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Beneath the cover of a star dotted sky, Wraith loosens her tightly-held grip on stability.
She rubs at her eyes with the palms of her hands and takes in one shuddering breath after another. Her lungs burn. Her lips chap. Hot air blooms when she exhales.
All reminders that she is so very alive, and Wraith grimaces at it. Sometimes it’s a boon, but often it’s a burden.
Right now, it’s a burden.
With a sigh, Wraith leans back against a slope on the roof, cheeks raw from the cold. The hangar bay at night is quieter than the rest of the compound: no drop ships go out till morning, no recreational flights in or out after nine.
She is alone.
The muffled sounds of life echo up from below, soft and incoherent. There’s someone in the courtyard nearby, singing to themselves. The call of flyers in the menagerie crow at random. She is alone, but there is life all around her, and it’s something Wraith still isn’t used to.
Memories of the facility often creep up on her like a landslide, sudden and without warning. It sweeps her away from the sporadic patches of “being okay”, wrenching all of her progress away with the wrong word, with the wrong sounds.
Wraith holds the disaster close to her chest like a full house in poker, not letting them spill until she is well and truly alone. Wetness drips down her face, cool tears that she doesn’t recall feeling before now.
They’ve started and they just won’t stop, rolling waves that turn choppy with the way her body heaves and weeps.
In the facility, she’d learned to grieve over herself in quiet, all of her sharp edges turned inwards and blunting themselves against her insides. She’s so tired, but sleep won’t come. It’s not always an elusive thing. It’s no longer the voice that echoes inside of her that keeps her awake, and sometimes Wraith wishes it was.
At least then she’d have an excuse for the weakness.
She’s so tired that it hurts in her bones, so exhausted that her limbs are clumsy and her mind is slow. Sluggish, like a golem returning to mud. Like a woman of the water returning to sea-foam.
Like an experiment reverting to its original state: feral and furious and ground down into nothing. A tool and a weapon. A husk carved out to be hollow.
And alone-- So, so, alone.
No.
Wraith reaches out frantically for the sounds around her, desperately seeking purchase. There has to be something to tether her to the now, but she’s numb to the chill. The sky above is shrouded with milky grey clouds, obscuring the moon and the stars. The singing in the courtyard has drifted into nothing.
She is wrapped in gossamer, and the tears don't stop. Wraith pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them, tight. The tactile sensation isn't enough to soothe her, no matter how tight she pulls, no matter how much she buries her face into them. An invisible dagger presses itself down her throat, making it impossible to swallow. She can't breathe, she can't breathe, the ringing in her ears reverberates until it is all she knows.
Wraith's world collapses on itself like a dying star. She is becoming nothing. All of the searching means nothing, there are no answers to be had. Two steps forward and two steps back, in a perfect gravitational pull that ensures Wraith will be chasing ghosts for years to come.
What do you call a ghost that can't find its brethren?
There is a hole in Wraith's head and it can never be filled, a yawning chasm broken apart in her chest too large to close again. She can only build a bridge over it, and that's what she does, every day.
Every day, she zips into her gear. Every day, she screws on her ironclad determination, squaring up no matter how exhausted she is. The past is set in stone but her future is clouded and murky, something she wanders into every day with a face that is not her own. Hands that are not her own.
Powers that are not her own.
Wraith sucks in a huge gasp of air and then another, letting her legs fall flat. She turns her palms up on her thighs and stares at them, bare and pale and scarred. She flexes this stranger's fingers, one at a time. Crackles of energy flicker to life with the colors of a winter sky; pale and cold and harsh. They lead to nowhere, to another land that rejects her like a body does a virus: not even the place that she's intertwined with on a molecular level wants to keep her.
Nothing does.
No one does.
The voice startles her with a warning, and heavy footsteps from below soon follow. Without thinking, Wraith's walls of who-she-has-to-be violently slam upwards, and her body follows suit. In her mind she knows it is a friend not a foe-- or, at least, not a foe that will take action outside of the ring-- but instinct rules her in the face of perceived danger. She only just barely keeps out of a combat stance.
"Who's there?" she asks, and while her voice is scratchy, her tone is sure.
The door to the stairs creak open, revealing a shock of blonde hair and bright blue eyes that crinkle at the sight of her, even though Wraith looks on the verge of murder.
"It's just me," Natalie says, and her lilting voice washes over Wraith like a soothing balm. Safe. Wraith lowers her guard, a little bit. Natalie is strict about her 'work-life balance', in her words. One of the reasons why she insisted on the use of her first name to everyone she met. "I didn't mean to scare you!"
Wraith flexes one hand into a fist, hackles raising. "Nothing scares me," she says, miserable because it's true. It would be easier, if fear was her motivator. But Wraith is no longer afraid that she will never find an answer for whose body she inhabits. Only doggedly determined to find out, no matter what it takes. "What are you doing here?"
She half shrugs with a smile. "Startle, then. And I... saw you, on my way inside." Natalie doesn't say the words, but they hang between them like a spider's web. Delicate, but if she answers wrong, Wraith will be tangled up in the trap.
I saw you crying, say her kind, kind eyes. I saw you come apart.
Uncomfortable, Wraith stares at the ground between them, a maelstrom swirling around inside of her. Resentment that she'd been seen in such a state, and she can't find it in her to turn it on Natalie. All of her feels brittle, not quite recovered enough for human consumption. Wraith doesn't want to snap in two and bleed into nothingness in front of anyone, least of all her. "I was fine."
Natalie shrugs with half a smile. A coat is in her arms, puffy and the tell-tale orange that is her signature color. She holds it out as a silent peace offering. Her smile doesn't falter, nor does it turn into pity. It must seem logical to offer it-- even without the coat, a huge and cozy turtleneck swallows her up. "Pardon, I know. From what I've seen, you are always fine."
With a hand at first hesitant than swift, Wraith takes the jacket, as if Natalie might take it back. "Thanks," she says, staring at it in her grasp. It's still skin-warm; she must have taken it off recently, maybe even as recent as her trek up the stairs.
From... below.
From the courtyard.
She'd been the one singing, then. It had been a solemn melody, one that doesn't fit her nature. But then, even the happiest of them have their sorrows, and Natalie's is still fresh. A wound that has not yet begun to heal.
It's hard to see that vulnerability in her, now. Natalie delicately closes the door behind her, stretching her arms up to the cloudy sky, loose limbed and content. She turns back to Wraith with hands held behind her back, bouncing on her heels. Wraith can tell that she's hoping that she's reading the situation well. She's said that people are harder to understand than her work, after all.
Wraith can relate. The battlefield is almost all she knows.
It would be unkind to reject this olive branch, a gift freely given with no want in return. Slowly, Wraith shrugs into the coat, overwhelmed. It smells a little like grease and a lot like roses, and the insides of it are soft from use. It must be a favorite, a fact confirmed by the uneven stitching of a patch job in the left pocket.
Already, she is warmer, and something in her chest flutters to life, kicking up dust. Something sleeping, rousing to life.
"You didn't have to do this."
Come up here. Give me this. Give me anything. I'm not worth anything.
Natalie laughs, genuine, like it hadn't even dawned on her that had been a possibility. "I know that. I don't need to do many of the things I do, but I choose to." She leans back against the door, letting her shining eyes fall closed. In the dim of night, she is luminous. Beautiful.
'Don't mistake my kindness for weakness,' she's said, suited up as Wattson and ready to take on the challenges of King's Canyon. Being on Wattson's team was a boon to anyone: careful fences set, the consideration of shared loot, and the fierce aim of a seasoned sniper. She may look-- and act-- like something harmless and nonthreatening, but Wraith knows that she's anything but.
All that killing, and Natalie retains the soul of herself. She is immutable to both victory and defeat. She is the monument that does not crumble, and Wraith knows in her heart it is because goodness is a choice you make every day, again and again. Just as sure as any other determination, it requires a dedication that Wraith can't fathom, not with how she's seen and known the world. The ability to choose to be kind is inscrutable to her, and so it is fascinating.
"What were you singing?" she blurts out, and then blinks, as if bewildered by her own words. "Down there. I heard you."
Natalie's shoulders slump, just a little. "Oh, nothing. My workshop is quiet now, so sometimes, I sing. To fill the quiet." Her smile remains, but Wraith can see the sadness in her eyes. She wets her lips, and her next words shake, only a little. Just enough. "It used to be okay, when it was us. We could work in silence together. Now, it is just me."
With a hesitant hand, Wraith reaches out to lay a hand on Natalie's shoulder, close to her neck. Her brows furrow, and her next words are hypocrisy incarnate. "You don't have to be alone. The others... I know they would be with you."
Wraith does not offer herself, because how could she? She is half a specter, she is between life and death. Sometimes, she can't even remember how to hold on to the world, loose yarn that unravels again and again.
Natalie smiles, and covers Wraith's cool hand with her own, tucking her chin against it. "I know. They come, sometimes. But we all have our lives, mon amie. There are lives to be lived, and grief comes upon us when it suits itself. It is always there."
She should pull away. She should disentangle herself from a woman too good for her, but Wraith finds that she steps closer instead, and tilts her forehead so it touches Natalie's, until hers presses against bangs. "I understand," she says, and her own voice shakes. "I know. It's not the same. I know. But something-- Something in me is gone, and I can't ever forget it. She's gone."
It's not cold, anymore. They're close enough that their breath is shared, and Wraith's insides ache.
"Who do you mean by 'she'?" Natalie asks, quiet, thoughtful. It's common knowledge that Wraith was without her memories, but she doesn't talk about it much. Not like this. Bangalore doesn't share like this. Makoa does not overstep the boundaries she's set.
"Myself. Who I was before. They made me a weapon first and person second. Person third. Fourth. They made who I was into a ghost that I can't seem to find." Milky eyes shutter, and it's Wraith's turn to laugh. "I'm... sorry. Your grief is-- I didn't mean to detract. I don't want you to think--"
Natalie's hand comes up to cover her lips, cold like the air around them. Up close, Wraith can trace the lines of her scar in a single searching glance. The shape of her lips, the chapped pink of her cheeks.
"I know. I came up here to listen. You are very alone, I think. I see it in you like I've seen it in myself. When I saw you--" Natalie chews on her lip. "I didn't want you to be. I haven't. But you do not make it the easiest to find you, madame Wraith." Slowly, like one might approach a skittish animal, Natalie's hand moves to clutch the back of Wraith's neck, and pulls her in, presses her head against her bosom.
Wraith tries to remember the last time she's been held, and comes up sparse. With a heaving breath, she embraces Wattson, arms encircling her waist in a too-tight hold. "I have to be," she murmurs, almost inaudible against wool. "I don't know how to-- how to be anything else."
She doesn't know how to be human. She can go through the motions but the gulf inside of Wraith widens with every passing day. With the knowledge that the woman who might have lived in this body is gone entirely, even when she does find out what happened to her.
"Who said you had to be?" Natalie's chest rumbles with another laugh, and her hands rub wide circles against Wraith's back. "I'd certainly never ask. It is your company I seek, and that means the whole of you. We can complete a circuit, if you would like the company."
Wraith melts into the touch, a starving woman finally set before a feast. She worries that if she takes in too much, too fast, that she'll be ill. Her seams are loose, barely tightened, and Natalie is undoing them one by one. With every word and every brush of fingertips, every reverberation of her heart against Wraith's temple-- she unravels.
"Oh," she says, robbed of speech. It's so simple, in Natalie's words. She has always made the world into her own black and white, and has painted Wraith with the brush of worthy. Wraith's milky eyes scour the fabric that is not her own, that in turn covers skin that is not her own. it feels like it's sealing her in. The threads holding her together that smell like Natalie's perfume and workshop, the arms around that tether Wraith to the here and to the now.
She pulls back, aching at the distance already. Pink dusts her pale face, and she can only swallow thickly.
It is so strange, to be touched. To want to be touched.
"I want to," is all Wraith can manage. "I don't know what to say. Or how to. But--"
There's no need to find the words, in the end. Natalie presses their lips together, slotting their mouths into place like pieces of a puzzle. They are two women who are missing pieces, but are not halves of a whole.
They are, they are.
They are.