@ oscar_mike

[mylawn]

[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.

Comments

[oscar_mike]

[His hand settling on top of hers stops her withdraw and she pauses, measures, sifts through the fine sand to try to find the safe way through. For both of them. He's already taken off his mask, now she reaches out and begins taking off his gloves. It's a small thing - but its not small at all. He wears his armor as much to shield who he is as he does to shield his body. If she is going to expose her raw core to him - she is not asking for a fair trade. But she is going to ask him to give her something in return.

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.]

[mylawn]

[Jack doesn't object to her touching him the way he might with, well. Everyone else, but it does take a moment for him to relax and let her pull his gloves off. He realizes all at once that he missed the feeling of skin on skin more than he thought, even if it's just the gentle resting of her hand on top of his without anything in between.

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.]

[oscar_mike]

[He lets her have his hands - and she wishes she could strip away so much more than the gloves.

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.]