— are you scared?

          “Not yet,” replies Ana, her voice laced with mirth. Look at him, the poor thing — slumped on his side, withering away on a weathered cot that’s bending under his sheer bulk, looking more grey than she remembers him being. Even Fareeha didn’t look that pitiful during the worst of her childhood flus. 

         She dumps her bag of groceries on the floor and slips off her dust-speckled cloak, opting to drape it over the back of the closest chair. Her dart gun is the next to go on the chair; then her scarf; her gloves; and the hairband that had held up her hair in a braid all day. After plucking a box of painkillers and a bottle of water from today’s haul, she walks over to where Sigma was languishing away.

to  find  your  secondary  &  third  tarot  cards,  scroll  down  your  result  page  to  your  answers  &  result  totals.

PRIMARY: THE EMPRESS

“Celebrate life’s grandeur… its brilliance… its magnificence...” 

The Empress represents motherly, prosperity, creativity, sexuality, abundance, fertility and comfort which most often observed in maintaining peace. Often belongs to people of authority or wise and motherly figures.

SECONDARY: THE JUSTICE

“To find the one true path, one must seek guidance amidst uncertainty...” 

The Justice Arcana symbolizes a strict allegory of justice, objectivity, rationality and analysis. You are concerned with matters of fairness, and otherwise are very stoic individuals.

TERTIARY: THE HIEROPHANT

“It is indeed a precious gift to understand the forces that guides oneself...”

The Hierophant is a symbol of education, authority, conservatism, obedience to rules and relationship with the divine. You are a person who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles. 

You are matured enough, quite wise and logical. However, you are somehow associated and obsessed with the past.

Ana has written dozens upon dozens of letters for others, detailing her fondest memories, her travels, and her feelings of them now. They are usually meant for people from her past, such as her daughter or her old colleagues in Overwatch, or for civilians that she had met during the turmoil in Cairo. She has written a letter for other notable persons too, like Amélie or Doctor Lee, the physician who treated her after her deadly sniper duel. Sometimes, she adds photographs or small trinkets that had reminded her of them in each envelope. 

                HE’S PAINFULLY AWARE OF HIS OVERREACTION, and when she cuts through his pitiful blubbering, the pathetic ways he tries to stall her. If she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, then no one had to know she was here. If they didn’t know she was here, then why did she have to hurry?

Is he talking too much?

                   Initially, when Ana approaches, he can’t help but flinch; there’s a distinct authority she carries herself, and although SIEBREN doubts she could really hurt him, given the circumstances, he is technically attempting to detaining one of TALON’S OFFICERS. While TALON has never directly threatened him, these people…

They aren’t good people. 

                     No matter which way he rationalizes it, he knows it, and no matter how familiar he’s come to find them– no matter how much they help him, they are not good people.

One only has to wonder what it would take to lose his so-called immunity.

                 “… I-it would be kind of you…” He says finally, his voice dropping whatever real tone it had previously held, hunching over the much shorter woman as she takes his balled-up hand into her own. Inwardly, he marvels at her size. He’s well aware of his own unreasonable size, but she seemed like the very opposite end of the scale.

Hesitantly, SIGMA lowers his opposing hand as she lightly scolds him. It could have been funny, really– if he wasn’t so sad. How she seems so… unaffected. It was as if she could trust him; as if he weren’t so ANOMALOUS and unpredictable. Certainly more than he could ever trust himself, whatever he had come to be. 

                     “… Oh, um– Professor O’Deorain is my primary, ah….”

“… Physician…? Psychologist…? I’m… a-actually not all that certain!“ He really should clarify that with Moira– maybe during their next session. “The truth is that she has other things of which she must attend to, and as WONDERFUL as she is, I don’t really think she can afford the time.”

                        “… I think I get an hour or so– that’s usually how long her sessions are.”

“I’ve only recently received clearance to leave my room unattended, but no one ever seems very…. I n t e r e s t e d   in speaking to me. N-not for.. extended periods. Which isn’t unreasonable! After being in STASIS for so long, I am still struggling to readjust, and I tend to be… Ah. I’m doing it again, aren’t I…?“

                        “… I’m sorry. I’ve just taken such a liking to you… You are so interesting.”

“And…. Well, I… I-I just have a lot to say! After so many years of observing, it was…. It was very nice to be able to…. Talk about it, I suppose…“

         O’Deorain. The mere mention of that name leaves a sour taste in Ana’s mouth. To know that that woman was prowling in these hallways, free to roam wherever her whims took her and twist whatever poor soul into a freak of nature... and apparently, the go-to for Sigma, this pitiful thing. And to think that she’s ‘wonderful’ in his eyes... Ana scrunches her nose and shakes her head. 

        Absently, as she peers at Sigma’s sharp face and dabs at the tear tracks on his cheek, she wonders if he’d end up like Gabriel after one experiment too many. 

        Who’d save him from his saviours then? 

        Once he’s neat enough by her standards, she shepherds him back to the chair and perches on its edge again, sitting where she would have a perfect sightline towards the door. “For someone locked up for twenty years, you’re not too shabby! I’ve seen people live perfectly fine lives and be barely able to string their own shoelaces together, let alone two sentences.”

        He is rusty, no denying that - but no less eager to talk, talk, and talk some more. Would he be clumsy in conversations in the real world, outside of the confines of this station? If he was out and free to wander, would he delightedly throw himself into every bout of chatter with the shopkeeper, the bus driver, the stranger next to him on the park bench? 

        “You should come out with me tonight,” she then decides. She juts her chin out towards the door. “Outside of this miserable place, to the city. You’ll never be bored --- trust me, there will be plenty of people wanting to talk to a man like you. People more interesting than me, no doubt---” 

        Footsteps. Faint, faraway, but footsteps nonetheless. Ana tenses and watches the door, jaw hard, eye unmoving. Her heart is plummeting to her stomach. Her hand creeps for her dart gun and snakes around its weathered grip. She has to go, she can’t hesitate this time----

        The thud of the marching looms closer. The footfalls grow louder, direly heavier... and travel past the laboratory. 

        She lets out a breath that she didn’t realise she had been holding in. Her hand falls from her gun. 

   To find Harold lost in the millions of thoughts that cycle through a busy mind is no strange sight. So the suddenness of Ana seemingly appearing making him startle slightly, eyes widening a fraction could be passed off as. Perhaps the sudden bump and wiggle inside his too bulky pocket lab pocket, and how his hand shoots inside of it a little too fast isn’t strange at all. He only needs a moment to recollect thoughts and put face to name. He knows her face as well as anyone on Earth. The moon may be quiet but not blind to Overwatch’s bold actions (both good and questionable).  

    “Ah, Miss– Captain Amari, glad to have you here.” Harold says genuinely by way of welcome. At her comment he gives her an edge of a sympathetic smile. “There’s tea in the kitchen. I can brew you a pot.” He offers.     The colony is cold but only so that nothing unwanted from space could fester into something from one Yoshida’s syfy movies in the base. And after a unanimous vote from his dear colleagues – (You’ve the kind of face that says you would die first). At least the specimens were comfortable.     Harold’s gaze pulls to Earth at her question. On that little blue dot was everything. Everyone they had ever known, heard of, or loved. The blue planet was the only one known in entire vast blanket of space known to harbor life and settle (for now). For all it’s differences, for all it’s strife, there was only one Earth. In the brief quiet between the two there’s an unmistakable steady crunch of someone nibbling too close nearby. Harold clears his throat. 

   “You know, they say you can never go home again…” For one question he gives her his own. “Do you think that’s true?” 

         So polite, the scientists here. With a weathered hand, she waves off his greeting. “There’s no need to be so formal when I’m on my downtime. Just call me Ana.” 

        There is an inexplicable tightening in her gut as she stares through of the pristine glass and gazes upon their home world. It’s hundreds of thousands of miles away, spinning at its leisurely pace, oblivious to the handful of human beings marvelling it all the way from its lonely moon. Here they lingered, untethered, ungrounded. If the moon was to be ripped from its orbit and they were to be flung into the unexplored unknown, no one would ever notice they were gone.

        No one could even come close to them.          

         Her hand grasps for a rifle sling that isn’t there. Dread seeps into her stomach, but she stamps that sliver of paranoia down and pays it no more heed. 

        His question makes her scoff. “Of course you can go home again. Where else would you go, Mars?” She gestures to their pristine, sterile surroundings. “You’re in a place with more technology than in some countries back there, doctor. You’ll have at least ten pods to pick from once you want to go home-----”

        What was that? 

                “– I’m not tired!” He counters quickly, and although it was certainly a lie of his own, he would happily throw away the few, meager hours that he did rest in favor of a few extra hours of engagement. There was no one to talk to– all of those he was in contact with could only afford a few minutes let alone an hour of time to interact with him. To talk to. 

She talks to him like another person– not some patient she had to walk on eggshells around. 

                  He hates feeling like another clinical trial.

“It’s– it’s okay! You don’t have to w–“

                  Her ANSWER, however, is a shattering blow to him on a personal level. 

It’s obvious that it affects SIGMA negatively, and he’s immediately torn between beginning to cry and SHOUTING at her, and although his expression is very BLANK for several moments, there’s a distinct tightening of his angular jaw, and he seems to stare through her. 

                   It hurts.

It hurts.

                  Why does everything have to hurt so much?

Instead of lashing out like he wants to, he withdraws, a large, gloved hand lifting to cup over his mouth as his gaze slips to the floor. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad if she’d just lie and tell him he would. For a few startling moments, he finds himself genuinely YEARNING for the suffocating silence and disconnection within solitary confinement again. At least if he were still strapped to that bed, he’d be safe from all of this complicated EMOTION that seems to eat away at what’s left of his sanity. 

                  He wouldn’t feel so…. raw. 

He wants to go back to his room and cry. He wants to cry until it stops hurting– until he doesn’t have to feel so WRETCHEDLY MOROSE. But if he were to leave now, she would be GONE. The moment he isn’t in the way, she’s going to leave, and he’s NEVER GOING TO SEE HER AGAIN.                       Why won’t anyone ever stay?

What’s    w r o n g    with him?

                  He tries to find words, but the more he looks for them, for something to say to try and get her to stay, his vision begins to blur sharply, and wet tears begin to cool on his cheeks before he can try to will it to stop. “I– I don’t understand-” He all but whines through his fingers as he clutches his face tighter. His opposing one finally lifts to his eyes, frantically trying to dry them before she can see.

But he knows she’s already seen. 

                      Why is he so pathetic?

“… Why would– why’d you say any of that, then…?“ He asks finally, his voice strained and tight. “… Why would you be so nice? I don’t– I don’t want you to go…“

                    “– If you’re just going to LEAVE, why say any of it at all…?”

          Good grief! With that look on his face, anyone would think that she had just stabbed his mother in broad daylight. 

         Seeing those wintry eyes well up with tears again doesn’t feel any less alarming than the first time. Ana watches him crumple for the second time that night, seeing the quiet desperation in his fingers as he tries ( and fails ) to dry tears faster than they come, and is struck by a quiet regret: should she have lied to his face? Should she have said yes, she’ll be right here waiting for him, see you tomorrow? 

         What even is the matter with this one? Why weep for someone that he had only met today --- by stumbling on her when she was trespassing in his own laboratory, no less? 

         Be so nice, he says. He couldn’t even tell niceness apart from honesty, that poor fool. 

         As pitiful and heart-wrenching his pleas are, she only clicks her tongue at his questioning. “Now, what is that supposed to mean? If people had to stay just to share a few words, then hardly anyone would move around in the world.” 

         It’s foolish, staying a minute longer with one of Talon’s prized scientists crumbling down in front of her ( because of her ). It was foolish to have risked her cover and stayed at all. It would definitely, certainly, unequivocally be foolish to stay for a mere second longer, especially when Sigma might see past her facade if she took another misstep. 

         She tugs her sleeve back and checks her watch. Few hours until sunrise. 

                            A drag of quietness passes. 

        The weight of Sigma’s misery looms over her skull, sinks down onto her shoulders. 

                                                                     Ah, damn it. 

         “If,” she begins. She pulls her sleeve down again. “If I stay for an hour more, will you stop crying?” Despite her better judgment on how to deal with people this volatile, she comes nearer. She takes a step towards him and reaches up to take one of his hands, tugging it away from his eyes before he could claw a hole into his skin. Same as before. With the same patience as the first time, she thumbs away the tears he missed, her feet stood on her toes and her arm straining to reach his face. “Honestly!” she clucks at him. “More emotional than a bride with a stained dress.”

                IT LEAVES A BITTER TASTE IN HIS MOUTH to think of all the ‘should’ve’s and wishes he’s suffocated under for so long– he doesn’t need HER to remind him of just how helpless he really is in all of it. 

What a silly thing to want, to crave, to need…

                   More than anything, he wants CONTROL.

Of SOMETHING.

                  Even if it was only over one, meager thing.

Himself…. gravity….

                  ANYTHING AT ALL.

“– It isn’t too late. I don’t CRY because I COULDN’T– I SPENT TWENTY YEARS DOING THAT.“ He wonders if she was listening to him at all, or if…. Maybe the guards aren’t that interested in how some little science project says it feels. SIGMA’S grip tightens on the armrest, and he just wants her to go back to telling him how INTERESTING she thought he was. 

                   He wants to be acknowledged..

Or… At the very least– he wants some form of praise.

                    Something to have made all this pain worth it. 

BUT THEN SHE’S MOVING AWAY, and the space begins to grow again. 

                     He doesn’t want her to go– she’s so nice, even if she doesn’t know how to talk to him properly. He doesn’t understand why she needs to go. Why can’t she stay? Why won’t she stay? Don’t go. Don’tgodon’tgodon’tgo-.

She doesn’t even have the opportunity to take a step before SIGMA lethargically drifts around her, barring her from the door by placing himself in between.

                     “– No, no! You don’t…. you don’t have to go.” SIEBREN assures her, his expression shifting to one of mild hurt as his hands lift in some semblance of sincerity, as if he were trying to coax a wild animal into trusting him. 

“We were getting along fine! I don’t need to be anywhere!” 

                     “– If you– if you really have to go…. Can I… see you again…?“

          And here Ana thought Sigma would be more than relieved to send his rambling intruder on her way. Never would she expect him to turn around and promise her that no, no, she could stay. 

         ( Is he always this starved for a scrap of company? )

         When Sigma looms in front of her, barricading her way with a wall of his own sheer, overpowering mass, she halts in her tracks and cranes her neck to look up at him --- and what a mistake that is, because the look on his face would tug on anyone’s heartstrings. He looks... genuinely let down, like a child distraught that playtime had come to an end. Ana gently pushes his hands down, because he looks like he is only one rung above clasping his long fingers together in a plea. 

         “Tch, aren’t you tired? How will you get that head of yours to do any work tomorrow when you don’t go to sleep?” she asks him, as if lecturing him on late bedtimes would distract him from his million-dollar question. 

         Should she tell him that he will see her again? That she’ll be here the next night and the next; that he could find her roaming away from her patrols and meet her here again, same time? 

                    It’s the answer he’s itching for, isn’t it? 

                                    Her stomach is in knots. It’s on the tip of her tongue. 

          ... Ah, how could she lie a second time?  

         “I don’t think you will see me again, Sigma.” There’s not a drop of malice in her tone; no, the only thing that’s weaved into her voice is an unspoken ‘sorry’. “It’s not you. I don’t belong here in Talon, and the sooner I get out of here, the better. If you knew me any better, you’d see just how right I am.” 

             Galas aren’t Ana’s scene, but not even Overwatch’s second-in-command could find enough excuses to skip out on these glitzy, bustling functions. Jack had threatened to delegate a year’s worth of rookie training to her and Reyes if they so much as thought of disappearing before the big date, and so here she is: dressed in a long, royal blue dress, standing by a high-ceilinged wall and watching her fellow agents mingle ( or fumble ) around the starry-eyed crowds. 

            And of course, she always spotted one who stood out like a sore thumb.