Chapter Text
You don’t dodge his next attack.
The flat, rippling planes of his flesh fist catch you in the gobble hinge, and you topple, only righting yourself in time to not be KO’d by his next hit. He has yet to strike you with the gauntlet. You could survive, you’re sure of it, enough that you’d claimed as much so confidently an hour before and he’d grinned at you with that tiger’s smile. Now he doesn’t even bother as a single-armed strike across your back brings you to the metal floor.
“Up, Zaryan,” he tells you when you do not immediately rise.
“I…will…” you wheeze.
You should. You will.
You stagger, dizzy, both fists raised to his one. He smirks, casting a glance over his shoulder at the Captain and tells her, “a bit more pressure, Ana. You go too easy on her.”
The Captain’s eyes narrow. At first, there is nothing, but after a moment’s hesitation the pressure at the back of your pan increases from a thrum to an ache, and you nearly fall again.
The only reason you don’t is because the Successor is darting forward, a clean right hook that you block and a knee to your gastric sack that you don’t. You fold, stumbling before Doomfist as he shakes his head.
“Up. You have spent too long too soft, Aspirant. The Condescension holds within her claws ten times this strength.”
“The sleep psionics…” you mutter out through a mouth full of blood, even as you know it is a foolish thing to say.
Disappointment clouds his eyes. “A fraction of what you will feel when you face her. Think, Zaryan. The Empress is you: of your blood, of your lineage. She is you and you are her but only in her most larval for, at her lowest point. She has had hundreds of thousands of sweeps to hone what her DNA has given her, stretched her psionics abilities to their physical limits, fended off death itself for those around her. You wish to overthrow her, to tear her from her throne, yet you cannot face me? Up.”
You get up. Within eleven minutes you are on the ground again.
He shakes his head. “That will be enough for today. Someone get her some juice.”
The world feels like cotton around you, fuzzy at the edges of your skin as you’re moved about like a doll. The Captain says things to you, at you, in your ear as she tenderly and calmly patches you up. You ignore all of it. You suck down the rejuvijuice that is shoved in your hands and let yourself be hauled toward the medbay. It is only when you pass by a portal to the outside, the vast canvas of stars, your own pale reflection floating translucently along its surface, that you realize that the arms supporting you are not Ana’s.
“Lynx,” you mutter.
“No other.”
“I did not tell you where I was going.”
“I am your Strategos, it is my job to know the goings on in this ship. Now, be quiet, your lifeblood’s going to fall all out of your mouth if you keep doing that.”
So you quiet, and the two of you drag along, foot by foot, the portholes sliding by like rare glimpses into the future if the future were nothing but void. Your reflections chase you, a pair of trolls stretched long by time and obligation.
“It is necessary,” you say.
“I’m sure you think so.”
“You disapprove.”
“Of course I disapprove,” Lynx scoffs. “And you know I disapproved before you asked. That is why you hid this from me.”
You don’t deny it. “I am not ready to face her. I must undergo the training she has, a millennia packed down to a few decades. Doomfist understands this.”
“You are, and always will be, awfully big headed Zarya,” they snort. “If you ever face her in single combat we’ve already lost. The whole point of this revolution is that it is not only on you, you know. That is what makes us different from her.”
“Are we truly so special?” you ask bitterly. “I am just Her, after all. Her again and again, over and over as the cycle repeats.”
The silence hangs heavy between you.
Quieter, much quieter, you say, “I am not Her.”
“I know,” they tell you.
The doors of the medbay rise up in front of you and you have a heartache that cannot be summed in words as you feel the pressures of your wounds and your misery and your ribs that were so fruitfully kicked in. The flesh on your face is tender and Lynx’s grip under your arm jerks discomfort, yet it is the only thing holding you up. Shouting comes to a blundering halt as you enter.
Moira acknowledges you first, and offers a dismissal to her verbal sparring partner. “Another time, Widowmaker,” she says evenly, too smoothly, sea before a storm because Widow turns to the waves and snaps back, “no.”
“What is-” is all you say, for Widow begins before you can end.
“No, this is not a debate, I will not come back another time, and you will not go near him again.”
Reaper is lying on a plank between them. Since he’s acquired the mask you have become much worse at reading his expression, but the way his head flips between the two women reeks of a deeply saturated discomfort.
“It will be very difficult to treat him without going near him,” Moira says with every shark tooth in her pharyngeal jaw.
Widow looked like she might jump right then, wrap her grapplekind around the docterror’s throat and try like she has so many times. “What is going on here?” you bark again.
“O’Deorain is going to stop experimenting on Reaper,” Widow says through clenched bone nubs. “Right. Now. Or her desecrated floater is going to splattered over the hull come tomorrow evening.”
“How many times must I say it my dear?” Moira sighs. “It is not an experiment. I am treating him. His condition is…most unstable.”
“Liar,” Widow bites.
The altercation unfurls before you, again, a call back to the ring and you once again are stuck between those indecisions. Why does it always come to this? You have your theories, your ambitions, your plans, but in the heat of the moment you freeze. A small hand presses warm into your side. In reassurance or in restraint you are not sure.
“Reaper has volunteered for this,” Moira deflects easily. “Together, we are making so much progress.”
You think you hear him swallow. “Look Widow, without Moira’s help I’d be dead-”
“-And that does not mean you owe her your life,” Widow finishes. She has not taken her lookstubs off Moira. She may never. It may be the last thing she sees and for one blinding moment you can see a possible future sweep out before you, where the ancient seadweller culls a mere guppy with barely a sweat. Where Reaper deteriorates. Where Sombra fades once more because she uses pain as an excuse to pry herself away and always has.
“Enough,” you say, and in this moment, you are not Aleksa Zaryan, you are not Doomfist’s prodigy, you are not the tenderized bit of meat that wobbles in the middle of the infirmary. You are the Aspirant. You are their Heiress. “Moira, you will cease your experiments.”
Her head moves to you. Surprise lifts her brows, but more than that is condescension, as though she is used to minnows that think they can swim so close to her mandibles. “Like I said, they are not experiments-”
“I did not ask,” you say. Her jaw locks. “I do not care whether Reaper has agreed or not: you do not have permission to make contact with my crew. I have given you an order, and I will hear no more on it.”
You stare her down. There is a challenge, a dare to bring up the Successor’s name, to use him as a shield, a captain to go over your head to. Your eyes openly invite her to take it.
After a moment, she drops her chin. “As you say, Aspirant.”
“Yes. As I say.” With the remaining authority in your voice you tell her, “now, I am in need of medical attention. This is now your focus.”
“…Of course, your grace.”
You are sat upon a spare recline. Moira busies herself, a state you have not observed before, and wonder if for the first you are seeing her put off her game. Widow watches you, for a moment, standing still in time as the scene moves on without her. The two of you lock eyes. There is the slightest shift to her, a tilt to her head, what might be a nod of acknowledgement or—dare you think it— respect. The bow retracts once more, and then she is gone. Reaper slinks out in the gaps between those moments.
As the docterror finds what she needs, a body joins you at your place of rest. “You are not Her,” Lynx tells you. “The difference is in the choice.”
“Which choice,” you ask as you look directly ahead.
“Mine. And who I’ve followed, in the end.”