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Sova is given the prosthesis the day he signs with Valorant.
Four hours into orientation, he is pulled aside by a masked man in a wide-brimmed hat, led into an examination room, and put through an onslaught of blood tests and body scans.
The hardest part wasn’t sitting through the exams. The prosthesis came with it’s own entourage of paperwork. Waivers, consent forms, liability releases. Funny, he thinks. He’d imagined that joining a top-secret paramilitary organization might've absolved him from administrative tedium. The whole process had Kingdom written all over it: layers of legal insulation, built for a worse case scenario someone high above had clearly planned for.
He signs anyways, without much protest. A little banality is a fair trade for the restoration of his sight. Besides, Sova has never put much time into wondering who signed off on his paychecks. He’s never been the type to voice his questions about where, or who, his orders came from. Questions led to complications, and complications led to dissent — and dissent impedes action. It was this easygoing nature that made him a brilliant soldier, the sort that superiors trusted with difficult, high-stakes assignments because they knew he would carry them out with little complaint.
The surgery takes a total of three hours. When he comes to, the world is whole and panoramic again. He blinks hard, adjusting to the novelty of having something cold and metal sit against the flesh of his right eye socket. It’ll take some getting used to, the masked man tells him, as if it was an afterthought and not the understatement of his life.
The man hovers around him for a couple days following the installation, closely observing his movements and recalibrating as needed. In the coming weeks, Sova would know him by the callsign of Cypher, Valorant’s resident spymaster. They would be frequently partnered for reconnaissance work that demanded patience, precision, and restraint — qualities both men possessed in abundance.
But the similarities ended there. He develops a quiet disdain for Cypher’s conduct. More than once, Sova holds his tongue when he sees Cypher linger over the corpses they tended to leave behind. Not to confirm the kill, but to pocket personal keepsakes before moving on. He says nothing about it each time, even though the habit fills him with disgust. The dead deserve dignity, even if they had spent their final moments trying to off him. He couldn’t make sense of what Cypher gets out of it beyond personal satisfaction. And satisfaction, in his opinion, has no place in war.
--------
The first time he breaks his implant, it’s completely by accident. He had intercepted an attack meant for Skye at the last minute. The ensuing fight involved him plunging face-first into the corner of a concrete barrier, leaving his right eye swollen and bruised. Hours later, back in the safety of the bunker, he realized he could not see beyond a few gauzy blurs inches in front of him.
Removing the implant wasn’t pleasant. Cypher peels the thin bloated skin of his eyelid back, clicking his tongue in disapproval once he saw the damage.
“May I ask how this happened?” There is palpable disappointment in Cypher’s voice — the same disappointment reserved for when a tripwire or camera gets destroyed.
“Skirmish.” Sova shrugs. He had no intention of telling the spy any more information. Cypher could read the debrief if he was so interested in details.
Cypher wipes down a pair of forceps with disinfectant. When he finishes, he raises a hand towards Sova’s face in silent request. Sova nods. Cypher steadies his jaw with a firm grip.
“Hold still.”
The pain is agonizing, but nothing like the first time he lost his eye. Blood and tears flowed freely down his face as Cypher tugged and yanked at the offending object. Sova digs his fingers in his thighs. He can take this, he thinks.
When the implant is finally freed, Cypher lets out a hiss of resignation, gently placing the broken piece on a plastic dish.
“You should be more careful.” Cypher says.
“I had no other option.” Sova wipes his face with the edge of his sleeve. His shirt was already ruined anyways. Blood dotted edges of the collar, while sweat pooled at his back.
“Go to Sage.” Cypher cleans his hands with a towel. “I’ll have your implant fixed by the week.”
He doesn’t go to Sage, but she finds him regardless, descending upon him in the surveillance room with worry etched across her face. Despite the healer’s protests, he assures her with his most disarming smile that it wasn’t anything life-threatening or obstructive, and that her energy was better saved for others instead. Realizing that the argument was futile, Sage folds a pack of painkillers into his palm and closes his fingers around it, lingering a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
--------
Months later, he breaks his implant a second time during a routine training exercise. It was a matter of bad timing and bad luck more than anything — a polymer round ricocheting at exactly the wrong angle as he rounded the corner. Before he knew it, Sova was flat on his back against the cold carbon steel floor, field of vision cut in half.
Fortunately, there had been no witnesses to his mistake. Sova slams the reset button with more vitriol than necessary, erasing the training logs and stored recordings before swiftly whisking himself to Cypher’s lab.
“Again?” Cypher unfurls the usual belt of instruments needed for the procedure. “I’m starting to think you enjoy being around me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Sova says flatly. “I would not be here if I had a choice.”
“You're racking up quite a debt.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Sova catches the faint twitch of Cypher’s mask. The bastard was laughing at him. Whatever shred of gratitude he had towards the spy for repairing his hardware evaporates on the spot. He makes a mental note to hand the engineering schematics for his prosthetic to Killjoy the next time he sees her.
“I’ll repay you.”
“You don’t even know what my price is.”
“I’ll repay you.” He says again, firmly.
Cypher sighs, then throws up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll need to write this up.”
Sova rubs the finer points of his fingers against his temple, feeling the undulating beginnings of an inevitable headache. Cypher is right. This incident, no matter how minor, had to be reported. The loss of his implant meant he would be decommissioned for days.
Idiot, he chastises himself.
Sure enough, when the writeup reaches Brimstone, Sova is ushered into rounds and rounds of additional testing. Although injuries were far too common in their line of work, this was the second time in a year his prosthesis broke. A mechanical defect wasn’t out of the question. Neurological assessments, dexterity drills — he goes through the motions without much fuss. When the results come up inconclusive, Viper hypothesizes he may be overcompensating on his right side, now that the cybernetic enhanced his depth and scope.
The next time he trains, he focuses on aiming with his left eye.
--------
His nightmares begin to take on new shape once Fade arrives. They are no longer hazy memories distorted by his subconscious, but intrusive, alien thoughts that feel less like dreams than borrowed experiences.
In his dreams, he is blind. He knows he’s blind because he can still discern the environment by his other senses: the smell of copper, the sharp whistle of sonic arrows, the bite of glacial air and static prickling at his skin. Most overwhelming of all, a deep, unshakable fear that something is terribly wrong.
There was no shortage of fresh horrors to supply his dreamscapes. Sova had learned to handle them well. More often than not, he couldn’t even remember what he had dreamed about. Waking up, drenched in sweat and instinctively fumbling for the light switch was new.
Sova knows its not Fade’s fault. She can’t control her radiance as much as it controls her. He tries to be cordial to her when they run into each other — as if being kind to the Nightmare’s host will lessen its impact on him.
Fade spends a non-insignificant amount of time in Cypher’s workshop. During the occasional late night kitchen excursion, he would see her saunter out of the den, two mugs in hand.
Sova never inquires on the nature of their relationship. Still, he can’t dislodge the pinprick of insecurity when the pair shows up with new intel.
He spends more time training. This time blindfolded, running drills alone before dawn, forcing himself to navigate by instinct and sound. He disables the camera before each run and restores the course to its original state after, with a carefulness that borders on obsessive.
It’s risky, sure. If a bot lands a lucky shot — as one already has before — there would be no one to stop the simulation or pull him out. One mistake, and he’d be effectively stranded on the floor until someone finds him.
Still, he tells himself it’s another occupational hazard. Better to gamble with his own safety in the dark than on the field.
--------
In Icebox, he hunts the doppelgänger through a maze of frozen shipping containers until he finds him crouched behind a stack of crates, bowstring drawn, poised to strike. Sova doesn’t bother raising his gun. Instead, he swiftly lunges at him with his knife, easily closing the distance in seconds.
The doppelgänger catches the blade meant for his gut at the last second with his left hand, locking Sova in place and driving a fist into his jaw. Pain blossoms where the hit had landed, but Sova presses on, head-butting into the bridge of his nose until he hears bone snap.
The fight descends into something ugly and primal. Fists, elbows, knees — two bodies tangled together like a grotesque chimera. It feels good, really, beating the shit out of each other like this. It’s not like either man was unarmed. Sova’s own Sheriff was holstered and well within reach. The only thing stopping him from taking it and efficiently putting a bullet in the other man is because he knows this hurts more.
But discipline prevails over fury. At last, Sova sees the opening he’s been waiting for: overcommitting to a counterstrike, shoulders turning a fraction too far right. Sova feints before dropping beneath the counter, feeding the blade into the Achilles tendon before hacking at the second.
Omega Sova collapses, falling to his hands and knees as his legs fold beneath him. Up close, Sova can see that the resemblance was imperfect. His double had inherited his father’s brown eyes, a stark contrast to his own pale blue.
The differences were comforting, or at the very least, enough to make the next part easier. All the adrenaline from the fight seemed to have ebbed in a heartbeat, leaving only a thin, unwavering line of resentment.
Sova seizes a fistful of hair and yanks the doppelgänger’s head back.
“You look good like this.”
The double spits a globule of blood and phlegm at his feet.
“Fuck you.”
My, he hasn’t heard anyone curse at him in Russian in years. A faint sneer tugs at the corner of his mouth. In one fluid motion, he slips the knife right beneath the prosthetic and carves around the curvature of the orbit. The angle is familiar. He knows exactly where to insert the blade, how far to twist before the resistance gave way.
The implant comes free with a wet crunch. Omega Sova howls in pain, clutching the divot now marring his face. Bright arterial blood seeps through his fingers.
“Watch your mouth, or I’ll cut out your tongue next.” Sova responds in kind, wiping the viscera off his blade on his vest.
There was a time when he would have called this cruelty. But looking down at the writhing man beneath him, he feels strangely calm. It’s as though some old imbalance in the world finally got around to correcting itself. He lets the scene play out, listening to the doppelgänger’s breathing degrade into ragged gurgles. Sova waits and waits, until resistance gave way to resignation. Only then does he drive the knife cleanly through the mirror of his own throat.
--------
When Sova returns to headquarters, the first thing he does is bring the implant to Cypher.
“Repayment.” He sets the artificial eye on the table. It takes all of his willpower to not smash the damn thing.
Bits of blood and brain matter still clung onto the outer rim, forming a blackened mold around the sclera. Cypher is not at all fazed by the gore, nor is he surprised to see Sova in front of him.
“Taking trophies now, are we?” Cypher says, with a hint of smugness.
Sova ignores him. “The transmitter is in tact. Find out what was recorded on it.”
With no intention of lingering around the other man any longer, he turns to leave.
“Sova.”
He pauses. “Yes?”
“Come here.” Cypher taps the edge of the table, motioning for him to sit.
The spy is already moving towards the cabinets, pulling out a heavy looking bag he doesn’t recognize. It isn’t until he sees the telltale white cross ironed into the canvas that Sova understands, and complies.
“Take your armor off.”
Slowly, he unbuckles the straps of his shoulder plate, then the vest, then the harness, letting everything fall to the floor, until he was just in his undershirt and slacks. Blood had dried in great dark sheets across his gear and clothes. On a different day, he might’ve been more mindful of the mess he was leaving in someone else’s space.
“Adding it to my tab?”
“Consider it on the house.” Cypher chuckles. “I know you weren’t planning on going to Sage.”
Once again, there is a steady hand cupping his face. The ritual feels all too familiar now. Cypher dabs antiseptic on a deep cut above his cheek, just where his old scar began. It is a clean hurt, a predictable hurt, that lights up his nerves. Cypher has never once offered him anything for the pain, nor has he ever asked.
“You didn’t need to do this. It wasn’t part of the objective.”
“No. But it was an opportunity for intelligence.”
Cypher threads the needle with practiced ease, closing the loop in one smooth, economical motion. Sova squeezes his eyes shut.
The first suture under his skin is cold and smooth. All he could think about is how easily his flesh gave away to the bite of metal. For a second, it’s not a needle at all — it’s the knife, sliding in without protest, tearing through muscle and tendon until it found what it came for.
Cypher doesn’t apologize when he tugs particularly hard at a stitch, coaxing the split edges of the skin neatly closed so it won’t leave another scar. A small gasp escapes Sova’s throat before he can stop it.
His eyes snap open, wildly searching for reprieve. The first thing he finds is the blue glow of Cypher’s lens, unwavering, unreadable.
“Hold still.” Cypher murmurs.
A few feet away, the prosthesis sits where he left it, abandoned by the spy in favor of tending to his wounds. Blood has dried into the table beneath it. The glass aperture is untouched, the pupil intact and perfect. He’s almost certain it’s engineered exactly like his own.
Sova’s heart is pounding. Everything he’d been carrying seems to have wedged itself behind his ribs. His hands ball into fists, fingernails cutting half-moons into his palms. Without meaning to, he bucks against Cypher’s grip, fervently trying to recoil from something that isn’t in the room.
He’s going insane, he thinks. Today’s finally going to be the day he loses it. His chest’s wound way too tight, every breath arriving too much and not enough. Of course he’s seen this before — back in his military days, and even now after a particularly bad battle. His hand finds the other man’s forearm before he could think twice, fingers curling into the cool leather until it shriveled. There’s no doubt Cypher knows what was happening now.
The spy says nothing — just resettles his hold, thumb pressing firmer beneath Sova’s chin to keep his head steady.
The spasm passes as quickly as it comes. When the last knot is tied, Sova’s mostly back in control. Cypher dabs the fresh stitches with clean gauze before covering them with dressing, smoothing the flimsy medical tape in place.
“What did it feel like?” Cypher says quietly, motioning for Sova to roll up his sleeve so he could inspect the cut on his forearm.
Sova frowned. “Like I was doing my job.”
“I’m not asking about killing him.”
What had it felt like? Reaching into a face that mirrored his own and taking something out of it? He still hasn’t found the shape of that answer. But what he recalls is that it was easy — too easy. The eye had all but slipped from its socket on its own. Was that what Cypher felt each time he removed the implant? In the moment, his hand had known exactly where to go, like a motion he’d done a hundred times before.
“I did the right thing.” He can’t quite fight the laugh that comes with it.
Cypher looks at him questioningly, then pulls the bandage tight on his forearm.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but this won’t end well.” His voice was gentle, almost pitying, which annoys Sova for some reason he can’t fathom.
“Don’t lecture me.” Sova mumbles, distant and watery. “You, of all people, should not be giving advice.”
They sit in silence after that, nothing filling the space but the soft scrape of gauze against skin.
--------
The third time he loses his eye, it isn’t only his eye that is lost.
He’d been nursing his third drink of the night, fondly turning over the possibility of a fourth. The liquor had settled into a pleasant warmth in his gut, softening the edges of a rare, quiet evening.
The arrow took him through the left side of his face before he even registered it. Before he knew it, he was pitched backward in the chair, wood splintering as his body hit the ground.
For several contextless seconds, there is nothing. His limbs seize without permission, an evolutionary oversight rocking his system on its way out. When he comes to, there is copper and bile in his mouth. The world has gone the color of an oil spill — edges swimming, nothing where it should be.
Somewhere above him, voices shout unintelligibly. He can barely make out the pale flickers of muzzle flash darting back and forth, too nebulous to comprehend. He tries to shout, to reorient himself, but the noises that come out of his mouth aren’t human, much less language.
Sova drags himself forward. There is no strategy behind it, just the most basal part of his brain insisting on finding cover. His vision is now quickly dissolving into black. Something disturbing and hot runs down his face with every pull. The air scrapes his esophagus going in, until each breath feels like dragging glass instead of oxygen. By the time his back meets concrete, he is barely in control.
He can feel the arrowhead shift somewhere behind his eye. There’s a sequence of actions he’s supposed to take — he’s trained for this — but the memory won’t hold still long enough to grasp. In its absence, there is fear: raw, primal, self-propagating. He tries to count to ten, his last reflexes reaching for an easy tether, but the numbers slip through his hands like water.
The last thing he understands is the arrow tearing from his face.
--------
Light spills all around him. Clean, bright, holy. Something warm swells on the side of his head, not painful, but uncomfortable enough that he tries to protest. He hears a woman’s voice above him, feels a dry palm smoothing out his forehead. Some part of his broken brain thinks that it’s his mother, comforting him in a particularly bad bout of illness. He wants to grab the hand and tell her that it’s alright — he doesn’t need to be coddled like this, but can’t seem to muster up the energy to move.
He decides the best course of action is to go back to sleep.
--------
Consciousness returns to him in pieces. It was as if he had awoken from a very long dream. The first thing he does is catalogue the damage on his body: a dull ache in his bones, a throbbing pain on the side of his skull, ticking in tandem with his pulse. A second heartbeat living where it shouldn’t.
“Welcome back.”
A familiar voice raises anchors him into focus. Cypher is seated beside the bed, a tablet balanced in his lap.
“How long was I gone?” Speaking feels like dragging his voice through and acrid desert. He licks his lips, trying to void the bitterness from his mouth.
“Three days.” Cypher says. “Do you remember what happened?”
It doesn’t take much time to surmise that he’d died. Sova runs through the mental checklist. Name, last known date and time, location. Five objects in the room. Everything arrives, eventually.
Resurrection after head trauma was never straightforward. Distantly, he recalls someone explaining the risks. Neural tissue could be physically reconstructed, but mental recovery was unpredictable. Memory loss, changes in temperament, slowed cognition. The brain was excellent at keeping alive, not for counting the cost.
He swallows hard, nausea rising up against his wishes. Cypher silently proffers a basin. Control was always difficult after coming back; none of the agents judged each other for it.
“I was at the sanctuary…” Sova says hoarsely. “There was an attack.”
Cypher nods, satisfied. Snippets of what happened return in uneven flashes — the warmth of the night, the spirits, the laughter, and then —
Instinctively, he reaches for his right eye, only to find the surrounding area unblemished. The prosthesis sits exactly where it should be, whole and intact. Confused, he reaches again.
Out of the corner of his vision, he sees Cypher shake his head.
Realization lands at once. The doppelgänger had gone for the left eye this time. He refuses to entertain the disquiet that rises in his chest. What if Sage hadn’t been able to save it? What would he do then?
“We pulled the footage,” Cypher sets the tablet aside, just out of Sova’s reach. “It was an ambush by Omega.”
Sova tries to retrace the night. He’d been the first one lit, and possibly the first one taken out. He struggles to recall the exact memory: the arrow finding him mid-thought with cold indifference, the dense envelope of Viper's poison. He had been the warning shot, a signal of the massacre to come.
And his team… God. His team had been there. He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. The act of remembering intensifies the throbbing in his skull, giving way to a different type of hurt entirely.
“The others. How are they?”
“Fine,” The other man’s expression was unreadable. “Rattled, but fine. You’re the one everyone’s worried about.”
Sova furrows his brows. “They shouldn’t be.”
He tries to sit up, rolling to his side with his elbow, but Cypher’s hand presses flat against his shoulder blade.
“Stop.”
For the first time, there’s a unmistakable edge in Cypher’s voice. Real frustration, threatening enough that Sova freezes. He’s never heard it before. Not during crises, not under fire, and certainly not directed at him. It’s enough to trigger his vigilance.
“You died, Sova. Do you understand? For three days. Sage had a hard time pulling you back. We weren’t even sure you’d come back whole. And the first thing out of your mouth is that no one should be worried.”
“What do you want me to say?” Sova says through gritted teeth. “He —“
He caught me with a drink in my hand. He slaughtered my team and I couldn’t do anything about it.
Cypher sighs, tension releasing in his shoulders.
“You know, I’ve always considered you to be a measured man. Someone who calculates the consequences before taking action.”
The sentence is an accusation, and they both know it. There might've been a version of him, once, who would fit the description. Someone who carried his duties with integrity, who would never have gouged another man’s eye out before killing him, and who certainly wouldn’t have felt better for it afterwards. Somewhere between the first time he saw his own reflection staring back at him, and however many times since, that person had slipped away — phased out like a trait that was no longer worth preserving. By the time he noticed, there was nothing left to grieve.
“I don’t know,” He says, something dangerously close to a crack working into his voice. “He won’t stop, Cypher. This only ends when one of us wins.”
He can’t bear to face the other man right now. How pathetic he's become. Valorant's golden boy — reliable, perfect Sova — reduced to a facsimile that wasn't quite right, that he didn't know how to fix. How does he explain that every time he looks in the mirror, he sees the man he despises? How does he explain that every incursion alert makes his pulse quicken with something closer to hunger than dread?
He isn’t even sure where the wanting-to-protect ends and the wanting-to-hurt begins — if there’s even a line between the two at all, or if he’d invented one just so he’d have somewhere to stand. That’s the part that frightens him the most: not the hatred, not the anger, but how much harder it’s gotten to say with certainty who he is.
The room is hollow and quiet and white. He’s wrapped in clean linen, surrounded by the steady whirring of monitors and rows of empty beds waiting for the next inevitable tragedy. Here, there is nowhere to hide. This is what’s left of him after the battle, when everything’s been stripped away.
His breath hitches, and something in his face must have finally given way, because Cypher lays a hand over his. The gesture is so unexpected, so kind, that Sova almost pulls away, some old reflex telling him that to be touched is to be hurt, and nothing gentler than that. And yet, the warmth is so hopelessly human, that some starved part of him leans into it anyway, before the rest of him decides whether he’s allowed to.
“…Does it ever go away?” Sova stares blankly at the wall.
“No.” Cypher says. “No, it doesn’t. But you find ways to get through it.”
“Is that what you did?”
Cypher says nothing and squeezes his hand.
“Get some rest, Sova.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Somewhere behind his ribs, the hunger is still there, patient as ever. It’ll give him the strength to live. It’ll give him the strength to fight.