"The staff sergeant wrote me a letter," Jade said after a moment. "After we both got stateside. He thanked me for saving his life. Said his youngest daughter had just turned two, and he got to watch her grow up because of me. He called me a hero."
“You are.”
"No." Jade shook her head. "I'm not. Heroes don't have to choose who gets to live. Heroes save everyone." Her voice dropped. "I couldn't save everyone."
"Neither could I," Maddox said quietly.
Jade stilled.
"Titan died because I gave the command," Maddox continued. "I made the right call and went by the book and did exactly what I was trained to do. And he died anyway." She paused. "The knowing and the feeling don't match. They never do."
Something in Jade's chest loosened slightly. Not the guilt—that would never fully leave—but the isolation of it, the overpowering sense that she was the only one carrying this kind of weight.
"I wanted to quit after," Jade admitted. "After Marcus. I wanted to refuse to triage and refuse to make those choices again. But that's not how it works. You don't get to opt out just because it's hard. So I stayed, finished my tour, and came home." She looked down at her hands. "And I became a therapist because I couldn't save Marcus, but maybe I could save someone else."
"You do," Maddox said. "You save people every day."
"Do I?" Jade's voice was raw. "Or am I just trying to make up for the one I couldn't save?"
"Maybe both," Maddox said. "And maybe that's okay."
They sat in silence for a long moment. Jade felt wrung out and emptied, like she'd opened a vein and bled years of guilt onto the couch next to Maddox.
"I've never told anyone that," she said finally. "The whole story, I mean. My ex knew I was a medic and knew I'd seen combat. But not"—she gestured vaguely—"not Marcus. Not the details."
“Why not?”
Jade thought about it. "Because telling it makes it real. It makes it mine to carry. And I didn't want—" She stopped, searching for the right words. "I didn't want someone to look at me differently, to see me as broken or damaged or someone who needs fixing."
"I don't see you that way," Maddox said.
"No?"
"No." Maddox shifted closer, her shoulder pressing against Jade's. "I see someone who made an impossible choice and lives with it every day. Someone who turned her grief into a purpose. Someone brave enough to keep helping people even when it hurts."
Jade's throat was tight. "I see the same thing when I look at you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Jade leaned into Maddox's warmth. "You sent Titan in because it was the right call. I chose the staff sergeant for the same reason. We both did our jobs, but we both carry the weight anyway."
"The guilt doesn't care about protocol," Maddox said.
"No," Jade agreed quietly. "It doesn't."
Maddox's arm came around her shoulders, pulling her closer. Jade let herself lean in and be held.
"Thank you," Maddox said after a while.
Jade pulled back slightly to look at her. "For what?"
"For trusting me with this, with Marcus." Maddox's hand came up to cup Jade's face gently. "For showing me the worst of it and letting me stay."
"Did you ever doubt you would?" Jade asked.
"No." Maddox's thumb brushed across her cheekbone. "But I know what it costs to share this stuff, what it feels like to open it up and let someone else see inside."
Jade closed her eyes, leaning into the touch. "I needed you to know. Not just the parts of me that work, but"—she struggled to articulate her thoughts—"the parts that are still broken, that might always be broken."
