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He’s aware of the shuffle that takes place. He can register the feeling of being lifted from one gurney onto another. He’s fully expecting another round of tests and experimental drugs being pumped into his system that make him taste blue and feel orange but it never happens.
Hours or days or seconds later he feels something familiar coursing through his veins. Morphine. It makes him feel safe, and most importantly makes him feel human again, instead of…
Whatever he’s become.
“Do you remember your name?”
Voices in his various apartments at the facility had become common, even expected. This, however, is not a voice he recognizes. Even the resonance of the room feels different. He slowly opens his eyes and realizes at once everything is completely and utterly wrong. Instead of the utilitarian equipment he was so used to, everything is sleek and polished. Cutting edge, even. Was his facility so far behind? Or, more harrowing, how many decades has he been asleep?
“You don’t remember?” His gaze flitted about until it landed on the source. Her hair was a shock of orange and she was seemingly impossibly tall, thin as a rail and icy in her composure. She stood at the other side of the room with her arms crossed as she regarded him with sharp eyes that seemed to pierce right through him. Her gaze flitted momentarily to his heart rate meter which had apparently started going off without him really hearing it, and then back to him.
“Sie-,” He starts, wincing at how dry his vocal chords are and how his voice fades into a scratchy hiss. He doesn’t know why he’s telling this woman his name. He tries again. “Siebren de Kuiper.”
Her lips quirk almost imperceptibly, and he doesn’t know how he even manages to catch it.
“No, your new name.”
He exhales in a shudder as he looks away at one of the onyx walls, polished to an almost mirror-like finish. He can't quite see his reflection in it and sees only vague shapes and colors, but he’s glad that he’s not able to see himself too clearly. He’s still at the facility. This is another test and he’s failing it. He can’t answer her.
She takes pity on him. “Project Sigma,” she helpfully provides, as if he really did forget what they’ve been calling him for the past… however long it’s been. “Don’t worry. In time you will reclaim this name and wear it as a badge of honor, as armor that will protect you. You have been shamed for far too long.”
Maybe he’s getting too much morphine because he can’t focus on what she tells him. He can’t seem to parse it. Instead, he asks a question his own. “Where am I?”
“Home.”
----
Home, it turns out, is Talon headquarters. Where Talon headquarters is actually located, he is never told. He supposes it’s better that way.
The woman— Moira, he learns— has been helping him get acclimated to his new environment. At first he is pushed around the parts of the headquarters he’s allowed to see in a wheelchair, as his legs that had gone unused for so long became so thin and frail that he barely recognizes them. He’s ashamed of it until Moira assures him he will get stronger. The assistant speaks not a word as he wheels him wherever she directs him to, and he’s thankful for it.
“Is the morphine agreeing with you?” She asks as he’s led past what appears to be a gym. He can see the equipment and he can hear agents conversing with one another. He doesn’t know why they’re listening to Chopin.
He doesn’t have to think about his answer. “Yes. Very much so, I think.”
She lets out a short exhale from behind her teeth. It’s her version of a laugh, he’s learned. “Hopefully not too much. We do still need you to function if you are to help us.”
Help us . He focuses on that for lack of anything else to latch onto. He is still not told why he is here and what exactly he is meant to do. What use does an organization like this have to do with a fractured old man who exists neither here nor there?
“Your purpose will be explained in time,” She assures him, and he momentarily wonders if she can read his thoughts. No, he tells himself, it was a logical follow-up statement. Everything is fine.
He turns his head and sees himself down a hallway, standing upright and watching him as he passes by. He only tears his eyes away as they veer right, taking the hallway out of his line of sight. The familiar and unwelcome sensation of his skin prickling into goosebumps and burning hits him all at once and he grinds the palms of his hands into his eyes in an effort to ground himself. There’s only one of me , he assures himself like a mantra. Not two, not ten, not fifty. There is only one of me.
Gravity
They’ve stopped moving and he can faintly hear voices that aren’t his own, but he can’t hear them when they’re a million miles away. Everything is getting louder in his head to an alarming degree and before it can reach the horrifying peak of its crescendo, he feels a needle in his neck and everything ceases to be.
----
He can’t find the energy to be shocked or surprised that he has ended up here again. The steady beeping of his heart monitor serves as his ambience as he opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. A distorted reflection looks back at him.
They’ve lowered his dosage, he can tell right away. Instead of an all encompassing haze, he can distinctly feel things again. His pain is dulled, but the drugs are no longer overwhelming. It’s a blessing and a curse.
“You are overwhelmed.”
He knows it’s her. The panic in his chest that so recently consumed him starts to raise its hackles once again.
He turns his head to look at her to prove to himself that he’s not hallucinating. She peers down at him like he’s a puzzle that she has yet to solve and the fluorescent ceiling lights shine behind her, bleeding around her form and glowing through her bright hair like a halo. For some reason his breath catches in his throat and he doesn’t know what he was going to say.
“What medications did they have you on? I feel as if we are not properly managing your symptoms.”
Siebren doesn’t know. He never used to be on any medications before… any of this, though people always told him he should have been. They couldn’t deal with his eccentricities. It almost makes him laugh to think about. What would his former colleagues think of him now?
Is
“We will get your medical records from that place and this will all be behind you. Don’t worry.”
His mouth goes dry at that. “It’s a government facility. You can’t get in.”
A smirk, this time. “We got you out, didn’t we?”
----
It’s been two weeks, he thinks. Time still evades him, but he’s finally able to keep better track of it. He knows he’s on a cocktail of antipsychotics and blood pressure medication and whatever else but he tries not to think too hard about it. If this is how he functions, then so be it.
He sits now in a waiting room, anxiously tapping his foot as he waits for what is supposed to be the most important meeting he will have at Talon. He doesn’t know what the expect and he still doesn’t know anything. What will they do if he’s not up to their standards? He runs a hand over his ever-receding hairline as he glances at the clock across the room. It’s 8:59 in the morning. Maybe he shouldn’t have come so early.
As if on cue, someone comes out of the office and calls his name (Not his real one) and he stands up on much steadier feet, following the assistant in.
He’s led through a lavish office to a plush chair in front of a huge desk and the door closes behind him as the assistant leaves him alone. Well, not alone.
The man he was told was named Doomfist spins to face him in his giant office chair and gestures for him to sit. He hesitates for only a second before gingerly sitting himself down, not expecting the sheer size of this man. Even while sitting, it’s almost overwhelming. There were black plates of complex circuitry spanning the entirety of the right side of his massive chest as well as through the entirety of his arm. He realized belatedly that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he doubted a shirt could even contain his bulk. He was always considered somewhat large both in height and stature, but compared to Doomfist, he may as well be a twig.
“Dr. De Kuiper. Your reputation precedes you.” His voice was strong and clear and it was obvious that he was leader through and through.
“Thank you, sir.” He’s already bursting apart at the seams, but he takes a deep breath to hold himself together. “Though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing these days.”
Doomfist shrugs a massive shoulder. “Depends who you ask.” He gathers a stack of papers into his hands and flips through them, skimming the content as he goes. He knows at once that those are his files and detailed reports of his life’s work. “We, for example, are very impressed by all that you have accomplished and also quite intrigued .”
He was now fully aware of the other man’s inquisitive eyes on him and immediately feels the pressure. They want answers. They want to know what he saw. He feels rather than hear the first note of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. He tries not to fixate on it.
He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “What do you want to know?”
“I hear you can control gravity.” Doomfist was apparently not one to beat around the bush. He was also watching him very carefully. “Is there any level of truth to that?”
He had to think about his answer. Could he, truly? He knew he had a strange gravitational pull and he was told in times of duress he could make things float or become too heavy to logically be possible. But could he control it?
“I can’t control it,” He admits as he casts his gaze downwards to the desk, already feeling this meeting going south. “I acknowledge that there are… anomalies, but I can’t control it.”
A
“Yet,” Doomfist tacked on, and Siebran looks back up at him warily. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. The most we can ask for is a strong foundation to start from, and that’s what we have.”
Strong foundation. He didn’t think he could find it in himself to believe those words. It was a shaky foundation at best. The soil of his mind had gone sour and rocky and life could not hope to bloom there. The sea had eroded away the once strong and impressive empire of his mind, and everything he did to try and rebuild it got washed away in the unforgiving current.
He found speaking to be a monumental task.
Luckily, Doomfist didn’t appear to be waiting for a response. “You will begin training tomorrow. Report to Moira’s lab at 0700 hours.” He smiled at him as he processed the order, for it was most certainly an order. This was his life now. “In time, harnessing your abilities will become second nature to you. I have high hopes for you, Dr. De Kuiper.”
“Is there a… contract I have to sign?” He asked, furrowing his brow. He felt like a raft out in the middle of the ocean, desperate to make sense of the second chance he had been given.
Doomfist’s smile took on a sinister edge. “We don’t do contracts here. I find it’s never necessary.”
In a past life, he would have been able to catch his meaning right away. He was good at that, reading between the lines and whatnot. He could come to logical conclusions in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t so easy anymore.
He took pity on him, perhaps. “You are a smart man. I would not patronize you so by having to explain. I will ask you this, however. When was the last time you met an ex-Talon member?”
He looked at him with new eyes, finally grasping the absolute power this man held.
He would do well to not disappoint him.
----
“Again.”
Training, as it turned out, was not easy. He tried to wipe his face but he was sweating too profusely for it to do any good.
A gym towel was tossed at his back unceremoniously.
“Again,” She barked at him as if he hadn’t heard her the first time.
They had been working on his hypersphere ability, and it was taking everything out of him. The design of the spheres was brilliant, he had to admit, having been cut and molded to a specific shape so that the energy was always bouncing off of each other. All he had to do was infuse it with gravitational energy and it would work, creating destructive projectiles.
Funnily enough, when he phrases it like that, it doesn’t sound so easy after all.
“I can’t do it again.” He admitted shamefully. He hated being this weak. Would his past self be up to this? He discarded that thought as soon as it reared its ugly head. It didn’t matter if he would have been able to do it before. That’s not who he was anymore.
“Siebren.”
His heart stopped in his chest as he tried to remind himself how to breathe. He could feel her eyes on him but he could not will his body to even look in her direction.
Harness
He exhaled shakily as he picked the spheres up again. “Alright.”
----
He’s at the international space station except the structure has torn itself apart and he’s left on a piece of debris floating through the unknown. Or, it’s unknown to him now. The stars don’t look the same to him anymore and he can’t tell if it’s because he experienced the splendor of a black hole or if it’s because half of his brain doesn’t appear to be working. He thinks it’s perhaps a little of column A and a little of column B. Even though he is floating through space, he can breathe and he is alive.
In the resulting explosion-- or implosion-- or total and utter annihilation -- his right leg was torn off at the thigh. Blood gushes out of it in that almost enchanting way that it only can in zero gravity and he knows he’s dying. He screams but there is no sound.
He’s going to die alone in space and looking back now, that’s all he ever really wanted.
Except suddenly, he isn’t alone. He blinks once and then she’s there, as elegant and lithe and cold as she’s ever been. A shock of orange hair.
“You will not die here,” She tells him matter-of-factly in that way she always talks to him. It occurs to him that he shouldn’t be able to hear her. She ties a tourniquet around his thigh to staunch the blood flow and her now-bloodied hands feel like fire on the skin of his thigh and threatens to burn him from the inside out. She is methodical in her work and does not spare him a glance as she secures the wound and he’s thankful for it because he has no idea what he looks like right now.
Meanwhile, he can’t tear his eyes from her face. The curve of her nose, the sharpness of her cheekbones, her pursed lips as she concentrates. He’s forgotten about his leg entirely.
I
She looks up at him in question as she feels the heat of his gaze on her and the second they make eye contact, he sits up in his bed way too fast and feels the blood flow from his head. He’s breathing hard now, and instead of the silence that space had offered him he can now clearly hear his ragged breaths in the dark room.
Once the haze of the dream has left him and he can focus on reality, he realizes he’s hard.
He ignores it. In fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge it. He lays back down properly in bed, still trying to shake the feeling of sheer terror from his bones. That, and--
No, that’s it. He doesn’t feel anything else.
He falls back asleep.
----
He spins around, absorbing the incoming rocket into his kinetic grasp. When he concentrates he can transform its properties into something infinitely more useful. It takes more effort than it probably should and he’s sure he can fine tune the process in time, but for now it’s acceptable. Electricity tingles in his veins as he feels the shields forming a protective barrier around him and when he doesn’t turn fast enough to catch the next rocket, the shields absorb it easily.
“That’s pretty handy. Do you think you will be able to do that on the field when there are real threats coming at you?”
The rockets have stopped as he is allowed a short reprieve, sitting down heavily on the floor.
“Maybe not yet, but yes.”
Reaper had been watching his training from the rafters, making sure everything was going according to plan. Alternatively, it was because he didn’t trust him. It’s hard to know what someone is thinking when you can never see their face. Even if he could, he was never very good at reading people and their intentions.
Have
“Maybe this wasn’t a stupid idea after all. Keep working.”
And with that, he’s gone.
Siebren lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, relieved that he is left alone once again. He’s been focusing solely on his training since… since that , and he feels like he’s managing to get back some of the brilliance of his former self. He doesn’t feel as lost as he had when he first came here-- was brought here-- two months ago, and he feels as if he has a purpose again.
If only he could get that damn music out of his head.
----
He doesn’t know what happens. He remembers forming a gravitational field that lifted everything in the area up and up, and then suddenly he’s on the floor with blood pouring from his ears and nose and eyes and the music is so fucking loud and--
Well, now he’s here.
It may have been a miscalculation.
The familiar sound of his heart monitor doesn’t calm him. He knows it’s bad. He can hear the delay in the beeps, the stutter and general unsteadiness between them. He’s tried to wake up for the past thirty minutes but he has been struggling. The pain in his head threatens to overwhelm him and the ache makes him feel sick both in body and soul. He feels the gauze wrapped tightly around his head and he wants to laugh. What do they think that will do? Do they think it will meld his shattered brain back together?
“You fractured your skull.”
Her voice reverberates through the room almost painfully and he doesn’t think he can open his eyes. Nor can he speak. It feels like he’s been in this situation around her too many times to count.
Harnessed
She knows he can’t answer, or maybe she doesn’t care, so she continues. “I feel as if you, of all people, would understand the stressors that gravity can place on your body. We’re affected by it daily, and you are trying to control it.” She pauses. “I shouldn’t have to explain it to you, so I won’t. If you overtax yourself again, I doubt it will work out so well for you next time.”
He doesn’t know how many moments pass between them before he hears the far too loud click of her heels on the tile as she steps to his side, and he hears a switch being activated and suddenly he feels ok, he feels alright. She upped his morphine he realizes and suddenly the ache in his skull is dulled so much that it barely even feels like he has a skull anymore. The echo of the piano-- he doesn’t know which song it is and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t know-- is thankfully tuned out.
He becomes small, so small, until he fades away completely.
----
He comes to some time later. How much time, he absolutely couldn’t say. He feels exhausted enough to where it could have been maybe thirty minutes but his joints also feel stiff enough from disuse that it could have been weeks. His consciousness evades him like the swing of a metronome; the rod taunting him to catch it on the downbeat. Before, he was good at this.
Now, music doesn’t hold that same comfort.
He manages after several tries to latch onto consciousness, and he almost immediately regrets it. He sits up because he finds that he can , and clamps a hand over his mouth as an intense wave of nausea washes over him. He doesn’t think as his body goes into autopilot, bringing him to the bathroom that he knows is there as he falls to his knees painfully and lets out everything he’s ever eaten in his entire life.
Time passes without his knowledge, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been here, shivering against the porcelain that feels so cool against his burning skin. The nausea persists but he lets it wash over him in waves, knowing there’s nothing else he can offer it. His IVs float above him as hears the motors of the small drones attached to them whirring in the small bathroom. He’s thankful for that, at least.
“Do you need some help?”
He’s too exhausted to turn, so he doesn’t.
It’s not Moira. He knows that much.
He is still trying to hold himself together , but it’s almost proving to be a losing battle. He breathes in through his nose, holds it, and exhales as steadily as he can. He can’t recognize the song in his head.
Whoever it is huffs in annoyance. “If you’d rather sit there, it’s really not my problem.”
The
He steels himself as he turns towards her, seeing Sombra leaning against the door frame of the bathroom door he had left ajar. She looks at him now like he’s a bug, and insect , and he supposes he is one. He doesn’t know why she’s there.
“You think bringing me into Talon was a waste of time.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but there it is.
Sombra looks at him more seriously than she had been a moment prior. She no longer looks annoyed with his existence as she regards his pathetic form draped over a toilet. He’s suddenly aware that he only has a hospital gown on.
“The only thing I’ll say is that Reyes suffered way worse than you, and look at him now.”
It takes time and effort on both of their parts to haul him back to bed and as he settles down, he finds himself intensely grateful for her presence. He feels so heavy despite having lost at least twenty pounds over the past few weeks or however long it’s been (and he doesn’t want to know how long it’s been), and he finds himself drifting in and out of consciousness.
He wants to thank her but his brain finally settles on unconsciousness and he’s floating into space once again.
----
They fit his head for the specialized armor being designed for him and it hurts. Two nurses work with each other to clamp it around his head and feels like his skull is getting fractured all over again but he trusts them because he doesn’t have any other option.
Moira is there, overseeing. There are tears pricking his eyes from the sheer pressure of it and he’s doing everything he can to keep it together . The pain folds in on itself a million times before suddenly, in a millisecond, it’s gone. The music is gone. Hands are no longer on him and he focuses on his breathing before realizing he can focus on other things, too. He can feel the cool plate on his head, so snug against his bare head but still keeping his neck mobile. He opens his eyes when he realizes he can without feeling like he’s going to blow apart.
The first thing Sigma focuses on is Moira, who watches him curiously. Once she decides that whatever she sees is acceptable, she speaks.
“The gear appears to be working. Now you are able to focus on me.”
“I was always focused on you. It’s just easier when everything else isn’t there.”
He hadn’t meant to say it but once it’s out, it feels right. He feels like he experiences every emotion at once at the simple admission and it’s all he can do to keep his eyes on her. The nurses are still there gathering their things but they hardly even register in his mind.
She doesn’t look shocked. In fact, she doesn’t react at all, which makes him regret every decision he’s made up until this point.
Her lips quirk upwards. There’s no warmth in it. “Good. Now the real training can begin.”
Harness