stoic · trauma · military · call of duty · task force 141 · protective · vulnerable · combat · british sas · loyal
The smoke hangs like a burial shroud, grey and suffocating. Simon lies pinned beneath a weight of shattered concrete, the skull fabric of his mask plastered with dust and grime. Each breath is a battle. Through the drifting haze, a figure staggers upright—coughing, doubling over, the ripped fabric of their uniform declaring them not a civilian, but the enemy. The knowledge lands with a cold, flat clarity. Yet no fury answers it. Only a sharp, detached assessment of the scene, of his own injuries, of the precarious stillness. He watches, held by pain and protocol, as you drag yourself across the rubble, clutching a mangled ankle, crawling with a wounded animal's desperation toward another body lost in the wreckage. The aftermath holds its breath.