. He felt a curl of victory in his mind when she seemed to acquiesce. Almost instantly it was replaced by a minute discomfort as she began to speak. He knew she was trustworthy, he knew she wasn't going off to do something untoward, but somehow he was still in the necessary position to grill her about little things.

His expression turned sympathetic, brows furrowing and mouth turned down as his gaze softened.

"I know you're an excellent soldier, but an even more exceptional person, Oxton. I'm sorry someone thought otherwise." At the revelation, his brows rose in mild surprise. "Do you want to take time off? If you need to, you've got it."

"s'complicated." She admitted, hating how small her voice had become. The path to becoming Tracer had been involuting, turning her back on treasured friends and loved ones, shooting Lena straight into the spotlight from the humble London streets she once came from. Enlisting, deploying, recruiting for Slipstream, and now this, Tracer, The Golden Child, the newest edition to the special forces that now touched down seemingly wherever they pleased.

Overwatch had their fans, sure, but they also had their critics. Those who used to exist in the same circles as her, anti-war anarchists who loathed to see one of their own join Overwatch. It was different when she was dead, lost in the expanse of Time and to be blamed on the mistakes of the organizations. But now, landing in front of them, very much alive without so much of a note? Bad blood flairs.

"I," Lena searched for the right words, selecting and discarding an explanation. "I left behind a lot, when I joined up with the military. Broke promises. Guess it came back to bite me."

blood, blood, gallons of the stuff ! a collection of icky, bloody prompts for those who like to choose violence. actions are reversible. general warning for blood, violence, murder, death.

𝚂𝙿𝙾𝙺𝙴𝙽 :

𝚄𝙽𝚂𝙿𝙾𝙺𝙴𝙽 :

. They watched quietly, eyes taking in Lena's movements and expression. They had nothing good to say about Overwatch- they strangled science through a thousand rules, and Pasiphos hadn't even entertained going through them for that very reason. Even if they were interested in what little had been said about the Slipstream and other projects (and of course they weren't! They had better things to focus on, of course!), they weren't going to be hamstrung by a thousand rules on their technology.

"You can still be a hero, dear," they replied, their tone as gentle as they could force. "They don't have a monopoly on the concept."

They adjusted their seat in the chair, expression like one a parent would offer their child when offered some useless trinket like it was pure gold. Historical anecdotes weren't terribly useful to them, but Lena's trust and confidence was.

"Really? How curious," they hummed, a hand briefly resting against their chest. "I'm sure there are some historians that would chomp at the bit to talk to you, but I don't think you're up for nosy researchers right now." Barring current company, of course.

The gentle expression, regardless of how forced it was, had the rapid race of her hearting ticking back down to baseline. There was something lurking in those bright eyes that Lena felt as if she could trust, assurances falling on eager and needy ears. She could be settled, could be good, to listen to Pasiphos. They cared about her, more than anyone else that had barged through those doors had.

A shaky breath filled her lungs, then another. Known historical facts shuffled through her mind, organizing them in a quiet stabilization of mental and physical being. Everything was in extremes, panic swelling and falling with tides. Clarity replaced it, the rock shore visible beneath the tamer waters, and Lena looked up at the researcher behind the glass.

"What do I do from here? Where do I go? If I can ever leave here, I mean." She gestured to the crude isolation chamber, face scowling in disgust. "I can't go back. I can't trust them again." Overwatch reduced to no more than a sneer in her voice, distrusting and hateful already. "I was supposed to be someone, to make a difference, and now I can't. So what, what do I do? Where do I go?"

He relents with I Know because Lena Oxton is a survivor. There is a quiet faith as he acknowledges her okay, as she quivers to her very foundations and white-knuckles her voice to grip herself from self-collapsing. Cole does not push.

Chikadee's Service Dog certifications is inked with diligent hours. They are notched and reared with careful simulations. Months ago, Cole was Lena; buckled up in the cotton sheets of a shitty prison spring-bed, thrashing himself out of false nightmares and dodging the haunt of pseudo-demons. This is what to look out for, this is what to do. Rinse, repeat. Press your weight. Breathe.

It is one thing to act something out, even when you are intimate with its heavy-handed reality, and another to witness somebody you care for to be hauled through the thick of it and pulled out onto the other side in shambles. He sees the echo of those months of practice coming into fruition as sleepy silhouette lumps shuffle in the dark, as Chikadee nurses a whine in her throat and as Lena's eyes catch wet reflection in the cold dawn to meet where he stands.

he is caught off guard by the wake of it. His hand goes for the brim of a hat that isn't there. It cups empty air. He averts his gaze to the window instead, to the slats slicing morning light against the opposite wall and the motel television making zebra stripes with the reflections.

"Not much of a sleeper anyway," he says lightly and it is half a lie and half a truth. His voice is tepid and soft this early. "Was 'bout to grab some coffee from the main lobby. Did you want any?"

"Sure."

It was choked, strangled against the hollow silence of the morning. Cole throws down a path and Lena follows it, blindly, latching onto the few concrete things she knew of in that moment, a bull in a china shop stamping their way to a shaky salvation. She took stock of the facts, the soft fuzz of Chickadee's ears between her fingers, Cole's figure silhouetted against the lightening dawn, the tangle of sheets around her legs and torso, and the discomforting lack of weapon in her hand.

Lena dragged herself upright, propped against the messy pillows and wrangled bedsheets, with Chickadee following her until she was rested on her knees. Pausing to allow for the snk of the latch that announced Cole's departure, she stared down at the dog's soft brown eyes. Losing herself in them, the blood that rushed through her ears and thrummed along thin-skinned pulse points gradually beat down into some semblance of normality as the setting was assessed and reassessed. Shiny diner. Roadtrip. Freedom. Freedom.

Paranoia flushed through, Lena dropping ungracefully down the flight, flee, fawn scale until the WATCH settled into something closer to a WARNING; the storm come to pass. Her fingers slipped from Chickadee's snout and she nodded toward the door.

"Guard." She murmured, Chickadee settling into her vigilance as a response. Lena rose to her feet, form made unsteady by the last vestiges of a tremble, and moved to deadbolt the door. The windows were next in the paranoid checklist, locked tight and blinds closed tightly in the silent dawn. Cole would have to knock to gain access, fortunately Chickadee had been trained well and knew what to do. For now, Lena simply opened her bag and tried to silence her racing mind with organization of the mundane until his return.

Little activity notice but I'm taking my praxis/boards at the end of March so I'll be extra unresponsive from here on out. See you all on the other side of this!!

I PASSED 🎉🎉🎉

the way Lena spills out a protest is akin, to her, a swollen, bloated corpse rupturing. Moira pays it no mind. Empty words. Vapid things eating up time, eating up attention; there are more important matters to tend her hand to. Blood blooms pinprick stains on cotton-linen fiber and she folds the fabric in on itself diligently. She will rehydrate the sample, later, and slip it tidily between slides. An outline of a procedure is already cobbling together in the back of her mind. Step 1, Step 2, Step 3. Deftly, she slips the fabric in a plastic baggy, labelled in belligerent, blocky letters: biohazard, for disposal, and presses her fingers along its ridges to seal it closed. She sets it aside on the seat of the nearest cabinet top, trades it for antiseptic within the drawers. The screw uncaps, bleeds dark and acrid to a new set of cotton that she upholds between tweezers. It slides wetly, mopping after red-colored crescents, flesh indentations and broken skin.

Moira's expression pays little heed to Lena's gaze snapping to a corner, screwing shut, denying demons or another rapid onset of an episode.

"Your measure of a bad day will not uphold to the definitions of the medical community, Oxton," The cotton ruddies; she repeats the procedure of tossing this into another biohazard baggy. This, she places to the left of its predecessor. This one, she will throw away. "By defining this as something that warrants discharge, you are exemplar in showing your disconnect."

Paper packets tear beneath her fingers and she guts them of the bandages within. There is no softness in her movements as she applies them, but they are precise; efficient. She purses her lips.

"Tell me, Oxton," She smooths over her voice, "Would you reject medical attention like this if you were in a more privatized environment? Some place more familiar?"

She almost sounds kind.

Quicksilver pooled over her fingers, digits frozen and scalding and twitching under the restraint. She disassociates, watching from a clinicial distance in her brain as cotton soaks up red, Moira stealing her lifeforce. Lena was an empty vessel, each newcomer dipping into her. Sanity. Personality. And now, her very blood.

"I don't have anything else to give." The protest slipped, unfiltered, the fevered bemoans of a psyche shredded and pasted back together, a billion pieces stuck together attempting to masquerade as functioning. "Please, I can't give anymore. Please leave me alone."

They're quiet protests against the expanse of space and time. Echoed by dozens of iterations of her, deposited ungracefully in some forgotten life, left along to rage and protest. And just like those empty spaces, the stars winked silently against her screams here too.

Head pressed tight against the pillow, eyes pressed closed tight against interjections of Time and the leer of the doctor over her. She was a beetle in a case, pressed and pulled and on display for those who might look on with a passive curiosity. Moira's expression was not a novel one, her expression matching those who would stroll into isolation chamber wanting to pick her apart, to dip into an already-empty tank. Lena pulled forth some kind of act, years spent lying to doctors and herself to escape the press of walls around her.

Brown eyes slid open, her body quiet and still again. Lena willed away the visage of the past away, fruitlessly so, but that went ignored too.

"Listen, I feel better, really. Besides, marketing's got me booked for some kind of interview tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep for it. So why don't I 'ead out, and we can meet again later." Her tongue nearly slipped on the new tactic, words a rushing stream barely restrained by sharp enamel. "And we can sort out anything then, yeah? Sounds like a plan t'me."

Something loosens in his chest; a wretched little hand gripping his lungs so tight its knuckles rupture ghost-white; a flash flood hope burning so fatally that it chokes on itself. It startles into oblivion at her blasé reponse, exiled by drunkish, sloppy consonants and slurring vowels. You wouldn't think vindication would come from from the lips of a pummelled portrait; salvation plucked and culled in the earnestness peeking beneath swollen reds and gorey purples. It staggers him briefly, cascades his head bowing and lambasts the tension in his shoulders null. "Well, shit," a chuckle rattles out from the rib cage, ping-pongs around on the bones, and his head dips to the side, ear yanked towards the shoulder furthest from Lena's face, "Didn't think you noticed."

And it's a truth smothering a Thank You. Not that any amount of gift wrapping can hide the shape of gratitude beneath.

They slog down the row of motel doors; bright greens punching squares against peeling white walls. Lena undulates on his shoulders, is made passenger to an uneven and burdened gait. They make it to room 206, brass numbers pinned beside the doorframe. Cole blearily fishes out the keycard, presses it sloppily against the card reader that flickers from solid red to blinking green. The lock clicks audibly, the noise abruptly followed-up with the handle being jammed down and the meat of the door being swung roughly open.

The chime of rattling metal tags greet them, the pitter pattering of dog's feet. Chikadee whines in the gulf of their combined shadows, eyes caught in the window of light that blasts past their shoulders. Head bowed and ears peeled back, she whines and looks between the two of them before making for the light switch. Her snout noses into yellowed plastic and the hallway beams to life. Cole shuffles her carefully towards the bathroom and elbows down the toilet seat before depositing her on top. The flourescents buzz, clinking. He scrapes the backside of his thumb against a split lip and is promptly re-acquainted with the metallic taste of copper. Dirt smears grain trails on the tile; a bloody fingerprint splotches over the enamel next to the lightswitch and drags a dirty stroke over and onto it.

Cole grunts, teething the open wound notching the seat of his lips. "Y'still got that first aid kit lyin' in your luggage, Birdy?"

Time ticked by in a lurching matter, here one second and gone the next. Ten hours took them up the stairs, stumbling into the door. Trekking from door to bathroom another ten minutes. Things skipped by quickly then, Chickadee nosing concernedly at her face and blood flecking out from a lopsided nose at dazzling rates. Lena remembered a haunted house as a kid, the flashing strobes making things move at impossible rates.

Throughout their impossible stumble back to the motel, Lena gifted him with the blind trust he's earned after these years. She sat, shifting awkwardly on the toilet, resting the base of her skull against the cool porcelain while he moved about above her. Any semblance of paranoia she once had filtered out between the scuffs of violence and fleeting moments of peace.

She was startled from her stupor by a wet nose in her fingers, pressing comfortably between palms and into her lap. A familiar sensation, comforting. Brown eyes flickered open, gazing through the swollen tissue to look up at Cole. Busy. Always busy.

"In my carryon." It was rough, crass, but harmless against the gloom of the evening. "Blue bag."

There was a beat of easy silence, and Lena didn't mind breaking it, voice hoarse against the irritant of backwash blood and resonance shattered through the crook of her nose. "Y'know, 'ad the big'un m'self. Talk'd a bi' game bu' they fall easy."

Bloodied slugged out, crusting over the splits in skin and tissue alike. It buried into ravines of flesh, dried in the rivulets left behind by predecessors. It was familiar, a distant reminder of the past scarred into freckled skin, but it didn't bother Lena like similar reminders had.

"Was pretty impressed, taking that bottle across the head like that. Sure you're okay?"

ㅤit occurred to him to apologize for startling her, but he ultimately decided against drawing any attention to the matter. instead, when lena shifted to one side, he stepped closer on quiet feet and joined her at her perch. also one to take to height when he needed distance from others, genji found something of a soft amusement in another discovered similarity between the two of them, but took his seat without commenting on it.

ㅤㅤ" yes. sleep is... "ㅤcomplicated at best. difficult and not as necessary as it once was at worst.ㅤ" ...elusive at even the best of times. "ㅤsomething he was sure most on base could relate to, but that lena in particular would be painfully familiar with the feeling. obviously she was, or she wouldn't be up here, avoiding her bed the same way he was.

the chilly air earned a faint shiver from him, with none of his armor on to protect his remaining skin from the night's breeze, but even that was intentional — it served as a reminder that he was alive, that he wasn't all metal and electricity.

ㅤㅤ" i did not think anyone else knew of this spot. it's a good one though, is it not? it is rare that anyone thinks to look up here. "ㅤreyes was the only one who came to mind as someone who would think to search for him on the rooftops and in the rafters, but that hadn't been the case for some time now.ㅤ" —unless they are also seeking someplace to hide, that is. "

There was a certain comfort in Genji's appearance, his body still and poised compared to her near constant frenetic twitch of the Brit. Lena found herself subconsciously mirroring it, mind and body already slowed by the looming expansive of stars that decorated the sky above the base made doubly so by his definitive and gradual movement. A mirror existed in him, reflecting back some of the novel discoveries of life after Overwatch had meddled, a string connected on two candles melting under the heat of acute trauma dragged down a gravel road.

"Yeah, best place to see the stars, too." She countered, easily, stress evicted for something casual between the pair. Lena noted his pale skin, freezing against the yawning night air, and offered a piece of her carefully constructed nest to his shoulder; shelter from the storm.

Silence befell them, something comfortable and familiar, before Lena spoke again. "You want t' talk about what brought you up 'ere? Can't be the only one gone to hide, then."

He breathes out between his teeth, palms at the sweat gathered slick on the back flats of his neck. The moisture bleeds into cracked callouses. "You, and an army."

Exhaustion whets the wry tone and he near wishes it were hyperbole, that all this didn't echo so closely and preversely to the times of Before; where it was just him and Deadlock and red rock splintering the blue sky and Jesse McCree reduced to a wounded animal holed up in some abandoned, godless place counting the shades of Death closing in on his peripherary. There are no good things in past and present bleeding in together so profusely like this, blurred lines where the cattle fence broke in from rot and now all the ghosts are having at it in free-for-all bedlam.

Caution drips off her as she assesses the room, gaze seeking hidden dangers in the shadowed and obscured. Cole only shifts against crusty cushions; the shredded upholstery bleeds stuffing as it creaks.

Her gasp pierces and falls through all the wooden floorboard grousing against their rusted nails and the punch of it rocks his expression into a grimace.

"Call it a bad draw." Could call it a lot of things, but it's mostly just a steaming pile of shit. He backtracks and clarifies, has to grab his own obfuscating habits before they run off without him, "Talon. Made some allies with a couple of folk who've got some grudges."

Lena settled on the ruined couch, hips twisted toward the shredded arm. Eyes darted up at him, silently asking for permission to see the gaping expanse where his hand should have been. The smell grew, something acrid and rotten; she wondered how long he had found himself in this rotten couch at the end of the world.

Cole Cassidy had always appeared steadfast, steady, a resolute obelisk buried deep into the Earth under the blaze of the scorching sun. Leaning in the muddied waters of life and death, the buried boundaries blurring together, Lena was struck by how horrifying mortal he looked.

"Let's 'ave a look, yeah? You clean it?" Field medicine had been a distant memory, but the movements still came as second nature, codified in the mud and blood of a hard life. Cold fingers prodded at the bicep, Lena wincing at the heat of the skin beneath them. Dark eyes searched for marks in the veins, signs of blood poisoning, before gradually working her way to the wrapping around the wound itself.

"Ready?"

.     "If I was, she would be dead," Sova replied. He was an efficient creature, not one to torment or play with his targets or their families.

"I wanted to warn you. The bounty is anonymous. I do not know how to connect it to Greenholt themselves." Anything to retaliate. It clearly wasn't to save their reputation or company; nothing was going to do that, and certainly not the death of an investigative reporter. If anything, it'd probably just make it more apparent they were guilty.

"However, I am aware of one other hunter in the area. I think to find you as well. Perhaps they will have some kind of information that I do not."

His confirmation was enough to lessen some of the stress that had wound her tight since the article was dropped. If nothing else, they had one ally in keeping Emily safe. Sova was one of the few she felt she could trust, with little reserve, and he would be able to keep his ear to the ground while they worked on keeping Emily safe. The safehouse would work for now, though it wouldn't stop a bounty hunter forever. Lena was struck by the fact that even she didn't know where her partner was housed.

"Thank you." It was almost a wheeze, chest crushed under the pressure. Lena meant it, voice betraying her concern. There were too many unknowns to take true solace in the hunter's promise. "I know it's not safe for you, either."

Her mind whirled, selecting bits and pieces of a plan that would protect Emily, at least for a little bit longer. "What would you do? If you were on the run like that? We can have her moved, while I figure out who's after her. At least then we can do something."

Fight, if they had too. Overwatch may have been dead and gone, but that didn't mean Lena was down and out too. A hunter wouldn't be an easy fight, but one worth it to protect Emily.