Marked

The tide had pulled back just enough to reveal the streets. The air clung with last night's mist. Wet stone glistened under a sky the colour of cold ash.

Tobias moved with a soldier’s gait—balanced, alert, like the ground might shift under him at any second. He was lean but hardened, close-cropped hair plastered to his forehead by the wet air. A scar curved from the corner of his jaw to just below his ear. His uniform, once pristine, was torn at the collar. Grey eyes swept the street ahead like he didn’t expect it to stay empty.

He guided Evie along cracked tiles where algae had settled in patterns no one would call art. His boots left dark prints in the slick grit. Hers dragged.

Seaweed looped through the spokes of a rusted child’s bike, the bell still clinging to the handlebars. A pair of rubber sandals floated nearby, bumping a sunken crate. A streetlamp lay fallen across the walkway, its base rusted through, glass shattered in the water. Every corner of the city looked like it had been broken with purpose.

Tobias shifted his grip on her arm. She was barely staying upright, the gash on her thigh soaking through her pants. Her jaw was tight, breath shallow. She hadn’t asked for help.

“I’ve got it,” she muttered.

“You don’t.”

She didn’t argue, but she didn’t lean into him either. Still too proud. Still Evie.

Ahead, a flooded market square shimmered with oil streaks. The lowest parts of the stalls had sunken months ago—kiosks now tilted or half-collapsed, their awnings torn and floating like kelp. Supply bins bobbed in shallow eddies, their contents long spoiled. The only reason they could walk here now was because the tide was at its lowest; in another hour, the sea would start swallowing it again.

The sculpture at the centre—a pair of hands reaching skyward—had lost its fingers. He remembered this place. There used to be music here, weekends with pop-up stalls. He’d bought her fried dumplings from a cart just over there, grease bleeding through the paper while she teased him about his inability to pronounce the vendor’s name. Her laugh had cut through everything. Clear. Reckless. Free.

His chest tightened. That memory hurt more than the ones with blood in them.

Now the only sound was their footsteps and the low creak of water moving where it shouldn’t. Even the gulls had stopped crying.

“I thought this would be gone by now,” she said, nodding to the sculpture.

“You always hated it.”

“I didn’t hate it. I hated what it stood for.”

“And what was that?”

“Hope,” she said. “Bought by people who never had to pay for it.”

He didn’t respond. She was shivering now, blood loss catching up to her.

They crossed the square, careful not to step where the stone had collapsed into sinkholes. Tobias led her to a dry edge near a collapsed kiosk and crouched. Underneath a dislodged slab, hidden where even the tide couldn’t reach, he pulled out the pack he’d stashed months ago.

He opened it slowly. A few ration bars. A rusted flask. And the fox plush.

Its fur was water-stained and stiff. One button eye hung loose on a thread. Still, he held it like it might breathe.

“You kept that?” Evie asked, voice thin.

He didn’t look at her. “Didn’t know I had.”

His fingers didn’t want to let it go. He forced them to.

He zipped the bag and turned back to her. She had one hand braced on her knee, the other pressed to her side. Her eyes were tracking the shadows around them.

“Evie—”

The comm clipped to his collar crackled. Static, then a voice, tinny and sharp.

“Vale. That you?”

Tobias went still. Evie didn’t move, but her body tensed.

The scout stepped from behind a support column, limp obvious, one leg bandaged in blood-soaked gauze. Seventeen, maybe. Fresh-faced, scared. His eyes went straight to her.

“That’s her,” he said, too loud. “That’s Ashfox.”

Tobias moved before he thought. Hand to the boy’s mouth. The other arm pinning his chest. The scout fought back, elbow catching Tobias’s ribs. It hurt. It didn’t matter.

“Don’t,” Tobias said.

“You’re helping her,” the scout gasped as he twisted free. “You’re compromised.”

“I know.”

The kid reached for his comm.

Evie didn’t speak. Didn’t run. Just looked at Tobias like she already knew what he’d do next.

He pulled the knife from her belt. The one she always carried.

He didn’t hesitate. That was the worst part.

One motion. Blade to skin.

The guilt would come later, too late, like everything else.

The boy went down with a choked sound, landing in the shallow pool near the sculpture. His blood mixed with the oil-slick water. Bubbles rose. Then stopped.

Tobias stood still, breathing hard. His hand was shaking now.

Evie’s voice was quiet.

“You used my knife.”

He kept his eyes on the water.

“Planning to tell them I did it?”

“Only if I have to.”

She stared at him a long time. Then she laughed—once, soft, dry.

“You haven’t changed. You’ve just learned how to sound sorry while twisting the blade.”

She turned and walked away, limping worse now. Still scanning. Still reading the exits.

Tobias let the silence settle before following. The worst part wasn’t what she said.

It was that she didn’t sound wrong.

----

They walked in silence.

Water sloshed at their boots, rising enough to soak the edges of her coat. The tide was already creeping back in. Tobias kept half a step behind her, tracking the tremble in her steps. She was slowing. Gritting through it.

He knew that kind of endurance. He’d seen it in battle, on evac lines, in the moments before people broke.

She wouldn’t give him that moment. Not if she could help it.

They passed through a narrow lane where vines gripped the walls and old banners hung in tatters. A shutter banged softly in the wind. Faded paint spelled out names of shops long emptied: tailors, spice stalls, a forge. Salt and rot saturated the air.

They turned into what had once been a covered market hall. Stone columns lined the walkway, cracked and leaning. Half the roof had caved in, letting shafts of light cut through the shadow. The water rippled around their ankles. Stalls were overturned, fabric rotted, pottery shattered underfoot.

Evie paused, resting a hand on a bench crusted with moss and salt. Her breath came shallow.

“You said you’d protect me,” she said, eyes ahead. “Said we wouldn’t have to run anymore.”

“I meant it.”

“You meant to report me too. At the north conduit. But you didn’t.”

Tobias didn’t answer.

“You gave them everything but my location. Just enough to sound loyal. Just enough to get everyone else killed.”

She turned, met his eyes. Didn’t blink.

“You told them our fallback point. Grid coordinates to make it a clean strike. You knew I’d be out on recon. You knew who’d be sleeping in the barracks.”

Her voice dropped to almost nothing.

“You knew Alexi would be there.”

He felt the memory like shrapnel under the skin. Static on the comms. The strike’s whine. The silence that followed.

“I didn’t say your name.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“You timed it,” she said. “They waited until I’d moved. Until you knew I was clear.”

Her gaze flicked to her sleeve, then back. “You always did track better than you aimed.”

“You called in a favour. Got someone to leak my unit details.”

She laughed — not with humour. “That wasn’t protection, Tobias. That was possession.”

“I thought it would be enough to keep you alive.”

“It was enough to kill everyone else.”

“Sixteen people. You learned their names. You tracked their routines. Their safe hours. You knew when they’d be sleeping. And you still gave the coordinates.”

Tobias didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

He’d told himself it was protection. That not giving her up meant he’d stayed loyal.

But all he’d really done was watch—just close enough to say he’d tried.

He’d run that night through his mind a hundred times, shifted pieces, rewritten timelines. But this was the only version that existed. The one where she was right.

A drip echoed from above. He lowered himself onto the edge of a collapsed pallet. Water crept up around his boots.

“I thought I could make it better from inside.”

“No,” she said, “you thought you could stay neutral. You thought loyalty was a matter of timing.”

She pushed off the bench, still not looking at him. Still scanning. Always calculating distance, angles, escape.

“There was a time,” she said, “when I thought you were the bravest person I knew.”

He flinched as the words landed. She used to say it while tracing the scar on his jaw. Like she believed it.

“That was before you told them where to miss. Before you stood there and didn’t flinch while they fired.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“No,” she said. “You were trying to protect the version of me that didn’t ask you to choose.”

He looked at her, dirt streaked her face, eyes ringed red from exhaustion. Still upright. Still too proud to ask for more than she was given.

“You wanted me safe,” she said. “But only if I stayed where you could see me.”

Her voice didn’t rise. That made it worse.

“I thought I could hold both truths,” he said. “You and the mission.”

She let out a sound—not quite a laugh. Not quite a breath.

“You didn’t hold either. You just didn’t let go.”

A breeze swept through the shattered roof, lifting the corner of a tarp and sending a ripple through the puddled water. Neither of them moved.

She turned away again, slower now, her limp worsening. Her boot dragged.

“Let’s get to the docks,” she said. “You can feel guilty later.”

Tobias followed. The words echoed in his chest like a faultline ready to split.

----

The docks were crumbling. Piles of barnacle-crusted stone jutted from the seawall, scattered with snapped lines and rusting cleats. A cracked float buoy bobbed in the shallows, paint worn to silver. Salt hung in the air, sharp enough to taste.

The tide-runner waited where he’d hidden it, half-submerged, one panel cracked along the hull. Algae clung to the intake vents. The engine core blinked a soft green, steady despite everything.

Evie stopped a few feet from it and stared. Her braid had unravelled. Mud dried into the fabric at her side, brown and stiff. She didn’t speak.

He guided her toward the cargo bins off the loading ramp—most of them split open, but one still held its shape. She sank onto it slowly, breath catching as she moved.

“Let me see it,” Tobias said.

“I’m fine.”

“Evie.” His voice was low. Not a plea, a command.

She didn’t argue. That scared him more than a thousand of her insults ever had.

He dropped to one knee and opened his combat pouch, sorting through the medpack: sealant foam, injectable clotter, pressure tape. Tools he’d used on the field a hundred times, never heavier than now.

He peeled back the fabric at her thigh. The cut was deep—deeper than he’d realised. And still bleeding. Not gushing, but steady.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “It’s not closing.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“You don’t clot properly. You never have.” He met her eyes. “You think I didn’t remember that?”

She looked away.

He injected the clotter, pressed sealant over the worst of it, then wrapped it tight. His hands moved fast. His jaw was tight.

“Breathe,” he said when she flinched.

“You always say that.”

“You always need to hear it.”

As he secured the tape, his wrist brushed her arm, braced against the crate for balance. Beneath her cuff, he felt something hard and cold. The tracking crystal. Still clipped in place. She didn’t hide it. Didn’t mention it either. Neither did he.

His hands stilled over the bandage. Too many memories lived under her skin. He pulled back before he let them reach his fingers.

When he finished, he pressed a hydration gel into her hand.

“Drink.”

She stared at it. “Tastes like mould and regret.”

“It’ll keep you upright long enough to get out of range.”

She downed it in two gulps. Tossed the wrapper.

She looked at him, not with anger or sadness, but with a distance colder than either. Like she’d already left.

“You look older,” she said. “Eight months feels longer in a war.”

He didn’t argue. Just packed the medpack with movements sharper than they needed to be.

“You always bled too easily,” he said.

She looked at him—really looked.

“Not just from wounds,” she murmured.

They sat in silence a moment longer. Then she pushed to her feet, slower this time.

“You think it’ll make the distance?” she asked, nodding to the tide-runner.

Tobias rose stiffly. He crossed to the platform’s edge, each step deliberate. He ran a hand along the tide-runner’s side.

“If you don’t push it too hard.”

She gave a dry nod. “Like I have a choice.”

He crouched, checked the stabilisers, clicked the manual override into place. The seal on the cockpit still held.

“I thought you might not come.”

“I thought you might hand me over.”

He glanced up. She wasn’t angry. Just used up.

Evie stepped onto the dock, unsteady but refusing help. The body of her coat was soaked and stiff with dried blood. As she climbed into the tide-runner, her coat shifted. He caught a glimpse of the rebellion sigil - a fox, stitched in red, blackened at the tail.

Ashfox.

Tobias followed slowly. The platform dipped under their weight. He stood close enough to smell blood and salt on her skin.

“I brought supplies. Painkillers. A disruptor. If you want them.”

She didn’t look at him. “Trying to buy me off?”

“No. Just… what I owe.”

Evie didn’t answer. The engine hummed beneath them.

“You could stay,” he said. “Just long enough to—”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t want to hear it?”

She looked up, exhausted. But the stare was sharp.

“I wanted to believe you. When you said we could rest. That you’d keep me safe.”

He remembered saying it—in a room lit by emergency lights, when their futures still felt undecided.

“You could,” he said.

“But not like that.” Her voice cracked, then steadied. “You didn’t want me free, Toby. You wanted me still. You wanted me quiet.”

He exhaled. “I didn’t know how else to love you.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “You didn’t love me. You tried to manage me.”

She reached for the nav panel. Her hand shook once, then steadied.

“After this,” she said, not looking at him. “I don’t come back. You know that, right?”

He didn’t answer.

“You going to ask for forgiveness?”

“No.”

“Good.” She reached out for the disruptor. Their fingers brushed—just for a second. Neither of them moved.

Then she took it like it hadn't meant everything.

“Going to watch me go?”

“I always do.”

She didn’t say goodbye.

She didn’t have to.

As the tide-runner drifted off the dock, Tobias stood still. The ache in his chest wasn’t sudden. It was old. Familiar. She’d taken it with her years ago.

-----

The tide-runner drifted into open water, its hum fading beneath the rhythm of the waves. Tobias stood on the dock, fists at his sides, watching until even the faint glow of its core disappeared into the mist.

She was gone.

Again.

But this time, he knew she wasn’t coming back.

He didn’t move. Just stood there, boots planted on the slick dock. The silence was absolute, not the calm kind. The kind that pressed into your ribs and made you remember everything you tried to bury.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the tracking crystal, the twin to the one he’d given her eight months ago, back when they still believed in half-measures.

He’d said it was for safety. She hadn’t questioned him. That had hurt more than if she had.

His thumb hovered over the activator. He didn’t press it.

Not yet.

A gull cried in the distance, one sharp note. Then silence again.

She used to hum when she couldn’t sleep. Just one note, held between her lips like a secret. He remembered. Too much.

He looked down at the crystal. Its surface caught the dock light, dull red.

He told himself it was the only way. Marking her was mercy. Protection. But it still felt like choosing a side.

His hand closed around it. He pressed the activator.

The light blinked. Synced.

Target acquired.

It didn’t feel like victory. It didn’t feel like anything.

He closed his eyes. For a second, he could almost feel her weight against his side. Her head on his shoulder. Her breath syncing with his like they had all the time in the world.

She’d once whispered he was the only place she felt still.

He’d held onto that line like it made him good.

He pressed the crystal into his palm until it bit. As if pain could barter for redemption.

He could still hear her voice, low and final: “You didn’t break the rules for me, Tobias. You broke me to keep them.”

Maybe she’d known he’d do it. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t looked back.

She used to. Every time. Even when she was furious. Even when she swore she was done. She always looked back.

This time, nothing.

A torn mooring line trailed in the water near his feet, swaying with the tide. It brushed against his ankle, loose, searching.

He’d never let her go. Just waited. Watched. When the time came, he turned the signal back on, like that was mercy.

But it wasn’t mercy. It was a cage. One she hadn’t escaped after all.

The tide rose. Unforgiving.

And he didn’t move.