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You sit in the only chair left intact in the middle of the base you had once frequented enough to call home, flames and sparks from broken circuitry all around you. You bring the cigarette you hold between your fingers to your lips, taking in a long, painful drag. You had promised Dr. Ziegler way back when that you would quit, but after what you’d been through, you couldn’t see the harm in one or two or ten.
Parting your lips, the smoke escapes your mouth steadily, and you watch it drift into the air and meld with the smoke from the flames until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other one started. You hadn’t smoked in so long, it was a wonder how you didn’t cough. Perhaps your lungs had already adjusted from inhaling the destruction that surrounded you.
You stare out the broken door into the sky, the color of orange sherbet, and in the sky your mind wanders, projecting a scene from your past.
“[Y/N]? [Y/N], hello?”
You recoil and blink several times from the fingers snapping mere inches from your face. Your gaze follows the arm and settles on the familiar, comforting face of your long-time friend and partner-in-crime, so to speak.
“Emre,” you say as if you had just met up with him, as if the two of you hadn’t been having a drink at a bar.
“You’re so spacey nowadays,” he comments, a warmth in his smooth voice as if he found this to be endearing.
You hum in acknowledgment as you look down to your drink, an Old Fashioned that has hardly been touched, the ice beginning to melt and watering down the whiskey. You’ve always liked it a bit watered down, anyway.
“What’s on your mind?”
You almost refuse to look up because you already know what the look on his face is going to be. You’d seen it so many times that you could imagine it, picture it in your head without needing to meet his eyes. When he asks this question, he has this look that to you feels like bundling up in a thick blanket on a cold, rainy day, telling you that you’re safe, that it’s okay to open up and be vulnerable without speaking a single word.
You bring the glass up to your lips, mumbling “Nothing” around its rim.
“You expect me to believe that?” Emre scoffs, though you can hear the gentle smile, the one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, the one that was always accompanied by this pitiful yet tender look.
You pause for a few seconds as if to gather your thoughts.
“I was just thinking about how much I hate that haircut on you.” This is a lie. Although you preferred the longer hair, you didn’t exactly hate it. At the moment, though, you just needed to get him off your trail, to give you some time to calm your nerves.
“Oh, so you hate it now?” Emre feigns a hurt gasp.
You force yourself to finally look at him again, and thankfully that look that makes your heart shatter into a million pieces has disappeared, at least for now, but you know he’s not going to drop it. You also know that you’ve done this enough times where Emre has picked up on it and has learned to humor you for a few minutes.
You give him a once over with a disgusted look, crinkling your nose and mouth.
“It’s just… such a slimy haircut.”
“You weren’t saying that when you couldn’t stop touching it the other day.” Emre leans back in his chair, running his hands over his hair as if to slick it back.
“Well—.” You’re so caught off-guard by this that your face erupts in a deep blush and you have to look away again. “The, um, hairstylist must have used a product… because it’s never felt that soft before. And the shaved sides are… soft, too. Like, fuzzy, you know?”
You can imagine Emre raising an eyebrow with an almost smug look on his face. Then, a sigh escapes you, and you’re spinning your glass on the bar top, watching the ice twirl in the amber liquid. Emre has once again successfully waited you out until you were ready to spill.
“I was just… thinking of leaving Overwatch.”
The silence bears down on you, nearly suffocating you. This is his way of gently urging you to continue, but the air between the two of you is electrifying as if he’s shocked to hear this, as if your words have stunned him into speechlessness. Emre has always known you’ve been unhappy here, that the responsibility was too much to bear, and that, quite frankly, Overwatch has a plethora of talented members. You are of the opinion that they wouldn’t exactly suffer if a member on the sidelines were to simply step away and disappear.
“I just can’t take it anymore. Maybe I’m just lazy, maybe I’m just a bum at heart, but I can’t take the fighting anymore. I never really have but in the beginning I was just putting up with it. But now it’s just gotten to be too much. Did you know that they want to promote me? I wouldn’t have a choice. If I were to stay, I’d have to accept the promotion. But that’s not me.”
This silence is different. It’s deafening. It stretches on to the point you’re feeling a little antsy, anxious for his response, but you know he’s working your words out through his mind. You remember Emre telling you that when he gets stressed out, it’s like his language centers shut down in his mind. He explains it as though he’s mostly forgotten how to speak and understand English, and that suddenly he finds himself translating the words he had just heard into Turkish — Türkçe, he calls it — to fully understand them, and then back again so he can convey the appropriate response, like he’s back in school again. You wonder if this is what he’s doing right now.
Finally, he speaks, and it’s like a defibrillator to your heart.
“If it’s your ability you’re concerned about, they don’t give promotions for no reason.”
“I know, but… you know that’s not me.”
“I know…” Emre takes a deep breath, and then he takes on a half-joking, half-serious tone. “I mean, you take your job very seriously as if you don’t have a problem with it. I hardly get to see this side of you.” He gestures to you, up and down. “I can’t see you living a domestic life at all.”
You tilt your head towards your drink and peer at him. “At all?”
It’s Emre’s turn to blush, though his is more subtle, right at the tips of his ears and dusting his cheekbones a soft pink. He knows what you mean. “You want me to go with you,” he says, saving you the trouble of voicing it yourself.
“I mean… that’s up to you, obviously. We hardly get to spend time together as is. It’s like they know, and they station us on opposite sides of the world on purpose.”
“Mm.” He agrees. Then he takes a moment to tip the rest of his drink back into his mouth. He leans his elbows onto the glossy bar top, staring down at his empty glass. “I suppose that depends on your answer to a question I’ve had for a while now.”
Emre pauses so that you’re forced to coax this question out of him before it gets too awkward.
“And what is this question?”
He looks up in thought, as if he has to conjure it up, as if it wasn’t sitting at the tip of his tongue. Then he sweeps his gaze to you, a look so tender and delicate your stomach jumps to your throat.
“What exactly are we?”
You stare at him with wide, wondrous eyes and your mouth agape. Emre looks expectantly at you, and you’re not sure whether he’s so sure of the answer or if he’s completely unsure.
You give it some thought, because you yourself have no idea how he feels about you exactly and what the ideal future would look to him. A scene of said domestic life plays out in front of you, at the face you’re looking at, of late, sleepy mornings, of an egg and toast breakfast, of a hot cup of black coffee on wintry days. You see the two of you lounging on a couch, of your legs laid across his lap as he massages your calves one night, and his head upon your lap the next, your fingers rifling through his grown out hair. You see a dog that you two decide to rescue, you see weeks and months of gaining the dog’s trust, and you see the two of you lying in bed, side by side, with this dog sprawled atop the both of you.
“We’re whatever you want us to be,” is all you say.
The corner of Emre’s mouth tugs upward like he had predicted you were going to say something to that effect, and a deep but quiet laugh rumbles in his throat.
Luckily, the two of you had chosen a spot at the very end of the bar, away from prying eyes, so you don’t reject him when he places a hand on the back of your neck. Your hands find his shirt near his ribs, and Emre pulls you in to kiss you. Despite the years of romantic tension, the rumors from your colleagues, the gossiping, the bets, this is the first kiss the two of you have ever shared — many, many close calls, but this is the very first, the real thing. His soft, supple lips and the taste of whiskey on his tongue convinces you that everything will end up okay, that you and he will be okay.
Emre pulls away, and he sighs like he’s taken his first breath since the two of you met, like he hasn’t breathed since he’d first wanted to kiss you. You find it to be quite corny.
“Then… that settles it?” you ask, and Emre throws his head back in laughter.
“That settles it.”
“I was thinking about a date,” you continue, “for when I leave. Um, feel free to join. I mean, please come with me.”
Emre smiles at you. “I will.”
You stare at him, and you save that image, storing it into your memory banks, and as you call it up now, that image projected onto the golden sky, his face seems to be superimposed over another, one that looks so familiar, yet so strange. Your trance is broken, the memory of a promise fading, a promise that was never kept. You’re forced to face the reality — that the figure standing before you is someone that looks almost exactly like Emre. It’s his face. He’s recognizable yet not at all. His hair has grown out, grey at the temples but the same chestnut brown as it always has been everywhere else, his beard full and lining his face like a frame of an oil painting. Most notably, there is a giant eye in the center of his chest, with pipes and wires all around it as if that’s the sole thing keeping him alive.
“I was hoping I’d find you here. I was starting to run out of ideas.” His voice is the same, if not a bit deeper, with a mechanical edge to it like he’s been possessed.
You take another drag from your cigarette, and you blow it in his direction before flicking it at where he stands. This is how he greets you after so many years, as if the years apart is a taboo subject.
“I like this hair much better,” you comment, bitterness in your voice. Your eyes have swelled slightly, as if you’re holding back tears that threaten to cascade in a flash flooding at any moment. You blame the smoke.
“I figured you might.” Emre runs a metal hand over the top of his hair, the same way he had that night, and you hate it. You hate that this husk of your former best friend is imitating him.
You look away, yet his gaze remains on you, and for a short moment it is silent save for the crackling of fire and short-circuiting wires. Then you say, “Frej has been looking for you, you know.”
Emre dismisses this. “And I’ve been looking for you.”
You’re not sure if this is a threat and you don’t give him a chance to prove otherwise as you throw yourself at him, aiming for his neck, but his reflexes kick in and he throws you off to the side with ease. Your back collides with the edge of the broken countertops and you collapse into a pathetic heap, coughing. Emre walks up to you, and when you stare up at him like you’re trying to burn holes through him, you see guilt morphing his face. He reaches his hand down to you, like he’s offering you a truce. You’re hesitant at first, and then you take it. You take it and you yank him down, smashing his face against the same panel you’d nearly broken your spine on, before kicking him away.
Before Emre can gather his senses, you’re on top of him, straddling his waist, with a knife pointed at his throat. Emre has this pleading look on his face as he tilts his chin up and away from the knife. He raises his hands in surrender.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.” Emre’s voice comes as nearly a whisper. You just stare at him with wild eyes, not offering him any emotion, any indication that the two of you had a shared past. Your eyes fall to the eye on his chest, and it stares back at you. Before you can think too hard about it, you raise the knife with both hands over your head. You wonder what would happen if you destroyed this thing. Would it kill him, or would it free him? Would he be given back to you?
Sensing your intention, Emre frantically says, “I have been looking for you for so long. I never stopped looking for you.”
You’re breathing hard and Emre is pleading for you to stop, before your fist falls to his chest and you deflate. The flood works have begun, and you can’t seem to stop them from spilling over your cheeks, stinging your eyes.
“What happened to you?” you sob. “This isn’t you. You’re not Emre. Emre’s gone.”
“No.” His voice is firm, grounding you like an anchor, and the mechanical feature of his voice has disappeared. “I’m still here. I’m still me. I’m just… a bit of something else, too. I can’t explain it.” He sounds so sure of himself.
Emre places a cold hand on your cheek, catching the tears as they come. His words don’t seem to convince you as much as he wanted them to.
“You were supposed to come with me,” you choke, your breath catching at the back of your throat almost every other word. “We were supposed to leave together. You promised me.” Your fist strikes his chest, and he doesn’t react, like he doesn’t feel it. “And then you disappear a week before that.”
“I’m sorry.” Emre admits that he doesn’t have an explanation for this either without outright saying it. You feel betrayed by this. You feel like the least you deserve is an explanation, anything to put your mind at ease, to let you know that he had been safe all these years, and that he hadn’t disappeared because of you in particular. Due to his appearance, you’re almost sure that at least one of these hadn’t been true, and your heart practically disintegrates. You begin to blame yourself. Maybe if you had never suggested what you did, he’d still be the same old Emre from before. Maybe if you had chosen a sooner date, the both of you would be living in a cozy yet overpriced city apartment. “I know I let you down, and I’m sorry. I wanted to come and see you. Believe me, I really did, but you were impossible to find. I can’t answer any questions I’m sure you have right now because I don’t know the answers myself. I’m sorry.”
Emre gently shoves you off of him, and you hunch over where you sit, overcome with sorrow.
“I know this isn’t fair for me to ask of you, but please come with me.”
His hand moves to your face, sapping the warmth from your cheek. You hope that this is simply armor, because his touch just isn’t the same anymore. You’re not sure where exactly he’s asking you to go for him, but if you accept, you don’t think you could get used to his metallic fingers on your skin. And that’s the problem, is that you had almost agreed within the heartbeat he had asked.
Instead, you force yourself to say, “I can’t…”
“I’m not a part of Overwatch anymore… obviously. It’ll be different from that, so you won’t have to worry. We’ll—”
“Why don’t you come with me? Leave whatever bullshit you’re dealing with behind and come with me, like you’d promised,” you snap, staring up at him with burning eyes.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. Not right now. But I promise — and I’ll keep it this time — that after all of this has been settled, we’ll continue with our plans. But before then, I want you with me. I want to make up for lost time. I’m begging for your forgiveness here, and I know that doesn’t come easily. So come with me and give me the chance to earn it, and to prove myself. To prove that I’m still me, and I’m still yours.” Emre is framing your face with his hands now. The desperation in his voice and eyes is almost enough to convince you that he is in fact still Emre. “I spent so long trying to track you down. This? This was just a stroke of luck, like fate bringing us back together. I’m not going to lose you again.”
Without giving you the chance to think your decision over, Emre pulls your face to his, and he tilts his head so that he can kiss you deeply, hungrily, like he’d been thinking of this moment all these years. You pull away sharply, your hand on his chest, covering the eye. You stare into his auburn irises, the same eyes you’d come to know and love like the back of your hand. Even the speck of darker brown is still there. And then you notice the warm fingers of his right hand, still exposed, and that gives you hope — hope that he hadn’t completely transformed into something inhuman.
Emre is here. He’s still with you. And you release the breath you’d been holding.
So you wrap your arms around his torso, thicker than it had been years ago. And you pick up where you’d left off, smashing your mouth harder onto his than he had onto yours. His lips are the same. His tongue is the same. Warm, inviting, flirtatious. Familiar. Comforting. That’s all you needed. You know that deep down you’d drop everything to be by his side. You’d leave your house, your peace, your quiet. Luckily you haven’t yet gotten a dog. You wanted to wait, to see if Emre will ever come back.
When Emre pulls away, he presses his forehead to yours, and tears come back, harder than before.
“I’m still here. I’m still me.”
You nod against his forehead, closing your eyes, your lips quivering. “I know.”
“And I’ll feel even more like my old self around you. So please stay with me.”
You wipe your nose with the back of your hand, knowing that Emre had witnessed you do worse in the past, like vomiting your guts out onto a sidewalk at four in the morning after consuming enough liquor to put a horse into a coma. He’d been laughing, amused by the scene, but he’d also been rubbing your back in comfort, encouraging you to expel the poison from your body. You blink the tears away as Emre peppers his lips against your cheeks, and you wonder if he still remembers that night.
“There wasn’t a single day I didn’t fucking think about you.” Not a single day where you didn’t feel his absence in every mundane thing you did. Not a single day that you didn’t fear that it wasn’t his absence you were feeling, but his ghost.
“I’m sorry.”
“Every night I dreamt about you. Every night I had nightmares about you. Everywhere I looked I expected you to be there, and you never were.”
“I’m sorry… I hope you know that I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I have never stopped loving you. Please stay with me.” He ends this with a kiss to your lips, as if it’s a part of the statement.
You give his words some thought like you used to do, pretending like you don’t already know what your answer is going to be. Emre smiles that same, charming smile of his. You close your eyes and take a deep breath.
“I will.”