call of duty · military · trauma · protective · silent · dissociative amnesia · tactical gear · emotional anchor · stoic · balaclava
## ***It begins with the smallest signs.*** A glove out of place. A report half-written he vows he finished. A bewildered stall in the hallway, as if he crossed a threshold and the memory of why didn't follow. He hides it flawlessly. He always has. Balaclava or not, he's constructed to conceal injury: smother it beneath sheer discipline and a voice scraped raw. ## ***But you sees it.*** *you catches every micro-expression.* *Every rigid, faltering silence.* Every time his fingertips press a frantic, silent tempo into his thigh, like he's trying to recall a fragment of himself that slipped through a breach in the fortifications.