Work Text
Therapy had run long by more than an hour, at the insistence of Dr. Alcaraz. Since he’d begun to see him, he had always been concerned about him trying to ignore his problems, but even in the drawn out session he’d given him no leeway. Ortega had left therapy shaking, and even after trailing his way through half the city to clear his mind, he still shakes. He needs
something
, a drink or a fight, anything to cool him off and distract him. He was right to be worried about him being alone today.
Yesterday,
he corrects himself almost snappishly as he catches a glance at the date on his phone.
Seven years as of yesterday.
Seven years since Heartbreak, and seven years since he lost them. Seven years since he dragged two of the brightest hearts in Los Diablos to their deaths, and seven years since his life fell to pieces
.
He shakes his head to clear the thoughts away. If he wanted to linger on them, he should have done it with his doctor, not while he was wandering the city alone in the dark.
Given the hour, trying again to walk the whole thing off seems like his best option, after a fistfight or a few beers. It’s also the only one he knows wouldn’t make him hate himself in the morning when he wakes up aching. So, he walks. He starts on the long way home through downtown, challenging anyone brave enough to try and attack him as he passes through less-than-stellar areas, then follows the sidestreets back up towards the center of the city and his apartment. Almost at the end of his route, he spies Park Street Cemetery, trees and monuments visible over the wall as he approaches it. Every step closer makes him think he ought to have just gotten drunk instead.
Seeing their grave and reminding himself they’re gone is the last thing he needs tonight, but he’ll be damned if that isn’t exactly what he wants to do.
He really shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t. It’s only going to make him break down again, and he has to go in tomorrow. He can’t be a mess at work just because he was out all night—
morning,
he corrects again— sobbing.
It wouldn’t be the first time he showed up a wreck, though. Maybe that’s what tells him he can’t do it again. Steel wouldn’t fire him, not for this, but if he trashes his image too much it will pile up. Just like the debt he needs the job to pay off. Even lost in thought his body knows the way, however, and feet carrying him right to the cemetery’s great, wrought iron gates.
He slips his entrance keycard into the reader anyways, after only another few seconds deliberation. The gates pop open with a click, making just enough space for him to slip inside. He moves quickly down one of the smaller paths, towards the little copse of dogwood trees that shades the grave he wants. It’s a familiar route, one he’s walked at least a hundred times, but he stops short of the destination as he spies something between the trunks.
Someone
.
A figure, visible only as an outline against the polluted sky, paces between Sidestep and Anathema’s headstones. They gesture animatedly, as if in active conversation with some unseen person.
He feels a current spark and run between his fingers. Any other day and he’d have the patience to deal with someone who wasn’t meant to be here, but not tonight. He balls his fists and moves towards them. He wonders if he’s really going to get the fight he wanted, or if that is going to have to wait for whenever Chen hears about what he’s done.
“Hey!” He barks, gearing himself up for conflict. He freezes though, then the figure turns to him, all anger forgotten and the current dying in his veins.
It can’t be.
It can’t be them because his life isn’t a television drama. People don’t come back from the dead.
“Is that you?” He asks anyways, and almost doesn’t recognize his own voice from the way it trembles. “Seneca?” If it is, they look like shit. They’re paler than he’s ever seen them, dark circles looking like bruises under their eyes, which flicker about like a scared animal’s. A ratty sweatshirt and torn jeans worn over faded tights complete the image.
The ghost doesn’t speak for a long moment, but as it calms and opens its mouth to speak, he knows he’s not dreaming.
“Hey, Danger.” He rushes to embrace them, and they return the gesture in full, dropping the notepad in their hands. The voice they spoke with was little and weak and rough, but he’d still know it anywhere. That’s Seneca Strangelove, Sidestep,
Trouble
, his Trouble, any other name he could care to call them, in the flesh and blood.
“Christ,” he breathes—
whines
, practically— into their neck as their arms wind tight around him. It's like picking up where they left off, their fingers curling in his hair at the top of his neck the same strange way they always did when they hugged him. It feels too good to be true. “I missed you.”
“‘Tega—“ They lean back and he releases them with slow reluctance, almost afraid that they’ll disappear again. When he looks, concern is written in every line of their face. “You’re shaking.” He shakes his head.
“No, no, Sen,” his breath catches in his throat. He hadn’t thought about them as
Sen
since they died, it felt like a denial of what happened, but the nickname came back to him in an instant. “I mean, I am, but I’m okay,” he says, and wipes his eyes before the tears can well. They purse their lips as they look him over, obviously unconvinced.
“I just can’t believe that you’re alive,” he says. After the nightmares about Heartbreak stopped coming, and he wasn't drinking himself into dark, dreamless sleeps anymore, he would occasionally have dreams about them coming back. Sometimes they would turn on him, scream that it was his fault they died and show him all the bones they broke on impact until he woke up in sympathy pain, and in others he would come to them pleading with them not to hate him, telling them he didn't mean to let them fall. They never speak in those ones.
The worst were the mornings he woke up dazed and looking for them in the cold side of his bed. It was one thing to wake up screaming, or in tears, and another to have to recollect the fact that the closest person to you in the world is dead.
“I am.” He flinches out of his thoughts at the strange weakness of their voice; they sound sick, out of breath, and far away all at once. “It’s a surprise to both of us.”
“I saw you go out the window, and I knew how far down it was, I never thought… they said you were dead and I—I believed that.” He can feel the smile growing despite the tension, and can’t help but notice a smaller mirror of it on theirs. “But clearly they were wrong.”
They nod, stooping to retrieve their notebook before its ruined by the dew on the grass. “You know, had it been almost anyone else in the world approaching me, I would have run. But I couldn’t feel you coming. I don't know if thats luck or not.” He isn’t sure what to make of the statement, it’s as vague as half the things they say, and he falls silent. He watches as they gather their things and fit them into the backpack that sits propped against Anathema’s grave.
“But, hey…” With the clouds overhead parting, he can finally get a decent look at them in the moonlight. What he sees, he isn’t thrilled about. “You’re shaking too.” In his initial, superficial observation he hadn’t noticed just how poorly they’d looked. If he hadn’t known they’d not buried a body, some part of him would think they’d just crawled out of the grave.
“It is very cold.” Los Diablos doesn’t
get
very cold, but for someone born and raised there, the night is downright frigid. He beckons them towards him.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” They hesitate.
“To talk about… whatever happened to you.”
Whatever happened to us,
maybe. It may not be as private as here, surrounded by nothing but field, but things might feel a little realer there, under the lamplight.
They nod, eventually, and sling the backpack over their shoulder. He takes the hint and starts walking back towards the entrance.
“So,” he tries as he carefully shuts the gate behind them. “You didn’t die.” They walk a short ways at his side before responding, hands shoved into their pocket and eyes dropped down to the sidewalk.
“I should have,” they say eventually. “I was… very, very badly hurt.”
“Why… didn’t you? All of us were told you died on the way to the hospital.” It’s not what he wants to ask. He wants to dig to the heart and ask how they could have let him mourn for nearly a decade, and
why?
But if he’s learned anything since then, it’s how to hold back.
“I told you before. I have enemies.” He lets them remain in sullen silence until they reach his apartment complex. It’s too late for the doorman to be on duty, so he gets the door for Seneca in his stead.
“After you.” They tip their head towards him in quiet thanks as they slip into the well warmed lobby.
“New place,” they comment at the top of the stairs. He sucks in a mouthful of air through his teeth, not yet ready to admit what happened to make him move.
“An upgrade,” he answers. Not a lie, it is larger than his old one by a good margin, but it’s not the whole truth, either. They don’t need to be worrying about bomb threats—
attempts
, more like— the moment they get back. They seem to accept his response, and he relaxes enough to make it to his door without any nervous chatter.
Inside, he half expects them to go back to old routine. Throw their bag onto the couch with a vengeance, kick their boots off down the hall only to retrieve them and set them by the door, then follow him to the kitchen to eat whatever sweets he’d procured since the last time they were over.
They keep their bag slung over one shoulder and their boots laced, but it gives him a measure of comfort to feel them close behind him as he makes for the kitchen table.
They settle into the chair across his. Carefully, they set their bag under the table, then stretch an arm across the table, offering their hand to him. He takes it without hesitation, thumb rubbing over their knuckles. It’s no small comfort to have their fingers pressing into his palm, their hand just large enough to wrap his.
“Where do you wanna start? There’s a lot you could ask.” He sighs, leaning back and gathering himself. His head is cloudy, has been all day, and shows no sign of clearing as he gains more and more reasons for it to be. He struggles to think of something, and so he asks what he’s been aching to since they wrapped their arms around him.
“Why didn't you tell us you were alive, even if you didn't want to see any of us again?” There's a flash of hurt in their eyes, and he knows they’re aware he’s not asking about anyone but himself.
Why didn't they come home?
Seneca rubs their eyes with their free hand, bumping their glasses up to their forehead.
“I was… captive, for five years after Heartbreak.” They pause a moment after that bombshell, gauging his reaction, and he nearly leaps across the table. He doesn't know what it would accomplish besides getting him a broken wrist and gentle lecturing, but the reflex is there, even after so long. They seem to understand that he can't respond yet, left un-articulate by his anger, and continue. “When I escaped, I found out that I’d lost half a decade.” He has to squeeze his eyes shut hard to keep down the wave of dizziness.
Half a decade. As long as he knew them, down the drain because of some sick fucks who couldn’t let them die.
A stray spark dredged from his upset jumps into their palm, but they hold fast to him. He jerks his head up to apologize, but is silenced when he sees the tears welling in their eyes. They try for an encouraging smile, that only serves to ring the anger from his heart and turn it to anguish. Words still won’t come.
“I did escape, though. Eventually.” He nods, and refocuses on the present. “Once I got back, I…” Their gaze becomes unfocused, just like Chen’s does when he thinks he isn't paying attention anymore. He lets them take their time, gathering up their lost breaths and thoughts, sorting them into proper order.
“I couldn't come back,” they whisper, still not looking at him. “They could find me again.” His heart sinks into his stomach as he realizes the same fact that made them choke up. Him finding them in the graveyard, talking to them and bringing them here?
It all puts them in danger.
“We—
I—
won't let that happen. Not again.” They huff a little breath and watch him with the same kind of sad amusement as someone seeing a terrier trying to pick a fight with a mastiff.
“I don’t doubt that you would protect me, if you could.” For a long while after their declaration, they sit in silence. Eyes downcast and unaware of the others presence save for their laced fingers. The quiet does not last long, but the weight of it makes him strain quickly under it.
“Hey,” he says, and they look up with watery eyes. “You’re here, and that has to count for something, right, Trouble?” Their eyes lighten noticeably with the nickname and they straighten in their seat, nodding as they wipe their eyes again.
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
After that, the topics are easier to swallow. Smaller and sweetened with the familiarity of an easy flowing conversation.
He asks what they do now, and finds out they freelance work wherever they can, and live frugally between paychecks. Finds out they live downtown, near the piers, in a little apartment looking over the water. That they have goldfish, five of them, because they found the poor things in a bucket outside a closed petshop. There
were
more, they tell him, but only the five they have now we're alive by the time the got them home.
He finds out they still have the biggest sweet tooth he’s ever seen when they produce a bottle of sugary soda from their bag, and he finds out that they don’t have the lovely low singing voice he’d heard only a few times before anymore; that they’ll never get it back. He finds out they still have a soft heart despite it all.
By the time birdsong starts to filter in his window from the park under it, he’s exhausted all his questions, and Seneca decides that it’s his turn in the hot seat.
They ask after every aspect of his life they can think of, the Rangers and Elena, the wisps of drama they've picked up on since returning to Los Diablos; anything they’d have missed in their absence. He tells them everything, but as the morning draws on, the words slow to a crawl, and both questions and answers grow incoherent.
“Getting late,” he observes with a yawn, watching the pale light from outside dance across the table. “Or early, maybe.” They yawn too, then nod, resting their head on their arm. He almost reaches out to pet their hair, where it falls down their face and curls on the table. He doesn’t, in the end, more afraid of disturbing them than anything. Instead he opts to rest his eyes too, for however long he has.
The peace lasts until his phone chirps, making Seneca jump. A cursory glance tells him it’s just his alarm. The thought of getting up to go to work, however, it makes him recall something that had slipped his mind in the rush of their resurrection, and the warm haze that followed it.
“I hate to ask you for help so soo—“ They wave him off with the hand not holding his before he can get to the ‘but’.
“I’m here now, for good it seems, so hit me with whatever it is you need.” The phrase
for good,
makes his pulse quicken to a sprint. The thought of having them back, and them meaning to stay, it almost hurts. He knows now it’s dangerous for them to, and not just for them, but he can’t shake the well of affection under the worry.
“A friend of mine, she—“ Seneca‘s expression warps into a rakish smirk at ‘she’.
“Quiet, you,” he admonishes with faux indignation. The rapid shift from painfully genuine to playful feels good. They laugh softly, still sounding deeply tired.
“I can’t get much quieter, Ricardo.” The comment makes him frown. He still has no idea what happened to their voice. There no obvious scarring around the neck, which makes him wonder what could have stripped it down like it is.
“I see that look,” they say, squeezing his hand for his attention before the thought can go anywhere. “I’ll tell you later. For now tell me what’s up with your lady friend.”
“That’s a surprisingly correct turn of phrase, given that it’s Lady Argent who needs your help.” They don’t look pleased with that, lips pulling back into an exaggerated grimace, but they also don’t leave outright or jerk their hand away from him. It’s the little victories, when dealing with someone like them. “She was hijacked by a rogue telepath.” Seneca nods, like they already knew.
“I saw her on the news,” they say, explaining that look. “She looked like she was moving underwater.” He nods. He hadn’t been there to see it, but he’d gotten the account from Herald and seen the footage that wasn’t permitted for release. It was a disaster. Leaving him wedged in the rubble of the mall, hurling herself at Steel. A weaker mind in that body could have done much worse than she did before fighting the assailant off.
“You're still a telepath, right?” They give him a puzzled look, corners of their mouth quirking into the vestiges of a smile.
“Of course, I’m a boost. You can't just take that out.” He nods, then struggles to explain himself.
“I just… I wasn't sure if you could still use your powers after all this time.” They nod, and let the word Heartbreak go unspoken.
“I’ll need time to get ready, just a couple of days to make up for me being out of practice, but I’ll help you if I can.” He can't help but smile at them. Seven years and so little has changed for how much has happened; they're as congenial as the day he met them.
“As much time as you need, Seneca.” They flash a look of intrigue at him, for reasons unknown to him, and finally let go of his hand. Standing and stretching, their spine makes an awful sound. Because they know he hates it, they make a point to do so a little more as they scoop up their backpack.
Somehow, seeing them get ready to leave doesn’t bother him. Maybe it's the knowing that they’ll be back.
They pull their glasses, big, round frames with pale pink lenses, back down, and say their goodbyes with a simple nod in his direction.
He watches the door fall shut with a click behind them, and listens as their footsteps disappear in the distance. His phone chirps again, the second alarm for when he ignores the first, and he grins as he paces towards the shower to get ready. Even exhausted as he is, he can’t shake, the overwhelming joy and disbelief of finding his friend alive. It sticks to him, sits around his shoulders momentarily warding away anything that could bring his mood down.
Even as he pushes into the Ranger Headquarters, movement made slow and clumsy with exhaustion, the excitement is irrepressible. If he were taking the steps up to the Marshal’s office, he’d be taking them two at a time. Steel’s door is open when he arrives, and he doesn't both knocking.
“Chen,” he says, shaky voice betraying every ounce of giddiness as he moves inside and locks the door behind him. “You’re
never
going to believe who I found.”