An alleyway in Los Diablos, three weeks after the arrest of Psychopathor by the Rangers
You still have the limp. The cut is healing, inches long, yet not so terribly deep that it broke the muscle. What matters is you are functional. Even if it hurts. And in such a case you ignore the pain in favor of what you are here to do, like any obedient Re-Gene.
Except, unlike any of them, you aren’t reporting to your handler. You’re just meeting Charge. Your contact in the Rangers. Who knows to count on you for any of their big jobs. Who you listen to in the field, most times, and to whose expectations you feel an inscrutable need to live up to.
Put like that, maybe you aren’t so different. You might argue that you chose her, that there is an intention there that no one on the Farm would ever be allowed. But didn’t she choose you? Don’t you need her more than she needs you? On your own, you would never have gotten half the equipment you have. It’s an unequal balance when weighed against you; little more than a hopeful, a recruit she’d scouted over a year ago but whom she’s never managed to bring home.
Is that the line? You can’t be sure. You could never be a part of them anyway. Too many hands and eyes whose nerves lead back to the slabs and white walls of your birth. But even then, maybe she isn’t really the problem here.
She has no concept of handlers, of Re-Genes blue or cuckoo alike. She, unlike you, probably only sees you for what you have told her. It’s you who cannot look past the similarities. You who feels that pull to heel at her call. You who relies on her for more than you should ever ask for. Charge has never demanded such obedience. Not as your handlers had.
Though, you suppose, there was one thing they had in common. Something you’ve yet to get out of your head since it entered. That makes you flinch, even now, as if reaching for a hot iron not yet cooled from the furnace.
You touch a hand to your cheek. Your bare cheek. And imagine it as it was three weeks ago. When Charge had run up to you, face paled by the sound of your screams, pulled up your mask and laid her lips on yours.
In the moment, you did nothing. Hardly moved, but not resisted when she braced one arm at your lower back to cradle you against her larger form. It was so different, you had thought. You could hardly appreciate the rough texture of her chapped lips or the hint of iron from where you had bitten into your cheek before, because you weren’t there. In that moment you straddled the barrier and stood both in the present and in memory. And then, Charge pulled you out of it. Set you down with an uneasy smile on her lips as she pulled your mask back into place and mouthed an apology. You said something, you’re sure, but you didn’t stay to hear her response. As soon as the LDPD broke perimeter, the media would follow, and you were long gone before the cameras began to snap.
Now, here you are. Waiting for her to leave the Ranger’s HQ for her mid-day coffee just as she did every day she was on reserve duty. It is a recent habit, or so you surmise from a brief skim of the baristas’ thoughts. One that she’s only picked up within the last few months. You’ve taken advantage of it several times to make contact with her outside the HQ. You have a phone, now, but you know she rarely holds onto one for longer than a few weeks. You’ve learned a lack of response is means she’s between devices, and so you’re thankful for her habits giving you a more reliable way to get a word with her.
You enter the shop after she does. On Wednesdays, she usually takes her time. Gets the coffee just after the afternoon rush has left the door and there’s only a handful of people like seeds scattered carelessly across the soil. She’s been at her table for at least a minute, and you ride out the time waiting for your order by skimming the crowd. No one here is paying her much attention. A flare of excitement that’s faded, duller than usual for a Charge encounter, but you get the feeling the folks here at this hour are more used to her presence at this point and definitely see through her “disguise” of a large tan jacket and chunky sunglasses. Good. That will make it easier. If they’re used to her by now, sending a little don’t look at me and there’s nothing to see here should be easier.
Not that the same works for Charge. Her static is as unreadable as ever. Soft white noise, lazily buzzing along.
You take your order from the counter. Black coffee and a slice of a dry cake topped with super sweet icing. You approach her table, careful to balance the tremulously high pour the barista gave you. When she looks up, sees your approach, you catch the tiny frown at the corner of her lips as she evaluates you. She doesn’t recognize you, because of course she doesn’t. You’ve never appeared in your civilian clothes before. The only part of you she’s ever seen was what she revealed right before she kissed you.
As she begins to sound a protest, you take your seat.
“I’m sorry, I’m not really sure—” A defiant clack of the plates in your hands halts her just long enough for you to interrupt.
“Ortega,” you say. You can’t call her Charge out of uniform. It just doesn’t feel right.
Her face shifts quickly, mild displeasure to confusion to wonder in just under a few seconds. She tips her sunglasses down, brown eyes wide as she leans in to look at you. In response, you smirk and take a bite of your cake and a sip of your coffee. Delicious.
“Ceres?” she says it like she can’t believe herself. “Is this—I wasn’t expecting…”
You take advantage of her surprise and interrupt again, “don’t act so surprised.”
Her brow furrows.
“No, really,” you continue, “it’s hard enough to keep people from looking my way, but the bigger a deal you make this, the harder it gets for me to do this.”
You’re already failing, really, but you’re betting on how well you read the on-shift barista and their camaraderie towards messy situation-ships.
Not that your relationship with Ortega is like that, necessarily.
Or at all.
Ortega, on her side of the table, doesn’t seem to like that you’re right. She’s pissed, you think by the set of her jaw and the look in her eye, but there’s something else there. The way her scowl can’t quite hold its edge and the small tilt of her head. Almost impressed, somehow, that you might get one over her. Or that you would be bold enough to play so heavy a hand.
“Well,” she says around shark’s teeth. She hasn’t looked away from your face, but you watch the way her eyes flicker when you take another bite. “You have me caught. Well done. It takes a lot to take me by surprise.”
“It really doesn’t,” you reply. As if. Ortega’s quick on her feet, but she isn’t always the first on the uptake. And you aren’t the only one to notice. You can’t count the number of times you’ve had to step between her and danger just because some villain caught wise to her tactics.
“That is what you think,” she says. Her eyes have wandered a bit, traced down and over what she can see. She lifts her own drink to her lips and takes a sip, meeting your look over the rim of the mug.
“You went to a lot of effort for this.” As if it wasn’t obvious, but you let her continue, “so I won’t bother telling you that you could have just—walked in the front door.”
Not likely. But you can’t tell her why.
“Except that I can’t. I’m not one of your Rangers.” You repeat yourself so much with her.
She scoffs. “That has nothing to do with it and you know it.”
Insufferable.
“But,” she continues, “I’m not going to look this gift in the mouth.”
“...What.” It’s not a question. She’s been looking you in the mouth since you got here.
Somehow, you’re missing something. And with the sly tilt of her lips, you know she isn’t going to tell you.
“So,” she says, “I spent the last year trying all my little tricks to meet you out of uniform, everything I could think of: coffee, lunch, healthcare,” she gestures vaguely at you with her free hand, “none of it worked. And yet, here you sit.”
“Do you have a point?” You aren’t just here to listen to her talk, after all.
She leans forward until you can see her eyes narrow in challenge over the rim of her sunglasses. She laughs a little under her breath and you marvel at how she makes even that sound so effortlessly smug.
“No point,” her voice is hushed, speaking just for you as you fork another chunk of coffee cake, “only, if I knew all it took to get you out of that mask was a kiss—I would have tried that first.”
You sputter, struck at the audacity of this woman once again. She’s merciless in her victory, watching you struggle to respond and stealing forward to wrap her fingers around yours and directing the fork to your mouth.
“Careful, Ceres, you almost spilled your cake.” It’s only your purest restraint that keeps the rest of it on your plate and not smeared all over her face.