Work Text:
It was supposed to be the perfect day.
I woke up five minutes before my first alarm set for 6:30 rang, next to the love of my life. The breakfast we shared, which was simple yet perfectly cooked sunny side-up eggs with perfectly crisp bacon and toast, was accompanied with laughter and perfectly brewed coffee. The commute to work was normal, barely any traffic in sight. We arrived at the laboratory earlier than usual, which was a pleasant and welcome surprise to the night shift employees. We took over their work and urged them to go home earlier, which might have been what saved their lives. They would usually ask to stay behind and watch us work, but they had a particularly rough night and went home. I silently wished them a perfect day ahead of them, just like how mine had started out.
Sauntering over to my office, I was shocked to find the pile of documents I hadn't overseen yet neatly placed in the box that housed those that I have accomplished. I flipped through them and saw everything filled up perfectly to a T. There was a knock on the door, and I looked up to see him with a sly smile on his face.
"Dr. Callas," he called out with a tone to match the mischievous look on his face.
"Dr. Hayes," I responded in kind, realization soon settling in. "You did this?"
He chuckled as he gently grabbed me by the waist, wrapping his arms around it. My hands immediately discarded the papers, pulling him closer by the nape of his neck.
"When did you find the time to do this?" I asked, perplexed.
"While you were at the meeting yesterday," he whispered as he kissed the top of my head. "I snuck into your office and started from the very bottom of the pile in case you finished earlier. And... you did, so I finished it while you were out for lunch with Dr. Smith."
I stared up at him, wide-eyed in surprise.
"Is that why Dr. Smith asked me to get lunch with her?"
"Yup," he responded with a pop to the 'p'. "She was an accomplice."
"Why?" I asked finally, confused why he had to do it. "I could have finished them by tonight. Sure, I probably would have stayed later than usual, but that's nothing at this point."
"That's exactly why I had to do it," he answered, a grin slowly forming on his face. "We can't have you stay late and potentially miss the dinner reservation!"
I tilted my head, perhaps even more confused than before.
"What's the occasion?"
"Can't I take my beautiful girlfriend out to a fancy dinner?" He tilted his head the opposite direction before he chuckled. "Today marks seven years since we met, since you changed my life for the better, so of course we're going to celebrate."
"Has it been seven years?" I asked, recounting how we met and smiling as I recalled how he first asked me out two years after that. Going out on that date with him was the best decision of my life.
"You've been cursed with me for seven years now, stuck for almost five," he nodded with a smile.
"Hey!" I playfully hit his chest, earning myself a small 'oof' and a laugh. "That's not funny!"
"Alright, no more jokes," he whispered, placing a chaste kiss on my lips. "We're going to go home early, you're gonna get all dolled up, you're going to berate me about my choice of clothing and end up choosing a suit for me, and then we'll have dinner, yeah?"
"Okay," I replied, a smile slowly forming on my lips.
We ended our conversation with another kiss. He left my office smoothing out his labcoat and hair. I was never one to show excitement for things like a fancy dinner, but every moment with him was filled with much excitement, even moments of anger and sadness. It truly was going to be the perfect day.
"Congratulations, Dr. Callas. Your team's proposed budget has been approved," I breathed out a sigh of relief at the president's words. "Your research on radianite has made great strides. I'm looking forward to what your team will accomplish in the following years to come."
"Thank you, sir," I smiled. Perfect, this was another thing to celebrate during dinner.
Presenting what the laboratory has achieved these past few years has always been a nerve-racking affair to me, much more that I was presenting in front of Kingdom's board of directors in hopes that the team would be sponsored and our ideas and hard work would come to fruition. Everything was going well, until the earth shook and the lights blared red. It took everyone in the room a while to register what had happened. Soon, the guards were ushering everyone out. The board was being escorted out of the building. One of them, Jason, turned to me and beckoned me out of there, too.
"I have to check on them," I said, turning my heels despite Jason's protests.
People were piling out of their offices and stations, panicked faces illuminated only by the red alarm. The whole building was running on backup power, only the annex, which houses the radianite reserve, doors, and alarms were being powered at this point. Some were crying about their experiments' progress being hindered, others were fearing for their lives. As more people left the building, I became more acutely aware of the lack of his presence.
"Dr. Callas!" I turned the voice and saw Dr. Smith—Regina—running towards me.
"Dr. Smith, what happened? Where's-"
"We don't know. There was an explosion in the annex. But, Dr. Callas, it's... Dr. Hayes, h-he refuses to leave! He just wouldn't listen!"
"He's still in there?" My blood ran cold. "Is he... Is he okay?"
"I'm afraid I don't know. He immediately ordered people to evacuate, and without the team lead there, he was the person-in-charge. We couldn't..."
"I understand. Regina, you should leave," I usually wouldn't call anyone by their first name, especially not in the laboratory, but seeing how shaken Dr. Smith was, I knew that calling her by her first name would give her even just a modicum of relief. "If there's anyone else left in the building, evacuate them immediately."
Regina nodded before running off towards the exit. After a few seconds, likely too many seconds, I ran towards the annex. In this line of work, you never have to run. Running meant that there was something at stake, and I never had to do this before. I didn't care for lost progress or lost resources, those could all be brought back after sacrificing a bit more time. For the first time, my feet moved faster than my brain could realize that there was something at stake—someone. Before I could enter the main room, the glass door slid shut and I heard the lock click. I banged on the door, sweat dribbling down my temples.
"John? John!" I called out to him, looking around frantically. There must be a mechanism to unlock the door from the outside.
I always thought there might be, but looking back, we were all prepared to die inside that room, especially if it meant we would save other lives. Radianite is a fickle matter. It's unstable, and the point of our research was to find a way to tame it enough that we could find ways to replicate it and supply the entire globe with its benefits. I joined the project to see if there were any medicinal uses to the mysterious element. I wish I had finished my research, maybe then...
"John, this isn't time for jokes, open the fucking door!"
"Hey, honey, it's okay," he finally emerged from behind the busted glass where the largest radianite sample was housed. My breath hitched as I saw his bloodied arm and disfigured right side of his face, bits of glass stuck to the charred skin. "I-I just need to secure the files and make sure to shut everything down. We can't have all our hard work just explode, right?"
"John, I don't give a shit about that right now!" And it's true. It always has been the truth. I didn't care for what would happen to our hard work and to the millions of dollars worth of equipment and resources. I cared about him. "Please, open the door, let's get out of here!"
"Sabine, love, I'm sorry, but I have to stay for a bit longer," he sniffled, though there were no tears. It was later I realized it wasn't him who was crying, but me. "I'm sorry, honey. Even though I was the one who said we can't be late, I might be late for dinner after all."
I bit my lip, drawing blood from how hard I had been biting down, but the pain never came, dulled out by the growing ache in my chest.
"H-How long? Five minutes? Ten?" I asked, breathing ragged and it felt as though my chest was caving in.
"I promise I won't make you wait," he whispered, leaning his forehead on the glass. "I'm sorry, love."
"You don't have to do this, John. Y-You don't-... I can't..." I felt my throat closing up, knowing the outcome of this incident. "Please, John.. Don't do this.."
His hand travelled to his coat pocket, fiddling with something inside of it. He looked back up at me with that same sickeningly sweet smile.
"I don't want to do this, but I have to," he slowly backed away.
"No! John, please! T-There must be someone who can help us, yeah?" I looked around frantically, calling out names into an empty hallway. Everyone else had left. Nobody could help. Nobody cared to help.
"Sabine, you should go home now. You should... you should get ready for dinner. I can't wait to see you in your favorite dress! I love you."
My throat was burning now. There was a piercing scream that erupted from within me. Finally, my knees gave in and I sunk down to the floor, eyes still fixated at where he had disappeared to, until everything went black.
When I came to, I was being carried into an ambulance on a gurney.
"Where... Where is he...?" I asked, though I knew my speech was slurred and barely understandable.
"Dr. Callas," I heard a familiar female voice. Regina Smith. "We're going to take you to the hospital now. Everything will be okay."
I didn't care about that.
"Where's... John.. Where is he...?" I asked again, this time a tad bit clearer. When no response came, I slowly sat up, despite the protests and the gentle hands that were trying to pin me down. I immediately saw the smoke and the chaos. Where a magnificent research laboratory once stood was now just a pile of rubble. The annex was barely standing, but that still gave me hope.
Even though my body ached and the paramedics told me to stay put, I scrambled out of the ambulance and slowly made my way to the crumbling building. Regina, finally realizing she couldn't stop me, helped me walk towards it. Perhaps to her, she was trying to help me find closure. Instead, she helped my madness.
Inside that building used to be a man with striking blue eyes and curly dark brown hair who was obsessed with geology. He stood 6 feet tall, and he had a terrible taste in clothing, often opting to wear sweats and a hoodie. He always made the perfect cup of coffee, though sometimes he would forget that I don't take mine with sugar. He was a crafty person who loved to cook and knit, much to my chagrin due to the mess he inevitably leaves. He used to have the gentlest hands in the world, fingers long and slender that slot perfectly into mine.
There, inside that building, was the love of my life, charred to an almost unrecognizable crisp, like the blackened coffee grounds he would use to fertilize the plants with. Those same plants would die after I had neglected them. That was his job. That wasn't my chore.
That day, I lost the love of my life. Days after, I was told I lost the proof of our love, one that I didn't know existed until I lost it—until I lost you. It was supposed to be the perfect day. I was supposed to have a perfect life.
I woke up to a tear-stained pillow. My eyes burned as I blinked away the tears. It had been 15 years since that day, and yet that body slumped over the main computer never left my mind. I sat up, stretching as I looked at the clock. I laughed humorlessly. 6:25 AM.
I still took my coffee black, still ate sunny side-up eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, but I sat with the silence, only the humming of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock could be heard. Something new is that I ran. I bought a treadmill and I would run on it for a few minutes every day. I ran with the thought that if I had been fitter, faster, maybe I would have gotten there before the doors closed. Maybe I would have died with him that day.
I did as I usually do these days. Instead of a Kingdom laboratory, I would commute to the VALORANT headquarters. Instead of meetings about what radianite can do, I had meetings on how to stop those pesky Omega Earth thieves. Instead of a clipboard and a pen, I held a gun and vials of toxins. I always wondered what he would think if he saw me.
"Sabine,"
I suppose I didn't have to wonder. Nobody else would call me by that name out of fear. Even Cypher, who would usually jokingly call me that, would cower afterwards and correct himself by saying Dr. Sabine. In front of me stood a ghost. He would sometimes speak like him. He still did the same things John did. But he wasn't him, at least, not anymore. He called me a monster before. It stung, and though I knew it wasn't him, it still felt like a punch to the gut.
"Yes, Omen?" I answered after he was just silently standing there. It always felt as though he was watching me.
"Are you feeling unwell?" He asked. I just stared wordlessly for awhile, bemused, until he continued. "Although people in the protocol have not realized, you have been distracted and out of sorts."
"And how do you know that, Omen?" I asked, crossing my arms as my eyebrow raised in questioning.
"Your face," he answered. "You look saddened by something."
I laughed. "Not to worry, it's not going to affect the mission." I nodded my head and turned around to leave, but I felt the coldness of his hand gently wrap around my wrist.
"I worry, Sabine," Omen says, his voice strained. "Not for the mission, but for you."
I shook his hand off, and for a split second, I thought I saw his face morph in sadness. But I knew that wasn't the case; Omen is a specter, a failed experiment, if you will. Nobody knows what's underneath the hood, only that those three, glowing blue streaks were his eyes.
"Thank you, Omen, but you don't have to worry. I don't need your concern."
I wish I could say I left the room and coolly did my business, but I left for my own little office and struggled to breathe. Striking blue eyes. A hoodie. Gentle hands. That isn't him. It will never be him. Perhaps that second statement hurt the most.
After a while of cursing those memories and recollecting myself, I went about my day. Meetings, training, briefings. The same old since that day. What didn't change was the amount of paperwork that I had in my hands and the fatigue that came with working. I felt some of the documents slip through my hands and fall to the floor. I had to steady myself before I could bend down to pick them up.
"Oh, Viper! Let me help you!"
Curses, I said to myself. This day could not get any worse.
Sage diligently picked up the scattered papers off of the floor, neatly placing them into a pile. I finally bent down to help after a few seconds of internal groaning.
"Oh," Sage whispered. I looked up at her and followed where her eyes were trained. On my neck was a simple silver chain with an emerald-studded ring. I quickly hid the necklace into my sweater.
After an awkward silence, as Sage handed me the documents, she spoke up.
"Viper, I know you don't like talking about it and it's been years, but allow me to-"
"Don't," I interrupted. "I've had enough of your guilt."
"This isn't about guilt, Sabine, I—"
"Don't fucking call me that!" I yelled, stunning Sage. "Nobody should call me that, so stop it. Just stop. If you're truly sorry, then you'll leave me alone. I don't need your help, I don't want your help. We're not friends and will never be friends. You already did enough damage."
I left Sage in that hallway. After dropping off the documents into my office, I went to the parking lot and beelined to my car. Before I could get in, I was stopped by him.
"Sabine,"
"Omen, will you please leave me alone? I don't need you to lecture me about what I said to Sage," I told him, eyebrows furrowed.
"It is not her fault, nor is it yours," he said softly as if afraid to break me.
"You don't know anything," I said through gritted teeth. I threw my keys at him in frustration and he effortlessly caught them. Finally, hot tears streamed down my face. "I've had enough! I know it wasn't her fault, but you can't say that it isn't mine! If I was faster, I would have been there with him! If I hadn't met him, he would still be alive! If I didn't bring you to Sage, maybe I wouldn't be seeing a ghost, something that acts like him, that sometimes speaks like him, but isn't him! I wish you stayed dead. I wish I didn't beg Liam to bring me to Sage. I wish I didn't have that false hope that she could bring you back! I wish I died with you that day, instead I see you everyday, suffering because of my own selfishness, breaking yourself into pieces because of my own selfishness."
Again, there was silence, save for my echoing sobs.
"Sabine," there he goes again, saying my name without a care in the world. "You didn't do this to me. You're not the one ripping me to shreds. And though I do not have the desire to do it, I have to,"
I looked up, and for a split second, I saw him. John. The love of my life. I imagined what life would have been like for the both of us had the incident not happened. I wondered about how different married life would have been for us. I wondered about how you would have felt if I told you about the bundle of joy growing inside of me. For a second, I imagined his warmth instead of this cold specter's arms wrapping themselves around me. For a second, I imagined his sweet voice, whispering sweet nothings and reassurance into my ear, instead of a ghost's raspy, hollow promises. For a second, I thought he was you.