The night stretched long and heavy over the base. Patrol lights traced lazy arcs across the walls, their beams swallowed by the darkness between outposts. Somewhere in the far distance, artillery thudded like a heartbeat—steady, endless, impersonal. The war never truly slept, but tonight it felt muted, as though the battlefield itself was holding its breath.
Sirius Blake sat alone at the edge of an unused loading platform, staring out at the horizon where earth and sky blurred together. His hands rested limp on his knees, grease-stained fingers still trembling faintly from the work he'd abandoned earlier. For weeks, his workshop had been filled with restless laughter, manic muttering, bursts of joy when an idea clicked into place. Now, there was only silence.
He hadn't even noticed when the laughter stopped.
The days blurred together: endless tinkering, half-finished notes on datapads, schematics abandoned mid-line. His grin had become a reflex, his jokes hollow. At first, the others thought he was just tired, maybe burning himself out again. But slowly, they began to see it—the spark was missing.
The Renegade wasn't laughing anymore.
---
FAWS personnel whispered it to one another in the mess hall, their voices lowered.
"You seen Blake? He's… quiet."
"Quiet's not the word. He looks… smaller."
"Think something happened? He hasn't cracked a joke in days."
They were right. Sirius drifted through the corridors like a ghost. No mad cackling at his workbench, no half-serious, half-maniac speeches about "his babies," no sparks of wild energy that made people roll their eyes and secretly feel safer because of it. Instead, there was a stillness around him, a silence that felt unnatural.
Even his friends—those scattered across different departments—noticed when word reached them. Stone Varga frowned during his drills, muttering that Sirius' laugh used to carry all the way to the heavy infantry range. Bear Ivanov, towering in his mech bay, paused one night and admitted to his crew: "If Blake ain't laughing, then something's broken worse than my armor."
Shade, from his perch during recon duty, said nothing, but his jaw tightened every time the reports came in. Jinx Alvarez, ever restless, asked twice in the barracks if anyone had checked on him. Sparks tried to brush it off with her usual sharp tongue, but her voice cracked when she said, "He's fine. He always bounces back."
And Whisper Kade, medic hands stained with the blood of too many soldiers, worried quietly to herself.
---
Sirius sat there under the wide sky, the stars scattered above like shattered glass. For once, he didn't mutter or grin. He didn't whisper encouragement to a half-finished weapon. He didn't even pretend to be alright.
The silence was unbearable. And yet, he stayed in it, because maybe he deserved it.
The thought pressed into him like a blade: he had built so much, given the Terrans new teeth, new claws—but at the end of the day, it all came from somewhere else. The doubt gnawed at him. Was it really him? Or just the echoes of someone else's design, someone else's legacy?
His chest ached, heavy and hollow. His grin had always been his armor, his laugh a weapon sharper than any rifle. Without them, he felt exposed—just a boy staring up at a sky that would never give answers.
And then, for the first time in months, a tear slipped free. It cut a clean path down his soot-stained cheek, catching the faint light of the stars. He brushed at it quickly, angry at himself, but another followed.
---
"Sirius."
The voice was soft, steady, and real. Not memory, not static in his head. Real.
He froze.
At first, he thought it was another trick of exhaustion. His name carried sometimes on the wind, or in the echoes of half-sleep, and he'd learned not to trust it. But then it came again—firmer, tinged with worry.
"Sirius, are you really okay?"
His breath caught. Slowly, stiffly, he turned.
Whisper Kade stood a few steps behind him, her medic's coat unfastened, hair loose from its usual braid. Her face, pale under the dim light, carried no judgment—only concern. Her arms were folded, but it wasn't the defensive stance of someone bracing for Renegade's madness. It was the quiet posture of someone waiting, steady as stone.
"You…" The word scraped from his throat before he could stop it. His eyes widened, disbelief flickering through them. "…Whisper."
She didn't move closer yet. Just looked at him, gaze steady. "You haven't been yourself. Everyone's noticed."
Sirius laughed, but it wasn't a laugh—it was a broken sound, hollow and sharp. "Myself, huh? Maybe this is myself. Maybe the laughing maniac was the lie."
Whisper tilted her head, watching him carefully. "Maybe. Or maybe you've been carrying too much, and the laughter was how you kept breathing."
Sirius looked away, back to the stars. His shoulders shook once, but he forced the sound down before it could escape.
"Do you know what it's like," he muttered, "to be surrounded by people who think you can fix everything? To have their eyes on you like you're… salvation. And then to feel like it's not even yours? Like everything you build is borrowed, stolen, inherited. Like you're not even real."
Whisper didn't flinch. She stepped closer, slow and deliberate, until she was standing beside him. She didn't touch him. Didn't speak. Just let the silence settle again, softer this time.
The night air carried the faint smell of oil, dust, and ozone. Somewhere far off, a sentry called the all-clear. Sirius exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the cold.
"I miss it," he whispered finally. "The noise. The madness. The laughter. I miss… being me."
Whisper turned her gaze to the stars, her profile calm in the faint glow. "Then be you again. But don't force it. Let it come back when it's ready. Until then… I'll stand here."
Sirius blinked at her, throat tight. For once, no words came. No jokes. No sharp retorts. Just the weight of someone who hadn't walked away.
---
So they stayed.
Sirius sat at the platform's edge, eyes fixed on the stars as though they might answer. Whisper stood beside him, arms folded, eyes flicking between the horizon and her silent friend. The base continued its restless hum in the background, but here, in this pocket of stillness, it felt distant.
Neither of them spoke again. They didn't need to.
For the first time in weeks, Sirius wasn't alone.
And for the first time in weeks, Whisper didn't see Renegade Blake, the laughing storm or the mad genius. She saw Sirius—the boy beneath, raw and frayed, but still standing.
And so the night stretched on, starlight pouring over them both, silent and unbroken.