During that last deployment, Elena lost someone.
Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. Not in a moment that could be easily explained. It was sudden, disorienting, and final in a way that left no room for closure. Senior Chief Aaron Velez had been the kind of operator people relied on without thinking about it, the kind who carried a steady calm into situations that demanded it. The night before one mission, he had joked with her over lukewarm coffee, saying, “If you ever get married, don’t tone yourself down for it. That’s the one day you’re allowed to be exactly who you are without apology.”
At the time, she had laughed it off.
After he was gone, the words stayed.
When she came back stateside, Adrian suggested a traditional dress, not out of pressure but out of instinct, because that’s what most people expect. Elena didn’t answer right away. Instead, she visited a cemetery she had avoided since returning. Arlington doesn’t feel like a place that demands silence, but it creates it anyway, the kind that presses inward rather than outward. She stood there longer than she meant to, reading names, dates, imagining the lives behind them, the families that had stood in places just like that and tried to make sense of absence.
