I miss Reaper by eleven minutes.
How agathokakologically predictable that he works off his frustration by throwing himself into raiding parties instead of sulking somewhere dark and damp like a normal fucking troll. That, at least, keeps everyone well and accounted for.
Or maybe not. Maybe brooding is reserved for my ilk, and Reaper has the right of it by dropping off the face of the ship to go have fun harassing fleet cruisers. It at least saves him from stewing in what has become the oppressive atmosphere of the Talon.
The unspoken agreement that we have all come to is, surprise surprise, that we are not going to talk about it. Sombra fucked Lynx, decided everything was hunky dory, and because she decided it will become so. She elbows me cheerfully as I grab trays in the omnigrubacquisitionhall, and the affection is so outwardly genuine, I wonder if the mask has gone so deep she's forgotten why she needs it.
The nights tick by. I need only dodge her for a little longer.
I have avoided this conversation for so many sweeps, convinced that the pieces should fall into play naturally, not to be pushed. So afraid, so certain one wrong word would undo all I had worked for. Yet, the moment I set my mind to this meeting, I begin to long for its arrival, if only that it will be over. How funny that what we dread changes on a caegar.
For instance, all those other fears seem trite in comparison to what I feel when I burst through the medbay doors and nearly claw Moira to death when I think she's going to stop me from seeing him.
"How base," she says as holds my wrist in an iron grasp. "It is truly a shame you've grown here, in such uncivilized conditions. If you wish to visit him, you need have only asked."
Stars I hate her. I want to gnash her throat out right now, but the marks she's leaving in my frond remind me what a horrible idea that is, and I settle for snarling at her. "Let me through."
She sighs. But not the long-suffering sigh of an overworked docterror, oh no. She has lived here too fleetingly, caused too much fear to be henpecked—no, this is an act, a charming display of playful condescension. She releases my wrist. "Very well. Allow me a moment to stall the dehumidifiers. They're torture on the gills."
"Dehumidifiers?"
I know she's done something to Reaper. He returned hours ago and only now am I arriving at his recoveryblock, news slow and thin, disjointed with some reports telling me he's come back in pieces, or not at all.
But Moira presses her fingers against the doorhusk, its legs wiggling in a coordinated shiver of compliance. A black sheet of glass that I did not realize was a window clears, its apparent opaqueness actually the presentence of rolling black smoke amassing on the other side. Moira barely steps out of my way as I charge in.
"Crap," he hisses as he catches sight of me.
Although, that's difficult to tell with how many tubes are clinging to his face. Nearly every inch of skin is covered by strange suction cups, the few bare areas burned black and patched with sensory nodes.
No, not burned. As I move closer, I see that his skin is moving, swirling like its gaseous, occasionally sliding to reveal the grey underneath.
"Gaberl, what happened?" I'm almost afraid to move closer. "What is she doing to you?"
"Widow, if you could wait until I'm passed out to start squeezing my shame globes, that'd be just peachy."
He preempts me. I was, in fact, just about to lay into him for going off on unnecessary escapades, but the scene in front of me now is far more pressing. I fold my arms. "I'd be happy to, if you'd describe to me the exact details of…this."
"Jegus," he groans, but he knows I am not budging. "Fine. The Doc's testing out some cell regeneration technology. Check it."
With one hand, he scrabbles at a pen on his side table. Then, holding it firm, he stabs it through his other.
"Reaper!" I lunge forward, trying to stop whatever he's doing, grabbing hold of his injured hand lest he try to impale himself again.
It is inconsequential. The pen sticks out both sides of his palm. As I hold it, his hand in both my own, restrained but supported with all my strength, the squid fluid instrument convulses out of his flesh with a *pop*.
He stares at me, two circles of reflective glass concealing his ganderbulbs that still shine in shock. The cycle of confusion-revelation-embarrassment is as clear as though the medical apparatuses were not there at all.
"So, uh. Yeah. I can do that now," he says, in a failing attempt to continue the conversation while my hands are still locked together.
I don't have the wherewithal to snatch them away. Instead, they come apart like a pair of magnets, jerking like a claw machine around scalemate. "I…" I say, desperate to explain myself, the plans of whatever I'd been meaning to confess here tonight falling away.
I am saved, (damned) by the one clown who has crafted every moment up to this point.
"Reaper holy fuck!" Sombra says, kicking down the panel of the recoveryblock. "Renvif told me you dragged half an asteroid field into like, fifty hijacks. You have got to fill me in."
"There were ten," Reaper says distantly, the barest dash of annoyance returning to his voice, yet another way to remind me how deep in this trench I am. "Don't you know better to listen to Renvif by now?"
"They tell me what I like to hear," she waves him off. As she crosses to his medicoon, she says with utterly believable nonchalance, "'sup Amelie." Like nothing has happened. Like the breaking point is not barreling toward us all. I still feel the ghost of Reaper's hand within my grasp.
"Some thing has happened," I insist to unspoken denial.
She freezes. She knows what I meant. "Well obviously," she chooses to misconstrue, "I doubt he's horizontal and missing half bodymeat because things all went according to plan."
"We must talk," I reiterate.
Reaper stays silent, eyeing us both, positioned on either side of him. A configuration decidedly not the providence I desire.
She blows air to flip her hair out of her face. "Do we really have to do this now?" She glances at Reaper. "Look, everything's fine. It was a mistake, we regret it, let's move on eh?"
"It was not-" The words I'd been hoping for won't come. They don't fit right in my mouth and the two people I love most are here and Reaper nearly died and I still can't- "I made you think I bear no feelings, but this is not the case."
"Okay, I figured, you're in diamonds or whatever-" (She picks at the edge of her gloves, the hopelessness spilling out in ways that she always tries not to) "-but not here okay?"
"You idiot." The voice that speaks up is so sudden, so rare we both jump. "I can't fucking believe you," Reaper says. "She's ashen for us, dumbass."
My lungs freeze. Sombra looks like she's been struck, and her gaze flicks to me for confirmation but all I can do gasp like slaughtered fish.
(Haha. Lynx will get a kick out of that.)
"Good one," she laughs nervously as though desperately still hoping this is a joke. "Nice to see getting the shit kicked out of you to the hoofbeast nebula and back hasn't wrung it all out of you."
"You seriously didn't notice," he says dully, whether the conversation or the exhaustion getting to him I can't say. "Come on Sombra, just look at her."
She does. There are two spotlights shining on I and now, now I should say something, but it feels like I've been flayed, every thing I am stripped bare. "I…"
I swallow.
Both of them are watching me, my friends that have put their roots into me and never let go entirely, no matter the distance. The people that I have never felt right without. Stilling every particle of my being, I reach forward and take Reaper's hand in one of my own. The place where he impaled himself meets my thumb.
"I care for you both," I admit. "I had always hoped that…things would simply be. That we could maintain without me asking for it. But I am done with that. Now I am asking."
"I…" Sombra looks at Reaper and me. "I really want to auspistice us? I mean…us?"
Finally, a truth that does not hurt to say. "There is nothing I want more."
Sombra stares for a moment more, as though the concept could ever even begin to cross her mind, and I will not pretend I understand her. I am done predicting what she will do, done thinking I know best. Instead, I offer my other hand, and let her make her own choice.
Almost without warning, she darts to the other side of the bed and takes it. "Sounds like a good deal," she says, breathless as though crossing an ocean rather than a few meters. "I mean, Minstrels know you and I need it, right Boss?"
"Oh fuck off Sombra," he scoffs. "A minute ago you didn't even remember there was fourth quadrant."
"Of course I did!" she beams confidently. "I was just waiting for one of you to say something."
Reaper barks something back, but I am too distracted by the warmth in each of my hands. The bickering turns into familiar background noise, like the hum of the ship around me, and it feels so right to allow it to go on. I squeeze them both.