Page 70 of Zorro

Courage. Wasn’t that being so goddamned afraid, but facing that thing that terrified you and doing it anyway?

She slid onto the mattress, Zorro’s shirt soft against her bare skin, the scent of him curling in her lungs like smoke and memory. Her body was still trembling, but no longer from fear.

Not the old kind. This was something deeper. Quieter. The kind of fear that meant the truth was finally close. She closed her eyes. Not to escape.

But to rest. Clarity was so close, all she needed was to let it be.

The sky above Rio bled orange and bruised lavender as dusk slipped into night, the rooftop pool reflecting every shifting color like liquid glass. The edge blurred into the coastline, lights flickering against the Atlantic like restless ghosts. From the shadows just past the pool deck, Bear watched Zorro cut clean lines through the water.

Stroke. Breath. Kick. Turn.

Repeat.

He wasn’t swimming. He was wrestling the water. Wrestling himself, desperately trying not to rush her before she was ready. Zorro would never push anyone until that person was ready. Bear’s heart contracted. If she didn’t come to him, he wouldn’t give up, yet something would crack in him, and Bear…the team didn’t want that. This man was their brother, and they loved him.

Zorro was running from something that didn’t have legs, and Bear knew that kind of fugitive grief. Knew it down to the bones that still ached when it rained back home on the rez, when the ghosts of the prairie whispered through the tall grass of memory.

He didn’t announce himself. Just stood still in the quiet, arms crossed, Flint at his side, the Malinois as silent and watchful as his handler. Together they formed a shape most people didn’t approach. Not until invited.

Zorro reached the far end of the pool, touched the wall, and just…floated. Head back. Eyes closed. Like maybe if he stayed submerged long enough, the pain would evaporate. Bear didn’t move. Didn’t call his name.

This…this was why he’d come.

He’d felt Zorro’s exhaustion humming through the air like a vibration in his chest. It was more than fatigue. It was the kind of soul-deep tired that sleep couldn’t touch. Bear knew that feeling. He'd lived it more than once.

The first time, he was sixteen.

The call about Thatcher’s death had come in the middle of the night. An IED in Marjah. The Marines called it an honorable loss. Grandfather Ray had said nothing. The old man sat down on the front steps of the house and didn’t move for nearly six hours. Didn’t cry. Didn’t curse. Just stopped. Bear had never seen him retreat like that, like someone had carved out the light behind his eyes and left only shadow.

The second time, Bear had just finished BUD/S. He’d gone home on leave before quals.

Ayla.

She was just gone. One day part of his life, the next vanished into a system that didn’t know her name, into a world that swallowed girls like her whole. Grandfather Ray didn’t retreat that time.

He collapsed.

Emotionally. Spiritually. The man who taught him how to break horses and burn sage in homage just folded, like the world had become too loud and cruel and undeserving of his words. Bear had been left to carry it alone. The grief. The weight. The silence.

No funeral. No body. No closure.

Just another empty bed and a grandfather who stopped singing.

Bear hadn’t known what waited for him when he left Pine Ridge at eighteen with nothing but a duffel, his hair shorn and burned for his brother, and the silent scream of get me out wedged like glass in his throat.

He didn’t enlist to be a warrior.

He enlisted to survive.

Poverty wasn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it just wore you down, slowly, cruelly, like wind over stone. He hadn’t planned to be a SEAL. At first, he just wanted structure. A challenge. Something big enough to give the weight in his chest a direction.

But then BUD/S cracked him open. Ground him to dust. Somewhere between the freezing surf, the sand in his mouth, and the blistered skin from log PT, he found something he hadn’t expected to receive like a gift in his blood. Brotherhood. It had snuck in quietly. Not with the oath he took, but in the shared bruises and sweat and purpose. Through the way Gator snapped at anyone who flinched. Through Buck’s dry humor. Through Professor’s steady calm.

Through Zorro’s stubborn, relentless care.

Bear exhaled slowly as Zorro surfaced again, dragging himself across the water like it owed him answers. Even in the water, Zorro couldn’t stop trying to save someone. Bear could feel it radiating from him, this ache.

Everly Quinn.

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