I turn my head, slow as death, and she’s there. Close enough I can smell her—antiseptic, sweat, and something that’s still her beneath it all.
“Still here,” she whispers, her fingers squeezing mine. “Still fighting.”
I want to answer. My throat won’t cooperate. The tubes choke the words back down but my eyes find hers and God—those eyes. They undo me. They’re the only thing that’s real in this blur.
She leans closer, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go. “You don’t get to leave me, Dax. Not again. Not ever.”
The words hit like a round straight through my chest, sharper than any shrapnel.
My lips part. The sound’s broken, raw, barely air.
But I force it out anyway.
“…Butterfly.”
Her breath catches, and she’s shaking her head, whispering like she’s bargaining with God. “Don’t you dare stop saying it.”
I don’t know if I can. My body’s wrecked. Fragile. Every heartbeat feels borrowed but as long as she’s here—I will because I’d rather choke on her name than breathe without it.
Her hand is the only steady thing I’ve got.
Warm. Trembling. Real.
Everything else—blur.
The tent hums. Monitors beep. Diesel burns through the canvas walls. Men cough in beds two rows down. Someone’s screaming for morphine in the far corner. The war doesn’t stop just because I’m flat on my back.
And it’s creeping in.
Already.
The flap of the med tent whips open. Boots pound. Voices sharp, urgent. I try to turn my head, but it’s too heavy. I catch fragments.
“Convoy hit?—”
“—three down?—”
“—need more hands?—”
Cass stiffens beside me. I feel it in the way her fingers twitch against mine. The medic in her wants to move. The woman in her doesn’t. She leans over me, her face tight, eyes flicking to the chaos at the door, then back to me.
“Stay,” I rasp, or maybe I only think it. My voice is shredded glass, but her eyes snap to mine anyway.
“I have to—” she starts, but I squeeze her hand. Weak, but enough. My ribs scream from the effort.
“No.”
It tears out of me, low, guttural.
The monitors jump because I know what it means when she walks out there. It means bullets before breakfast. It means she patches bodies that won’t make it back. It means one of these days she won’t either.
I can’t lose her to the same teeth that chewed me up but the war doesn’t care.
It keeps pressing in.
Voices closer now.
“—need plasma now!”
