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It wasn't often the two of them had the training room to themselves.
There was either not enough time in the day to squeeze something in, or their schedules just didn't align.
Sonya had no issue training by herself.
She preferred it most days, especially if the day itself had been hectic.
But it was certainly more enjoyable with a sparring partner - especially one that could keep up with her.
Such a thought crossed Sonya's mind just as she blocked the swing Kenshi threw at her.
She countered it with a lower punch aimed for his ribs, only to be blocked just the same.
Between meetings, adjusting her schedule on the fly, dealing with inter-realm politics, and then the day-to-day busy work and family business, it was difficult enough for her to get a hot cup of coffee from the canteen - let alone carve out a full hour for training. And even when Sonya did have an hour to spare, it was usually in the early morning hours when the training house was already booked with the other personnel getting a workout in before clocking in.
And sure, as General, she could kick someone out to make room for herself.
But that would defeat the purpose.
An army was only as strong as its weakest soldier.
Any one person could be a gamble, a liability, if things didn't work out.
As far as she was concerned, anyone and everyone needed as much training time as they could get.
But that same mentality had to include herself as well.
While Sonya never had to worry about herself in combat, she wasn't without a sense of humility. She knew her own strengths and weaknesses; she knew she could hold her own at any given time, in any given situation. But a week without working on her blind spots would put her in a place of failing just as much as anyone else.
And if there was one thing the Special Forces couldn't afford, it was her being the liability.
After spending most of her week cooped up in her office, or in a truck driving between meetings, Sonya knew she needed to work out the excess energy and make sure that it didn't stress her out - at least, not anymore than she was already stressed out. The last time she let things bottle up she almost cold-clocked another General just for misquoting her; and had Cassie not been present to stop her, Sonya most certainly would have sent the man to the med-bay.
So, while a three-in-the-morning workout session wasn't exactly ideal, at the very least it would help her sleep a little easier tonight.
Not by much, given her poor sleeping habits as of late, but it was something to look forward to.
Sonya followed her blocked punch with a quick side step and a readied elbow, intending for her mark to land against the soft tissue below his ribs now.
Without his protective armor on, it was his most notable weak point.
But Kenshi knew her methods, her tactics, and was quicker to evade the would-be crushing blow.
For every swing, there was a block, then followed by a counter, which was the blocked and countered in return.
Which, frankly, was how their usual sparring matches went.
Given the time of day, or if there was the rare audience involved, the two of them could go fist-to-fist for a while without actually doing any bodily harm.
It was more for show, more for synchronizing with one another.
If Sonya could get into his head and predict what he was going to do, then she could counter it.
And with that knowledge, she would know that out in the field, against a common enemy, the two of them could work in easy sync and amplify one another's attacks.
Kenshi's sense of telepathy helped him figure out what she wanted him to do, or what she needed him to do, but he wasn't without admitting that a lot of his responses were based on already knowing what she was going to do first. He could base his responses on her actions, and she could do the same in return. He was capable of setting up a fight in a way that Sonya could easily follow through on, making it easy for her to knock down anyone that he didn't finish off himself.
They were a well-oiled machine together.
An unstoppable tag-team.
For now, however, it felt like they were just going through the motions.
They were sparring more to get the restlessness out.
And as long as they kept it simple, there wouldn't be any real winner here tonight.
Kenshi was usually good about ensuring that he didn't keep his own energy pent up throughout the day, but he was far from being perfect. Sonya wasn't much better, but at least her pent up energy couldn't cause an entire room to be completely destroyed by a rogue influx of telekinetic power.
Although Kenshi usually begged to differ on that.
It came with the territory though.
Sometimes Sento just couldn't be contained.
Not unless it was behind a steel-door vault covered in three different types of containment seals.
But Kenshi kept rejecting her offer to do so.
Sonya took down another one of Kenshi's swings before she switched her routine by utilizing a right kick; and she managed to find the leverage she needed as it connected successfully with his hip.
Kenshi stepped to the side to disengage the strike, and inadvertently gave her the opening she needed to put him down.
She just had to move fast to utilize it.
Grabbing at his left shoulder now, Sonya dug her heel into his thigh and used the leverage to hoist herself up, giving herself the height she needed to then get her left leg over his right shoulder.
By the time she got her right leg over just the same, however, Kenshi caught on to what she had planned.
He used his own weight to counteract the force she was preparing to use in order to pull off a back throw.
But the sudden grip of his hands on her thighs warned her of something else.
"Shit-"
Sonya felt Kenshi collapse out from underneath her.
She felt his arm move between them and manage to break the lock she had on his shoulders before he shoved her away from him - slinging her off to the side with more force than was probably necessary, but made in the heat of the fall.
Thankfully, she hit one of the floor mats, cushioning her landing.
Sonya waited for her body to settle itself out, to catch up on the action, before she pushed herself up to see where Kenshi had landed.
He was only about two feet or so from her.
Flat on his back and laughing, which meant that whatever had happened wasn't serious.
Although that could be a bit of a gamble with the man.
"You alright?" Sonya questioned.
"Yeah, it's nothing," Kenshi replied, as he waved her off. "I was going to reverse flip you over my shoulders, but uh - my leg locked up at the weight change."
She shook her head and gave a sympathetic chuckle at his own expense.
"Still bad?"
"Not always," he assured, although loosely at that, "- but it hasn't exactly been a good day for it either."
"I can understand that," Sonya remarked, before she slid herself across the floor mat until she was settled next to him.
She watched as he sat up just enough to touch at his right leg, grimacing some as he did so.
Fifteen years or so, give or take, Kenshi had had his right tibia shattered by an arrow while he was trying to defend Takeda and himself from the Red Dragons. And because of the ongoing chaos, and the events that followed the days before and the days after the fight, he never got it properly checked out. A Shirai Ryu healer had done a quick patch on it, but that was the extent of the medical care he had gotten. Although Kenshi insisted that he also did some on-the-fly healing himself while he was on the run - doing whatever he needed to to keep the leg from giving out on him.
And of course, by ignoring the problem and stressing the injury further, the wound eventually got infected.
And because of how deep it was, the infection set in fast and basically rotted from the inside out.
When Kenshi didn't almost die from the infection itself, he almost lost the leg.
It was a miracle that neither of those happened, despite how close he had been to both.
When he finally returned to a Special Forces outpost, Sonya intervened and got him the proper medical attention he desperately needed - and should've had from the start.
She had to pull a lot of strings to keep the doctor from amputating it outright.
Once the infection had been cleaned and cleared, Kenshi had a steel rod put in to keep the bones together.
He healed fast and adapted quickly.
Although he did end up snapping the steel rod a few years later - to the surprise of everyone but herself.
"Keep this up and you're going to have two disabilities," Sonya remarked, "- and that's putting it nicely."
Kenshi laughed at her subtle jab before he laid back down against the cushioned mat beneath him. "Doing something nicely is very unlike you," he teased, as he moved to rest his hands on his chest now.
He was out of uniform, out of his armor.
He was dressed in a fitted long-sleeve and loose shorts that had the Special Forces medal embroidered on it.
And that was about as revealing as he got in public.
The lack of protective under-armor and armored boots exposed the knots of scar tissue that covered his right leg, showcasing the numerous attempts and successes it had taken to get him back into fighting order. She could still see the outline of the skin graft he had needed after all the infected tissue had been cut out, leaving behind a disturbing, but clean hole in his leg.
"Let's face it, we're both pretty much halfway dead at this point," he continued. "I just happen to be a couple steps ahead of you."
Sonya laughed this time before she pushed herself into a normal sitting position.
She hated to admit that he had a point with that.
"Well, you're half right," she replied, before she turned to face him. "But you're not as far ahead of me as you think you are."
"No?"
"No," Sonya repeated.
Even with his blindfold on, she felt Kenshi eyeing her in question, before he slowly pushed himself up.
"You know, I'm getting this feeling like... you want to tell me something," he started, as he brought a hand to one of his temples.
Sonya reached over and slapped his hand away, garnering a soft laugh from the man.
Whenever Kenshi wanted to get more information out of her, he always pretended like it was her who wanted to tell him, and then he would make a show of using his telepathy - although he never went through with it. Not on her, at least.
"I say one thing about how you don't know as much as you think you do and suddenly you have questions?" Sonya teased.
"You said I had two disabilities, and then followed it up by saying you're not as far behind as I think you are," Kenshi countered.
"I said you're going to have two disabilities," she corrected.
"You're avoiding the topic."
She rolled her eyes at his persistence over what should have been a harmless remark.
But there had been truth behind it.
Which was why she had brought it up in the first place.
So she really couldn't be annoyed that he had called it out.
"Alright, I'll let you in on something," Sonya conceded, " - but it stays between us."
"I can do that," Kenshi replied.
"Can you?" she countered. "Promise me?"
He chuckled at her persistence now, at the hoops she kept setting in front of him, before he leaned in towards her.
Sonya felt the touch of his lips against her own, the solid press of a single kiss, and then the lingering heat when he pulled away.
"I promise."
"Alright, give me your hands," she spoke, as she held her own out for him to find.
Sonya watched as Kenshi turned to face her, mirroring her position with his own body now.
He reached out for her hands without further wait - and found them with ease.
Squeezing his hands in her hold, Sonya took advantage of his exposed skin. So rarely was Kenshi seen without his gloves, let alone did he go anywhere without them; he even wore them in private, even away from prying eyes. He used the excuse that his hands got cold easily and that he didn't like having to continuously warm them up every time he wanted the feeling back in his fingers.
Whether she believed that excuse or not wasn't important.
Despite his prior reasons, she felt the sweat on his palms from their earlier skirmish.
Sonya felt the build up of scar tissue on his left hand as she ran her thumb across his knuckles, across his fingers, before she brought it to her face and cupped his palm against her right jaw.
Kenshi offered no resistance to her motions and let her take the reins as she moved her hand to cover his own now.
"You know most of the story already, so I'll keep it brief," Sonya started, as she moved his fingers to trace the subtle curve of her eye socket. "Back during the Tournament, I took a full kick to the face from Sindel, which ended up splintering my eye socket and crushing this cheekbone. It wasn't much to complain about, considering what happened to everyone else, so I brushed it off; I was just thankful to be alive at that point."
She felt Kenshi squeeze her other hand in response.
"My face was ninety-percent bruised and the swelling made it difficult to figure out the full extent of the damage, but this portion of my face ended up degloved from the hit. It took hours to correct what had been impaired, to reduce pressure, and reattach things back to where they needed to be. Most of it's just a blur now, I only remember being in and out of consciousness for the most part," she continued. "I do remember having to deal with temporary facial paralysis for a week or so though, which is not something I'd wish on anyone else."
"I had that once," Kenshi remarked, as he released her hand and moved his own to his left jaw; she knew there was a scar there underneath his thick beard. "Leechsnake bite to the jaw. The paralysis only lasted a few hours, thankfully. I've been through a lot of gruesome experiences, and that's one of them that's not worth repeating."
"It's not fun," Sonya chuckled. "I'm pretty sure I chewed through the inside of my cheek at one point."
Kenshi moved his hand to take her own again.
And she leaned into his palm she still had pressed to her cheek.
"I talk a lot about the damages, but the reason it's not noticeable to anyone is because I got it touched up about a year after I was discharged from the hospital," she spoke. "The prior surgeries fixed the critical issues, but that was it. They glued my face back on, but after all the swelling and pushing things around, I just didn't look right - which was something they warned me about. My right eye just kind of floated in the socket and my cheek never really got the curve back to it. Every time I looked in the mirror, it just wasn't me that was staring back."
Despite the Hell she had given him back then, Sonya was certain Cage really didn't mean anything nefarious when he had passed her the business card of a well-known plastic surgeon.
Careless maybe, but nothing intentionally cruel.
It didn't matter though, because she ended up going anyway.
She could still remember agonizing over the decision, wondering how she was going to justify it in the end.
Back then, she had worried about how she looked, worried about how part of her face sagged, and how her eye looked permanently drooped all the time. She hated how the scar tissue pulled tight every time she moved the right side of her face, reminding her again and again how it used to be paralyzed.
Meanwhile, she was lucky to have escaped with the injuries that she had.
Meanwhile every person she had gone into the Tournament with was gone.
Her problems were arbitrary in comparison.
Looking back on it now though, Sonya was certain it was that mindset, that debilitating depression that hounded her for years after, that led her to focus so obsessively on those small injuries. Because at least then she was focused on something else; at least then she was thinking about something else. And it was a small reprieve from the thoughts and memories that haunted her day after day.
"And then, just my luck, five years after the initial blow from Sindel, I get decked in the same spot by Scorpion," Sonya continued. "Which just aggravated the injury all over again, which meant I had to go through yet another healing process. So all of this right here-"
She moved Kenshi's hand to feel around her right cheek and part of her jaw.
"- I have no feeling in it. I know your hand is there, but only because I know I put it there. I can't actually feel it."
"All of this?" Kenshi questioned, as he moved his hand underneath her touch.
"Yeah," she nodded. "It's gotten worse through the years, but I can't imagine it can get any worse than it is right now - although maybe that's just wishful thinking. I mean, I can take a full hit now and not feel a thing for the most part, nothing more than my head getting snapped from it."
He said nothing in response.
Not at first anyways, as he continued to trace his fingers over her cheek and let her story settle with him.
But something about his actions didn't sit with her.
"Did you just pinch my cheek?" Sonya questioned.
"I thought you said you couldn't feel anything?" Kenshi queried in response.
"I can't," she reminded, before she pinched the back of his hand. "But I felt it here."
"Oh."
"This must be how it feels when you say you can't see anything," she lightly mocked.
Kenshi gave a laugh before he leaned in once more and brushed his lips against her forehead.
And for the time, Sonya let herself sink into the gesture, into the moment, savoring the quiet between them.
It wasn't easy for her to open up to people, especially not about her own weaknesses.
Any leaked health issue could be turned around and used against her at any given time.
"Is this your secret then, General?" he questioned.
"No, that was just the set up actually," Sonya corrected, as she pulled away from him now. "There's more to it, unfortunately."
"We have time."
They didn't really, but the idea of it was nice.
"You're committed," she chuckled.
"It's late, or early, depending on how you look at it," Kenshi replied. "I would like to make the most of the hour."
It was almost four now, actually.
She didn't see them sparring after this, so perhaps he had a point.
"Alright, if you insist," Sonya spoke. "After getting hit by Sindel and then Scorpion, the optic nerve in my eye was pretty much shot. I took medication and whatever else I needed to to relieve the pressure, and that did the job - for a while, anyways. It had been getting worse in the past few years though. I was getting a lot of headaches most days, migraines once a week it seemed - all of them focused around my eye. My vision was going in and out more and more each month. And then last year, I lost full vision in my right eye."
She felt Kenshi squeeze her hand once more.
"It had been a long time coming, but it was still pretty scary when it actually happened," she continued. "I've been keeping the whole thing under wraps for now. I get criticized enough in this position; I don't want anyone to have a legal standing on me for once. I know that sounds awful. I'm putting a lot of people at risk by hiding this, but it's been a year now and no one's even noticed a change, so it clearly doesn't affect my work. I try not to drive much these days, which isn't difficult seeing as I have a convoy that takes me wherever I need to go - and it's not like I go anywhere else between bases."
Admittedly, she had fitted her personal truck with some new features that helped with her depth perception issue.
She didn't drive at night anymore and she kept to places that she knew, that were routine.
"I wear a colored contact to hide it since the eye started to get that milky look to it, and it's virtually impossible to tell the difference," Sonya remarked. "As far as I can tell, no one has seen a change in me, and as of now, you're the only other person who knows."
There was a look on Kenshi's face that said he understood where she was coming from.
And why she had trusted him with the information in confidence, in solidarity.
It was just a fraction of a subject that he himself knew well.
"If you have any jokes, go ahead and get them out of the way," Sonya spoke, getting ahead of the topic.
"And ruin your beautiful confession?" Kenshi remarked, humoring himself with a chuckle.
He moved both of his hands to cradle her face, before he pulled her in to him, bringing her lips to his own now.
Sonya softly hummed behind the kiss as she lingered in the touch before she brought her hands to his face and pulled him in just the same.
It was brief and gentle, lasting just as long as it needed to, before Kenshi pulled away and brushed his lips against her forehead once more.
"You trusted me with this secret," he spoke, "- and for that I am grateful."
"I figured it was something we partly have in common now," Sonya replied, as she pulled away from him once more.
She felt Kenshi move a hand to brush against her cheek, before he trailed it downward and tucked it underneath her chin.
He lifted it slightly, tilting her head back as he did.
"The One-Eyed man is King-"
Sonya dug her knuckles into his chest at the words, cutting him off before he could finish them.
"I had to, you cannot fault me for that," Kenshi laughed.
"You are asking the wrong woman for forgiveness," Sonya reminded, although the remark still got a chuckle out of her. She leaned back now and moved her hands to brace behind her. "Well, now that that's over with, I'm going to chalk this session up to being done. I know it's only..." she paused to check her watch, "- four in the morning, but I think that's early enough to call it quits."
"Quits on the training, or quits on the day?"
"Right now I'm leaning towards the day, but I need to check my schedule and see what I signed myself up for," she replied.
Wishful thinking, anyways.
There was no time for days off in this position.
"You should sign yourself up for a shower and some sleep," Kenshi remarked.
"That does sound nice," Sonya agreed. "Why don't you join me? I could use some... tips on navigation."
"I can do that."