Pablo had heard about Sébastien from other instructors before—a forger turned fighter.

"Old," they said. "No background, no connections, no talent. He should just go back to tinkering."

The other instructors mentioned him in passing, always with the same shrug—like he wasn't worth more than a footnote. Just another latecomer who'd burn out within a month.

Pablo didn't think much of it at the time. Every year brought in a few like that—people chasing a 'purpose' they should've found a decade earlier. Most of them faded quietly. Some washed out. A few broke something and left on stretchers, never to return.

But then he saw him.

Sébastien wasn't even officially signed up for his session. Not that it was forbidden—just... unusual. Most recruits stuck to their assigned rotations, careful not to step outside their lanes. People didn't ask for extra, they barely survived what they had. Besides, training under Pablo was notoriously grueling. Many tried to avoid his sessions.

But Sébastien was there.

It was subtle—Sebastien kept a fair distance, always at the edge of the group. Watching, not participating at first. He kept his distance, respectful but intent. But Pablo had been teaching long enough to know when someone was paying attention for real. He didn't interrupt him. He just... observed.

Pablo still remembered the first time he caught Sébastien copying his movements from across the training yard. Pablo raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He'd seen plenty of overeager trainees burn themselves out trying to prove something. But Sébastien wasn't showing off. He wasn't even aware Pablo was watching.

There was something in the way Sébastien moved—clumsy, yes, but determined. He wasn't mimicking blindly. He was studying. Watching how Pablo shifted his stance, how he redirected his weight, how he turned defense into offense. And then Sébastien would try it himself, again and again, adjusting slightly every time, until it stopped looking like a copy and started looking like his own.

He moved like someone with nothing to lose—and everything to prove.

And day after day, he came back. Still unofficial. Still on the sidelines. Never asked for help. Never expected it. Just observed, absorbed, practiced.

There was something in that stubbornness Pablo recognized—something he hadn't seen in a long time. That stubbornness... the same kind he'd once had.

Pablo remembered the early days, when his hands shook with the weight of his first axe, and every muscle screamed as he struggled to keep up. The quiet frustration of not being quick or strong enough. The long hours spent practicing alone, pushing through the exhaustion until progress—however small—became its own reward.

Watching Sébastien now, it hit him with a jolt. That hunger. That drive to keep going when you don't know if you can, but you do anyway. It was the reason he'd started, the reason he'd kept going all these years.

That moment, the old flame in his chest flickered back to life—the one he thought had died, but Sébastien had unknowingly reignited.

***

Pablo finally approached him after a few weeks of this.

"You're gonna pull your shoulder like that, kid" he said casually, stepping in and correcting Sébastien's posture. "Here. Keep your elbow loose."

Sébastien blinked, a little startled. "...Thanks, uhm.. Mr. Guerreiro."

After that, it became a regular thing. Pablo didn't go easy on him—if anything, he pushed him harder, gave him drills no one else wanted to do. And Sébastien never once complained. He just did them. Quietly. Effectively. He took every correction like a sponge and, before long, started improving faster than any trainee Pablo had seen in years.

By the time Sébastien was ready to move on from basic training, Pablo had already started calling him by name—a small thing, but Sébastien noticed.

Sébastien was never the best in the yard. Not the fastest, not the strongest, not the one others gravitated toward. But he was steady. Reliable. The kind of person you didn't notice until you were falling, and he was the one who caught you.

By the end of the seventh month since he started, the veterans had stopped laughing. They didn't say it out loud, but they'd stopped underestimating him. Pablo could see it in how they spoke to him—less with derision, more with quiet respect. And maybe that was all Sébastien ever wanted. Not admiration. Just to stand among them without being questioned.

"He's rough, but he learns," Pablo told the other instructors later. "He's sharp. He listens. He adapts. He learns. And more importantly—he doesn't quit. That's rarer than raw talent."

***

There was one night, just before Sébastien's first mission came through, that Pablo caught him alone in the yard. The others had long since turned in. The lamps were dim. Shadows stretched like cracks across the dirt.

"You don't stop, do you?" Pablo asked, leaning against the fence.

Sébastien looked up mid-swing, breath fogging the cold night air. "Not yet," he said simply.

Pablo watched him for a while, then stepped into the yard. No words, just movement. They spared until the stars blurred overhead, until the silence between them became something familiar.

When it was over, Pablo clapped him on the shoulder—hard enough to mean something. "You've got good instincts," he said. "Use them."

***

Sébastien left for his first mission the next day. No crowd, no fanfare. Just a bag slung over his shoulder and the quiet resolve of someone who knew this was just the beginning. And as he walked away, Pablo watched from the gate, arms crossed, expression unreadable. "Don't waste that stubbornness," Pablo told him. "Make it count."

And Sébastien did.

It wasn't goodbye. Not really. But it felt like the end of a chapter. And he never forgot the man who gave him a chance when no one else did.