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Emre has done this about a hundred times now. He has lost count at this point, but he’s sure he wouldn’t be too surprised if the number is now closer to one hundred than it is to zero. He should be used to it — the death, the destruction, the pillars of fire and smoke.
Emre will never grow accustomed to it, to the voice in his head steering him in the direction of the next nearest command center, to feeling his control of his own body slip away, to the darkness that consumes his vision and his mind. He will never get used to waking back up, to seeing these buildings up in flames, torn apart. He will never get used to seeing the dead bodies all around him. He will never get used to the idea that, for all intents and purposes, this had been his doing.
Emre has a few things he is grateful for, however. He is grateful that the devil incarnate, as he calls it, which lives inside of him is a benevolent being. It is benevolent for the simple fact that it forces his mind to shut off, transports it into a sort of oblivion, swimming through a starless space in peace as it rains its destruction down upon the creatures with the likeness of its host. Maybe it knows. It knows that he has very little trouble taking the omnics down, but when it comes to other humans…
Emre still hasn’t quite figured out whether it is a gift from that which possesses him, or whether it is simply a side effect, but he is grateful nonetheless.
Further is he uncertain of the memories that embrace him when the devil sends his mind to a far off place. He doesn’t know, and he can’t tell. He can’t tell if it’s his own mind protecting him with a happy scene from a movie, or if the devil coaxes it out of the cortical folds of his brain. Or if his beloved is attempting to reach out to him telepathically, and he is simply picking up the weak, broken signal across miles and miles of ocean. Emre never allows himself to think so optimistically. He is sure you could never forgive him, as he would not forgive himself.
Just as well, he figures this being inside of him can’t possibly be so kind as to flash a sequence of some of his happiest memories every time it forces his body to murder. He scratches this off the list.
That leaves his own brain. A defense mechanism of sorts, he thinks. But Emre is wracked with a sense of guilt so intense nausea washes over him like a tidal wave nightly and forces him to remain awake, hardly a wink of sleep since he’d left. This must be it. This must be why. Every image and every scene of you that his brain shows is a reminder to him of why he’s doing this, or why he must keep doing this, and why he has left you and has not been back since, and why it had been okay for him to do so.
Because when he sees you crumple to your knees, sobbing into your palms, he has to convince himself he is doing the right thing. He has to believe that he is saving you, that he is putting you aside out of harm’s way. He has to believe that you will be safe, unharmed, and alive when he returns to you. If he may ever return to you.
Deep down, he knows how disgustingly untrue this is, because you have told him yourself, that he was being delusional. You tell him everything he already knows — that he’s making up lies and excuses to make it easier for himself, so that his guilty conscience might spare him. He knows all of this. He knows he’s better off with you by his side. But, perhaps one of the worst decisions he’s made by far, he does not tell you any of this, that he knows all of what you’re saying to be true, and he does not listen to you. He pushes it all down, buries it all deep, and he leaves.
The very first time this happens, Emre is near a breaking point, ready to rid himself of this entity, even if it means it will take him with it. But like an oasis under the oppressive desert sun, you appear before him, and Emre can’t stomach the thought of leaving this world before reuniting with you. And here you are again, saving his sorry ass once more. Just as you always have.
At first, as his body floats through the void, they are mere fragments of memories, like a scene of the main character’s deceased wife in a film. One moment, you’re shooting him a thumbs up with a flashy grin as you press your back against the cover you had dove for. Cool and composed on the outside, though he sees the gun you’re holding trembling in your hands. The next moment, you and he are back at the barracks. You sit beside him on his bed in the dim light, cigarette between your lips, as you wrap the graze wound on his arm with gauze. It looks awful and sloppy, and the two of you throw your heads back in laughter. Another one, where the two of you are running side by side, not even halfway through your fifty-lap punishment from getting up to no good and messing with your squadmates.
In the last, Emre is holding his unlit cigarette between his lips, steadying it with his fingers. You bring the tip of yours against his to light it, a perfectly functioning lighter in Emre’s back pocket that he is well aware of unbeknownst to you. When your gaze meets Emre’s, the two of you blush fiercely — you because Emre’s eyes had been so transfixed on your delicate face frowning in concentration, and Emre because you had just caught him staring at you. The two of you quickly pull away from each other, and the walk back to the mess hall is awkward as all hell. This is the most vivid of them all. Even now, Emre could recall the texture of your skin and the way the burning cigarette set your eyes and dewy face aglow. Emre could almost reach out to touch you, to change the course of that moment, but just as he’s about to, he'd be brought back to the present, to reality, much to his dismay. He misses the chance to kiss you for the first time that night. His knees buckle, and he nearly collapses from the weight of his cowardice and hesitance.
The second, third, and fourth time this happens, the fragments are more detailed, longer than before, and he can’t even begin to fathom what had been happening around his body for these scenes to be longer than before. But he doesn’t concern himself with that. He simply decides to lose himself for a little while in these moments of respite.
He remembers resting his back against his pillow as you sit at the foot of his bed, taking apart your gun to clean it before reassembling it back together. Emre puts off cleaning his own in favor of watching you for a while with some intensity, following your fingers as they work with efficiency and precision, gazing at you scowling with concentration, your tongue sticking out of your mouth. He remembers you finally noticing him after you’ve finished and set the weapon aside, and frowning deeply in confusion. He remembers dismissing you when you question him, before getting up and off his bed and gesturing with his head at the door. You agree to follow him instantly despite probably finding him creepy.
Emre remembers shooting shots of vodka — rocket fuel mixed with cleaning product, you like to call it — with you in little plastic shot cups. The two of you have a line of ten each, and your colleagues surround you, cheering the two of you on. You finish your last one when Emre shoots his eighth. You straighten out with your arms in the air, whooping in celebration with the rest of your friends. Perhaps the excitement and competitiveness have built up to the point of exploding out of you, because you flip the table over, serving only to make a mess and make the crowd grow more rowdy. You’re the life of the party. The apple of his eye.
The next memory is a continuation of the last. He knows this to be later in the night. You stand propped up against the corner of the room, your knees bordering on hyperextension, with a Solo cup of some concoction you had made earlier. Emre presses his palm onto the wall just above your head with his own cup of sludge, some special drink you had insisted on making for him. The two of you are deep in conversation, but Emre can’t seem to hear a single word. You glance at the door before taking his wrist and leading him outside into fresh air. The two of you sit on the porch, smoking cigarettes, shoulder to shoulder, until the party dies down.
You stroll side by side down the road, and Emre remembers you turning to bid him farewell for the night. Still, he can see your lips moving, but he can’t make out the words. You stand there, almost expectantly, before you give him a tight-lipped smile and a raised hand before disappearing into your home. Emre gawks at the closed door with bated breath, waiting for it to open again. He considers knocking on it himself. Instead, he simply walks away into the dark, early morning.
Emre recalls a time when the two of you had not seen each other in weeks. He’d been itching to see you again, so you both agreed on a restaurant. He arrives first and waits for you outside, though as the minutes tick by, he becomes antsy. He checks his watch. Five, ten, fifteen. Just as he’d begin to think you stood him up, he sees you drifting down the sidewalk, your head down. You’re wearing a trench coat, buttoned entirely to protect your body from the rough breeze, your hands shoved deep into its pockets. You don’t so much as face him, only glance upward at him for a moment. There is this somber quality about you, and you must have said something, perhaps apologizing for being late, because he’s shaking his head, holding his hands up.
Emre remembers suggesting the two of you just go back to his place, and you nod almost pitifully like a sad, wet dog. He doesn’t think when he wraps his arm around your shoulders, a newly-formed habit of his at this point, and he guides you down the sidewalk.
He holds the door open for you, and you thank him. The two of you peel off your outerwear to drape onto a coat hanger. You sit rather stiffly on the couch as he pours the both of you a glass of wine. Only when he sits beside you, perhaps a little closer than he had intended, he notices that you and he have both chosen similar outfits. He thinks that the maroon long-sleeved turtleneck suits you very nicely.
You spill about a most recent mission you’d been sent out on, talking about it in great detail, and you spill, and spill, and spill, until it had no longer been just words. He furrows his eyebrows, and his own eyes feel heavy as he witnesses you crying. At some point, you’ve stopped talking altogether, and you’re crying deeply into your hands. Emre pulls you into a tight embrace. Your arms snake around his torso, his collarbone replacing your hands and catching your tears. Emre gently places his chin atop your head.
“I’m sorry,” he could hear himself say, though his own voice sounds distant, like a muffled echo behind a wall. This nearly shocks him out of his trance. “I’m sorry.”
You pull away from him so that you could tug your sleeve down and wipe your nose with it. The last thing he sees is his own hand placed upon the side of your face, wiping his thumb over your shiny cheek, slick with tears. You stare up at him with horribly sad eyes, and then you’re gone.
Emre wouldn’t exactly call that a ‘happy’ memory, but it had been a memory of you nonetheless. However, he feels even worse knowing that will be the last of you he sees in a while, in such a miserable state. The image of your tearful eyes and sullen expression appears every time he closes his eyes, and he didn’t even get a chance to hear your voice.
But the next time, he does, and your sweet, dulcet tones flood his mind.
“Emre? Hellooo, Earth to Emre?” You wave your hands in his face from where you’re sitting, legs criss-crossed on the couch, in the same exact spot you’d once been crying. He blinks. “You’re such a creep. Always staring at me and shit.”
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” Emre says, cursing himself for having been caught again.
“Can’t help what, being a creep? Word.”
“Stop calling me a creep. You’re making me think you actually believe it.” Emre reclines against the pillows, spreading his arms out over the top of the backrest.
“And what if I did?” You raise an eyebrow as if to challenge him.
“Now that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?”
“It would be, because that would mean you’re actually a creep, and that’s on you, pal. I ain’t got nothing to do with that.”
“Aaand what if you did?” Emre imitates your raised eyebrow. This time, you pucker your lips and drop your eyebrow into a deep, exaggerated scowl.
“You’re telling me that I have something to do with you being a creep?”
“Well, I’m not trying to be a creep, but since that’s what we’re apparently referring to it as, then sure. Unless it’s code for something I’m not aware of.”
“It’s code for ‘you’re being fucking weird,’” you say with a deadpan expression. Emre genuinely can’t tell when you’re joking sometimes. “And also, what is ‘that’ that we’re referring to?”
“Me staring at you?” Emre leans forward. “Is there a problem with that?”
“Yeah, there is, actually—”
“What’s so wrong with me admiring you?”
Your mouth hangs open for a second before you slowly close it. You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously. “What is there to admire?” You seem to be treading lightly, like you’re testing him.
“Everything.”
Your face contorts like he’s just said the corniest thing, which he admittedly has. Then, you gradually bob your head up and down in a nod.
“Riiight. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to make a move on me.”
Emre glances to the side for a moment. “Is that an issue?”
“Umm.” Suddenly, you’re sounding nervous and uncertain. “No, I wouldn’t think so. Just, uh, why now? Not that there’s a problem with that either. Just curious.” Your shrug is that of forced nonchalance.
“It just felt right. I mean, how many times are you going to catch me staring at you before you suspect something?”
“I never did suspect a single thing.”
“You’re kidding.” Now, Emre is growing antsy. So far, you’ve given little to no indication that you feel the same way, in his opinion. He wonders if you’re ‘playing hard to get,’ as you call it.
“I’m serious.”
When the words start tumbling out of his mouth, he can’t stop them. “Okay, listen. I’m working up the courage to kiss you right now and you’re giving me nothing to work with.”
Your eyes glitter in surprise, perhaps thrown off by his straightforwardness. You sit there unspeaking for a long enough amount of time that Emre is convinced you’re about to reject him. He feels his stomach drop and his blood running cold all the way to his fingertips.
“I really thought you were just messing with me. Like always. So now I’m wondering why you haven’t yet, if you’re not messing with me.”
Emre nearly disintegrates from the weight of relief. So he leans toward you with a hand on your shoulder, your hand on his face, and there, he shares his first kiss with you, in his house, on his couch. It’s nowhere special, and it’s by no means incredibly dramatic, but it doesn’t have to be. All those missed opportunities have led up to this moment. His lips on yours. That’s all that matters.
You and Emre are in the beginning stages of your romantic relationship, and he can’t tell if his colleagues notice or not. In the past, the two of you have always been quite flirtatious. Emre had been asked about it once, and he regretfully denies the accusation. He figures they had always chalked it up to it being something ‘really close friends’ do. That’s what he had assumed, in your case that is, despite the countless times he’d wished the two of you had been flirting in earnest.
Emre always had a fear. He worried of ruining the friendship he had with you if he had ever decided to venture forth about your feelings for him, whether they existed at all or not. Even in the moments leading up to his first kiss with you, he had been unsure. But everything has felt normal since. It feels right.
You’ve been sleeping over at his house more and more. As if a switch has been flipped, you stop crashing on his couch and instead crawl into bed with him of your own volition. He didn't need to suggest it to you. You rest your head on his shoulder, you kiss him on the neck, you play with his hair. This is all enough to convince him that what he feels for you, you too feel for him.
He recalls all the times the two of you would steal away into an uninhabited office to kiss, to make out, to fix each other up before joining the rest of the team on whatever mission they had been assigned to that day.
You look around, ensuring that not a single soul has been paying you nor Emre any mind, before you grab his wrist and take him down a long, winding corridor. You push him through the door, closing it behind you, and Emre instantly pulls your body flush against his. He tilts his head to kiss you deeply, shoving his tongue into your mouth. You run your fingers through his hair, tugging on it as if to anchor yourself, as if to remind yourself that you shouldn’t get too carried away before a mission. Then, your hands travel under his skin-tight shirt, and your fingers run across his skin taut over his firm muscles. You pull away first, licking your lips as you gaze into his eyes. Emre kisses you quickly, tenderly this time, then peppers his lips across your face. You reach up to smooth down his hair, straighten out his shirt, and tidy up his coat. On your way back, you stop at the breakroom, grabbing a cup of coffee and chugging it with gusto. When the two of you return, everyone else is none the wiser.
He savors these moments, because although he doesn’t allow himself the chance to think about it much, it had never been a guarantee that either of you would return. You and Emre remain professional in the company of others, but Emre always makes it a point some time soon after the mission, away from prying eyes, to embrace you deeply and to kiss you as if he was sure he had just lost you.
And Istanbul had been a grave reminder of why Emre never takes things for granted, of why he does the things he does.
He watches as the shrapnel flies through the air, striking you somewhere in the head, he hadn’t been sure where yet. But he sees your motionless body laying on the ground, and he sees blood, and he’d nearly lost all sense and direction. Just like your teammate, the world famous and talented engineer Torbjörn Lindholm, you had lost an eye. Your left eye.
Emre has spent many sleepless nights sitting beside your hospital bed, his hand wound tightly in yours. He stares anywhere but your face, a sullen, empty stare.
“Ow.”
You hoist yourself up into a sitting position, shaking Emre’s death grip from you.
“Are you trying to break my hand?”
Emre stares at you as if he has just seen a ghost, and he could not stop the cascading of his tears. You bring your hand to the patch that covers your left eye.
“Fuck…”
You embrace Emre’s hunched figure next to you, who feels as though he’s trying very hard not to tremble, to no avail.
“You weren’t fucking moving,” Emre sobs. “You had a pulse, but you weren’t moving.”
“Well… I’m moving now?” You’ve never been the best at comforting someone. That’s more of Emre’s forte. “I’m still here. Mostly…”
It breaks Emre’s heart to hear you joke about it, to him, to your friends, to Wilhelm and Lindholm, who had been ambushed alongside you and Emre. You say, “Bah, it was my bad eye anyway. There’s practically no difference,” but Emre often catches you lifting your hand to the left side of your head, squeezing it, waving it. Emre is often helping you clean up after you’ve misjudged the distance between you and a coffee cup. He hears you cursing and cursing under your breath.
These certainly had not been some of his happiest memories, either. Perhaps a simple reminder of how precious and fragile the human truly is. Perhaps a secret message he has yet to decode.
You’re leaning against the locker that Emre is currently unpacking, shoving his belongings into his unbranded duffel bag, as he had tossed out the Overwatch-issued one. You’ve already finished unpacking your own locker, not having much to begin with.
“You know that you’re not obligated to leave with me,” Emre says, shuffling through the bits of trash shoved at the back of his locker.
“Oh, please. I’ve been meaning to leave long ago. I’ve only been sticking around for you.”
Emre pauses. “Define ‘long ago.’”
“Um.” Emre peers to find you fingering the eyepatch. “Before White Dome…”
Emre feels an intense wave of guilt wash over him, nearly strong enough to sweep him off of his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He doesn’t mean for this to sound demanding, but he blames himself.
“Do not blame yourself,” you say as if you can read his thoughts, your voice so firm it shocks him. “You still seemed… happy? To be doing what you’re doing, and I wanted to stay with you. That’s my decision, not yours. You’re going to blame yourself because of my decision not to speak up?”
You’re right, as usual. He stands up straight, passing his hand over the top of your head and down the side of your face.
“It’s just… you’d still have two eyes.”
“Okay, first of all, who knows? Maybe it was fate, so if I didn’t lose it then, I’d lose it some other way. Second of all, you have to admit it looks pretty cool… Even if my depth perception is fucked now.”
Emre offers you a pitiful smile. You poke each corner of his mouth with your fingers and force his smile larger until he’s laughing.
“Even if I didn’t want to leave, I’d still be going with you right now. There’s nothing left for me here if you’re gone. Plus, who’s going to drive me around?”
Emre rolls his eyes. “That’s what you want me for.”
“Oh, please. I might actually be better off driving myself, now that I think about it. How many curbs have you hit in the past month alone?”
Emre rolls his eyes even harder. It’s a wonder how his optic nerves haven’t detached yet.
He remembers the two of you casually walking out of the headquarters, duffel bags slung over your shoulders.
Emre remembers going home that night, you having been moved in for a year at that point. He remembers dropping his duffel bag and shoving his mouth against yours. He remembers you leading him up the stairs and pulling him on top of you, collapsing onto the bed together. He remembers the clothes strewn across the bed, his body moving in tandem with yours, the searing touch of your lips against his neck, and his against yours.
He remembers a week of this, of freedom, of loving bruises on his and your neck that you both cover with a turtleneck when you go out for dinner that same night.
Then, he remembers the two of you getting down to business, the research, the planning, the figuring out what parts of the world needed his and your help the most. He remembers taking trips, some with you, some without.
There’s a lapse in his memory, blank and black and nothing, and then he remembers, against his better judgment, against the entity’s command, deciding he must see you one last time.
And he remembers the shock in your face when you see him again after months of no contact, of thinking he had fucking died. He remembers you telling him your calls never went through. He remembers you sobbing, pleading, begging, and he remembers telling you you’d be safer this way, telling you to just forget about him.
He remembers you lashing out, telling him how stupid he’s being. He remembers wanting so desperately to touch you, to kiss you, to make love to you, but knowing that would simply be too cruel of a thing to leave you with.
You firmly remind him of your promise to him, that you’d follow him to the ends of the world. You tell him that you don’t give a fuck if it put you in harms way, that it would make you a target. You tell him you’ve seen worse, been worse, done worse.
Emre tells you he needs to figure this out on his own, and you ask him if he realizes how insane he sounds. He doesn’t, because there’s a voice in his head convincing him that he’s being rational, that leaving his lover and life partner is the right thing to do.
He promises you that you would not hold the same high opinion of him if you had witnessed the shit he’s been through, the shit that he’s seen, the shit that he’s done since he’d been gone. You tell him that you don’t give a fuck, that your opinion of him at the moment is already low enough, and that it can’t possibly stoop any lower. You tell him that if your opinion of him matters that much, he would let you come with him to prove you wrong. But he declines.
You tell him that you can help him, that that’s all your duo has ever been about, helping those in need. You tell him that you love him, that you always have and you always will. He declines once again.
You give him one last chance. You give him a chance to admit his lies, his excuses, his delusions, to admit that his belief that you’ll be safer this way is a fucking joke. You tell him that if your safety is what he’s concerned about, he’s already compromised you by visiting you.
Only to leave again.
Nothing about this memory is happy. So what, exactly, is the purpose of this? How can his brain betray him in such a way, during what is supposed to be a moment of respite?
Its purpose is to make him realize, to slap him silly, to smack some fucking sense into him, and something in him clicks.
He remembers the deep, intimate love he’s had and still has for you. He remembers the unconditional love and faith you’ve shown him, and he wonders if you still feel this way. He understands now that he has repaid you with his betrayal and absence, and that in leaving you, he has made the biggest mistake of his life by far.
Emre goes against protocol. He only cares about finding his way back to you.