The Good, The Bad, The Dude

The night my village burned, I was barefoot in the fields with blood on my apron and my son in my arms.

Raiders. Dozens of them. Fire lit the sky like a second sun, and the screams—gods, the screams—would haunt me forever.

I thought we could hide in the cellar.

They found us before I could close the hatch.

One lunged at me. I screamed. Raised a rusted pitchfork.

Then his head rolled clean off his shoulders.

He was just there—sword dripping, eyes wild, mouth curled into something between a snarl and a grin.

He moved like violence made him whole. Like he wasn't afraid to die, so long as he could take everyone else with him.

The last raider begged for mercy.

Dude gave him silence.

When it was done, I clutched my son and stared at him. My hands were shaking. My knees bloody from the dirt.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He turned to the firelight. "Dude."

He stayed. Only a few days, he said. But we both knew time stretched differently when everything smelled like smoke and blood.

He buried bodies with me. Sharpened broken blades. Helped my son carve a wooden sword—then taught him how to swing it.

"You'll need to fight," he said. "Next time, no one might come."

He was distant. Sharp-edged. And yet, when he sat on my porch at dusk, he looked like the loneliest man in the world.

"You don't talk much," I said.

"I say enough," he replied.

We drank the last of the cider together in silence.

It wasn't love. It was need.

I needed to feel alive.

He needed to forget whatever haunted him.

It started with a touch—his hand on mine, calloused and careful. Then a kiss, unexpected and rough, like he was afraid I'd vanish if he blinked.

I pulled him inside.

We didn't speak.

The world narrowed to skin, breath, teeth. He lifted me like I weighed nothing. Pinned me like he needed to know I was real. I clawed at his back, bit his shoulder, cried out like grief could be exorcised by desire.

And for a while, it worked.

At dawn, they returned.

The ones he'd missed. Raiders with torches and vengeance in their eyes.

He didn't hesitate.

He ran toward them.

I screamed for him to wait, to think, to—

But he was already in the thick of it, carving a path like death in human form.

I fired a crossbow from the roof.

My son hid in the barn.

He took a blade to the side. Still kept fighting. Blood soaked his shirt, but he didn't slow.

When the last raider fell, he collapsed beside him.

I ran to him.

He grinned through the pain. "Told you… I don't settle.

"You'll die if you don't rest."

"I'll live longer if you kiss me again."

So I did.

He didn't stay. He left at dawn with his wounds half-healed and my heart torn open.

But he left his knife.

A blade sharp enough to kill—and kind enough to save.

It lies beside the hearth now.

And every time I touch it, I remember what it felt like to be more than a widow.

To fight beside him.

To breathe again.

And maybe, one day, when smoke rises again, he'll come back through the fire like he always does.