[Ana doesn't compartmentalize. She's a river, always has been and everything inside of her flows together. It's a river that's gotten deeper and quieter the older she'd gotten but the flow of her is still there. And, because she's a river, she had, over her life, gotten very good at learning to be exactly in whatever moment she is in. In the moment the trigger is pulled there can be no before, no after. There is only just that single perfect moment in amber when a second is a lifetime. She can't find that perfect moment outside of that trigger, but she has gotten very good at, when she chooses, being nowhere but exactly where she is.
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.]
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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 -