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There are twenty-six cameras on compound (fifteen are Cypher’s own), thirty-two assorted listening devices and sensors (all of which are his), and enough physical locks and biometric scanners that an insect couldn’t find its way in. Cypher has a line in on all of them.
There’s not an event that goes on inside VPHQ that he doesn’t know about. Like this, Cypher is very much aware of the intricate weave of each relationship in Valorant. A collection of veiled and bare hate, discomfort, camaraderie, and even genuine affection that can somehow coexist and overlap between them.
But nothing, nothing, else can unravel hatred like a mission going well can. Boundaries fray and snap like they mean nothing in the first place, and even the most reclusive agents can be coaxed into a round of drinks.
Cypher would usually jump at the chance to put off the several hours of post-mission debugging and repairs that are inevitably needed, but he can’t seem to sink into the cheerful atmosphere the others are championing. The mission went well—better than one has in a while—so they’re celebrating. Cypher agrees. He just can’t convince his nerves of the same.
His fingers tap a slow rhythm on the wooden bar, a nervous tic easily disguised as boredom. He’s not so much of an amateur that he would give himself away that easily.
They deferred to Yoru to pick their Tokyo haunt, and the izakaya he brought them to is on the cusp of nice, good enough to most, and bad enough that nobody would care about a strange bunch like them. Cypher likes it because there are three escape routes and the lights are dim enough to give him an advantage with night vision lenses.
They snuck up on him.
A mirror Jett, icy rage rising as her knives whipped to target him. The moment replays, slowly, in his head until the details blur and all that’s left is the sound of silenced bullets piercing her temple. In his memory, he turns and faces the smoking barrel of Omen’s phantom, still pointed at Jett’s corpse.
Immediately after the site is clear, he checks his wires until he’s satisfied that it was not a malfunction.
A one-foot blind spot that let Jett snake around behind him. His fingers stutter. Clench into a fist.
Fade is staring at him. He collects himself enough to face her and pretends the look doesn’t burn.
“Not drinking tonight?” She asks, bringing a coffee-rum mix to her mouth that Cypher didn’t even know they served.
“Ah, no. Who else will be designated driver? Er, flyer.” Cypher knows he could just leave piloting the Vulture to Omen, so the excuse is poor. Admittedly, his mind isn’t working the conversation. Instead, his eyes are watching the door kick against the bell, synchronizing with a clear chime. His mask covers exactly where he’s looking, but Fade turns her head in the same direction anyway.
She hums lowly, almost drowned in the din. “Your fear will eat you alive, Cypher.”
Her glass glistens with sticky-sweet liquor residue crawling down the sides, last of it drained in one toss back. The low light of the overhead fixtures makes the neon sign outside soak red into the establishment.
Cypher’s mind kicks into traitorous overdrive. What else can she read off him? How much does she know? Who will she tell?
Calm yourself, Amir. But he didn’t live this long by trusting people.
He goes to reply—something witty and off-putting—but Fade has already turned away to talk to Neon. At another time, he might find it interesting to eavesdrop on their conversation. Right now, his skin crawls and his nerves scream out like a hot iron pressed against his spine. Or a knife in his back.
Cypher swallows thickly and goes back to watching the exits.
There’s the welcome-back, there’s the debrief, then there’s Cypher haunting the headquarters. He tried to turn in at first, but the static buzz of tech in his room seemed to reverberate in his head when he closed his eyes. Phantom clicking of gun safeties and muffled footsteps accompanied his fragmented thoughts. He twitched at every note, checking every surveillance device within a twenty-foot radius of his room, then his workshop, then the entrances. Then he gave up.
Cypher drags himself through the halls, quiet. It’s midday, so most agents are out or sleeping through the post-mission time difference, like Cypher should be. Though twenty-three hours is hardly the longest he’s been without sleep.
It’s easy to think that VPHQ is empty most of the time. It's never truly uninhabited, but the size and the small population just make the concrete halls echo like an abandoned concert hall. Of course, there are the homebodies like Cypher, Brimstone, and Viper, who are in their offices working more often than not, but the majority of the Protocol have homes elsewhere.
Sure, some might still live on base, but Cypher thinks it’s a different feeling entirely to have someplace you can go back to. Rabat was—and in part, still is—his home, but he can't live in a memory.
The common room is quiet when Cypher walks in, air still and undisturbed. The lights are on, dimmed halfway, and Cypher only knows one person who prefers it like that and can get away with blending in. He inspects the corners of the room until a faint light materializes out of the shadows.
“Omen, my friend! Did we not speak of announcing our presence when lurking in shadows?” Cypher asks. He double-checks the sides of the room, the exits, and the attached kitchen for—something. He doesn’t know, but not knowing wouldn’t stop something from sneaking up on him.
“We did not talk,” he says, slow and deep like he’s just waking up, “you cursed at me after I scared you.”
“Reflexively, may I add. But I do apologize.”
Cypher sets the kettle to boil, digging out his (thankfully untouched) tea from behind the Keurig cups and whole coffee beans. He presses his hands flat against the counter to stop them from shaking. The adrenaline from the mission has worked its way through his system already, but the annoying scratch of vigilance mixed with existing sleep deprivation has his body unsettled.
Omen hums, an uncategorizable rumble that makes the base of Cypher’s neck prickle. He knows Omen can sense his unease.
On Cypher, agitation looks something like: shattered/bugged/broken tech, the eyes of someone haunted, and the shape arabic swears make of his mouth. He’s glad he’s not so obvious.
Omen can always read him anyway.
The kettle clicks off, a final squeaking pitch escaping. His hands feel better with a warm mug (maybe on the side of too hot, admittedly) cradled between them. A dull ache begins to pulse behind his eyes, so he takes a seat across from Omen at the kitchen table.
When Cypher is at his worst, when he can’t trust the air around him, he always feels like he’s drowning. Like every movement is too sluggish, and every thing is suffocating. He glances up discretely five separate times to see if Omen is staring before trying to gain control again. The tea helps—earthy and robust in a way that reminds him of something safer, something before it all went bad—but it’s not a cure.
There’s a half-full fruit bowl at the center of the table, a nice little still life that can pretend it’s in an idyllic family home. Cypher is almost jealous of the connotation. He picks through and grabs an orange, inspecting it. A stroke of green around the stem blots the orange, but it’s otherwise perfectly ripe.
“What are you doing?” Omen asks, the click of knitting needles pausing as he looks over. Likewise, the orange rolling across the tabletop under Cypher’s fingers stops.
Cypher’s deep breath is filled with the clear scent of citrus oil. The texture under his fingers is slightly rough and waxy. It makes a brushing-squeaking sound when it rolls.
It’s something else to focus on aside from the feeling of being watched. “Grounding,” Cypher says, because that means something to Omen.
“I see.” And that’s that.
Cypher focuses on tracing patterns, figure eights, ovals, lines, watching it revolve closer and away with his cheek pressed to the table’s surface.
The pinpricks of anxiety still pinch at his skin, but the exhaustion finally wins out. The world goes muted until he shakes himself awake, mask lenses flickering like they’re also unsure if he’s going to pass out. It’s not unnoticed by his company.
“Rest,” Omen says.
Bleary and halfway to delirious, Cypher asks, “Who will watch?”
“Rest,” he repeats, and Cypher does not have the mental capacity to analyze the meaning he’s giving him, so he lowers his head into his arms and lets his eyes fall shut.
Cypher’s rest is about as good as any—fitful, tormented, and difficult. His first time waking up isn’t long after he falls asleep, by his estimation. His heartbeat kicks up as he opens his eyes, seeing nothing in the darkness. The lights are drawn lower, a bare hum. Just before he’s about to sit up, his vision adjusts and he can vaguely make out Omen’s shifting form, still across the table from him. Before Cypher realizes it, his eyes are shut again and he drifts back into nothing.
He wakes like that three more times, settling into sleep when he sees Omen on his vigil. The fourth time, Cypher actually gets up. Omen is nowhere to be seen, and if Cypher sits up a little too quickly when he notices, there’s no one else to tell.
One of the throw blankets from the couches falls from his shoulders and bunches across the chair's back. Bluelight burns at his eyes as he flicks on his lenses and checks the time. He blinks hard and straightens to make sure he’s reading it right, because there’s no way he slept for ten hours. The bones in his back crack and he winces—even if he’s in disbelief, it certainly feels like he slept ten hours in a chair. Still, he hasn’t slept that long all week. All month, even.
Vaguely, he wonders if Omen dosed him somehow.
Distracted by his strange wake-up, Cypher only then notices the plate in front of him. Plastic wrap forms a tent around a quartered orange. He inspects it, puzzled, and peels off the attached sticky note. Scrawled in bold marker is Omen’s handwriting—Cypher would know, he reads every mission report, and Omen is the only one who hand-writes his.
‘For Cypher.’
He feels a little faint. The last time someone fed him just to make sure he was fed, Nora was alive.
Cypher is not an idiot, generally. He is one for hoping. The opportunity for love has passed them both—this is not something they could have. But Cypher cannot bring himself to toss the plate, so he leaves it, tucking the note in an inside pocket, pressed to his body.
The way back to his room is blocked by another agent sulking in the halls.
“Yo, finally, man!” Phoenix says, a grin lighting up his face. “Omen wouldn’t let anyone into the lounge like all day for some reason. So we cool now, yeah?”
Cypher’s head isn’t straightened out enough for him to parse the meaning behind the statement, but his heart squeezes like it already knows.
“Yes, you can go in now,” Cypher says, opting for simple—nothing to twist or point at him.
“Great, because I really don’t want to piss Omen off. He still needs to teach me how to knit.”
Cypher chuckles at that, letting Phoenix’s chatter soothe him. Phoenix, at least, is someone incapable of a true betrayal. Though betrayal implies a sense of loyalty, and Cypher doesn’t know if he’s ever really had that. “I wouldn’t worry about him, he is quite the softie.”
Phoenix stares like Cypher’s been replaced with his double. “I dunno if I would call him a ‘softie,’ mate.”
Cypher shrugs, noncommittal. “Different perspectives.” And he’s on his way, off to prep the next mission.
When Cypher wakes, a lance of pain strikes. It worms its way under his skin, under the gauze packing and bandages flooded with red.
Cypher no longer likes reminders that he is just a man—that was for when he could still love and be loved. Now he prefers being unknowable, unperceivable.
Untouchable.
The bullets that tore open his side disagree.
Coming to consciousness is a slow affair, with lots of debating and contemplation weighing his body. The familiar pressure of his mask cradles his face.
“Oh good, you left it on,” Cypher mumbles, fighting his eyes to open. Omen temporally shudders at the edge of his vision but doesn’t say anything.
On Omen, agitation looks something like: incorporeal hands, split-second shifts, and a glaring blue glow like a computer screen in the dark. Cypher’s three for three so far. He figured Omen would be glad Cypher took the shots for him, but it doesn’t seem like the case.
The drugs pumping through his IV make it hard to focus. Thoughts he doesn’t need or want rise unendingly. Cypher almost tells Omen he doesn’t know why he did, but he assumes that might just make him angrier. People are so fickle, sometimes.
Cypher’s body fights him every movement trying to sit up, but he struggles through it until he’s propped as best as he can manage. “Did Sage stop by?” He questions, and winces, because his voice sounds like he’s been gargling razors. Not an iota of the happy-go-lucky lilt it should have.
If Omen cares about how rough Cypher is, he doesn’t show it. “Yes,” Omen responds, “She healed you with what she had.”
The mission comes back in pieces, like reconstructing a torn picture. The abstract of pain and hot-iron heat floods in, but beyond that screams of his teammates and the sounds of bodies dropping. There’s no doubt it’ll be the motif of his nightmares for the next few days.
“Tablet,” Cypher says. He’ll have to apologize later for his forgone politeness. Omen obediently hands it over, having retrieved it from Cypher’s office while he was out. His bedside manner leaves some room for improvement, but Cypher wouldn’t let anyone else into his office without him being there. There’s some comfort in knowing the routine, and it smooths over the slight jitter in his hands.
He checks the biometrics, the ins and outs logged in the compound, the last known location of every agent and their latest health updates. They’re all alive now, at least, but everyone who was on their mission is back on base in various states of incapacitation. He doesn’t pity Sage and Skye; or the rest of them, for that matter.
It was a rough one, to say the least. If a mission going well can unite the protocol like nothing else can, a mission going poorly can inspire a morbid sympathy like no other. Even Omen seems like he’s feeling the aftereffects, if his lack of attention is anything to go by.
When Cypher glances over once he’s done, Omen has pulled out a knife. Cypher’s breath hitches and maybe this is it. Maybe this is what he’s doomed to. This is what he gets. Then he shoves it down.
His anxiety alerts Omen, who stares and tilts his head ever so slightly. Cypher laughs and it echoes hollowly like a morgue. “I really hate that power of yours,” he says, forcing himself to look away from the white glint of a blade in the infirmary lights.
Omen silently glances over to the heart monitor Cypher’s hooked up to. Cypher groans, melting back into the bed.
The pain is familiar, but irritating all the same. Still, things are… okay. They’re all alive, mission report be damned. Despite all the momentum they’re building up to in this dimensional war, it’s starting to feel like it would be a victory to just get out in one piece together.
Cypher’s lost track of his reason for being there. A thousand others have replaced it and one of them is sitting next to him.
The knife in Omen's hands expertly skins an orange. He sinks it down the length and pulls off the rest in one clean strip, dexterous in an unexpected way.
His fingers glisten darkly with orange mist, holding a neat slice out for Cypher.
Cypher’s too old for the chase, the push and pull, that bygone era. And he’s used to starving affections, but he’s been holding out for so long. Maybe just this one thing, he can have.
He’s thinking about it too long, but Omen is docile in a way that only Cypher seems to get. Omen doesn’t bite, doesn’t bark. Maybe he should. Cypher’s being selfish, making him wait.
Cypher wants it. He wants like he’s had it before. He takes the orange, splits it, and hands half back. How Omen knows it’s his favorite fruit is strange but not unexpected.
“I can’t eat this,” Omen says, but it’s not about that. Cypher thinks Omen knows, and this is the precipice they’re careening towards. A cliff impossible to climb back up from.
“You are not a monster, my dear,” Cypher says, rolling up the bottom half of his mask. The orange is ripe, membranes engorged with nectar. It’s good—sweetly indulgent and fresh in a way he never had in childhood. It’s finished in silence.
Once half the orange is gone, Cypher rests his hand at the edge of his bed, palm up and vulnerable in its invitation. He lays back, staring at the ceiling, trusting Omen to take it.
Omen does.