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Neither of them was there for the explosion which destroyed Headquarters. Both of them were gone—pushed away, or else forced out—so neither saw it, but in their own way, in the coming days, they both felt it.
Sometimes, Reinhardt feels it still.
He does not expect, when he agrees to travel back to the Necropolis with Ana, that he will feel it then. It is a short trip, only one night, and only the two of them. In truth, he is not needed here at all, only came as a favor to Fareeha, who is away on her own mission, and asked him to come in order to watch over her mother.
(They both know that Ana has never needed to be watched over, but he is polite enough not to mention why Fareeha has truly sent him—to ensure Ana does not leave, again.)
This is, perhaps, the last place he expects that spring in Switzerland to find him—here, in Egypt, in autumn. But Ana lights a campfire, the way the they and the rest used to on missions, and he smells the ash, and suddenly he is not in autumn, he is in the Fall.
He was not there when the base exploded, this is true—but he was there in the aftermath. Stuttgart is less than a day’s drive from where the base once stood; at 10:23, the first bomb went off. By 19:47, Reinhardt was there.
What he remembers, or what he will admit to remembering, when pressed into conversation about it, is still images, single moments from the two weeks that followed: finding the distinctive shoe, part of a foot still inside, of one of his favorite cadets, and using only that to declare the woman dead; Torbjörn, moved to tears when they finally, finally dug their way to what remained of the on-base nursery; Angela, screaming into his chest one night that it was not fair, that she should not have to do this again.
And, throughout it all, what remained of Headquarters burned.
(He does not think about how in another sense, Headquarters had been burning for years, consumed from the inside.)
He does not mention this part, at a deposition before the UN, or to Brigitte, when she urges him to talk about it, but the first thing he saw was ash. It was in the sky long before he reached the base, and it blotted out the sun in the weeks afterward. His white beard was suddenly grey, and he choked on it in his sleep—woke up coughing.
It does not bear thinking about, what—who—was in the ash, but sometimes, it is all he can think about, is all he can see when he closes his good eye. Usually, these thoughts come only when he is alone, when it is quiet, when no one can see him—but Ana lights a fire and all he can see/smell/taste/feel is ash.
Part of him is still aware of his surroundings—knows he is not there, knows that even the rubble has been cleared away, by now, but even if his body is in the Necropolis, his mind is elsewhere.
Seeing it—sparks flying upward not from the fire but from the base. He knew long before he arrived that the situation was dire, but it was not until he saw the ash in the air, still stuck in traffic on the motorway 15km away, that her realized how great the destruction must be.
(In another time, another place, he knows his body is shaking.)
Smelling it—at first, it was awful, the smell, made him sick before he ever went in to search the rubble, for he knew already from the Crisis what it meant. But soon, a worse thing happened, and he found himself growing accustomed to it, so much so that he did not realize he smelled of it until he left, two weeks later, giving up on the possibility of any more survivors, and woke the next morning in a clean hotel room to the very same smell as before.
(It clings to him still, in that faraway place, and he lurches towards the water, to clean his hands, to scrub scrub scrub until he is clean, until nothing remains.)
Tasting it—that was the worst. Long after the explosion he woke with the taste of ash on his tongue, found himself coughing it up, or thinking he was. Often it was followed shortly by another taste—bile. He did not want to think he carried those days still in his body.
(He is not sick, in the present, but he is nauseous, knows well enough to put his head between his knees and wait until it passes—it will pass in time.)
Feeling it—the ash clung to him then, and clings to him still, sometimes hot and sparking, but sometimes just a sense that he is unclean, that it has stained his skin, burned him, that no matter where he goes he bears a visible mark of that final, great loss.
(In the present, a hiss—that is the one thing the ash has left to him, sound—the fire is being extinguished and he knows, then, that it is nearly over.)
Even when the fire is gone, it takes time before Reinhardt’s awareness fully turns to the present—dark places are easy to stumble into and hard to find one’s way out of, but he will find his way, just as he always has.
When he does calm, and return the present (autumn, not Fall), Ana is there, squatting down in front of him, good eye locked on his own. She is not touching him, knows better than to do so, when she does not know what it is that sparked this, but she is close, if he needs her. Even knowing the option is available to him, he does not reach out, places his hands on the ground before him and feels the stone, blackened from so many fires lit here by Ana over the years—knows it is here and not there, and so, too, must he be.
“That’s a new one,” she observes, and from anyone else, it might seem cold—but this is how they always have dealt with things, the two of them, and so it is a comfort.
(Neither of them likes to admit to pain, or to weakness, to name such would be unthinkable. Reinhardt’s role is to be happy, to be in any way less would be a failing—and Ana cannot protect anyone if she cannot protect herself. This is how it must be. What else could they do? No remedy exists for memory.)
“The explosion,” he says, and does not elaborate further—there is no need to.
He can see the guilt on her face before she speaks, “I should have been there.”
When he reaches up to cup her cheek and reassure her, he does not notice the blackness on his hand. Unthinking, he smears the ash on her face—what was meant to be a comfort, a reassurance, gone awry.
Now, it marks them both.