We settle in the driest corner we can find—not dry, but less wet than everywhere else.
The rain hammers the ruins around us, drumming on broken concrete and twisted metal.
Thunder shakes the walls.
Kasia sits with her back against rubble, rifle across her lap, watching the entrance.
I take position beside her, close enough to share body heat against the cold rain air.
"Could be worse," she says.
"How?"
"Could be on fire."
I laugh despite myself.
"That's your standard? Not on fire equals okay?"
"In Warsaw right now? Yes." She pulls a cigarette from her jacket—somehow still dry—lights it with practiced efficiency. "Want one?"
"Yeah."
She lights a second cigarette, hands it to me.
We smoke in silence, listening to rain and thunder and distant artillery that never stops.
"You think we'll make it back?" I ask.
"Eventually. Storm will pass. We'll move when it's safe."
"I meant out of Warsaw. Do you think we'll survive the siege?"
She's quiet for a long moment.
"Honestly? No. Poland's finished. Warsaw will fall. Most of us will die here." She exhales smoke. "But I'll fight anyway. Because giving up means they win without effort. And fuck that."
"Fuck that," I agree.
"Besides," she continues, "maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some of us make it out. Maybe you make it out. Old soul, remember? You survive things."
"Doesn't feel like it."
"Feeling and reality are different things." She looks at me. "You've survived everything that's tried to kill you so far. That's not nothing."
"So have you."
"So far." She takes another drag. "But I've been lucky. Luck runs out."
"Then we'll make our own luck."
She smiles at that.
Actually smiles.
"Optimist."
"Pragmatist. Luck is just preparation meeting opportunity."
"Who said that?"
"I have no idea. Heard it somewhere. Sounds good though."
She laughs—the first genuine laugh I've heard from her.
It transforms her face, strips away the exhaustion and danger and reveals someone young and alive underneath the war.
"I like you, Rio Castellanos," she says. "You're strange and probably crazy, but I like you."
"The feeling's mutual."
---
The rain doesn't stop.
Hours pass. Storm intensifies if anything.
Visibility drops to almost nothing. No chance of moving safely.
We're stuck here until dawn at least.
We talk to pass the time.
Not about the war—about everything else. Small things. Human things.
She tells me about Kraków, where she was born.
University there, studying literature before the war. Loved poetry especially. Wanted to be a teacher.
"War changed those plans," she says. "But maybe after. If there's an after."
I tell her about New Mexico.
Desert landscapes that seem impossible from Warsaw's perspective. The garage I worked at. The mother I left behind.
"You'll see her again," Kasia says.
"Maybe."
"Definitely. Old soul, remember? You survive."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true." She shifts closer—practical body heat, not romance, though the distinction feels blurred. "I can see it in how you move. You've done this before. Not this war. But wars. Fighting. Surviving."
The fragments pulse.
Sword weight. Horse screams. Deaths I've died but don't remember clearly.
"Sometimes I remember things," I admit. "Pieces. Feelings. Like déjà vu but stronger. Combat instincts I shouldn't have. Languages I don't speak but almost understand."
"Past lives?"
"Maybe. Or I'm crazy."
"Could be both." But she says it gently. "My grandmother used to say souls get recycled. That we live again and again, trying to learn whatever lesson we're supposed to learn. Maybe you're on your twentieth life. Or hundredth. Maybe you've been a soldier in all of them."
"Sounds exhausting."
"Everything about living is exhausting. But we do it anyway." She rests her head against the wall, eyes closing. "Tell me something true, Rio."
"What?"
"Something true. Something you haven't told anyone else."
I think about that.
What truth do I have that matters?
"I came to this war because staying home felt wrong," I say finally. "Like I was supposed to be here. Like if I didn't come, I'd regret it forever. But now that I'm here, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Don't know what I'm fighting for besides survival."
She opens her eyes.
"That's honest."
"Your turn. Tell me something true."
"I'm terrified," she says quietly. "All the time. Every mission, every patrol, every moment I'm out there. I'm scared I won't come back. Scared everyone I care about will die. Scared Poland will die and I'll survive and have to live with that." She pauses. "But I keep going anyway. Because being scared and fighting is better than being scared and hiding."
"That's brave."
"That's survival." She looks at me. "You're scared too. I can see it. But you fight anyway. That's what makes you worth surviving with."
Something shifts in the air between us.
The space that was practical body heat becomes something else.
Awareness. Connection.
The hook in my chest pulling tighter.
"Kasia—"
"I know," she says.
And moves closer.
The kiss is inevitable.
Natural as breathing.
Her hand on my face, my hand in her hair, lips meeting in the darkness of a ruined building while rain hammers around us and Warsaw dies outside.
It's not gentle.
Nothing about war is gentle.
It's desperate and hungry and alive—two people grabbing something real in a world where real things are dying.
When we break apart, we're both breathing hard.
"That was probably stupid," she says.
"Definitely stupid."
"We should do it again."
"Absolutely."