Chapter Text
Morning sunlight pours in through the thin curtains and shines directly into Elizabeth Ashe’s eyes. The day has already decided to be cruel. She groans and rolls over, trying to hide from the celestial tyrant that mocks her, but it’s too late. She’s awake.
She kicks the blanket down, letting cool air rush over her body. It’s not often she sleeps nude, but when she does, it brings a lot of relief from the desert heat. God, she can still smell whiskey in the air. Her stomach is heavy with bile; her head is pounding, her mouth is dry.
She overdid it.
Again.
In her defense, she kind of needed it this time. To say that the last few days have been a nightmare would be a gross understatement. Trying to keep her gang together in the midst of an omnic war, a recent resurgence of a certain cowboy ruining her plans; being surrounded by death and gunfire on all sides. The dying screams of omnics and humans alike still haunt her. Until a few days ago, she didn’t think omnics could scream. It seems like a cruel addition by their creators–or, more likely, a reminder that there is far more to personhood than a bipedal arrangement of meat and bone.
B.O.B. never screamed.
Granted, B.O.B. never made any sort of sound at all. Ashe wonders, as she has for many years, if he's able. Perhaps one day, she'll ask.
The terror and adrenaline overload has left her hollow. But, she thinks as she rubs her eyes, that’s not unusual. It’s not the first time she’s watched bodies drop, or been splattered with somebody else's burning blood. No, this wasn't Ashe's first rodeo. She’d spent the last ten years running a gang of vicious criminals solo, and had become a horror story for those who saw her wanted posters. Mama Spider wove her webs through the whole country, capturing anyone stupid enough to wander through them in a haze of bullets and smoke. But it never gets easier. It never gets cleaner, or calmer.
She shakes her head. She’s been swimming in the murky swamp of her own worry for long enough. Focus. Here and now. Back to the cool silk sheets she's laying on top of. Egyptian. The house she's renting may not have all the amenities she was hoping for (and she let B.O.B. hear about each one), but it's leagues better than a hotel. At the very least, she's alone. She laughed in that nurse lady's face when she was offered a spot with Overwatch, in barrack-type arrangements. With other people.
"Y'all don't even have a bathtub," she'd said. "Do I look like a fuckin' co-ed?"
So she decided once again to take matters into her own hands, and is now paying four grand a month to stay in a house about twenty miles away. That's nothing for a little peace and quiet. It's the least she deserves, considering all the time and blood she's given to that ragtag circus already.
“Ugh…” It’s the first sound she’s made today. She has to get up, has to start her routines. She shifts-
And bumps directly into someone's back.
How the fuck did she not notice? Was she that lost in her thoughts? For all her big talk of being snake-tongued and hawk-eyed, she's awfully unobservant when she's hung over. Which has become semi-frequent. She grabs the gun she keeps under her bed, stands up and points it at the big, hairy stranger.
"Turn around real slow, motherfucker!" she demands.
He obeys, and her heart freezes as she stares into tired-but-playful hazel eyes. Eyes that didn't belong to a stranger at all.
“Well good mornin’ to you too."