This chapter takes place after Chapter 41 in SFTD.
It was in the darkest hours of the Workshop that Mordenna was really confronted with his inner thoughts.
The timer in his head noisily ticked into his third hour of low productivity as he stared at the device on his workbench. He knew he should be working on it—it was the device that would be governing how Fal-Mai's new arm functioned. Yet he simply watched it, as if he expected it to build itself, his brain humming with white noise.
Mordenna usually counted himself a productive man. Stuff like this, where he was gazing longingly at his machines like a schoolchild at homework wasn't exactly him. So what was going on? He wasn't really sad, anymore. He worked out everything between Fal-Mai and Jax at the present moment. Was there something he had forgotten? Couldn't be it—he would've hit upon it by now and his brain would've had a riot of a time shaming him for it. No, he was just... here. Here and getting little to nothing done.
It was around 2 AM for the ship, and he'd forced Lily to go to bed, so this was firmly a hell of Mordenna's own creation, he knew that. The time on the ship was lent a surreality by how bright it was in the Workshop. If he had a circadian rhythm to adhere to, Mordenna could only imagine it'd wreck his sleep cycles—if he wasn't naturally a night owl to begin with. He didn't quite know anymore.
Speaking of, what did he know of himself? Mordenna blankly brought one of his hands around, staring at it. He was Ref-Il Mordenna, though he'd rather forget his first name. He used to be David Tomko. He was the Hunter in ADVENT, now he was XCOM's Hunter. He used to be a spiteful git with no remorse nor empathy, now he was maintaining a healthy relationship with his adoptive family and working on himself as a person.
He'd like to think it all would stay that way. But his life was ever-changing, it seemed, and a lot of it was out of his control. He just... didn't feel like he had a proper grip on himself, anymore. At least when he was being difficult to work with in ADVENT, that was his choice. It was his choice to defy the Elders where he could, even if it ended up with him earning a few lumps for his trouble. But he chose that. He chose to be difficult. He chose to get beat, time and time again.
Now? Getting kidnapped by Eliza was nice, but it wasn't his choice. Wasn't his choice to start working for XCOM, really—it was that or the perceivable future spent walking the walls of a cell in solitary confinement. It wasn't his choice to get snatched by his brother while he was still a Reaper and be converted into the Hunter.
Even the things he had choices in seemed so inconsequential—or when they weren't, he kept making all the wrong ones. It didn't seem like much to just not antagonize everyone. It wasn't much to be passive instead of being aggressive. Though it was much, he didn't make the right choice when it came to target priority. Even if Bradford managed to talk him out of it in the moment... he couldn't help but come back to it, now.
But the worst thing was that he didn't feel sad about it. Not at the moment, anyway. He was caught up in this distinct lack of motivation to actually do anything with himself. He didn't have the energy to work, he didn't have the energy to go seek out his siblings, who would undoubtedly be up at this hour, and he just didn't have the energy to feel. In a way, it was a cruel blessing—Mordenna had always wished he didn't feel. But this cold oblivion, this crushing numbness... he couldn't say it was what he wanted. He'd thought it would have been more freeing to be nothing, to feel nothing, to have to worry about nothing but the next breath.
But it hollowed out his chest and left a gaping hole. It left his lungs feeling like nothing was passing through them even as he kept breathing in and out. It left him wondering what the point was, of everything.
The worst part of it all was knowing that last statement was a cause for concern. But without the energy to even do anything self-destructive about it, what was he to do? Go to Eliza or his siblings and just say "I'm not feeling much?" What kind of issue was that? If he wasn't feeling much, he wasn't feeling sad. If he didn't have the energy to go throw himself off of the top of the ship, it couldn't be all that bad. True, it was bad if he was trying to work on something—but all he'd need to do was wait for Lily to come in the morning and then he'd throw on his happy mask as usual and get to work, pressured into doing so by having another person in the room.
It wasn't good. But he couldn't say it was bad. Mordenna kept staring at his hand like that, even if the seconds continued to tick on by in his head. It was nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Nothing.
Maybe he was depressed.
He'd always fought himself on that point. The point wasn't that he didn't have evidence before—it was practically written on the walls of his Stronghold every time he made the walk of shame back in from another tumble, another bitterly cold freeze, another bullet in the brain. He was afforded the luxury of immortality, and he sure was a depressed immortal.
But now that things were better? Now that he had support systems and people who actually gave a damn? Strangely, he found himself giving less credit to it. He really didn't have a reason to be depressed anymore, did he? Life was pretty good. He had his own Workshop to make whatever he wanted, he had his siblings to hang out with and have good times with, and although he didn't have a chance in hell with Eliza, she was still the best friend he could ever ask for. In the face of all that, he didn't have the right to be sad, did he? There was hardly anything to complain about.
And yet. And yet. And yet.
And yet here he was, distinctly feeling like the hand that was presented before him wasn't really his. In fact, he couldn't claim to say it was him looking at it, either. He felt so... detached, from himself. He was David Tomko. He was Ref-Il. He was the Hunter. He was Mordenna. What would he be next? Who would take him from his home next year and turn him into something entirely new, rendering his previous life meaningless but to taunt him?
Who was he? Who was the Hunter? Was it bad that not even he really knew? He could pin a few traits to who the Hunter was—the Hunter was a cold-blooded killer. He would just as soon go after enemy soldiers as he would the innocent civilians in the havens with them. But that wasn't him. Not anymore. He was on the "good side." He shot ADVENT, not XCOM. But as his past self would taunt him, was the killing all the same, at the end of the day? He pulled a trigger, something died, another point earned for the side he was on now. Mordenna was just a passive observer unto himself, watching as he flowed from one state in life to the next.
The hardness of his palms from years of working with weapons and firing them in equal measure, was that him? Or was that David, who undoubtedly lived a tougher life in the Reapers? Was David him, or another entity entirely that was forced to harbor him like a parasite?
This wasn't even getting into the fact that he was noticing things about himself that he couldn't even pin to David. When Eliza pointed out the fact that he knew about the Geneva Conventions because she did and it got imprinted onto him during the six months of data upload, he'd laughed it off at the time. Now that he was given a moment to think over it all... him and Eliza had a lot in common, and that wasn't the sign of chemistry it sounded like. The way they ended sentences, their propensity to gesturing... Mordenna had heard that Eliza tended to talk to herself. Whenever Mordenna wanted to do something, even though he was ambidextrous, he'd always default to his left hand—and Eliza was left-handed.
Who was he? Who was Mordenna? Was he just scraps and pieces of whatever was lying around? Was "Ref-Il Mordenna" just another name for a homunculus of other people?
He let his hand drop, and he raised his eyes, staring blankly into the horizon. He didn't know. Mordenna didn't know who he was, he didn't know what was wrong with him, and he didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't have the energy to be self-loathing, to cry, to get angry. He just was. Like the early morning haze, his self was something that he felt like would never be in reach, never be something he could grasp a form out of.
Slowly, gently, Mordenna crossed his arms and eased his head to rest on them, closing his eyes. God willing, the haze would break and he would start to feel again. He could get angry, he could get upset, he could seek out his siblings and cry. But for now, there was nothing he could do.
Nothing but stew in a hell of his own creation.