legionworld | [OPEN] You were lying on your back in the grass, counting backward from a thousand

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[OPEN] You were lying on your back in the grass, counting backward from a thousand

Who| Azúcar (Sombra) and you!
What| Hangin' out on the beach, getting drunk, being miserable and coping like an adult
Where| Sombra's section of the Habitat Deck
When| after the events of Silent Horizon
Warnings/Notes| possible talk about body horror and/or death, depending on the conversation

PROMPT A

Azúcar is harder to spot these days, following the events of the Silent Horizon. Most of her time— nearly all of it, in fact— is spent in the relative safety of her biome: a quiet shoreline, warmed by salted breezes even at night, when the lights of a nearby city's somewhat distant buildings cast a golden glow along breaking waves.

Before she'd left, she kept to the ruined industrial building hidden away behind foliage on the cliffs above the beach - that seemingly abandoned safehouse the only reason she'd constructed this illusion in the first place. Practicality over sentimentality. Now she wanders closer to the edges of the city limits where the sand bleeds off into stone and dated cement: each time she crosses the threshold, passing out of bounds for the plot given to her by the Legion, the mirage fades. It didn't used to be that this place was Dorado, the city she left behind. She thought she was immune to missing the familiar, that she was better than everyone else somehow. Less prone to that kind of vulnerability. Now she just thinks she wants to buy out someone else's biome. Expand her own with the closest Legionnaire's and get lost in the old city streets.

Ah well.

Barefoot, sporting a cutoff shirt from New Vegas and a pair of weathered, second-hand shorts, pulling a long, long drink from the bottle of tequila in hand, Sombra's perched on a rock near the city's edge, staring up into the warm glow of lit windows with a look that's entirely impossible to read. Longing, maybe.

How miserably fallible.

And so for that fact alone, every few minutes or so, she picks up another shell, another pebble, another cork from another opened bottle, and throws it out of bounds, watching it vanish from sight with a little virtual hiss.

PROMPT B

Most of her injuries have already been taken care of. No scars, no lingering damage; the Legion was thorough enough with their checkups once they peeled off the shuttle for all the follow-ups and debriefings. It's her cybernetics she was touchier about, quicker to hide: and aside from looking obviously damaged to anyone with a pair of eyes, the full depth of what that means for her is a problem too easily overlooked for the average medic, too easily (stubbornly) ignored by Sombra herself, when all she wants to do is coil around the idea of control over her own space, her own assets and resources for better— and in this case, albeit temporarily— for worse.

The skin around her spinal implants and ports is scorched from heat, reddened and raw from impact, though it's harder to notice in comparison to burned out circuitry and dulled metal.

She waits until the tide's in (all artificial programming), when it's quiet and she's alone, to slink down into the water and soak— sinking in up to her neck beneath the waves. Eyes shut, hair loose and coiled around her shoulders to light the water immediately around her, turning it a pale, luminescent blue. It's a small comfort for that incessant ache, but it's hers.

That said, the water's nice. The beach is warm, set up with a few crates full of beer and tequila and a lone parasol surrounded by laid out towels. No one would blame you for diving in with her— or maybe just setting up camp in the sand.

WILDCARD

[Want something more specific? Need a reason to sit by the ocean and chill, want to snoop around the outskirts of that ugly old industrial building instead of the very brilliant, beautiful shoreline? Feel free to run with whatever works best if you've got an idea in mind, or hit me up at ladyavali!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She breathes out sharply at the tail end, the start of a laugh that doesn't quite clear; wouldn't fit even if it did, eyes lifting up briefly towards the sky overhead before flicking right back towards him. "Ya lo sé, mijo, I felt it."

It's humor, black and bleak, shifting around to drag the focus off of him once again as she wraps her arms casually around her knees.

"So..." This time it's her stare that hits the horizon, distant and equally as pensive. "What's your purpose now?"

"Fighting is all I know. I've tried to leave it behind, but..."

To say results had been poor, trying to re-enter civilian life, would have been an understatement. Wu had seen it, had known his talents needed to be put to use somewhere. If he had stayed, perhaps things would have been different.

His gaze remains on her even as her own flits away, and it's with some relief that he sees he wasn't entirely mistaken about her.

"I'm still searching. I thought the Legion might be what I was looking for, but I'm not so certain of that anymore."

He isn't alone in that. Even having only just arrived a few weeks ago she's already felt unrest seeping into both the minds of the public and other Legionnaires.

The more missions fall through, the deeper that divide will grow; she's seen it all before.

"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" As always with Sombra, no matter how sudden her subject changes are, there's generally a point to it. Still, for now she reaches over without waiting for a chance to let him answer, pulling another long sip from the bottle before holding it out to him.

"Do you know where we are, Soldado?"

He surrenders the bottle willingly before truly taking in their surroundings. The beach, the city behind them. Most here choose places for their biome that are familiar to them, a small piece of home.

"Is this the city you're from?"

He has no hope of naming the actual city, of course. Earth was never home to him.

"This is as close as I can get to it." It can't be Dorado. In even testing the water with Jack she'd drawn suspicion: reaffirming that here? It'd kill everything she's planning. Especially with Ana Amari and Lena prowling around.

"Beautiful but...fake."

"My name is not Azúcar." Her shoulders roll in a shrug, one nail tapped pointedly against the bottle in her hand. "But I think you knew that already, didn't you?"

No more than Locus was his true name. But choosing names is a topic he's very familiar with, and she could have any number of reasons for taking on the one she did.

Locus nods once. "Most of us here use a code name. I assumed it was the same for you."

"When I was little, I had no family, no home. In order to survive, I adapted. Learned how to break into the tightest locked systems before anyone could catch me. It was in my blood." She was damn good at it, there was proof enough in her success.

A pause lingering in the air when she finishes off another long pull, grounding herself in the sting of it.

"And then one day, someone was better than the girl that worked out of a garage on the streets. Powerful people, that didn't like someone making their secrets public or using them to fight for freedom." Los Muertos were thugs, criminals, but they gave people a means to fight back and revolt. Something Overwatch and its former agents could never understand.

"They wanted to control me, Locus. I had to disappear.

And when I came here, I had to do the same thing all over again." Looking at him then is like measuring the safety of a lifeline: how much weight she can lean onto it before it snaps.

"You want to know why I kept you alive? It's because I can't do this alone, mijo. The Legion say they want to help people but even if that's true, it isn't going to work if someone isn't making sure we're not being manipulated."

She isn't invincible— she's far, far from it. And despite being adept at escaping, disappearing, eventually all roads end.

If there's any cause he can sympathize with, it's that. He has no desire to be someone's puppet ever again. She has the skills and the will to do what she says, of that he has no question.

But no one can do it alone.

In order to function at your best, you need someone at your back.

And now it starts to make a certain level of sense. "You need allies." Which is where he comes in. Why she's telling him all of this to begin with. It's an exchange, or the beginning of one. The offer before whatever she wants is requested of him.

It's actually something of a relief to know, and his shoulders sag somewhat, before he reaches for the bottle.

The bottle's held for a moment, tipped forward slowly towards his open palm - as much of a sign of agreement as the offer of a handshake would be.

He's smart enough to understand the weight of it; he always has been.

"If you're willing."

His fingers touch on the bottle, linger there. He does understand, and it's not something he gives lightly. Not after everything that's happened.

But he thinks he understands her reasoning, her motivations, and it's a good cause. If an underhanded one. Maybe the sort of work he's cut out for, rather than the attempt at heroics. But there's one problem remaining, one stilling his hand.

"...I could be a danger to you."

I'm a monster. Know that when you open that door.

For that, she presses the bottle in against his palm.

Their last mission was a disaster: it's left her thin and dull and bone-tired for how quickly it overturned her own selfish perspective— on everything, herself included. But she survived. Again. By the skin of her teeth, bought with determination (and anger, though she remembers that less except for a few key moments in her archived memories), and that's a point still set in her favor.

Does she want to do it again? Fuck. No. But if she had to...

"I'm not going to end up like him."

A vote of confidence in Locus' altered direction, a point tallied under her own survivability, or both, maybe.

An interpretation she leaves in his hands, just like that bottle of tequila.

It is apparently the absolutely correct thing to say.

Some of the tension eases out of his frame as he nods, lifting the bottle to his lips. An altered direction, a new beginning...and the small seeds of what could be trust finding purchase in the soil.

"...what will you need?"

"Right now? Vato I need a vacation."

A joke as much as it isn't, huffing out an alcohol-steeped breath as she watches the horizon. It won't last: she's never been good at sitting still for too long before restlessness sinks in, and even needing to lick her wounds it's not as though she isn't here now, talking to Locus about a practical alignment.

"You should take care of yourself, too. Su cuerpo y la mente son las armas, and it's the job of a soldier to take care of his equipment. ¿Estás de acuerdo?"

Locus huffs in response, lowering the bottle. He's starting to feel the tingle in his fingers. Probably a good time to slow down, considering exactly how much he's had to drink lately.

And how little he tends to drink, ever.

"People have taken to saying that lately when they want me to speak with the doctor," he grouses, though his annoyance isn't with her. She hasn't volunteered that particularly suggestion yet, after all.

This? Seems better overall.

"I lied my way through it." Sombra admits, shrugging off his irritation in a show of solidarity.

It wasn't bad, but her problems are her own: handing them over to anyone else seems like a recipe for disaster. The less that's on record, the better.

"Maybe it's just me, but I don't think sitting on a couch talking about how much everything sucks with a stranger counts half as much as it does with a friend."

Consider that an open invitation, amigo.

"And it doesn't beat a view like this."

"Or the company."

He'd much rather speak to someone he knows, someone he tentatively trusts. For better or worse. It doesn't make it any easier to speak of it, to form the words, but the desire is at least present.

"...I made certain never to look back. It was the only way to keep going forward, to continue fighting. If I thought on it too long, if I let myself regret any of it, I don't think I could have."

The first comment pulls an amused little noise from the back of Sombra's throat. As for the rest—

"I get it." She doesn't. Well...she does, but in concept more than practice: now more than ever Sombra can finally comprehend the differences between her own struggles and firsthand, agonizing genocide. The body count in her closet? It doesn't stack up.

Still pretty big, though.

"Take a hard enough hit, and deciding to stop moving is a death sentence." If she'd gotten too homesick while she was underground, if she tried to look back, it would have bitten her. There's not a doubt in her mind that what Locus endured? Worse. Considerably worse.

"But you're not being hunted, mijo. That fight? It's a long, long ways away. And if you try to keep running from it you're gonna bleed out before you have a chance to make up for it. Es la verdad."

"Perhaps less hunted than haunted," he murmurs, and it's supposed to be a dry joke, but there's a kernel of truth there. There is a ghost that ties all that baggage back to him, so that he feels the weight of it every time he moves. A voice he can't quite put out of his head, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.

His head dips before he glances back towards her.

"Allies certainly help." And now that he knows where he stands, it's easier. The niggling doubt, the worry that she'll expect too much of him as a friend, is no longer there. He serves a purpose.

He can live with that.

"So they do."

It's a shame that Amélie is so far away. Sure, they had their moments of animosity (decidedly dedicated thanks to a potent mixture of both Sombra's love of digging for a reaction and Amélie's barbed threats) but there was so little that was beyond them in their synergy - in knowing she had another piece on the board to lean on when things were tight. Now she's starting over, and that? That's delicate. Gabe is right: she should be patient.

And yet.

Stretching out her legs, Sombra angles a look right back at him that's more comfortable— has less to do with the heat of the alcohol burning in her veins and more for what's ahead. "Which means I should probably let you meet mine."

Which implies she's been planning this for some time. She's got her eyes on a much longer game, and that's reassuring as much as it is disturbing. He has no desire to let himself become someone's pawn again.

But choice. Choice is a strange and wonderful thing, and he thinks he'd choose to side with Sombra, if it came down to it. Slowly, Locus nods in response.

"I'd like that."

Learning about the people she trusts and associates with will be educational, if nothing else.

It's hard to say whether or not Locus really would like it in practice overt theory: Gabriel is...an experience by average standards. And considering how poorly he'd integrated himself into the Legion before she turned up, reputation might precede reality.

Without any apparent concern for how much he might care for it, Sombra tipsily scoots herself forward, shifting for the sake of resting her head in his lap.

"He's a soldier, like you. We've been friends for a long, long time, and he's always done right by me." Even on the Silent Horizon, he'd left for her sake— however sore she'd been in the moment, she can't disregard his reasoning. Or his loyalty.

"I trust him."

Maybe not with all her secrets, but with her life, she does. Has she ever admitted that before? Foggy as her train of thought is, she only remembers a faint glimpse of hazy blue.

"So don't let him intimidate you, se entiende? He's had a hard life. He can't help what it's done to him."

In that, they're somewhat alike, she thinks. Manipulated, unmoored— feared, even. Only where Locus' betrayal left him committed to trying to become a better person, Gabriel's death cemented his adherence to revenge.

A cause Sombra encourages about as often as she buffers against it. He can't be a machine all the time.

Edited 2017-02-01 02:19 (UTC)

Maybe it's the tequila, or maybe he really doesn't mind (Felix got into his space all the time, and Sombra is considerably less annoying about it) but when Sombra flops down into his lap, Locus doesn't so much as blink. This is a thing that is happening now, apparently.

Of course, Sombra had been testing borders since the Valor's Day party, hadn't she? She sees him now, maskless and vulnerable, so what more is there to shield himself with? There seems little point in it now, after she's seen so much more...

"He will not intimidate me." There's a wry certainty in that. After what they've experienced? He doubts this friend of Sombra's can hold any surprises.

He's so sure of it, how undeterred he'll be. It's charming. Maybe that's her own arrogance finding comfort in a show of someone else's certainty, but Sombra doesn't pretend to be a selfless altruist.

—oh no, wait, actually she does. Constantly these days.

"I'm glad to hear it." Inhaling once, she curls herself in just a bit tighter, lazily circling his knee with a single nail over and over again. She should walk him up to the safehouse sooner rather than later, make it easy on them both. But that'd require moving, and this is...nice. "Knew I wasn't wrong about you, Locus."

And look at that, no nicknames this time.

It's noted. Usually there is some variant being thrown around, but again, he's willing to chalk it up to the drink. Which has him settled and a little fuzzy around the edges and comfortable, in a way he generally isn't. Even that tickling touch against his knee only prompts the faintest of twitches.

"Good to know I don't disappoint entirely," he replies wryly, after a moment, one heavy brow arching down at her. Like a kitten that's made itself at home in the lair of a panther, absolutely fearless in its ability to make friends and remain safe.

What's the word? Charming? That works as well as any.

"I'd say I'm easy to please but, no es cierto."

That, at least, she can't fake. Not even in her best attempts to play innocent - and Locus? Locus is smart enough to see right through that in an instant.

"You should be proud of yourself."

[OPEN] You were lying on your back in the grass, counting backward from a thousand

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