Destiny Found On the Path of Fear and Trust
A morning run can mean more than miles.
For some, it’s a sojourn through mud and rain.
For Dar, it’s meeting Callum for a run where fear and trust collide.
Her breath caught when she saw him—a physical hitch in her chest that felt more like tripping than breathing. He stood with his back against one of the bare trees, arms crossed loosely over his chest, perfectly still except for the rise and fall of his shoulders. The posture should have read casual, relaxed even, but on Callum it looked like something else entirely: a predator at rest, conserving energy, watching.
He hadn’t seen her yet. Or if he had, he gave no indication—no wave, no smile, no acknowledgment that she’d just rounded the bend and entered his line of sight. His gaze was fixed somewhere downstream, focused on something she couldn’t see.
Dar’s feet slowed without her permission, her stride shortening until she was barely moving forward at all. Every instinct screamed at her to turn around, to slip back the way she’d come before he noticed. She could still salvage this—text him in five minutes with some excuse about a twisted ankle or a sick cat or literally anything that would spare her from whatever this was about to become.
Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, nails biting into her palms hard enough to sting. The pain grounded her.
You came this far, she told herself. Don’t you dare back out now.
But her body betrayed her anyway—shoulders tensing, spine straightening as if bracing for impact. She felt exposed out here on the open path, vulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with physical safety and everything to do with the man standing twenty meters ahead.
In a fluid motion, Callum turned slightly, leaning his shoulder against the tree trunk, uncrossed his arms, crossed his feet, and slipped his hands into his pockets. Their eyes met across the distance, and Dar’s stomach dropped like she’d missed the last step on a staircase.
She forced herself to keep walking.
He straightened when he saw her—not consciously, but by reflex, like coming to attention without thinking. Except this wasn’t protocol. This was something else entirely, something that tightened in his chest the moment her figure emerged through the morning mist.
She came.
The thought hit him harder than it should have. Relief came first—immediate and unfiltered—followed by something he didn’t allow himself to examine. He’d told himself it wouldn’t matter whether she showed up. He would have run regardless. That routine mattered.
That was bullshit, and he knew it.
He didn’t move toward her. Didn’t call out. Just stood where he was and let her see that he was exactly what he’d promised to be: present, waiting, without pressure.
When her stride steadied and her chin lifted in that stubborn way he was beginning to recognise, something loosened in his chest.
When she reached him, neither spoke right away. The silence stretched—not uncomfortable, but weighted. Callum pushed off from the tree.
“Morning,” he said, voice low.
“Morning.”
“Usual route?” He gestured downstream.
She nodded, grateful for the simplicity.
They started at an easy pace. Not synchronised, not quite apart either. Dar kept a careful distance—close enough for conversation, far enough that their shoulders wouldn’t brush. A buffer.
The river moved alongside them, its surface fractured by pale morning light. Birds called from the trees, their songs threading through the steady percussion of footfalls.
For the first kilometre, their chatter was light and easy, flowing back and forth. Dar focused on her breathing, on the familiar burn in her calves. Awareness crept in anyway. She could hear the evenness of his breath, the restraint in his pace.
He was holding back for her.
The realisation prickled at her pride, but her body vetoed any attempt to prove something it couldn’t deliver this morning.
“You always run this route?” he asked.
“Most mornings.”
“It’s quiet.”
“That’s the point.”
They rounded a bend where the path narrowed. Callum dropped back half a step without comment, letting her lead through the tighter space. Tactical. Automatic. When the path widened again, he moved back alongside her, closer now. Not invading—just present. She caught the faint scent of clean soap, sharp and unadorned.
“You run alone usually?” he asked.
“Logan comes sometimes. Mostly alone.”
“Safer with a partner.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I know,” he said, “Still safer.”
She let it go. Force of habit, she told herself.
They crested a small rise. Her breathing grew heavier, lungs burning. She pushed through it anyway, refusing to slow. Beside her, Callum’s stride remained frustratingly even.
“You’re holding back,” she said.
He glanced at her, mouth curving slightly. He didn’t deny it.
The path levelled out, and her pace faltered despite her effort. She sensed his attention on her.
“Dar.”
She stopped. Hands on her hips, chest heaving.
“This isn’t a test,” he said quietly.
The Midlands range chewed sound and spat it back, the low rumble of gunfire folding into the hollow moans of the wind. The air was cold, carrying the tang of peat, heavy and damp, mingling with the acrid bite of gunpowder that clung to their clothes and stung their noses. It wasn’t just weather; it was a mood, a presence that settled on them like a second skin.
Targets bobbed in the battered gully below—a graveyard of steel silhouettes pockmarked with scars, jerking with each strike. The clanging echoes seemed alive, mocking every miss and celebrating every hit. Brass casings spun through the air, catching brief flashes of sunlight before vanishing into the churned mud below like fallen stars swallowed by the earth.
“Move it.”
Rhys didn’t need to shout; there was weight in his tone that demanded attention without theatrics. His words were stripped of excess, lean and direct, built for efficiency. “Two-man bound. Eyes up. Muzzles indexed.”
Sean dropped, hitting the wet ground with a graceless thud that sent a spray of muck up his arms. Rolling onto his stomach, he snapped into a prone position and loosed a burst of fire. The rounds smacked into metal with an audible ping, shaving paint off a target’s shoulder but leaving it standing.
From higher on the ridge, Malik’s voice drifted over like smoke—dry, detached, but tinged with faint amusement. “Telemetry says Sean’s heart rate thinks he’s dying. Rhys’s too, but that appears to be baseline.”
Sean snorted into his mic, wiping mud from his cheek with his sleeve. “That’s because Rhys doesn’t have a heart rate. He’s powered by sheer disappointment.”
Rhys didn’t break stride as he stalked past them, his gaze sharp as glass shards cutting across the range. “Reset lane two. Logan, you’re wide. Sean, you’re late.”
Sean pushed himself up onto one knee and threw out a salute, casual to the point of insolence. “Style, boss.” He flashed a crooked grin.
Rhys didn’t glance at him. His eyes pinned to Sean’s elbow instead, noting how fatigue had dragged it down enough to throw off alignment. His jaw tightened.
“Style gets you a folded flag.” His voice was colder than the wind whipping through the range. “Again.”
The timer chirped in the distance—a mechanical reminder that time didn’t stop for anyone. The wind shifted, carrying the earthy roll of damp loam from the berms lining the gully. They ran it again.
And again.
The jokes that had flowed at sunrise died away one by one, replaced by grim concentration and an unspoken drive to endure.
Rhys’s corrections came sharper, his hand cutting the air as if he could carve sloppiness out of men and leave them clean.
By noon, clouds crowded low over the hills like sullen bruises on the horizon, heavy with rain waiting to fall. Sean collapsed against a tire wall, peeling off his gloves before draining half a bottle of water in one go.
“Why does our cardio have cardio?” He tilted his head back against the rubber tread.
Logan crouched beside him, then yanked him up by his vest straps. “So your mouth survives. Up.”
Rhys walked the line then—stopped abruptly at lane three, where one target sat crooked on its spindle—a small thing in the grand scheme but glaringly wrong under his exacting gaze.
Sloppy.
He reached out to adjust it himself—it snapped without warning.
Clack.
Sean watched from where he stood, resetting another lane nearby, noting how Rhys’s hand lingered for half a second longer than normal before pulling back.
“You all right there?”
Rhys’s voice carried none of its usual edge—just quiet steel wrapped tight around something he wouldn’t name. “Lane three. Fix it.”
He walked on—as if leaving something behind with every step that no one else could see but everyone could feel tightening around them like barbed wire straining under pressure waiting to snap again.
Seven years earlier, Syria burned too close. Heat permeated everything: the ground, the walls, every breath. It scorched lungs, turned sweat to grime, and hung heavy like a curtain of ash over every street. Smoke curled from shattered windows and blackened doorways, a veil that whispered of lives torn apart. The staccato of gunfire echoed like a heartbeat gone wrong.
“Contact right!”
The shout snapped through the chaos like a whip, cutting through Rhys’s focus. His body moved before his mind caught up, instincts sharper than any thought. A doorway coughed smoke—thick and acrid, like burning plastic mixed with despair. The air screamed as stone cracked and splintered, sharp edges tearing apart under the force of mortar fire. The courtyard fractured, dust rising in clouds that turned the sunlight pale and sickly.
Rhys didn’t think; he reacted. Training took over, muscles moving with a precision honed by repetition and necessity. He cleared the corner in three strides, rifle raised and eyes scanning for threats.
And then he saw him.
The man was there before Rhys even registered his existence fully—a figure half-obscured by the haze of smoke and debris. British, Rhys’s mind supplied automatically, noting every detail: the calm stance that didn’t quite match the surrounding chaos, a bandage already seeping pink at the edge. A long split along his cheekbone.
But he wasn’t firing. His weapon hung loose at his side—not forgotten, but deliberately lowered. He wasn’t shouting orders or ducking for cover or diving into action. He was talking.
“No, pressure there.” The man’s voice cut through the backdrop of madness. He knelt next to a boy—no older than nineteen—whose face was sheet-white beneath streaks of dirt and blood. “Breathe.”
Rhys’s grip tightened on his rifle as he approached, suspicion overriding everything else. His voice cut through the space between them like steel on stone: “Who the hell are you?”
The man glanced up. There was no fear in his eyes—just a calm that bordered on unnerving.
“Stroud.”
A mortar coughed somewhere too close for comfort. The ground shuddered beneath their feet as another explosion ripped through stone and sand. Dust rained down like dry tears.
“Your left flank folds in two.” Stroud’s head tilted toward the chaos behind them without breaking eye contact with Rhys. “Make noise for thirty seconds. Then go quiet.”
Rhys blinked, disbelief flickering across his features before anger settled in its place like an old companion. “I don’t know you.”
“Can’t clear yet.”
Stroud gestured toward the boy, whose breath rattled louder now than it had moments ago—a sound that clawed at something deep inside Rhys’s chest. “He looks like my brother did at nineteen.”
Rhys hesitated for half a heartbeat. “You have a brother?”
“Not anymore.”
“Thirty seconds.”
They made noise after that—enough racket to draw attention away from their position: gunfire ripping through silence; shouted commands bouncing off crumbling walls; boots pounding against unforgiving ground as they moved with purpose born of desperation.
At twenty-nine seconds exactly—Stroud’s hand tightened on the medic’s shoulder in what might’ve been reassurance or warning or maybe both.
“Now.”
Silence slammed down around them like a physical thing—heavy and absolute save for the wind that bullied ash into swirling patterns across broken stone.
A head rose from behind cover—a flicker of movement barely visible through smoke—and Rhys fired without thinking.
The figure dropped.
“Good lad.” Stroud’s gaze lingered just past him, watching something or someone Rhys couldn’t see but felt all too keenly pressing against his spine like phantom weight.
Rain stippled the range.
It wasn’t a gentle patter but a persistent, needling rain that blurred the horizon and turned the dirt underfoot into a slick, treacherous film.
“You with us?” Logan’s voice cut through the haze of rain and fatigue, sharp but not unkind. He tilted his head toward Rhys, brows furrowed, water dripping from his nose.
Rhys blinked. The pencil cap snapped between his teeth. He spat it out.
“Reset. Final block. No breaks.”
His tone was flat, almost mechanical—an old habit of compartmentalization that dulled edges sharp enough to cut. His eyes didn’t meet theirs; they stayed fixed somewhere beyond the rain, on a horizon only he could see.
“Copy,” Malik said. “Medical on standby.”
His gaze flicked to Rhys with a trace of unease.
Sean coughed. “Permission to vomit?”
“No.”
Rhys didn’t look at him.
They finished in rain that soaked through bone. Steam rose off them when it ended.
By the time Rhys called it, their bodies were trembling from exertion and cold.
Sean sagged and dropped to sit on a nearby rock, its surface slick with rainwater. “Therapy would’ve been cheaper.”
Logan crouched beside him and tugged off his gloves, flexing stiff fingers. “Would’ve required honesty.”
A protein bar arced through the air before landing in Sean’s lap. “Eat.” Malik unwrapped his own ration with teeth and numb fingers.
Rhys looked at them like a man studying a photograph he wasn’t in, an ache in his chest that he didn’t name because naming it would make it real.
“Again tomorrow,” he said. “0600.”
“Never?” Sean asked.
“0600.” Rhys turned on his heel and walked away before staying required words he didn’t have.
In the ops hut, laptop glow washed his face in surveillance blue. He scrubbed through footage as ghosts flickered across the screen—men who had been there once but weren’t anymore except in pixels and memory.
A folder hovered unnamed. He opened it. A still image: a dusty courtyard. A younger man at a cracked basin, fingers pressed to a split cheek. STRD_01.jpg.
“You’ll stop sleeping for a bit,” a remembered voice said. “Don’t sharpen it on your men.”
The voice came unbidden—gravelly yet steady—a relic from another time when advice had been given freely even if it wasn’t welcomed.
Rhys closed the laptop. Outside, rain made weather of the world.
Dar drew a long breath and let it out slowly, the burn in her lungs easing as she nodded once.
“I know,” she said, quieter now.
Callum held her gaze for a beat, then nodded as well, accepting it without commentary. They started forward again, the river slipping back into pace beside them.
They reached the small footbridge that marked her turnaround point. Dar leaned against the railing, breathing hard. Callum stood beside her, close but not touching.
“Thanks,” she said. “For not pushing.”
“You showed up,” he said. “That’s enough.”
Her throat tightened. She nodded, not trusting herself to say more.
“Cool down walk?” she asked.
“Lead on.”
They walked back in casual conversation, the tension between them easing into something quieter, more charged. Once, their shoulders brushed. Neither pulled away.
At the meeting spot, Dar stopped but her mouth had other ideas. “Same time tomorrow?” Shit—what am I thinking?
“I’ll be here.”
No hesitation. Just certainty.
She nodded and turned away, silencing her inner doubt.
When Dar reached her house fifteen minutes later, her legs were rubber and her lungs still burned, but it wasn’t the run that had her heart racing. She closed the door and leaned against it, eyes shut.
Twigs appeared, winding around her ankles. Dar bent to scratch behind the cat’s ears, mind already spiralling.
She’d gone. That was the truth. Despite every reason not to, she’d shown up.
And she’d asked to do it again.
Standing at the sink, glass of water in her hand, she stared out the window and tried to convince herself it had meant nothing.
The lie tasted sour.
Showing up had been a choice. A deliberate crack in the door she’d kept bolted shut for years. She’d let Callum see her tired, anxious, unguarded.
Tomorrow mattered.
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