Natural Selection (Elijah Kamski x Reader)

The Eternal Return

You'd tell yourself to stop listening for it. That it wasn't there, even if it had been there so many times before. But you heard the audible signatures of its presence, and they denied you the sweet slip of sleep, rendering you incapable of going under your body's natural anesthesia before healing all wounds. Well, not all wounds. If tears in your soul healed as quickly as scabs overnight, you'd be able to sleep more often. You would've stopped listening for everything at all times - but you knew better. You knew it wasn't there, and you listened for it anyway, because it'd been there so many times before:

Danger.

There was a time that, at the onset of nightfall, when darkness blanketed the room, your pulse outpaced your thoughts. It was so loud and thumping that you heard your hair move on your pillow every time your heart pushed blood through your body. It was the offshoot of living a life where you paid for people's insecurities and shortcomings, with your sanity as currency. There was a time that, when silence fell, metaphorical bullets were pushed in a chamber, the gun of your brain firing shots with horrific memories in each trail. Yes – alone with your thoughts, in the dark, you'd wondered not what the next day would hold, but which bullet would fire behind your eyes.

Shadows stretched on the ceiling as a low light emitted from a stray LED, painting a figure hovering over you. It captured a familiar picture with a familiar feeling of losing control. Your nightly occurrence was having your senses hijacked by past traumas – no matter how much time you spent in preparation during the day. There were curtains on your windows to hide from the outside gaze. There was a lock on your door to keep everyone out. You stared at it sometimes, wondering if it would hold strong against the same past threats that kept you awake. There was a gun in your nightstand in case it didn't. There was a knife under your pillow in case the gun jammed. You'd ask yourself, "Would I be able to kill him, this time?" You thought so.

You'd start shivering, and pull up an extra blanket, but the chill ran deep, it was untouchable. You looked for anything to cling to, any spot of brightness in the dark, but there was never anything save for harsh truth.

Danger is in your DNA, passed down and put into practice by the man who contributed to your circumstance. Danger kept you sharp, a honed edge ran across the grinding stone too many times to count. Danger made you strong, having forced you to accept its forcing upon you. Danger was always close to your heart, even if it was far away from everything else. And danger is what gave life to the bumps in the night.

It would hurt worse the second time around, because it would've hurt less if you hadn't learned to love again.

You'd found yourself buried underneath the rubble and fought like hell to move slabs of concrete, bent rebar, and threaded cords. You'd been bruised and beaten, but you were alive. You were treatable. You were salvageable. You'd learned this about yourself. There was no greater feeling than overcoming what was thought to be insurmountable. Anthony had helped you through it, but you'd been the one to put in the legwork. You were strong, even when you felt like you weren't. Your mind was fortified and the endless love you had to give was held under high security, only administered when specific prerequisites were met. It was safer that way, even if safe could be boring.

You could do things you wanted, when you wanted, with no obligation or terror of coming home to an enraged spouse. You could tell jokes again, and you could socialize in peace. Your new identity gave you so much more than what you'd expected. It wasn't just a cover to keep a deranged CyberLife at bay, but it was your fresh start. Your new beginning. It was everything.

You were alive, living and breathing, happy and warm, and life was kind. It'd dulled down so much so, that at that point, you'd been complaining about walking the beat in Detroit for years. Petty crimes, protests, no real action. So when Captain Fowler gave you orders to respond to a hostage situation, you couldn't resist.