Work Text:
It’s never a milk run.
What was meant to be a trip to retrieve Doc Xabier’s samples quickly devolved into… something on the more bizarre end of things, as far as Glory is concerned. Buildings and staff abandoned by corps? Sure. Studies and experiments of questionable ethics? Mystery meats and biomedical results? All par for the course for a typical run. But the guy they found… ‘Drones inspired by Slovakian TV schlock coming to their rescue’ outranked ‘albino basilisks named Billy’ for her, but both amount to an eventful day.
No run is ever normal, but this one, at the very least, was successful. The team were already hauling toward the broken down U-Bahn station with the bioware Xabier needed, when the nearby streetgang decided that they would rather have whatever it is a Shadowrunning team was sent to retrieve. They could either use it, sell it for Nuyen, or brag about the fun and cred they got from killing a team of Runners.
They put up a good fight, for a street gang. They lasted longer than Glory gave them credit for.
But with her whole team there, the measly gang was woefully outmatched.
The firefight hardly lasts a minute, the passage of time only amplified by her adrenaline implant kicking in. She can hear the whir of the pump as it comes to a halt again, eyes scanning the street for any signs of movement, the tang of gunpowder and blood still thick in the air.
She can hear one of Blitz’ drones buzzing nearby, and the familiar flow of Dietrich’s magic passing through her. The ork at her feet is completely still. The music from that old fantasy show is still echoing distantly behind them.
She blinks away the dregs of the battle, slowing down her breathing, feeling her heartbeat return to normal. Her commlink chirps to life, the crackle and shift of movement— fabric scraping against fabric— before the voice of their new team leader cuts through.
“Glory, you all good?” Her razors retract back into her clunky chrome before she fishes her comm out of her pockets.
“Hide. I’m fine.” She casts a sidelong glance at the blood sliding down her arm and takes a moment to make sure it isn’t her own.
“Great, got a moment?” he asks casually. She can’t seem to spot him on the street. “I got knifed in the side.”
Glory blinks.
Before she can muster a reply, Blitz’s voice floods the channel.
“You what?”
“Stabbed. Need a bit of help.” Hide’s voice sounds calm as ever, but Glory can hear the strain underneath it now. She can almost swear she hears him smiling. “Not really willing to play surgeon on myself here.”
“How?” Blitz continues. “With the armored vest and everything? Did you get—”
“Where are you?” Glory cuts in, already walking and scanning the street.
“With the armored vest, yes. Keep channels clear. I’m by the…” he trails off. Blitz falls in behind Glory, trailing just behind her heels, sending his drone up into the sky for a better view.
“Hide?” Glory asks, a bite of urgency in her voice.
“Yeah,” he winces. “The uh… jersey barrier. K-Rail. Cement thing. With the rebar sticking out the top. I think Eiger made that nice hole in the middle of it.”
She scans the rubble of the abandoned street, glossing over the gangers slumped over and dead. Her hand finds the handle of the medkit in her bag as she picks up speed, zeroing in on the line of concrete barriers near one of the cars. Sure enough, there’s a great big chunk missing from one of them, and enough rubble scattered around like confetti to signal Eiger’s own personal touch.
“Go get the others,” she says to Blitz, calling over her shoulder. His drone disappears toward Eiger’s direction as he turns on his heel, flagging down Dietrich.
“It’s not awful,” Hide tries to reassure them. “Just bloody. And above my paygrade.” His tone of voice contradicts everything he’s said, except the latter point.
Her heart starts to pound again as she rounds the K-Rail— something she blames on the aftershock of her adrenaline pump— and eases, barely, once she sees Hide with his back pressed against it. Sure enough, there’s a knife embedded in his armored vest and a dead ork sprawled across the ground next to him. He offers her a tight smile, hair falling in front of his eyes, focused on keeping his breathing even.
His hair is still up in a bun, loose strands falling across his face and the datajack inlaid in his head. His cyberdeck is gripped in one hand, the other weakly pressed around the vest and knife. He’s playing it off well enough that if she didn’t already know he’d been hurt (or if there wasn’t a Bowie knife protruding from his side) she’d hardly notice anything wrong. His dark jacket obscures most of the vest and his shirt underneath, hiding any blood along with it.
“He caught me off guard.” Hide nods toward the ork as Glory sets up the medkit, the autodoc voice long ago muted, leaving them in blissful silence.
“Is it deep? How bad does it hurt?”
“Oh, bad,” he chuckles. “Not too deep. The armor did its job. But it’s stuck. And I’d rather not just…”
“Don’t take it out.”
“Mm, yeah.”
“You’re breathing normally? Are you losing blood?”
“Yeah. And yeah. It’s probably not great.” He grimaces as she presses her palm lightly on his side. “Nothing horrible. It happens. Just not something I can really handle myself, you know?”
Glory checks the screen on the medkit, waiting for all the data to come in. Before she can respond, Blitz cuts in, jogging over with the rest of the team behind him. Glory tenses at the sudden crowd. There’s no one she trusts more than the people here, and being watched while you work is inevitable, but she can’t help the instinct. She can feel Hide tense up, too— more than just coping with the pain. Something in the air, something in his demeanor, shifts. Something heavy, like reluctance. She gives him a searching look that he refuses to meet.
“What happened? The big guy get you?” Blitz asks, a bit out of breath. Dietrich takes a half step forward toward Glory, who sees him and shifts so he has room to kneel next to her.
“I didn’t think I’d get a whole trauma team for something this simple,” Hide jokes, all smiles and wisecracks, but Glory can tell something’s wrong. She checks the read out again, then pulls his jacket off, leaving the vest, shirt, and unwelcome foreign body.
“I meant you should all get to the station,” she says, pointedly turning back toward her work. “Not regroup.”
“Oh. I— I was wor— we were worried,” Blitz fumbles, shoving a hand into his back pocket. Eiger huffs, shifting her weight, leaning forward to get a look at their fearless team leader, eyebrows knitting together.
“No. I… should’ve clarified. It’s alright. Dietrich.” She catches his eye before turning back to Hide. “Would you help me get all of this off?”
Dietrich moves a hand to Hide’s shoulder while sliding the other under a strap of his vest. Glory extends one of her hand razors partway, repositioning to get a clean cut from the bottom of the vest. She carefully catches the edge of his shirt, then, with near surgical precision, cuts as close as she can around the knife.
Dietrich tightens his grip on Hide’s shoulder in lieu of giving it a friendly shake.
“You’re alright. Just don’t move too much,” he chuckles.
Hide coughs out a laugh that sounds somewhere between nervous and impressed. “Those really do shred right through armor, don’t they?” Both Dietrich and Glory shush him, peeling away the vest and layered shirt, leaving only the scrap still pinned into his body.
Blitz and Eiger can’t help but react as Hide’s torso becomes visible, covered in an array of colorful tattoos. Dietrich leans back to look, tossing the ruined shirt to the side.
It’s more than just a mosaic of scattered ink. It’s a riot of color, still vibrant, carefully planned, leaving the empty space of skin to purposefully intermingle with the tattooed designs— a mix of animals, plants, and shapes like circuits breaking up the canvas of skin. It dominates his whole chest and stomach, wrapping around his shoulders to his back, and crawling up his neck.
Glory watches him avoid eye contact, the tension slowly unspooling as his eyes unfocus with a slow sigh of acceptance, while the others stare on.
“Damn," Dietrich nods, taking in every detail and color, stained brown and burgundy by blood. "Since when?” He looks to Glory for approval, then holds a palm near the wound, giving Hide a magical boost alongside the work of the medkit.
“Well, the stab wound happened today," Hide grimaces.
“Cute,” Eiger says in a way that means it isn’t. “Where’d you get them?”
Blitz doesn't wait for an answer, piling on. “Are you like… yakuza or something?”
“Not yakuza,” Hide says, more visibly swallowing down the pain. “German.” He points weakly toward himself, eyebrows raised.
“That doesn’t mean you can't be—”
“You never got them finished,” Dietrich muses, heaving himself up off the ground, giving Glory room to work.
Glory’s eyes flit up from the wound to Hide’s shoulders. She tracks the unfinished lines and shapes, flowing across his collarbone before stopping just past his shoulders. Some of the lines extend, half finished and lonely, down toward his arms.
“Okay,” she says, taking the knife in one hand. He nods, and she removes it, letting the scraps of fabric fall away, setting to seal the wound as blood pools out over her hands.
“Oh, that sucks,” Hide says calmly, sucking in a sharp breath, twisting one of his legs.
“I saw the snake sticking over your collar,” Eiger cuts in, catching his attention again. “Never thought you might be trying to hide it. Just assumed it was a stereotypical white-boy tattoo. No offense.”
“I think that’s fair,” Hide nods, watching Glory finish up the last few steps of field dressing.
“You do have sort of… tech-bro vibes.”
“Mmm. Weird time to have this conversation.” Glory waits for him to smile, or try and crack a joke, but nothing comes. He’s carefully neutral, eyes unfocused. “I appreciate the support, but I don’t need you all standing around while I’m tended to.”
“We can go. We should get you back to Paul,” Glory says, packing away the medkit.
“Can someone pass me the jacket?” He smiles mirthlessly, gesturing toward himself. “Not really keen on riding the U-Bahn with all this on display.”
Eiger steps forward, offering him a hand and lifting him to his feet. “Can you walk? I don’t want to have to carry you to your seat.”
Hide chuckles, shaking his head. “I’ll make it. Like I said, I’ve had worse. You make it out of this unscathed?”
“I have that damn song stuck in my head.” This pulls a real laugh out of Hide, which releases some tension in Glory’s shoulders. The wound can’t be too bad with a laugh like that.
“I think you got the short end of the stick on that one.”
Blitz hands him his jacket, still clearly trying to memorize the tattoo before it’s covered.
“You probably have questions,” Hide nods, zipping up, leaving only the curve of a snake peeking out on the side of his neck. “I was… kind of hoping to avoid this.”
“Let’s get you back. You’ll be okay,” Glory starts, only half talking about the injury. “But this is only a quick fix.”
The team all mumble some agreement, heading toward the station tunnel again, keeping a careful eye on Hide, both to make sure he has his footing and considering the array of ink under his clothes.
Eiger breaks the silence when they reach the stairs. “So what’s it from? Merc work? Corporate security? Some gang? I don’t recognize it.”
Hide straightens, casting glances down the platform. An old troll leans against the cracked tile wall. There’s a group of teens who all turn to gawk at the group as they come down. Glory looks at him, trying to really see him. The nervousness is practically radiating off him, and it makes her uneasy. It’s not the Hide she’s gotten to know. It’s not like him.
“You’ve asked about all of us. And we all know where each other came from, within reason. We’ve been a team for long enough.” Eiger keeps a steady eye on him. “But we don’t know anything about you. You’re just Monika’s friend.”
“...I just need more time,” Hide hesitates, picking his words and watching his tone. “I didn’t get the chance to… settle in.”
“With all due respect, that’s bullshit. I don’t like being lied to. I expect that from clients. And I don’t expect anyone on the team to tell me their life story. But you’ve always felt distant. Like Monika was a buffer between us and you. Now that she’s gone, it all just seems off . And this little tattoo reveal isn’t helping your case.”
He stays quiet until they all group up by the platform. The tunnels are empty and dark.
“It can wait until the train comes.”
“Alright. I can wait.”
If anyone else on the train really looked at them, they might laugh at the sight. Or give them a wide berth. But true to the unspoken rules of public transportation, nobody pays them any mind. Eiger stands with her back to the team, facing toward the doors. Dietrich and Blitz sit with Hide between them, with his arms folded across his stomach, trying to seem casual. Glory sits facing them on a corner seat, knees nearly touching Dietrich’s.
They’re all very blatantly Shadowrunners. Dietrich’s tattoos, the boys’ cyberdecks, Glory’s chrome, Eiger’s armor. The general demeanor and tension around them.
With the brooding and dark atmosphere, it almost seems like they failed at their job. Eiger stares straight forward, tapping her fingers idly against her thigh. The others keep exchanging quiet glances full of unspoken questions. Hide avoids eye contact still, scanning the carriage, eyes holding for just a moment on each passenger.
“So you’re hiding them?” Eiger says, determined to get something from Hide. Her voice is low enough and the rails loud enough that only the team hears it. “From the public? Or us?”
Hide takes a deep breath, eyes unfocusing again. He doesn’t answer right away.
“In general,” he says plainly. Eiger shifts to face him, towering above him. He looks up at her, meeting her eyes. There’s no defiance— just calm. “They’re too identifying.”
“What, like you’re famous, or something?” Blitz looks at him incredulously. “Like we’d recognize them?”
“No,” he shakes his head, smiling sadly. “Really not at all. The opposite.”
“Something like the Yakuza?”
“Are you ashamed of them?” Eiger asks. It’s not an accusation— just a question.
Glory’s watched this kind of exchange before, both from Eiger and Hide. It’s the kind of thing he usually does when meeting a client, or she does when casing an area for information. Carefully neutral inoffensive questioning. Trying to gather all the information they can before making a decision or judgement.
“I love them, actually. The whole piece means a lot to me. A lot of work went into it, both in designing it and actually getting it done.” He shifts his arms a bit tighter around himself, lips twitching into a tight frown. Field medicine can only do so much, but he tries to conceal whatever pain he’s still in as best he can.
“Your front and the whole back piece, and in color,” Dietrich nods. “And as one design. That’s some impressive workmanship.”
“It is. It took a long time to finish what’s there. That’s its downfall, I figure. Too distinctive. This life doesn’t really lend itself to showing it off.”
“So why’d you stop?” Dietrich angles himself inward, blocking off the rest of the train, facing Hide. “Why not finish it? You’ve got the start of a sleeve on each shoulder.”
“I left.” His statement hangs in the quiet drone of the subway car. “Couldn’t really go back to the same lady and ask her to finish the piece.” He smiles, a wave of sadness dragging his eyes down to the floor. He sways with the train as it curves along the rail toward home.
“Why not?”
“I’m never going back,” Hide says curtly. There’s a flicker of intensity in his eyes, sharp and biting like a snake about to strike. Almost defensive, like someone here might make him go back to where back is.
Glory knows how that feels. She says she doesn’t feel it anymore, despite the way it haunts her in her ribs, a hollow feeling.
Glory knows.
“Look,” Hide shifts, gritting his teeth, trying not to clutch his side. “This all should wait. I owe you some kind of explanation after all this, but I can’t have this conversation here.”
“No?” Eiger glances around the sparse train car.
“Paul knows some of this. He can back me up. Let’s just…” he sighs. “Somewhere more private, please.”
“I’m going to hear this in the Kiez.” she states flatly, like she carries the authority, then turns to watch the glitching sign displaying the next stops.
“Okay,” he answers flatly, and leaves them all in the droning quiet of the subway car.
“Well, if any of you are going to get knifed, I suppose this is the best case scenario for the severity of it all,” Paul says, bringing a blanket over to the couch where Hide has been stationed.
He’s pulled a new shirt on, leaving it half up to keep the wound exposed. Dante shoves his nose through the blanket as he unfolds it across his lap, snuffling and nudging at his hands.
“Not that I want any of you to be knifed, but it does feel a bit inevitable at times. You’re feeling alright?”
Hide gives a non-committal nod, ruffling Dante’s ears. The attention is the only thing keeping the dog from clambering onto the couch with him. Paul gives him a doubtful once over, before pushing up his glasses with a sigh. He pulls a chair out from the table that serves as their kitchen table half the time, pushing empty shell casings and a magazine out of the way. Dietrich and Eiger help, leaning forward from their seats, corralling the mess toward the center.
Glory watches them, sliding the used medkit into a cabinet, then turns to Hide. He’s still absentmindedly scratching at a very content Dante, eyes unfocused and elsewhere. Blitz is parked at the end of the couch, half leaning, half sitting on the arm, fiddling restlessly with the frayed upholstery. His eyes flit between the team, all new to him, all allies or friends to him, uneasy with this new tension.
“Okay,” Eiger says. She doesn’t raise her voice, but it carries through the whole room with authority. Paul and Dietrich turn to watch her, but she ignores them both, eyes burning a hole into the side of Hide’s head until he turns to meet her gaze. “We’re all here. You’re fine. You promised an explanation.”
“I did.”
She picks up a casing, squeezing it between her thumb and index finger. He watches her, an uneasy resignation settling around him like a blanket.
“Eiger,” Dietrich starts, but Paul stops him with a hand and a look, reaching quietly across the table.
“I’m only pushing this because we know nothing about you. Normally that wouldn’t matter to me, since there’s others to vouch for you. But you’re new, Monika’s dead, and you seem off. I don’t want to follow someone blindly without any idea where they’re coming from. Especially when you keep interrogating us.”
“Interrogating might be a strong word—”
“Call it whatever you want. I don’t need your previous employers and a resumé, but I want the assurance you’re not about to screw us all. You show up, Monika drops dead, and now you’re prodding all of us for information?”
“Eiger,” Paul chides this time, not ready to rehash this whole argument again. “He’s been made—”
“I know he’s been made our leader. I never wanted that, even as a joke, but I trust Monika. But ever since she dropped, some mysterious decker from her past was coincidentally there to take her spot, and it’s been nothing but surprises and hard luck since. I can accept her decision, but this?”
Her words echo through the room, repeating over and over.
Monika’s dead.
Monika’s dead. Their link. Their leader. The lover of the Kiez.
There’s an unspoken question in Eiger’s accusations. Who are you to claim you know her? Who are you to replace her?
“I’ll follow you. For Monika. But I want some honesty. If you’re hiding something that could hurt any of us, or interfere with what we’re doing, we need to know. Cards on the table. Now.”
“Okay,” Hide says, straightening up, making an effort to meet everyone’s eyes. Glory watches him mentally double down— trying to quell the unease with forced confidence. “Before this I worked with a different Shadowrunning group. They got caught, I didn’t. I don’t know what happened to them, but I was out a job. Monika and I have— had— been friends for a while, and she contacted me. So I came here. Before that, I worked with random Runners, assigned to jobs by a few fixers. Paul gave me some of those contacts, back when Monika helped me network and get on my feet. Before that … my whole life was working for Renraku.”
Blitz leans forward, a glint in his eyes.
“Nothing Yakuza related.” Hide shoots him a look. “Despite the tattoo. It was all based in Germany. I was… an off-the-books employee, I guess. I wasn’t called that. And I worked exclusively for Renraku.”
“So what is it then?” he prods. “Why get the tattoo?”
“It was designed for me. An ongoing design, too. It’s uniquely mine, and I… earned, I guess, each section and its symbolism. It’s meant to be a sign, or reminder. Something to tie me to it. Like… some symbol of loyalty. Or ownership. Both, maybe.” His hand brushes across his shirt collar, tracing the lines on his skin under the fabric. “It draws too much attention, and if anyone does know what it is, or if someone’s looking for me, it wouldn’t be hard to make the connection.”
“Alright.” Eiger drums her fingers across her arm. “You said you still like the tattoo. Are you still loyal?”
“No,” he answers quickly. “No. Not to Renraku.”
“Not to Renraku,” Eiger repeats. She clearly hasn’t given up her game from the subway. She wants information, and she wants to see if Hide will give it. Blitz chimes in before she can get a word in edgewise.
"So you're a kon-man, then?" he asks, fiddling idly with the ridged edge of his cyberdeck. His voice starts to trail off. “The… tech-bro vibes…”
"I was, before." Hide nods. "Not really a dataslave, though. It ran a lot deeper than that. Happens when you work for Renraku. They bring a very different meaning to 'we're like a family here'." He gives a tight smile, the look in his eyes disturbingly dead despite the underlying sadness in his voice.
“So you did mercenary work for them then,” Eiger states, sure of her guess.
“It’s the only work I’ve ever really done.”
“What did they have you doing?” she asks, like they’re at some conference somewhere, asking the polite corporate questions over dinner. “Wetwork?”
“Some of that, yeah. Some social stuff. Checking in on assets, making sure things run according to plans. Implanting ideas, corporate espionage. Anything they needed me for. Nothing too different from Shadowrunning, besides being shackled to Renraku.”
“What happened?” Dietrich asks, folding his arms across his chest loosely.
“I started asking too many questions,” he answers. Dietrich barks a humorless laugh.
“That’s always the way it is with the corps.”
“I knew not to get caught, and I knew how to cover my tracks. I met Monika on a BBS, and eventually we met up and ran a few jobs together.” He spreads his hands out, as if to say there it is. His gaze returns to its rooted spot on the floor.
“I’ve known Hide for awhile,” Paul adds, waiting to make sure he wouldn’t be interrupting. “Though I didn’t know him as well as Monika did. It was… maybe five years ago? She introduced us. I know about what he told you— he was fleeing his job and he needed safe contacts to find work from. She was always very fond of you, Hide. I’m sure you know that.”
The man’s words pull a wistful smile from Hide, before he finally lets it all rest with a deep sigh. “I’d… rather not really get into anything else about it. I think that’s sufficient,” he says, looking up from the floor and to Eiger.
“If I had less tact I’d ask if that was really all there was to it.” Eiger leans up against the back of her chair. “No offense, but it doesn’t seem like all that big a deal, now that this is in the open. We live in the Shadows. Mercenary work for a Triple-A isn’t really a hard to come by story.”
Glory catches a twinge in Hide’s body language— tensing again, wondering was that not enough?
“But you’re right. I asked you to explain, and you did.”
"Well hey," Dietrich starts, standing up and crossing over to Hide, clapping a hand across the back of his shoulders. "Every Runner has a body or two in the basement."
"Even a few hundred?" Hide asks. The strangely neutral smile returns— too practiced and too blank to ever be sincere. An old standby from the corporate days, maybe.
"No one ever has to talk about it, but if they insist there's nothing to their past, they're either lying, or they don't have their eyes open to see what's led them here. I can know as little or as much as you, or anyone in here, wants me to know. As long as what you keep to yourself doesn’t hurt you or the team, it’s none of our business.”
Hide’s mouth pulls into a tight line. What’s meant to be encouraging almost comes across as an ultimatum. As long as what you keep to yourself doesn’t hurt you or the team.
“I don’t mean to break this up,” Paul says, rising and pushing in his chair. “But Hide needs to rest, and we need to collect any job payment remaining. You’ve all been going harder than normal, and I don’t think things are about to slow down. It’s best to get rest where we can, you especially, Hide.”
“Mmm,” Hide hums, hand brushing across the bandages on his side. He feigns a wince, convincing enough, but not enough to fool Glory. She’s been leaned against the wall, watching the exchange happen, all too familiar with Hide’s hesitancy. Monika had tried to coax some semblance of her past from her before. Many people had, who thought themselves brave for being able to talk to the razorgirl in ancient chrome. She’d given the same answers that barely qualified as answers. If she’d been in Hide’s place, she would’ve just refused. Threatened to leave, or insist on holding her ground. But between the sudden attention, mounting pressure, and grief of the past few days…
She treated that wound. She knows his pain tolerance, and she knows he’s on meds to numb the pain anyway. His wince is nothing more than a polite cue to signal them to leave him alone.
Eiger is the first to leave. She tells him to heal fast so he doesn’t make another mistake out there, and gives him a nod as she leaves— a silent thank you of respect that he returns.
Blitz idles awkwardly at the edge of the couch, first opening his mouth to ask something, then closing it. He eyes Dante warily, but the dog is too preoccupied with leaning all of his weight against Hide’s thighs, so he takes his chance at leaving before the dog spots him. Dietrich leaves with him, giving Hide one final pat on the back. They can all hear Blitz’ voice carry through the rafters until he reaches the door, asking about Monika and what she was like.
Paul shakes his head in disbelief, placing his palms down on the table. “I forget how new he is to this mess. You’re a valuable leader, Hide. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. Monika wouldn’t have done all of this otherwise. You need to know that.”
Glory suddenly feels like she’s overstayed. Like she should’ve left with the rest of the team, and she’s encroaching now, hearing things not meant for her. But Paul says nothing, and Hide just smiles at her before yawning, carefully nursing his side, so she stays.
“I know,” Hide answers. His voice is shockingly quiet now, worn down by the stress of the day. “Thank you, Paul.” He tries to stand, but Dante is still sat happily on his feet, thick tail sweeping across the floor.
“Don’t get up. Rest.”
“Paul’s right, Hide,” Glory says, breaking her silence. “You need it. Not just because of the wound. We all need to recoup, and you have a chance to now.”
“I’ve been up and going during a lot worse,” Hide says, brow furrowing as he pushes against the dog, who now has his head pressed against the couch cushion, pinning one of Hide’s hands back.
“I’m sure. Stay put,” Paul says, looking at him over the top of his glasses. “You’re already pushing yourself. If you really want to work, you can review the disks we got from Winters, but either stay on that couch, or stay in your bed. We’re not losing anyone else on this team.”
If Glory were superstitious, she’d warn Paul not to jinx it. But she says nothing, and instead carefully scoops the ancient DVDs off the floor, bringing them closer to Hide.
“Eiger will come around. The stress we’re all under...” Paul trails, talking to no one in particular. “I’ve got to go speak to Altuğ. Don’t hurt yourself while we’re out, alright?”
“I don’t think Dante would let me,” Hide jokes. On cue, Dante crawls up onto the couch, wedging himself between Hide and the back cushions, nestling his head down on his arms. Hide shifts to a more comfortable position, carefully taking the DVDs from Glory.
“Thank you. For sharing all that with us,” Glory says, lifting the cobbled together disk player from its spot on the shelf and passing it to him.
He looks at her, really looks, as he sets the player on his lap. They both look through each other, past each other, into an unspoken understanding and agreement.
I don’t know how, but you’re like me.
Glory can’t explain it, can’t blame magic (it couldn’t be her, and it’s definitely not him). But they both know. The subtle subconscious signs they don’t even notice anymore. Whatever hell Hide is unwilling to talk about must bear some similarity to her own. She’s confident in that.
(Her decision to share the briefest of explanations of her past with him sits much easier in her mind).
“He’s right,” she says finally, breaking the silence. “You’re a good leader. And you’re part of our team. Eiger will get there. And don’t push yourself too hard.”
“I’ll be okay,” he shrugs, sliding a disk into the machine. “The stab wound is just sort of painful and inconvenient.” She doesn’t miss what he leaves unspoken, in between the lines of what he really says. The real pain is missing Monika. The real pain is whatever lies behind me, haunting me.
I don’t know how, but you're like me.
She leaves him to the video, audio crackling out the speakers as she vanishes down the hall and out the door. She turns her eyes skyward as the door shuts behind her, watching grey clouds stretch across the sky, turning the conversations around and around in her mind. What had Dietrich said?
As long as what you keep to yourself doesn’t hurt you or the team, it’s none of our business.
The past few days have forced them all to be uncomfortably open, but it hasn’t hurt any of them yet.
Yet.
It never is a milk run, these kinds of things.