#reader came back wrong

Soft silks, breezy linens, warm cashmeres, skin tight leathers and sultry gossamers. “Is this really necessary?”

She barely flicks a glance your way, raising items to your form and making a face before delving back into the endless fray of choices. “Absolutely. Look good, feel good.”

A prominent piece of you yearns to admit that you haven’t felt much of anything lately but refrain in favor of being on the receiving end of yet another pitying look. Instead, you keep your mouth shut, sitting pretty on Mor’s made bed while freshly manicured nails rake through the fluffy fibers of the throw blanket beneath you.

The windows are open, a cool breeze sifting through and caressing over your bare skin, dressed in nothing but your skivvy’s as you wait for Mor to finally decide on something suitable for a night out. She’s already done your hair, spending far too much time carding through thick strands until you’re forced to linger around the house with tissue paper curls pinned to your scalp. You suppose it was worth it, bouncy ringlets now cascade down your shoulders in a way that makes you look more put together. Enhancing makeup makes your eyes pop, accentuates your cheekbones, draws attention to the pretty pout of your mouth until Mor grins with satisfaction.

Your only job is to not fuck it up.

To pass time, you peer up at the stars. Listen to the city come to life as the sun retreats so the moon can have its time to shine. “Here, put this on.”

Under entirely different circumstances, you probably would react differently to the extravagant choice. The dress she’s chose is midnight blue, a corset bodice with intricate lace and beading painting a picture of cloud-like swirls and golden stars scattered about a moody night sky. The curve of two silver half moons cup the fat under your cleavage, the tops hooking just below your collarbones. It’s sexy, eye-catching, a little dangerous but it fits like a damn glove and accentuates the dips and curves of your waist and hips unlike anything you’ve worn before. “One wrong shimmy and I just might flash all of Rita’s.”

“I doubt they’ll mind much.” Black heels with gold bottoms are slid your way, feet eased inside and strap secured around your ankle. A tube of gloss and a spritz of perfume and Mor is urging you towards the front door, past the wards and winnowed to Rita’s where everyone else is already waiting.

You easily ignore the looks you earn upon arrival, as if the crowd can feel the shift that’s taken place—a predator entering the premises with the skin of a sheep on their shoulders.

“Look who showed up!” Cassian’s clearly already a little tipsy, a pitcher of ale clutched in one heavy mitt while the other arm rests along the back of the booth.

“Prison guards finally let me off my leash.” No one comments on the truth of your statement given the fact that the entirety of the Inner Circle had been taking turns watching your every move as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. “What are we drinking?”

It’s Azriel who slides over something fruity and frozen. “Your usual.”

Peach mix and grenadine, tequila and vodka, a strawberry split in half over a sugar rim. It’s finished all too quickly but you stick to the theme, vodka shots and cranberry juice chasers. Strawberry daiquiri’s and lemon drop martinis. Soon enough it leads you to the dance floor, body moving to the beat and brain effectively turned off while you lose yourself in the music. You’re passed around from Feyre to Mor to Cassian before they’ve broken off to their own couples and you’re left alone in the thick of the crowd.

Shadows curl around your ankle a bit later, their master following close behind and carving a space free for himself. His hands are respectful at first, brushing hair from your face and evaluating your state before easing into the way you playfully tug him in closer. His grip moves down to your hips, turns you around so your back is to his front. Falling into a rhythm with him is as easy as breathing, head tilting back to rest on his chest, exposing your throat and sinking into the smell of his cologne. “I can feel you watching me, you know.”

“We’re worried about you.

“Worried about what? I haven’t done a thing wrong.”

Azriel hums in agreement, the vibrations rumbling along your spine. “No, but you aren’t yourself.”

Shoulders shrug, eyes fluttering closed in your attempts to keep this buzz. To ride this carefree wave of relaxation the liquor provides. “So? I don’t call you out when you come back untethered. I give you space to find your anchor again.”

“You’re not untethered. It’s like you don’t even exist anymore.”

“Maybe, that was just my fate. To disappear.”

You break away from the spymaster, shake off his sticky shadows and part your way through the throng of bodies until you catch sight of curled blonde hair and the drinks she has sitting before her at their booth. “Ready for another?” Mor inquires, a shot already outstretched for the taking.”

“Keep ‘em coming.”

“You think that’s smart?” Rhys worries, waiting for you to walk away again, feet wobbly in your heels. For some reason, he’s unable to shake the instinct of searching for you between the hustle and bustle of bodies. “Plying a ghost with spirits.”

Mor pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Feigns ignorance to her own version of concern towards the situation she’s born and bred. “She’ll be fine, she’s having fun.”

“Danger enjoys fun too, Mor. Are you sure her version of a good time still aligns with ours?”

Tension exists in the line of her shoulders, settles in the delicate curve of her spine. “I guess we’ll just have to wait, watch and find out.”

“Great plan. Doesn’t sound like it’ll go wrong at all.”

Your version of fun ends up meaning to get as drunk as you can manage without toppling over, muttering slurred syllables in the High Lord’s ear about finally feeling full again—not quite whole but somewhat satiated. Something about your vulnerability calls to his magic, lowered your mental shields, luring his abilities to breech the walls of your mind in attempts to glimpse at whatever happened to you to change the female he’d once known.

Too bad the caress of his claws against your lowered barriers causes more harm than good. Drunken hiccups and inebriated giggles abruptly seizes the second he crosses the threshold. You go as still as a board, breath halting and grip tightening in the fabric tailored to his shoulders.

Inside your mind is murky, foggy, a jungle of trees and humid air that makes the hair on the back of Rhys’ neck stand at attention and in the middle of it all is you. Suspended midair by unseen restraints but more alarming than that is the state of you; life is leeched from your skin, eyes half-lidded and gaze distant but a constant stream of silent tears leak from your waterline.

Your misery wanted no company, though.

You didn’t tell Simon that you were leaving. Gaz let slip over a subdued but obligatory game of cards, you’d be gone for a long time - loaned out to Laswell.

Simon didn’t go to see you off. Didn’t ask why you were leaving or accuse you of being too immature to be on a team with him. He didn’t wish you good luck, stay safe with the rest of the team on the tarmac at 0-dark when you took off.

He should have.

Price says you’ll be gone for six months. Just six. It’s better this way, he reminds them when Johnny balks. His eyes are on Simon, though, when he adds that you need to get your head on straight, and you weren’t able to do it with them.

So. Six months.

Simon stops expecting you on his left. Stops smelling your shampoo lingering on bits of clothes he pretended not to notice you steal. He still dreams about you begging him not to push you away.

183 days come and go.

On day 184, Laswell sends word - your temporary team likes you quite a bit. They want you to stay on for one more month… one more mission… one more…

Six months turns to ten.

312 days since you left; since you were home.

The team hasn’t stopped leaving a space for you at their tables, right between Gaz and Price. You miss your own birthday. Laswell says she’ll pass along well wishes.

The situation changes. A target resurfaces. All hands on deck, including yours.

374 days. Twelve months and some change.

They don’t spend the holidays with you, but there’s a stack of presents waiting in Price’s office. Your mugs have collected dust in the back of the rec room cabinet.

Laswell says you’re still deployed on one last mission, return TBD. Soon, though.

487 days. Still TBD. Soon. Really. Just some loose ends to tie up.

561 days. There was some trouble during exfil but you’re alright. Just a bit of recovery.

You’re coming home.

590 days. You’ll land at 0700 tomorrow.

It’s been 591 days since Simon last saw you. Since any of them last saw you.

Laswell has come to deliver you personally, a kind of apology for keeping you away so long. She’s the first off the transport and you’re right behind her.

Your hair is shorter. Much, much shorter. There’s a new patch on your jacket - memento from your temporary team, Simon figures.

Apart from that, you look… almost exactly how you did when you left. Dark circles under your eyes, mouth drawn and tight. There’s invisible weight compressing your shoulders, urging them in and down. But you’re there again. Just the way he remembers.

(Why are you the way he remembers?)

“Long time, no see,” Gaz calls, reaching for you.

There’s half a beat, you blink. Hesitate.

Then you grin and reach back.

“Missed my pretty face, did you?” you reply.

Johnny laughs and brings you in for a hug. You twitch hug him back, patting his shoulder as you pull away.

“Good to have you back, Sergeant,” Price says, shaking your hand.

You turn to Simon, nod in greeting, expression pleasant. “Ghost.”

So that’s how it’ll be? Alright.

“Sergeant.”

That night, you go out for drinks with the team and Laswell. Simon goes along to show there are no hard feelings.

(Not that you seem to need reassurance. It’s not even that you’re not looking at him. You are. Whenever he speaks, the rare times he does, or if he shifts in his seat. Your gaze doesn’t linger or jerk away, you treat him like you do Johnny and Gaz and Price.)

When Johnny mixes up your usual for Price’s, you don’t even seem to notice. But Simon does.

“When did you start drinking whiskey?” he wonders.

You used to swear you’d never like it, claiming it tasted like boot polish and the “Boys Club” wasn’t worth the indigestion it gave you.

“Someone from my other team,” you say by way of explanation.

You don’t ask for another whiskey. Laswell gets the rest of your drinks for that night.

Simon turns into the rec room two days later and finds you already there. There’s only the light above the sink on, and you’re staring at the steady drip, drip, drip from the faucet. A cup of black coffee cools in your hand. You’re already wearing gloves.

“Sugar’s in the left now,” he calls.

Your head twitches, something pops in your neck.

“Oh, thanks,” you chirp, turning for the cabinet. “Sleep okay, LT?”

“‘Bout as well as I ever do,” he replies gruffly, sidling up next to you for the kettle.

You hum. There’s a yellow packet in your hand. (Didn’t you used to like the blue one?)

“I get that,” you sympathize.

He snorts. Since when?

“Do you?”

When he glances down, you’re not looking at him. Instead, you’re trying (and failing) to get the sink to stop dripping.

“You know that’s been broken for ages,” he says.

At least as long as the 141 has been around. You tried to fix it once when you first joined up, too, with no luck.

“Right,” you say. A little too quickly, a little too agreeably. “Well, anyway, enjoy your tea, Lieutenant.”

You leave the packet of sugar behind. Unopened.

You’re back and it’s like it used to be - not just before you left, but before the breakup. Before there was ever anything to break up.

Your time away seems to have given you whatever space from Simon you were hoping for, because you act like there was never anything at all.

He’s half expecting, dreading, that you’ll pull him aside at some point. Ask for a word after dinner, or swing by his room before bed. Talk about the break up now that cooler heads prevail and 19 months have sanded down the rough feelings. Seek closure, maybe.

But you don’t. The weeks pass until a month has gone and you never exchange more than easy pleasantries with Simon. You give him space, give him privacy. Things you never used to give him much of before, for better or worse.

You fool around with Gaz and Johnny, trade quips with Price, and follow Simon’s orders. Train recruits. Write reports.

You’re back, better than ever.

So why does it feel like Simon’s still waiting for you to return?

You’re always dressed now, head to toe. Day or night, rain or shine. From the neck down you’re in full sleeves, long pants, boots and gloves.

It doesn’t occur to anyone until you’re sweating through your compression shirt in the gym. Wipe your shiny forehead for the dozenth time before Johnny says, “why not just take it off?”

“It’s not that bad,” you laugh, waving him off.

When you lie down to bench press, Simon notes the bottom of your shirt tucked tight into your waistband. He exchanges a glance with Johnny - he’s seen it too.

You used to dress in shorts and sports bras during exercise, a towel over your shoulder. In the common room, you’d mill in tank-tops and boxers. Even used to trot down the hall swaddled in a towel or robe, mumbling that you forgot a razor or some other toiletry before showering.

“What, did ye get an embarrassing tattoo or somethin’?” Johnny asks finally.

You blink at him, expression bemused. “A tattoo? Why do you think I have a tattoo?”

“Yer covered up like a nun on Sunday. It cannae be comfortable.”

You snort. “Just because you’re allergic to clothes, MacTavish…”

“Allergic?! Wha’s tha’ s’posed t’mean?!”

Gaz barks a laugh. You grin and continue your workout.

Simon tries not to be disturbed by the name “MacTavish” coming off your tongue for the first time since you met.

It’s your first mission since you’ve been back. You have new gear, a new handgun. Something’s been carved into the side of the barrel in Cyrillic, Simon can’t read it. A new callsign.

(“What kind of a name is Carry-on?” Johnny teases, but he doesn’t quite hide the unease in his eyes.

You snort and lace your boots tighter. The edge of you sleeve inches up, revealing the curve of a glossy scar that wasn’t there before.

“You’re one to talk Mister Maybelline.”)

Someone painted an upside down cross on the temple of your helmet with their finger. You thumb it before stuffing it over your head.

“You ready for this?” Gaz asks, knocking his knee into yours. The two of you have been paired together for this mission. (Was it Simon’s imagination, or did you look annoyed that you would have a partner?)

“Always,” you reply.

Simon doesn’t hear what happens, but Gaz looks shellshocked when you haul him into the helicopter during exfil. You shake him a bit once everything is secure and the bird’s in the air.

“Garrick,” you shout, “c’mon, where did he get you?”

It takes him a second but he blinks, offers his arm for your inspection. You move with a speed even Simon is impressed by, tearing into the nearby med kit almost viciously. Gaz is patched up in record time and you sit back with blood on your hands, barely even seem to notice as you wipe them carelessly on your pants.

(You used to be more squeamish, weren’t you? You used to be the last one they asked for medical care because seeing your teammates in pain made you nauseous.)

“What about you?” Gaz asks after a small eternity.

You yawn. “What about me?”

“You got nicked too, didn’t you?”

Simon takes a second look at you and now that Gaz mentions it, you’re soaked in blood. Wet patches on your vest, your pants, dripping down your boots. It takes him a moment to notice the tear in your thigh, shredded flesh visible when you rock with the wind turbulence.

“Did I?” you wonder, glancing down like you only just noticed it.

Johnny curses, reaches for you - but you wave him off.

“It’s just a scratch,” you reply. “Barely even feel it, no worries.”

Then why is it still bleeding?

When the team lands, you hop off the heli without so much as a wince. Droplets of blood lead all the way back to your room.

(When Simon asks Nikolai about the hand-etching on your gun, he says the word means “promise.”)

In the after-action report, your callsign isn’t “Carry-On.” It’s Carrion.

Laswell takes you off the mission two months later, a joint assignment with KorTac. They send three operators to work with TF141 - Stiletto, Konig, and Nikto.

On the transport to infil, Simon notices the Russian inspecting his handgun in a seat separated from the rest of the squad. He recognizes the Cyrillic carved into the barrel this time: Promise.

It’s an eerie, creeping suspicion. An anxious fog rolling in.

It’s not one single thing that trips an alarm in Simon’s head, but a steady collation of oddities over months. A single arhythmic beat, a note off key. Just once or twice, but over and over until he can’t notice anything else.

You act just like yourself except for all the minute ways you don’t.

You smile big and wide, sunshine bright, when they make a good joke. Your laugh is still the same, bubbling up in your throat, head thrown back. You smell the same when you pass Simon in the hall, shampoo and soap that’s haunted him for a year and a half.

It’s insidiously subtle; he can’t pinpoint what it is for the longest time. Your mannerisms are almost too practiced, the cadence of your voice too measured. A missing turn of phrase you often used, replaced by something unfamiliar.

Simon dismisses it as guilt-laden paranoia. The two of you ended on bad terms with a year and half worth of space between. He’s hardly one to gauge what’s normal for you anymore.

And besides, the few times someone else has noticed at those tiny yet all-too-obvious inconsistencies, you shrug it off as something you picked up while away.

But he catches Johnny’s brows furrow one afternoon as you light up a cig (after swearing for years that you’d never pick up the habit) and Simon knows he’s beginning to see it too.

“You ever notice,” Gaz begins slowly. You’re the only one missing from the rec room this evening, retired with a drawn-out yawn. “That Carrion always mentions being away, but never talks about it?”

Simon stills. Johnny’s eyes fly to Price, who’s grimly tapping at his crossword puzzle.

“The file’s redacted,” he says. He’s seen it too then, tried to investigate for himself.

“That’s normal for a mission like that,” Simon reasons carefully.

“I don’t mean the mission,” Price says. “I mean Carrion’s file.”

“This is a good movie,” you mumble from the armchair you’ve stolen from Price. “What’s it called?”

Simon exchanges glances with the rest of the team. No one points out that this is (used to be?) your favorite.

Price looks into the team you were loaned out to. All were KIA or remain MIA. All but one. His file has been scrubbed too, the only documents readable are discharge orders and a PMC contract, both associated with the callsign “Nikto.”

They’re running out of time.

Less than 36 hours on the clock with only one lead, and it’s a zealot with a suicide pact. Price and Laswell both took a crack at him with nothing to show for it. Even Ghost has gotten hardly anything and he’s running out of nails. With time, he might get something useful, but they don’t have much of that left.

In the anteroom looking into interrogation, you’ve been observing through the one-way glass with your hands in your pockets, head tilted, expression serene.

Price and Laswell are discussing strategy, contingencies. Gaz and Johnny are throwing in their two cents, but Simon… Simon is watching you.

Like medical, torture used to be your Achilles. You were trained like the rest of the team, but there was never any need for you to step into the room yourself. Hell, you were a last resort even for observation or emergency resuscitation. No one blamed you for having a weak stomach for information extraction.

But today, you glance over your shoulder and make eye contact with Laswell.

“I’ll handle it,” you say with an air of finality.

The room goes silent. Price opens his mouth, but it’s Laswell that speaks, voice hard with resignation.

“Do it.”

You don’t blink. “Yes, ma’am.”

You walk out the door without a backwards glance, shoulders loose but each step steady and purposeful.

“What the hell is going on, Kate?” Price demands.

Kate sighs, looks away as you enter the interrogation room.

“Let’s do this outside. It won’t take long to get that intel.”

The only thing she’s able to share is that you and your team were captured. For a long time. And then you’re already stepping out of the interrogation room, wiping your bloodied hands off on an old rag.

There’s an unusual glint in your eye, an unnatural stillness in your expression.

Mr. Z made good on his promise. Your body had been dissected, vivisected, flayed and eviscerated and mutilated over and over again. Haphazardly reassembled over and over again, until the stitches began to intersect, webbing into a demented railroad of agony.

Each time, you scraped together the shards of your mind, cutting yourself on the edges. You don’t remember when you started losing pieces, or when you started substituting them with others.

All that was left at the end were bloody, sticky shreds - a mangled fraction of a person. Something that was once human, and never could be again. Slim pickings for the detritivores.

There were others, or there had been. Fragments of sentience with blood and guts and a bit of sinew still congealed together. When all those bits of viscera and bone were cobbled together, something that was almost whole reformed.

“Promise,” you (he?) wheezed, “promise if we ever cross again, we will end our suffering.”

“We promise,” you (he?) rasped in return.

It sounded like salvation you’d stopped hoping for since the first time your heart restarted.

You were captured. For a long time.

That’s all Laswell is able to tell them before the team is in the air and then boots down, running. A mission too important to delay poking for classified information and questioning you about.

If you notice they’re sideways glances and disquieted shifting, it doesn’t show.

You sit in your (new) customary spot at the back of the plane - first out and last in, no matter how Price reprimands - with your arms crossed and eyes closed. Seemingly resting, except for how your foot occasionally twitches like a hypnic jerk.

But Simon suspects you’ve already stopped falling.

The inverted cross finger-painted onto your helmet burns into Simon’s eyes. Your handgun rests on the same side, the Cyrillic engraving prowling at edges of his mind. Promise, it says, Promise.

“Carrion, you take the north. Keep that route clear for exit. If you need backup, give us a shout.”

You smile indulgently at Price. “We will be fine, Captain.”

And you are. When Simon and Johnny sprint down the hall, charges in hand to blow the whole operation into the stratosphere, the walls are painted in crimson. Bodies litter the edges, laying at unnatural slants and hasty angles, pulled and pushed out of the path they’re running. Swept aside like so much garbage.

But Simon doesn’t have time to stop. He doesn’t catch more than flashes of only-just-fatal gunshots and bone splintering out of limbs, sockets devoid of eyes. There are hostiles hot on their heels, bullets flying, and you’re leaning by the fire door at the end, casual as you please.

“Cover us!” Johnny shouts.

“Already on it,” you reply, sounding focused in their ear pieces. But Simon can see you shrug leisurely off the wall, raise your gun and barely aim before the barrel flashes.

Johnny yelps as the shot whistles past his ear, but he’s none the worse for wear and a body drops somewhere behind them. And then a couple more, tripping over their fallen comrade.

“Like bowling pins,” you muse. “Hurry up, you two.”

You fire in a steady stream, just purposeful enough to be justified as conserving ammo. Simon lets himself believe that’s what it is as he shoves Johnny through the door and yanks you through just after.

(Are you reluctant to go? No, no he’s just paranoid from Laswell’s revelation.)

On the ride back to base you sigh and stretch out. Your gun is still in your hand, still live. You use the barrel to scratch at your jaw.

“Oi!” Price barks.

“Aye, Captain?” you reply, blinking innocently. “I will send you back to basic handling so fast, soldier,” he swears. Your head twitches. Blink and you miss it, just the tiniest bit. Cocking in confusion. “Ah, shite. Sorry, Cap. Won’t happen again,” you apologize. You sound sincere, but you don’t blink once as you holster your weapon. (It happens again. You sit through the remedial looking for all the world like you’re going to eat the instructor.)

“What do you mean they were captured?” Price demands. His voice is taut, stretched too thin, on the verge of snapping.

His office is too small, too full. It’s 141, minus you, and Laswell. It’s not the bodies that crowd the little space, but tension. Confusion, guilts, desperation for answers - but mostly fear. It’s bitter on the back of Simon’s tongue and knows the others taste it too.

“Carrion’s team was captured in Russia while trying to extract a deep cover asset,” she explains. “They were held by Zakhaev for an extended period of time.”

She pauses as Price curses, walks away to the far wall, then pivots right back around to rejoin the conversation. Simon recognizes the name - recognizes the work. The scars beneath his clothes, his mask, flare and itch. He crosses his arms tight against the feeling.

“How long?” Price growls.

“John…” A long time, she’d said before. Long enough, Simon surmises. (Too long, his mind whispers.)

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Price asks.

Laswell is trustworthy, has proved that over and over again - but she’s still CIA. She knows how to trim and prune information down to the bare essentials so that she never actually has to lie.

“Carrion isn’t compromised, we made sure of that,” she says.

The ringing in the back of Simon’s head gets louder. He smells dirt and decay.

“Dammit, Kate, you know that’s not why I’m asking,” Price hisses.

She sighs, shoulders sloping down. “Because I don’t have much to tell you, John. There’s so much we don’t know about what happened. Carrion won’t tell us anything, and the psychologists have advised that we don’t press.”

“So you kept us in the dark so we wouldn’t press either.”

“I’m saying that even if I told you, it would have done more harm than good. I don’t have any triggers to warn you away from, or PTSD symptoms for you to watch out for. The best course of action was to treat Carrion like nothing happened. Are you telling me you could have done that, knowing Carrion was captured and tortured by Zakhaev?”

Price’s jaw twitches. Johnny picking the skin around his thumb bloody and Gaz keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. They know the answer, but it still smarts. Rings too close to Simon’s own truth for comfort. He talks himself into taking a deep, slow, purposeful breath. The lingering scent of cigar smoke helps clear his head.

“We know now,” Price says.

Laswell nods, gaze steady, unrepentant. “And now you need to act like you don’t.”

“Carrion isn’t right,” Gaz pipes up. “We’ve all noticed.”

The corners of Laswell’s mouth tug down. “What have you done about it?”

“Nothin’,” Johnny assures quickly. “Jus’ noticed ‘s all.”

“Then keep doing that,” she says, meeting each of their eyes, ending on Price again. “Notice and do nothing.”

The days after feel like a horrific kind of fever dream.

Johnny calls your name across the cafeteria in the morning. It takes you a moment too long to turn. (You don’t have so much as a bite of food despite arriving after them.)

When Price shouts “Carrion” on the training grounds later, you alert like a hound. Like that was always your name.

Simon knocks on your door in the afternoon. You swing the door only just wide enough to fit most of your torso in the opening. Beyond you, the room is pitch black despite the sun shining on that side of the building. Your pupils are blown and ebb slowly in the light of the hallway, slithering away from your irises.

You’re still dressed head-to-toe, as always.

“Need your AAR,” he says.

“Oh, right,” you say, “just a tic.”

You step away, the door drifting closed almost as if by accident. In the brief moment and space you’ve vacated, Simon notices a glittery sliver of mirror on the floor. He could almost swear a shadow slides across it. But then you’re back, the report in your hand. Your pupils are pinpricks now, almost completely gone. There’s a smudge on the bottom corner of one page and your signature is yours but not in your handwriting.

“Anything else, LT?” you ask cheerfully.

"I’m sorry,” he says, “about the things I said before.”

“It’s alright, I know I should have been ready to cover you,” you laugh.

“Not the mission. I mean the things I said before you left. I should have at least shook your hand when I saw you off.”

Something slides behind your eyes, your expression frozen.

“Oh,” you say, blissfully blank. “I really appreciate that, but it’s all in the past. I just appreciated you showing up at the time.”

You smile and for the first time, he notices all your teeth don't look quite like he remembers.

"It meant a lot to say goodbye - you never know what could happen on those long missions, yeah?"

"Yeah."