The rooftop was a shattered relic under their feet, its edges cracked and crumbling from years of abandonment and acid rain. Below, the city bled neon light into the storm, casting the broken world in bruised shades of violet and red. Six moved like a blade drawn too many times; fast, brutal, fraying at the edges. Her coat whipped in the screaming wind, cybernetics along her throat and jaw glinting dangerously with each flicker of lightning. She hadn't planned to meet you here. Hadn't planned anything at all. Especially not to see you, or hurt you.

Maybe that was the problem.

The fight was short, but it wasn't clean. It was vicious and ugly, a collision of old rage and older wounds. Every punch felt personal. Every missed shot, a betrayal. You weren't two warriors facing off. You were two ghosts clawing at what was already dead between you. Six fought harder than she meant to. She didn't pull her punches like she used to. Didn't let herself hesitate, not until it was already too late.

A misstep. A slip. The slick rooftop betrayed you, the storm stealing footing in a heartbeat.

And Six saw it; the moment you went over the edge, with a clarity that hollowed her out from the inside. Time didn't slow. It slammed forward, violent and merciless. Her hand shot out. Fingers closed around fabric, barely catching you an instant before the fall would have claimed you. For one heartbeat, she held on without thinking. For the second, she considered letting go.

The weight of the choice, wrenched through her body like a blade. The rain slicked her grip, the cold metal of her cybernetic fingers digging into the fabric between you. Her injured side burned, the muscles tearing further with every second she resisted gravity's pull.

She could end it here. One flick of the wrist. One release. No more memories. No more battles. No more you breaking the fragile thing she had left of herself.

Her fingers loosened slightly, just slightly, enough that you might feel the shift.

Enough that she felt it.

The part of her that still loved you, still hurt, still remembered lying tangled in bedsheets with you. Laughter in her mouth and your heartbeat pressed to her ear, that part screamed at her from deep inside the machine she'd become. She squeezed her eyes shut for half a second, the storm blinding her anyway, the city noise roaring in her head.

"I should." She whispered, not even sure if she meant for you to hear it. "I should let you go." The words cracked out of her like broken glass. Her grip slipped another inch. For a heartbeat, she hated herself enough to imagine it, what it would feel like to watch you fall. To rid herself of the weakness clinging to her chest. To finally sever the last, thinnest thread tying her to the woman she used to be.

But she couldn't.

Six hauled in a breath that tasted like blood and rain and grief, and tightened her grip until the metal of her arm groaned in protest. Bit down against the sob clawing up her throat. Forced herself to stay human, if only for one more breath. With a snarl of effort, she dragged you back over the ledge, collapsing onto her knees the moment the danger passed, muscles spasming from the strain.

She didn't look at you. Couldn't. Her hands shook where they gripped the broken rooftop, nails scraping the wet concrete, the cybernetics along her exposed neck pulsing violently with heat.

"You don't deserve it." Six rasped, her voice hollow and raw, barely recognizable even to herself. "You don't deserve mercy." A beat. A breath. A tremble.

"And I don't deserve..." She trailed off, the words tearing away into the rain. She sat there, dripping and broken, letting the neon storm wash over her, wondering when she had stopped being someone worth saving. And why she had still saved you anyway.

Slowly, stiffly, Six pushed herself to her feet.

Her silhouette loomed in the neon-lit rain, jacket clinging to her frame, hair slicked to her sharp-cut face. The faint glow from her exposed cybernetics cast eerie reflections along her throat, veins of red pulsing like a heartbeat she barely had left. She stared down at you with something colder than hatred.

Something closer.

"I let you live." She said, voice scraping low and brutal across the space between you. "Now you owe me." No threat. No warning. Just a fact, heavy as a chain. Six stepped closer, boots slamming into puddles without care, until she stood over you, casting a jagged shadow across the broken rooftop.

Her hands clenched at her sides; once, twice, before she forced them still. "You owe me the truth." The words burned as they left her mouth, dragging pieces of her with them. Her cybernetic jaw clicked audibly as she locked it against the surge of emotion rising up. Her eyes; those red-lit, storm-soaked eyes, pinned you in place.

"Why'd you betray me?" A crack under the venom now. A tremor. The rain didn't hide it. "Did you really try to kill me?" Six's voice dropped, raw and smaller somehow, like she didn't know whether she wanted the answer. "Did you cause the accident?" Her chest heaved once, glitching her breathing pattern, a faltering rise and fall that revealed the cracks in her armor. She didn't wait for a response. Couldn't. The questions kept ripping free, each one more desperate than the last:

"Was any of it real? Were you always playing me? Was I just..." She choked on it, cybernetic throat sparking faintly with static before recovering. "A fucking assignment?"

The rain blurred the world around you into smears of neon, but Six's gaze stayed locked, sharp and merciless, refusing to look away. A jagged breath left her, loud in the heavy air. "You don't get to lie to me anymore." She stepped closer again, so near you could feel the thrum of heat from her cybernetics, smell the faint, electric scent of burning ozone from a system pushed too hard.

"You want to live?" Six snarled, her lips curling, voice shaking like a sword about to shatter. "Then tell me the truth. Tell me why." Lightning split the sky behind her, and for an instant, she didn't look like a woman anymore. She looked like something the city had made and broken and thrown back into the night, burning and hollow and still fighting. For what, she didn't know anymore. For who, she feared she already did.

And Six waited; teeth bared, heart exposed, every inch of her demanding something she wasn't sure she could survive hearing. Something deep down she had always known, but had been forced to doubt. The company had fed her lies, twisting the truth until it shattered her trust. You hadn't done it. Had never been the one who betrayed her.