The SCDF Headquarters always felt too large at night, as if the halls grew hollow when the sun went down. Most of the administrative tower sat in darkness except for a scatter of desk lamps that officers had forgotten to turn off, their cones of warm light floating like isolated islands in a dark sea of polished concrete. Even the holopanels were dimmed to power-save mode, their blue sheen pulsing faintly at the edges of the room like the heartbeat of a sleeping animal.
Soren had been sitting in his usual corner of the ops planning office for hours, armor dull under the soft lights, black helmet barely reflecting a pale stretch of city glow from the window behind him. He never shifted much, never fidgeted, never let his posture slip. Anyone else would have been visibly exhausted at this hour. Soren only looked like a statue waiting for orders.
Across the room, Etrius worked with his sleeves pushed up and his hair tied messily out of his eyes, leaning over a table covered in route maps and casualty indexes. His claws clicked softly on the laminated surface whenever he traced a line or tapped a note to himself. He liked the quiet. He liked the sense of the world narrowing to simple tasks. And he liked that Soren didn’t fill silence with meaningless talk.
A half-finished cup of coffee sat cold beside Etrius’s elbow. Soren had refused one as usual, claiming it wasn’t necessary. It was never clear if he meant he didn’t need caffeine, or didn’t need comfort. Maybe both. The only sound that broke the stillness was the low hum of the floor ventilators and the gentle scratch of Etrius’s pen as he corrected a redeployment schedule.
Outside the windows, Sigma City’s central district glowed dense and vertical, all glass and steel and late-shift movement. But up here, in the administrative quiet, it might as well have been a different world.
By the time the last datapad was stacked and the last form electronically signed, it was nearing two in the morning. Etrius rolled his shoulders, slow and heavy, letting the tension break out with a satisfying stretch.
“We should call it,” he murmured in that low, rumbling voice of his. “It’s late.”
Soren didn’t move.
He just sat there, still as ever, hands braced against his knees and visor pointed at the floor. For a man who lived inside armor, every tiny shift in his posture meant something. And Etrius had known him long enough to feel the air change. A subtle tightening, a hesitation. Something gathering behind the stillness.
Etrius let the stretch fall out of his posture and lowered his arms, watching Soren with that quiet attentiveness he didn’t bother hiding anymore. Soren wasn’t moving, not a shift of weight, not a glance upward, nothing. Just that rigid, braced stillness he fell into when something internal caught on the edges of his composure.
The room stayed silent, the kind of silence Soren normally wore comfortably. But this one had a different temperature to it. Slightly off. Slightly brittle.
Etrius didn’t speak. He knew better than to prod him; Soren never responded well to direct prompting. Instead, he waited, leaning back against the table, giving him the space to start whatever he needed to start.
Soren finally drew a breath. Not a dramatic one, just a small, shallow intake that his armor amplified slightly. He put a gloved hand on the desktop, fingers tightening once on the metal edge before going still again.
Etrius’s ear flicked once, subtle. He stayed relaxed, open posture, no pressure in his stance. Just presence.
Soren didn’t look at him when he spoke. His voice came out low and rough, the same way it always did. Sanded, uneven rumble shaped by old damage and the habit of speaking as little as possible.
“I need to say something,” he said. No preamble. No framing. No softening. Just that.
Etrius nodded once, easy. “Alright.”
Soren leaned back slightly, the armor creaking in a familiar way, and set both hands on his knees again. His helmet tilted downward, as if the floor were easier to talk to than a person.
“This isn’t operational,” he said, dry as ever. “It’s not about the reports.”
“Understood,” Etrius replied.
The moment stretched out again. Not uncomfortable, just deliberate. Soren was sorting through words, something he did with the same precision he used for field triage. Slow. Methodical. Controlled.
When the silence settled again, Etrius didn’t break it. He just stayed there, breathing slow, letting Soren come to the edge at his own pace.
And eventually, Soren did. He lifted his head just slightly, visor still turned away, and said, in that flat, restrained cadence:
“It’s personal.”
Soren stayed seated for a long moment. He didn’t shift or fidget. He simply went still in a way that suggested he was measuring the distance between the thought in his head and the act of speaking it aloud. His visor remained turned slightly away, angled toward the corner of the desk rather than toward Etrius.
When he finally spoke again, his voice carried the same rough, low weight as always. He never softened anything he said, and this was no exception.
“I’ve been carrying a piece of intel for a long time,” he said. “Longer than you’ve known me. It isn’t connected to service records or command history. It’s about me.”
He paused there. Not dramatically, just settling the next words into place.
“This body is not male.”
He didn’t clear his throat or brace himself or look over to check Etrius’s reaction. He simply continued, as if listing an operational detail, even though his posture had become slightly more rigid.
“That information was classified during my early career. After the throat injury, the paperwork was altered to keep me in the field. Later it became a tool people used against me. Eventually it stopped being a question at all. People assumed I was what the documents said I was, and I let them. It made things easier.”
Soren’s hands rested flat on his knees. His hands were steady, no tremor in the plating. His breathing was level. His tone stayed dry and even, not wounded or apologetic, just factual.
“I kept it to myself because it was safer that way. And it never seemed necessary to bring it up. Then we started working together, and it still didn’t seem necessary. Until now.”
The visor turned a few degrees in Etrius’s direction, not enough to show vulnerability, just enough to confirm he was finally looking at him rather than the floor.
“I figured you should hear it from me,” he said. “Not from anyone else. Not from the past. Just directly.”
There was no apology, no hesitation, no searching for sympathy. He was simply giving the truth as cleanly as he had carried it.
For a moment after Soren finished speaking, the room settled into a calm that felt heavier than the quiet hours before it. Etrius didn’t straighten or shift his weight or narrow his eyes in thought. He simply absorbed what Soren had said the way he absorbed anything important: slowly, without alarm, without surprise.
“Soren,” he said, voice low and steady, “I already knew.”
He said it plainly, without sentimentality or hesitation. Just truth.
Soren didn’t move. He didn’t tense or look away. He simply went still in a different way, a listening way. Etrius leaned one hand on the table beside him, relaxed posture, tail resting along the floor behind him.
“I can smell the difference,” he continued. “From the first month you and I worked in the same building. Hormonal profile, endocrine markers, the whole internal pattern. It isn’t something you can disguise from someone built like me.”
There was no pride in his tone, no self-satisfaction. He wasn’t claiming insight. He was explaining a reality as casually as one would explain that they could see in the dark.
He lifted his gaze to meet the reflection on Soren’s visor. “And none of it mattered.”
Soren’s breathing stayed level, but something in the air around him eased. Not visibly, not dramatically, just subtly. Etrius continued.
“I never said anything because it wasn’t my place to. Your body is your concern. Your history is your concern. You’re a man because you’re a man, and that has never been in question for me.”
He spoke it plainly, as if stating departmental policy. The room remained calm, no heightened emotion, no shift in tension.
“What I care about,” Etrius said, “is the person who shows up. The one who works beside me. The one who knows what he’s doing and does it well. That’s the man I trust. The rest stays where you choose to put it.”
He didn’t soften his voice or reach out or make any gesture that might feel intrusive. He simply offered the truth in the same steady tone he used for mission debriefs and long tactical discussions, because for Soren, that tone carried more honesty than anything sentimental could have.
“If you’re telling me tonight,” Etrius added after a moment, “then I assume it means something to you to have it said aloud. So I’ll answer you clearly. I knew. And it changes nothing.”
The light from the city caught the side of Soren’s helmet, breaking across it like a faint, shifting line. He didn’t nod or speak or exhale in any visible release. He just held the silence in a way that suggested something long-weighted had finally found a place to rest.
Soren didn’t answer immediately. He stayed exactly where he was, hands braced on his knees, helmet tipped slightly toward Etrius. The room felt still again, but not with the brittle tension from earlier. It was a quieter quiet, the kind that settled in after a line was crossed that had been waiting for years.
He didn’t shift or look away. He simply held the silence as if assessing its new shape. Soren was used to moving through the world with every personal detail sealed behind armor and discipline. His body, his history, anything that wasn’t mission-relevant stayed locked down. That habit had lasted decades, long past necessity, long past any real threat. It had become part of him.
Etrius’s response didn’t provoke shock or discomfort. What unsettled Soren, in a very small way, was the fact that nothing about Etrius changed at all. No altered posture, no redirection of tone, no recalibration of how he regarded him. Soren had expected neutrality, but receiving it still created a small ripple inside him, something he wasn’t used to acknowledging.
After a long moment, he spoke again, voice steady but quieter than before.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever told directly,” he said.
Etrius didn’t interrupt or try to soften anything. He only gave the smallest nod, acknowledging the fact without exaggerating its significance.
Soren looked back down at his hands. “Most people saw the paperwork and made assumptions. I didn’t correct them. It was easier for everyone if they believed what they already believed.”
He let a brief pause settle before continuing. “But that wasn’t the same as telling someone.”
There was no tremor in his voice, no emotion breaking through. Just a calm admission of something that had never been spoken to another person. His posture stayed straight. His breathing stayed even.
Soren didn’t explain why he chose to say it now. He didn’t need to. The act itself spoke more clearly than any justification he could give. Etrius understood that instinctively, and he didn’t fill the moment with interpretation.
Soren finally lifted his head a little, visor angled toward Etrius again. “You needed to know it from me.”
Etrius stood still for a moment after Soren spoke, not out of hesitation, but to make sure he wasn’t stepping on something unspoken. When he finally moved, it was only to shift his weight slightly and rest both hands on the table behind him, posture open and relaxed.
“For me, it doesn’t change anything,” he continued. “You are the same man you have been every day I’ve known you. Competent. Reliable. Consistent. You work hard. You think clearly. You don’t quit. That’s the person I know. Not a line in a medical file, and not the way you started life.”
He didn’t phrase it as reassurance. He said it as if it were a fact as simple as reporting the weather.
“Your form is one component of your life,” Etrius added. “It has history. It has complications. Mine does too. But none of that defines the person walking around inside it. You are who you are because of what you’ve done and how you carry yourself. Everything else is secondary.”
Etrius watched him for a moment, eyes steady, tail resting motionless on the concrete floor.
“I respected you before you told me this,” he said. “I respect you now. There’s no difference. The only thing that changed is that now I understand what you wanted me to understand. That’s all.”
He didn’t turn it into a moment or try to meet Soren’s stillness with something emotional. He simply held the line where he always held it, giving Soren the stability he operated best with.
“What matters to me,” Etrius said, “is the man you are when you walk into a room. Not the vessel that carries him there.”
The room remained quiet, calm, unpressured. Etrius didn’t wait for a reaction. He just let the truth sit between them in a natural, unforced way, giving Soren every inch of space he needed to absorb it.
The office felt different after Etrius finished speaking, not in any dramatic or emotional way, but in the subtle shift that happens when something previously unspoken finds its proper place. Nothing in Soren’s posture changed in an obvious sense. He didn’t relax his shoulders or lean back or exhale in relief. He simply settled into a quieter stillness, one that no longer carried the faint tension from earlier.
He tilted his visor a little, just enough that Etrius could tell he was looking at him directly again. The reflective surface revealed nothing, but the attention behind it was clear.
Soren didn’t speak right away. He seemed to be testing the air around them, confirming that Etrius truly meant what he said, not as a courtesy, not as an adjustment, but as a stable fact that required no further negotiation. Once that settled, he gave a small and almost imperceptible nod.
“I expected this to change something,” he said. His tone remained dry, straightforward, completely without sentiment.
Etrius shook his head slightly. “There’s nothing to change.”
He said it plainly. No weight added, no emphasis. The words landed softly in the quiet room, as solid and unmovable as stone.
Soren considered that for a moment. “Most people would adjust how they look at me.”
“I’m not most people,” Etrius replied, calm and even.
That earned a faint shift of Soren’s helmet. Not amusement, but something close to acknowledgment. He looked away briefly, taking in the dimly lit office, the stacks of finished paperwork, the lingering smell of cold coffee and warm electronics. The space felt the same as it had an hour ago, and he seemed to recognize that the conversation hadn’t altered the room or the work or the connection between them.
Soren leaned forward slightly, hands returning to rest on his knees. His voice stayed level. “Good.”
Etrius glanced toward the window, where the lights of the central district were beginning to thin as the very earliest hint of morning crept into the edges of the skyline. The hour was late enough that staying any longer would make the next day even harder than usual.
“We should get some rest,” he said, voice calm and unpressured.
Soren nodded once. “Agreed.”
He rose from his chair without any visible strain, armor plates shifting quietly against one another. He didn’t rush the movement. Soren never rushed anything unless circumstances required it. Etrius gathered the last few datapads into a neat stack and powered down the desk console, leaving the room dim and quiet again.
They walked toward the elevator in their usual formation, side by side, matching pace without thinking about it. Nothing in their spacing changed. Soren didn’t drift farther away, and Etrius didn’t move closer. Their rhythm remained the same as it had before the conversation, steady and uncomplicated.
At the elevator, the doors slid open with a soft mechanical hiss. Soren paused just slightly before stepping inside. Not hesitation, just a brief acknowledgment of the moment they were closing behind them.
“Thank you for hearing it,” he said. His tone stayed dry, even, completely level. It wasn’t emotional, but it was honest.
Etrius met his visor with a steady look. “Anytime.”
Soren gave a small nod, stepped into the lift, and stood with the same composed posture he always carried. Etrius joined him without comment. The doors slid shut, and the quiet hum of the elevator filled the space as they descended.
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