voice unnervingly calm.

Then his gaze shifted to Aemond, narrowing with undisguised hatred. "Brother."

Aegon rose slowly from his chair, the crown of Jaehaerys seeming to weigh heavily on his head. The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken accusations.

Aemond's lips curved into a faint smirk, his single violet eye gleaming with satisfaction. "Brother, you asked for us?"

Aegon's jaw tightened, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "You've married her," he said flatly. "Without my permission. Without the Council's knowledge."

"Indeed I have," Aemond confirmed, the satisfaction in his voice unmistakable.

"You've betrayed me," Aegon hissed, his composure cracking as his face flushed with anger. "You've stolen what was mine by right."

Aemond's expression remained coolly composed, though his eye flashed dangerously. "Nothing was yours by right. Vera cares for you only as a brother. She chose me, freely and willingly."

Alicent stepped between her sons, her green eyes flashing with maternal authority. "That's enough. What's done is done. The marriage is valid and has been consummated. There is no undoing it."

Aegon's face flushed crimson, his eyes blazing as they fixed on his mother. "You knew," he accused, his voice rising dangerously. "You helped them, didn't you? My own mother conspiring against me!"

"I helped two people who love each other find happiness," Alicent replied firmly, standing her ground despite her son's towering fury. "There was no conspiracy, Aegon. Only a mother's wish to see her son content."

Aegon's gaze moved between them, realization dawning in his eyes. "Does Grandsire know of it?"

Alicent's silence was answer enough.

"You and Grandsire keep choosing him," Aegon spat, his voice trembling with barely contained fury. "Always Aemond. Always the perfect prince while I am cast aside like—"

His hand rose sharply, the movement instinctive rather than deliberate, a gesture born of years of frustration and resentment.

Aemond caught his wrist. Aegon's eyes snapped toward his brother, surprise and fury warring in his bloodshot gaze. Aemond's grip was iron, his fingers digging into the flesh of Aegon's wrist with deliberate pressure.

"Never," Aemond said coldly, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "raise a hand on our mother."

Aegon struggled against his brother's hold, his face flushing crimson with humiliation and rage. "I wasn't going to hit her," he spat.

Aemond released Aegon's hand after pushing him back a little, his violet eye gleaming with barely contained fury. "Intentions mean little once the hand is raised."

Alicent stared at Aegon in shock, her green eyes wide with disbelief at the thought that her elder son had actually been about to strike her.

Aegon glanced toward his mother, a flicker of shame crossing his features before he masked it with renewed anger. He straightened his crown, which had shifted during the confrontation, his movements jerky with barely controlled emotion.

"This matter is closed," Alicent said, her voice remarkably calm despite the tremor in her hands. "Vera is now married to Aemond. The marriage has been consummated and witnessed by gods and men. There is nothing more to discuss."

"I am the King," Aegon declared, his voice rising with each word. "My permission was not sought, my authority ignored. This is treason!"

Alicent stepped closer to her eldest son, her eyes blazing with maternal authority. "And I am not only the Queen Dowager, but also your mother! You will not speak to me in such a manner, nor will you threaten violence against your own blood."

The tension in the room was palpable, a living thing that seemed to press against the walls and ceiling. Aegon's chest heaved with each ragged breath, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. For a moment, it seemed he might lash out again, but the memory of Aemond's iron grip stayed his hand.

"What of Lady Floris?" Aegon demanded, his voice slightly calmer though still edged with bitterness. "What am I to tell Lord Borros?"

Aemond's lips curved into a cold smile. "Lady Floris is of no concern to me. Find another purpose for the alliance. She came here because you had invited her, so you deal with her."

"Your Grandsire will find a different way," Alicent said, her voice steady despite the tension crackling between her sons.

Aegon's laugh was sharp and bitter, echoing off the stone walls of the council chamber. "What if he can't? Lady Floris wants Aemond. She came for him, and he insults her by marrying our sister." His violet eyes burned with fury as they fixed on his brother. "Lady Floris is staying here. You find a way to make it right for her. Take her to be your second fucking wife, I don't care. We need Storm's End."

Aemond's expression remained impassive, though a muscle twitched in his jaw. "I prefer one wife," he replied flatly. "It will be insulting for Lady Floris anyway if I take her. I won't be paying attention to her."

"Enough," Alicent commanded, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade. "We'll discuss Storm's End later in the Council meeting. We shall meet in the dining hall where we'll have breakfast together."

Aegon didn't respond. Instead, he straightened his crown with a jerky motion and strode past them, his shoulders rigid with barely contained fury. The heavy door slammed behind him, the sound reverberating through the chamber like a thunderclap.

Alicent closed her eyes briefly, a slight tremor visible in her hands. Aemond moved to stand beside her, his violet eye watching the door through which his brother had disappeared.

"He won't let this go easily," Aemond observed, his voice low.

Alicent turned to him, her green eyes troubled. "No, he won't. But what's done is done, and we must stand united now." She reached out, placing her hand gently on his arm. "Come, let's return."

Aemond nodded silently. Together, he and Alicent left the council chamber, the heavy oak doors closing behind them. 

Taglist:

The clubhouse was loud that night.

Music blaring.

Bikers yelling over poker games.

Half-drunk croweaters laughing too loud near the bar.

Happy sat at the table in the corner cleaning one of his guns while Tig and Kozik argued over something pointless nearby.

It was normal chaos.

Until the front doors burst open hard enough to rattle the walls.

Everyone looked up instinctively.

You stumbled inside.

Pale.

Breathing hard.

Terrified.

Not upset.

Not startled.

Terrified.

Happy knew the difference immediately.

Your eyes darted frantically around the room before landing on him.

And then—

You ran to him.

Actually ran.

Happy barely had time to stand before you crashed into him hard enough to knock his chair backward.

Your arms wrapped around his middle desperately.

Your face buried against his chest.

The entire clubhouse went dead silent.

Happy froze.

Every muscle in his body locked instantly.

Because you’d never touched him like this before.

Never.

You joked with him.

Sat near him.

Talked to him more than most people dared.

But this—

This was different.

This was instinct.

Fear.

Need.

Your entire body was shaking.

“Hey,” Happy said automatically, startled by how rough his voice sounded.

You made a small, broken sound against his chest that twisted something vicious inside him.

Without thinking, Happy’s arms came around you.

One wrapped tightly around your waist.

The other pressed protectively against the back of your head.

Covering you.

Shielding you.

Like his body moved before his brain caught up.

“It’s okay,” he muttered roughly.

Which was ridiculous because he had no idea what happened.

But you were trembling so hard he could feel it through your ribs.

“Hey. Hey.” His hand tightened gently against your hair. “Look at me.”

You couldn’t.

You just clung harder.

Happy’s jaw flexed sharply.

Rage started building immediately.

Cold and violent.

Because somebody had done this.

Somebody had scared you badly enough to send you running into a room full of killers looking for safety.

And somehow—

Somehow—

you’d chosen him.

“Who?” he asked quietly.

You shook your head against his chest.

Couldn’t speak.

Happy looked over your head immediately.

The room had gone eerily still.

Jax was already standing.

Chibs looked deadly serious.

Even Tig had lost the usual humor in his face.

Happy adjusted his hold on you carefully.

Painfully carefully.

Like you were something fragile despite the violence simmering under his skin.

“Take a breath,” he murmured.

Your fingers clenched tighter in the back of his shirt.

Happy glanced down finally.

Really looked at you.

Your eyes were wet.

Terrified.

And Christ.

Happy had seen bloodier things than nightmares.

Had done bloodier things himself.

But seeing you look genuinely afraid hit him harder than violence ever had.

“It’s okay,” he repeated softly.

The softness startled everybody.

Including him.

You finally managed a shaky breath.

“There was a man—”

Happy went still.

“He followed me,” you whispered. “From the grocery store.”

The room temperature seemed to drop instantly.

Your voice cracked.

“I thought I lost him but then he grabbed me outside my apartment and—”

Happy’s arms locked around you tighter immediately.

Not enough to hurt.

Just enough to anchor.

Rage exploded white-hot behind his ribs.

“Did he hurt you?”

You shook your head quickly.

“No, I got away. I just—I didn’t know where else to go—”

Happy’s expression changed.

Tiny shift.

But devastating.

Because you came here.

To him.

Out of every possible place in Charming, your terrified brain had decided Happy Lowman meant safety.

Not danger.

Safety.

Something ugly and protective twisted violently in his chest.

You finally looked up at him then.

Eyes red.

Face pressed close enough he could feel your breath through his shirt.

And Happy—

Happy melted.

Nobody would’ve called it that.

Not looking at him.

Not with the tattoos and scars and death in his eyes.

But something in him softened instantly around you.

His hand cradled the back of your head more securely.

“You did good,” he said quietly.

Your face crumpled unexpectedly at that.

Like nobody had said the right thing yet.

Tears spilled harder.

Happy visibly panicked.

“Hey.”

You buried your face back into his chest immediately, shaking.

And Happy—

Jesus Christ.

Happy Lowman, who had stabbed men without blinking, looked completely overwhelmed by your tears.

His eyes darted around the room like someone else might know what to do.

Tig made a tiny motion with his hand.

Comfort her, dumbass.

Right.

Happy swallowed hard.

Then lowered his head slightly toward yours.

“It’s alright,” he murmured again, softer now. “Ain’t gonna let anybody touch you.”

You made another shaky sound.

Happy’s hand moved slowly against your hair.

Awkward.

Careful.

Like he was trying not to break you.

And maybe the strangest part was how natural it felt after the first second.

Holding you.

Protecting you.

Keeping you tucked against him while your fear slowly eased.

Like something deep in him had already decided you belonged there.

The clubhouse stayed silent around you.

Mostly because nobody had ever seen Happy like this before.

Gentle.

Patient.

He looked like a wolf trying to hold a wounded bird without crushing it.

Jax finally spoke quietly.

“You know what the guy looked like?”

Your body tensed again immediately.

Happy felt it.

Saw it.

And instantly tightened his hold.

“Nah,” he said flatly without looking away from you. “Not now.”

Jax paused.

Then nodded once.

Because Happy’s tone made it very clear:

This came first.

You came first.

The room slowly resumed movement after that.

Quietly.

Respectfully.

But Happy stayed exactly where he was.

Holding you against his chest while your breathing gradually steadied.

Minutes passed.

Maybe longer.

Eventually, your grip loosened slightly.

Embarrassment started creeping in around the edges now that the panic faded.

You pulled back just enough to wipe your face quickly.

“Sorry,” you mumbled hoarsely.

Happy frowned instantly.

“For what?”

You laughed weakly.

“I basically tackled you.”

“So?”

The answer came so automatically it stunned both of you.

You stared at him.

Happy looked mildly confused by your confusion.

Like he genuinely didn’t understand why this was a problem.

You swallowed hard.

“You don’t really… do this.”

“Do what?”

“This.” You gestured vaguely between your bodies. “Comforting people.”

Happy looked down at you for a long moment.

Then his thumb brushed lightly near your temple, wiping away leftover tears before he even seemed to realize he was doing it.

“Ain’t people,” he muttered.

Your breath caught.

The words hit him about half a second later.

Happy froze.

The room went suspiciously quiet again because apparently everyone heard that.

Tig’s eyes widened dramatically.

Chibs looked delighted.

Happy ignored them completely.

Because you were still looking at him like that.

Soft.

Safe.

Trusting him with parts of yourself most people never got close enough to see.

And Happy realized something ugly and undeniable in that moment:

If that man had actually hurt you—

Really hurt you—

they would never find enough of him left to bury.

The violence of the thought should’ve bothered him.

Instead, all he felt was relief that you were here.

Alive.

In his arms.

You shifted slightly, finally realizing you were still pressed fully against his chest.

But before you could step away, Happy’s hand tightened reflexively against the back of your head.

Not forcing.

Just… keeping you there another second.

His eyes dropped to yours.

“You stayin’ here tonight.”

It wasn’t really a question.

You blinked.

“I don’t wanna inconvenience—”

“You ain’t.”

The firmness in his voice shut that down immediately.

Then quieter:

“You’re safe here.”

Something warm and aching spread through your chest.

Because you believed him instantly.

Happy glanced toward the clubhouse doors again, jaw tight with leftover rage.

Then back at you.

And for the first time since you’d known him, the terrifying brutality everyone feared about Happy Lowman became something else entirely.

Not frightening.

Protective.

His violence curled around you instead of toward you.

A wall between you and anything cruel enough to make you cry.

You looked at him for a long moment.

Then slowly rested your forehead back against his chest.

Happy’s entire body relaxed.

Just a little.

His chin dipped briefly against the top of your head while his arms settled around you more securely.

And this time when he spoke, his voice was low enough only you could hear it.

“Got you.”

Happy did not sleep that night.

Not really.

He stayed awake on the clubhouse couch while you slept in the room down the hall Gemma had practically forced on you.

The lights stayed low.

The TV muttered quietly in the background.

Most of the club eventually drifted off or disappeared into other rooms, but Happy stayed exactly where he was.

Watching the door.

Knife turning slowly between his fingers.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw you bursting through the clubhouse doors again.

Terrified.

Shaking.

Running straight into him like your body already knew he’d protect you.

Something vicious settled deep in his chest at the memory.

Protective in a way he didn’t entirely know what to do with.

By morning, the rage had sharpened into focus.

Happy wanted a name.

You woke up embarrassed.

That was the first problem.

Happy knew it immediately from the way you avoided eye contact over breakfast.

You stayed close to him physically—always within arm’s reach—but now there was self-consciousness wrapped around your movements.

Like you regretted last night.

Happy hated it instantly.

“You eat yet?”

You glanced up from your coffee.

“Hm?”

“Food.”

“Oh. Uh. Not really.”

Happy shoved his plate toward you.

You blinked.

“You don’t have to—”

“Eat.”

You stared at him for a second before quietly taking the plate.

Happy watched until you took the first bite.

Only then did he relax slightly.

Gemma noticed from across the room immediately.

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Interesting.

You looked up suddenly.

“I should probably go home and grab some clothes.”

“No.”

The answer came so fast you startled.

Happy leaned back against the counter, jaw tight.

“Not alone.”

“I’ll be fine during the day—”

“No.”

There it was again.

That dangerous edge under his voice.

Not angry at you.

Just furious underneath.

You looked at him carefully then.

Really looked at him.

At the exhaustion under his eyes. At the tension in his shoulders. At the way his attention never fully left you even for a second.

Your chest tightened unexpectedly.

“Happy…”

He looked away first.

“Jax is workin’ on findin’ him.”

That got your attention immediately.

“What?”

“You gave enough description.”

Happy rolled his shoulders slowly.

“Guys are askin’ around.”

Something dark flickered behind his eyes.

“If he’s local, we’ll find him.”

The certainty in his voice should’ve scared you.

Instead, it made you feel safer.

Which maybe said something concerning about you at this point.

It took less than two days.

SAMCRO had roots everywhere.

Bartenders talked.

Dealers talked.

Mechanics talked.

And creeps who grabbed women outside apartment buildings apparently talked too.

Happy got the call while you sat beside him outside the garage drinking a soda.

He answered quietly.

Listened.

Went still.

You noticed immediately.

“What?”

Happy hung up slowly.

His face became unreadable in that terrifying way it sometimes did.

The calm before violence.

“We found him.”

Your stomach dropped.

You set your drink down carefully.

“Oh.”

Happy looked at you then.

Really looked.

And the fury in his expression softened instantly at whatever he saw on your face.

“You stay here.”

You swallowed hard.

“What are you gonna do?”

Silence.

That was worse.

“Happy.”

His jaw flexed.

“He scared you.”

The simplicity of the statement sent a chill through you.

Like in Happy’s mind, that alone justified whatever came next.

You stood quickly.

“Don’t kill him.”

Happy’s eyes lifted to yours.

Cold.

Violent.

Protective.

“You askin’ me not to?”

You stepped closer before you could think better of it.

Happy went still automatically.

“You don’t need to do something awful for me.”

Something changed in his face then.

Small.

Sharp.

Almost offended.

He stepped toward you slowly until there was barely space left between your bodies.

“You think this is for you?”

Your breath caught.

Happy looked down at you with an intensity that made your pulse stutter.

“This is for me.”

The words landed heavy.

Possessive.

Honest.

Because somewhere along the line, your fear had become his too.

Your safety had rooted itself inside his ribs like instinct.

Happy reached up slowly.

Like he was giving you time to pull away.

His rough knuckles brushed gently against your cheek.

“You came to me scared,” he said quietly. “Ain’t nobody gonna think they can do that shit again.”

Your heart slammed painfully against your ribs.

Nobody had ever looked at you the way Happy was looking at you now.

Like protecting you was something sacred.

Like hurting you was unforgivable.

You covered his wrist lightly with your hand.

“Please be careful.”

Happy’s expression shifted immediately.

Softer.

God, it was dangerous when he looked soft.

Because it felt earned.

Rare.

Only for you.

“I always am.”

You both knew that was a lie.

The man’s name was Curtis Bell.

Mid-thirties.

Local drunk.

History of harassment complaints that never went anywhere because Charming had always been better at ignoring women than protecting them.

Happy found him behind a run-down bar just outside town.

The guy recognized immediately that he’d made a catastrophic mistake.

Especially when Happy approached wearing his kutte.

No smile.

No hurry.

Just death walking steadily closer.

Curtis backed up instinctively.

“Hey, man, I didn’t do nothin’—”

Happy punched him hard enough to drop him instantly.

The sound echoed sickeningly through the alley.

Curtis gasped, clutching his bleeding mouth.

Happy crouched slowly in front of him.

Calm.

Terrifyingly calm.

“You touched her.”

“I didn’t—”

Happy grabbed him by the throat and slammed his head against the brick wall.

Once.

Hard.

“You scared her.”

Curtis whimpered.

Happy felt absolutely nothing.

No guilt.

No hesitation.

Only rage.

Because he kept seeing your tear-streaked face buried against his chest.

Kept hearing your shaky breathing.

Happy leaned closer.

And quietly—almost conversationally—said:

“You ever look at her again…”

Curtis started crying immediately.

Actual tears.

Begging.

Happy’s expression never changed.

“They won’t find your body.”

The certainty in his voice broke something in the man completely.

Good.

Happy released him roughly.

Curtis collapsed coughing onto the pavement.

Then Happy stood.

Looked down at him one last time.

And realized something deeply inconvenient.

The violence hadn’t satisfied him.

Not fully.

Because what he’d really wanted—

What had actually been clawing at him for two straight days—

was you.

Your safety.

Your trust.

The feeling of you clinging to him.

Like he was home.

That realization followed him all the way back to the clubhouse.

You were sitting outside when his bike pulled in.

Waiting.

The second you saw him, you stood quickly.

Happy killed the engine.

For one moment neither of you moved.

Then you walked toward him fast enough that his chest tightened instinctively.

“You okay?”

The question hit him strangely hard.

Not “did you do it.”

Not “what happened.”

You okay?

Happy stared at you for a long second before nodding once.

“He won’t bother you again.”

Relief washed across your face so visibly it almost hurt to look at.

“Okay.”

That was it.

Just okay.

Because you trusted him.

Completely.

Happy got off the bike slowly.

You stayed close while he pulled off his gloves.

Your eyes caught on the blood across his knuckles immediately.

Tiny cuts.

Split skin.

Your face tightened.

“Happy…”

“Ain’t mine.”

You exhaled shakily.

Then, before he could process it, you reached for his hand carefully.

Happy froze.

Your fingers wrapped around his wrist gently as you inspected the bruising across his knuckles.

Such a small touch.

But it hit harder than violence ever did.

“You should clean these.”

Happy couldn’t stop staring at you.

At the softness in your expression. At the concern. At the way you held his hand like it wasn’t attached to someone dangerous.

You looked up suddenly and caught him staring.

The air shifted instantly.

Heavy.

Close.

Happy stepped toward you slowly.

Your breath caught.

“You ain’t scared of me,” he said quietly.

Not a question.

You frowned softly.

“Should I be?”

Probably.

But Happy found he didn’t want that.

Not from you.

Never from you.

He lifted one hand carefully.

Slower than a man like him had probably ever moved.

Giving you every chance to pull away.

Instead, you leaned into the touch immediately when his palm settled against your jaw.

Happy exhaled roughly.

Like that tiny movement undid him.

“You ran to me,” he murmured.

Your eyes searched his.

“I knew you’d protect me.”

That did it.

Completely.

Something fierce and aching cracked open inside his chest.

Happy lowered his forehead against yours carefully.

Like he still couldn’t believe you were real.

“You got no idea what that did to me.”

Your hands slid slowly up his chest, gripping the front of his kutte lightly.

And when you kissed him—

Soft.

Tentative.

Warm—

Happy made a low sound in his throat that almost sounded pained.

Then his arms wrapped around you fully.

Secure.

Certain.

One hand cradling the back of your head exactly the same way it had the night you came running to him terrified.

Only now he kissed you like he’d been holding it back for far too long.

Deep.

Intense.

Every ounce of restrained feeling finally surfacing all at once.

And when he finally pulled back, breathing rough, his thumb brushed beneath your eye gently.

“Mine now,” he muttered before he could stop himself.

You blinked once.

Then smiled softly enough to ruin him forever.

You were born in the shadow of Dragonstone’s smoking cliffs, the daughter of Rhaenyra and Daemon, though half the realm whispered otherwise. Your father was far across the Narrow Sea with Laena when you came screaming into the world, and by the time he returned, the truth had already been wrapped in layers of courtly half‑truths and political convenience.

So you grew up as Rhaenyra’s quiet, sharp‑eyed daughter, the one who preferred the company of scrolls and dragonkeepers to the court’s endless, poisonous chatter. And from the moment you could walk, you walked toward Vermithor.

The Bronze Fury had not taken a rider in generations. He was older than the halls of the Red Keep, older than the songs sung about him. Yet when you approached him—small, unafraid, your hand outstretched—he lowered his massive head and breathed you in like a long‑forgotten memory.

And he chose you.

The court never forgot that.

---

Aemond was twelve when he first saw you truly—standing in the training yard, your hair wind‑tangled, your cheeks flushed from a morning flight. Vermithor circled overhead, a bronze shadow blotting out the sun.

Aemond stared at you with something too intense for a boy his age.

Not admiration.

Not envy.

Something deeper.

Something hungry.

You laughed at something Jace said, and Aemond’s jaw tightened. He didn’t understand why it bothered him. He only knew that it did.

He watched you everywhere after that.

In the library, where you read Valyrian histories with your lips moving silently.

In the courtyard, where you practiced High Valyrian with your mother.

In the stables, where you fed Vermithor charred goat meat with gentle, steady hands.

He memorised you the way other boys memorised battle tales.

---

When he loses his eye, you are the only one who doesn’t look at him with pity or horror.

You look at him like he is still whole.

“Does it hurt?” you ask quietly when you visit him, your voice soft as ash.

“Yes,” he answers, because lying to you feels impossible.

You sit beside him, close enough that he can feel the warmth of you.

“Then let it hurt,” you say. “Pain is a forge. It makes us stronger.”

Aemond never forgets that.

He never forgets you.

---

You spend two years away—training, studying, learning the old ways of Valyria from the keepers who still remember them. When you return to King’s Landing at sixteen, you are no longer the quiet girl with ink‑stained fingers.

You are a dragonrider in truth.

Vermithor lands in the Dragonpit with a roar that shakes the stone, and you dismount with the confidence of someone who knows exactly who she is.

Aemond is waiting.

He shouldn’t be—he has no reason to be—but he is.

And when he sees you, something inside him snaps taut.

You are taller.

Stronger.

Your eyes burn like molten gold.

Your hair whips around you like a banner.

You look like fire made flesh.

And Aemond feels the heat of you like a physical thing.

“Cousin,” he says, bowing his head slightly.

“Aemond,” you answer, your voice steady, your gaze unwavering.

He feels seen.

He feels chosen.

He feels undone.

---

He seeks you out constantly

In the library.

In the training yard.

In the godswood.

On the ramparts overlooking Blackwater Bay.

He asks questions he never asks anyone else.

“What do you read?”

“What do you dream of?”

“What do you fear?”

And you answer him.

Because with Aemond, you never feel the need to hide.

---

During a late‑evening flight—Vermithor restless, Vhagar ancient and irritable. The two dragons spiral around each other above the cliffs, their roars echoing like thunder.

Aemond lands first, sliding off Vhagar with practiced ease. You land moments later, Vermithor’s wings kicking up a storm of dust and heat.

Aemond approaches you, breathless, exhilarated.

“They respect each other,” you say, watching the dragons settle. “Old power recognises old power.”

His gaze flicks to you.

“Is that what this is?” he asks softly. “Recognition?”

You meet his eye—his one remaining eye, sharp and bright and burning.

“Perhaps,” you say.

The wind whips your hair across your face. Aemond reaches out—hesitates—then gently tucks the strand behind your ear.

His fingers linger.

You don’t pull away.

---

It happens in the library, late at night, candles burning low.

You’re reading. He’s pretending to read.

“You are the only one who ever looked at me without seeing a monster,” he says suddenly, voice low.

You close your book.

“You are not a monster, Aemond.”

He swallows hard.

“You make me believe that.”

You step closer.

“You should believe it.”

He looks at you like you are the only light in a world full of shadows.

“I think of you,” he says, voice trembling with honesty he cannot stop. “More than I should.”

Your breath catches.

“Aemond…”

“I know,” he whispers. “But I cannot help it.”

---

The revelation happens during a council meeting—whispers, accusations, a slip of the tongue from someone who should have known better.

Daemon is your father.

Aemond hears it.

Aemond freezes.

You find him later in the training yard, sword abandoned, chest heaving.

“You lied,” he says, not angry—hurt.

“I didn’t know,” you answer. “Not until recently.”

He looks at you, searching your face for something—betrayal, distance, regret.

He finds none.

“You are still you,” he says finally, voice rough. “And I am still… whatever I am to you.”

You step closer.

“You are Aemond,” you say. “And that has always been enough.”

His breath shudders out of him.

---

You stand together on the cliffs above the sea, Vermithor and Vhagar curled below like sleeping mountains.

Aemond turns to you, the wind tugging at his cloak.

“Tell me,” he says quietly, “that I am not alone in this.”

You look at him—truly look—and realise you have been walking toward this moment for years.

“You are not alone,” you say.

Aemond exhales like he’s been holding his breath for half his life.

He steps closer.

You don’t move away.

His forehead rests gently against yours, a gesture intimate in its simplicity.

“Good,” he whispers. “Because I would burn the world before I lost you.”

You close your eyes, letting the warmth of him settle into your bones.

“You won’t lose me,” you say. “Not now. Not ever.”

Below, the dragons rumble in their sleep—ancient, knowing, approving.

And above them, two Targaryens stand together, bound by fire, forged by fate, and finally—finally—no longer afraid to choose each other.

ᴀʟʟ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ᴏᴡɴ - ɪ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴀʟʟᴏᴡ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏᴘʏ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋ.

You were already by the crib, a mug of coffee warm between your hands. You looked up as he slipped into the room, your eyes softening at the dark circles under his.

"Hey, handsome," you whispered, setting your mug down on the side table. "Survived the night?"

"Barely," Jack murmured back. He walked over, wrapping his arms around your waist and burying his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent. "Missed you, beautiful."

"Missed you too, Doctor." You tilted your head, kissing his cheek. "Say hi. She’s just waking up."

Jack smiled, pulling away to step over to the crib. Inside, your daughter was starting to stir. She blinked sleepily, her eyes rubbing against her fists until they landed right on Jack. Instantly, a tiny smile broke behind her pacifier.

"Daddy!" she screamed with a sleepy voice.

She immediately poked her hands up into the air, making her uppie arms.

Jack’s heart completely melted. He leaned over the railing, scooping her warm body up against his chest.

"Hi my beautiful girl," Jack whispered as he pressed a long kiss into her hair.

She let out a giggle, her hands immediately coming up to cup his face. Her fingers patted his cheeks, testing the rough morning stubble on his jaw. "S'atchy," she mumbled, but she didn't pull away. She leaned her forehead against his nose, rubbing it side to side in a sleepy greeting.

"Yeah, Daddy needs a shave, doesn't he?" Jack cooed, rocking her gently from side to side as she buried her face into his neck.

As he hoisted her a little higher, Jack noticed something else in the crib. A familiar fluffy brown teddy bear dressed in a miniature set of blue hospital scrubs with a very cute little stethoscope.

"Since when does she sleep with plushies?" Jack asked softly, turning to you with an arched eyebrow. "She usually kicks everything out the second she lays down."

You let out a soft laugh and wrapped your arms around his waist, leaning your head against his shoulder. Hearing your voice, your daughter reached one hand to pat your face, ensuring both of her favorite people were within arm's reach.

"She only sleeps with that one," you explained. "And only on specific nights. When you're on a night shift and you can't put her to bed, she gets incredibly restless. She sits by the door waiting for you."

Jack’s chest tightened. The guilt of the long hours at the hospital was a constant weight.

"So, I started giving her the bear on those nights," you continued, reaching out to smooth a stray curl away from your daughter's forehead. "I told her that whenever Daddy is at the hospital helping people, this guy is on duty to keep her safe until you get home. Now, she won't go to sleep without him when you're gone. I think it's her way of keeping you close until you come back."

Jack looked down at the scrubwearing bear on the mattress. He reached down with his free hand and picked up the plushie, holding it up so his daughter could see it.

"Who's this, sweet girl?" Jack asked her gently, shaking the bear's little paw. "Is this your helper?"

The toddler blinked sleepily at the bear, then looked right at Jack, her little thumb poking the bear as she nodded. She leaned her head back against his shoulder and pointed a tiny finger at the plushie.

"He's night dada," she mumbled softly, her voice muffled around her paci.

Jack froze. New emotions emerged at the realization that she considered the little bear her version of him when the sun went down.

"Night Dada, huh?" Jack pressed the plush bear gently into her arms, and she instantly hugged it tight against her chest, right alongside his own neck. "He takes good care of you when Daddy's at work?"

The toddler nodded and whispered. "Dad doctor."

He wrapped his free arm securely around you, needing the comfort of his family.

"Thank you," he whispered to you, leaning down to kiss your lips. "For being here for her when I can't."

⋆｡˚☤🩺✧˖°.｡⋆💉

Jack can’t help himself when his eyes trail behind your figure as you walk by him to the kitchen wearing a sundress, maybe in a bright color, purposefully making it hard to miss you. His sight isn't the only thing that follows you; his feet move in your direction, quickly coming up behind you to wrap a thick arm around your waist. You spin in his arm to face him, and his grip around you tightens, effectively pinning you to his chest, just enough so your breasts are squished against him.

“Hey there old man,” you greet him sweetly, almost with faux innocence, and your arms move to settle over his shoulders.

“Hey baby. Is this dress new?” He knows it’s new, he knows every single dress you have in your closet. He simply likes knowing you spent his money dressing yourself up.

“Mhm. I ordered it the other day with a couple of other things. Do you like it?” It’s hard to ignore you when you were looking at him with a flirty flare of your lashes and plump glossy lips.

Did he like it? It seems like a stupid question, but he was willing to indulge you just a bit.

Jack stays quiet but his eyes greedily rake over your body. The light blue fabric stretches almost too well. The deep cut of the lace neckline ends right by your sternum, the golden necklace he gifted you last year dangles as your breasts rise and fall with every breath you take. He can tell you weren’t wearing a bra underneath, his blood runs hot and rushes below the belt as your nipples poke through the material.

Yet that wasn’t the best part.

Taking a large hand, Jack palms the middle of your back and traces the length of your spine. He stops just a little bit before he hits your tailbone, digging his fingers to put some pressure before moving lower. His hand follows the curvature of your ass, grabbing a handful and giving you a loving squeeze. You laugh from the touch, stretching your back more so he can continue to grope you just the way you liked.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” his chuckle rumbles against your chest, and a smile creeps up onto his aged face.

“I like it a lot. It’s very pretty on you. You’re very pretty. Always are.”

Jack grins and leans forward to plant a kiss on your waiting lips. You expected him to pull away, but he only lavishes you with more attention. He kisses you again and again until your tongue curls around his, both of his hands now kneading your ass, he groans when you sigh happily against his mouth. He grips you harder and lifts one of your cheeks, and you gasp as he spreads your bare pussy just the slightest bit.

Of course, he also knew you weren't wearing any panties underneath.

“What time is brunch with the girls again?" 

"The reservation is for 12:30. I still need to fix my hair and find my shoes." You can sense Jack thinking, the cogs in his mind working overtime so he’d come up with a solution to the problem that was the growing bulge in his pants.

“You can spare a couple of minutes for me. Right, baby?” He kisses you once, attempting to coax you to agree with him, as if you needed any more convincing. “I want a taste of you before you go.”

The look in his eyes told you that he wasn’t suggesting. You merely bit your lip and nodded. A thrumming pulse beats under your warm skin, slowly building up between your legs, right where you needed him.

“Bed or couch?” As Jack listed your options, he kissed your neck and walked you backwards towards the living room, pawing at your hips and groping your chest.

“Couch is closer," your voice shakes and you clutch the back of Jack's head to steady yourself. He gets close enough to the couch to gesture at you to sit and lean back on the cushions, grabbing a spare pillow to place under your hips as he gets comfortable to lay down in front of you.

"I only need 5 minutes, then I'll drop you off. I promise."

He was already getting your dress out of the way and impatiently kissing on your inner thigh, mouthing at your hip and pubic bone, so close to his target he could practically taste it. He didn’t even hear you say yes before he dove in head first between your legs, lapping away at your sweetness with a satisfied moan and a roll of his eyes. You let him take what he needed, digging your nails into the graying curls you loved so much and shifted your hips to grind into his mouth, giving yourself to him until his craving was sated.

You arrived at brunch only a few minutes late thanks to Jack driving faster than usual. As he rolled up to the driveway of the brunch spot and kissed you one last time, you could still taste yourself on his lips. From the gleam in his eyes and his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, he was well aware of that, and wasn't too bothered by it. In fact, he was probably a little too happy for your liking. Though the two orgasms he gave you earlier and the rasp of his stubble on the skin of your inner thighs certainly worked in his favor.

"Text me when you're ready for me to pick you up," Jack says, caressing the side of your cheek before he has to let you go. "Don’t get into too much trouble."

"I’ll be good, Jack. I promise." With one last smooch, you exited the car and made your way into the restaurant, with Jack happily watching your ass jiggle as you walked away from him.

He hates to see you leave him, but man, did he love watching you go.

He pulls you in closer, spooning you in the bed with the furs atop the both of you. His hand is hot to the touch and large and firm against your stomach to keep you there. You have a tendency to squirm. 

"'S just an evening chill. It will pass," he murmurs low in your ear. 

"Every night?" You huff, emphasizing your point with a shift of your hips. 

He groans lowly when your ass presses against his length. His arm wraps around you tighter until you're utterly stuck in his hold. "If you'd hold still, I could share my warmth with you. As I do every night you whine."

Truth be told, he sweats under the heavy furs every night. You had insisted on them, and he wanted to sleep with you. Small price to pay, he tells himself. 

Especially when you'd finally fall asleep and unconsciously curl into his side. 

"I do not whine," you proceed to whine.

You go to say more, but you hear and feel his low chuckling. 

You huff, pulling his hand off of you. You make a dramatic show of scooting to the other side of the bed. It's cold. You ignore it at first. You can't show weakness. 

But his laughing doesn't stop. "My stubborn girl. C'mere."

But you don't move. You throw one glare his way then turn your back and pull the cold covers tight around you.

It's silence as his laughter settles. "C'mon," he finally settles on. "Don't want my southern flower wilting in the cold tonight. Come back now."

"I'm sleeping here."

He sighs, though it's full of love. "You're angry with me?"

"Yes."

"Mm. Cold?"

"Yes."

"Ah. Quite the predicament." He runs a hand over his growing stubble. "If I apologize, is that enough to make you come back over here?"

You pause. Turn to look over your shoulder at him. "Maybe."

"Forgive me then," he coos. 

Even in the dark, you can see the glimmer of amusement in his hazy colored eyes. But you have no fight left in you and you're cold.

So you let him scoop you back up and drag you across the bed until you're right back where you started. 

And now that you think about it, it is a lot warmer against him like this. 

What were you complaining about again?

You sigh in content and close your eyes. 

"'S what I thought," he says to himself.

Your eyes open. "What?"

He doesn't pretend. "Good night, my love." He kisses the side of your head. "Sleep well."

…

"Father wrote me," you chirp, inviting yourself into your husband's solar. A neat letter laid in your hand with a familiar Lannister seal broken atop it. "He told me that his lioness is expecting cubs. Isn't that wonderful?"

Cregan looked up at him you from his paperwork. He blinked once. Then twice. "'S alright," he settled on. In truth, he didn't care of the news at all. 

Your face fell a bit. "Did you not hear me? Cubs."

"My love," he says carefully. "I care not for matters of those against the crown. I have permitted your brother's writings but I do not have to pretend I am overjoyed to hear of more lions that will be slaughtered should a battle commence."

You take a long time to think. You look back over the letter with a more tainted viewpoint than before. "They must be killed?"

"If he brings them into battle as Lannisters have done in the past, yes."

"Well." Your eyes water. "What if he does not? What if he keeps them hidden? Safe? As pets?"

"My darling love." He reached out his hand and drawls you to sit on his desk before him. He sighs and rubs at your hips. "A lion is no pet. They are unpredictable and dangerous. It is a strong house sigil. But to own them—"

"What of your direwolf?" You cry. "It is large and intimidating."

"Dark Night is uncaged. He proves no threat to me and my house. He can read me well. A lion cannot do that."

Big tears pool in your eyes and his heart immediately thumps harder. "My girl." He wipes them as they fall. "Ease your broken heart."

"They are only cubs." You hiccup and lean into his touch. "They have done no wrong."

"It is a curse, I know," he comforts. "Lots of things happen that way. Just the wrong place and the wrong time."

"Can I write? To Father. Can I tell him not to use them?"

Cregan knows exactly how this will go: You will beg Jason. He will lie and agree to ease your poor aching heart and to make Cregan no longer suspicious of the Lannister's war efforts.  Then, in battle, lions will be slain. 

It would happen regardless of what you wrote to your father.

He watched another tear fall down the tracks on your face from the previous ones. And he nods. 

You run off quickly to try to correct this and save the lives of innocent animals. 

He knows it's truly in vain. And when he or his men must kill them, he'll make sure you never hear of it.

But he knows it's the only way your little bleeding heart can sleep tonight.

….

Dark Night lays at your feet, nuzzling against your leg every now and then to get your attention. 

Cregan sits across from you. He's still looking over letters and pages, just in comfort outside of his solar. 

You still don't look up by the third time the dire wolf has nuzzled you. So he nips. 

You whimper. It didn't break skin or cause you tremendous pain. But it was a surprising prick.

Cregan barely looks at the thing and lets out a low growl from his throat to reprimand him.

Dark Night whines and lays down once more.

"Needy thing," he sighs with the shake of his head. "Scare you?"

You nod. "I do not like it when he does that."

"He's only playing. Is that right, boy?"

"Your Northern ideas of play are much harsher," you scoff. "I hate it."

He looks back to his letters. "You do not hate it."

"I do," you insist.

A small flicker of his eyes— swarming with mischief. "You do not hate Northern play."

You catch his meaning and flush. And he was right. This morning, you didn't seem to mind 'northern play' at all.

"You are all savages." You set your embroidery aside and stand. "Heartless and cold and… and…"

"Yes?" He grins.

"And… and I don't like it!"

You watch him do everything he can to hold back just how funny he thinks you are. He only gives a quirk of his brow. "You don't like it?"

"No," you snap. "And I don't like you! Or… your dog… or…" You look around. "Or this rug!"

"Oh?" He looks down at it— the bear skin rug from the animal he caught himself a few weeks after your wedding. "You told me you loved it."

"Well… I lied!" 

He watches you storm out, knowing you didn't mean a word you were saying. That was the Southerner in you talking. 

It made him want to coddle you more. Just to see what lengths you go to.

…

He let you sit and pout in your room for a while before coming to collect you.

He stood outside your closed door, sighing to himself. The things he did for love.

Opening the door, he saw you sitting on the floor in front of the hearth. You didn't look up at him. "And like that, the room is colder."

He scoffed. "Stubborn girl. C'mere and look at me."

"Why? So you can gloat?"

He stopped behind you. "You think I want to gloat?"

"No," you answer honestly. He'd never been one to think better of himself. That was one northern trait you did appreciate of him.

There's a tap of something hitting the table behind you and you turn.

There's a tray he'd just sat down. Lemon cakes and a nice glass of wine. Over the back of the settee he'd walked by was richly colored fabrics. 

"What is this?"

He shrugs. "If you don't want it, I can take it back—"

"Stop!" You sit up more now. "It can… it can stay."

His brow tilts. "Can I?"

You nod. 

He sits on the settee and waves his hand at you. You obey without a second thought, coming into his lap. 

"Thought about you," he admits, brushing your hair from your face. "I miss you during the day. Wish you'd visit me more often."

"They told me it was unbecoming of the Lady Stark to bother you while you work."

"Who told you that?"

You sigh. "Northerners. You know, my father let me speak to him at any time of the day in Casterly Rock."

"I know it," he agrees. "'S how you became so fucking spoiled." You grow defensive, but he quickly soothes it with a brush of his hand. "So are you going to visit me more or not, little garden rose?"

You hum in thought. "I will, but I have some requirements."

"Aye, I figured. Go on then. Name your terms." He pulls you closer, having a hand on your back to keep you from pulling away. "Tell me what you want."

"Well, I want a new dress to start. A brighter one of those fabrics. The colors here are too drab." 

He hums, nuzzling his nose against your neck now. 

"And I want… I want a horse of my own. I want to ride like I did at Casterly Rock."

"Too cold for you to ride," he murmurs. It makes a shiver go down your spine. 

"I want a northern horse and I want a heavy cloak so that I can, then." 

He lays a sloppy kiss against your throat. You squirm. "You're not listening to me," you whine.

"I am." He kisses. "Dresses and a horse." Another kiss. "A heavy cloak. What else?"

Your head grows dizzy when his scruff brushes against your skin. "I want…"

"Tell me what you want, wife," he whispers then kisses again. He nips lightly then soothes it with his tongue.

"I want… I want… new perfumes."

He groans at the thought and moves a meaty paw of his up into your hair to force your face up. "You'll have it."

He works across your neck and down to the place where it meets your shoulder. When you feel teeth there, you squirm and whimper. He groans out a 'good girl' when you let him finish the hickey you know will be there for at least a week.

He pulls his face away to look up at you now. His lips are swollen but there's a victory in his eyes. "Anything else?"

When you try to reach up touch the cooling spot at your shoulder, he intercepts and keeps your wrists in his hold. He looks the spot over. And at seeing the color beginning to pull, he grins. "Looks pretty," he tells you.

"And I want you to take me seriously."

The grin pulls into a knowing smile— bright and rare. "I take you very seriously, love."

"You don't! You… You're a brute."

"Mhm." He says as he looks you over.

"You're horrid. Just horrid."

"I know." He draws you in and slips his hands under you. 

You shriek when he picks you up suddenly. "And a barbarian!"

"The worst," he agrees as he carries you to the bed. "The worst I've ever seen."

"I hate the North!"

He plops you down on the furs, making you let out a small 'hmph.' Then, he knocks your knees apart with his own and leans over the bed until you feel his breath upon your face. "You don't hate the North," he purrs.

"No," you whisper back.

"You like the North very much, as barbaric as it is."

"I do."

He lays a kiss to your lips. "I know."

The horse, the dresses, all of it— yours.

He made sure you, his little sensitive southern flower, were the most spoiled thing in the Realm.

........................................................................................

Pittsburgh in late July was already decided by seven in the morning. The heat came up with the sun and didn't negotiate about it, that thick wet warmth a river city wore in summer, the kind that got into your clothes and the back of your throat and the flat silver surface of the Monongahela if you stood at the right angle to see it. We crossed to the far edge, where we always went. Years ago we'd started climbing through the safety bar to sit on the outer ledge, facing the city, a single step from a very long drop, and neither of us had ever said a word about why two grown men who'd spent their lives keeping people off ledges chose to sit on one. Robby ducked under the rail and lowered himself down. I followed. The view had stopped registering as a view a long time ago. I'd have noticed instantly if it changed yet I almost never noticed it at all.

Below us the city was already running. Traffic stacking on the bridges. A barge on the river, unbothered. A siren somewhere, then nothing.

Robby leaned back against the bar with the ease of a man who'd been doing this long enough to forget the height.

He didn't look at me, "tonight was your first shift with the other Dr. Abbott."

"Yeah."

He waited for my answer, shifting uncomfortably beside me in the one kind of silence he could stand, the kind that was waiting on someone else.

I looked at the river, "she did well," which was true and was not the whole sentence, and Robby had known me long enough to hear the part I left off. I tried to give him more of it anyway, "It's--she's--"

I stopped.

Like looking in a mirror.

I didn't say that. "She's carrying a lot under the surface," I said instead, "more than she lets out. But she worked clean all night. Didn't freeze until the MVC, and even then she came back fast," I paused, "considering."

"Considering," Robby said, in the tone of a man who knew more than I did and was deciding how much of it to spend, "that she lost a leg, took an honourable discharge, and has been hauling around God knows what since she got back?" He cut his eyes at me.

Honorable discharge.

I'd assumed. Sawyer hadn't put it in those words, but she would have told me if it was anything else. Hearing it stated flatly, from Robby, the way he stated things that were simply true, it landed somewhere.

"And she's got the face," he added.

"What face?"

He gestured at me, vaguely, the way you pointed at something too obvious to name, "that face."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"The almost-angry-but-actually-just-thinking face. The one you've worn since the day I met you. The one that makes a brand-new resident think you're about to fire them when really you're deciding between the turkey and the Italian."

"I do not--"

"You absolutely do," he wasn't unkind about it, he was never unkind about this kind of thing, "and she's got it. Plus the leg, plus the posture, plus Sawyer's fingerprints all over her career. Which makes her--"

"Don't."

"I'm observing."

"I know what you're observing."

"Then finish the sentence," he was taunting me.

I looked back at the river and let the quiet run. I'd have let it run all morning. There was a peace in it, in the darkness and the height and the not-talking, that I'd stopped trying to explain to people a long time ago. Robby was shifting again, ruthlessly restless. He never could just sit in it. Where I went quiet to find the bottom of something, he filled the silence before it could close over his head.

"I'm not anyone's pseudo-father figure," I broke it, "before you go there."

"I wasn't going there."

"You were thinking about it."

"I was thinking," Robby said, carefully, "that Sawyer pushed her the same way she pushed you. And that she looks at Sawyer the way you used to look at Sawyer."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I closed it and exhaled, "that's fair."

Down in the street a delivery truck pulled up and double-parked with the magnificent indifference of a vehicle that had given up caring what anyone thought of it.

"Has she told you anything?" Robby asked. "About what happened over there?"

"No. Sawyer gave me an outline. Said the rest was hers to give."

He nodded slowly. Then, in a different register, "I could tell you. I was in the meeting with Gloria. And you're her supervising physician, which technically means--"

"No."

He stopped.

The word had come out of me before I'd finished deciding it and once it was in the air I knew it was the right one.

"She tells me when she decides she wants to," I ran a hand down over my jaw, the stubble three days past where it should have been, "not because I read her file."

Robby looked at me for a moment. Then he looked back out at the water, "alright."

It was the alright he used when he respected something. I'd learned the difference between his alrights years ago.

The city kept moving under us. A small ferry crossing. The heat settling in for the day like it had nowhere better to be.

"I hope you and your mini-me are at least getting along," Robby said.

"Don't call her that," my head dropped back, eyes rolling at the sky, "she's not a mini-me. She's a colleague." I brought my eyes level with his and held them. Stern.

That's all she is.

"Mm-hm," Robby nodded, "whatever you say, brother."

I looked at him. He was staring at the skyline with the smug face of a man who'd won something small and was being gracious about it.

"You ready for today?" I asked.

He breathed out through his nose, long and slow, the exhale of someone whose tiredness had stopped being about sleep a long while back. The smug look he'd had on his face a second ago now skewed into something else. He rolled his shoulders once, a movement so worn-in it had stopped being a movement resembling something more like a tic.

"No," he paused, "but I'm here."

I looked at the river.

"Yeah," I said, "I get it."

Then he ducked back under the bar and turned for the door. I followed him in.

Your POV (Four Days Later)

It had been four days since your first shift.

The integration plan was a sequence somebody in administration had clearly felt good about: one shift, then a day, then a shift, then a day, and now you'd apparently "graduated" to the big leagues with two shifts back to back starting today.

Thrilling.

The day off after that first shift you had spent the way it demanded to be spent. On the couch in one of Adam's sweaters, prosthetic off, your residual limb tucked up under you. The folded burial flag held to your chest. His urn within arm's reach. His wedding band loose in your palm.

Not crying, at first. Just sitting with him. Holding the weight of the flag they'd handed you in the waiting room and letting the apartment go quiet around it. Then the crying started, soft and controlled, the kind you could still have talked through. Then it stopped. Then it came back louder, uglier, the snotting, wailing, fold-yourself-in-half kind that doesn't ask permission and doesn't take it back. Then quiet again. Not the gentle kind. The kind that sits down in the room with you and doesn't move, so complete you half wonder if you've gone deaf, if anything is still out there making sound at all.

Which was as close as you'd ever gotten to an honest definition of grief--not the crying, but what it leaves behind.

You'd been carrying his death close to a year. The weight was familiar. You knew its edges.

The burial flag was the new part. The fact of it. The formality of it. The way it had all happened out loud, in the lobby of The Pitt, at seven in the morning, in front of Dr. Shen, Dr. Ellis, Mateo, Dana, Dr. Abbot, and thirty people you'd barely met and were still quietly hoping to impress. That was what was new. Not that you were a widow. You'd known that.

It was that they knew it now.

That was the part you hadn't been ready for.

You sat with it anyway, because there was no alternative, and because you'd learned that most of the things you weren't ready for arrived on their own schedule.

Your second shift, the day after you'd re-grieved Adam on the couch, had been almost identical to the first. Same rhythm, same floor, same sense of learning the room from the inside. The medicine was the medicine. The rest of it was hospital geography, the names, the faces, the personalities that made up a department you were slowly being let into.

Dr. Trinity Santos you'd clocked early on, she was abrasive in the efficient way of someone who didn't have time for the social performance of not being abrasive, which you respected more than most people's warmth. She'd introduced you to Dr. Javadi, who looked young enough that you briefly checked the back of your own hands for age spots, and Dr. King, who went by Mel and had a quiet settled air of competence around her.

Santos had also been your source on the tall fair-skinned man with the blue eyes you'd hit like a door in the locker room on your first night. You described him to her and without blinking Santos spilled, "oh, that's Langdon. Frank Langdon. He was probably rushing off to pee in a cup." There was, apparently, a story involving benzos the prior year. Santos offered more. You decided you didn't need it.

Then there was Dr. Huckleberry, who looked like her was in the early stages of realizing the job was harder than the degree had implied. You couldn't help but have a soft spot for the poorbguy, even when, especially when, he had the misfortune of a name like Huckleberry.

Today, just under two hours before your third shift, you were on the couch with your good leg tucked under you, looking at the bookshelf.

The afternoon light had moved across the room making its way towards Adam's frames, the three of them in a row, his face waiting to catch the golden beams the same way it used to catch them over the base perimeter in Salerno.

You were just sitting with him. Letting yourself appreciate that he had somewhere to be now. A spot on the bookshelf dedicated to just him.

The funeral came back without warning. Arriving in your body before it arrived in your mind, a tightness behind your sternum, a coldness in your hands, and then you were there.

You were in a wheelchair.

You were so ashamed of it. You'd spent a career around people who needed them and felt nothing but tenderness toward every single one. Now that you were the one in it, things were different. The visibility of it. The way it announced that something bad had happened to you in a room where everyone already knew tragedy had struck.

Though nobody knew the shape of it, so they filled in the shape with the chair.

You spoke to almost no one. Tissue pressed to your nose rubbed raw. It wasn't hard to avoid people, because most of them took one look at the chair, at the face you were wearing, the shell of a woman who had been allowed to fall in love and know him just long enough to start a life before it was ripped out of her grasp, and decided, mercifully, to let you be.

Some greeted you anyway.

His parents stood with you and took the condolences you couldn't, a buffer made of his family.

His mother's face you would carry for the rest of your life. She put her hand against your cheek and held it there, the way a mother touched someone she had decided to claim. In that one touch was the whole of her. A woman who had raised a son into someone extraordinary and was trying to hold on to every last thing that had ever defined him, including you. "He's my boy. I can only imagine what this is doing to you, and I am so sorry, sweetheart." She didn't say it out loud, she didn't have to.

At the ash distribution, held in a smaller room after the service, she asked you, quietly, if you remembered what he'd wanted.

Your voice went flat. Tears ran silent down past your raw cheeks into the puddle they'd already made in your lap, "he wanted to go everywhere."

His father laughed, a short wet sound. His mother smiled the smile of a woman who was not surprised. Not even slightly.

It had been his idea. He'd brought it up out of nowhere, no lead-in, no occasion to attach it to. But there was nothing casual about it. He said it directly, without dressing it up, like he'd been carrying it quietly for a while and had simply decided it was time to say it out loud.

You were sitting on the perimeter wall in the late afternoon, the base laid out below in the long orange of the desert evening. Adam on his back along the wide concrete ledge, one arm behind his head, watching the sky change. You sitting with your knees pulled to your chest, watching the same sky from a slightly different angle.

The two of you, forever doing the same thing in slightly different ways.

He'd been quiet a while. Long enough that you knew something was coming.

"Hey," he said, not looking over.

"Hmm."

"If anything ever happens to me--"

"Adam."

"I mean it. Just--"

"I don't want to have this conversation."

"I know," he turned his head and gave you that look he had, the patient warm certain one, "but I do. For one second. Then we never talk about it again."

You looked at the horizon, "fine."

He looked back to the sky, "I want to go everywhere," he said simply. "That's it. I don't care about the ceremony, I don't care about the arrangements, I don't care about any of the official stuff. Your judgment's better than mine on all of that anyway." His mouth curved. "But wherever you go. Whatever missions, whatever trips, whatever the next idiotic mandatory redeployment to some base in Kuwait--"

"That was one tim--"

"Bring a little of me," he talked over you, easy, "just a tablespoon. Less, if you're flying carry-on. Spread it. Let me see it too."

You were quiet a long moment.

"Anywhere?"

"Anywhere."

"Kuwait?"

"I said anywhere, I meant anywhere."

You looked at him, admiring the profile of him against the orange, the comfort of a man fully at peace with what he'd just said.

"Okay," you agreed, thinking in the moment you would never have to follow through on this promise.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," you turned back to the horizon, "okay."

You were still looking at the sky when you heard it. The unmistakable click of a shutter, the quick flash going off behind you. You turned. He'd taken a photo of you against the sunset. Of course he had. He was already lowering the little camera with that look on his face. You smiled. You leaned over and kissed him.

He reached out without looking and found your hand. You let him hold it.

The photo with your head turned away was in front of you.

You'd come back to the present without quite registering how you got there. The small album that was only him, only the two of you, was open across your knees.

There you were against the sunset, twenty-something and unaware, the orange you'd grown to love behind you the exact orange you'd watched change a thousand times. The version of the sky he'd been looking at the second he decided to keep you forever in a four-by-six.

You had spread some of him at Salerno before they flew you out. Early morning, the wheelchair maneuvered somehow to the edge of the perimeter wall, your face turned up into that same sky. His ashes sat unceremoniously in your lap. You reached in and took just a small amount, because he'd already spent years there with you, and let it go into a gust of wind and sand.

You'd spread some of him in Washington too. The garden outside the rehabilitation unit where you'd spent most of the spring. Where you went every morning the weather allowed. A dry warm April afternoon, the garden empty except for you. Near the flowers you thought were most beautiful. Just a tablespoon, the way he'd wanted.

His parents had spread some in his hometown. They told you at Christmas, in a card written by his mother's hand, which you had read more times than you could count.

The urn on the shelf held what was left. About three-quarters of what you'd started with.

There was still so much of the world to show him.

The bookshelf had taken two days to get right. Not two full days. Two days the way a thing took two days when you did it slowly on purpose, when the doing was as much the point as the finished product.

You'd started at the bottom and built up. A sequence. A structure. Something that would hold.

The shelf itself was solid wood, thick and dark, the kind that didn't complain when you set something heavy on it. One of Kalista's finds, bought your second week and left standing empty too long.

It wasn't empty now.

The bottom shelf you'd given to the trailing plants, deep green things whose stems spilled over the edge and reached for the floor, soft and loose, growing with their own opinions about which direction to go.

Above that, your books. Medical texts you'd kept not because you needed them but because you might want them again, spines out, ordered by no system anyone but you could name.

Above that, the photo albums. First the ones of your family, then, medical school, the deployments, the whole life that existed in prints and Polaroids and glossy four-by-sixes, sorted roughly by date and event, but mostly by the private logic of memory.

You'd driven to a craft store for the right albums. Fitting the loose prints from Sawyer's package into pages one at a time had been a strange kind of therapy. Sad and funny and angry and nostalgic, the slow procession of every version of you there had ever been. All the faces you'd worn across all the years, arranged into something you could hold in your hands and call a life.

Until the whole shelf said what you needed it to say: This happened. Here is the proof.

Then the shelf for Adam.

You stood back and looked at it.

Three frames, arranged with the care of someone who'd thought about this for a long time.

The first was the Polaroid, framed properly now. Adam on promotion day, that contained proud smile, and if you tilted it toward the light at exactly the right angle, the faint ghost of his lips lived in the gloss. Your own kiss on the back was no longer visible, but you knew it was there, which was all you needed.

The second was the wedding photo, taken by someone you would never be able to name, though the angle gave them away as tall and patient and good with a lens. The two of you leaned into each other, foreheads nearly touching, both in your army uniforms because a base in a war zone didn't offer much in the way of venue and neither of you had cared even slightly. Confetti thrown by everyone who could be spared that afternoon, because Adam had always had the kind of friends who showed up. Both of you laughing at something that had happened a half-second before the shutter. Not posed. Caught. The best kind.

The third was him alone. A squad photo, flat midday light, looking straight down the barrel of the lens with the face he wore when he was wholly at ease. Not performing. Just there. Him as the subject. Him as the whole point of the frame.

Behind everything, standing upright against the back of the shelf, the folded triangle of his burial flag. Red and white stripes precise at the edges, the blue canton at the peak tight and even, bearing the full formal weight of what it was and what it had cost.

Beside the frames, tucked away but not invisible, his urn. Dark ceramic, plain, the way he'd have wanted it. Behind it, an incense holder you'd found and couldn't have explained wanting. A small pale-grey ceramic mountain with a channel carved into it so the smoke ran down instead of up, a slow grey waterfall pooling at the base. You'd sat and watched it the first time you lit it, this thing that fell when everything about smoke said it should rise, and found it, for reasons you couldn't get to words, exactly right.

On the shelf above, the dark oak box with ABBOTT engraved across the face of it in clean block letters, turned outward so anyone walking by could read it. Three small urns set around it. The worn little photo book of before, balanced half-open and standing upright against the side of the box.

Leafy green plants spilled over every edge. In the afternoon, as the sun crossed the back windows and started to fall, the light caught the whole thing and soaked it through with gold.

You'd sat and watched it happen the day before, eyes red and full, the warmth moving across the hardwood floor until it reached the shelf and lit everything from below with the unhurried certainty of something that had been doing this forever and intended to keep doing it.

You'd built something. Not a memorial, exactly. Not a shrine, in the sorrowful untouchable way the word wanted to mean. Something closer to a chair being pulled up to the table for someone who hadn't come yet.

A place in the room that said: These people were real. They are still real. They are allowed to be here.

You made one small adjustment. Stepped back. Made another. Checked it. Adjusted again, the way you'd checked sutures and field dressings and the seating of a tourniquet, until you were sure.

When it finally felt right you turned around.

Two envelopes sat on the coffee table. The last thing left. The final object in the apartment that wasn't put away, the last thing standing between you and being, officially, moved in. You'd shifted them off the bookshelf earlier in the week to make room, and now they sat one on top of the other with the patient air of things that had been waiting a long time.

Ninety-nine percent done. You've got this.

You took a slow breath and sat on the couch, both envelopes in front of you.

The larger one official, sealed with the finality of something that had passed through several sets of hands before yours. Sawyer's letter on top of it, smaller, one corner bent from weeks of being moved and not opened.

You picked up Sawyer's first. It felt more approachable. More like a person and less like a process.

You turned it lengthwise in your hands, an old habit, and tore the top in one clean line. You slid the pages out.

Her handwriting was tight, slanted, unmistakable.

Y/N, I've started this letter more times than I'll admit. Every time I get to the part where I try to be useful, I remember who I'm writing to. A doctor, a soldier, one of the most clear-eyed people I've ever known. And I remember you already know everything useful I could say. So I'm going to stop being useful and try to be honest instead, which I'm worse at. You changed something in me. I spent thirty years in a place that has opinions about feelings, that has a way of convincing you that you don't have any, that you handed them in at the recruiting office with your civilian clothes. I believed that for a long time. Then you walked into my unit, eighteen and furious about being underestimated, and it turned out I had something to feel after all. I won't write that I'm proud of you, because you'll read it in my voice and roll your eyes and it'll lose all meaning. But maybe you'll hear it anyway. When the report came through that eight people had been captured at the perimeter and I couldn't locate you, something in me knew. I need you to know I tried. I need you to know that trying wasn't enough, and I will carry that for the rest of my life. I have spent my whole career fixing things. I couldn't fix this one. You lost your leg. You lost Adam. And all I could do was stand on the other side of a desert and be too late. And "sorry" is too small a word for what I mean. You are alive. You are in Pittsburgh. You are starting over.

Which is the hardest thing a person is ever asked to do, and you are doing it whether or not it feels like it from the inside. I keep coming back to that. I have to. I have two things to ask of you: 1. Trust the place I sent you. 2. Trust the man on the ground. His name is Jack. I knew him before you were born (yes I'm old, save it) he is more like you than either of you is going to enjoy admitting. He has lost the things you've lost and he found a way through. Not cleanly, not quickly, not in a straight line. But through. Let him show you the parts of the map he's already walked. That's all I've got, kid. I love you. (Don't tell anyone.) Sawyer

You read it twice.

You didn't cry. Something settled in your chest instead, not happiness exactly, but a near neighbour of it. The warmth of being known inside and out by someone who chose you on purpose. The knowledge that far away, in a place you'd left behind, the people who shaped you were still standing in it, still holding their post.

You set the pages on the cushion beside you and let them sit.

Then you picked up the second envelope.

Heavier. Not dramatically, just the density of official things, of documents processed and filed and signed across several departments before they came to rest in your lap. You worked the flap. Inside, a stack clipped together, and clipped to the top of it a typed contents sheet, the kind someone generated so nothing important went missing in transit.

CONTENTS — HANDSCOMBE, ADAM J. / SGT DD Form 1300 (Report of Casualty) AR 15-6 investigation summary (redacted) SGLI disbursement record; beneficiary designations; death gratuity DIC reference Sealed: account credentials (see attached) Personal effects: 1 item

You went through it the way you'd been trained to go through anything. Top to bottom, no skipping.

The DD Form 1300 you didn't read. You'd seen it during discharge. His name in the field where his name went. His military identification number. The date and the place of his death. You set it aside.

The investigation summary you didn't read either. Portions of it had been read to you in a debrief. Portions of it you had given--your account of the twenty-seven days folded into the record in the clean passive grammar the Army used for the worst things that ever happened to a person. You set it on top of the form.

The financial packet. The accounts, the beneficiary lines filed the week you married, the gratuity and the DIC you'd already learned to navigate in Washington. A small sealed envelope inside the big one, labeled in someone's unfamiliar hand: passwords and accounts. You set it aside for a practical day.

Today wasn't that.

Then your fingers found something at the bottom that wasn't paper.

A small clear bag. Inside it, a flash drive. Black casing, no brand. A strip of masking tape along one side, three characters written in a hand you didn't recognize.

H2A

You held it in your palm.

Not on the contents sheet. Not official. Slipped in by someone, off the record, in handwriting that belonged to no one you could place.

Something in you started to reach toward what it might mean. You caught the thought before it could finish forming and set it somewhere you kept the things you couldn't get to yet. Not because you were afraid. Because you weren't ready to be right about it.

Not today. Not yet.

You set the drive aside, sealed, unplayed.

At the very bottom, a second clear evidence bag, this one sealed at the top. Inside it, two tags on a single chain.

Stamped metal, the edges worn soft from years against skin.

His name. His blood type. His religion.

You opened the bag and took them out.

You had your own set. You'd worn tags for ten years. You knew exactly what they weighed, knew the small cold sound the chain made pooling into a palm, the way the stamped letters caught under a thumbnail. None of that was unfamiliar.

What was unfamiliar was the arithmetic of it. That these were his, and that now they were yours, and the only reason both of those things could be true at once was that he was dead. The weight in your hand was the same weight it had always been, but everything around it had changed.

You sat with them for a while. No tears. Just the memory of him held quietly in both hands.

Then you got up, crossed to the bookshelf, and draped the chain over the corner of his frame. The squad photo, him looking straight out, wholly at ease. The chain settled against the wood. The tags hung against the glass, his face visible behind them and through them.

You stepped back.

There.

That's what had been missing.

The afternoon light had moved while you read. It sat at the foot of the bookshelf now, starting its slow climb, the gold rising the way it always rose, certain of exactly where it was going. You watched it find him. Warm beams pouring across his face the way they used to stream across yours at Salerno, except this time there was no camera--no click. Only you, and the room, and the light doing what light did.

You looked at the time. 5:56.

You had to go.

You turned to your room to change quickly and grab extra scrubs, your stethoscope and your bag. Contents mostly unchanged--an extra liner, backup shrinker, the ibuprofen that you shook into your palm and dry-swallowed before zipping the bag shut. Getting ahead of the swelling before twelve hours of standing made it a problem.

You opened the door to leave. No bye to Kalista tonight, her door was shut and the apartment was quiet on the other side of it. She was probably already out for the evening. You turned toward the elevator, the shift already starting to arrange itself in the back of your head. Tonight felt different from the first two. You weren't sure why yet.

God. How long does credentialing take?

The elevator doors binged and let you enter.

You parked on the third floor, still refusing the handicapped spaces on the ground level of the structure, the placard still buried in your bag where it would stay.

You had the whole night crew now, all of them confidently. The day shift you were maybe halfway through. You'd pick up a few more at handoff if the universe was cooperative.

You sat down on the bench in the locker room and dragged your hands down your face, scrubbing off the last day and a half of grief like it was something that could be physically removed. You did not like to let it surface in public. It didn't always cooperate, but the intention mattered. You pulled in a breath and pushed it out slow.

Then you reached down and rolled your left pant leg up to look at the sleeve. You had to tug hard on the scrubs to just barely see the mark. There on the inner thigh, where the top edge of the silicone suspension sleeve rolled up over the knee and onto the lower thigh, a welt was coming up red and angry along the line where the silicone met skin. The size and temperament of a friction burn, which was exactly what it was--an edge working the same patch of skin for hours, every step, a fit that had never been quite right and had gotten worse the longer you'd ignored it.

You knew the band-aid wouldn't hold under the sleeve. You knew it would bunch and slide and probably make things worse. You put it on anyway, smoothed it down with your thumb, and fought the pant leg back into place. It was a field fix. The kind you reached for when the right fix wasn't available, which lately was always.

You stood and crossed to the mirror. Turned the prosthetic a few different ways, checked the drape of the fabric, the line of the pant leg, the place where most people's eyes would go.

No visible sign of a fake leg.

You reached for the door.

It opened first.

A body came through with the full momentum of someone who'd badly misjudged the timing of an empty room, and you had half a second before his chest met your face. Two hands gripped your waist, certain and immediate, and you both stilled.

You looked up.

Hazel eyes, just slightly wide with surprise, the pupils adjusting to the new distance between you. Salt and pepper curls that fell just past his ears, faintly damp at the edges. A jaw that was defined and deliberately structured, maybe two days of silver-threaded stubble sitting well against it. The breadth of him across the shoulders and chest was something you registered at this distance whether you meant to or not, the scrub top pulling across it with the particular tension that happened when a frame had been built through use and the fabric hadn't been cut to accommodate it. His hands on your waist, large and certain, the grip already softening from a catch into something steadier.

He was not Adam's height. You registered that the way you registered it about everyone now, like a reflex, and then registered something underneath it: that you didn't mind. You put that second thing, unnamed, somewhere it couldn't cause trouble and left it.

A huff of air left you on contact. You had no idea what your own face was doing. His had already moved out of the surprise into something easier his grip had softening to a steadying hold, warm through the fabric of your top.

Normally, you would have had a line for this. A comeback, the reflexive volley you ran on anyone who gotten too close too fast. But you'd spent the last twenty minutes scraping a dead husband off the surface of yourself and came up empty. No line. No punchline. You just stood there in the half-circle of his embrace and let the silence go a beat too long.

"You with me, Abbott?" He waved a hand gently across your eyeline, "can't lose you this early into a shift." He stepped back, releasing your waist glancing at his watch. "It's 6:34. You've got time to pull yourself together if you--"

"I'm fine," you straightened, shoulders back, chin level. The automatic geometry of a soldier's posture. "Just," you stepped back too, giving him room to get to his locker, hands finding the stethoscope at your neck, "things can get tough. You know."

He turned from his locker to you, "that's vague," he said. And then nothing else, just waited, like he had all night and the rest of the week to talk about it.

"I finished his spot today," you said. You watched it land in him without a name attached, watched him fit it to the burial flag and the two soldiers and the 7 AM ceremony in the ED few days prior--he'd been there, he'd seen it. You didn't give him more than that. "It was tough."

A woman of many words, you were.

"Did it help?"

"Help what?"

He tilted his head, considering you, "we haven't talked much outside of the floor. I've been keeping my focus on the medicine, on getting you onboarded. That's the supervising part of the job," he shuffled through his locker, leaving a small pause, "but there's a part that isn't in the job description."

You shifted to face him, "what would we even talk about, off the floor?"

He looked at you like you'd said something faintly insulting, "when I lost my leg," he said, "I had someone. The whole way through. And it was," he caught your word and set it down carefully between you, "tough. But there was someone there every day for the practical things. The shower. The fit. The hundred small adjustments you make to a body that moves differently now." A brief pause. "That kind of help is not nothing. That was most of it, actually."

You held still.

"It's good that it's done," he went on, easier now, like he'd decided to risk something, "his spot. That's real work, finishing something like that," he shrugged, like it cost him nothing, which you suspected was untrue, "the part nobody warns you about is that finishing it doesn't mean it's over. It just means they have somewhere now. A shelf. A countertop. Somewhere in the room you can see them and can't change it. Somewhere they are allowed to be," what he said next was specific in a way that could only come from personal experience, "that's not nothing either," he turned to look you in the eyes, "I'm just trying to help."

You had your hand on the door.

And selfishly, because you were tired and hadn't finished grieving yet and didn't know what to do with the particular thing he'd just said, you said, "nothing will help."

True.

And you walked out.

Jack's POV

"Nothing will help," and the door snapped shut behind her.

I let out a breath in the now empty room.

I understood it. Really. When I lost Claire I'd been a disaster in ways I still didn't enjoy revisiting, and that was a different shape of loss entirely. Claire hadn't been in the service. Hadn't worked beside me. Hadn't died for a country in front of God and everyone. This woman had a lost limb stacked on top of a lost husband, and somewhere under all of it a story that the burial flag and ceremony had only sketched the outline of. I knew there was a floor to it. I hadn't reached it yet.

Her last shift, two days back, she'd done well. Same as the first. Still half-amazed by the supply rooms. Still reaching for a kit that wasn't on her body before she caught herself and recalibrated. I remembered the exact same disorientation, the phantom reach for equipment that didn't exist, learning all over again to trust that the room would answer. The medicine had been the same. The method had changed.

The problem wasn't her medicine.

How do I break into that?

Her walls were poured, not stacked. No visible gaps. She ran off exactly two settings: ruthlessly honest or ruthlessly avoidant, nothing in between, and I didn't know her well enough yet to read which one was load-bearing and which was the trap.

I'd never tried to reach someone from this particular angle before. In Kosovo, Sawyer and I had been the surrogate parents of a young squad, not in that way, never in that way, more like a brother and sister keeping a household from burning down--and Sawyer hadn't exactly been a fountain of emotional technique. But Sawyer knew this woman down to the foundation. If anyone had a crowbar, it was her.

I pulled out my phone before I left the locker room and typed.

The walls she's got up are concrete. You need to give me something. A seam, a soft spot, anything. Or this is going to take ten years I don't have. Throw me a bone, Sawyer.

I hit send, pocketed the phone, and went to work.

They were already gathered at the nursing station.

We had this thing that resembled tradition but fell closer to ritual. A huddle that hadn't started as a huddle but evolved into one over time, the way the best rituals did, accreting out of habit until somebody would've objected if it stopped. Practiced. Worn smooth. But tonight there was an addition to it whose presence made something in my chest shift in a way I hadn't named yet.

Maybe it was recognition. Maybe it was seeing my own posture standing across the room wearing a different face.

Robby said she had the same face I did. When I looked at her though, I saw more than stoicism. I saw the flicker behind her eyes that she'd gotten very good at covering. The tell. The small leak of pressure that said a person wasn't calm, just sealed, and that the seal had a rating it hadn't fully tested at yet.

She was mid-conversation with Santos, back turned to me.

I didn't mean to interrupt.

I interrupted.

"Nightcrawlers." I grabbed both ends of my stethoscope and slung it behind my neck and she turned. I did not miss Santos's small efficient eye-roll. "Quick one before you scatter. Cruz, night before last, witnessed an arrest in the waiting room, downtime was under two minutes because somebody was paying attention. Good compressions, early shock, ROSC on the floor before the rig was even cleared. That's the job. That's it exactly." A few nods. "Ellis, angioedema that went from a fat lip to a closed airway in about ninety seconds. Read it early, didn't wait for it to get ugly, surgically cleared the airway--clean. Patient is upstairs breathing through their own neck because she didn't blink." Ellis tipped her head. "That's two people who saw the problem before it was obvious, which is the entire game down here. Everybody else, match that."

I let it sit a beat, then leaned in.

"We're the nightcrawlers. We get the weirdest and the wildest. Because-!"

They came back without missing, "We are the weirdest and the wildest of them all!"

"That's right." I clapped once. "Go get some!"

"HOOAH!"

And to my right, just under everyone else's, a half-second behind and quieter, "hooah." I heard it. I tried not to look but my eyes found hers for exactly one second before I let go.

The huddle broke. She didn't move with them. She turned back to Santos.

"So his name isn't actually Huckleberry?" I couldn't see her face.

"Not technically, no," Santos said, with the long flat look you gave a dog you'd decided to put down, aimed across the bay at Whitaker.

"I can't believe you," she nudged Santos, "I called him that to his face."

Santos laughed louder than I'd ever heard her speak, "Dr. Huckleberry. I am absolutely using that. So, how's nights treating you?" her eyes moved up and over y/n's shoulder to me, because I was hovering, and I knew I was hovering, and I kept doing it.

"Um. Hi?" Santos said, eyebrow raised with an attitude.

"Hello." I replied, flat.

Y/n turned, the confusion on her face quickly bleeding into something nearer to curiosity.

"Hey," she said leaning a hip and an elbow against the desk, loose.

I haven't seen you lean before.

Not a large thing. It registered anyway, because you were always squared up, always standing like there was a sergeant somewhere behind you.

"You waiting on me?"

I tilted my head, "yeah. But if you're busy, you can find me."

"Oh, no, I think we're done," she glanced at Santos, "right?"

"Yep. Got a brand-new nickname to ruin somebody's night with and a stack of charts." Santos pushed off toward a free computer. "Later, 2.0."

Y/n's head dropped back and I watched her roll her eyes behind a closed lid, "why did I agree to that."

"What? You don't like it?" I stepped into the space Santos had left.

"No offence to your branding, but for the last decade I've been Abbot(t). The one and only. The original recipe," she made a small gesture, "now I've got a number after my name. It's strange."

"Hate to be the one to tell you this, but I knew Sawyer before she knew you. So technically you've always been the second Abbot(t)."

"Ha. Shut up," she knocked my shoulder with hers as we started for the board, "Sawyer never even mentioned you."

"Well," I put a hand flat over my chest and turned to her as we reached the board, "that hurts."

"Oh, come on," another eye-roll then her eyes came back to mine and her face did something deliberate, a put-on softness, a mock-tenderness, "you need a waaahmbulance?"

It got me. I laughed a real laugh--loud and full--loud enough to turn heads at the station. I shook it off looking at the floor while something in my stomach turned over quietly.

"I think I'm okay," I said, looking back up.

"You sure?" She still had the mockingly soft face on.

Her hands came up and her fingers settled at my left wrist, two of them on the inside, the lateral edge below the thumb, finding the radial pulse in a flat second. Her other hand braced my forearm. She didn't break eye contact. I could practically hear her counting through her eyes.

"Pulse is climbing," she said, the put-on softness shifting into something more genuine, "wait-" her brow drew, "it actually just shot up." She pulled my wrist closer to get a cleaner feel but I pulled my hand back.

"I'm fine," I said, "just keyed up for tonight."

That's true.

I tried to convince myself it was true. But my heart was doing things it had no business doing at quarter to seven, and the cleanest explanation available was the start of a shift, so I took it.

She looked at me a beat longer than that explanation needed, "whatever you say."

I didn't answer.

I looked at the board.

I was cherry-picking, I was allowed, it was a privilege of the position and one of the few perks that came with it. I ran my eye down the column until I found something I wanted.

My pocket buzzed.

Please let that be Sawyer.

"How about this," I said, "South 11. Twenties, called in blue. Sats reading low and not coming up on oxygen, but they're sitting up talking. No real distress to match the number."

"Sounds far-fetched," she said, "you think it's what I think it is?"

"If it is, I think I've got it in me," I started us walking.

We didn't talk for a few steps. I noticed her gait was off today, the specific hitch I recognized from the inside, the tell of a day when the leg was winning. Mine had been behaving lately. Good fit, low complaints.

Hers clearly wasn't.

"How are you doing with being on your feet twelve hours a day?" I asked.

"First of all, I don't have feet. I have a foot," deadpan, dead level, "second, fine. Some soreness. Nothing Tylenol and Advil won't handle."

She turned her face forward, shoulders set, chin up.

I wonder if that's what I look like.

"How's the prosthetic?"

I caught the start of a twist in her face before my peripheral vision lost the detail.

"It's a prosthetic," she said.

We reached South 11. I put my hand on the door and looked at her.

"And how's it fitting your residual limb?"

That got her.

She stared at me. I stared back. My hand stayed on the door--one of us was going to break first, and it wasn't going to be me. I kept my face out of angry, aimed it at curious, and hoped I'd landed it. Her face ran through a short sequence then settled, unfortunately, on exactly the expression Robby had named on the roof. The "almost-angry-but-actually-probably-thinking" scowl that we apparently shared.

Those walls are reinforced.

I let her win this one, turning to open the door tablet in hand.

The patient on the bed was dusky. The blue-grey you didn't see often and never forgot once you did. Lips and fingertips the wrong colour entirely, and yet sitting up, irritable, fully oriented, complaining mostly about the mask. The pulse ox glowed at 85 and would not move no matter what we did with the oxygen, which was the whole tell. The number wouldn't budge because the meter was reading a pigment that wasn't carrying anything.

"Saturation gap," she said quietly, half to herself, already there, "what's the gas show?"

A nurse had sent blood earlier. When it came back, the draw was the giveaway. Dark, the brown of old chocolate, the colour that meant the iron in the hemoglobin had been oxidized into a form that couldn't hold oxygen and wouldn't release what it had. Methaemoglobinaemia. Co-oximetry confirmed the level. Somewhere in the history was the cause: a numbing spray, a party favour, something topical that had quietly converted his blood chemistry out from under him.

"Methylene blue," I said, "one to two milligrams per kilo, IV, over five minutes."

She watched it go in. Watched the colour come back. The kid pinked up from the centre out as the dye performed its strange chemistry handing the hemoglobin its job back.

"Huh," she said soft, watching the line where blue became not-blue on his hand, "I've read about it. Never seen it in real life."

"They don't walk in often," I countersigned her order, "that's part of why I picked it. Wanted to see your face."

She gave me a look. But the corner of her mouth curved upward.

I filed that the way I'd been filing everything about her all night without quite admitting to the filing.

12:50 AM

"I NEED A GURNEY!!"

Her voice came through the ambulance bay doors and cut the department in half. Loud, square, pitched to carry to everyone who was listening, the voice you learned in places where being heard was the difference.

What stopped me wasn't the volume.

It was the blood.

It was all over her. Soaked into her hands, the dark saturated red of it covering them past the wrist. Sprayed in a fan across one cheekbone. Spattered across her neck, the black of her scrubs now a shade of burgundy that read almost invisible even under the bay lights, still obviously wet--a few drops still moving across her skin.

She'd gone outside for five minutes. She'd gone outside to breathe.

What happened out there?

Henderson was already running. My feet went before the thought finished. A gurney came up behind me with Mateo pushing it. I dropped back half a step to help guide it through the doors, then I saw the rest of it.

A man had walked to the entrance. The blood trail leading to him told the story--a long dark path from somewhere past the bay's edge, a stagger that had somehow covered at least 30 meters delivering him here. His abdomen was open. Not bleeding-from-a-wound open. Open. A transverse slash through the abdominal wall, his hands the only thing keeping the inside of him from becoming the outside. Loops of bowel pushing between his fingers, a fist of omentum visible between a gap, the dark red-brown shine of liver catching the light where the wall had given way. He was screaming. Screaming meant airway. Screaming meant pressure.

"Oh my god," Mateo breathed behind me.

She was already moving. "Trauma one. Two large-bore, sixteen-gauge, both ACs. Type and cross, four units to start, activate massive transfusion." One hand on the man's shoulder, guiding, her voice flat and fast and completely level over the top of his screaming, "Sir, we've got you. I need you to keep your hands exactly where they are. Don't push. Just hold," to the room, "nobody reduce it. Moist saline gauze, occlusive cover on top. Keep him warm. TXA on the clock, somebody get it drawn," then lower, to the man only, "you walked here. That was the hardest part. You already did it."

We got him through the doors and onto the table, the room filled around him. Henderson on the right line, Mateo running products, Ellis at the head with the airway kit. The monitor started giving numbers, none of them were good but they were numbers, which meant we still had something to work with.

"Pressure's 80 over 40 and dropping," Ellis called.

"Surgery is paged, scrubbing now, two minutes to the table," Henderson said.

She had the abdomen. Gauze down, soaked saline, her hands working under the man's and taking the weight off his grip with a gentleness that didn't look like speed and got everything done. Then her shoulders changed. I knew that change before she said anything.

"He's got an arterial bleeder in the mesentery," her voice dropped into the register people used when they'd stopped talking to the room and started talking to the problem. "Spurter. Upper mesenteric, I can see it pulsing. He's going to empty before surgery gets here. I can clamp it right now and buy him two minutes on the table instead of giving them a cod--"

"No."

She didn't stop. "Are you serious, he is bleeding faster than we can hang it, the pressure is telling yo--"

"No. You clamp blind into an eviscerated mesentery, you sacrifice bowel he might have kept, you contaminate the field that surgery needs clean--they are two minutes out," pressure infuser, products, keep him moving toward the table, it is the right call, the same call I'd make for anyone, "pressure and product. We get him there breathing and we let the people in the OR do the rest."

"He doesn't have two minutes," she had a Kelly clamp in her hand, God knows where she'd gotten it, her body already angling it, "I have done this in a tent with a headlamp. I can do it clean in eight secon--"

"You don't have privileges to do it at all."

"That's what you're worried about right now? Privileges? While he's bl--"

"ENOUGH! I AM THE ATTENDING." It came out loud and harsh, loud enough that it cut through the monitor and the screaming and everything else in the room, "your actions are my responsibility. Do not make me regret taking that on."

I was staring her down, she knew it, the room knew it.

Every head turned. Henderson's hands froze on the IV line. Ellis looked up from the airway. For one full second the only sounds were the monitor and the man's laboured breathing, and what I'd said sat in the air between us--not a military command, not a reflex, something more specific than that. A thing said in front of everyone that named exactly what this was and what it cost me.

She went still then straightened, slowly, and her face closed like a hatch. She peeled the gloves off, one and then the other, and placed them in the bin with a control that was somehow worse than throwing them. She gave me a look that I felt in my back teeth. Then she turned and walked out of trauma one, fast, but even when moving quickly I could see the limp. The leg winning in front of God and everyone. And she didn't slow down for it, didn't hide it and that was the part that got to me.

"Pressure infuser on the second unit," I said to Henderson, and put my eyes back on the man on the table, because there was a man on the table and he was the entire point. "TXA in. Where's surgery?"

"Doors," Ellis said.

They took him through 90 seconds later. Still bleeding, still breathing, still a patient and not yet a code. Which had been the whole argument. But it didn't make me feel like I'd won anything.

I came out of trauma one and made for the nursing desk, scanning the bay. She wasn't there.

Gone to change out of those blood soaked scrubs I bet.

I went to Lena and opened my mouth but she beat me to it, "you looking for Abbott 2.0?"

I nodded.

"Said she was getting clean scrubs. My money's on the locker room."

"You okay if I step off the floor a minute?" I asked, because I ran nights and it was a real question and not a courtesy.

"I think we'll survive. I'll page if it's a 911."

I nodded and turned off.

On the way I finally did what I'd been failing to do for hours and checked my phone.

One text from Sawyer.

She takes pictures. A lot of them. Digital camera and polaroids, no phones. Her father was a photographer, it's how she keeps people. She drives a thrice dead man's car and won't let it die. If you want a seam, Jack, it's the past, not the present. She'll defend and deny the present to death. But she's already mourned a lot of the past, so she'll let you near it. Don't be obvious. She'll smell obvious from across a room.

Print photos. Dead men's cars. She's attached to what she has lost.

I got to the locker room, badged in, pushed through. I went around the second bank to her locker. She was sitting on the bench, back to me, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. She didn't move. She knew it was me.

I didn't move either, for a moment.

She straightened without standing and turned half toward me. Still covered, the blood had dried dark on her neck and hands, soaked through the shoulder of her scrub top by the look of how much had set.

"I can't get into the shower," she said it calmly, like I hadn't just screamed at her in front of the whole department. She wouldn't look at me,"I brought extra scrubs. I didn't think about the shower."

I took a few steps toward her. She still didn't look.

"Want me to show you a very well-hidden secret?"

Her head came up. Those eyes I'd been failing not to stare into all night came with it. I sat down beside her.

"What kind of secret?"

"You have to agree to keep it a secret before I show you."

"What? Why?"

"Because if I show you and you haven't promised," I kept my voice flat, deadpan, "I'd have to kill you. That's the rule. Non-negotiable."

She looked at me for a beat, then almost despite herself, a smile. Close-lipped and tired but real, "how can I say no to that?"

"You can't. Follow me. Bring your stuff."

We left the locker room, her bag over her shoulder. I led.

Third floor, a couple of turns most people never took just past Respiratory, past the back of the old materials-management corridor, down the route that went nowhere on any current floor plan in this building. I nodded at the two people we passed because I knew everyone here, which was its own kind of camouflage. Down a hallway that narrowed and went dim and finally just ended. Two supply carts parked against the wall and a janitor's closet, the kind of dead end that collected forgotten things and asked no questions about them.

She turned a slow circle. "Where are we?"

"Remember. You promised."

She raised her left hand and drew an X over her heart with her right index finger, "scouts honour."

I motioned her to the side and walked toward the door marked Maintenance 3B. She followed, eyes moving around the dead end the way someone looked at a place when they were trying to understand what they were missing. I tapped the panel the sign was mounted on. It shifted slightly, the whole face of it swinging out on a hinge that nobody would ever find if they weren't looking for it, and there behind it was the sign that had been there originally, before whoever redrew the floor maps decided this hallway didn't exist anymore.

A handicapped accessibility symbol. The small white figure on blue, slightly dusty, completely unbothered by the years it had spent hidden behind a maintenance placard.

She went still.

Then the smile broke across her face, wide and open and entirely unguarded, the kind I hadn't seen from her yet and wasn't prepared for, and I held up the key before she could say anything.

"Oh my god," she said, and stepped forward. Shock and awe in equal measure and something that looked, just for a second, like genuine delight.

"Accessible call room," I said, "left off the floor map years ago, after some minor renovations and somebody redrew the layout never putting it back. I found it by accident one night looking for somewhere quiet to not exist for twenty minutes," I held up the key, "and before you decide I'm some kind of phantom of the opera, anyone with the right credentials could pull a key for the call rooms. There's no magic. I've just been the only one who knows this one exists. And I've been careful about keeping it that way," I unlocked it and swung it open, "I'm just an adrenaline junkie who works too much and needs somewhere to crash that nobody can find. That's it."

That was not it. Not the whole of it anyways.

She followed me in and I shut the door behind us.

Inside: a single bed instead of the usual four. A private bathroom with a real shower, a built-in chair, a sink with an outlet beside it. I'd made it a little mine over the years. New sheets had been the first thing, a charger in the outlet, a spare stethoscope on the hook by the door and a half-read paperback on the nightstand.

Even Robby didn't know about this room.

"What is this palace?" her voice raised at the question.

"It's my secret. Now it's our secret," I turned and found her eyes and held them. She was still smiling it was just more contained now. "There's a shower chair in there. Soap, shampoo, all of the good stuff. It's mine though so you're going to come out smelling like a man, but you've got bigger complaints right now, so," I kept it light on purpose. "there's lotion on the shelf too. The good kind. For the limb."

"The good kind? What do you mean?"

Now I was confused, "what do you mean what do I mean?"

"For the limb?"

"Yea the good lotion doesn't just sit on the surface, it absorbs, keeps the skin from breaking down where the liner pulls against it," I said it like it was weather, "you put it on after you doff every time, like brushing your teeth."

She tilted her head slightly.

"Taking the leg off," I clarified. "Donning is putting it on. Doffing is taking it off. Standard terminology."

Her face filled with recognition, "Yeah... I don't do that."

I gave her a look, "you don't doff, or don't put lotion on?"

"The lotion. It's--" she shrugged one shoulder, "it's not for me."

"Not for you?" I looked at her steadily. "You don't have a foot. The list of things that get to be "not for you" has gotten shorter, whether or not you've accepted that."

"Well, I still don't."

"Maybe that's why you've been limping all night."

That earned me an eye-roll and a pointed limp over to the bed, where she sat down with an audible hmph.

"I've been limping," she said, "because this sleeve," she gestured at the prosthetic with pointed irritation, "digs into me. And some days I cannot stand it."

"Let me see."

Her brows pulled together, "What? No."

"Look I'm not trying to push," I kept my voice even, "but you are clearly in pain, and I am the only person in this building who has been through anything remotely similar. My first prosthetic was a disaster. Yours will be too unless someone looks at it. That's not an opinion. That's just the sequence these things follow."

Her face, the thinking scowl we apparently both owned, softened at the edges.

"So let me see," I held her gaze and didn't look away, "let me help." It came out quieter than I intended and more honest than I planned.

She sighed muttering something under her breath that I didn't try to catch. Then she nodded at the floor, which was the closest thing to a yes that I was going to get.

She reached down and grabbed the hem of her scrub pants rolling it upward. But the fabric bunched at the knee coming to a halt. She tugged once, hard, it still wouldn't clear the socket. She tried again, pulling with both hands now but the pant leg refused to give. I watched her jaw tighten at the indignity of it, this small ordinary thing that should have taken three seconds just wouldn't cooperate.

She let go. Looked at her lap. Didn't look at me.

"It's further up than that," she said, "the mark."

"Do you have something to change into in that bag?"

"Just another pair of scrubs."

"I'll step out. Cover yourself with the blanket." I was already heading for the door. Professional. Clinical. The same register I'd use with any patient.

She made another comment quietly, something along the lines of "this is ridiculous," but she agreed.

I stepped out.

I went to the supply rack in the corridor to grab a few things: non-adherent pads, a roll of soft gauze, tape, antiseptic solution, the things you used to dress a friction wound cleanly before anything else touched it. She was about to shower and she'd need the dressing after. I gathered it without overthinking.

I knocked as I came back in.

She was sitting on the bed half-turned away from me, reaching for something on the far corner of the mattress. My book. The black scrub top was gone she was in just an athletic shirt now, burgundy, and lifting with the lean, riding up from her waist. She hadn't put the blanket across her lap. Instead the new scrub pants were folded in half, a small rectangle of fabric sitting just above where a low waistband would fall, and with the way she was turned they were not covering what they were meant to cover.

I couldn't look away. The slope of her waist, the curve of her hip falling away from it and where the fabric ended and her skin didn't, a black lace thong, thin enough that it was less a garment and more a suggestion, the dark edge of it sitting against her skin like a line drawn deliberately.

I tore my eyes away.

I did it fast, holding the dressings in my hands looking at them with the desired focus of a man reading the most important document of his life.

She hadn't noticed. She straightened back up, book in hand, and turned toward me.

I had my eyes up and my face composed by the time she did.

Half a second. Maybe less.

I set the supplies on the bed to her right. She had straightened back up. In her hand was my book, turned cover-out, facing me like evidence.

"Seriously," she said, "A Man Called Ove." She looked at it. Looked at me. Rolled her eyes with her whole face. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Ironic, right?" I kept my voice straight. "May as well have called it A Woman Called Y/N Abbott."

"Oh my god," she dropped her head back, "ugh," she stuck her tongue out and made a sound that was unmistakably fake-vomiting, brief and committed. She turned the book over once in her hands, looked at it one more time like it had personally offended her, then tossed it over her shoulder. It landed somewhere on the bed behind her. "

"You don't want to read that book. I promise you it is not very interesting."

"Something in me says that's not true," my eyes narrowed at her.

She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She closed it and gave me a look that was half offended and half something else she wasn't going to name.

I knelt down in front of her, "okay," I said, and motioned her forward.

She shifted to the edge of the bed and watched me with the wariness of someone about to let a person see the thing they didn't let people see.

I rolled my own right pant leg up in two motions and let her look. The pylon, the foot built for long shifts on hard floors, the whole unbeautiful, unhidden reality of it.

"I've got my own, this is nothing new to me. There's no version of this where I'm surprised," I reached for the suspension sleeve, "I'm going to take it off. You don't have to watch. Just let me."

She turned her face away. I caught the brightness at the lower edge of her eye before she turned it out of view--the brimming that hadn't fallen yet.

I worked with the precision and care the moment required. Released the suspension and eased the socket off the residual limb slowly, supporting the weight of it, not letting it drop. Then I rolled the liner off inside-out the way you're supposed to, peeling rather than pulling. I took down the sock plies one at a time, then the sleeve rolling it down.

There it was.

It was a clean amputation. Military clean, the kind that came from a team that knew what it was doing under pressure. Sawyer had said infection.

Probably sepsis moving fast.

I could see the evidence of decision making. The doctor that amputated had likely gone several inches above where the tissue would have been compromised, sacrificing length to get clear margins, clean vascularized muscle for closure.

The right call.

The only call, if the infection was bad enough. I recognized the work, transtibial, well-shaped residual limb, the closure scar sitting where a military surgical team would put it, the kind of clean lines that came from people who had done this before and would do it again before the week was out.

I'd been laying on that table once. Different theatre, different team, same math.

I looked at it the way I looked at myself in the mirror on the hard mornings. Not with pity, not with anything that required a name, just with the recognition of someone who knew what it had cost to get here and what it cost every day after.

Then the rest of it came into focus.

The limb was angry. Red where the socket had pressed too long, the skin shiny and irritated along the socket lines. And there on the inner thigh, where the top edge of the sleeve had been working against the same patch of skin for hours with every step she'd taken, a blister had come up and burst. The skin around it raw. The band-aid placed earlier bunched uselessly off to one side.

"Who's been managing your adjustments?" I asked.

She took a sharp breath, "no one."

I looked up at her, then back at the limb, "is it okay if I touch you?"

She still had her face turned away. She let out a heavy breath and nodded, fast.

I put my hand to her skin carefully. Assessing the heat of it, the give around the blister, the alignment of where the socket had been sitting versus where it should sit. A poorly fit first socket with no adjustments, a stubborn patient who hadn't gone back for the dozens of small corrections any first prosthetic needed.

All of it fixable, which was almost the worst part of it, because it meant she'd been hurting for nothing.

"Okay," I said quietly, "first, this gets cleaned and dressed before anything else touches it. Shower and I'll take care of it after, while it's clean. Don't scrub it, just let the water run over it."

I'd set everything she'd need within reach and looked at her, at the turned-away face and the wet she wasn't letting fall.

"And then I'm taking you to my prosthetist. Not a referral you'll lose in your inbox. I'll drive you myself. Because this," I gestured at the raw welt on her thigh, "is not what it's supposed to feel like. It's fixable you've just deciding not to fix it."

She didn't answer. But she nodded a single tear falling before she could catch it--she wiped it before it cleared her jaw. Then pretended she hadn't. I let her have the pretending.

I helped her up and got her to the bathroom door where she took the wall and waved me off the rest of the way.

Which was right.

Which was hers to do.

The door shut and a moment later the water came on.

I sat back down on the edge of the bed letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Trying to capitalize on the unplanned escape from the ED I let my mind wander.

That was my mistake.

With my hands empty and the sound of the shower on the other side of the door, it came back. Not the blood, not the wound, not the limb I'd held with clean clinical hands and a clean clinical head.

The half-second I'd tried to forget.

The curve of her hip. The black lace at the edge of everything.

Coming back with no medicine in it at all, lighting something in my chest that had no right to be lit. The same something that had kicked my pulse up under her fingers at the board, the thing I'd called "keyed up" because that was the nearest available lie.

Stop.

I dragged a hand down over my face trying to wash the image from my mind.

She is half your age. She is your junior. She is a grieving widow you met three weeks ago who you are, at this exact moment, supervising.

I looked at the closed bathroom door, the water was still running.

She's a colleague.

I'd said it to Robby on the roof like it was a settled fact.

That's all she is.

I did not believe a single word of it.

I forced myself think of other things: the box score from Tuesday's game, the trade rumour I'd read about that morning. I replayed the game in my head.

I got approximately two innings in before the image of her ripped through my thoughts. And I let it because fighting it was getting me nowhere.

The specific, unhelpful, completely uninvited image of her that had lodged itself somewhere behind my eyes and showed no interest in leaving.

Her waist, the way it lead to the curve of her hip and the black lace sitting against her skin like it had been put there specifically to ruin my concentration.

I knew it hadn't been, which made it worse somehow, the total indifference of it. She hadn't been thinking about me at all. She was reaching for a book.

And I was sitting in a room I'd made my own years ago for the specific purpose of having somewhere quiet to think. Yet I was not thinking quietly about anything.

I stared at the wall.

The wall was not interesting enough.

The lace sitting soft against her skin, patient and vivid.

I gave up on the box score entirely.

I was still sitting in it when the door handle moved, then stopped.

"I don't want to put the scrub pants back on," her voice came through the door, careful, "can you close your eyes and I'll come sit?"

"Yeah," I said covering my eyes with both hands and shut them tight.

The irony was immediate. The second my eyes closed, she was right there.

The way her waist dipped. The black lace. The specific, unhelpful detail of all of it, uninvited, with absolutely nowhere to go.

Stop. Right now.

I heard the door open. Heard her navigate the space between, the careful sound of someone moving on one leg. Felt her weight settle beside me on the bed.

"Okay," she said. Her voice was smaller now. Almost scared.

I uncovered my eyes and moved to kneel in front of her.

She had the scrub pants folded across her lap again, this time slightly off centre. So slight that if I hadn't spent the last ten minutes consumed by the thought of that lace, it never would have registered. But I had, so it did.

The burgundy shirt from before was gone, replaced with one that looked exactly the same in every way except the colour, a deep navy. It pulled tight across her chest and shoulders the way shirts made entirely of spandex tended to. Leaving very little to the imagination of a man who was already working too hard to keep his imagination out of the room.

I looked at the wound.

The wound was the point. That was the only point. I am a doctor and she is, in this moment, my patient.

She was sitting with her hands loose in her lap and her face balanced somewhere between braced and exhausted.

I reached for the antiseptic and began cleaning the wound with deliberate, unhurried hands.

Very professional, very doctor-patient.

Those were the rules of this room and I intended to follow them.

Her skin beneath my fingers was soft. The kind of soft that arrived as a surprise, something you noted and set aside. I set it aside.

"This is going to sting," I said.

"It's already stinging."

"More, then."

She made a small sharp sound through her teeth as the antiseptic hit the raw skin. Then, as I worked, my thumb pressing firmly at the edge of where the sleeve had been sitting hardest, I found it, a deep tension knot in the muscle of the upper residual limb. The size and density of a month's worth of skipped adjustments and compensatory loading. Something that had been building silently under the skin without anyone pressing into it to find it.

I pressed into it.

"Ah! No, tha--" she flinched hard, "that hurts."

"I know. It's a tension knot. It's built up because the fit's been wrong and your muscles have been compensating for it. It needs to be worked out. It's going to hurt for about ten seconds."

"That's what everyone s--"

"Ten seconds. Trust me."

She went quiet.

I held the pressure, working in a slow deliberate circle. I felt the exact moment it began to shift, the muscle was slowly releasing what it had been holding.

Ten seconds. Maybe twelve.

She exhaled.

Long and loose, a low sound from somewhere deep in her chest. The kind that had nothing polite about it, the sound of something that had been held tight for a long time finally giving way all at once.

Her whole body dropped back against the bed. One arm went over her eyes. The scrub pants shifted with the movement and the hem of her athletic shirt rode up with the lean of her.

I could see the sharp jut of her iliac crest, the narrow strip of skin at her waist, the edge of black lace sat just above the mons.

Just sitting there. Not by design, just the geometry of a person who had stopped thinking about what position they were in.

I looked at the wound.

She shifted slightly, a small involuntary adjustment of comfort and I looked up.

I looked back at the wound.

She shifted again, settling and my eyes went up before I could tell them not to.

I looked at the wound. I kept working.

"Oh," she said, still to the ceiling. "Oh, god."

I said nothing. I kept my hands moving and said absolutely nothing and focused on the dressing with the intensity of a man whose entire career had prepared him for high-pressure situations and none of it for this one.

"How did you do that," she said.

"Tension knot," I said it too quickly, "you've probably got a few of them. That one's broken up now but the others won't work themselves out on their own." I reached for the non-adherent pad, "if you don't stay on top of them they only get worse."

"You have to show me how to do that myself."

"That's what the prosthetist is for."

"The prosthetist isn't here."

"No," I taped the last edge of the dressing, "they're not."

I sat back on my heels and looked at my work.

Clean. Covered. It would heal fine with a properly fitted socket and about a week of rest.

I looked at her. Still on her back, still staring at the ceiling with a shockingly peaceful expression. The folded pants doing a somewhat reduced job of covering her at this angle.

The lace at her waist is still visible.

You are a medical professional Jack.

I stood up and picked up the spent antiseptic wrapper from the floor.

My pager went off.

I looked at it.

911 — Trauma 2 — all attendings.

I looked at her.

"Go," she said, sitting up, already reaching for her prosthetic, "I'll be right behind you."

I picked up the packaging, "I'm serious about the prosthetist."

"I know."

"Not a suggestion."

"I know. Go."

I turned for the door. I was halfway through when she called.

"Dr. Abbot."

I looked back.

"Thank you," said quietly, directly, without dressing it up, "genuinely."

Something in my chest settled at the simplicity of it.

"Don't skip the lotion."

Then I went.

The rest of the shift went by in fragments.

A woman in her late twenties, abdominal pain she'd called heartburn with right shoulder pain she'd almost forgotten to mention.

Y/n asked about it first, before I could. When the answer came back she said, quietly and precisely.

"Diaphragmatic irritation. That's free fluid."

The FAST confirmed it--free fluid everywhere it shouldn't be. A ruptured ectopic, bleeding into her abdomen from a tube she hadn't known was compromised.

We had her in the OR in eleven minutes.

In the brief quiet after, I was reviewing the chart on the cart and became aware, at some point, that I'd stopped reading it.

I looked back at the board.

A while later, a young man brought in by friends who'd said he was drunk. Nystagmus running in a pattern that didn't match any intoxication I'd catalogued, ataxia, confusion, the specific triad of a brain being starved of something it had no way to produce on its own.

Y/n tilted her head, watched his eyes track for three full seconds, and said, "Wernicke's? Look at the ophthalmoplegia." I did.

She was right.

Thiamine 500 IV. Not Narcan. Not a psych hold.

She was right before I'd finished the differential, and she ran it cleanly without showing off about it, which was its own kind of impressive.

I stood back and let her work. I watched her with the attention I'd been paying her all night without fully accounting for it.

After that it didn't let up. Cases kept coming in waves. It was the kind of night where the board never fully cleared before the next ambulance called ahead. I'd lost count somewhere past fifteen. I'd lost count of her too, in the sense that I'd stopped tracking her every movement and started just feeling where she was in the room.

Then the board updated again.

A teenager was brought in by his roommates with a petechial rash that was still spreading when we first assessed him, non-blanching, his neck stiff, his temperature climbing fast. The photophobia was clear before we even dimmed the lights.

Meningococcemia.

No time to deliberate. She was already calling for the lumbar tray, already talking to the patient in the voice made for exactly this level of urgency, steady without being soft.

"I know it's scary. We're going to take care of you. Hold very still for me."

Ceftriaxone. Dexamethasone. ICU on the line. Contact precautions. Public health notified. The two of us moving around each other in the trauma bay with the coordination of people who'd been paying close attention to how the other one worked.

We got him upstairs.

In the hallway at one of the mobile units afterward I was supposed to be finishing a chart.

I was thinking about black lace against her skin.

She was walking away from me down the corridor toward the nurses' station and my eyes were already moving before I could stop them.

Shoulders.

Waist.

Lower.

I had stopped pretending I wasn't watching.

She turned back for a pen she'd left on the unit and caught my eyes exactly where they shouldn't have been.

Her expression moved through something dry to knowing in about half a second.

"Anything interesting back there?" she asked.

"Chart," I said. I looked at the chart.

"Mm-hm," she said turning back towards the station.

I looked at the chart very intently for several more seconds.

7:04 AM

The day team started filing in and the handoff assembled. I went through the board with Dana, flagged the ectopic for surgical follow-up, noted the meningococcemia admission. Handed off the overnight.

Y/n stood a few feet away doing the same with the incoming resident, professional and contained, the shower and clean scrubs covering everything the night had done to her.

I need to get out of here.

At 7:13 I came through the staff locker room doors and made my way down to the ED. I didn't normally rush out like this but I needed out of the building.

I was passing the nurses' station and she was still there, unmoved since I'd left, now talking to more than just the one resident. I jutted my chin at her, the small upward motion that passed for a greeting between people who'd spent enough time overseas.

It got her attention.

"Hey," I said, "good shift." Because it had been. That was true and she'd earned it.

But I needed to leave before I said something else.

"Prosthetist," I added, more pointed than I meant it, "I'll text you a time."

She tucked her chin--the same gesture back.

I adjusted my bag on my shoulder and left.

I was home by 8:15.

I stood in the kitchen reheating whatever was in the container on the second shelf because I couldn't remember what I'd made and didn't particularly care. I ate at the counter. Washed the container. Put it in the dishwasher.

Then I stood in the kitchen.

She's never called me Jack.

The thought arrived sideways with the quality of a detail you'd missed on a first read but suddenly couldn't let go of.

The whole shift, every exchange, every room we'd stood in together "Dr. Abbot," every time.

Professional.

The correct formal distance for a junior with a supervising attending.

"Dr. Abbot."

It echoed through my head--loose and low. I could almost hear her. I put the dish away and went to take a shower.

I moved through the routine of showering. Crutches against the wall where they always were, the angle worn into the habit of my hand by now. Sat on the tub edge, released the prosthetic, set it aside. Shower chair already in position, because it had been in position for years. Grab bar where it needed to be, non-slip mat, towel within reach. None of it required thought anymore. That had been the entire point of building it this way.

A cold shower was a sensible response to a long hot shift and an unreasonable amount of thinking about a woman I supervised.

It helped, the way cold showers helped--immediately and for approximately six minutes.

I got out. Dried off. Got into bed.

I stared at the ceiling.

The room held the quiet it always held. I'd made my peace with that quiet years ago. Right now it had a quality to it I couldn't attach to anything reasonable.

I thought about the box score. I thought about the rotation question for the next board meeting. I thought about Robby on the roof.

I thought about the lace.

The way it had just sat there. Plain and unbothered, like it had no idea what it was doing to me.

I told myself not to. Several times, in the specific internal register of a man who had made his position clear and expected compliance.

A decision had been made on a level I couldn't identify.

My hand moved, wrapping around myself. I let it. Because there was no version of stopping that felt like it belonged to me anymore.

Stop.

I didn't.

The image came back without invitation, and this time it didn't fade. It sharpened.

The black against her skin. The sound she'd made, low and unguarded, the sound of someone who'd lost control for one single second and hadn't known I was close enough to hear it.

My breath had already gone short and rough. My hand moved slow, at first.

I could picture her arching back. The line of her spine, the way her whole body would curve into it.

I quickened my pace, just a little.

Her falling back against the bed. The squirm of her hips, restless, the black lace shifting with it.

I was not gentle with myself. I had lost the patience for gentle.

The sound echoed in my head, low.

"Oh."

Then the rest of it followed, the thing I had no right to want but wanted anyway.

"Dr. Abbot."

That was mine. I'd added that. She had never called me anything else, not once, not all night, and some part of me had apparently been keeping score, because that was what came back to me now.

Her voice, my title--in a context that it had never existed in before.

Heat built, low and fast.

The mons. The lace. The iliac crest, the soft jut of it under my palm if my palm had been there. The squirm. The "oh."

I pressed my head back into the pillow, my mouth open, jaw tight.

I'd stopped pretending this wasn't happening. There was no way out of it now. There was only through, and through had already started, low in my throat, my breath laboured and building toward something I didn't have a name for yet.

Black Lace. A breath catching in her chest. The shape of her under that navy shirt.

All of it, half-formed and soaked with the ache of wanting her. Someone I had absolutely no business wanting, this badly, this soon, this completely--at all.

"Oh god," her long unraveling exhale, "Jack."

I had no right to imagine her moaning my name.

It pushed everything over the edge faster than I wanted. My head pressed back hard into the pillow, my whole body went tight, my back came up off the mattress.

"Fuuuuckk Y/--"

My breath went out of me all at once, ragged, release moving through me in a wave that left nothing behind but the quiet.

For one full second there was nothing else in the room. Nothing else in the world.

Just her.

Just the want.

Just the falling away of it.

I stared at the ceiling for a long time after that.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked the room.

A rhetorical question. I already knew.

I lay there for a moment, breathing, eyes closed. Then I reached for the shirt I'd discarded on the floor and wiped myself off and the whole thing, the heat of it, the want of it, collapsed instantly into something a great deal less poetic.

A man in his late forties, alone in his bed at eight in the morning, cleaning up after himself like a teenager who'd gotten caught by his own hand. I felt, distinctly, like fifteen-year-old. I felt like an idiot.

The ceiling offered nothing useful. Pittsburgh moved quietly outside, running its early morning routine. Completely unbothered by the fact that I was lying in my own bed having apparently misplaced every scrap of professional judgment I owned over a woman I had known for three weeks. Whose hands I had held while she bled and while she didn't, whose name I had been one syllable away from saying in the dark.

I closed my eyes.

Get it together.

Sleep did not come quickly.

AN: If you made it all the way through this one, thank you, genuinely. This chapter asked a lot of both of them (and a lot of me, lol), and I hope it landed the way I wanted it to.

The paint had once been Lime Gold, a particular saturated yellow-green that had probably turned heads off the lot in 1971 and now turned them for different reasons. Now chalky at the edges, paint lifting near the rear quarter panel in pale dry curls where the elements had found their way beneath it. Rust had set in along the wheel wells, patient and thorough. The chrome had gone dull, the brightwork reduced to a suggestion of itself. And the body carried dents the way a person carried old arguments, some of them yours, some of them Hunter's, some of them belonging to the decade the car had spent in storage where ordinary settling and neglect had done what neglect does.

You ran your thumb along the deepest dent as you reached her. It had been there since you were seventeen, and without meaning to, you were back in your grandparents house.

You were small. Small enough that the chair felt large, small enough that your feet did not quite reach the floor, small enough that you still thought of him as enormous even though in photographs from this time he is simply a regular-sized man with grey at his temples and a way of telling a story that made the room pay attention.

He was leaning back in his lounge chair, the one he always used, something in his expression had changed, from how it was when he talked about most things, to a more energetic version of himself reliving something from the past. Warmer. Like the story itself generated heat.

"I was twenty-two years old." He touched the centre of his glasses, pushing them up his face. "Your grandmother had just told me she was pregnant with your father and I had a car but it wasn't a family car. So I went to the lot, and as soon as I saw her," he pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead, one broad swipe of the back of his hand, "a 1971 Pontiac LeMans Safari in Lime Gold." He bellowed a laugh, loud enough that you heard it echo through the kitchen where you grandmother shift behind you. "She was mine."

You asked why he called the car she.

He looked at you over his glasses with the expression of a man who found the question both obvious and charming.

"Because you have to treat a car like a lady." He pointed at you with one finger, the way he did when he was making a point. "She'll take you anywhere you want to go. But you disrespect her, she'll leave you on the side of the road."

"Anyways," he restarted, after allowing himself a detour, "I drove straight from the dealership to pick up your grandmother." The smile that came was slower now, the specific one he reserved for stories about her. "She was standing on the front step when I pulled up."

He paused for effect.

"Arms crossed."

From the kitchen, your grandmother made a small sound, the kind that was not quite a laugh and did not pretend to be.

"We had a plan," he continued, with the tone of a man who had made peace with having abandoned the plan and never once regretted it. "Something sensible. Something practical. A family car, room in the back." He spread his hands. "And I came home with this. Lime Gold. Long as a boat."

He refused to repeat verbatim what she said about it. Every time anyone asked, he just laughed and waved it off, the gesture of a man who had won and could afford to be generous about the rest.

"What I will tell you," he said, "is that she came around."

Behind you, from the kitchen, your grandmother laughed, a real one, full, the sound of a woman laughing at a story she had heard so many times it had become less a story than a fact of life, something as familiar as the kitchen itself.

You stood in the bar parking lot with your thumb resting in the dent and let the memory go.

He died of a heart attack the year after your grandmother passed from a stroke. 

Your father said he died of a broken heart, that he had missed her so completely, missed her in such a specific and structural way, that the body that had been operating next to her for more than fifty years simply decided it was finished.

You are a doctor now. 

You know that's not how it works. 

You still believe it is true.

You opened the driver's door. It groaned, the way it had always groaned, like the low complaint of a hinge that had been in use for fifty-three years and had opinions about it.

The interior smelled like stale leather and time, the particular combination of dust and warmth that very old cars accumulated and never fully lost. Underneath it, something else that had no clean name, the residue of a family that had sat in this car together, of laughter and bad singing and your father saying, “we’re gonna arrive in style,” with the certainty of a man who meant it every time.

You glanced up at the sun visor before you sat fully.

The polaroid was still there. Tucked into the felt, held in place by decades of pressure, slightly yellowed at the edges and still perfectly itself: your grandparents standing beside the car, young, her laughing at something mid-sentence, his arm around her with the ease of a man who had already decided how the rest of his life was going to go. Your father was in her arms. Weeks old. Eyes shut. Entirely indifferent to the car.

You looked at it for a moment.

Then you looked at the gear shift.

Manual. Five-speed. The clutch pedal on the left, which had been a problem when you first got the car back, and then a different kind of problem after Washington. Left foot below the knee was functional for many things and for this particular mechanical action required relearning from the beginning--not the motion, but the feel. Feeling the bite point through carbon fibre was not the same as feeling it through flesh, and the first weeks back behind the wheel had been a specific and humbling education. 

You figured it out. You always figured it out.

You turned the key. The engine coughed, rattled, and caught with the low grumbling roar that had always been hers, rougher now, the sound of a machine that had been idle too long and was still clearing its throat.

I know. I gotta take you to a mechanic.

You let her warm up for a moment, then put her in gear and pulled out of the lot.

At the first red light you checked the rearview mirror.

The back seat was empty, but you wouldn’t have said the car felt empty. That was not the right word for it. It felt like a room does when the people who filled it are gone but the impression of them hasn't fully lifted yet. Not grief. Something more specific than grief. The particular sensation of being in a space where laughter used to live, where it had happened so many times the walls remembered it even if no one was there to hear it.

Your ninth birthday was the last time you’d all been together in the Pontiac.

You had not known that then. You were nine years old and it was your birthday and were pre-occupied with being newly nine.

Somewhere in the echo of this car, a smaller version of you was making the case of her life.

“Pllleeeeaaaasssee, Dad! Hunter got to steer on his birthday!”

You were on your knees, which was both theatrical and strategic. You had been planning this argument for months, since Hunter's fourteenth birthday, since you watched your father cave to the same request and unknowingly set the precedent. You had waited for your moment.

Your father was crouched down in front of you and tried to look firm. He had the face of a man attempting authority but not convincing either of them. He had already decided the moment you asked, thats the way it always happened. Whatever stern architecture he maintained with Hunter, with you and those eyes, he never stood a chance.

He opened the door and sat down.

“Sit on my lap. I do the gas and the brake.”

You had climbed in before he finished the sentence. The fairy wings from your costume, bent wire, thin nylon, three weeks past their prime, had gone directly into his face as you settled onto his lap and gripped the wheel with both hands. He did not say a word about the wings. You had the complete conviction of someone who has been waiting for exactly this moment and knows what to do with it.

“Put the pedal to the metal!”

He laughed. He was still laughing when he put the car in drive and helped guide you off the driveway and into the road, your hands on the wheel, his covering yours just enough without making it feel like you were in charge. He let you feel the weight of the wheel. The way the car moved.

And you drove.

The light changed.

You pulled forward.

The back seat remained empty in the rearview, and somewhere behind you, the shape of that birthday, the last one, sat in the car the way it always had. You had not known at nine--that last was about to gain new meaning. That the word would start to arrive differently in you, weighted and specific, collecting things it had no business holding.

You drove home.

The apartment building had a handicap space with your unit number painted in it. The space had come with the lease, arranged without your input, and you used it the way you did most things you had not chosen and could not practically argue with--without enthusiasm and with a resentment you acknowledged was not entirely rational and did not stop feeling.

You pulled in. Cut the engine.

Upstairs, the apartment was exactly as you had left it. The bathroom door was still closed. The hole in the lower cabinet was still there, the ghost of the burst face wash still faintly marking the wall above the tub. You stood in the doorway for one moment and looked at both of these things.

Then you turned away, changed into soft clothes, and brought your laptop to the couch.

863 unread emails. Jesus.

Eleven months... approximately. Eleven months of the world sending things into a void and not getting an answer back.

You scrolled.

The first hundred were exactly what you expected:

A clearance alert from the tactical gear brand you had ordered from twice before everything happened SALE ENDING TONIGHT!

Presumably the fourteenth time they had sent that particular subject line.

Three alerts from a scrubs retailer whose clearance section you had browsed one sleepless morning in the spring of 2024 and apparently never unsubscribed from.

A TRICARE service notification, No Action Required.

The AUSA Weekly Newsletter, subscribed in 2019, read perhaps twice.

Fifteen Army Times Digests.

None of them consecutive in the inbox because nothing in an inbox was consecutive, each one separated by something else.

A VA Claim Status Update you had filed six months ago and forgotten.

Next to a LinkedIn notification from someone whose name you recognised without a face attached.

A follow-up from the prosthetics clinic in Washington: Socket Fit Check-In – Please Respond. Sent six weeks after discharge.

You had not opened it then. You did not open it now.

Two emails from a Veterans' Peer Support Committee, subject lines about connection resources and benefits navigation.

Another scrubs sale.

You kept scrolling.

Then, deeper: names.

Amber. Three separate threads, three different dates. The first sent four days after your discharge from the Army. You did not open any of them.

Benson. Twice.

Gomez. Once, a month since you left. Subject: Checking in.

And then, a thread that made you stop. Lukas. The first message sent the week you arrived in Washington. The most recent from five days ago. Every week between, consistent as a clock. Subject: Still here. 

Just that, every time. No pressure, no escalating urgency. Just, still here. 47 emails in 47 weeks, none of them requiring anything from you in return.

You were going to respond to them.

Just not today.

Near the top of the queue, one day ago, from an address ending in @ptmc.org:

CONDITIONAL OFFER — Observer Physician, Emergency Medicine, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre.

You clicked it.

The language was clean and did not waste words:

Observer Physician, Provisional. Reporting structure: Dr. Jack Abbot, Senior Attending, Emergency Medicine. Minimum ninety-day observation period, subject to extension at departmental discretion.

Then the scope of practice during that period, laid out in plain terms.

Chart review and documentation: permitted, with required attending countersignature on every entry. Patient assessment: permitted under direct supervision. Procedural assistance: permitted with attending physically present. Independent clinical decisions: none. Independent ordering authority: none. Prescriptive authority: none.

Great. I'm a fucking intern again.

Two and a half years in the field. Clinical decisions made in under thirty seconds with whatever was at hand. Bilateral chest decompressions in the back of a moving vehicle, damage control surgeries in a tent, keeping people alive with whatever was in the gap between what you needed and what you had filled entirely by stubbornness and field improvisation. And now you required a countersignature on your documentation.

“You have to follow the rules of where you are.” UGH!

You had met him once, properly, for less than an hour, and he was already getting to you.

You read to the bottom. 

In-person signature required.  Contact Dr. Gloria Underwood, Director of Operations, at the number below.  Both Director Underwood and Chief Attending Dr. Michael Robinavitch would be in attendance at the signing meeting.  Please call at your earliest availability.

You set the laptop down.

Looked at the bookshelf.

Sawyer's letter was still there, still sealed, sitting where you had placed it the day the package arrived, the larger sealed envelope beside it. You had walked past both of them for too long.

You had not been able to open either one. Not because you were afraid, exactly. It was more specific than that, you had not been able to open them because doing so required something of you that you were not finished preparing for. The letter you wouldn't read until you'd gone through the photos first. All of them, the whole chronological box of them. You had only made it through perhaps a third of before you had to stop. You had not reached the end of it yet.

You looked at the envelopes a moment longer.

Then you picked up your phone, typed the number from the email, and pressed call.

It rang once.

Twice.

"Gloria Underwood." Clipped, efficient.

"Director Underwood." You kept your voice level. "This is Y/N Abbott."

A brief stillness on the line.

"Two T's," she said, and you could hear the smile in it.

"Two T's," you confirmed.

12 Days Later

The mirror in the front hallway was almost too large. It had come with the apartment and on most mornings you walked past it looking slightly to the left of your own reflection without deciding to. Tonight you were standing directly in front of it, which you were not finding pleasant.

Hospital-issue black scrubs. Off-white long-sleeve athletic shirt underneath, sleeves pushed to mid-forearm, which was where they were always going to end up anyway. The habit had calcified overseas. You spent years working in heat, in conditions that required rolling sleeves up dozens of times a shift until eventually you started every shift with them already rolled, a shirt that held the sleeve there without a second thought. You owned this shirt in six colours. The off-white was for tonight because it sat clean against the black. 

Dark grey New Balances. Broken in. Quiet-soled.

Hair secured at the back of your head, relaxed but anchored, not a single strand given the opportunity to fall into your field of vision.

Eyebrows filled in at the ends. Mascara. The ring on its chain sat below your collarbone, just under the neckline.

You reached up and lifted it, dropping the chain beneath your shirt. Gone. Hidden for no one to ask about.

You bent over to adjusted the left pant leg, then turned your remaining limb through two rotations, checking the socket's tracking. Checking the drape of the fabric.

Nothing visible.

You straightened.

The apartment was quiet behind you. And then, without deciding to, you started to relive the meeting.

The conference room at PTMC had been ordinary in the specific way that institutional spaces were ordinary, a rectangular table, a ring of chairs, a pitcher of water no one had touched, fluorescent overhead light that did its job without enthusiasm. You had registered all of this and sat down.

Gloria Underwood had been exactly what you expected. Efficient. Warm in the specific way of someone who understood that warmth was professionally useful and deployed it with precision. She had looked at you when you walked in and said, with a smile that was controlled at the edges, she understood you had already made something of an impression on the emergency department.

You had not asked her to elaborate. She elaborated anyway.

“I hesitated, initially, when I received Sergeant Major Sawyer's request, because of the incident in the ambulance,” she said. “That cannot happen again. I want to be clear with you about that.” Then, in the same register, “But Sawyer explained the context. I understand what you came from. And I have a great deal of respect for both.”

Dr. Michael Robinavitch had been to her left.

He looked like a man at the far end of something long. Not burned out--that implied a flame that had extinguished, and this was not that. It was more that he had been running on will and commitment for so long that the two had become indistinguishable from each other, that the part of him that wanted to be there and the part of him that had no choice had merged into a single continuous motion he no longer examined. His eyes were attentive in the way of someone whose attention was not free, who had to choose where to spend it. He had looked at you when you sat down and not looked away.

"Call me Robby," he said, about three minutes in.

You nodded. You were not going to call him "Robby". He was your superior officer in every practical sense except the name, and you had been trained for the better part of a decade to address rank correctly, and a conference room in Pittsburgh was not going to override that.

He looked at you for a moment with an expression that was entirely unreadable and then let it go.

Gloria opened a folder.

She went through it the way she might go through a shipping manifest: name, discharge status, training history, deployment record, functional designation, each item in the same even register, without adjusting her voice to indicate that some items carried more weight than others.

Then the medals.

“Purple Heart. Prisoner of War Medal. Combat Medical Badge. Bronze Star with Valour Device.” She read the citation language, “For actions taken during captivity, demonstrating conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in the face of enemy action. 27 days of unlawful detention. Following escape, attempted treatment and extraction of two fellow service members under hostile fire. Sole survivor.”

The room was quiet.

You looked at the table and kept your face still.

Robinavitch had gone very still beside her, the attentive quality of his gaze shifting into something else entirely, something you could not name because it was aimed inward.

Gloria moved forward. 

Dr. Osei's letter. Your PT's letter. Both landed on the same conclusion through different routes: "Re-entry, not immersion." "Structured, supervised, monitored." "She is not adjusting. She is functioning." 

Then Gloria closed the folder, set it to one side, and looked at you directly.

"The details discussed today remain between the three of us," she said. "I also received correspondence from Dr. Abbot, who confirmed his connection to Sergeant Major Sawyer and has indicated he would serve as your direct supervising physician." She set her pen down. "I imagine having a supervisor who has navigated something similar will be a useful support. For the adjustment."

Silence arrived in the room.

Not a long silence. Just long enough.

You looked at Robinavitch. He looked at you. His jaw shifted, just slightly, in the way of someone who has specifically chosen not to respond. Neither of you said anything. Both of you moved on.

The second half of the meeting had been paperwork, HR protocols, a brief conversation with the accommodations coordinator about the locker situation and the parking marker. Robinavitch had been quieter through all of it, present but not leading, watching more than he participated. You had caught him doing it twice. That specific quality of attention, holding on you a beat longer than the content of the meeting required, as if he had arrived at something and was keeping the conclusion to himself.

When you stood to leave he stood too, looked at you one more time with those tired, careful eyes, and said goodbye.

Three knocks at the door.

You did not need to check the peephole.

You opened it and there was Kalista, oversized sweatshirt, hair loose, nose still bandaged, the bruising had gone yellow at the edges. She looked significantly more like herself. She also already had her arms open.

Oh no.

"I wanted to come and wish you luck," she said, and had her arms around you before you finished processing the sentence.

You stood there for a moment, arms at your sides, but then you raised them and held on. She was slowly and systematically making a “hug person” out of you, without announcing it and without asking permission, and you had apparently decided somewhere along the way to let her.

You pulled back first and pressed two careful fingers along either side of the bridge of her nose, checking the tissue.

Swelling resolving on schedule, alignment holding.

"It's healing well," you told her.

"I better be." She released you entirely and walked directly into your apartment, heading for the kitchen with the easy authority of someone who had stopped asking permission somewhere around the third visit. "I've always wanted a nose job. I just wish I'd had some notice."

You followed her. "Maybe I shouldn't have turned my head."

She opened the freezer, found the ice pack. "Then we'd be matching."

"Your face is proportioned correctly. You didn't need a nose job."

"Perfectly proportioned," she corrected, and pressed the pack lightly to the bridge with the resigned competence of someone who had done this enough times to have developed technique. "So." Her tone shifted to the mode that performed seriousness without committing to it. "Since my nose is broken, and it is at least partially your fault-"

"HA! You told him I could take him in a fight. Not me."

"He punched me because of you."

"He punched you because he was taking steroids. That anger was a character trait that was already present before you rage baited him."

She blinked at you. You looked at the bag of chips she had opened on the counter and took one.

"Duly noted," she said, already smiling. "Sooo. You are going to find me a hot doctor? That is literally the minimum you owe me."

"I am not Meredith Grey."

"You work in a hospital-"

"Yeah, a hospital is a place where sick people come to receive clinical care."

She raised one eyebrow. Just the one.

You looked at her. She held the eyebrow. You both said it at the same time, "So pick me! Choose me! Love me!"

Then you were both laughing, the kind that arrived before you could organise it and didn't stop cleanly. She slapped your arm. You let her. When it settled you were both slightly breathless and the tightness that had been sitting in your chest since you woke up had been pushed into a smaller space for the moment.

You had watched the show for the first time in her hospital room the afternoon she was allowed visitors, mid-season, no context, just sat in the bedside chair and started watching from wherever she was. You had spent the first few episodes pointing at the screen every time the medicine was wrong. When you got home you had started from the beginning.

Overseas, bandwidth on the base was allocated for operations and communications. Entertainment moved on hard drives, shared and copied, never guaranteed. You had mostly listened to music. You had never watched the show before and had not noticed the absence, not until you sat in a hospital room in Pittsburgh and discovered that it was the exact right kind of ridiculous for the moment you were in.

You were now 31 episodes in and had no intention of stopping.

"You're going to be great tonight," Kalista said.

The straightforwardness of it found a gap in your defences that you had not accounted for. You were still getting used to receiving things like that.

"I appreciate it," you said, and meant it more than it came out.

You returned to the front door and reached for your bag and ran through it: extra liner, backup shrinker, water bottle, the compact first-aid kit that had lived in every bag you owned since 2016 without requiring a conscious decision, granola bars, stethoscope. You found the ibuprofen. Shook a pre-emptive dose into your palm, a doctor's calculation, not a patient's. Getting ahead of the swelling before twelve hours on your feet made it a problem.

You had not been on your feet for twelve hours sin-

The smell arrived first.

Thick, humid, the stale damp air of an enclosed space not designed for people to stay in, that held the moisture on the floor and walls and never released it. You knew the smell before you realized you were remembering it.

Your arms were above you, tied tight. They had been above you long enough that the ache had become geography. Your tank top was soaked through. Your field shirt was gone. Your boots were gone.

You were standing on both feet. You could feel the grit of the cement and dirt against the soles of your feet.

A man in front of you was yelling at you in a language you could not understand. He said it again, the same flat cadence.

“Please,” your voice was unrecognizable, “I don't know anything, I don't know.” 

His eyes moved downward. 

The screw was large. Maybe six inches in length, an inch in diameter. The kind of hardware meant for structural things, for load-bearing things, for things that were not supposed to move.

You had felt every inch of it.

It went in slowly. One turn at a time, the way you turned something when you wanted to be certain it would hold. You could feel the pressure arriving before the pain did, the tissue giving way in a sequence your body reported to your brain in real time with a specificity that was almost clinical, almost, except that you were the patient and there was no anaesthesia. The sound that came out of you hit the cement walls and came back with nowhere to go. You heard yourself. You could not stop it.

"Pleeeeaaase! STOP! Pleaaaaaseeee!"

By the third turn it had gone through the arch. Rust against flesh, metal against bone. Both sounds at once, intimate and impossible.

By the fifth rotation, it hit the floor.

You were pinned.

You blinked.

Pittsburgh. Your kitchen. The ibuprofen in your palm.

You shook your arms out, hard. 

Once. 

Twice.

The ghost of sensation was moving through your leg, the echo of pain firing along pathways that led nowhere now. You breathed through it.

One. Your keys on the counter.

Two. The plants in the front hallway.

Three. The pairs of shoes by the door.

Four- four-

"Well, I know it's going to be a great night," Kalista said, from right behind you.

You turned.

She was watching you with the quality of attention that was not pity, not alarm, not the terrible careful gentleness of people who had decided to treat you like something that required handling. She had seen the arms shaken out. She did not say anything about it. Her eyes just said: I see you. We're still here.

Your pupils were still adjusting. You could feel it.

"Thank you," you said.

You took the ibuprofen. Dry swallow. Then shouldered your bag.

Kalista put her hand briefly on your shoulder as you passed. "Don't forget… hot doctors."

The laugh that came out was small and real. "Goodnight, Kalista."

"See you tomorrow!"

You turned toward the elevator and watched the numbers change.

You took the route that ran past the river.

It was wide and flat and silver at this hour, the sky behind it still holding the last of the evening light. A thin burnt pink sitting low at the horizon, the water catching the sun spreading it out in long flat reflections that moved slowly with the current. Something about a body of water that size did something to your nervous system that you had never examined directly, only relied on. In Salerno when the sun had set over the base perimeter and you had always loved it. But there was no water, just sand and distance and the way the sky shifted into a rich orange before the dark of night fell. 

But this, this was different. 

This was Pittsburgh.

You kept driving.

The staff parking at PTMC was a concrete structure, six levels, attached to the hospital. You turned in and came around toward the ground level.

The handicap spaces were there, well-lit, clearly marked, empty, close to the stairwell door. The placard was in your bag, you could grab it and put it in place before you finished parking.

Nope.

You drove past.

Took the ramp. Third floor. Fourth row back from the stairwell.

You cut the engine and sat with the ticking quiet for a moment. The Pontiac, your car looked like an old, beaten, lived-in station wagon that had been run into the ground. Faded and dented and not worth a second glance from anyone who did not know what they were looking at.

You got out of the car and made your way towards the entrance.

Locker 25. End of the row, bench angling away to the left before it reached you, sightlines of the room would not naturally fall to this corner.

Some small fortunes still remained in the world.

You had one earbud in. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue came through low, the particular rhythm of it occupying the space where your thoughts would otherwise start running. Adam complained about this song every single time you played it. Too repetitive, he said. Always the same. You had played it specifically because of this opinion, which in retrospect was a slightly juvenile position. But now every song he had complained about was entirely yours, belonging to no conversation, answering to no one's preferences but your own.

The temporary code for your locker was 1-2-3-5-6-7.

Sawyer would have things to say about this.

You reset it: 0-8-1-2-9-6.

August 12, 1996. Adam's birthday. The same six digits you used for everything. Completely predictable to anyone who knew you. Sawyer would have had opinions about that too.

You loaded the locker. You keep the water bottle out, placed a granola bar into your left pocket and hooked your stethoscope around your neck. Then you checked your watch: 6:23 PM. 

Nice. I got lots of time to look around. 

You closed the locker and waited for the confirmation beep.

You made your way towards the door but it opened before you reached it, fast, full momentum, you had half a second before the impact. His chest met your face. Two hands caught the bend of your elbows, his grip certain and immediate, and you both stilled.

You looked up.

Tall. Fair skin, slightly flushed. Dark hair, almost black, and eyes that were a particular shade of blue that registered before anything else did, the kind that arrived in your visual field and simply sat there, certain of itself. He was looking down at you from a height that for a half-second, at this angle, in this light, was Adam's height.

Stop. Filed. Gone.

His breath was warm against your face. You could see a faint scar at the corner of his jaw, small, old, the kind that had been there long enough to be unremarkable to everyone but you in this particular second.

"Sorry," he said, on an exhale, and then he was past you. Three seconds to a locker across the room, something grabbed, three seconds back, clearing you without breaking pace, the door clicking shut behind him so fast you felt the shift in air pressure before the room settled.

You stood in the empty room.

Then you crossed to the full-length mirror. Just one final check, left pant leg, collar, ring tucked below the neckline. 

You reached for the door handle.

It opened again.

Unhurried this time.

Dr. Abbot walked through with a small duffel slung over one shoulder, the strap held in his left hand, his arm carrying it with the particular ease of someone who carried things with intention. You registered the forearm, the clean definition of the muscle there, the line of a vein along the inside of it, the kind of detail that arrived without invitation, and redirected your gaze to his face in the same motion.

He met your eyes. The corner of his mouth moved.

"Abbott." He let the door fall behind him. "You're early."

"You told me to be on time."

That got a small, genuine smile from him, brief and contained. He punched his code into his locker, back to you, opened it, dropped the duffel in with the efficiency of a routine. Then he closed it, turned, and sat down on the bench facing you.

The expression that settled over his face was deliberate. He had something specific he wanted to say and had thought about when to say it.

"I want to tell you something now," he said, "so you're not carrying a question around all shift." He held your gaze steadily. "Sawyer told me about your leg. Left, below the knee."

Every muscle in your body now frozen in place. 

He had said it the way doctors said things and the way soldiers said things, which were not always the same thing but in this case were, cleanly, directly, without softening it into something easier to hear than it was.

Your face did not move. Your mouth was closed. You were aware, distantly, that you did not have a response yet and were not sure what shape one would take.

"She told me because," He reached down. Rolled his right pant leg up in two efficient movements.

The prosthetic was functional and unornamented. A thing that had been integrated long enough to stop requiring adaptation, to simply be part of how he moved through the world. A mid-tibial right leg, the carbon-fibre pylon visible below where the suspension sleeve ended, the foot system built for long hours on hard floors. Not dressed up. Not apologised for.

In your apartment you had seen the hip compensation. The barely-there adjustment, the practised redistribution of weight when he turned in the kitchen, the quality of stillness that came from years of knowing exactly where his body was.

What. The. Fuck. Sawyer.

He let you look.

"Kosovo," he said.

One word. Carrying all of it.

He rolled the pant leg back down. Straightened. Ran one hand over his jaw, the faint rasp of several days' stubble, grown in rather than simply present, sitting well against the structure of his face in a way that was not your business to observe.

Not the time. Stop.

"So now you don't have to wonder how much I know," he said. "That's it. I don't know how. But I do know it was over there."

You nodded. Words still had not come.

He did not appear to need them. He tilted his head toward you, eyebrows lifting slightly.

"And because you're with me tonight, you're going to sit down when I tell you to sit down."

The eyebrows stayed up.

You nodded again.

"Good."

He stood up, looked at you a moment, then extended his arm--not a handshake, not the civilian version of it, but the other kind, forearm to forearm--a gesture that meant something specific between people who had learned it from the same source.

You took it. The grip, the brief hold, then release.

It was only afterward, when he had already let go, that you registered you had not hesitated to fill his grip with your own. You hadn't even thought about it. You simply took the grip the way you had taken it hundreds of times before, in places far removed from a locker room in Pittsburgh. You had not noticed the comfort of it until it was already over.

He tucked his chin, short, downward, precise. The greeting that was not a greeting, the acknowledgement that lived in a different register from anything civilian.

You returned it. And for just a moment you felt something click back into place, some recognition of yourself in a language you had not spoken in almost a year.

Then his eyes left yours and he moved to the door. You followed him into the corridor and under the sterile fluorescent light of a hospital.

He gave you the tour efficiently and without a single wasted motion. 

The Pyxis unit, the automated medication dispensing system, “your ID badge accesses it, all pulls are logged, you are not independently ordering anything so anything your pulls needs my countersignature.” The crash cart locations, “north bay, south bay, trauma one, trauma two, know where they are before you need them.”

The supply rooms, the imaging order terminal, the on-call paging system for surgical and neuro and ortho consults. The board, which tracked every patient currently in the department and their status in real time.

You took all of it in the way you took in everything, quickly, without needing it repeated.

By the time you finished, the night team had gathered near the bay entrance.

Eight-ish people in the loose formation of a group that knew each other well enough not to need to perform it. They cohered when Dr. Abbot arrived without being asked to, the way groups shift around certain people naturally, not from authority alone but from something more specific to the person.

Dr. Ellis was there. You recognised her from South 7, the particular quality of her stillness that communicated more than movement usually did. She looked at you when you came in and the expression on her face became fractionally more specific, not quite a smile, not quite relief, something between them.

Beside her was a young man with shoulder-length curly hair who looked at your name badge, looked at Ellis, and then looked back at you with the undisguised expression of a man who had been waiting for this moment and found it did not disappoint.

Great. Everyone in this room already knows my fuckin’ name.

Dr. Abbot stood front and centre of the loose cluster. Weight distributed evenly, arms loose, the same quality of stillness you had seen in the trauma bay and in the locker room and in your hallway at six in the morning--the kind that meant he was entirely present and the room knew it.

He looked around the group and let a beat of quiet settle before he started.

"Alright, I see the eyes." He looked around with the dry acknowledgement of a man who found his team predictable and did not mind it. "I know what you're all wondering. So let's deal with it." He gestured toward you with a slight tilt of his head. "To my left is Dr. Abbott. Yes. Dr. Abbott. Two T's. I know. We will get to the implications of that in a moment." A brief pause. "She comes to us from overseas. Specifically a forward surgical environment, which for those of you who have spent your entire careers at institutions where the supply room has what's in the supply room, I want you to understand that she has been practicing medicine in conditions that would make most of your worst nights look like elective procedures." He let that land. "She is functionally an R3 and she is joining us tonight in an observational capacity. What that means is she is with me, she assists when I say she assists, and all documentation from her requires my co-sign. Shen, if I'm not available, she can go through you." He nodded to a man on the far side of the cluster, lean, attentive, holding a cold drink. "Clear on all of that?"

General nods.

"Good." His tone shifted, fractionally lighter. "Now. For the record. And I say this because I know one of you," he looked at the curly-haired man with something adjacent to patience "have already been thinking about this. If your documentation involves both of us, which tonight it will, you need to differentiate. The paperwork needs to be distinct. If I find a chart that has combined us because someone forgot a second T, I will be very disappointed and slightly impressed, but mostly disappointed."

A ripple went through the group. Ellis was pressing her lips together.

"So," the curly-haired young man said. "What do we call you?"

What followed was several seconds of people thinking out loud simultaneously, with the particular collaborative chaos of a night shift team that was comfortable with each other.

“Senior Abbot and junior Abbott?”

“Boy Abbot and girl Abbott?”

“Attending Abbot and resident Abbott?”

“Old Abbot and young Abbott?”

That one earned a brief silence and a side eye which everyone pretended not to notice. 

Then the curly-haired one.

Mateo.

You read his badge, who had clearly been waiting for his moment "Generic Abbot and Brand Name Abbott. Jack is generic, same active ingredient, one T, no frills. She's brand name," he gestured toward you "full formula, two T's, premium."

Dr. Abbot looked at him with the long-suffering expression of a man who had made the mistake of encouraging this.

"Or," someone said, "Abbott 2.0."

That one settled differently. Landed cleanly. A few people nodded.

Ellis said it again under her breath, “Abbott 2.0,” as if trying the fit of it.

Dr. Abbot looked at you.

You looked at him.

You had given a quick "hello" to the group when he introduced you in the beginning, accompanied by a small wave that you were already regretting. You said nothing now but gave a small smile and the faintest nod.

Abbott 2.0 isn’t the worst.

"2.0," he said. "I like it. That works. Anyone who puts it in official documentation goes home."

"Noted," said Mateo, who clearly had no intention of following this.

Dr. Abbot looked around the group one more time, and something changed in his face. The lightness clearing, the thing underneath it becoming visible, the specific quality of a person who cared genuinely about the people in front of him and expressed it in almost no words at all.

"We are the nightcrawlers," he leaned in as he spoke, "we deal with the weirdest and the wildest. Because-!"

They came back at him together, without hesitation, "We are the weirdest and the wildest of them all!"

"That's right!" He clapped your shoulder once, firm, his other hand gripping the stethoscope around his neck. "And tonight they are reaaaaally going to be crawling. So." He looked at the group. "Go get some."

The room shifted. Something warm and specific moved through it.

Again, in unison, "HOOAH!"

You caught it just above a whisper, "hooah," the cadence already there in your chest from years of something similar, from circles like this one in places far from a hospital corridor in Pennsylvania. It came out quieter than everyone else's, a quart-second behind, but it came out.

He heard it. His eyes found yours for just a second.

The team dispersed with the efficiency of people who knew exactly where they were going.

Ellis passed close enough to nod at you with the expression of someone who had questions and was choosing the right moment for them.

Mateo fell into step beside her and you caught, just, the tail end of what he said to her, "so we are absolutely calling them Abbott squared, right," and Ellis laughing as they moved away.

Jack stayed where he was. You stayed beside him.

"Stay close tonight," he said, looking toward the board. "Don't go looking for something to prove."

"I'm not trying to."

He looked at you sideways.

Partially true.

"Mm," he said. And walked toward the board.

You followed, one step behind, his left foot leading, your right. Into the shift.

The first case he brought you to was a 30 year-old male, abdominal pain, presenting from triage.

"Good place to start," he said, outside the bay. "I can asses. See where you're at." He tilted his head slightly. 

You understood “where you're at” actually meant he wanted to asses where you were beyond your clinical ability.

The patient was sitting up in the bed, arms wrapped around his midsection, the posture of someone who had been hurting for long enough that bracing had become automatic. He looked up when you came in.

"Hello, Mr. Ramirez." Dr. Abbot kept his voice easy. "My name is Dr. Jack Abbot. This is Dr. Y/N-" brief, unavoidable pause "-Abbott."

Mr. Ramirez narrowed his eyes.

"Unrelated," he clarified. "This is a teaching hospital, are you comfortable with Dr. Abbott assisting today?"

He looked between you both. "...Sure?"

You moved to his bedside. Started at the beginning, the way it always started: history first, presentation, onset, quality, radiation, associated symptoms. He had woken with the pain, four on a ten-point scale, which had climbed steadily. Nausea since this morning. Low-grade fever he had assumed was nothing.

You palpated his abdomen, beginning at the left upper quadrant and working methodically clockwise. When you reached the lower right quadrant--McBurney's point, two-thirds of the way between the navel and the right anterior superior iliac spine--he flinched hard.

You pressed the left side. He gasped from the right.

Positive Rovsing's sign. "What is... appendicitis."

"We're going to get an ultrasound to confirm what I think is going on," you told him. "In the meantime, we can get you something for the pain." You glanced at Dr. Abbot, who gave the small nod of someone countersigning a decision he had already made himself. "Do you have any allergies?"

He did not. You ordered four of morphine with Dr. Abbots co-singing your credentials. He watched you administer the drug and the tightness across Mr. Ramirez's face gradually release as the medication reached him.

"Thank you," he said, on an exhale, and you could hear in those two words how long he had been carrying the pain before coming in.

You closed the bay door behind you.

"How'd I do," you said, without inflection.

He looked at you with the expression of someone who was choosing what to say from a longer list.

"You were good," he said.

He said it plainly, without elaboration, the way he said most things. But you had spent years alongside Sawyer, reading the space between what she said and what she was holding and you could feel the same shape in him. He was satisfied. He was also watching something more specific than your technique.

You filed it and moved on.

Jack's POV

The board was quieter than most days by midnight, which meant Shen, Ellis and Mateo had a few minutes to be themselves rather than purely functional. This meant they were standing near the north nursing station making the kind of conversation that only night shift people made.

I was across the bay with a chart I was not fully reading.

I was distracted watching her.

She was in trauma two with the latest arrival. I checked on her twice and she did not need me yet, her hands steady, her head down, doing the work with the quiet competence of someone who had done harder work in worse places. The version of her that existed in this room was already different from the version that had stood in my locker room two hours ago. Not more open, exactly, but more present. Like she had found a register she recognized. 

She was working the patient with the kind of focus that didn't perform itself. No sideways checks to see if anyone was watching. No adjustment for the audience. Just her hands, and the work, and the thing underneath the work that she was holding back with everything she had.

That was the part that caught me. Not the competence--I expected the competence. It was the effort running parallel to it, invisible if you weren't looking for it, the quality of someone keeping two things completely separate from each other--what her hands were doing, and everything her mind was carrying while they did it.

I knew that effort. I had logged the same hours.

I had looked away twice. I was aware of having looked away twice, which meant I was aware of looking back, which was its own kind of information I was not particularly interested in examining right now.

There was something specific about watching her that I could not organize into a clinical observation and leave there. Something that went past what I was looking for, past the question of whether she was going to be alright in this room, whether the field training would hold or fracture under the particular pressures of a real facility.

Past all of that. 

Something that was just her, the way she moved through a space, the quality of attention she brought to a thing once she committed to it. Its made something in my chest shift.

That's… new.

I was still looking at her when Shen said something across the bay. Ellis laughed. Mateo pointed at trauma two, then turned and pointed at me with the expression of a man who had caught something and was not going to pretend otherwise.

I looked back at my chart.

I had felt this before. I recognised what happened in a room when someone arrived and the room recalibrated itself around them.

I looked back at the chart.

Then, despite myself, despite the other eyes, back her.

Sawyer. What have you gotten me into?

Your POV

An MVC brought in three critical patients within four minutes of each other.

The third one was yours. 22 year-old male, ejected from the vehicle, chest trauma, compromised airway. You moved through the initial assessment fast: airway, breathing, circulation, in that order, A-B-C. Dr. Abbot was to your right, working the second patient with Shen, available without crowding you.

Henderson called out, “Abbot, I need you over here.” 

Both your heads turned.

Henderson looked between you, recalibrated. "Uh- sorry. Dr. Abbot. Jack. The actual--” He pointed. "Him."

You turned back to your patient. Dr. Abbot gave your arm a brief touch before he moved. "You good?"

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"Yes." 

True. 

Your hands were in this man's chest and somewhere beneath all of the training and the months away, you felt more like yourself than you had in a long time. Practising medicine with your hands, a patient in front of you, a problem to solve. The rest of the world had gone quiet in exactly the way it needed to.

He moved to Henderson.

You kept going.

The bleed revealed itself under careful retraction, arterial, requiring immediate control. Your left hand found the angle and your right went automatically to the backpack, the Kelly clamps that lived in the left exterior pocket, the ones that had been there for two and a half years--

Wait.

You did not have a backpack. You did not have a kit. You were in a trauma bay in a hospital where things lived in specific places that were not on your body.

Your eyes went left. Right.

You needed a clamp.

The sweat was immediate and started at your hairline. 

You needed a clamp.

You looked at the instrument tray, at the walls, at the absolutely extraordinary abundance of organised and catalogued supplies in this room that you did not yet know how to find.

You needed a--

"Hey." His voice came from directly over your right shoulder, low and certain, cutting through the sound of your own heartbeat. "We're gonna follow the rules of where we are."

You met Dr. Abbots eyes.

His hand came alongside yours, the other one extended. "Kelly clamp," he said, and the nurse from earlier, Mateo, expression entirely matter-of-fact, had it in his palm. Clean, uncapped, ready.

He placed it in your hand. His voice, still low: "Now ask for a--”

"Sponge," you said, the word arriving on its own.

A hand clad in the blue latex-free glove, appeared at the edge of your field of vision. The sponge was already there.

"Good. Now--”

"Bovie," you said, to no one in particular, or to the room in general, and the room answered.

It kept being true. Every time you called out a tool to be used the room would give it to you in a gloved hand, waiting, exact, as if the space itself had anticipated you.

Dr. Shen appeared at your elbow somewhere past two in the morning with a plastic cup, Dunkin' Donuts, orange and pink lettering across the side, with the easy manner of someone performing a welcoming gesture without making it feel like one.

"You drink coffee?"

"Yes," you said, and then registered what he was holding. The cup was sweating. There was ice in it.

He set it on the counter beside you. "Wasn't sure what you liked. It's got two pumps of vanilla, no cream."

You looked at it. "It's cold."

"It's iced coffee."

"Coffee is hot."

"Not always." He looked at you with the mild curiosity of someone who had not expected this to become a conversation.

"In Salerno there wasn't ice to put in water," you said. "The idea of putting it in coffee," you picked the cup up and looked at it, "why would someone do that?"

His eyes went slightly wider than the topic warranted. "You've never had iced coffee?"

"I've never had iced coffee."

"Try it."

You tried it. The cold arrived first, sharp and immediate, then the sweetness threaded through it, and then underneath both of those things the actual coffee, present and correct despite everything that had been done to it.

You held the cup for a moment.

Hm.

Shen was watching you with the satisfied expression of a man who already knew how this was going to go.

"Oh my god," you said.

"Yeah," he said.

The night moved in the particular rhythm of an ED shift: compressed and then dilated, moments of full-speed action followed by the strange suspended quality of waiting. In the intervals you started to know the room a little.

Cruz Henderson found you during a brief quiet stretch, leaning against the wall in your vicinity with the ease of someone comfortable in most spaces.

"Hey, 2.0." He was now committed to the nickname. "What do you do for fun?"

The question arrived and sat there.

Fun had a shape you recognised from before, from a version of your life that had existed prior to the last few years, but the specific contents of it had reorganised themselves in ways you had not yet fully mapped. You opened your mouth.

Before you could say anything, an ambulance pulled into the bay with a new case. 

"To be continued," Henderson said, and was already moving.

Ellis found you near the end of an hour you would not have been able to number. She came to stand beside you with the deliberate intention of someone who had been waiting for the right moment.

"I didn't actually expect to see you here again," she said. Not unkind. The opposite actually, said with the warmth of someone who meant it as a compliment.

"You said you needed a change in conversation," you reminded her.

"When Abbot told me I went home and thought there's no way she's actually starting here,” She shook her head, smiling. "I have about 50 follow-up questions from that night."

"I'll answer some of them."

"Some."

"Probably not the ones about privileges."

She laughed. Behind her, Mateo arrived into the conversation with the timing of someone who had been waiting nearby.

"Abbott squared," he said. "That's what I keep calling you in my head. Or like… Abbot to the power of 2T." He looked at Ellis. "Is there a medical joke there? Like two T cells?”

"Please don't," you laughed.

"She said don't," Ellis smiled with you.

Mateo looked delighted by this.

At some point past the halfway mark of the shift, one of the radiology techs asked--not to you directly, but in your general vicinity, the way people asked things they wanted answered--"so both Abbots were military, right?” 

The question landed in a brief quiet and Ellis picked it up. “Both Army,” she clairified. 

Then someone else within ear shout but out of eyesight, “But… Jack was honourably discharged. Right?”

Dr. Abbot, a few feet away near the board, nodded once. Did not look up. Did not elaborate.

You noted the particular quality of the chosen silence.

Later, much later, in the quiet of a night that had opened into something more manageable, you turned to Dr. Abbot and just above a whisper you said, “you know what I can't get over?” you looked up into his eyes, “you say the word and it just appears," you flutter your fingers to make the word dazzle.

He looked at you with the expression of someone revisiting a specific memory.

“I know exactly what you mean,” his eyes glued to yours with a sparkle of recognition, “I remember the first time I asked for something and it just showed up. I thought someone was pranking me.”

“How long until it felt normal?”

He took a moment to think. “Six months? The asking. The trusting that it would come,” then, “but the medicine was the same. The medicine is always the same.”

You nod. You knew what he meant by that.

"You know what I didn't expect?" you said.

He looked at you.

"Iced coffee." You nodded toward Dr. Shen's half-empty plastic cup sitting on the counter. "Coffee is supposed to be hot. It has always been hot. That is the entire point of coffee."

The laugh that came out of him was real and loud enough that it turned two heads at the nursing station, the kind that seemed to surprise even him slightly.

"I’m still not used to that one," he said, when it settled.

The lull came around 4:40 brief and real.

You were on your feet, moving through it, when Dr. Abbot came to stand in your path with the deliberate positioning of someone who had thought about this.

"Sit down," he said.

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask."

You were amped, not manic, just fully alive in the way that twelve hours of useful work made you feel, like a circuit that had been open for months had finally been connected. You had not felt this in close to a year.

"Why don't you sit?" you challenged.

He looked at you.

You looked at him.

He sat down.

Hmm.

You sat across from him, because what else were you going to do, he'd let you win.

He extended his right “foot” and tapped it lightly against your left "foot" the prosthetic toe against yours, a small deliberate contact, not quite a knock, not quite a nudge.

You rolled your eyes a smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth.

He said nothing. Just looked at you with the expression of a man who had won without speaking.

Across the bay, you did not see Ellis nudge Shen. You did not hear what Mateo said quietly that made Shen give a tight lipped smile and stifle a laugh.

At 5:57 in the morning, you were standing in the ambulance bay with Dr. Abbot, debriefing a case that had closed well. The air was cool. The sky outside the bay doors was still dark but differently dark, the particular darkness that preceded the first pale edge of morning.

Something moved in your chest that you caught and examined before it could grow into anything larger.

Nope.

But it was there. The first fragile thread of something that might, given time and enough of nights like this one, grow into something you could trust.

Then headlights swung into the bay. Not an ambulance. A regular car, moving too fast, horn going.

You both ran.

The mother was in the back seat holding her son in her arms the way mothers hold things they are terrified will disappear if they let go for even a second. She was screaming before the car had fully stopped.

"Please! Please help him! He was fine, he was sleeping, he was fine!"

The boy, maybe eight or nine years old was grey, lips already bluish at the edges.

Secondary drowning, the diagnosis came fast, the way they did when the picture was complete before you had consciously assembled it. The child had been in water earlier and had come home, seemed fine because children after submersion often did. Then he had gone to bed. The water in his lungs had been working against him while everyone thought the danger had passed.

"When was he in the water?" you asked the mother.

"This afternoon-- the pool at the Y-- he coughed a little after but he was fine, he was laughing, I put him to bed and he was--” Her voice broke. "He was sleeping and I went to check on him and he wasn't--" Then she was wailing, like she had made a conclusion she wasn’t ready to cope with. 

Now inside, youd started compressions by the time the gurney reached the room.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30. Stop. Two breaths from the ambu bag. Again.

You were sweating through the back of your scrubs. Your arms burned. But you did not stop.

The team moved around you.

Another 30 compressions.

A rhythm built and then changed.

Another 30 compressions, this time you felt his ribs break.

And as it did when the picture was becoming clear, you could feel it in the room, the quality of attention shifting, the quiet that came before the harder quiet.

Another 30 compressions.

"Another amp of epi!" you called.

No one moved.

You kept the compressions going and looked up.

"What are you doing? Another amp of--"

"We've given three," Dr. Abbot said calm and flat. Quietly, from behind you.

You did not stop.

"We've gotta call it," he said.

"No. He's coming back." Your arms did not stop.

"Come on." His hands were at your shoulders, not pulling you, offering a way out. "We gotta call time of death."

You felt his hands and you pushed them away then one hard shove centre-chest that rocked him back a step. You reached past him for the epi.

His hand closed around your wrist.

You stopped.

You looked at him.

He looked at you. And in the way that two people can have an entire conversation in three seconds when they have been paying attention to each other. You had him, you did not want to stop. Abbot was telling you that stopping was the only thing left. You didn’t want it to be. He knew that, and it made no difference to what was true, and he was sorry for that and you could see it.

Your hand loosened on the epi.

You stepped back.

He looked at you warily. Waiting.

You squared your shoulders. Breathed out once. Grabbed everything that had come up in the last few minutes and pressed it down into the place you kept things you could not afford right now, pushed it deep and locked it there.

Your face was still.

"Time of death." You checked your watch. "6:07 AM."

You left the room.

The family was in the corridor.

You walked toward them because someone had to, and the person who had been there at the end was usually the one who delivered the news.

The mother looked at you and knew before you said a word. The way mothers just... knew.

You told her. You said the words clearly and without softening them into something less true. Her husband caught her when her legs stopped working. She made a sound that was not language, that was below language, that belonged to a frequency of grief that no vocabulary had ever needed to describe because there was nothing to do with it but let it exist.

You stood with them. You stayed. For several minutes, you stayed, because leaving would have been the wrong thing and you had been trained long enough in the wrong things to know one when you saw it.

Then you excused yourself.

The women's bathroom near trauma one.

You stood at the sink and looked at yourself in the mirror.

There was a version of you that should have been here. That you looked for and could not quite locate. She felt very far away right now.

You could feel the tears starting. Not a wave, just the first pressure of them at the edge, the signal before the signal. You inhaled sharply through your nose, once, utilizing technique that had served you in many rooms with people watching--the sniff pulled the sensation back, reset the baseline, bought you ten seconds that became thirty that became however long you needed.

You closed your eyes.

The sun over the Salerno roofline. The specific quality of the morning light over the base perimeter, the way it turned the dust gold before the heat came, the few minutes of each day when even that place had been clean and quiet and purely itself.

You let yourself be in it for three seconds.

Then you let it go.

You opened your eyes.

You straightened your scrubs, pressed the back of your hand briefly to your face, and walked out.

Dr. Abbot was in the hallway.

He straightened when you came out.

"Hey." His voice was careful. Not careful in the way of someone managing you--careful in the way of someone paying attention. "You okay? I didn't mean to push you back in there."

The box inside you, filled with every emotion, held. Not a crack in it. 

You rolled your shoulders back, "never better," you said. It came out with more edge than you meant.

"Hey," he stepped into your path lightly, not blocking, just present. His hand landed briefly on your shoulder. "You gotta be honest with me. That's the deal."

You looked at him for a moment.

Then you breathed out. "I guess... I haven't lost someone in a while. With the recovery, the time off. And it hits different when it's a kid."

It was true, and it was not the whole of it, and you both knew. He did not push further.

"Come on," he said. "Let me show you how we hand off."

The day shift charge nurse was at nursing station when you and Dr. Abbot walked up, already mid-handoff with the outgoing night charge Lena. Reading glasses on with the easy authority of a woman who had run this floor for long enough that the floor ran itself around her.

She looked up when you and Dr. Abbot were close.

"Dana, this is Dr. Abbott…  2.0." He said it with the particular dry affection of someone who had not chosen the name but had decided to keep it. 

She looked at you over her glasses for a long moment.

"I finally get to put a face to the name," she said. "Been hearing about you since Tuesday, kid."

"Good things, I hope."

"Mostly." Her eyes were kind, "Dana Evans," her hand was stretched to yours, you shook it, "first shift?"

"(Y/n) Abbot, nice to meet you. And, yes, first shift," you confirmed.

"Likewise. How was it?"

You thought about it honestly. All of it. The locker room. The handshake. The clamp appearing out of nowhere. The iced coffee. The name debate. The child.

"It was good," you said. "It feels good to get back into the medicine."

That was true. 

As true as anything you had said all night.

Dana looked at you for just a moment longer than the sentence required. Then she looked at Dr. Abbot, once, with the quick and knowing look of a woman who had noticed things.

She did not say whatever she was thinking.

She looked back at her paperwork.

Dr. Abbot glanced at the time. "7:13. Handoff's done. You’re good to get your stuff from the locker room." He stepped back. "I need to find Robby before I leave.”

You nodded. 

You peeled away from the nursing station, already mentally in the stairwell, already halfway to the parking structure and the long drive home, when something stopped you.

Not a sound. A quality in the air had shifted in the light near the entrance, the particular stillness that preceded something that was not ordinary.

You turned.

Two soldiers were coming through the waiting room doors.

Army Service Uniforms--the dress blues, dark and precise, hats on, gait squared. Between them, held in both hands with the careful flat-palmed carry of something that was not to be dropped, was a folded triangle of fabric. Red and white stripes at the edges. The blue field of the canton visible at the apex, tight and even, the way they folded it when it came off his casket.

Every cell in your body came to a violent halt.

In the back of your mind you knew they were coming for you. Not today, not this specific morning, but in the general sense of eventual--you had known, and had been avoiding it the way you avoided things that required you to accept a finality you were not ready to accept. You had refused all visitors and had been difficult to contact and had let the distance between you and everything and everyone from before grow.

The soldiers were still twenty feet away.

And then you looked again and they were not strangers.

Amber, on the left. Taller than the image your memory had preserved, her hair shorter, a corporal's chevron on her sleeve. She walked with the particular straightness of someone who had been in dress uniform enough times to have forgotten they were wearing it. Her eyes found you immediately, the way eyes found people they had been looking for.

On the right, Lukas. His jaw was set the way it got set when he was working to keep something in. He had emailed you every week for almost a year. Every week, without asking for anything back. Subject: Still here. Every time.

The space had gone quiet in the way that rooms went quiet when something was happening that people recognised even without a program. You were aware of eyes at the nursing station. Ellis and Mateo, somewhere to your left. Dana. The incoming day shift who did not know you at all and were watching anyway.

The two soldiers came to a stop three feet in front of you.

Amber spoke, her voice was level and formal, "Captain Y/N Abbott." She held her gaze steady. "On behalf of the United States Army, and in recognition of the service and sacrifice of Sergeant Adam Handscombe," she glanced at Lukas, who transferred the flag to her hands with the careful coordination of something rehearsed, "it is our honour to present to you this flag, which flew over the base at FOB Salerno in his name."

She held it out.

At first you couldn't move.

The emergency department, this enormous loud functional space, suddenly contracted around you until it was just this. Two soldiers, a folded flag, and every eye in the room landing on you at the same moment. The walls came in. The sounds of the floor dulled. Your pulse, which had been steady, kicked, hard, like a door being tried from the other side.

Not here. Not now. Absolutely not here.

You could feel your hands wanting to do something with the type of alertness you couldn't put down, the kind that arrived before the spiral did. You breathed in through your nose, held it, then let it go.

Your face did not move. You had built that particular architecture over a very long time and it held.

Then you bent your elbows, lifted your hands, and took it.

The weight of it was almost nothing. A few yards of folded fabric, precise and tight. And it was the heaviest thing you had held in a long time.

You were aware of every eye in the room. You were aware that something had just been said out loud and answered questions everyone had been too polite or too busy or too uncertain to ask. You were aware of all of it and none of it mattered for the next several seconds while you stood holding a triangle of flag in a hospital corridor at 7:15 in the morning. You looked at your two closest friends from another life.

Amber raised her right hand.

The salute was formal and precise and absolutely personal at the same time.

Lukas, beside her, did the same.

You had not been in uniform for almost a year. You were in scrubs, with yesterday's mascara probably doing its own thing, holding a folded flag in a hospital waiting room. None of that mattered.

You raised your right hand.

The three of you held it for a full three count.

Then you lowered yours and Amber's face changed.

She stepped forward.

You were already reaching for her.

She put both arms around you, hard, the full grip of someone who had been waiting to do this for a long time, and Lukas stepped in from the other side, and the three of you stood in the middle of a room full of people who had stopped pretending not to watch, you pressed your face against Amber's shoulder and let yourself feel the specific relief of being found by people who had known you before you had to learn yourself again.

It was not a clean feeling. Nothing about it was clean. Happy and devastated and relieved and terrified all in the same moment, layered over each other, the sorrow running through all of it like thread.

But it was real. You were standing. All three of you were standing.

After a while the three of you pulled back enough to put your foreheads together, close, the way you had done a hundred times in a hundred different circumstances in a place very far from Pittsburgh. Lukas's hand at the back of your neck. Amber's at your shoulder.

"We're still standing," Amber said.

"Still standing," Lukas confirmed.

You breathed in and said it with them, "Still standing."

Jack's POV

I was standing at the edge of the corridor when it happened. About to turn toward the elevator when something told me to stop and look back.

I watched them come in. I watched her recognise them. 

I had seen this before, a long time ago. Not this exact thing. The moment when the war finally finds the door you have been living behind and knocks on it in a way you cannot pretend you didn't hear.

I watched her take the flag.

But, the half second before she took it--the stillness, the quality of it, the particular controlled nothing of her face, that, I recognised as the opposite of nothing. I had worn that expression myself in rooms I could not afford to come apart in.

She thought she had hidden it.

She had hidden most of it, her face gave almost nothing. But I could see behind her eyes she was trying to contain something bigger.

Then the other two stepped forward.

The woman was a corporal, the chevron on her sleeve catching the light as she squared up. Her voice carried across the floor--clear and formal, “On behalf of the United States Army, and in recognition of the service and sacrifice of Sergeant Adam Handscombe.”

The name landed in the room like a stone dropped in still water.

I went stiff.

“It is our honour to present to you this flag.”

A husband? She had a husband.

Past tense, present weight, the specific gravity of a loss that did not get smaller with time, only more precisely shaped. 

Sawyer.

I watched her face stay still in a way I now understood, watching it from the outside for the first time, was not stillness at all.

Then the corporal stepped forward and her arms went around you and the face that had been still stopped being still, and something in me flinched away from watching it-not from discomfort, from recognition. 

She had a husband. 

She had lost a husband. She had come to Pittsburgh with all of that packed down somewhere below the surface and had spent a full shift beside me moving through this floor like someone who had decided, somewhere along the way, that if she just kept moving nothing could catch her.

I knew that exact calculation. I had made it myself. I had made it for years.

My thoughts, now aimed squarely at Sawyer.

Of course you didn't tell me. Because if you had, I would have handled her differently. And you knew that handling her differently was exactly the wrong thing to do.

I stood there another moment.

The three of them had their heads together now, something passed between them too quiet to reach me. Something old and specific to those three people and no one else.

I thought of Robby. The particular tired quality of his face lately, the way he had been carrying the weight of the ED on will alone for longer than anyone had asked him to. I had been meaning to find him.

I turned toward the elevator.

The doors opened as I reached it. Robby was inside, coming down, coat on, the end of something written across his face.

We looked at each other.

He read whatever was on mine.

He stepped back. Stayed where he was as the doors began to close.

I stepped in.

Neither of us said anything.

The doors shut.

Your POV

You walked toward the stairwell unsure of the exact time, the flag tucked under your arm.

The stairwell door swung shut behind you.

You stood on the landing between floors for just a moment, alone, in the concrete quiet.

You looked down at the flag.

You had been carrying the absence of this for almost a year. The shape of what you had not allowed yourself to receive, what you had walled off and worked around and refused to acknowledge in the specific way you refused to acknowledge things that had the power to completely undo you.

It was in your hands now.

You pressed it once, briefly, against your chest.

Then you went down the stairs, through the parking structure, and into the early morning.

The Pontiac was where you had left her. You got in, put her in gear, and drove home into a sky that was beginning, very slowly, to go light.

AN: Thank you guys again for being so interested and so kind. I really really appreciate it! I've made a taglist for those who asked! If you'd like to be added just let me know and I'll do my best. Comments, reblogs, and thoughts are always welcome <3