Ey I'm workin' here

"Nobody" represents how "it's hard to be someone" (Sova) and "it hurts to be nobody" (Cypher) The playlist is technically a story about them. This song is the point in time where they are introduced to each other and slowly learn how to live with each other in their life.

I wanted to showcase the rivalry they have and the negative emotions Sova has towards Cypher. However, in a moment of vulnerability, the two are able to share sentiment and move forward from it.

“Sasha - can you hear me?” Amir’s voice is trembling, his eyes glued to the pen. After a few tense moments the pen shifts.

YES.

Cypher shoots up from his chair and backs away from the desk. Sasha can hear him. Sasha can communicate with him.

“Sasha, you’re- fuck-” Amir doesn’t know what to say- what to do- the moment that pen moved his brain completely fried.

Sasha reaches back down to the paper and rolls the pen back towards the middle before pushing it back to “YES”.

“This isn’t real- this isn’t happening.” Amir’s voice is trembling as he starts to pace. “I don’t understand.”

“Me either.” Sasha mutters, eyes following Amir as he paces. It’s amusing at least, watching Amir freak out. Seeing him lose his cool was a rare sight and at this point Sasha’s just glad for the show. He grins as the other man spends the next several minutes chattering to himself anxiously and nearly walking a trail into the floor.

Until he blurs, at least. The grin fades from Sasha’s face as he notices it. At first it’s as if Cypher was lagging behind himself with a soft blur of colour tracing behind him. He reaches up to rub his eyes to no avail - the colours of Amir’s clothes are still blurring behind him, swirling and mixing into the colours of the room around him.

Sasha jerks his head to look at something else and, to his horror, watches as the room blurred terribly. It’s almost as if he was standing in a still-wet watercolour painting and someone’s just tilted it to the side. Colours swirl together and drift from their original positions. His gaze drops to his hands and finds them to be shaking, but still solid.

What the fuck is going on?

The swirling begins making him nauseous - it gives him the same feeling that he would get when he’d get drunk then lay down in bed, that same sickening spinning feeling that seems to never end. His eyes squeeze shut as his stomach begins churning. Can dead people throw up? He feels like he’s about to.

He starts breathing rapidly, fighting the sick feeling until the spinning slows to a stop. Sasha slowly opens his eyes, blinking away any fuzziness until he can clearly see his surroundings.

He’s in his room in HQ, standing just in front of the memorial that he saw Sage and Jett working on before. How the fuck did he get here? What just happened to him? Was it something he did, or something external? He wasn’t sure that answers would be easily found.

Sasha’s walking before he even realises it, feet carrying him back towards Amir’s door. He reaches his destination and pauses, still out of sorts. He gives himself a few moments to collect himself - he can’t get answers for what happened earlier right now, so he might as well drop it for now.

When Sasha comes through the door he’s met with a sight that he didn’t get to see in life - Cypher is sat behind his monitors, eyes glued to the screen with a dainty, decorated teacup clutched in one hand. His mask sits neatly folded beside the large keyboard.

His face was illuminated only by the light of the monitors, the blinds still shut tight to choke out the morning sun.

He’s beautiful. The thought makes Sasha cringe, but he doesn’t fight it. He simply stands, drinking in the features of Amir’s face and basking in the unfamiliar, but warm feeling that fills his chest.

There it is again, that strange feeling. It’s not quite comparable to anything he’d felt when he was alive. Do the dead feel things differently than the living? It was something he had plenty of time to think about going forward.

It takes him longer than he’d ever admit to finally look away from Amir, but when he does that strange feeling persists. The corner of the desk closest to him is cleared from the original technical bits that usually covered it. Now, it is covered by many small bits of paper.

The strips are longer than they are wide and are stacked into a neat row of 3. They’re written on in a way similar to the large yes and no sheet, but with many more options. Small metal rods - scraps from some failed inventions - lie in the middle of each.

“HELLO” and “GOODBYE”, “YES” and “NO”, “MAYBE” and “I DON’T KNOW”. Simple responses, but judging by the mound of papers erupting from the small bin next to Amir’s desk, he’d chosen them specifically.

Sasha walks up and focuses, bumping the first rod over to “HELLO”. Amir flinches, hand smacking the keyboard and adding a quarter row of gibberish to the report he’d been finishing up. He takes a deep breath and corrects the typing error before tabbing out of the report. He turns towards the scraps of paper and tries to sit up a bit straighter.

“Hello, Sasha- well, I assume it’s you.”

YES.

“Good. I’d hate to think there was another demon roaming these halls.” Amir chuckles at himself before stopping dead. He jumps up from his desk and nearly runs to his bed, snatching his mask from the bedside table.

Again he pauses, mask in hand.

“It’s a bit late for this now, I suppose?”

The sound of a rod readjusting then rolling fills the quiet room.

YES.

Amir sighs and drops the mask limply onto the bedside table, eyepieces making a thunk against the wood. “I suppose you aren’t going to go telling people anyways - not like you can.”

More rolling. NO.

He stands beside the bed for another moment, seeming to collect himself, before slinking back over to his desk and sitting back down. He turns towards Sasha, assuming his position, before looking upwards.

He realises now he remembers almost exactly how tall Sasha was. His brain automatically directed his eyes right to Sasha’s, but only Sasha could tell.

“I’m sure you’re enjoying this, not just my face, but knowing you can snoop to your heart’s content.”

NO.

Amir looks unamused. “Even in death you hold that honour of yours above honesty then? I of all people would know you were nosey.”

Sasha starts to move the rod again, but decides against it. Amir’s not necessarily wrong - Sasha loved information just as much as he did, it’s just that Sasha also loved privacy. He loved knowing his own personal information was safely locked away in private files and his mind. And if nothing else, Sasha believed the best way to protect yourself was to keep to yourself. Mind your own business and yours stays safe.

However, being dead does change things. Is karma such a thing after your heart stops beating? Do the sins he commits now condemn him to a hell that he’s seemingly avoided?

He’s not sure he wants to risk it.

Regardless, he watches Amir’s face as the man continues staring up at him, eyes searching the space hopelessly. It’s somewhat…endearing?

“Does it feel different? On that side?” Amir’s voice shakes Sasha from his ever-spiralling thoughts. The question doesn’t help.

Did it? He really wasn’t sure. In a way, yes. The way he feels emotions and sensations is definitely different. He’s been more numb since he’s died. When in life he’d be feeling neutral he now simply felt nothing. Not in a negative way, just in a way that made things feel more absent and blank.

Feelings felt less like “emotions” and more like temperatures. Instead of flustered or angry or even happy he feels warm, seemingly more warm the stronger the emotion. Same goes with the cold- the fear, the sadness, the loneliness.

YES.

“Hm. I wish I’d written more cards out now… I’m deathly curious about it now - forgive my pun.” Amir chuckles at himself, and something about it has Sasha feeling fire.

Does he really think it’s funny? Sasha is dead. He’s just confessed he doesn’t feel the same as when he did when he was alive. He’s been patient and playing along with Amir’s endless game of questions just to have him laugh at an answer?

Maybe it was the build-up of it all. Maybe he’s still not thought through everything. Maybe he just really dislikes Cypher.

Anger is very different when there’s literally nothing you can do about it.

He swings his fist at Amir’s head and watches in terror as it goes through him. The cold chill of horror continues down his spine as everything blurs, almost as if the colours and shapes of the world were smudging like paint on a canvas. It all spins and mixes and muddies until there’s nothing but black.

Sasha is alone again.

His breathing picks up as he begins to sprint in… a direction? He’s moving, he can feel his legs pumping and feel the ground pushing back up against his feet, but he doesn’t feel that he’s getting anywhere. There’s no sign of movement, no wind on his face, no change in the surroundings - nothing.

He runs until he physically can’t anymore. He’s lost again. Over a stupid, inconsequential remark that Amir had probably made by accident. Sasha lets out a shout before falling to his hands and knees. How could he be so stupid? So reactive? Has death truly made him so unstable?

It’s a stupid question, he realises. Of course it did - he’s lost everything. His hopes and ambitions were crushed. What he had left of his family was now likely unreachable. His friends and teammates are lost to him again. What’s the fucking point?

Sasha rolls onto his back and stares into the void, hoping that something - anything - would stir in the stillness.

-----------------

A/N: sorry for disappearing ive been playing baldurs gate 3 and in 3 weeks have got nearly 200 hours into the game LMAO sooooooooo

ngl im not totally happy with this chapter but i want to get it out so i can get the ball rolling on this again, so sorry if it’s shit!

Sasha remembers dying. Remembers how it felt. He doesn't know who caused that final blow, but he knows it was a bullet. He felt it tear through the meat of his chest and rip through the veins nearest his heart. It burned like a fire from a low rung of hell, one much worse than the ones he'd felt before.

He'd been shot before. He'd felt the heat of the metal as it pushed through him, but not like this. No. This was different. He knew this is the one he wouldn't come back from.

The hope of a saviour died out quickly - Jett and Gekko were across site engaged in a fight, Sage was pinned behind a wall, and Phoenix… well, who knows where Phoenix was. He lay there, hand clutched over his chest, breath shallow and stinging his lungs as they fought to keep him going. He couldn't blame anyone for that either. He'd hung back, lurking in the background as he tried to keep an eye on everyone.

The protector of everyone except himself, it seems.

It didn't matter for very long - he was dead in under a minute. Even if someone had noticed they wouldn't have been able to save him. His last breath wasn't significant, it wasn't poetic or comforting. It was painful. The most pain he'd ever felt in his life.

Then it was done. He was dead. The end.

Or at least he thought it would have been.

He was lost for a while, wandering a vast, white space. There was nothing. No pain, no fear, nothing. He wasn't cold. He wasn't warm. He was just there. He walked and walked over unnaturally flat terrain. He seemed to make no progress.

Days, weeks, maybe years passed. Or was it minutes? He didn't mind either way. Or did he? He wasn't sure. It was all blurred, just a smudge of white blinding his vision until it all faded back in.

It was faint at first, just a muffled whisper in the distance. It was the first thing he’d heard in ages - decades it felt like. He followed it, chased it, ran for the first time since his death towards something other than that awful, blank, silent whiteness. It came into focus and shifted colour.

It was darker now. And he felt something. A deep unease crept into his bones as the blinding brightness faded off into a cool, dark shadow. The voice was nearly in his ear now, but he realised it wasn’t directed towards him.

The conversation was one sided, questions flowed from one side only to be answered with silence. He recognised her then.

“Fade?” Sasha calls out, voice cracking from disuse.

The voice stops mid-sentence as she drifts into his view. She stood there before him in the dark void, eyes wide with shock. Shock? Terror? Sadness? He wasn’t sure.

“Fade?” He tries again. He receives no response aside from her petrified stare. He digs deep, trying to remember enough about her after his absence to jar her out of her silence. “Hazal?”

She flinches at the name. “You’re dead.”

“I know.”

Her look softens, shifting from disbelief to a proper sadness. “Sage tried to bring you back, but something went wrong.”

Sasha hums in response, still locking eyes with Fade. “Was everyone else ok? Did they survive?” He receives a nod in response. “I’m glad.”

Hazal shifts uncomfortably, still seemingly coming to terms with her current position. “I’m not sure how you’re here - Nightmare isn’t exactly the afterlife.”

“I only just got here - I followed your voice. Before it was white - all of it. Forever.”

“Sounds lame.” Fade jests, a very forced attempt to add to the conversation. “I just - I’m not sure what to make of this. I never knew that this crossover was possible. I’ve never experienced something like this before.”

Silence returns to the darkness around them. Fade feels herself drifting, slowly being pulled out of Nightmare and back into consciousness. It must be visually obvious, as Sasha’s eyes look panicked.

“Fade?” His voice is pained, the reality that he’ll be alone to drift again rapidly setting in.

“I’m sorry, Sasha, I can’t control it!” Hazal fights against the fading as much as she can until she finally feels herself waking up, reaching her hand out to Sasha. He cannot reach her.

As she’s pulled further she hears Sova calling out one more time: “Look for me where you would usually find me. I will try to follow you as best as I can.”

Hazal wakes up as she always does - gasping for air and shaking. She reaches for the bottle of water on her bedside table and gulps it down, dry throat straining as she does. Had that been real? Sasha speaking to her within Nightmare?

Was such a thing really possible?

She forces herself to sit up, rubbing her still tired eyes as she tries to unpack what she’d seen. She slowly rises out of her bed and shuffles over to her desk to write down her conversations with Nightmare. She had much to sort out.

Her body was still buzzing with anxiety and her mind still foggy, which might account for why she didn’t notice him.

Sasha stood in the corner of Fade’s room. He felt weak and disoriented, but there he stood, firmly on the ground of Valorant HQ. He’d done as he’d promised, chasing after Hazal as she faded back into her mind and physical body and somehow had found himself beside her.

He slowly moves his fingers, then his toes, then sluggishly lifts his hand up to his eyes. He’s solid. Firm. At least he thinks so.

“Fade?” He calls out weakly, voice cracking as it had when he’d seen her first in Nightmare. He clears his throat and tries again. “Fade!”

No response.

“Hazal! Can you hear me?” He takes a step forward, feeling his legs nearly limp forward as he tries to get them to follow his mental requests. Fade continues writing in her journal - hands jerking about and scrawling sloppy, unorganised notes onto the blank pages.

Sasha watches with sorrow as her face twists into a look of pain, tears slowly finding their ways into her eyes. He suddenly feels like he’s invading her privacy. He is, he realises, awkwardly stepping backwards to give her some space.

He intends to lean back against the wall to steady himself, but feels a chill run down his spine as he glides straight through it.

He stands perplexed, staring at the wall he’d just backed through.

He was really dead. A ghost.

A ghost? He thinks. It’s not something he’d ever believed in, not even considered for a moment. His chest tightens at the thought that the ones he’d lost might be reachable like this.

Sasha’s thoughts are interrupted by the sound of footsteps. They echo down the hallway and approach him. He instinctively steps to the side to make space, but mentally kicks himself for it.

Sage and Jett turn the corner, speaking quietly to each other. Sage is carrying a bouquet of flowers - face sombre. They fall silent as they walk past Sasha and stop in front of a door.

His door - the one to his bedroom. It sets heavily with him as Sage opens the door and slowly walks in. Jett stands at the door, leaning on the doorframe without truly crossing the threshold into the room.

Sova slowly makes his way past her, walking into what used to be his space. It is mostly untouched, bed still roughly made and laundry still in the hamper when he’d changed that last time.

The only notable change to the space was on his desk. The notebooks and laptop had been stacked and set aside, leaving space for several new objects to be placed.

He comes closer, looking over the items. In the centre sits a large vase filled with slowly wilting flowers, Around it are various snacks and items that he recognised from his teammates. Little trinkets that held memories of him or snacks he’d once shared with him littered the desk in a type of altar to his memory.

What hit him the hardest and nearly left a sick taste to his mouth were the photos. There were many either framed or propped up around the other items. Photos of he and Brimstone from an ice fishing trip they’d been on, a group photo from the early days of the protocol, a few random polaroids that Phoenix and Jett had randomly started taking a few months before he’d died.

He chokes up when his eyes land on one of him and his babushka. How had he only just thought about her? Surely she knew he was gone… Is she handling it ok? Who will be with her now? Is she alone? He sits on his bed out of habit, pleasantly surprised that it was something he could still do.

“I didn’t mean to let these go for so long - they’re rotting.” Sage’s voice cuts through his thoughts, startling him for a moment.

“I doubt he’d mind.” Jett responds, voice lower than her usual cheerful tone. Sage hums in response, seemingly only half interested in the reply as she replaces the dying flowers in the vase with fresh ones.

“I still feel bad. Don’t want him feeling forgotten.” Sage’s words sting, even though they shouldn’t.

“He’s gone, Sage, he doesn’t know.”

“I’m not.” Sova mutters in response, unheard by the two women.

“He is, yes. I thought time would make it better, but I still feel awful.” Sage snaps, voice cracking a bit. Jett comes to her side and pulls her into a hug from the side.

“울지마 - it’s ok, I promise you.” Jett consoles, swaying slightly with Sage as she breaks down. “If he’s out there he knows we miss him, yeah? He’d remember that.”

For the second time that day, Sasha feels like an invader, just lingering around as someone he cares for breaks down in front of him. A wave of hopelessness washes over him. He’d felt hopeless in the past, sure, but not like this. This didn’t even feel like hopelessness, but he wasn’t in the place to place words at the moment.

For now he was fully focused on the feeling of bile raising up his throat. Can dead people puke? It absolutely felt like that was about to be the case.

He stands up from his bed and leaves his room, feeling ill and like he needs air. Perhaps he should have stayed put - the awful, blinding whiteness was feeling like the more bearable option.

Down the hallway, Cypher clicks through his cameras. He was in his room, eyes casually glancing across one of his six monitors. This wasn’t his official surveillance station, just the spare one he’d set up for more “light” surveillance needs when he wasn’t up to leaving for his proper office.

It had been happening less and less as the time passed since the day Sova had died, but it was still much more comfortable to sit in his room than in an office where he had to mask himself. (And wear trousers, but that’s neither here nor there.)

He’d seen Sage and Jett heading to Sova’s old room and had decided to keep an eye on them. A month had passed and yet Sage seemed no calmer now than the day it had happened. Well, “a month”…technically only 27 days. Amir had kept count.

He was surprised to find himself mourning Sasha’s death considering their strained relationship, but the tenseness had always been more from the archer’s side than Amir’s. There were many times that Amir had tried to bridge that gap, but Sasha just didn’t trust him. Which is fair - Cypher could hardly blame him.

His eyes are focused on the doorway leading into Sasha’s room- no, the room that Sasha had lived in- hoping to see Sage and Jett leaving soon. If not, he decided that he was going to head down, check-in on the two.

He glances over to his teacup, sighing in dismay to find it empty. As he reaches over to the shelf beside his desk to select a new tea, he notices a person leaving Sova’s room on the monitor. The relief is instant, but brief.

Amir properly looks to the monitor to see if Sage and Jett were ok as they leave the room but freezes in his seat.

The figure he sees leaving the room isn’t Sage nor Jett, no - it’s Sasha.

He drops the box of tea to the ground, not even noticing it pop open and spill expensive leaves onto the carpet, hands immediately returning to the keyboard to pause the camera footage.

Amir pulls the mask off and rubs his eyes, hoping to clear and refocus them. He obviously needed it - he was starting to see things. He selects the camera that he’d been looking at and makes it fullscreen, allowing the settings to enhance the video for the new resolution.

He back-tracks the paused feed a few seconds to reassure himself he hadn’t seen what he thought he had, but was met by horror. There, clear as day in the middle of the screen, is Sasha. Not all of him, almost as if he were fading out from the feet up.

But there was no mistaking it - that was Sasha. Sova. Walking through the hallway outside of what used to be his assigned room. It was impossible, unthinkable, and currently happening.

Amir rewinds and rewatches the footage a few more times, praying each time that he’d clarify what he was still sure had to be an error. It doesn’t help. Every rewind showed clearly the semi-transparent form of Sasha pacing down the hallway as if he’d never left.

“Ghost…but that’s not…that isn’t…” Amir leans back into his chair, brain absolutely frying from the slow onset of a reality he simply was not in a place to accept. His fingers thread into the hair at the back of his neck as he tries to ground himself. If he’d seen it in person he would have been fine - could have blamed it on grief or some emotional shit but no, technology doesn't lie.

Sasha’s ghost is wandering the halls of the Valorant Protocol headquarters.

--------------------------------------------------

hihiiiiii- if you made it all the way down here then thanks for reading! i'm thinking about putting this one up on ao3 since it's going to be several chapters haha. ngl i already have chapter 2 written bc i accidently went ham at 3am so i'll get around to posting it once i have the ao3 setup <3

first time back writing something longer so hopefully it came out ok! :)