#chargestep

Just by the look in his eyes, Isabelle knew what would come next. He hovered close, gaze darting to their lips, but leaving just enough space for them to flee. It would piss them off if it wasn’t so painfully considerate. They accepted the kiss, but firmly held Ricardo back from going any further—again.

“I have to go,” they sighed. They didn’t even have to pretend to be disappointed.

“So you’ve said before, and here we are,” he replied, wiggling his eyebrows.

“No, I really have to.”

The smile Ricardo got was hard-won as Isabelle pushed themself up from the couch and walked to the door of the apartment, pretending their heart wasn’t still back there, with him.

“Oh, wait—I’ll be back in a sec,” Ricardo bolted from the couch and ran to the bedroom. Isabelle picked up the frantic opening and closing of drawers while they stood awkwardly alone. What the hell was he going to bring them?

“Ortega, if this is an autographed photo or something—”

 Whatever snarky comment they were about to make died on their lips when Ricardo returned and they saw the look on his face. Worried, vulnerable. His hands were cupping something that seemed as fragile as an injured bird. He smiled, though his eyes were too sad for it to reach them, and took a deep breath.

“I, uh—we went to empty your apartment, since—well. There wasn’t much, but I…found this.” Ricardo opened his hands to reveal a worn rosary. “It seemed important to you, so…”

“Oh,” their voice was doing something funny, like it was getting trapped in cobwebs. “You kept it…”

Isabelle had cried enough (not cried, they had made an effort to stop tears from actually falling) for one night, but could not help their eyes from getting misty. Religion was not taught at the Farm, of course it wasn’t; it would have been stupid to believe in any of that when they were a thing created in a lab, which they were pretty sure went against the whole God thing. Still, their memories of the childhood that didn’t belong to them had overridden that bit of programming. At least for a time.

a dress with a scratchy lace collar

glimpses of colourful stained glass

tracking the Roman numerals of the Way of the Cross

the aftertaste of communion wine

They knew it wasn’t for them. They were never that child.

And yet, when Ricardo released the rosary in their palm, a strange and overwhelming sense of peace settled their nerves. That was also bad. They were supposed to tear down everything that had ever caused them harm. Instead, they were going to therapy, and spending time with Ricardo, and reconnecting with a faith that was never theirs to begin with—and finding comfort in that?

“Bel?”

They didn’t flinch when Ricardo, with his index under their chin, angled their head up to look at him. Did he wipe a tear from their cheek?

“I have to go,” they said again, though this time their voice cracked, and carried no conviction. Ricardo seemed to deflate. The static of his mind grew even cloudier with emotion.

“You don’t have to,” he coaxed. His hand settled at the back of Isabelle’s neck, and his pinky found the edge of a scar, right at their hairline. “You can stay. Please stay.”

Isabelle shook their head and regretted it immediately because the motion dislodged more tears.

“Thank you for holding on to this for me,” they whispered before wrenching themself away from Ricardo and his embrace, his warm hands, his kisses, his stupid kind eyes.

“Of course,” he replied, patient to a fault whenever it came to Isabelle. Apparently.

Isabelle unceremoniously dropped the rosary in one of their pants’ many pockets before grabbing their shoes. Putting them on never took longer than it did now, with Ricardo watching their every move, clearly seconds away from reaching for them again. They couldn’t let that happen, else all their resolve would most definitely crumble away—whatever remained of it.

“Text me when you get home?” Ricardo pleaded more than asked.

“I’ll be fine.” They had to clear their throat for the words to come out.

“I know, just—”

They kissed him to make it stop and left before he could say anything else.

The cold air outside should have helped, but they were fairly sure nothing could, at this point. The whole night replayed in their mind, over and over again. Years. Ricardo had kept this cheap plastic rosary they probably had stolen for years. Where had he stored it? Did he forget about it as soon as it was out of his sight? Did he ever pull it out? He still had that stupid mug, so—

Stop it. Stop that. Stop thinking about him.

"Tegan, don't." Ortega's voice was a warning, low and dangerous.

"Am I wrong? From what you've told me he loved his precious status quo too. And you can get away with just about anything if you dress it up with the words like law and order." He flicked the ashes of his cigarette over the side of the bar. "Well, it's real fucking nice to finally meet you Mr. Garcia." A mock salute. "Here I thought you were de-"

The rest of Tegan's words were spat out across the floor in a spray of blood, world tilted sideways as the stool he had been sitting on clattered to the ground with him. The shock stung more than anything else, nothing had telegraphed Ortega's movement despite all the little signs he knew to look for in order to compensate for that infuriating static. Since when could Ortega move that fast? Injured and half way to drunk, but then again Ortega always was a good actor.

Tegan pressed the back of his gauntlet to his mouth and it came away wet with blood, lip split upon impact. He craned his neck to look up at his assailant, backlight against the single light, a fuzzy yellow halo formed around his black curls, though he sure didn't look like an angel. Or maybe he did, wrath and righteousness worn as easily on his face as his bruises.

^Tegan's well deserved punch was the initial spark of this whole thing and I think chatting with Wednesday was the first time the "Mr Garcia" bit was brought up and its so juicyyyy to me. That and the image of a furious back lit Ortega was so clear in my head.

"You know, things would go a lot easier for you if you just dumped him." Jake called out over his shoulder. "And I mean in the harbor not whatever weird thing you two have going on." Charge was bad news, better to just cut him out of the picture completely. Offing a Ranger might garner a lot of heat but better to let that fall on Retribution's shoulders than Hollow Ground's.

^Jakes oh so helpful "advice" from ch 2 still makes me laugh.

Ortega couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up from within him. Russian roulette, one of the oldest intimidation techniques in the book, a deadly game of odds. It wasn't the first time he'd seen its use, it was a classic for a reason, most people cracked before a single shot was even fired. That Tegan would try an use it against him now was ridiculous.

"You're not going to shoot me." Of that he was confident. All that talk of his supposed immunity against Hollow Ground meant he wasn't doomed to die here today. This was just to scare him, and Ricardo Ortega was not a man to scare easily.

"You're right."

Two words, a statement of a fact that seemed to slow down time in order to capture it in perfect clarity. Memory is funny like that, what it will choose to preserve to be visited later in nightmares both waking and asleep. Ortega could feel it burned into his psyche like a brand before it even happened. Could feel his stomach plummet like a fall out of a fourth story window and straight through the center of the earth as Tegan put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. Ortega was sure he screamed, a name, a curse, but the only sound he heard was the metallic snap of the trigger mechanism firing.

^All of ch 3 is my darling but my sincerest hope is in how this lands with readers. I want those two little words to be as chilling as possible. To feel Ortega's bravado shattering the instant Tegan moves the gun to his mouth.

Tegan placed both hands on the back of the chair, straddling Ortega's legs until he was sitting in his lap, though Ortega couldn't feel his weight they were eye level now and far too close.

"You asked me what I wanted." Direct eye contact was such a rare thing, Ortega had almost forgotten how pale gray Tegan's eyes were, like an overcast sky but there was something else he hoped was just a product of his imagination - a speck of bright green in his pupil, like a stuck pixel against a black screen. "I want you to trust me."

"You've got to be kidding me." Ortega wished he could, more than anything but there were too many still smouldering bridges for that.

"You called me a monster once but I'm not Hollow Ground or some wannabe warlord like Psychopathor or a ticking time bomb like H-heartbreak." Ortega couldn't help but notice Void was absent from that line up, delusional, dangerous and dead or that Tegan had never referred to Heartbreak as anything other than it before. "I don't kill, I steal from criminals and corporations, no one innocent and you should trust by now that I'm not going to hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it." Tegan didn't so much as blink.

"And me? Do I deserve it?" Ortega had a feeling he already knew the answer but searched Tegan's face for a lie anyway.

"Ric," Tegan put his arms around his shoulders, pulling him into an awkward embrace. "you deserve the world."

Ortega pressed his forehead into Tegan's shoulder, the soft material of his coat and the warmth of the body underneath strangely comforting in this waking nightmare, too exhausted to even wonder what Tegan meant. Sincerity or a threat? Would it matter? Probably not with the way the scent of Tegan's sweat and faint cigarette smoke seemed to sucker punch his heart with familiarity. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Tegan, you can't keep me here." He could feel Tegan's hands slid down he back of his arms to his hands, fingers entangled in his own and the wires embedded in his mods. He grasped his hands tightly. "You need to let me go."

^And their super weird sorta cuddle despite the horrors. The intimacy is still there, it won't save either of them.