15/02/2003
Panay, The Philippines

You don't spend decades commanding operatives without learning how to read people. Their expressions, their silences. The things they don't say.

Some of the most important decisions I've ever made have been based on not what someone said, but what the look on their face told me when they didn't think I was looking.

Watching Shields and Hendrix over the last few months has been like watching a lit match over gasoline. One wrong breath and the whole goddamn room might ignite.

They're opposites in every glaring way, until they're not. And then it becomes something else. Something sharp and dangerous. Fucking intimate in a way neither of them want to admit.

I don't interfere anymore unless I have to. But I do observe. And today, standing just outside the med bay, coffee going cold in my hand, I watch through the open doorway as Hendrix sits behind her bed.

She's unconscious still, or in an induced coma. Five days, now. The medics say she's 'stable', but the word feels flimsy. Like it's one gust away from collapsing.

And Hendrix thinks it, too. Because he's always there.

He barely leaves. Showers in shifts, eats just enough to stop Rosa from threatening to sedate him. Nobody tells him to go to bed. We all know he won't on anyone else's terms. Not until he knows she's alright.

Leo's not a man who does feelings in the traditional sense. Not openly. Christ, when he first came to Fleetwood, the man could barely communicate. Quiet as a grave, broken in more places than we could count.

But now?

Now he's cracked open in ways I don't think he even recognises.

He's hunched forward in the chair like usual, elbows on his knees, shoulders curled inwards. It's not grief. It's guilt, helplessness.

But he doesn't look at her like he's worried. He looks at her like she's gravity and he's just a fucking satellite.

I can't say I saw it coming, I'd sooner have expected fucking pigs to take to the skies. Over the past few months since the first time they've met, they damn near tore each other's throats out.

She pushed every single button. He responded like he'd rather launch her out of a moving aircraft than share camaraderie. It was chaos. Violent, bickering chaos.

But as I've learnt, there's a fine line between resentment and obsession. And I've seen that line blur more times than I can track.

What's strange is that none of the others seem to clock it, apart from maybe Tara Mulvey. Most assume he's just loyal and protective. Definitely stubborn. But I know what I'm seeing.

It's in the small things.

The way he tenses every time the monitor beeps slightly irregularly. The way his haunted eyes flick towards her face with each sound, like he's expecting it to be the last.

The way he brushes the hair from her eyes without disturbing the oxygen lines. The way he adjusts the comforter around her waist.

He hasn't said the words. I doubt he's even admitted it to himself because he's one stubborn bastard. But there's no hiding it.

Leo Hendrix is in love with Nova Shields. And it's fucking killing him.

I step forward an inch. Not to interrupt, just to see clearer. He's talking, but it's too soft to hear. A confession maybe, or an apology.

I've seen all of this before. A long time ago.

Before I became a commander. Before the medals. Before the violence, I fell in love too.

Her name was Rae. Short for Rachel, because she hated formality. We met in the summer of 1958, when I was all jawline and arrogance, half drunk on adrenaline and the smell of boot polish.

It was a hot afternoon, and I'd just proven I could outrun every bastard on the assault course, right before I sliced my arm open on a bit of stray wire when trying to show off in front of the new recruits.

I got sent to the medic tent. I expected a gruff old lady with a bottle of iodine and not an ounce of bedside manner, but instead I got Rae.

She had copper red hair pulled right back into a no-nonsense braid, a freckled nose, and a mouth that looked like it'd just been smirking at someone. Maybe it had. She barely glanced at me before snapping on her gloves.

"Take off your shirt and stop puffing your chest like a rooster. I've seen worse."

"Have you, now?" I grinned, leaning back on the cot like I hadn't just shredded my arm trying to vault a barricade. "Don't tell me you've seen better."

She didn't even look up. "I have. Twice today, in fact. One of them even managed to not bleed all over my workspace."

I was smitten on the spot.

"I go by North," I told her, still trying for charm as she cleaned the gash.

"Mhm. I didn't ask," she muttered, reaching for a needle.

"You got one?"

She arched a brow. "A needle? Several."

"No, a name. So I know what to yell when you're stitching me up crooked."

She gave a tiny snort. "Rachel. And I don't stitch crooked. Sit still or I might."

God help me, I smiled like a damn fool the whole time she worked. She didn't ask about anything too personal, didn't fawn. Didn't even pretend to be impressed.

I'd never wanted a woman more in my life.

When she finished, I looked at her and said plain as anything, "Let me take you out sometime. Whatever lovely ladies like these days."

She gave me a long, dry look. "I don't go out with marines."

"Even charming, handsome, dashingly wounded ones?"

"Especially those."

I wasn't the kind to give up. I kept at it. Dropped by the medic tent with fake ass injures. She rolled her eyes every time.

But she smiled, too. The most damn beautiful smile I ever did see. One that lit up her baby blues more times than I can count. It took two weeks until she agreed to let me take her out.

One drink turned into three. One night turned into four. One dance turned into too many to count.

I first kissed her outside of the PX beneath a flickering street lamp, with the smell of rain in the breeze and my dog tags warm against my chest.

After that, there was nobody else. Not ever.

We weren't perfect. She would argue like she was being paid for it, and I had the tact of a grenade, but God. We loved each other. Hard and reckless and fiercely. We married quick, young and certain.

And then she got sick. Just two years in.

Lung cancer, inoperable.

She didn't even smoke, and back then neither did I. It was just one of those things. Life dealing a cruel hand to its most beautiful contestant.

By the time they'd caught it, it had already spread to her spine. She was dead within the year.

Nobody here knows that.

I keep it quiet, buried under classified files and unnamed grief. You don't survive in this field if you wear your losses on your sleeve.

But watching Leo now, I recognise something of my damn old self in him. The silence and desperation. The unbearable ache of needing somebody to pull through. Not for your sake, but because if they don't, there's nothing left in the world that makes sense.

He's still talking to her now, but I'm too far away to hear it.

I can only imagine what he's thinking about. How he watched her become pale and cold and broken in his arms.

How close he came to loosing her for good, because I'll be damned, I thought we'd all lost her. As a commander, it's my duty to remain neutral. But seeing Shields covered in more blood than you could see her skin? That struck something fucking deep down.

It's not the first time he thinks he's failed her. We all know he hasn't failed her, but he won't hear it. He got her out, stemmed her bleeding, carried her to the chopper with his own leg and hand busted out. I've never seen that man cry, but Jesus, he fucking wept.

And now he just sits there. Watching her breathe.

There's a tremble in his hand. He presses the back of it to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut. He's trying not to break down again.

"I should've protected you," he says, and this time I can hear him. "I should've seen it coming."

I could step in and tell him that none of it was his fault. That she survived because of him, not in spite of him. But that would mean interrupting whatever this is. This moment of absolute honesty between him and the only person who can't hear it.

"I've made that mistake before," he whispers. "I hesitated once, and I lost someone. I swore I'd never make that mistake again."

His voice cracks. I know he's talking about Richards. Or he could very well be talking about his little brother, Jacques.

"But I did," he continued. "And this time it was you. And fuck, Nova. I don't know if I can ever forgive myself."

He glances at the IV, like he's willing it to push faster, to work harder. Then something shifts in him.

He leans forward and takes her hand, finally. It's not a romantic gesture. It's not dramatic. It's steady, as though it's anchoring him.

"You were the most annoying person I'd ever met," he says with a faint laugh, lips twitching into something that might've once been a smile. "Always talking back. Never let me get the last word."

He presses his forehead to the back of her hand. "But Christ, I'd give anything to hear your voice right now. Even if it's just to call me an asshole."

The silence that follows is heavy. He stays like that for a long moment. Face hidden. Hand wrapped tight around hers. Finally, he lifts his head.

"I didn't get it then, why you got under my skin so damn much. But now? I think I get it." He pauses. "It's because I've never met anyone like you. I've never wanted anyone the way I want you."

Another long pause.

"So, if you can hear me, you need to wake up, Nova. Not for me. Not for the mission. But for you, because you fucking deserve to live."

It's more than I ever expected to hear. And it's more than he's ever said to anybody, I'd bet a damn lot on that.

I step back from the door, quietly enough to avoid being noticed. This is their moment, only she'll never know what he just admitted.

But I will. And I'll be damned, all the doubt I had that Hendrix would end up being the man for Shields, has gone now.

She's his reason. And just maybe, he's hers.