Ashes to Ashes.

It’s late at night and the starlight glints across the rusted scrap and metal husks decorating the Junkyard that a silent lone figure overlooks from its perch, at this time of the night there is no movement save the scampering of vermin among the junk.

Ash fists her hands inside her long coats pockets, a heaved sigh leaving her as she stands quiet in the silent night - she’s been out here ruminating on things for a awhile now, but it’s the only place that’s quiet enough for the cacophony in her mind - always thinking always strategising, but she has to if she wants to keep all her boys safe.

and currently, one of her boys is lying on one of sanctuary’s hospital cots, undergoing surgery to stabilise him after their mad rush out from under the hounds of Izymiska - and to remove his chip, requested by him before he went under and Ash knows why and knows what it means.

today she will lose one of her shadows, one of her sons - but he will live, that’s the important thing.

Ash already knows she and her boys have done all they can for their brother in arms, it’s up to him now to build a life from under her - heh - shadow, she snorts mildly at the pun but if she doesn’t find the humour she might cry. Ari has already promised she would take him in if - when - he pulls through the surgery.

he won’t be a shadow anymore, or at least not one of hers - but in his way he will always be one of her boys, her sons, as all her shadows are.

Ash shifts looking down into the darkened shadows of the scrap piles below before pulling her hand from her pocket and unfurling to reveal the item drawn from her jacket.

a pass - specifically handed to her by the Praque officials to give her and her boys an ease of access time to any restricted areas when they’d been hired on as their black ops special assignments crew.

staring at it now, she knows it was never worth it - the money was good sure and it kept her and her boys sorted but it hadn’t been worth what Oberon had lost that day - and Ash will never forgive herself that she had not been able to stop it just as she wishes Oberon would have told her, she could have planned an out earlier, could have made it so they’d all gotten out! but-

but it’s too late for maybes and could have beens,

Ash sighs before crushing the defunct pass in her grip and throwing it to the scrap, no point even holding onto it now that they’d cast enough doubt as to be labelled potentially unrecoverable rogue assets, it wouldn’t work anymore, still, they’ll head back in to Izymiska perhaps, help was always being hired whether, though blacklisted by Praque would make it more difficult, there was no shortage of other odd jobs - and they couldn’t prove definitively That it had been them entirely.

fuck but what a shitshow,

Ash watches the crumpled item fall to the ground and finds she doesn’t miss it - hmph, she’d got tired of the way their assigned handler and his pals looked down their nose at the ‘hired help’ never mind any one of them could have seen him dead in seconds flat (and well, they sure had now, though Praque would struggle to prove it)

maybe sanctuary would hire them out from time to time, maybe it was about time they all went truly freelance for hire.

Ash watched the horizon and the low light starting to breach the dark skies, hmm, time would tell - first though, her boy had to pull through, she had to see him set up, check on her other boys and then,

then she could plan where they went from here.