I felt my father stiffen beside me.
The officer scanned the crowd. “Commander Cassidy Roar?”
I could have refused. I could have stayed in the shadow of the bleachers like I had at so many ceremonies before, watching without being seen.
Instead, I stepped forward.
The wind tugged at my jacket as I walked onto the tarmac. The sun was too bright. The air felt too thin. But my feet moved anyway.
Adam’s eyes found mine as I approached. For a second, he was eight again, scraped knees and stubborn chin, following me into the woods behind our house even after Dad told him not to.
“Hey,” he said quietly when I reached him.
“Hey,” I answered.
The patch waited in the officer’s hand between us, small and unremarkable. A piece of embroidered fabric like a hundred others I’d seen on a hundred other uniforms.
But patches, like stories, aren’t about the stitching. They’re about what people believe they mean.
I took it from the officer and pinned it above Adam’s heart, fingers steady from muscle memory alone.
“Come back with this,” I murmured, voice low enough only he could hear, “not because of it.”
He nodded, jaw tight.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The ma’am wasn’t about rank. It was about respect.
The officer shook his hand, said a few more words to the crowd, and dismissed the unit for family time before movement.
Adam stepped aside and gestured toward the far edge of the tarmac where the noise thinned out.
We walked in that direction together.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Wasn’t going to let you ship out without someone competent pinning that patch,” I replied.
He huffed a short laugh.
“I told them you were coming,” he said after a beat. “Didn’t tell them who you were. Just that you had a… different kind of service record.”
“I like that,” I said. “Different.”
He glanced back toward our parents. My mother watched us with open worry. My father stood rigid, every line of his body shouting conflict.
“He’s afraid,” Adam said.
“Of me?” I asked.
“Of what you mean,” he replied. “If you’re not what he said you were, then he has to admit he was wrong. About you. About what strength looks like. About himself.”
“That sounds like a him problem,” I said.
“It is,” Adam agreed. “But it still bleeds on everyone else.”
We stood in silence for a moment, watching a transport plane taxi slowly in the distance.
“Just… don’t disappear this time, okay?” he added quietly. “I know you can’t tell me everything. I know that. But don’t go dark on me completely.”
I nodded once.
“I’ll stay as close to the line as I can without crossing it,” I said. “Deal?”
“Deal,” he said.
He pulled me into a quick, tight hug that smelled like starch and dust and something achingly familiar.
When we turned back, my father was waiting halfway between us and the crowd.
He hadn’t moved to meet me since I was sixteen.
“Cassidy,” he said when we approached.
“Dad,” I answered.
He glanced at Adam. “Give us a minute, son.”
Adam looked at me, a question in his eyes. I gave a small nod.
“I’ll be right over there,” he said. “Don’t kill each other.”
“Can’t make promises,” I said dryly.
He snorted and walked away, leaving me alone with the man who’d built an entire identity around his disappointment in me.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The noise of the ceremony pressed in around us—laughter, engine hum, the sharp beep of a reversing truck.
“I looked you up,” he said finally.
I almost smiled. “Did you?”
“Far as I could get, anyway,” he muttered. “Library. Old buddies. That neighbor who works at the courthouse. They all told me the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“That I wouldn’t find much,” he admitted. “That when file numbers get that long and that redacted, it means either you screwed up real bad…” He paused, swallowed. “…or you did something important enough they don’t want idiots like me poking at it.”
I watched his face carefully.
“Which conclusion did you land on?” I asked.
He shifted his weight, scuffed his shoe against the tarmac like a boy caught lying.
“For a while,” he said, “I tried to convince myself it was the first. Easier that way. Kept the story tidy.”
“Your favorite,” I said.
He flinched, but didn’t argue.
“Then one of the guys from my old unit called,” he continued. “Said his nephew was at Harrison. Said they still talk about you there. About what you did at that tribunal. About that contractor you nailed. About the girl from ROC who didn’t crack—who got recruited.”
His gaze snapped to mine.
“Recruited,” he repeated. “Not rejected. Not washed out.”
I didn’t correct him.
“I don’t have clearance for details,” he said. “They made that real clear. But I have enough sense to know when I misjudged a situation.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“That’s new,” I said.
