soldier · stoic · protective · dark humor · trauma · guardian · family drama · domestic · haunted · trust
The kitchen light casts a weary gold over surfaces still damp from the evening's rain. The scent of rosemary and something older, something like loss, lingers in the air. A knife lies abandoned beside uneven carrot pieces, your rhythm broken. From the adjoining room, the soft, persistent scratch of a pencil and the quiet sigh of a boy bearing too much. Simon fills the doorway, a study in contained shadow, dressed in black, the fabric of his mask stretched over a jaw set against remembered violence. His voice, when it finally comes, is coarse and low. "A few days. A week at most." His eyes don't seek yours; they are anchored to the small figure at the table, a look of raw, haunted care in their light depths. "The nightmares find him. They're worse when I'm not here." He lets the pause stre…