The ground beneath Ashe's feet was dark and covered in a thin layer of water. She walked without knowing toward what, only that the walking felt necessary, that even without reason, stopping was not an option at all. There was fog ahead too, dense and cold, sitting close to the surface of the water and extending upward as she walked.
Slowly, the fog began to thin, revealing what looked like an oval shape of sorts, taller than herself, simply hovering just above the surface. Strange vines were attached to it, stretching outward and disappearing into the darkness and the fog. Its surface looked strangely organic, layered in a way she couldn't fully describe, even pulsating faintly in certain areas, as if it were alive.
She took a step toward it. As she focused on its surface, writings began to form across it, taking shapes she couldn't read, as if she lacked the vocabulary to turn them into words. They spread quickly, not just across the object, but all around her.
She turned, trying to escape them, and in doing so her breathing quickened until it eventually turned into panic.
"Ashe…," someone whispered just beside her ear.
And then she suddenly woke up.
—
She opened her eyes to the ceiling of Connor's apartment without making a sound. The transition was abrupt, so for a few seconds she simply lay still, letting her body confirm that the ground beneath her was something she recognized and that the darkness was gone.
She drew a slow breath and let it out. Her first thoughts drifted to Seven right away. The strange writing in her dream had to be a remnant of their interactions, she had no other explanation for it.
She then turned her head, taking in the space around her.
Connor was sitting on the floor near the large window with his back against the wall and one knee drawn up. On the small table beside him sat a cup, a strange construction of metal and glass fused together, a detail Ashe noted in passing. His attention was on the window, on whatever the view offered at that hour. Ashe couldn't say what it was, but she paid less attention to that than to the way he was looking at it, somewhat lost, unguarded.
"I'm willing to bet that's not coffee," she eventually said, breaking the silence.
He looked at her. His green eyes adjusted from wherever they had been to where she was, and for a moment they carried the same look she remembered from that facility, underneath the rain, like when reading something at a deeper level than words could ever reach.
"No," he said.
She pushed herself up onto one elbow.
"Coffee…" Connor repeated after a moment, as if holding onto the first thought that felt like reason. "Doesn't it strike you as strange? You know what it is, you could even describe it, and yet you have no memory tied to experiencing it."
It took her a moment to follow the turn his thoughts had taken, but she couldn't blame him for questioning something like that. She looked down at the inside of her wrist, at the small mark embedded in her skin that illustrated the figure of a dragonfly. She traced it lightly with the pad of her thumb.
"I'm willing to bet missing coffee memories isn't the strangest thing about this place," she said.
"Nope," Connor agreed. "Wait till you hear about the mecha bunnies."
Ashe looked at him for a moment, unsure what to make of that, then something in her gave way and she laughed in a way that surprised even herself. Connor smiled too, and for a few seconds the atmosphere in that room seemed to change, as if brightening just a little. Then it settled, as these things do, back into what it was before.
"I never asked your name," Ashe said, as if searching for something to properly anchor him in her mind.
"Connor."
"Ashe, I think…," she replied. "At least that's what was written on the pod I came out of, so I assumed." She looked at the ceiling for a moment. "Which raises its own questions, actually. If whoever built those things took the time to write names into them, you'd think they might have left something more useful alongside it. A message. An explanation. Anything, really."
Connor scoffed a little bit. "I'd bet on incompetence."
But then, after a pause, something in his expression changed again, as if his thoughts had returned to something heavier than sarcasm.
"Not everyone got a name. The pod I came out of had been destroyed long before I woke up. Vegetation had grown through most of the place, and by the time I emerged from it, there was no trace of anything that might resemble a written name."
A brief pause followed, during which it seemed as though Connor considered whether to walk a certain path or not.
"My brother gave me my name."
"You have a brother."
"I do." And then, as if reconsidering his own words, he added, "I did."
The reply immediately carried weight for both of them. Ashe didn't say anything, mostly because there was nothing useful to say, and Connor didn't appear to want anything said anyway. He turned his attention back to the window and to the view beyond it as if closing himself off from anything human that might follow.
The silence afterwards was uncomfortable, so after a while he decided to break it, still looking at the window.
"I can't take you to Threnos. There's too much here that I need to do and a journey like that would cost me time I don't have." He stopped for a while as if looking for the best choice of words. "But I'll show you the maps and I'll tell you what I know about the route, even if it's not complete."
Ashe looked at him across the room. She studied his profile against the low light from the window, trying to determine how much of what he was offering came from a genuine intention and how much came from wanting her to remain quiet and not become a problem. She couldn't say, but she wasn't sure it mattered anyway. If those maps were real, then that was far more important.
"Okay," she said.
He nodded slightly, not looking at her, then lifted the cup and drank from it.
The rest of the night passed without incident. At some point, Connor moved to the other side of the room and put together something that looked like an improvised bed, similar to hers.
On her side of the room, Ashe lay on her back, looking at the ceiling. Her thoughts drifted back to the shape from the dream earlier, the oval thing, its organic surface, the vines disappearing into the dark ground. She stayed with it until her body made the decision for her and pulled her under.