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You knew you’d have to fight him again, someday. The two of you have managed to stay clear of one another for longer than you ever expected, to be honest. But it couldn’t last forever. Nothing ever does.
He’d surprised you. Ambushed, even. If it had been anyone else, you’d never have been caught unawares like this, but of course you can’t listen for his thoughts.
It’s dusk, the last lurid glow of the sun sinking behind the ragged skyline, and you’ve been staking out Ana Fairchild’s private residence. She works in the mayor’s office, low-ranked but in a position to overhear a lot, and you think she might be sympathetic to your cause, if you can ever catch her at home and alone. The construction site next to the apartment building had plenty of nooks and corners for you to lurk in, but you haven’t had any luck, yet.
That was your mistake, probably, you think as you just barely dodge a kick. This is your third visit here. You didn’t think anyone had noticed you coming and going, but the elbow that collides with your chest while you’re still off balance from your dodge says otherwise, and you’re knocked back even as your armor diffuses the blow, keeping it from shattering your collarbone.
That’ll be a hell of a bruise, tomorrow.
It’s still less than what you did to him at the museum, though, so you’ll take that and more. You never want to see him like that again, bloodied and beaten on the ground before you, then swathed in starched hospital sheets and surrounded by monitors, looking inexplicably and terribly small. Those images have haunted you, chased you, added to the jumble of fear and regrets that surface in your dreams. You did that, and you don’t want to do it again.
It’s unconscious, the way you you hold back in this fight now. You’re not looking for openings to take him down, just for a chance to escape. But he took the advantage when he managed to catch you by surprise, and he hasn’t stopped pushing it. He’s damn good at this, especially here and now, with no civilians around to worry about.
You’re holding back, but he absolutely isn’t. He’s fast, he’s shrewd, and he’s not too proud to fight dirty. If you can’t get out of here, this is going to end very badly. You cast around for an escape route, but the raw concrete shell of the building isn’t exactly forthcoming. No jump-jets, not with a solid, heavy ceiling ten feet up, and Ortega is keeping you too busy to use the nanovores to create an opening.
“Nothing clever to say this time, Pariah?” he asks you between clenched teeth as you narrowly avoid another strike. The venom in his voice as he hisses the name is such a stark contrast to the tenderness with which he says your other name that it hurts more than anything else he’s thrown at you.
Not that you don’t deserve it. Regardless, you don’t answer, because you don’t have anything clever to say. Not this time, not when you’re alone here, no cameras to put a show on for.
“I’m a little disappointed,” he says, easily leaning out of the way of a halfhearted blow, “I thought you’d put up more of a fight, with all the trouble you’ve given us.”
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And there’s no denying that you could, if you were so inclined. But…
“I don’t want to hurt you,” you say before you can stop yourself. The distortion on your helmet makes it sound like a threat, but it’s a plea.
Ortega snorts and backs up a step. “Didn’t seem to bother you last time.”
It’s true, but things have changed. You’d been trying to prove a point last time, to yourself and to everyone. Now… now you’re tired, so, so tired, and pushing down the thoughts that tell you you’re doing the wrong thing, going about this the wrong way, get louder every day.
You haven’t killed anyone, but you’ve hurt people. People you care about. Frightened them. Made them feel unsafe. All in an attempt to shape the world into one where you don’t have to feel unsafe and afraid. How is it fair?
You’re getting lost in your thoughts, and you really can’t afford to to that. You recognize the mistake, but not in time to react to Ortega’s fist, crackling with electricity, and it’s colliding with your midsection; you’re not ready for it at all, and it sends you flying. You land hard in a pile of construction rubble, the wind knocked out of you and something wrong in your leg.
You look down, assess the situation. There’s a piece of iron rebar, broken off jagged and sticking out of the slab of concrete you landed on. It’s also sticking out of your thigh. You were thrown so hard that it went straight through a gap in the armor plates, piercing the skinsuit, and all the way through your leg. This shouldn’t have happened, but you haven’t been able to go to Doctor Mortum for repairs since your falling out after the auction when you told her the truth. Your tech skills are good, but nothing compared to hers, so it’s a little worse for wear already. You have just enough time to think that maybe you should have asked her to upgrade the shielding back at the start of all this, and then the pain hits and chases every coherent thought out of your head. You’re well and truly fucked, this time.
“Oh, shit,” Ortega says, taking in the wound, the spreading pool of blood. You struggle to get up, to fight through the pain and get away from here, from him, but your body refuses to cooperate when you try to move the leg; you jar the wound and agony is so intense you reflexively go perfectly still just to make it stop. It doesn’t, and now it’s too late to get away, as Ortega leans over you, looking into the dark mirror of your faceplate.
“Well, I didn’t mean to beat you like this , but here we are,” he says, having the audacity to look almost apologetic. Ortega is more than capable of delivering a beat down, but he usually tries to stop short of maiming anyone, so it may even be genuine. That makes everything that’s about to come so much worse.
The pain becomes a distant sharpness, overwhelmed by a tide of panic when you see him reach for your helmet.
“Let’s see what you’re hiding under here,” he says, unfastening it. You vainly struggle, trying to grab his hand and stop him, but his hands are already pulling it off, and a terrible sense of inevitability washes over you.
“No,” you gasp, “Don’t--please.” But it’s no use, and you have to watch the look on his face journey from shock and disbelief, to betrayal, to outright anguish as he recognizes you.
“No,” he breathes, barely more than a whisper, “No, no, no.”
You don’t know what to say. I’m sorry is all you can think, but it’s woefully inadequate. So you don’t say anything.
“I… I wondered; you’ve said some things... but I never really believed you could...” he trails off miserably, and look on his face hurts worse than the metal sticking out of your thigh. You’re both frozen for a long moment, each waiting for the other to act. He loses the standoff, face darkening like storm clouds rolling over a clear sky. “Damn it, Luca, say something! Why?” His voice breaks on the last word, and you flinch.
The flinch makes something flash in his eyes, something you can’t read, and he grimaces, looking away from your face for the first time since he unmasked you and back at your leg, a point of bright agony, warm and sticky with blood. Better that he chocks it up to your physical pain. You don’t have the right to be hurt by his words, not after everything you’ve put him through.
“Fuck, I’m not letting you bleed out before I get my answers,” he mutters. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
That startles you out of your silence, “No!”
His eyes snap back to your face, his mouth opening to say something, so you try to explain. “No, I can’t, if I go to the hospital they’ll find me and take me back, and I can’t go back there again. I can’t, I can’t ; I’d rather die here.” You’re rambling, but you can’t seem to stop the flood of words.
The expression of frustrated confusion you see then is an old one. “Tell me why, ” he demands, begs. He’s been fed up with your secrets for almost as long as you’ve known him. Well, it seems like they’re all pouring out of you tonight as surely as your blood on the concrete, what’s one more?
Instead of speaking, you reach over to the release of your gauntlet, wincing when even this jars your leg, and remove it, tossing it aside and rolling up the sleeve of your suit skin. The orange tattoos are lurid in the faint light from the streetlamps outside.
“You’re…” he says, face eerily blank. Your skin isn’t blue, of course, but he makes the leap of logic quickly enough. He’s never been as simple as you’ve liked to pretend he is, and a part of you has become increasingly and uncomfortably aware of that, lately. He wouldn’t have lasted this long if he was.
“Not human,” you confirm, hating it and hating yourself. He reaches out, tentative, gently running his fingers down the inside of your arm, over all the scars, as if he’s trying to convince himself it’s real, you’re real, and for a horrifying second, you think you see tears gleam in his dark eyes.
Once again, you can’t stop yourself from speaking. “It’s why I didn’t want you to see me,” you say, looking anywhere but at him. You’re pretty sure he’d put that little quirk of yours down to gender dysphoria, and you’d let him believe that. It wasn’t entirely a lie, anyway. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
Blessedly, he doesn’t respond to that, instead saying, “And when you were taken after… after heartbreak, the enemies you told me about were…”
“The special directive,” you confirm again. You can almost hear the gears turning in his head, as everything falls into place.
“Fuck, Luca,” is all he says, shaking his head. He sighs heavily, visibly packing this away to deal with later, and all business, goes on. “I meant what I said about not letting you bleed out before you explain everything .”
“Where are you taking me?” You ask, voice small.
“Not to a hospital,” he answers. “But I have to move you, and I have a feeling it’s going to hurt.”
It does, more than you would have thought possible, and despite your best efforts to hold onto consciousness, panic welling up in your throat with the scream, the darkness takes over and you don’t feel anything anymore.
The loss of control is a familiar torment.
Disorientation hits you hard when you come to. Then, a wave of mixed relief and anxiety as you recognize your surroundings. You’re not at the hospital, or Rangers HQ, or in a jail cell. You don’t know how you got here, but instead, you’re in Ortega’s bedroom, carefully propped up in his bed, and you’re alone. You’ve been stripped of your armor, and the skin suit has been cut away from your injured leg, which is cleanly and securely bandaged now, though the pain is still intense.
You don’t like the idea of anyone handling your unconscious body; too many bad memories. But it’s more than you deserve, to be taken care of like this. He might even have saved your life, for what that’s worth.
What did he think, cutting away the material and seeing your skin? All the times you’ve been in this room, in this bed… it’s not something you’ve allowed before. And for him to see you now, under these circumstances. Guilt and regret threaten to consume you, so you try not to think about it.
But it doesn’t seem like you’re going to get that, because you see movement in the corner of your eye, the sound of footsteps, and then a shadow in the doorway.
“You’re awake,” he says flatly.
“I am,” you reply, your voice rough and dry, unable to look at him.
He sets a cup of water down on the nightstand, and sits down on a chair you recognize as being from his kitchen, and lets you take it and drain it, even though you spill half of it down your neck, the way your hands are shaking.
When you set it back down, his eyes are on you, sharp and wary.
“You’re going to tell me everything,” he says, voice firm but brittle.
You close your eyes. Fuck it, you are.
And you do. You tell him about the Farm, about your first escape and how you survived, how you became Sidestep. About how you were taken back after Heartbreak, and what they did to you. About how you tried to get out, and failed. About how you tried to end it all, over and over again, but they wouldn’t let you. About how you eventually escaped again, by the skin of your teeth. About your plan to become powerful enough to make sure they could never hurt you again, no matter what the cost. About how you’re thinking now that the cost was too high, after all. Telling him the things you’ve kept from him for a decade is like having your heart ripped out through your throat, but there’s a deep placidity welling up in you at the same time. It almost feels like relief.
No more hiding, no more secrets. No more lies. This can all be over, now. It’s out of your hands now, and in Ortega’s.
Maybe there’s a part of you that wanted this. You’ve been pushing down the voice that tells you you’re on the wrong path, that there must be a better way, but now finally someone’s come along to stop you. Maybe that’s the real reason you didn’t fight back, why you allowed yourself to be careless. Maybe that’s why the thought of using your nanovores to take care of the metal impaling your leg back there didn’t even occur to you until now.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe you were just hoping you’d bleed out, and it could really be over.
You just wish you didn’t have to hurt him, either way.
He gets you more water when your voice starts to give out; you don’t know that you’ve ever talked this much for this long before. But he doesn’t comment, doesn’t interrupt. Just watches with that fragile blandness that’s more disturbing than if he were to rant and rave and curse the day he met you.
“And that’s it,” you finish lamely. There are some things you kept to yourself, secrets that weren’t yours to reveal, and things that even now you can’t bring yourself to put into words. But it’s more than you ever thought you’d tell him.
For a long moment, silence holds. You’re out of words, so it’s up to Ortega to break it.
Finally, he does. He lets out a long exhale of breath, and says, “Mierda, Luca.” That’s all.
You risk a look at his face, and wish you hadn’t. There’s a complex seething mass of emotions there, barely contained. He clenches his teeth and his fists, and you dread what’s to come next.
“And all the stupid shit I said about… about re-genes. No wonder you felt like you couldn’t talk to me about this.”
That’s not what you’d been expecting.
“This is not your fault,” you say, because you’re not going to let him shoulder the guilt for this, not on top of what he still feels about Heartbreak. You’d wasted plenty of time at the Farm blaming him for not coming for you. But that wasn’t fair. Not to either of you. You’re responsible for your own actions, and all the harm you’ve done. Nobody else.
Another glance his way, and the look on his face is devastating. “If I’d been there when you needed me… if you’d trusted me enough to tell me, would it have ended like this?” He asks, twisting the knife in your gut.
He should hate you for this. Why doesn’t he hate you for this? It would hurt like hell, but you’d know how to deal with it. But this... You don’t know what to do with this.
“I don’t know,” you say, your head spinning from more than blood loss. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. But… I don’t think I’m a very good villain.”
His head snaps up, and there’s the anger you’ve been expecting.
“Tell that to Danny’s leg.”
You wince. Direct hit.
“I know,” you whisper. It’s all you can say. You’re not about to start babbling apologies or explanations. None of that will change what you did. Not only to Daniel, but to Argent when you possessed her, and to Ortega himself. Fuck, you put him in the hospital. And that barely scratches the surface of the harm you’ve done to him.
“And then you had the audacity to train him, to keep coming around like nothing was wrong, to--” he cuts himself off, jaw clenched. But you know. You did all of that and more. You let him fall in love with you all over again, despite what you were doing. You knew it couldn’t end well, but you still kissed him, let him touch you in the dark.
“I know,” you say again, even more softly, even more miserably. Against your better judgment you add, “I understand if you hate me, now.”
The look he shoots you then makes you swallow a sudden lump in your throat.
“I almost wish I could,” he says, voice raw.
Long seconds pass in silence. Finally, Ortega stands up, scooting the chair back so that it nearly falls over.
“I need to think,” he says and turns to go.
“What are you going to to with me?” you can’t stop yourself from asking as he’s starting to close the door.
“I don’t know yet,” he answers, looking away. And with that, the door closes, and you’re alone again.
You’ve always been alone, really.
But this time, you deserve it.