Chapter Text
0: prologue
What was the worst part?
Feeling helpless.
So, I’m sure it felt good to get revenge.
What revenge?
You killed him. Didn’t you?
Yes.
Did it feel good?
Yes.
See? You got revenge.
No. I can never do to him what he did to me.
Then why kill him at all?
Why not?
Percy loved it when it rained. It was like a kind of cosmic release and, for a moment, she didn’t have to tell herself to breathe. She didn’t have to remind her heart to pump or the stale blood in her veins to crawl. It flowed freely from the holes in her stomach on its own as she collected the drops from above in her hand, all but transfixed by the water that rolled across her palm. The rain chill felt almost warm against her cold skin.
“Jesus, Perce.”
The harsh words were spoken out of concern, and some part of her knew that, recognized the voice even, but her brown irises seemed to darken as they darted up stiffly. It was Rick—always fucking Rick—stood a few feet away, just as dirtied and soaked with sweat and rain. He had been apprehensively worried. She caught a glimpse of it before his demeanor shifted in an instant, visibly slinking back within himself as his eyes rounded with realization.
“Hey,” he held up his hands as if to steady an unsure horse, voice firm despite the shade of fear coloring his otherwise steeled features. “It’s just me.”
As Percy let her hand fall to her side, her frame straightened. “I know.”
“Then why’d you look at me like that?” he questioned, offended.
“Habit. I told you not to sneak up on me. Now we both look like we’ve seen a ghost.”
Rick huffed a scoff and continued approaching her, shaking his head as his eyes fell to the crimson dots on her black jacket. He counted three, though he looked again just to be sure, before checking for exit wounds.
“How the fuck are you standing right now?” he asked the question under his breath.
It was just loud enough to hear over the shriek of cotton as he tore strips from his sleeve to pack the still-oozing holes in her abdomen. She knew it wasn’t a question meant to be answered. He knew. Of all people, Rick Flag knew. But Percy’s mind couldn’t help but float to one anyway, her inner voice hissing a single word in the dark—will. She reached out and took the fabric from his hands before they could get too close, taking a step back from him instead.
“I’ve got it,” Percy said. She began forcing the torn fabric into the wounds, one at a time, plunging a finger into the hollowed flesh as she walked past the Colonel with her eyes on the task at hand. “Let’s get to the pick-up.”
Rick once again shook his head, sighing heavily, but he followed after her. It didn’t make sense to him. None of it ever did. Witnessing some of the things she could do without blinking often threatened to sour his stomach and regularly came close to an involuntary gag. Sitting across from her on the plane home, he watched under a knitted brow as she sewed her own gunshot wounds despite the help available. But he hadn’t expected her to let him touch her anyway.
The hem of a baggy t-shirt on her shoulders between her teeth, she nudged the fitted tank beneath up far enough to access the lowest open wound. A hole three inches from her hip bone. Diligently, her fingers worked a needle through the less than pliable skin until she could tie it off and cut the excess thread. It didn’t matter how it looked. Only that it was closed. Anything deeper inside would heal on its own later.
Lost in the task, she was unaware just how high the fitted tank had ridden.
There, just above her navel, Rick could see it—the end of a scar only mentioned in passing or speculated in hushed whispers. Part of him had come to disbelieve its existence. That would be too much, wouldn’t it? There was no reason to buy into the grotesque allegations. After all, that would feel too much like a cruel and twisted horror movie he’d much rather turn off before the big reveal. But it was there. He was making eye contact with it and it was exactly what Harcourt and Economos had said it was.
He hadn’t realized he was staring until black fabric tugged over the puckered line of risen flesh, suddenly blocking his view, and he blinked as his eyes immediately darted to find Percy’s face in search of confirmation.
Percy was already looking. Her expression was unreadable to him, as it often was, but there was no anger or offense—so he took that as a good sign. However, she stared back at him as she wiped the old blood from her hands with a rag, and he got the distinct feeling that she knew he had seen the scar.
“Any questions you have, you should ask now,” she suddenly said. “Before I change my mind.”
Rick swallowed. Though a bit taken aback by her forward offer, it was almost exciting to hear. Like when a wild animal decides to trust you for some reason. He had many questions that felt far too personal for a setting like this. But he wasn’t going to waste this opportunity in the slightest.
With a jut of his chin, he gestured toward it. “That really from an autopsy?”
Percy shoved her arms through the sleeves of her jacket and zipped it up to the neck before settling back into her seat on the bench, stuffing her stained hands into the pockets.
“Yes,” she nodded once. “My skin doesn’t actually heal, it just glues itself back together, so it looks pretty bad.”
“How’d you explain it to the doc that took out the stitches?” he asked, somewhat rhetorical.
“I took the stitches out myself.”
She had said it so casually that it sounded like something as common and mundane as taking out the trash. And to her, that’s what it had become after six years. Eighteen-hundred days of practicing humanity had distanced what little feeling was left from the day Percy died—and every horrible thing that came after waking up. It was too much to carry, so she simply tucked it away.
Sometimes, she felt herself slipping into that dark place. Her eyes would drift away, unfocused. Her chest stilled, unreminded to move. And time would stop. Sometimes, when Percy would come back, everything around her was different. A different room, a different street, a different city. There was no way to know just how she managed to function like that, but somehow she always did, relying on muscle memory to continue performing despite taking a step back from her own body.
When Percy came back this time, she was sitting at a desk—her desk—leaning back in an office chair with her legs crossed at the knees as she pretended to watch a mission recap. Warm coffee felt like magma in her hands where she clutched a disposable cup. She didn’t remember getting off the plane or changing her clothes and washing up, or even walking to the coffee machine at the back of the office.
Her eyes moved stiffly around the room to take in the others, their demeanors and levels of participation to gauge what she had missed and who might’ve noticed. Though, to her left, she paused on her desk neighbor. Economos. He was looking at her with an expression she knew well. It was the face he always made when she was doing something or appearing to be obviously not normal. But she expected him of all people to notice.
No one else seemed to give her so much as a passing glance, unbothered by it or simply too busy actually paying attention to their work, so Percy simply waited for a dismissal and turned to her computer to begin writing her report. She would be the first to admit that her performance needed work. Even after all this time, there was still so much human behavior she could not force her body to emulate. Expressions, tones, and the general stiffness. She could feel eyes watching her as her fingers worked methodically at the keyboard and it didn’t bother her. There were far too many in the office to pay attention to all of them.
Then he opened his mouth.
“Is it true you took four bullets to the chest?” Economos asked, rhetorically, from behind his computer.
Percy continued typing. “Three to the abdomen.”
“Damn, I don’t know why the maintenance guys keep getting it wrong.”
His humor was noted despite its dryness.
“Close enough,” she replied. “Don’t tell me you bet the house on the ponies.”
After the briefest pause, Economos sat upright in his desk chair to better see his neighbor over the cubicle partition, sarcastically confused eyes illuminated through his glasses.
“Not to ruin a good thing, but is that banter? Are you bantering with me right now?” his voice was full of jestly wonder, causing Percy to shake her head at his antics.
“I’m working on it, John.”
And she was working on it. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t understand how others interacted with each other or what those tones and expressions meant. More so that she had forgotten how it felt to emulate them herself. That was a memory her body had refused to withhold for a reason she may never come to realize. Now these things felt utterly odd to act out. Her face felt wrong, normal reactions lacked their emotional weight. For long periods of time, she stood in front of the mirror and watched herself, trying to learn what she looked like with different feelings and gestures and committing them to new memory.
At home, she didn’t need any formal training.
Crossing the threshold meant taking off all of those masks, and her existence no longer needed an approval. The unfamiliar lines of her face could fall flat in the evening shadow of the hall. A nighttime routine was nonexistent in her home—she would simply enter the house, shower, and continue her work on a laptop in the kitchen. Though most of the appliances were no longer necessary, the coffee maker was all but perpetually in use.
Percy took her time sipping a hot cup of black coffee in between the paragraphs of reports as the night hours ticked by. Under other circumstances, it would feel odd to describe herself and her actions so clinically, so methodical. Attempting to see her life from the perspective of a forensic narrator often left her head with a gentle spin.
Today was not any different than yesterday in the grand scheme of it all, but somehow tonight felt…off. She found it more difficult to focus, forcing herself to remain at the forefront as she felt her mind threatening to slip away, and it reached a point she could not ignore. It started with the same taps she heard every night, but there was something particularly loud about them. The slow drips from the faucet, the soft rain on the roof, the ever gentle settling of the house. Then, the thudding—at first, just the rhythmic thudding from the upstairs hallway she knew to ignore, but another set echoed in from the living room.
She found herself transfixed by the pattern on her mug, the steam still lifting from the liquid, as her ears could not help but attune to each individual sound. It was as if she could feel strong hands wedge themselves between herself and her body and start pushing. She tried to stand up and walk around the kitchen, circling the island in an attempt to draw her senses back to her body. She even reached for the light switch to let the brightness of the overhead shock her system out of it.
But the hands persisted.
They pushed harder and a pressure formed between her eyes. Almost sharp, it sent her hand up to cradle her head at the temple, briefly squeezing her eyes shut as the intense sensation involuntarily wrinkled her nose. When she slipped away this time, she swore she could hear a faint pop from somewhere deep inside her own mind. It was like holding onto something that was suddenly whisked away with great force—but she did not let go, instead whisked away into the darkness with it, plunging into the shadows of her subconscious at a break-neck speed.
There was no sign of light for a long time. Though deep within, she could tell that time was passing. But she felt so far away from her body. Even when her consciousness snapped back into place, there was a heaviness to her head, a stiffness to her limbs. It was like being dead again. And it was that thought that jolted her eyes open.
Everything was white. The tile, the porcelain, the harsh light overhead. When Percy sat up, she found herself in the dry basin of the bathtub. Her hands gripped the edge to pull herself out and crimson smeared the porcelain, a sight that halted her completely with a drop of dread in her stomach as the copper smell reached her nose. Quickly, her eyes scanned the room. The tub, the sink, the walls, even the ceiling. Only when she looked to the floor did she find any accompanying red. Droplets splattered the tile like spilled paint, but there was no trail.
There was no relief to be had as she moved swiftly to the sink to begin scrubbing the substance from her hands. It smeared on the hot water handle, the soap dispenser. Her skin was pink beneath the worst of it. Percy blinked hard several times as she tried to comb her memories for this. Of course, she did not truly expect to find the cause so easily. Her mind never kept track when she was away, not her movements nor interactions, and she would have to be her own detective if she wanted answers.
However, as she yanked the hand towel from the holder to dry her hands, there was a rapping at the front door. The sound echoed up the open stairwell, over the banister to the open bathroom door. Frustration welled within her, and she threw the towel back at the dirtied sink before marching for the stairs. Her fingers hastily turned the lock and she pulled open the door a little harder than she planned, only to find herself looking at Harcourt through the still-shut screen door.
Percy adjusted her posture instinctively, smoothing over her features in an attempt to put a mask back on on demand—and hide her previous predicament.
“What are you doing here?” she questioned, her voice flat.
Although Harcourt retained an expression of skepticism, there was something surprised about her features. Hands in the pockets of her coat, it didn’t look like she planned on staying long, and in fact appeared as though she hadn’t expected the door to open at all. There was only a brief moment before Percy noticed it. Something sad in the dark of her eyes. Harcourt was trying to hide it, though she should know better than to think she could hide such a thing from her.
“Where the hell have you been?” Harcourt asked, a bit accusatory, withholding the answer to Percy’s question. “No one’s been able to get ahold of you for weeks.”
Percy lifted a brow. “Weeks?”
“You went home for the weekend three weeks ago,” Harcourt clarified.
Absentmindedly, Percy moved to push open the screen door and Harcourt stepped aside to miss it as it swung, before she gestured for Harcourt to enter without a word. Confusion only deepened on her face, but Harcourt stepped inside the house. Percy let the screen door fall shut and turned on her heel to walk instead into the kitchen.
The room was virtually the same as she had left it. Her chair at the nook table pushed out, laptop open with a manila folder beside it, her forgotten cup of coffee now cold on the coaster near the computer mouse. Mold spores floated on the surface. She pushed in the chair and poured out the half empty coffee pot on the counter, moving with robotic instinct to start a new pot in order to avoid the uncomfortable thoughts at the edges of her mind. Blood, lapsed time, a house call—what had she done this time? Where had she gone? What did she miss?
Filling the machine with water, something caught her eye. Turning her head. She blinked as her eyes settled on the smears of dirt and something red on the floorboards just inside the back door. Sure enough, when her gaze moved immediately up to the handle, she found it unlocked. Percy was quick to press start on the machine and move toward the back door, immediately sweeping at the dirt with her foot. Attempting to scatter it toward the base of the counter cupboards. At best, it would disperse. At its worst, it would simply look like she hadn’t cleaned in a while.
Harcourt entered the kitchen quietly. Keeping one eye on Percy’s position while the other swept over the room with suspicion. The open laptop and its placement insinuated that Percy had been working—but if she had, why wasn’t she answering the phone? Why didn’t she reply to any emails? It didn’t quite make sense.
“Long night?” she asked, a thinly veiled attempt at prying as her eyes found Percy at the back door.
Percy exhaled and turned to face her, forcing her hair behind her ears. “Yes,” she said, before bringing the coffee mug from the table to the sink, dumping it down the drain. “Waller sent you, then?”
It was rhetorical.
Harcourt nodded once, though Percy’s back was turned.
“Yeah. You missed some pretty important stuff,” she answered.
There was something sad behind her bleak, somewhat uninterested voice like the sadness in her eyes, and Percy finally found herself curious enough to ask. She turned her back to the sink, leaning against it as she folded her arms across her chest, attempting gentleness.
“What happened?”
The question sounded a bit more earnest than Harcourt had expected. Though, she hadn’t expected much at all. It was always a gamble with Percy, and Harcourt never knew how to tell what emotion she would get in response. She would never admit how intimidating interacting with Percy was just for that fact alone. Harcourt had seen the files, the reports, the footage with her own eyes—the last emotion she wanted to trigger was anger.
However, the thought of having to answer just as earnestly turned Harcourt’s stomach.
“You missed a…pretty big mission,” she began, though she found it harder to maintain eye contact with every word. Then, she swallowed thickly. “We lost Rick.”
Something cold ran through Percy.
The words hung in the silence between them and the air suddenly felt heavy. Harcourt had averted her eyes completely, looking instead through the glass of the back door at the large oak beyond the porch. It was the only way she could retain her integrity. Though, Percy could not look away. Her eyes burned holes in the meat of Harcourt’s cheek, losing focus at the edge of her view as her chest stilled. Nails carved half moons in the flesh of her palms where they stayed tucked beneath her arms.
“I know it’s sudden, but the memorial is tomorrow if you’d like to pay your respects,” Harcourt broke the silence as her eyes fell to the floorboards. “We’ve already got another case in the works. We’re not sure how long it’ll be before takeoff, but Waller wants you on board, too.”
Slowly, Percy managed to nod.
It felt like a one-two punch, coming back after slipping away for so long and finding blood, just to be given such grave news minutes later. And none of it felt real. Her mind raced back to the last time she saw him. Rick offered her that stupid yellow shirt when she complained hers was soiled and she turned it down, said she would change at home. Percy wondered, now, what he’d assumed of her. Did he know she considered him a friend, though she wasn’t sure just what that meant anymore? Did he ever know she cared?
Percy’s tongue felt dry in her mouth when the coffee pot chimed. A fresh, full pot.
“Coffee?” she asked. Her voice cracked. “I need you to catch me up to speed.”