The world around us was quiet, too quiet. The wind had picked up, cutting through the stillness with a cold bite that made my bones ache. I wrapped my cloak tighter around my shoulders, the thick fabric offering little protection from the chill in the air, and settled myself against the rocks.
Across the fire, Kvatz sat still, the light from the flames dancing in his eyes. He hadn't spoken much since we'd captured the deserter. He was much quieter than his comedic usual-self. I watched him for a moment longer, the shadows playing over his face, making him look even more like a man made of stone than usual. There was something about him—something I couldn't quite place—that always seemed to make me feel like I was staring at a puzzle I could never solve.
Kvatz had been my companion for a long time now, longer than I cared to remember. There had been times when I wasn't sure we'd make it through the next day, let alone the next week. But we always did. Always survived. And it wasn't just luck. It was Kvatz. He was relentless. He was a machine, his focus unyielding, his instincts sharp, but there was more to him than that. I knew that. Somewhere beneath the hardened exterior, beneath the mercenary façade, there was something real. Something human.
I couldn't help but think about how we got here, to this point. Back in the beginning, when we first crossed paths, I never would have imagined we'd still be standing here together. Kvatz wasn't someone who easily formed bonds. He was a mercenary, after all. He lived in a world of contracts and payments, where relationships were temporary, and survival was the only thing that mattered. But despite that, he'd never left. He could have walked away at any time. Hell, he could have walked away the first time things got rough, but he didn't. He stayed.
He stayed.
I didn't understand it at first. I didn't get why someone like him would stick around when there was nothing but pain and death ahead of us. But now, after everything we'd been through, I started to see it. He wasn't just sticking around for the job. He wasn't staying because of some misplaced sense of duty or obligation. No, Kvatz was staying because, somewhere in that cold, unfeeling heart of his, he understood what it meant to be a part of something bigger. Even if he wouldn't ever admit it.
I shook my head, turning my gaze back to the fire, the flames licking at the night air. There was a part of me that wanted to ask him, to demand he tell me what was going on in his head, but I knew better. Kvatz didn't share. He didn't talk about feelings or memories or anything personal. His past was a dark, jagged thing, and he kept it locked away. He wasn't the type to open up about anything that mattered.
And maybe that was just how he coped. Maybe he couldn't deal with the weight of it all, the guilt, the regret. He had too much of it—too many ghosts clinging to his every step. But even in that silence, that impenetrable, suffocating silence, I knew there was a softness to him. A part of him that cared. He just didn't know how to show it.
I thought about the way he had been with the deserter, how he'd been so cold, so detached, when he'd confronted the man. How he had done what needed to be done without hesitation, but there was something about the way his eyes flickered—just for a second—when he looked at someone who was broken, who was scared. It was as if he saw himself in them. As if he saw his own mistakes reflected back at him, and it hurt him, even if he wouldn't admit it. Even if he couldn't.
I knew that look. I had seen it in his eyes a hundred times before, but I had never said anything. I didn't have to. He didn't need me to fix him. Hell, I wasn't even sure if he could be fixed. But I'd be damned if I didn't try, if I didn't keep pushing, if I didn't keep moving forward with him, side by side, even if I didn't know where we were going.
"Kvatz…" I said, my voice quieter than I meant. I almost didn't say it at all, but something inside me urged me on, something I didn't understand. "Do you ever… regret it? Everything?"
I couldn't look at him when I asked him. I didn't want to see the hardness in his eyes, the walls he always put up. But there was something in me, something I couldn't ignore, that I needed to know. Needed to understand.
He didn't respond at first. The silence between us stretched long, thick and uncomfortable. It always did when I asked him something like that. He wasn't the kind of man to dwell on regrets.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he spoke. His voice was low, gruff, but there was a quietness to it that I wasn't used to. "I don't have time for regrets."
I wanted to say something—anything—but I held my tongue. It was the only answer I was ever going to get from him.
I sat back against the rocks, the weight of the silence pressing down on me. It wasn't comfortable, not like the easy silences between friends, the kind of silence where you didn't need words to communicate. This silence was different. This silence was the kind that came with unspoken pain, with things left unsaid, with the weight of everything we had carried with us for so long.
But despite it all, despite the heaviness in my chest and the uncertainty that gnawed at the edges of my mind, I felt something else. Something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Hope.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, there was more to this life than just surviving. Hope that even in a world as broken as this one, there was still a chance for something real.
I wasn't sure what that something was. But as I glanced at Kvatz once more, sitting there in the firelight, I realized I wasn't so alone in this anymore.
We had our scars, all of us. Some were visible, some weren't. But we carried them together. And in the end, maybe that was enough.