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Yoru was always cold, a result of constantly teetering on the edge of the rift. He'd curled himself under blankets, but they provided no warmth. It was late in the night, or more likely early in the morning, yet the riftwalker lay awake, alone in his room. Lately, he found himself holed up there much more frequently. He hadn’t been himself in a while and his usual confident demeanor had noticeably diminished. He no longer partook in friendly competition or banter. On the rare occasion he did leave his room, he opted for silent avoidance. Ryo sat up, figuring it best if he left his room, lest he go insane or be deemed completely anti-social. He figured no one would be out this time of night anyways, still, the prospect of being perceived weighed heavy. The bright neon clock read 2:46, too early for Skye to be up on her runs, too late for most of the night owls of Valorant to be up. If anyone still was, they'd likely be hard at work, a ways away from the community space of the protocol. Ryo rolled out of bed, realizing just how freezing he was. He made sure he was relatively presentable in case he ran into someone. He figured he'd stretch his legs, get a snack, and return to his room. When he got to the shared kitchen, he flipped on the lights, which yielded a yelp from somewhere across the room. He turned to the sound to see Fade, shielding her eyes with one hand, holding a mug of coffee in the other. "Fucking hell, not all of us are trying to go blind at three in the morning," they said, harsher than they'd intended.
"Sorry. Didn't realize anyone would be here," the riftwalker responded apologetically.
"Can you turn off the lights?" they asked sheepishly, "Please?"
As a result of her radiance, Fade was able to see in the dark, and even preferred it, so when Yoru turned the lights off, she responded with a small thank you. Yoru was perfectly capable of seeing in the dark himself, so he didn't mind accommodating Fade's preference. Upon turning the lights off, Yoru was met with a pair of glowing eyes, one blue and the other almost golden.
Fade was one of the few people in the protocol who Yoru could tolerate, and he had much in common with the bounty hunter. The two of them were rather introverted, but Ryo enjoyed Hazal’s company. His fellow agents didn’t share this sentiment, and were often quite cruel to them. Sure, the others had a right to be scared after the events in Istanbul, but all Fade really did was defend herself. Even after they’d surrendered and joined the protocol, they were still treated poorly. Naturally, she isolated herself. If only they’d given her the time of day, or rather night, like Yoru had, they’d find she was quite sweet.
"So what's keeping you up at…" Fade paused to check her watch, "two fifty-three in the morning?"
"I could ask you the same" Yoru responded impatiently, not quite one for small talk.
"Nightmare" Fade answered.
"You? I always assumed you'd never had one in your life" the riftwalker said, surprised that the one person capable of manipulating fears was plagued with their own.
"Ironic, I know. Fade the Living Nightmare can't sleep without getting a bad dream," They said with something between embarrassment and annoyance. "Really I can't risk sleeping much at all" She paused. "Too much of a chance one of my nightmares will manifest, and i'll end up hurting someone and the last thing I need is to give them another reason to-" They froze.
"You were saying?" Ryo asked
"Boşver. Doesn't matter" Fade responded dryly "I think I'm gonna head back to my room." They turned to leave, and added a "Nice talking to you" on their way out.
When Hazal left, Yoru returned to the original reason he'd come here. Turning to the fridge, he took a look inside, but most of the foods had labels with some variation of 'don't touch' on them. There was one container of Tala's adobo that she'd made for everyone to share and some sort of unlabeled stew Efia had made far too much of, but he wasn't sure he felt like eating something like that, or really eating at all now that he thought about it. He resigned to that fact and just made himself some tea and headed back to his room.
He must've fallen asleep, because he woke up to the sound of an alarm over the loudspeakers. He was still in the clothes of the day prior so he made a beeline to the door. Upon exiting his room he saw Astra exiting, somehow looking flawless as ever in a matching violet pajama set and bonnet, decorated with little gold stars. From the room to his left was KJ, who looked as if she hadn't actually slept at all that night. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd been working or gaming. All up and down the hall, people looked utterly exhausted, save for Skye who was noticeably awake and was likely about to leave for her run, Jett who had gotten up to join Skye, and Sova, who just had a healthy enough schedule that it wouldn't affect him much to miss some sleep. Some of the higher ups were missing, likely the ones who called the meeting in the first place. They'd made it clear that it was urgent, so he rushed out of his room and down the housing hallway to where meetings were held.
The agents quickly filed into the mission control. He took the first open seat, which unfortunately happened to be between Raze and Chamber. He didn’t dislike Raze, but he could absolutely not deal with her seemingly endless energy this early in the morning. He was more bothered by Chamber, so he opted to ignore the man when he greeted him good morning. They got along fine initially, but interacting with Chamber had become increasingly tiring for Ryo.
The meeting began before some of them had even sat down, and lasted no more than five minutes, but Yoru was too tired to follow the conversation. He watched a handful of agents rush to the armory, but the majority lingered, sleepily filing out of mission control, complaining about having been woken up. After the meeting had ended, he approached Sage to catch him up on what he'd missed. She gently chastised him for not having listened, but explained that a team of Omega Earth agents had attacked a major shipment of radianite and they needed to send a team to intercept them immediately. "They've totally got this 'cause Tala's with them" Jett added, as she passed by.
Returning to his room, he passed Fade, coffee in hand, her fourth of the day, despite it only being five in the morning. They usually reached most people’s upper threshold for caffeine consumption by eight. It was completely valid, though, as neither of them could have possibly gotten more than an hour and a half of sleep. He gave a small wave.
Turning down the hall, he came face to face, or rather face to chest, on account of Yoru’s short stature, with Chamber. He stammered an apology, stumbling over his words. Chamber laughed, but there was no malice in it, but it enraged Yoru nonetheless. "No need to apologize, mon ami. It's been quite a while since we've spoken, no?"
"Wow, I hadn’t noticed. I was just leaving, so," He attempted to push past Vincent, but the taller man took a step to the side, blocking him.
"Are you well, Ryo?" Chamber asked, "You’ve been rather distant."
"I’m fantastic," he stated dryly. Yoru had absolutely no interest in entertaining this conversation. He had no interest in any conversation, but especially not this one. To Yoru, Vincent Fabron was a pompous, arrogant asshole.
Chamber laughed. This man was driving Ryo insane. "Yoru, are you even listening?" He asked
"I wasn't." Yoru stated harshly.
"Ah,” He pursed his lips, taken aback by Ryo’s response. “What I had asked was if you'd be free to,” he paused "get out of that room of yours some time?"
"I’m out of my room right now, aren’t I?” He glared at Chamber.
"That you are!" Chamber smiled, trying to ease the tension Yoru was insistent on creating. “Please consider my invitation. We all miss spending time with you.”
"Well I was planning on going back to sleep, but maybe later," Yoru said dismissively.
"It just so happens that the higher-ups have cleared all our schedules for this afternoon, on account of the wake up call. A few of us were planning to meet somewhere off base tonight, if you'd like to join us. My treat!" The sentinel said with a smirk, clearly unaffected by Yoru’s sour attitude.
Chamber was fairly popular with most of his fellow agents. Even the few who he didn’t mesh with still appreciated his wallet enough to tolerate his company. After all, Chamber was usually the one paying the tabs of post-victory dinners and pub crawls. Yoru lacked the social stamina for such events. There were a few agents he was close with, and he was happy with that number, but one night out couldn't hurt. He hadn’t gone out with the others in a while. He hadn’t isolated himself long enough to warrant being missed, had he? "Yoru, are you alright?" Chamber asked, pulling Yoru out of his thoughts.
Yoru nodded. "Just thinking." He paused. Chamber motioned as if he was expecting an answer to the invitation. “I’ll sleep on it.” Yoru replied curtly, pushing past the sentinel and silently returning to his room.