The first thing Toric felt when he came to was the gentle breath of cool air against his skin. It wasn’t smoke-thick or wrapped with heat. It was just clean and fresh. Not the kind of breeze that belonged to a battlefield.

He stirred slowly, pulling in a few shallow breaths. His lips were as dry and cracked as the pit of his iron laced throat. Every movement scraped from the inside out.

He heard no gunfire. No static. Just a stillness that felt eerie in its calmness.

There was a rhythmic hum of something deep in the heart of the building. It sounded like something mechanical. It continued to vibrate faintly through the floor beneath him like a distant heartbeat.

Stone walls surrounded him, smooth and deliberate. Everything looked cold to the eye. This was too pristine for a place that had ever known war.

The windows were tall, arched, and ornate. Stained glass fractured the weak daylight into ribbons of color, bleeding amber and violet across the polished porcelain tile. It gave the illusion of warmth. But the room itself was dim. Illuminated only by that faint grey light creeping through the painted glass, softening the corners.

Toric blinked and his vision swam, the edges bending, the light too sharp. His head pulsed like something was trying to crack its way out from the inside.

He wasn’t dead.

He should’ve been. The last thing he remembered was choking on his own blood. 

A pressure coiled tight around his side, hot and pulling at the tissue beneath his ribs every time he breathed. He tried to get up, but wasn’t able to. Or maybe his body just wouldn’t let him.

His awareness narrowed to a single shape. A body leaning in, haloed by the grey light. All white, something celestial. 

The figure leaned over him. Ever precise and exact.

Vox.

His crisp white sleeves had been rolled to the forearms. Clean white fabric gloves were discarded on a tray. Bare fingers traced him now, stained faintly with blood. His long fingers moved fluidly over a bandage, adjusting it with surgical care. There was a basin nearby, the water stained dark pink. A folded cloth, shears, and a length of gauze laid carefully beside it. The smell of antiseptic clung faint and bitter in the air beneath the iron of blood.

And Vox’s face read calm and remote. Like none of this had touched him.

“You were impaled,” he said without inflection, not even glancing up. “Two inches higher and it would’ve punctured your lung.”

Toric’s chest lifted in shallow pulls. The surgical tape tugged tight across his sternum, anchoring him to sensation. He was bare to the waist, skin mapped in a tight weave of bandages that were still damp. Too much of him was exposed. His body felt hot, vulnerable.

Vox’s hands moved along the edge of the wrap, but they didn’t prod. His fingers were soft and smooth. The kind of skin that hadn't been exposed to physical labor. Gentle fingers traced the lines with a quiet, deliberate pressure. An experience that felt almost sensual.

Toric’s body went rigid with the realization. And the sensation of being touched without anything between them. Bare skin on skin.  

His mouth felt suddenly dry. His pulse kicked hard and high in his throat, like it was trying to escape him. 

He didn’t dare try to speak.  He didn’t trust his voice.

Vox reached for a fresh cloth, wrung it out, and began gently dabbing the dried blood from Toric’s sternum. His touch wasn’t indulgent. It was clinical, focused. 

“Don’t strain,” Vox added, without looking up. “You’ll tear the stitches.”

Toric’s brain was short-circuiting on too many fronts: the pain, the silence, the surreal gentleness of this.

He was in a private room. The architecture gave it away — he was definitely in Vox’s cathedral—those same arched windows, the same church-like hush in the walls. But this time, he hadn't brought him to the ballroom. This was quiet and soft. Linens like silk caressed his skin. Pillows were arranged with obsessive care. This wasn’t a hospital or a holding cell. 

This was Vox’s bedroom. 

Toric realized it slowly, the implications trailing after like temptation. 

Outside, he heard the low murmur of activity. There was movement in the corridors. Voices, ringing out brief and clipped. The scrape of boots. The flicker of a command center. 

The base was alive. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious.

Vox looked up from the basin and their eyes met.

There was no arrogance in his face. Just a kind of certainty. The calm of someone who had already accepted this outcome long ago. Or even orchestrated it himself. 

“I wasn’t going to let you die,” Vox said, matter-of-fact. 

Toric clenched his jaw and turned his face away, trying to hide the burn from within. But it was too late. The heat was already there, rising up the back of his neck, curling behind his ears. 

Then, Toric sat up in a rush, like he’d just remembered where he was supposed to be. Or like his brain had finally jolted out of its drug induced haze. 

“Where—where are my men?” His gaze swept the room, wild, searching for a way out. “I have to get back. They need me.”

His voice cracked at the edges, climbing fast. It was panic, raw and rising.

“Don’t,” Vox said, his voice quiet and even. A sound like mercury being poured. His hand pressed lightly against Toric’s sternum, fingers a breath softer than restraint. “You’re still losing blood.” 

Toric didn’t answer. His fists clenched tight enough to ache.

He remembered it—blood threading through the grates beneath him, thick and slow, congealing hot. Sticky as syrup. The kid collapsed barely a meter away from him. Torn open, still twitching. A final breath that came out in a sound too close to a sob. Gideon, erased from existence like he’d never even existed at all.

The assault had been a disaster.

And Vox hadn’t come until it was already over.

Until there was no one left to save.

Except him.

“You—” Toric’s throat closed around the words. His eyes flicked up to Vox’s ever calm face. “You set us up. You knew.”

Vox said nothing for a beat.

Then, almost idly, he said, “I suspected.”

Toric’s fury came faster than the pain. He surged upright, ripping half the stitches in the process. Rough hands closed around Vox’s collar, yanking him forward.

“You fucking bastard—!” he choked, voice raw, shaking with grief and rage. Blood surged from his side, soaking through the gauze.

Vox didn’t stop him. He just let him scream.

“You—” Toric’s throat closed around the word. His gaze locked on Vox, and something in it changed. It was more than just horror, it was understanding.

“You gave us that intel.” He said, but it came out hoarse. “You gave it to us. You—” His breath hitched. “You fucking led us in.”

Vox was motionless. His expression remained unreadable.

“I trusted you,” Toric whispered, voice splintering.

Then the fury hit like a gut punch. 

“My men died because of you!” Toric shouted, voice unraveling. “Kael—fuck—Kael—”
His breath hitched again, nearly a sob. “I didn’t see her. I didn’t have eyes on her—”

He faltered, eyes going wild. “And you just—” He could barely get the rest out.

“You watched it. Watched it all play out like—like—we were—”

He stopped himself before he said it.

He wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t say pawns. But it hung in the air, undeniable. He’d known. Somewhere deep down, he’d known. But he’d hoped.

God, he’d hoped.

Even when he shouldn’t have. Even when he’d felt the misdirection in his gut, thick and sour.

Blood was soaking through his side, wet, dark, and sticky—but he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop.

“They followed me.” His voice cracked. “I gave the order because I—I thought I could trust you.” His plea hung in the air for a breath, with no response. Breaking, he slammed his fist into Vox’s chest. “You used us! You used me.”

Toric was full on shaking now. His shoulders were jerking, breath short and hot. His face twisted as he fought the sob climbing up his throat.

“You let them die so you could clear a corridor, didn’t you? That was the real goal. We were just — a distraction.”

The words burned. His whole body sagged, his forehead nearly leaning against Vox’s chest, his voice dropping to a whisper that vibrated with rage and grief.

“You fucking played me.”

Tears rimmed his eyes, sharp and hot, and he didn’t wipe them. He wanted them to sting. He collapsed forward without ceremony, holding tight to Vox’s collar just to keep himself upright. As if that contact, that fabric in his fists, was the only thing keeping him from coming undone entirely.

Vox didn’t try to pull away, but he didn’t offer denial, or comfort. He just let him shatter. Remaining eerily still as Toric unraveled in his arms.

Vox’s eyes watched him, curiously. Like he was watching something foreign — a feeling he remembered having, maybe, once. Before they started cutting things out of him to see what would happen.

He watched a shimmer slip down Toric’s face. Proof of something he hardly believed was real anymore.

Then he leaned in, taking what he wanted before logic could change his mind.

The scent hit him first. It was a strong, unfiltered, animal smell. Sweat, the copper of blood, smoke, and that deep, human stink of pain and adrenaline. Underneath, there was something else. Something he’d only ever smelled on Toric. It was sharp, spicy and warm. Like skin left out too long in the sun.

He’d moved slow and quiet, as if startling him it would break whatever this was.

His hands found Toric’s ribs, the edges of the bandages, and slid around him. It wasn’t a hug. It was just contact of cold, steady hands, that weren't sure what came next. 

As soon as Vox touched him, Toric jolted, his breath catching sharp. The embrace had barely begun before he was shoving him away, hard, with rough palms to chest. Smearing blood across white like a warning.

“Get off me,” he snapped, his voice raw.

But Vox didn’t stumble. If anything, the rejection barely registered, like it wasn’t rejection at all, just a part of the ritual. He moved in again, slower this time. Toric was too weak to fight properly, and too dizzy to follow through. He couldn’t stop him.

He stayed hunched, fists tight in his lap, knuckles white. Not really resisting, just trembling.

Then Vox’s fingers slid beneath the edge of soaked gauze, and started peeling it back with the same care he might take unwrapping a bakery-fresh pastry. The bandage came away sticky and dark, and Toric flinched, but it wasn’t from the pain, but from the unbearable quiet of it. The closeness hurt more.

Vox’s hands moved like this wasn’t new to him. He’d gotten used to patching himself up.

He pressed fresh gauze to the bleeding seam just below the ribs, right where Toric had split himself open, jerking away. Pale hands never wavered. They just worked, slow and exact, staunching the new blood without a sound.

“—You let them die,” Toric bit out again, the words cutting from behind gritted teeth. His head lolled to the side, breathing hard, like all his energy had finally bled out. 

“You watched. You waited.” He didn’t even sound angry anymore. Just tired. 

Vox’s hands didn’t stall.

“Yes.” He said, calm and inevitable. “It was necessary. They drew the fire from our entry point. My unit advanced during the breach. And now, the relay center has been secured.”

Toric jerked like he’d been struck, body recoiling against the mattress. “Don’t—” he gasped. “Don’t turn this into strategy. You could’ve saved them. You—fuck—you came for me.”

Vox’s eyes stayed fixed on Toric’s face, watching the tremor in his jaw, fascinated by the quiver behind the rage. There was a long pause he let linger. It wasn’t from guilt, or regret. It was something stranger. 

His head tilted, inquisitive. Unable to piece his logic together in his own head. Toric was right. There was no clear strategic advantage to letting him survive when he let so many of the others die in the push. None that made sense to him.

“Yes.”

Then Vox returned his attention to his hands, moving them with quiet precision as he began the final wrappings. He pulled the bandage snug across Toric’s chest, tightening it in slow, even passes. A pressure that felt suffocating. Crushing in its certainty.

Toric stared at him, heart thudding painfully against the tight bandages, breathing stuttering, and hating himself for it. He hated that that admission made something pull in his gut. Something low and dangerous.

“—You abandoned everyone else.”

Vox’s eyes flicked back up. It was the kind of steadiness that came from knowing exactly what he was doing. And the kind of cynicism that came from abuse.

His hand drifted up—fingers tracing the edges of fresh white bandages and dried blood, skating over Toric’s ribs, pausing at his collarbone. Like he was mapping the damage. 

Toric’s whole body was shaking, clenched, torn in half. He wanted to scream and shove him away again. He wanted to drag him closer and demand answers until he got the one that would finally let him forget about all of this. But he already knew what Vox would say. Something calm and logical. Cold mathematics that had no time for feelings.

“You think this makes it okay?” Toric asked, hoarse. “You think saving me erases—”

“No,” Vox said.

The breath drained out of Toric like he’d been struck. His jaw twitched. The fury was still there burning white hot but it was slipping, losing shape. Because everything Vox said made sense, and that was the worst part. That it always did. 

The relay center was theirs now.

They could jam signals. Feed false orders. Strike like shadows and vanish before a single distress beacon went out. The Unified forces wouldn’t even know who was hitting them, or where. 

Vox leaned in closer than before. His voice dropped, low, surgical, like he was carving straight into the part of Toric that still wanted to believe in heroes.

“You took what I gave you after Brannock. But you didn’t tell them what it cost. Did you?”

Toric’s throat closed, and breath stuttered out of his lungs.

“You didn’t stop needing me,” Vox continued, voice softening. “Even after you realized what I was willing to do.” His voice dropped lower, husky, venomous, enough to slip under skin. ”You just hated how much you wanted it.”

The glare Toric shot him could’ve cut through steel. But it didn’t hold, because Vox just slithered closer, unbothered by the push and pull of this dance. Those damn hands hovered, ghostlike, just inches above his chest, waiting like they were asking for permission. 

Toric went still, and his eyes went wide from sheer proximity. 

He didn’t push him away. 

He should’ve. He knew he should’ve.

Vox's fingers landed gently over his chest, then spread wide like he was reading him through the skin. Toric’s heart thudded beneath the pressure. Loud and exposed. 

He swore Vox could feel it.

Vox was studying him again with that eerie, unreadable calm — but there was something else under it now. His gaze flicked downward to Toric’s mouth. Lingered for a breath, then flicked back up. Then down again.

He was giving him the chance to say no. To shove him, curse him, to break the spell. But Toric’s body couldn't move. All it could do was shake.