#heres some word vomit i found in my drafts lmao

Jamison is awake, insomnia struck, stars fissured across the windows.

Old scars bloom under shards of moonlight like pale toadstools after a heavy rain. They hurt in places he never thought to check: under his rib, between his shoulders, the back of his thigh. The phantoms that bite the missing ache somehow less than thoughts of scavenging a scrapyard with poison leeching from its metal carcass.

If he could sink into deep sleeps like Roadhog, he’d be forever grateful.

The watchpoint is nothing but humming fluorescents and dark corridors. The temperature is regulated and there are formal facilities for nearly every need, everything from a shooting range to washrooms to sleeping halls. He’s not used to this place and its host of gratuitous amenities, and it’s a very disparate place to call home.

He finds her in the rec room. His wandering should have brought him to the workshop, but the back of his head said kitchen, and so he stands awkwardly in the threshold of neither half-dressed and with memories of the omnium hung in a noose above his adam’s apple.

Satya looks… tired. Drained. Like she might have tried sleeping several hours ago but it got her nowhere far. The lights are dimmer here, muted, muffled; they cast dark shadows by her eyes, her jaws, her throat; soft hollows of midnight that curl through her hair. She rocks back and forth on the sofa, her arms crossed, her body swathed in some sort of intricate nightgown that drapes down to the muscle lined in her calves. The balls of her feet plant firmly against the floor while her heels kiss the carpet in a steady beat: one, two, three.

She acknowledges him with a slight nod. He gives her the same courtesy.

Silence trails after Jamison’s footsteps. He could talk, make conversation, force something that isn’t there, but it would be pointless. Not too many other reasons someone would be wandering around the base this late. He knows why she’s here. In a way.

When he comes to, he’s not in his bed, but upon the sofa’s armrest. His prosthetic leg rests on the floor while the other stretches across cushions and fabric. Exhausted, bleary-eyed, and settled with a prominent ache in his neck, he lifts his head to find a soft weight nestled in the dip of his back.

Twisting halfway, he blinks over his shoulder. Satya sleeps across the opposite half of the sofa, head upon the armrest, her legs tucked and lolling over top of him. Her toenails are painted, he finds; they sport a rich and vibrant blue, not unlike her cherished dress. In the fading dark of dawn, the center of her left palm glows like the setting moon under morning’s pink pall. She is serene, and shrouded in silken daybreak.

It’s jarring. Perhaps he should be unsettled, alarmed, or confused at the very least, but he isn’t.

With sleep weighing his eyes, Jamison crooks his arm and buries his nose into the bend, his forehead back against the sofa’s rest. It’s not the most convenient setup, but Satya’s presence is comforting and warm, and he’d rather not wake her just yet. She’d wandered the night for a reason, after all.

He shoulders against the sofa and allows himself to decompress. He’ll worry about everything later, he thinks. Later. Now’s not the time.

Maybe when morning comes.