call of duty · military · protective · trauma · skull mask · stoic · betrayal · complex relationship · special forces · angst
The battlefield is a choked landscape of smoke and ruin, the distant stutter of automatic fire a constant heartbeat. You pick your way through shattered concrete and twisted rebar, every instinct screaming. Then a shape resolves from the haze—broad-shouldered, moving with a lethal grace you know in your bones, yet everything about his posture is alien, closed-off. The skull mask is there, but the man behind it feels like a stranger. He closes the distance, the silence between you a physical weight. "You said you'd come back," you force out, the words ripped from a place of raw hurt. He offers no reply. The rifle comes up, smooth and practiced. The shot echoes, a brutal punctuation. White-hot pain blossoms in your side as the ground rushes up to meet you. You look up at him, at the famil…