AGENT SOLARIS // VALORANT x Male Reader

Chapter 7 // One Step at a Time

I

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THE WARMTH of a breath drawn shallow and the high of adrenaline washed over you. And suddenly, when you opened your eyes, you were young again.

A hand. Your own — young, yet steady. Revolver heavy in the grip. Leather wrapped rough against the palm.

Another hand beside it — older, scarred — settling over a second weapon.

You glance up.

That faint nod in return. Calm and Certain. The one who taught you how to stand like this, how to breathe when the weight came down. How to pull the trigger when it mattered.

Across the floor was a man, bloody and broken, sprawled in his own ruin. Blood dark against tile floor. The scent of steel thick in the air.

Fingers tighten on the grip. The lesson learned.

Two barrels rise in unison.

Two shots break the stillness — sharp, final.

And then—

The sky.

A breath stolen sharp from your throat as the tremor rolls beneath your feet. The glass shudders in the frames.

Light — impossibly bright — bleeding through every seam. Rivers of violet, pink, white. Cutting across the sky like veins beneath thin skin.

The First Light.

You turn — heart hammering — seeking the one who stood with you.

But he is not there.

Only a shimmer of purple light in the air where he'd been. A ripple folding inward, fading to nothing.

Alone now — with the sky aflame above. With something new burning beneath your ribs. A steady, almost guiding pulse you do not yet understand.

You stand frozen, staring upward at the sky once more in awe, and wonder...

Where did he go?

II

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You woke with a sharp breath — chest tight, ribs aching. Light beat against your eyelids — too bright, too cold, followed by a buzz somewhere in the room.

That dream again. No... not just a dream. You knew the shape of memory when it bit this deep. Dexter. The room. The blood. The First Light. He was gone before you could ask how. Gone before you could even think to call out to him.

The alarm buzzed louder, slicing through the fog. Artificial light flooded into the room. Or maybe it was real? You couldn't tell with this place. It was too loud, too bright, too everything. Or maybe you were just too used to the opposite.

You groaned, rolling onto one shoulder, eyes half-lidded against the sterile white glare. A lazy slap of the palm found the control panel at the bed's edge, silencing the shrill tone in favor of something worse: The clinical chill of a room that wasn't home.

This wasn't the shack in the desert — no sun-bleached walls, no cracked floorboards under bare feet, no low rumble of sand stirring against old steel. Just this: Valorant HQ. Quarters assigned, not chosen. Polished metal walls that caught no warmth, a broad bed with crisp corners that hadn't yet earned the shape of restless sleep, and across one side of the room, a row of six battered crates stacked like relics of another life.