Chapter 9: The Room with No War

The infirmary tent was hushed.

The canvas walls muted the wind. Somewhere outside, a generator hummed softly. Monitors beeped in slow, steady rhythm.

Alex lay shirtless on the medical cot, chest wrapped in gauze, one arm hooked to a saline drip. Bruised ribs. Concussion. Second-degree burns on his shoulder. But he was alive.

Barely.

And only because Liana had pulled him from the rubble with her own hands.

She sat beside him now, one hand resting lightly on his, her fingers laced between his calloused ones. Her usually polished hair was messy, her eyes rimmed red from tears she hadn't let fall.

He stirred.

She froze.

Then—his lashes fluttered open. A groggy blink. Then her face came into focus.

"Hey," he rasped, voice dry and low.

"Hi," she whispered.

He tried to smile. "You look terrible."

A soft laugh escaped her lips, part sob, part relief. "You arrogant bastard."

"Still charming, though."

Liana gently pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. "You almost died."

"You say that like it wasn't worth it."

"You say that like you're allowed to make that call alone."

He looked at her, really looked—at the tired in her eyes, at the tremble in her touch.

And something inside him cracked.

"I thought I could protect you by staying away," he murmured. "By burying everything I felt and just… surviving."

"You didn't have to protect me, Alex," she said, voice quivering. "You just had to stay."

He closed his eyes, wincing—not from pain, but from the truth of it.

A long silence passed between them, filled with things they didn't say. Outside, the sounds of war were distant. In here, there was only heartbeats and breath.

"I don't want to be your ghost," she whispered. "I want to be the part of you that lives."

He turned his hand in hers, clasping it tight.

"You are," he said softly. "You always were."

Tears welled in her eyes now, unstoppable.

He pulled her closer with his good arm, and she leaned down—foreheads touching. Just being near him made her feel steadier.

"I missed you," she said.

"I never left you," he whispered.

And in that moment, the world outside the tent—the war, the fire, the politics, the dying—ceased to exist.

There was only the room.

The silence.

And the space between two people who didn't need words anymore.