One Year Earlier

The first time Wraith drops a portal to save his life, he stumbles. His whole body ignores his command and his feet fall out of sync. It hangs, in the air, a warped oval of purple shimmer, like a fog he can almost see through, if he squints. The shape has haunted him his whole life, elusive like the shadows he can see playing behind the gossamer surface of this other-worldy tear in the universe. Almost top heavy, just barely favouring one side. A perfect, asymmetric, ragged replica of the image he has nightmares of.

"Friend!"

It's the robot who shatters his daze, solid blue hand wrapping his arm and dragging his clumsy limbs forward. When he drops on the other side in a heap, their newest third shoots him a glare like he's called her something foul, and the hole in the air above him disappears with a swift crackle and a clenching of her jaw.

It truly is a wonder that he survives the next twenty or so hours until they snatch a very bloody victory from the claws of the previously unbested trio. Mirage accepts his winnings and the media attention with his usual guile, but inside, he's reeling.

Two Games, he's known her, this their third victory, and still with only minor injuries or harmony disputes. A year, at best. She keeps to herself, she doesn't say much, and she seems to have no particular fondness for anyone, or anything, let alone him. He doesn't know a single thing about her, though he made the usual efforts to at least be civil, when they were assigned each other. Path and he go way back, and even before that had been in each other's orbits as they rose through the ranks of their own Leaderboards, but Wraith…

Wraith he knows nothing of, and not for lack of trying. She showed up one day, slaughtered eighteen people and one of her own team, and somehow slipped every effort made by the paparazzi to get a scoop on the sections of the match happening out of the reach of cameras. And that itself was a feat, for the largest majority of the Arena was well-covered by cameras, and if she'd messed with any intentionally she wouldn't have been around long, but here she was.

He knows nothing at all about her, the Interdimensional Skirmisher who cuts holes in reality and can vanish before the eye. He doesn't even know her real name, but he comforts himself with the knowledge that at least, neither does the rest of the world.

But he wants to. He's wanted to since the first night they trained together, mandatory pre-Game training to gain entry to the Games as a new team, a rocky hike in the pitch dark and the rain, constantly alert for the vicious creatures loosed in the area by the GameMakers, and for other trainees with bloodlust in mind.

In the dark, soaked to the skin and exhausted by the intimidating pace she set and with the rolling of thunder above them, Mirage had seen quickly her unbreakable nature and her drive, and he admired her. Hell, okay, he was drawn to her. Something about her, something beyond the way the lightning lit her up like a fearsome warrior, something beyond how secretive her eyes were and beyond how sure she was in everything she did.

He hadn't worked it out then, and he sure hadn't worked it out still, but he could admit it. If only to himself, mind, but he could. Something about Wraith had sung to him from the very first time she met his eye and her face gave him nothing about what she was thinking.

And now, closing the door to his quarters with the sound of crowds still ringing in his ears, he knows why. He leaves the light off, locking the door and striding across the room to the en suite. The dull blue strip above the mirror buzzes on at his approach and bathes the room in a suddenly eerie, cold light. He catches sight of his own face and pauses, noting that he needs a shave, eyeing the faint white of old scars glowing in the unnatural light. There's still old blood dried to rusty flecks under one ear, and his hair is an inch away from a bird's nest, as his mother might say.

His eyes show it most, though. He looks haunted, and hurt, even he can see that. He reaches for his collar with an icy shadow in his chest, and he pulls down the zipper to strip off his suit. The holo-glass clatters melodically as he frees his arms, and his throat is dry and his heart is racing, and he knows it's stupid - it's so, so, stupid, because he knows what he's going to see, of course he knows, he's seen it daily all his life, but he still has to look now.

He yanks the t-shirt over his head in one go because he knows if he hesitates he'll spend an age trying to work up the courage. Shirt falling to the floor, he stares at the blemish above his heart, and he feels the organ itself fall.

Though it hasn't any colour outside the confines of old black, he knows it's purple. He doesn't think he'll ever see purple the same way again, not now that he's seen it shimmer and glow and live in the air in front of him. The oval on his chest in warped, favouring one side and almost top heavy.

Elliot feels the dread well up inside his gut like acid reflux, and continues to stare for several long moments.

There's no doubting it, no denying. He tries, but he fails, to come up with anything. Anything at all that would explain why he's looking at Wraith's portal, the one she dropped for him not a day ago in order to save his life, the almost out-of-body experience of travelling through… what? The fabric of reality? He'd asked of course, pestered her really with every question he could think of, but she gave him nothing, like always.

And there it is, a perfect little replica, if a replica could exist thirty years before the real thing did.

It twists like a nasty blade in his side, the cruelty of it. He knows, that life is unfair. God, of course he knows. He's lost his father, his brothers, might soon lose his mother, in ways he can't ever fight. He's seen it, he's felt it, the heartbreak, the evil. It's why he's picked the path he has, why he does what he loves even if one day it'll kill him - and he knows that it will, because he knows himself well enough to admit he'll never be able to give it up, now - but this feels particularly wicked and unfair.

To find her, thee her, on the battlefield of all places. Able to lose her at any moment, and no doubt if he does he'll get a front row seat to her death, because that's how these things go down, oh boy. It's not fair. Life has never been fair, but this, this is the worst it's given him, maybe. A teammate who barely deigns to talk to him, a fighter who killed her own squad before joining his, a woman who keeps herself so closed off, so isolated, that he's never seen her have any friends or family around, even when he himself sees her almost every day, if only briefly.

A cruel game of fate, to tie his soul to a woman he could lose before he's ever gotten to know her. A crueler game, that she so clearly doesn't recognise him the same.

He's always known that some souls are lost. That some people make do, or live without the touch of a soulmate. Elliot just never really believed he'd be one of them. With his own track record of depthless flings and nameless girls, he supposes maybe he should have expected it. But it stings, just the same.

It won't be until the moment she's dying that he realises that it doesn't matter if fate didn't tie her soul to him, because he's been lucky enough all this time, to be who he has, for her.

~.~