Sweet Romance14 min read
They Called Me a Prisoner. He Called Me Home.
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"I can still taste the roses."
I said it with a laugh that sounded like old wood creaking.
"Roses?" Chance tilted his head from the next bunk, eyes wide. "You smell roses in prison?"
"I did," I said. "Right before I died. Then I woke up here."
"My name's Chance Fisher," he said fast. "I told you already. I'm from the Capitol. How long have you been here?"
"Does it matter?" I shrugged and drank another nutri-vial.
Chance kept talking. He had so much air in him that he filled the small cell. "You were asleep for three days. You woke up two days after me. You're the one who smells weird. Everyone says you look like a corpse wrapped in skin."
"I'll take that as a compliment," I said. "I'm Avery Jenkins."
"Oh!" He grinned like someone who found a coin. "Avery. I like that. So why are you here? This place is Eleven Corps' lockup—frontline prison. Normal people can't come."
"Tourist," I said, because I could not say the truth. Saying the truth would get me sent to a lab or worse.
"Tourist?" Chance coughed. "You came to the war zone as a tourist?"
"Yeah." I lied and let the cells keep their silence. I kept my voice flat. It hid the sparking bits under my ribs.
Chance kept leaning toward me as if leaning would pry the secret out. "I'm lucky I met you, then. I mean, not that you're a spy or anything, but being by your side might help me. My brother will kill me if I come back empty-handed."
"Is your brother here?" I asked.
"He's in admin," Chance said. "Dempsey Ziegler. He has pull."
I nodded. I knew what pull meant. I also knew what a lie could do. I sipped the brew. It tasted like metal and sour milk. It made my stomach flip in a way that felt useful.
The slot-door buzzed. Soldiers in hard black stepped in. One of them read my number and said, "4597, come with us."
A hand took my arm. I stood because standing was safer than pretending to sleep anymore. The corridor fell away under us, elevators hummed, and we went down—deeper and deeper. I counted floors by the sway of the air, not the numbers on the screen.
When the door opened, the same rose scent hit me again.
"You're awake," the man in the chair said. He was younger than the uniform should allow. He had a face like someone carved from porcelain: sharp, pale, unbothered. His hair stuck up just a little. He smiled the kind of small smile that did not reach his eyes.
I sat. I had nothing left but that smile now. "I'm Avery," I said.
"Dorian Simpson," he said. "Nice to meet you, Avery."
He moved like a cat. He did not file through my face the way soldiers did. He looked—curious in a quiet way. He had the thin scent of roses around him. I let my throat thrum at the warmth that went through me.
"How do you know my name?" I asked.
"You sleepwalked into my team's radar," Dorian said. "I found you in a cave. You'd destroyed the entrance but left the plants alone."
"Uh-huh." I let my mind slide over the parts I could not explain. "You have a nice perfume, Dorian."
He relaxed. "It's not perfume. It's me. Sorry to be blunt. My father asked me to be gentle."
"You have a very blunt father." I smiled. "I think he likes cataloguing things."
Dorian didn't smile then. He looked at the files on his desk like the man in them was trying to hide behind a folded map. "My father is Luciano Costa. He asked me to keep you till they decide what to do."
"Luciano Costa?" I said. The name was heavy in a way that made my heart slow. "The marshal."
Dorian lifted one shoulder. "Yes. He also has a lot of photo albums, if you're into that."
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to refuse all of it. Instead, I let my mouth go quiet. I leaned back and felt the ring around my wrist—the metal shackle that hummed faintly at my skin. It had been the first thing to snap when I used my head once and laughed at the timing of their surprise. I had made it break without thinking about it. I had kept that small advantage without telling anyone.
They took me for tests. The doctor fed me more of that sour stew and looked at screens until his thumbs went grey. He complained that my appetite was ridiculous. He was proud and frightened at the same time. "Most people max out at seven vials," he whispered. "You took twenty-four."
"Someone had to catch up," I said.
They ran scans on my mind. Numbers blinked: three-series, five-series, and then a brightness so high the doctor blinked. "Quadruple three-S," he said and no human language could have made him look less sure.
Dorian watched quietly. He did not touch me, not in the way old threats touch a person.
"He's dangerous," a captain whispered in the corridor one day. "She could burn a city."
"So?" Dorian's voice was flat. "Or she could build one."
They brought me to the field two days later. They wanted to see what I would do. The order read like a test: send the prisoners out and measure reaction. Chance went too, because the military likes to measure collateral. He was panicked and babbled like someone who'd swallowed a live bird.
The ground opened beneath us. The loud alarms screamed and people became small, sharp things. The first thing that came up from the earth was a mound of carapace—too tall, too fast.
"Below!" I shouted and ran.
"We didn't expect three-S," someone hissed.
"Get to the ship!" Dorian's voice was inside me now. He moved like wind. I heard his single command and felt my hands move. I did not have to think to slice, to throw, to spear. My blade came out of light and space. The world narrowed. I became simple and efficient: one cut, one kill, two kills, until they stepped back and stared.
Chance's machine was being crushed. His hands shook, and he looked small. Dorian didn't hesitate. He put his palm to that creature's head and pushed. I felt something like a lock loosen. It staggered. Chance drove a beam and the creature fell.
After, men bowed like the ground had risen and they were sudden flowers. They called me a savior for a few minutes and then shuffled back to their lines. Dorian walked beside me as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"You did... everything," Chance sputtered.
"It was a scratch," I said. "You did well."
Dorian watched me. The look he gave was not pity. It was a reckoning.
*
The marshal—Luciano Costa—invited me to the big office later. He did not soften his chair to make me comfortable. He had shelves of neat albums. He showed photos of his son from tiny to taller and told stories that felt like old warmth. I pretended to listen because that was easy and because I wanted to see what he wanted to do with me.
"You have no record," he said finally. "No home. No origin on our files. So we will give you a file. We will give you a name. You will go to the First Military Academy. You will be watched. You will be trained. If you stay with us, you stay under our rule. If you run—"
"You think I will run?" I asked.
"I think you have no reason to run if you are given a place to stand," he said. "You will have a chance to choose your life."
Dorian stood a little back. He said nothing. He gave a brief bow and left me with a small black datapad that blinked to my wrist like a second skin.
They unshackled me—the ring had shattered. No one said what that meant. No one needed to.
"You will go to school," Luciano told me. "Your meals will be covered. You will be tested."
"Do I owe you anything?" I asked.
"Not yet." He smiled just as one of his albums slid from the shelf. A photo of Dorian at three fell onto the floor. Luciano's hand did not reach. He let it lie. "One day you will know what that means."
I kept the datapad. Dorian walked me to the ship.
"Three days," he said. "I'll be at the port."
I turned the datapad in my hand. It gave me a new face and a new ticket. For the first time in a long time, I had a plan that made sense: eat well, train, and do not get seen more than I had to.
Chance came with me on the ship. He cried when he left, and for the last time I let him be small and afraid. He would survive. People like him found ways.
On the Academy grounds, I saw banners. Young people walked like armor-glossed petals. I sat while the rank and roll blinked across a giant screen and the crowd swelled with a hush when Dorian's name stayed at the top. He had the first slot: the kind of student people watched to measure future histories.
I took the second slot.
"Second?" I muttered.
"Congratulations," a boy named Landon—no, his name was Fionn Bentley; he was the SS kid who had looked at me during the test—said. "You did well."
"It was luck," I said.
"Humility suits you," he said. He smiled like he meant it. He meant the smile for a moment, then he meant nothing at all.
Inside the dorms, I met a thousand small lives. I met a roommate who wanted to be famous and another who wanted to be brave. I met teachers whose names were warnings and teachers whose names were legends. I picked my classes: field tactics, weapons, mech systems. I sketched a life where I would move slow and keep my head down.
Dorian offered to walk me to dinner.
"You have to eat," he said.
"You're the one who keeps giving me food," I said, and the truth pulsed between us like a new muscle. "Why are you so kind?"
"Because it's easier than being cruel," he said. "I like when people I care about are safe."
He looked at me like he meant both halves of that sentence.
We fell into a rhythm that had a schedule: training, meals, lectures, and then late-night talks where we exchanged small things about our other worlds. He had everything and nothing to confess. He told me about the marshal's albums, about feeling like a thin plant in a well-ordered garden. I told him about the cave, about knives that never bent into the dead, about recipes from a world where people grew food and whispered to trees. He laughed a soft laugh that smelled like the rose scent he always wore.
"Why didn't you fight all-out in the test?" Chance had asked me before. "You could've taken top."
I smiled like a seam. "I don't like standing too high, Chance. It's dangerous."
He looked hurt. "So you held back for safety? For whose safety?"
"For mine," I said. "For the people around me."
Dorian's eyes found mine. "Or for someone you wanted to be near."
I did not accept the neatness of that answer, but I did not deny the heat under my skin.
*
The campus had two main problems. One: a chef whose experiments were used as punishments and who had once poisoned a cohort into asymmetry. Two: a mech instructor whose smile made people forget their names.
I liked the chef's class because food reminded me of home. I liked the mech class because a gun could be precise, cold, and honest. The internet said the chef was dangerous and the mech teacher was worse. I ignored both warnings with the same shrug I used on other people.
Then the university day hit the seam of the world like a thumb, and a girl we both knew from the ranks—no, a thin boy who came to my prison, Chance—got in a fight that meant nothing and everything. My name ended up on forums, and people offered money for my signature. Landon and I made a small plan: get a few signed photos and sell them.
"You're going to fight?" Landon asked, wide-eyed.
"I'm going to ask for photos," I said.
"You plan on winning fame with walking demands?" he laughed.
"Something like that," I said.
We started small. We asked for autographs and small favors: a meal from Dorian, a signed copy from Chance's broadcast, a mech token from Fionn. We traded, we bowed, we pretended we were fans. We collected, we sold, we laughed at how easy people believed the right smile.
Landow—no, Fionn—helped me exchange signatures, and Landon taught me how to post to the fans. The money in the account went up, slow and sweet. We used it to buy better rations. I tasted a world of food that did not come from a vial. I ate until my stomach felt heavy.
People started to notice the smirk returning to my face. That is the thing about food: it knits things back together.
Dorian watched me build a small life. He did not interfere. Once, he brought me a single rose and a small note: "Sit, eat." I sat. He sat next to me. He did not kiss me then. He pressed his hand to the place above my heart and left it there, a promise like a palmprint.
"You used to be a hero," he said. "You killed things. Why hide now?"
"Because being a hero takes something society always tries to take back," I said. "Because I don't want to be a story."
"You can be my story," he offered.
I looked at him, and the world became trivial: lectures, chores, battle tests. He said my name like a map. He said it like belonging.
"Don't speak for me," I told him softly.
"I won't," he said. "I'll speak with you."
We learned each other in small steps. He sat with me through midnight repairs, and I sat with him while he read maps into small dawn hours. We let our fingers brush on purpose and then by accident. We spent the night before the big field test sleeping in the same room because he insisted and I did not refuse.
"You're scared?" he asked as we lay beside each other.
"Sometimes," I said.
"Then hold my hand," he said.
I took it. The touch was quiet and had no sound except for the way the night rearranged itself.
"I will cover you," he said. "Not because you need it. Because I choose to."
"I cover you, too," I said. "In ways you won't see."
We promised nothing and promised everything. It was the beginning of a soft war, where kisses were small and rare but comprehensive.
*
The field exam came. The training halls roared. I moved like a knife and Dorian moved like a ghost. We fought in pairs and in lines, against simulated bugs that rose from the vale like old grief. They came in swarms and we took them down. My blade became a blade you could measure by sound and force. Dorian's control of the field bent whole columns.
Afterward, there was the ceremony. The marshal stood at the head. Luciano Costa announced a new unit and used the word "family" with an art he did not use often. He watched Dorian with the softness of an old man who had been a general too long.
"You will join the Vanguard," Luciano said to me. "With honor."
I felt the world tilt like a coin.
"Do you accept?" he asked.
"I accept," I said, because the word had weight and I understood its measure.
The crowd applauded. Dorian's hand found mine. It fit like a small truth.
That night, the press wanted statements. They circled like knives, shining light. A reporter asked, "Why did you hold back in the academy test?" It was a question meant to split me open.
"I did not hold back," I said. "I did exactly what was needed."
"No, you ranked second. You could have been first," she persisted.
I looked toward Dorian. He caught my eye and gave me a tiny half-lift of his brow. It was not enough to tell the whole story, but it was enough.
"He chose to let me," he said into the mic without flinching. "Because to him, victory is sometimes about who stands by you when no one else will. He chose to be with a person, not a trophy."
My chest turned hot. The cameras flicked. People murmured. Chance laughed in the corner like someone who had finally been given permission to be proud.
Someone in the back shouted, "Is this true? Did you choose him?"
I braced for the bite of a thousand tongues. Dorian stood and walked to me. He knelt. He did not intend to be dramatic. He simply bent and pressed his forehead to mine.
"Stay with me," he whispered. "Stay with me and train. Stay with me and be small with me when you need it. Stay with me and choose me."
A weight uncurled in my chest. I had never in my life been offered a choice with none of the strings. I could have chosen to walk away. I chose the other thing.
"I will," I said.
The press took it like a scene they had expected to crown their nights with. They missed the quiet behind it: Luciano watching his son with something like a relieved smile, Chance clapping like an idiot, men and women breathing as if the world had learned something new.
In the months that followed, I kept my hands busy. I trained until my muscles learned songs of their own. I repaired micro-joints in mechs with blood on my knuckles and tea on my tongue. I sat beside Dorian in strategy rooms and we argued about what a future could hold. He wanted order, and I wanted speed. We found places where our hands met.
The fans still wrote. We sold signed photos and paid our debts and kept enough money in the account to buy little things: for Chance, a small datapad that would let his brother find him easier; for Fionn, new maintenance gloves; for Landon, a sketchbook.
Rumors flew that the marshal had a plan bigger than a single academy—he wanted a new corps, the Vanguard, to be built on people who chose softness over shows of power. People called it a gamble. People called me a tool. I laughed loud and told them to try to name a piece of art that did not break things.
Not everyone liked our quiet. A colonel from a neighboring unit—Chester Perry—thought I was dangerous. He had wanted to prove something by exposing me as "unstable" in a packed briefing. He planned a test of traps and public humiliation that would have ended with me on my knees begging to stay alive.
Dorian found out. He walked into that room and took the microphone from the colonel with a smile that promised storms.
"You think you can scare her into obedience?" Dorian asked. "We are not dogs. You will stand and tell the truth."
The colonel's face flushed. He stammered excuses. The room smelled of cheap cologne and fear. Dorian did not wait for decorum. He told the truth: that I had saved lives in the field and that the marshal had placed me here to help build a better force.
Then Dorian did the brave and dangerous thing that men read in books: he used his rank to pick us up and make us public property.
He said, "Avery is with me."
Chester's mouth dropped. People laughed then stopped. Luciano sat tall and like iron. The media circled like vultures and then like moths. The world paid attention.
Chester tried to escalate. He tried to get a warrant. He tried to make things ugly. The marshal—Luciano—came down like winter.
"Chester," Luciano said in a voice that could have been kind and was not, "your negligence cost lives. You acted on petty fears. You will be stripped of your command. Your public record will be cleared after you go. You will never serve again."
Chester's face turned white. He tried to deny it, but there were records. There were saved comms and duty logs. People watched him crumble. He bowed on the floor and begged—tears and rage and a loud, ugly sound. Soldiers recorded him on their datacaps. They uploaded the clip and the public watched the colonel beg on loop.
He lost his rank. He lost his house. A month later the public board I watched every night lit up with his name and the sledge of his misdeeds. He was erased from the things that made him belong.
I felt no triumph.
Instead, Dorian squeezed my hand. "You okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I said. "But watch them. Power means people try to use you."
"I will," he said. "We will."
He kept his word. He kept me safe in quiet ways: a tax-free module where we could meet without cameras, messages he left on my datapad, raiding the mess hall to bring me new foods.
We had fights about small things. We had nights where I refused to talk, and he sat with his back to me until I spoke. We had mornings where his jacket smelled like leather and his hair stuck up inside a helmet. We had a thousand ordinary things, and each one built another wall that didn't feel like walls anymore.
One winter, a boy from my old life—no, a man who remembered the old me—found me on a supply run. He tried to blackmail me into giving him a research note I'd stolen from a lab, threatening to out the things that had made me new.
"You will sell me out," he said.
I stared at him. I reached into my pocket. I handed him a vial—a vial of the old bitter nutrient—and told him to taste it.
"Drink," I said.
He laughed. "You threatened me with food?"
He drank.
He convulsed, and the guards dragged him to a med-bay where he yelped and wheezed and broke like glass. People recorded him and the clip went viral. He lost what he wanted.
"That was cruel," Dorian said later when I told him.
"It was a lesson," I said. "Not everyone gets to touch the world and walk away."
He kissed my forehead like a benediction. "You are terrible."
"I am strong," I said. "I am hard to break."
"Not that kind of strong," he said. "The kind that stays with people."
When the semester ended, the marshal—Luciano—called us all together. He stood in the courtyard and watched his chosen students like a man who had sewn a flag and was watching it take shape.
"Vanguard," he said. "We will test you in extremes. We will send you out. We will rely on you. We will hold you to kindness and strength both."
He looked directly at me. "Avery Jenkins. You will be a standard. Not for blind valor. For the people who stand."
I bowed. I had never been asked to be a standard before.
Dorian's hand was in mine. He squeezed, and I held his palm like a map. He drew me into the new world like a quiet storm.
At night, we sat by a window and I held a small locket. It was a scrap of my past, a thread with someone else's name, a thing I had no right to keep. I put the locket in Dorian's hand.
"Keep it," I said. "Because home is broken and this is the only piece I have."
He held it, and then he placed it around my neck.
"If you ever leave," he murmured, "take it. If you stay, let it remind you who we are."
I looked up, and he leaned forward. Our lips met slow and careful at first and then a little hungry. It felt like spring and like returning.
"I love you," he said, not shouting but like a bell with a steady pull.
"I love you," I said back.
We kept training. We kept fighting. People still whispered. People still wrote. I answered some of it with small kindnesses and some of it with iron. My life had never been simple, but now it had a person who would stand on the edge with me.
Years later, they would tell the story about the marshal who loved his son and the woman from nowhere who became a standard. They would tell the tale of the young pair who saved a unit and then the world. They would forget the parts that were messy: the nights I couldn't sleep, the day Chance got sick and I carried him on my back for miles, the time I watched a man beg and I did not take pleasure in it.
My ending was not anyone's glory. It was a small, quiet thing: a sun that rose over the Academy, and two people who had sworn to be gentle and dangerous.
Dorian took my hand and folded his hand over mine. "Stay," he said again.
"Always," I said.
We walked into the courtyard with the Vanguard behind us and the world ahead. The marshal watched his album of sons and daughters and smiled like an old man who had finally learned what bravery meant.
I had been a prisoner of a body, of a world, of a past. Now I was free and bound to someone who made me want to keep building.
The last thing I felt before the day closed was a bloom of rose scent on the air—faint, sweet—and Dorian's thumb tracing my name.
"Home," he said softly.
"Home," I echoed.
We stayed.
The End
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