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"But, she's right. About all of it."
Wraith hardly recognised her own voice, it seemed so small and pathetic, barely registerable in the emptiness of the now abandoned warehouse. If Anita's selfishness had lit a fire in the younger woman's soul earlier, her harsh retort had all but doused it. The solider never wasted time with flowery metaphors or hidden meanings - her words were always direct, to the point - but that only made them hurt all the more. It wasn't like anything she'd said hadn't occurred to Wraith before - she lay awake most nights torturing herself with the very same thoughts. Yet somehow the shock of hearing them from another's mouth had still managed to catch her off guard. It rocked her confidence, made her question the already far too little that she knew of herself.
What were her motivations, really? Could she honestly say she did all this out of concern for the stoic woman she had only just begun to think of as a friend? A fellow lost soul who for some inexplicable reason had chosen her as a confidant, confessing her love for the enigmatic thief, her grief and guilt over a missing brother? Words she had read in one of the few documents she had recovered about her past flashed to the forefront of her mind, unbidden. A description of Renee Blasey, ARES senior science pilot, the woman who both was and was not her at the same time:
'Blasey's lack of empathy and short temper are a detriment to the department'
That sentence had seared itself into her conscious. What she trying to prove? That she wasn't really that person?
'Possibly even a danger to her fellow scientists' the report had continued.
Wraith felt the all too familiar ache in her chest as her thoughts drifted to Elliott. Her staunchest supporter, her closest friend. She had dismissed his advice at every turn, put him in danger, almost gotten them both killed and for what? Some stupid crusade to prove that she was somehow, despite the overwhelming evidence, a 'good person'? No, as far as she was concerned the report was right. Anita was right. Anyone who had had the misfortune to know her before must have been relieved the day she stepped through that portal and left their dimension for good.
Lost in a spiral of shame and self-loathing, Wraith attempted yet another exercise in futility - trying to choke back the tears that had started to blur the edges of her vision. It wasn't so much that she was upset - these were tears of pure, unadulterated frustration. At Anita, at the situation, but mostly, at herself. Her pale blue eyes burned as she stared at the dusty floor of the warehouse, jaw clenched, willing them not to fall with every last bit of energy she had. Not here. Not now. The task took so much concentration that she didn't hear his footsteps, didn't register that he had even moved until she felt his arms wrap around her, pulling her close to his chest.
The voices in her head surged, a cacophony of chatter offering up a single word - Safe - before they quieted just as suddenly as they had appeared, leaving her alone with her own thoughts once more.
For once, Elliott offered no words, perhaps sensing her could offer more comfort with his presence than with platitudes, no matter how well meant. His hands glided around her small frame, one coming to rest on the small of her back, the other between her shoulder blades, thumb rubbing small circles into the mass of tension that was her upper back. Wraith clung to the cool material of his jacket, a buoy in the storm of her thoughts, as she felt her resolve begin to waver.
Part of her couldn't help but wonder if this was why he'd followed along on her senseless mission in the first place - some deep-seated fear that she couldn't hold it together herself. Sure, he knew she could handle herself against any physical threat thrown in her path but her own emotions? That was a whole different story. The thought made her feel small and pathetic, but only because if it were true, then he'd be right. What would she have done to that guy at the bar, if he hadn't been there to hold her back? What would have happened in the confrontation with the mercs, if he hadn't been there to force her to focus?
She felt the first of her tears free itself from her lower lashes, swiftly followed by several more; the taste of salt stung her lips as she crumpled into him. He was wearing the cologne she loved, the one that was somehow just fundamentally him - woody, citrusy, a little earthy - she couldn't pinpoint the scent notes but it comforted her in ways she wasn't fully ready to admit. As he continued to soothe her, Wraith finally realised just how exhausted she was; between that morning's match and the afternoon's encounter, she had spent most of the day hopped up on adrenaline. She could feel the last surges of it ebbing away now, replaced only by a bone-deep weariness that she knew from experience would take days to shake.
Elliott cleared his throat as though he was going to say something but then thought better of it, resolving instead to hold her just that little bit tighter. Still, she sensed his confusion at Anita's outburst, at just what could have transpired between them to have provoked such an accusation.
"Anita and I...we had a deal." She offered by way of explanation, even though he hadn't asked. "She'd use her knowledge of the IMC to help me find records of my time with ARES, my family perhaps - and for my part, I'd...well, I'd been searching for information on her brother", she continued. "For all the good it did."
"Arrow girl," he mumbled, the pieces finally clicking into place.
"Huh?"
"Oh!" He fumbled, realising that he had spoken the thought aloud. "Th - that time you dipped on our game night with my Mom, Ramps and Path. You never said where you were going. Why didn't you just tell me?" He jostled her in his arms but there was no annoyance in his tone, only poorly veiled concern and was that...relief?
Wraith marvelled that he still remembered that evening and felt a sudden pang of guilt that it must have played on his mind all this time. She couldn't deny that she'd been distant lately, at least now he had some idea as to why. "I didn't want to drag you into it. More than I already have." She swiftly added, her gaze flitting down to the floor. "I can handle it myself."
She didn't know why she did it. Why she felt the need to constantly test him, to push and prod at his good nature just to see where it would bend; where it would break. He didn't deserve it, but the real issue was that she knew, deep down, that she didn't deserve him. And so, she shunted him away with barbed words and cold indifference. A safe distance, but never able to let go completely. She knew it must have been confusing...but how could she not give mixed messages when she didn't even know who she was, let alone what she wanted. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wasn't worthy of his unswerving loyalty, this supportive, kind, ridiculous man who would willingly follow her into hell and never once complain about how hot it was.
You underestimate him.
She always did. You would think she would have learned by now that Elliott Witt may have had many faults, but he didn't abandon those he cared about. It didn't matter how many times she pushed him away, he would always return to her side.
"Hmph" He shushed her, resting his chin on top of her head, "You're not 'dragging me into it'. I'm right where I want to be."
You can trust him
The voices assured her, once again telling her what she already knew.
It was odd, how they worked. Echoes of other selves from different realities, using their shared experiences to look out for each other, across dimensions. It sounded comforting when put like that, but the reality was anything but. In the games they were useful she supposed, they allowed her to hone her focus, fight a little more aggressively - but in the outside world they were just a nuisance. They sensed danger at every turn, but the threats the Wraiths in other dimensions faced weren't always applicable to her own. Often, they served only to make her second guess herself. Sure, everyone had that nagging voice in their head always asking 'what if' but she had hundreds of them, all at the same time, all telling her something different. Ramya often joked with her that what the gamemakers dubbed her passive was actually just anxiety and that she should ask for a new one, 'something explosive'. The young mechanic had offered her a 'home-grown' remedy on countless occasions, but Wraith had always declined. The absolute last thing she needed was more paranoia. She doubted she would ever get used to the voices but she had learned to live with them, for the most part.
The trick was knowing when to pay attention and when to ignore them. Sometimes they spoke in riddles and half truths and sometimes, like now, they were right on the mark.
So she told him.
Elliott listened intently as she spilled the entire story: Voidwalker's actions, the uneasy truce with Anita that had progressed into a friendship of sorts. How she had found records of a body matching Jackson's description in a morgue on Solace; her heartache at having to break the news to the soldier - only to have her turn around and make plans to leave the Outlands completely, no intention of fulfilling her end of the bargain.
He cursed when she had finished then pulled back from their embrace, gripping her forearms and dipping his face to her level, to look her in eyes.
She faltered as she met his gaze for a second; his warm, honey-coloured eyes boring into her icy blues.
"We don't need her, right? I can help, I mean I kn-" he continued rambling, but she couldn't focus on his words, her eyes darting about his face, taking him in.
His lazy smile, the sharp lines of his immaculately trimmed beard. His unruly curls pushed back by the goggles that so rarely left his forehead. The thin scars that pocked his otherwise perfect features, a shade darker than his sun-kissed skin. Despite herself she felt a wry smile tug at the corners of her lips as she recalled that she was one of the few people who knew the truth about how he really got them. Not some grand feat of bravery, thought up on the spot to regale Lisa Stone and the interviewers for the games - no, they were the marks of a childhood well spent, of climbing trees and roughhousing with his brothers in the balmy Solace summers of his youth. Her smile waned as she recalled the night he had told her, the tight grip of insecurities loosened by an evening sharing drinks on the Lounge's new outdoor terrace. She'd laughed as he'd fondly recounted memories of his family, silently wishing she had stories to share with him too. She had wanted to bond, but she could draw nothing from the black abyss of her past, no recollection of the experiences had that shaped her, of the people and places that made up a life.
Still, it was one of her favourite stories about him. It was just so ...Elliott, and not for the first time she reflected on how fitting his stage name was. Mirage. He had known loss too, but where she retreated inwards he projected out. He made himself bigger than the sadness, the pain, perhaps out of a desperate fear not to be defined by it. Not many saw the flashy persona for what it really was - a defence mechanism - but she knew. She knew because he had recognised the sadness buried within her from almost their first meeting, in the way that only someone else who has experienced it firsthand can. And that's why, for all their differences, she knew he would always understand her.
"Right, Ren?" he cocked his head at her and she shook hers as though coming out of a trance.
He sighed, looking a little dejected that she'd missed what was sure to be, to his mind at least, a rousing pep-talk.
"I - uh, I was just saying forget Anita. Detective Mirage is on the case, alright? We're the dream team! Remember that one duos match where we took out a third of the lobby, all by ourselves?
"Elliott, it was 16 to 4" she deadpanned, a lame attempt at the banter that had come to define their friendship.
"Y-yeah but you TOTALLY stole some of mine" he started to protest, dropping her arms and turning away, hands behind his head. "And y'know, I LET you have that level 4 light mag, out of the goodness of my heart, so technically..."
He turned back towards her, finger raised ready to make his point, only for it to die on his lips as he caught the timid grin spreading across her face. He was so very easy to wind-up, yet somehow that took none of the fun out of it.
"Heh, alright, very funny Kill Leader" he teased, stepping closer to lightly nudge her arm. "Well, if you ever get bored of being all cool and capable, you know where to find me."
She felt her cheeks burning hot under the spotlight of his gaze and turned away, sinking down to sit on one of the concrete steps leading out of the warehouse.
"That's just it though. Like Anita said: everyone in the Outlands has seen the games and no-one has come forward, no-one wants to admit they even know me..."
"Hey, look," Mirage started, settling himself down next to her. "You can't think of it like that. I mean, it's unlikely that..." He shifted his gaze, clearly struggling to find the right words before settling on: "You're not from round here, right?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Understatement of the century..."
He scratched his head in embarrassment. "Yeah, alright, b-but I didn't mean the whole 'alternate dimension' thing. I mean like...you're from Typhon, so..." He trailed off, skirting around the difficult truth, but the air was heavy with the implication nonetheless. Planet Typhon, her birthplace - home to the fold weapon and the shining jewel in the IMC's crown - had been destroyed some eighteen years ago, lost to the very weapon it housed. Wraith thought of it often, this homeworld she felt no connection to. It loomed large in her mind, taking on the almost mythical status that all lost civilisations gain with time. No one who was on world that day survived the catastrophe, not even the heroic titan BT-7274 escaped the aftermath of the blast. It was just another dead end, another piece of her past, lost forever.
"And Singh Labs..." Mirage continued, faster now, as though he could sense her slipping away into her thoughts. "There's no way anyone from Singh Labs is gonna come forward, not after what they did to you. Not if they know what's good for them" he added in mumbled afterthought, though Wraith wasn't sure if the threat was on his behalf or hers.
"Maybe" She conceded. "Or maybe I was just a terrible person."
"Nah" he waved her off. "You're not. Ren, you experimented on yourself right? If you were a 'terrible person' you would have experimented on...I don't know, puppies or something."
His unwavering defence of her character almost threatened to make her smile. Maybe he would even have succeeded, but the doubt was already in her, deep as poison, seeping into her thoughts and souring them with its sickly, bitter taste.
"Elliott, you saw that merc, the... horror on her face..."
"But she doesn't know YOU!!" he insisted, fervent now. "She knows Voidwalker. I know you. You're Renee Hope Blasey. Sorry, Doctor Renee Hope Blasey. Wraith. Ren. Nay-Nay. "
He paused, certain she would object to the nickname. When she didn't he continued, emboldened by her lack of protest.
"You're an Apex Legend. Four time Champ. Crack shot with a Wingman. A total lightweight, especially considering your drink of choice is an Appletini. You cry whenever the dog dies in a movie. You have THE coldest hands known to man. You're stubborn as hell but it's because you're usually right. You mouth along to 'Mirage's Pump Up Jams Volume 19' whenever we take the Trident in a game. I also know you're the reason volumes 1 through 18 all went missing and SOMEHOW ended up in your car. You're amazing at puns and you secretly love my cheesy jokes, even though you pretend not to. Your nose does this cute scrunchy thing when you laugh, when you really laugh, not that little 'I'm too cool to laugh' smirk you do. You're the only person I trust one thousand percent, without question, and there's no one whose team I'd rather be on. You're...you're my best friend. It doesn't matter who you were. I know exactly who you ARE" he finished, pushing down urge to say more, to out himself and his feelings more than his little speech had done already. "Want me to go on? 'Cos I totally can"
Wraith spluttered, lost for words - a hardship that Elliott had certainly never suffered from. Her brain couldn't form a single coherent thought, even the voices were silent, stunned how he had absorbed all these things that she never even realised she did, all the little things that made her...her. Knowing someone better than they know themselves - that always seemed like a cliché whenever she heard it in the cheesy romcoms Natalie enjoyed watching with her, yet here it was, staring her straight in the face. But...what if she'd read it wrong? Not for the first time she felt like a helpless teenager in his presence, missing the memories of first loves and past heartbreaks that could help her decipher...whatever the hell the meaning of this was. She could do nothing but stare back at him, eyes helplessly roving his face.
Elliott took her silence as encouragement to continue and started his list anew. "Okay then...You sleep less than Pathfinder - speaking of which, you drink WAY too much caffeine. You know far too much about astrology for someone who was supposedly a scientist. You never try and finish my sentence for me when I'm struggling with my pro...pronun...how to say stuff." His eyes took on a mischievous glint and he leaned in conspiratorially, fishing for her reaction to the next entry on his list. "Second best ass in the games" he winked, shooting her one of his trademark finger guns. "B-but y'know, it's close, especially when you wear that leather flight suit, oh my god..."
"...What!?" Wraith finally broke her silence, the word ripped from her throat before she'd even known it was coming. Second!? Who...
"Loba?" she glowered, the sudden flare of jealousy surprising her with its intensity.
Now it was Elliott's turn to look confused.
'What!?" he echoed, knitting his brows together in concern. "N-no..." he shook his head at her as though the answer should be obvious, motioning to himself with a sweeping hand gesture. "Me."
He looked so offended that she couldn't help but burst out laughing. Softly at first and then more unrestrainedly, unable to hold back the wave of fondness that crashed over her. Her laughter tinkled like the spent shell casings that littered the warehouse floor, a bizarre juxtaposition of delicacy and destruction. Wraith hated her laugh, it was too shrill, too girlish, but Elliott for his part beamed, coveting his prize.
"Hey, s-see, there it is. The uh, nose thing" he gestured proudly to the bridge of his own nose, clearly pleased with his handiwork. "Look, I guess what I'm trying to say is, out of all the infinite dimensions out there, I'm...glad you ended up in this one. With me."
"Yeah, you got off lightly, Voidwalker would eat you alive." The snarky comment left her mouth reflexively, slipping easily into their back and forth. There was something reassuring about his refusal to treat her differently, even in light of the day's revelations that set her at ease and made her soul soar.
"Hah, yeah I can believe it" he laughed, unfazed as ever. "Guess I lucked out that you're my Wraith, huh?"
Oh.
My Wraith. There it was again, unmistakable this time. Something about his tone and the way his eyes darted away from her face, that told her that his comment wasn't strictly platonic. 'Mirage' was a notorious flirt, but Elliott wasn't, not really. He showed affection with sincerity, his usual confidence replaced by hesitance. This seemingly never-ending game of cat and mouse. All too often, she found herself the mouse and the lack of control terrified her. He would never cross a line or make her feel uncomfortable, he just waited there; at the boundary between their friendship and something more, giving her time and space to catch up. What if she'd read it right?
It certainly wasn't as if she hadn't thought about the possibility. Sure, she'd always found him attractive, she was human after all - but somewhere along the way it had shifted from casual interest to a deep seated desire. In the past, it had been easier to convince herself it would never work. He was too careless, too self-absorbed. She'd yelled at him once, furious with him for taking her for granted, frustrated that he wasn't able to read her affection for what it was. The whole thing was a stupid misunderstanding, she'd realised in the many months since. Making dumb jokes was just his way of coping when things got a little too much. But it had hurt her and so he had gone out of his way to make things right, to change his ways. Maturity looked good on him. Now it was harder to bury those feelings. It was hard to deny how his face came to her mind unbidden whenever she was stuck bleeding out, the sound of metallic legs clanking outside whatever building she had holed herself up in. Praying it was Pathfinder or even Octane - anyone but Revenant, so she could live to see him another day. It was harder still to deny how they always managed to catch each other's eye across the crowded Paradise Lounge when the jukebox started playing some angsty love song that practically dripped with longing. And it was damn near impossible to deny how she imagined his hands roving the curves of her body on yet another sleepless night.
No.
Enough.
These were the fantasies of normal people, not dimension-hopping failed experiments with amnesia. Elliott may have grown, but she was still the same broken mess she had always been. She couldn't afford to lose sight of that.
Could she?
"Thank you" she whispered, surprising them both with the earnestness imbued in those two little words. Appreciation not just for his words in this moment, but for everything that he was. The irony wasn't lost on her, how he worked so hard to help her recover her memories, helpless to stop his mom losing hers. It was unclear at this point if she would ever unravel the mysteries of her past, but perhaps the more pressing issue was whether she even wanted to. Of the little she'd uncovered, none of it was good. She lived her life on the knife edge between hope and fear, both wistful and terrified at the thought that one day the right piece of the puzzle could bring it all flooding back. Could she live with who she was, what she'd done? Could he? The thought sobered her, stopped her from getting caught up in...impossible hopes. He was broken too, she knew that much, and she wasn't yet sure if their jagged pieces fit together or if her sharp edges would just end up cutting him deeper.
She raised her hand to cup his cheek and he leaned into it, covering her hand with his own.
To the surprise of many of the other legends, they had always been tactile. She had definitely overheard Ramya calling him the 'Wraith Whisperer' on more than one occasion, as though she were some particularly skittish animal he had somehow managed to tame. Wraith supposed she had to hand it to her, it must have seemed an odd pairing; the aloof, intimidating psych-ward escapee and the funny, insecure momma's boy. But as their comfort with each other grew it was something that had just seemed to happen naturally - communication that didn't require something as easily misconstrued as words. A squeeze of the shoulder for reassurance, a gentle hand on her thigh to steady the nervous bounce of her leg in the dropship before a jump. The way he nudged her leg with his knee whenever he sat next to her, stirring her out of her thoughts so she would look at him and he could throw her a wink that she somehow knew meant 'I'm here'. Both of them struggled with words in their own way - she was often lost for them while he would just keep talking until he hit upon the right ones, or at least some semblance of them - but this was easy, effortless.
Or, at least, it always had been, but right now his eyes were burning with an intensity she had never seen in him before. He leaned towards her, so slightly it was almost imperceptible. Wraith held his gaze for a moment more, tilting her head in an unspoken question before his eyes quickly darted away, leaving it unanswered.
"Uh...ready to head back?" he asked her, giving her hand a squeeze before letting it drop back to her side.
"I guess," she mused, shaking off her confusion. "I suppose we should really find Anita first though, make sure she's okay. There's a lot of anti-IMC factions in Harris Valley, what if..."
"Wraith, you heard her, she doesn't want our help. I sacrificed my post-game bubble bath for her and not even so much as a 'Thanks Witt'! So no, let her go hang out with her new bestie, the murderbot. Just uh, do me a favor and don't tell either of them I said that..." he winced, instinctively looking over his shoulder as he always did at any mention of the simulacrum.
"Lets get out of here, Ren, come back to mine, yeah? W-we can stop at that pizza place you like on the way back, my treat. AND, get this, you're gonna like this one: your own personal bartender for the whole evening." he winked. "Just don't tell the owner."
"You're hopeless" she laughed, powerless against the growing wave of affection that crashed against the walls she had spent a lifetime building.
"Only if you say no. Ha, BA-ZING, get it? 'Cos...cos your name's Hope and all?"
She shook her head, the ghost of a smile on her lips and an uncharacteristic flush to her cheeks. She'd spent many an evening curled into the corner of his couch, his coffee table littered with takeout cartons and some terrible movie playing on the holo-projector that was far too big for the unit it was precariously perched on. So why did it somehow feel...different this time? It wasn't that she didn't want to, it was just...
"Ramps is out tonight" he blurted out, eyes widening as he realised the implication that could be read into the statement.
"I-I mean so you don't have to share your pizza. O-or what happened today. We can just chill and forget all about it, if that's what you want. Or we can talk about it? " He quickly added, tripping over his words in a rush to elaborate. "Anyway, yeah, her and Kairi are going on some 'pub crawl' or something. I told them to start at the Lounge but she said it's an Old Man Pub! Can you believe that!? Anyway, I think her exact words were 'don't wait up' so..."
Wraith smiled, his wording may have been clumsy but he was right: she was relived. As much as she liked the young woman who had become his surrogate sister she didn't want to have to pretend to be fine tonight, or even worse, explain why she was anything but.
"Whaddya say? Wanna grab some food with Solace City's cough(third)cough sexiest man?" he tried again.
The voices clamoured in her head, a hundred other Wraiths vying for her attention. Some implored her to run, to break things off now before it got more difficult down the line. Others urged her to take up his offer, those who had long realised what she was only just beginning to. Those Wraiths had known him in ways she could only dream of, as a lover, a husband, a father. She wasn't sure which reality would play out closest to her truth, but for now, she decided to listen to the only internal voice that really mattered: her own.
"Sure," she agreed, hoping that her voice didn't betray the emotion that was bubbling inside of her. "There's just one thing I have to do first."
"You're going to check on her, aren't you?" he sighed, knowing it was pointless to try and talk her out of anything once she had set her mind to it. "Alright. I'll stay here and do a little digging on Mr. Hero. Meet me back here in 30?"
A wry smile tugged at her lips and she turned her back to him, before she lost her nerve. Maybe her past was a lost cause but her future? She still had Hope.
"Its a date."