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@ oscar_mike
[After blowing the lid off Hakim's compound and sending Reyes running, 76 starts to realize before long that they're going to need a better plan, something beyond 'haphazard reunion'. He can make things up on the fly, sure, but now it isn't just him, so preferably he needs a course of action that doesn't involve continuing to walk up to the front doors of Talon complexes and standing in front of security cameras, as much as he'd like to continue to do so.
He's been on his own for six long years, so traveling with someone else has proven to be an adjustment. It helps that it's Ana, who falls in step so easily with him that it's almost supernatural (as if no time has passed at all, to say nothing of circumstance), but acclimating himself to the presence of another person (even the closest of friends) is difficult. He's not the man he used to be, though he feels Ana bringing that out in him, digging things up that he tried so desperately to bury--perhaps more than he'd like.
There is something to be said for having someone at your back, however. It makes his mission easier, even if he knows, on some level, that he'll inevitably walk them both down a path that doesn't lead anywhere good.
They're merging safe houses, at least until it's time to leave Egypt entirely (which he imagines will be soon, given the scene he caused), and after a quick trip to gather his equipment, he's meeting Ana at hers. This is her turf, technically speaking, and he knows he should defer to her after cocking up her operation so thoroughly. It's the closest he'll get to an apology.
Because when he gets down to it, there are a lot of things unsaid between the two of them--things he thinks they could stand to talk about, but he is nothing if not very, very good at compartmentalization, telling himself that he can bring up the tougher subjects once things have settled. Then, it's easy not to bring them up at all, focusing on more immediate tasks like gathering supplies and planning their next move, fighting down the twist of something in his chest that he didn't think was still there.
He'll get around to it. But then again, he told himself he'd get around to talking things out with Reyes, too.
For now, he's making sure he isn't followed, hauling his equipment to where she's holed up, letting himself in with the codes she gave him. Just go through the motions--don't bring up what's eating at you.]
Your place is nicer than mine.
[An idle comment after a cursory inspection as he wanders into the main living area, such as it is. He moves around more than she does, he imagines, and Jack settles for whatever works, which more often than not means 'an actual hole in the wall'.]
Brought you some things.
He's been on his own for six long years, so traveling with someone else has proven to be an adjustment. It helps that it's Ana, who falls in step so easily with him that it's almost supernatural (as if no time has passed at all, to say nothing of circumstance), but acclimating himself to the presence of another person (even the closest of friends) is difficult. He's not the man he used to be, though he feels Ana bringing that out in him, digging things up that he tried so desperately to bury--perhaps more than he'd like.
There is something to be said for having someone at your back, however. It makes his mission easier, even if he knows, on some level, that he'll inevitably walk them both down a path that doesn't lead anywhere good.
They're merging safe houses, at least until it's time to leave Egypt entirely (which he imagines will be soon, given the scene he caused), and after a quick trip to gather his equipment, he's meeting Ana at hers. This is her turf, technically speaking, and he knows he should defer to her after cocking up her operation so thoroughly. It's the closest he'll get to an apology.
Because when he gets down to it, there are a lot of things unsaid between the two of them--things he thinks they could stand to talk about, but he is nothing if not very, very good at compartmentalization, telling himself that he can bring up the tougher subjects once things have settled. Then, it's easy not to bring them up at all, focusing on more immediate tasks like gathering supplies and planning their next move, fighting down the twist of something in his chest that he didn't think was still there.
He'll get around to it. But then again, he told himself he'd get around to talking things out with Reyes, too.
For now, he's making sure he isn't followed, hauling his equipment to where she's holed up, letting himself in with the codes she gave him. Just go through the motions--don't bring up what's eating at you.]
Your place is nicer than mine.
[An idle comment after a cursory inspection as he wanders into the main living area, such as it is. He moves around more than she does, he imagines, and Jack settles for whatever works, which more often than not means 'an actual hole in the wall'.]
Brought you some things.
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[Ana's safe house is the second story of a small house tucked back in a maze of small houses deep in the old section of the city, run down looking on the outside but still functional and even cozy on the inside and she's standing at the counter next to her hotplate, chopping vegetables, hair twisted back in a fresh, still damp braid down her back, long hands competent even as she shoots him a look over her shoulder as he comes in.
As he'd come in to one of their safe houses, and her, hundreds of times before.
For just a moment, the past overlays the present and the warmth of it comes swirling back over her. It hadn't all been bad. It had been hard but - it had been very good too. How many times had she holed up somewhere with her team, her boys, just Jack, and felt the kind of contentment of being surrounded by people she cared deeply for despite being in the middle of a mission or on call? She feels the swell of it in her heart for a moment and lets it come. Its a wave and she's learned as she's grown older that it is easier to simply ride that wave out than try to hold it back or fight against it. Because it passes and she sees only Jack and he isn't the Jack she remembered. Ah... but she isn't the Ana he remembered either, not anymore. But... he's still Jack. And she's still Ana. And some things never change.
Like the fact she was about to corral him off to the shower before he caught her attention and she turns away from her cooking, smile on her lips that's somewhere between pleasure and old familiar, gentle teasing, cutting knife resting against her arm as she crosses them loosely.]
When did you become such a charmer, Jack? I wasn't expecting housewarming gifts.
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[He punctuates the extremely dry joke with the sound of him unloading his pack on the nearest available surface. Then there's a moment, one for him to look her up and down, taking in the scene in front of him. Jack can't help but watch her for a few protracted seconds--the sight of her out of her tactical gear, inhabiting a cozy safe house just like he imagined she'd be. Seeing her cleaned up and doing something normal like chopping vegetables mostly serves to remind him how thoroughly entrenched in the vigilante thing he is. When was the last time he allowed himself to have something like a cooked meal?
He snaps back to business after only a second or two, digging through the bag to empty it of its contents.]
Don't get too excited.
[It's all just basic supplies--some that he'd already have, a few that he'd picked up along the way. Food, ammo, first aid, emergency gear. With all of that in view, he starts on his own equipment, taking the mask off first and then getting to work on his harness.]
Wasn't going to leave my safe house full of things we could use.
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The thud of his pack draws her good eye down, but she feels that thud in her chest too. It's a 'coming home' sound, a 'I'm here now' sound, a 'I never left' sound and her glance shifts from the bag to him just in time to catch the way looks at her.
And ah, if she were only young again and perhaps a bit more foolish this time. Or perhaps a bit less foolish.
But she's not and she goes back to watching his hands dig out supplies. In their old times together she would have been at his side by now, collecting what he set out, finding it new, easy to access places - probably even making comments on the quality of what he'd brought her this time - but she stays where she is in this new life. He's still Jack. She's still Ana. But they are not the same Ana and Jack they once were and she's unsure about that. She doesn't like being unsure. Her life now is very much about calm and balance. If she was centered as a sniper before, she is all but meditative about it these days. But this doesn't sit low and mild inside of her. He's still Jack. She's still Ana.
And she can still, apparently, predict what he's going to set out because his ideas of 'necessity' haven't changed at all. She sets the knife down and moves over to the table, stepping into his space the way she always used to, looked over the supplies. His ides of 'necessity' might not have changed much but -
she picks up one of the food packets with a 'tch' sound and has to turn her head to look at him from her good eye. Some things apparently will not change. The smile on her lips is almost familiar.]
Please don't tell me this is what you've been eating when you remember to eat.
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It's always been easier to just focus on the task at hand. The mission. Responsibility. Lining up protein bars and packs of sterile gauze in neat rows. He only looks up again when she joins him at the table, trying not to feel scrutinized, even though he knows there's no reason for it beyond the vague sense of shame that he has for running around, doing the things he's been doing.]
Easy to pack. [He offers a shrug.] Don't take up much space.
[It's a poor excuse--the truth is mostly that he's so caught up in his mission that he doesn't leave much room for self-preservation. Perhaps he's a bit ashamed to admit that, too. Jack doesn't want her to know how lost he's really been since she left.]
I don't stay in one place for too long.
[That much should be evident. He can't really afford anything else.]
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They may have gone their own ways, been apart - but she finds that she can still hear all the words that whisper under the ones he says in their place, like a radio song in the apartment next door, like rain against the outside of a window. And it hurts, what she hears. She's never done well with his pain, always feeling it so much deeper inside her than her own. But - she left him. Or hid from him. The end result was the same. She took herself away from him and left him alone and his world went to hell. And he's been walking through it, because he can't be himself and do anything else, ever since.
Without her.
Until he came to find her.
Or she let herself leave the traces to follow to do so...
Her hand reaches out, covers his to stop the ordering of the supplies that are already neat on the table. It's not a firm touch. It's light, almost a ghost more than solid. But she has faith that it will still his reordering all the same.]
Jack...
[Except there's nothing inside of her to follow after that. No soothing words, no proverbs, no gentle dry humor. She says his name and the rest dries up. Just her fingertips barely on top of the knuckles of his glove for a long heartbeat. A second. And then, softly:]
Stop apologizing.
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But he still can't deny that there's a great deal going unsaid between the two of them. Someone's going to have to breach the subject sooner or later, and the way Ana speaks up indicates that they might as well just get it over with.
It takes Jack a few moments to start. He's sort of lost his way with words in the aftermath of the Overwatch's fall, if he even had a way with them in the first place. He tries to focus on Ana, instead--how more than anything, he doesn't want her to think that he left her behind.]
I went back. I looked for you until they made me stop.
[Because he'd come up entirely empty, of course. Now he knows that she didn't want to be found, because even as dangerous as things were, they were a multitude of ways she could have let him know. Jack is trying not to be angry, or hurt, but she had to have known how he'd take losing her. He's gone so many years thinking he got her killed.]
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She has been, very studiously, being exactly in her current moment since Jack took off his mask for her in that courtyard and said he had been looking for her.
So she doesn't necessarily want to talk about the past. But she's aware they need to. That he needs to. And that she has apologies to make and, more importantly, reasons to give. Her words were a door for him, but it was not one she would have opened herself. Not yet at least. Perhaps not for a very long time.
It doesn't make him wrong to have opened it now. He always was more straight-forward than she was. She had always -
always loved that about him.
Her fingers don't leave his hand when it clenches even though she could withdraw. Instead it makes them settle more, so that her hand, dark brown and lean for all its wrinkles now, is entirely over the top of his and the very tips of her fingers with their habitually short trimmed nails are curved, just the smallest bit, to rest against the palm of his glove. She doesn't have both eyes anymore but the one she looks at him with is the same dark night brown it had always been. Her voice is a half tone lower, softer.]
I know.
[That he had looked for her. That he would have found her bullet shatter scope and blood and the signs of how she had writhed in it, out of her mind with pain. Her lost eye twinges at the memory and she raises her other hand to the patch across it, presses lightly so it will stop. Her good eye lifts again though, meets his and she means more than that he had come for her when she repeats:]
I know, Jack.
[She, too, knows the fault is hers for not coming back to him when she could. She knows he has to have believed she died or he never would have stopped looking. She knows he never would have believed she'd thought he was dead, despite the reports, if he'd known she was still alive when Overwatch had imploded and he'd officially gone with it. She knows that he doesn't want to accuse her of abandonment but that he has every right to. She knows he's been carrying her ghost inside of him and the ghost of a responsibility he'd refuse to give to anyone else even if it was hers in truth. And she is so... so very sorry for the pain -
but not for the choice she'd made.
Her hand lifts to drift away from him then. She knew, when she joined him, that she would have to answer for those choices. But now, caught in the stream that goes backward as much as forward, she's not sure where to even start. Or where he needs her the most to start.]
So ask me -
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After spending years pretending like there was still something to salvage between him and Gabriel (despite very little effort on his part to actually fix things--he'd always told himself he'd get to it at the right time), Ana's disappearance had spelled the beginning of the end. The two of them couldn't hold it together without her, and he thinks that she knew that. If she didn't, she certainly realized.
Jack has always been, in many ways, inherently selfish. His feelings. His mission. His war. There's a self-awareness in it that knows he's dragging Ana along for the ride, and that she deserves so much better than what he can give her at this point in their lives. At the same time, now that he's found her, he can't possibly be without her again, even if that means dragging her down with him. Jack thinks he hates that about himself most of all.
So despite the fact that he knows he has no right to ask this of her, he does it anyway, because he needs to know.]
Can you tell me why?
[He tries to relax under her touch, and knowing that this is going to be as difficult for her as it is for him, he moves a hand to put on top of hers, trying to be reassuring but not sure if he remembers how.]
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To see if he still will.
And because she needs the flesh of his hands when she tells this or she does not think she will tell it right. Or the entire truth of it. The starting part is easy at least and she can give that to him, gloves between them or no. Her voice has the slight lithe to it that she always used reading stories to her daughter at night. Can you tell me? he asks her. Giving her the extract point if she wants to slip away instead.
Except she has never been good at denying him the pieces of herself. And if she does not tell him now, she may continue to ghost away from it forever.]
It was my job to protect you. To protect all of Overwatch. I was your guardian. It was my job to end the threats before they could reach you, to keep you safe on your paths so that you could do what needed to be done. But I was choosing, each time, that your lives were more important than the lives of those I killed. I was making that choice for so many more than just myself. I was making that choice for the families and children of the people I killed as well as for the families and children of the people I protected. I was a very little god but my decisions were final and there was no mercy for them once they were made.
[Her good eye lifted to his face but it was not apologetic. It was simply full of harvested lives.]
I do not apologize for that. I have always been selfish. Your lives... your life... will always mean more to me and be more precious to me, than anyone else's. I will always make the choice to guard it at the cost of others. But I feel the weight of it, of all those families I have left alone, all the hearts I have left empty in my passing.
[It was the start - but not the root. Whether she pretended it ended there or not... well - perhaps it depended on if he gave her her pound of flesh. Or the equivalent of the weight of his ungloved, unguarded hands.]
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It's grounding, in a little bit of a surprising way. He's spent so long trying to cope with the dull ache of a fandom limb--the part of him that was hers ripped out and left raw and gaping suddenly filled again. Jack hadn't known how much he relied on her very presence until it wasn't there anymore.
Hands over his all of a sudden doesn't seem to be enough, but he'll let her talk, first. He'd asked the question, after all.
He thinks he imagined her saying something like this, but the way she voices the burden of taking lives perhaps surprises him. Not that she feels that way, of course not--they all wrestle with the complicated feelings of dirtying one's hands to keep others safe, but this sounds like something that had been eating away at her, and Jack isn't sure how to react.]
You could have told me.
[Jack will always insist that as commanding officer of her final mission, what happened that day falls squarely on his shoulders, but this seems to go beyond that. Something slow-growing and insidious. He knows now what it feels like to have those creeping doubts, and then be presented with the opportunity to vanish, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to try and salvage the pieces in front of him.]
I could've done something, I could've--helped.
[That's what he tells himself about most things, because hindsight is twenty-twenty. The thought that he could have been there for her if only he hadn't been so caught up in trying to hold Overwatch together. Wouldn't be the first interpersonal relationship he let deteriorate because of it. He's not sure which is worse--the thought that he didn't notice this happening, or the fact that she maybe felt like she couldn't talk to him about it.]
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She wishes she had years ago.
But there is no going back, not in any way that is safe or sane, and she is already having a difficult enough time going forward. Because the weight of the souls she carries is only half of the reason she didn't come back to him right away. The larger half, because she knew that she was not whole inside, that if her foundation was not solid before she moved, she would break for good and this time she would take others down with her when she crumbled. But there had been a more vulnerable and personal reason as well and one she felt much smaller and ashamed for having.]
Jack - [Her voice was gentle, calling, the long whisper of it that she could only do and one hand left his to cup his cheek as she stepped in closer to him, looking up at his face with her good eye. Because - he was falling. She could feel it in him. Taking all the blame for things that hadn't been his to carry.] We are soldiers. Carrying the dead is what we do. You could not have shouldered my responsibility as I could not yours. On the nights the ghosts walked for me, you were there, awake, to be alive and keep me from them. It was what I needed most. But I also needed time alone, with those ghosts and no interruptions. I needed to stop pretending they did not matter to me, that they did not effect me. I could not do that with you there to keep them away.
[Which was true. All true. And she had needed that time in privacy, locked in the lonely dark with them, no rescue. It had taken time, perhaps too much time. Her healing had perhaps cost everyone else. Or perhaps that was the simple answer and Overwatch had been crumbling long before she'd vanished and it had blown itself to hell. She looked down at his hand. Wrapped her own around that weathered familiar skin. Gave him the rest.]
But that was not the only reason I needed to be alone. [Her eye lifted back to his and her hand left his face to tap against the cover over the destroyed half of her.] I called protecting you my job. It was more than my job. It was my purpose. When I lost the ability to carry out my purpose, I lost myself. I was a gun with no trigger, useless to everyone. Even myself. If I could not do the one thing I was called to do, what was left of me? Better, I thought, that I die than live broken and useless to everyone. But I did not die and so disappearing was close enough. [Her head tipped for him and the single onyx eye that looked up at him didn't look useless or broken even if it did look sad and ancient with weight - and calm with hints of life glinting in it the way they always had. Watching him. Waiting. Because she was not 'disappeared' anymore.]