Chapter Text
While the room is quite nice for a treasonous band of murderers living on the fringes of civilization and you are oh so outwardly grateful to the Successor for the accommodations, compared to your hive on Continent 14, it’s a bit shit.
Mercy sets down her bag and collapses onto the loungeplank. “Well. That certainly could have gone better.”
“Indeed.” Sparrow likewise slides his white leather duffle under a recuperacoon, the cylindrical form fitting perfectly into its storage compartment as though it was made specifically for imperial stows. You wonder briefly who inhabited these quarters before you.
There are three recuperacoons, sectioned walls to give the illusion of privacy, and a single ablution block, all with the rustic charm of a spaceship barely holding together. You’ve never had to share a hive with anyone before, but Sparrow and Mercy are your crew: if you can survive living with anyone, it’s them. For now, you’re happy for their company, the ring of their familiar chatter a comfort when you look at a half-free screws and try not to think about the structure under your feet falling apart at the seems.
At least you’re not expected to share with O’Deorain. That would be a quadrant tic-tac-toe no one would benefit from.
“I’m going to secure the perimeter,” you tell them.
By now they’ve shuffled together onto the loungeplank, Mercy with one of her books pulled on her reader and Sparrow with his head on her shoulder. She looks up, not dislodging her morail. “By that you mean you’re going to poke around the ship?”
A smile tugs at the corner of your mouth. “Guilty as charged.” She grins back, and you circle around the backrest to plant a parting kiss on her upturned face.
“Be careful of Inner Circle,” Sparrow says as you depart. “There is no doubt there will be some sort of retaliation.”
You sigh. “Less than hour aboard, and already there’s a clusterfilial. Why am I not surprised.”
“I hate space,” Sparrow and Mercy say in unison.
They return to their book, some vacillation-based romance of hers no doubt, practially piled with the blankets stuffed around them. That’s, of course, when it bites at you again. An increasingly familiar spike of jealousy rushes out of nowhere, and the smile you’d meant to throw them wavers. These new, stupid, selfish thoughts begin to plague you, and you slip out the door before you can start to stare.
Why are you getting like this? You have a perfectly stable matespritship, and now you’ve gone and ruined it be developing…other…feelings. The walk is meant to clear your head, but instead of getting a lay of your new position in enemy territory, your mind keeps wandering, catching on them when they’ve done little shooshes in the long journey to this distant nebula. Usually those things are kept behind closed doors, but your close proximity in the past few wipes has made you privy to things you’d much rather ignore.
You don’t want to give up on being matesprits with Mercy. You love what you have, being able to wrap an arm around her waist or plant a kiss on her neck. And even if you did decide you wanted to flip, how would she see that? Certainly she wouldn’t end things with Sparrow, they were wrapped in each other’s pity more than a sleeksqeaker trapped in a net.
No, you know exactly how she’d see that. She’d think you were being greedy, and she’d be right. You pick at you gloves and again reaffirm the only thing you can do is shove these newly developed pale aspirations back into the dark corner of your being where they obviously originated from. So busy and successful are you at doing this, that you nearly trip over the pitched couple rolling around on the floor.
“Shit!” You jump back.
Unfortunately, they’re not even engaged in the interesting sort of caliginous entanglement, but instead are trying to beat the shit out of each other. Or at least, the violet is trying to beat the shit out of the teal, her hands wrapped tightly around their chug column as they kick out uselessly at her stomach.
“I told you I was coming for you, Seventeen.”
“I thought you were kidding!!!!!!”
You have just enough wherewithal to recognize these two from the incident in the throne room, when another figure you desperately don’t want to meet alone in a dark ship alleyway comes barreling around the corner.
You’ve never seen one this close. In fact, until today you’d never seen a fuchsia at all, save for artists renditions or on public broadcasts. Not only is she a rarity, but if you were asked if you were to ever see a fuchsia in your normal lifespan, you certainly wouldn’t expect an Heiress. There hadn’t even been an Heiress on Alternia when you were growing up, and you’d only seen pictures of the one who’d been hatched after you left.
But the troll in front of you is not digitized or represented in a very awkward East Alternian Animation; she is here in the flesh and then some. She is raw power, muscle upon muscle, clearly beating you in width as well as height. Her hair is nothing like the billowing mass of the Empress’s, and instead of adorned bangles, she has a tattoo carved in one arm. All this you had only caught glimpses of before, no matter how openly you had stared.
She looms over the scuffling pair. “What is going on here? You know, I have just realized I do not care.”
With that, she reaches down and extracts Widowmaker from the tangle of limbs. The seadweller hisses, but does not attempt escape as she is encased in a truly massive arm, reaffirming your assumption that this is all some sort of pitched exercise. Does that make the Aspirant their auspistice? Now that’s something that would make some truly bohemian literature if it were ever allow into publishing circles.
None of them seem to notice or care that you’re there. Exhibitionism? Perhaps but-
“Lynx Seventeen is fucking Sombra!” Widowmaker shouts.
Okay! Wasn’t expecting that! Exhibition or no, this is getting way too interesting to dip out now.
Zarya’s grip loosens somewhat. “What?” She then turns to her Strategos. “Really?”
They stagger to their feet, massaging where aqua bruises are already forming on their swallow pillar. “Yes,” they cough indignantly. “And I see no reason why anyone would need to strangulate me for it.”
Widowmaker snarls, “I told you-”
“We all threaten to kill each other, Amelie!” Strategos, or Lynx apparently, throws their hands in the air. “All the time! It’s a cute little banter we do, skirting the customs of what is acceptable ashen facsimile.”
Zarya is still dumbstruck. She blinks at Lynx. “Sombra? Really?”
They massage their nub link. “Yes Zarya. Sombra.”
She thinks again for a moment, then reiterates, “Sombra?”
“Zarya.”
“Right, right, sorry.” She scratches the back of her head with her free hand, apparently only needing one to hold the furious violet. “Flushed then?”
“No, pitched,” Lynx says drily. “My adulterous ways have finally been revealed.”
Wait what? You’d broken out the metaphorical popcorn because you thought you were going to see some juicy double reacharound drama, but the teal and the fuchsia are kismesises? And a moment ago you swore Lynx refer to themself and Widowmaker as ashen, but at the time you’d assume that was exaggeration for comedic effect.
The pure illogic of the situation makes you garble a very audible, “huh??”
Three sets of lookstalks turn to you. The Aspirant raises her eyebrow in your direction. “Pharah, yes? My apologies for my associates, I am aware we have not made a very good first impression today. We are usually not so quarrelsome.” Widow scoffs under her breath. Zarya ignores her. “It appears we are dealing with some interpersonal issues. Very, very strange interpersonal issues.”
Lynx puts a hand on their hip. “Why is this hook so hard for you to swallow, Tilapia?”
Zarya shrugs. “I am used to you expressing your standards.”
“May I remind you,” Widow cuts in with a growl. “That that is my clover you are referring to.”
“She is not!” The bellow from the usually composed Lynx makes you jump. “You three are not dating, she is not in an auspisticism with you, and that is the whole damn problem. If you had sorted this out sweeps ago we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess, but instead you’ve dragged your childhood drama out for so long you’ve convinced yourself it can’t be solved!”
Widowmaker’s cheeks are a bright lilac, hot with rage. “I tried-” Her whine is cut off again.
“Sufferer’s bruised balls Lcroix I am tired of repeating myself.” They storm over, getting right in her face, which you think is a monumentally bad idea when she’s only partially secured by the entralled Aspirant. “Deal with you shit, and stop taking it out on the rest of us. I want you to march over to them, get them in the same room, and talk things out. Do I make myself clear?”
She breaths out hot through her nose, bottom lip curling up in indignation. Zarya looks between the two of them. Finally, Widowmaker lets out a “fine.”
Zarya lets her go. She doesn’t attack, merely straightens her spine and wipes non-existent dust off her purrbeastsuit before marching past you without a glance.
She reaches the end of the hallway, where she turns on her heel, getting her last word with, “you will still stay away from Sombra-”
“Widowmaker!” Lynx’s voice is nearly a shriek. “Go! Figure out! Your triad!”
Widowmaker’s cheeks puff up. Then she spins again, disappearing around the corner.
As soon as she’s gone, Lynx leans over their knees. “Empress alive. This has been going on for way too long.”
“I see you’ve gotten a bit closer than usual to the disaster omniscuttlecaravan,” Zarya notes unsympathetically.
“…I may have gone a little deep in the pudding, so to speak,” they admit.
After a moment, she asks, “do you really like Sombra?”
“Good in the sack.”
“You’re an embarrassment,” she says, and there, that is something you can recognize. Just some good, old-fashioned, potent arch-rivalry. It’s like a lifebuoy thrown in a hurricane.
The sense of normalcy gives you the confidence to find your voice. “Well,” you say a bit loudly, drawing attention to yourself yet again. “I must be getting back. It was nice to meet you all. Again.” And you make your escape.
From behind you, not entirely sure if you’re imagining it, you hear the Aspirant’s voice smugly say, “I’m sure it was.”
Yeesh. All you want to do is return to your cabin. Suddenly, a pale-flushed flip-flop don’t seem that bad.