Work Text:
It’s a photo of a dinner table, decorated with lavish plates of ingredients – mushrooms, tofu skin rolls, chrysanthemum leaves, fatty beef, and more that Sage can identify even through the printed blurs of color. In the center of the table rests a pot, split into two: half near-translucent from the bone broth, and the other half a vibrant red warning the hungry group of the sheer amount of spice it held. Sage shuts her eyes, and is hit by the smell of everything cooking in the boiling soup: spices and aromatics and, somewhere in there, the feeling of family, of lost connections, of nostalgia.
She is Wei Lingying again, a child itching to return to her rightful time.
The photo, in her head, is loud. There’s chatter surrounding the table, interrupted by guffaws and the occasional smoker’s cough. Look left, look right, and she’s greeted with different gossip about the extended family she never sees, the family friends she’ll eventually forget. Mandarin floats through her ears and flows out of her mouth like it is second nature, as her mother piles food into her already-full plate. She shakes her head – no, I’m full already, please serve yourself first – and looks back down at her food, knowing that her request will be well-ignored.
“Sage.” Iso’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “Here.”
Her reverie, interrupted. Sage snaps her head upwards, blinking as her vision lands on Iso. He holds a tissue out for her, neatly held in his palm; his expression holds not concern, as Sage would expect from any other member of the Protocol, but understanding.
She takes the tissue and manages a smile. Her tears are quickly wiped away. “Thank you.”
“There’s no need. It reminds me of home, too.” Iso burrows his hands into his pockets, attention returning back to the dinner table. “It doesn’t matter where we go with the others, right? I feel like it can never be the same – nothing will ever triumph over running a butane stove in an enclosed space, with people you cherish the most.”
Sage laughs, but the comment pushes her to take a step back and pause. It’s part of her job to look at people and ensure that they are feeling comfortable in this new environment, but part of her job involves struggle. How to invite individuals to let down the walls they’ve grown so used to building; how to encourage the agents to trust in each other again; how to tell them that no matter how old or young they are, that they still have the capacity to live – these are the situations that Sage is accustomed to.
There is no struggle with Iso. He is an open book, nostalgia and homesickness written in bold ink on his face. His shoulders droop at the photo, grief of his lost childhood pushing down on him. He bows his head as if he is in prayer, praying for the feeling of family to return again. No matter how hard she tries, or how hard the Protocol tries, or how hard anyone in the world tries, he cannot be satisfied with a found family now.
Sage lets out a quiet breath – it feels like she is looking at a mirror, right at her younger self.
“You’re correct,” she eventually comments. “It doesn’t matter where you go or how you decide to go about replicating your memories from home. It will never live up to what you grew up with, because you look at your past and recall what you felt: what it meant for you to be a child again, surrounded by love, and protection, and security. You’re feeling the warmth that your family gave you, shown through every action and sacrifice they’ve made.”
Iso can only nod, his wistful stare gently glazed over with a softness. Soft bags decorate his face, a faded smile finding its way onto his lips.
Sage glances back at the photo, the colors glowing through the paper. “Before I was at the Protocol, I joined a monastery. And once, I thought the same way – I liked the monastery, but celebrations with them never felt the same as celebrations at home. They were grander, too: louder, more people, more food. Some part of me wondered why I could never feel the same joy as I once did.”
“Then what changed for you?” His voice is soft, yet unyielding; he almost pleas for an answer. “How did you move even further away, and still be… satisfied with where you are? How do you not think about home?”
“Well, I do think about home. I think about it sometimes. The thoughts appear, and then I fall into the trap that my very brain sets for me. Those days are more difficult than others.” She swallows the bile in the back of her throat. “Eventually, with enough time, you realize that yes, new celebrations will never be the same as old ones. But because they are not the same, then there is no triumphing. Once I realized that, I looked at the monastery with a newer light. Here, we are living a new experience, Iso, that challenges us to view it as its own – separate from what our memories hold.”
Iso is frozen in place, his feet glued to the carpet of his own room. Sage is starting to feel the struggle creeping back into her role, as she tries to pull for anything that she can understand. He only stands, face wrought with enough questions and thoughts and emotions that Sage is certain he cannot figure out himself.
“What you’ll realize – or perhaps, you already are – is that we are in a unique world. Valorant communicates with each other solely through a common tongue, and bridges cultures together through our universal mission. Everyone, then, ends up absorbing bits and pieces from everyone else, whether they realize it or not.” Sage’s eyes start to wander around the room: the metal chamber that they’ve all decorated to remind them of home. “In melting pots like these, I’ve realized, it’s important to keep culture going. You share what is significant to you, and everyone else will do the exact same. It’s why we plan hot pot outings; it’s why I listen to songs that remind me of Xi’an and home.”
She pauses briefly to think; she puts together pieces of words that she struggles to say together. “But it’s also important to maintain a slight separation between keeping culture going and memories of home. Once they start blurring, you are celebrating your culture by mourning your past.”
“Mourning your past,” Iso echoes. “How long before you stop?”
“I can’t say. Weeks, months, years. Soon, you’ll look at Valorant as a second family. Not to replace the one you have at home, but to compliment it instead. When that happens…”
Iso nods, firm resolve slipping into his words. “I’ll know.”
“You will. I know it.”
They fall into a comfortable silence, gazing back at the photo that had brought them here in the first place. Sage shuts her eyes again: she sees them now. Jett is fishing through the pot for the piece of lamb she lost in the broth, holding a ladle in each hand and splashing soup throughout the table. Phoenix chugs water – even though Sage had said it wouldn’t help as much as the bowl of rice there – after he makes a bet with Yoru to eat an entire spoonful of the chilies. Omen sheepishly asks her if the piece of fish he is holding is cooked yet, and Sage teaches him that generally, translucency in fish isn’t what you’re looking for.
Iso clears his throat after some moments, jolting Sage out of her reverie once more. The longing is still there, visible in his slumped shoulders, but there are newer thoughts of potential scattered within his mind. “Thank you, Sage.”
“Thank you, actually. Your photos are incredibly powerful.”
“You think so?” He breaks out into a wide grin, full of mirth. “I mean, I have too many photos for this wall anyway. I’d love for you to take some, then – otherwise, they’ll just be sitting in their cardboard boxes.”
Thus, Sage leaves his room with a photo in her hand.
It’s a photo of a bridge in Iso’s hometown – Chongqing – with its red arm stretching across the river. The city lights glow with vibrant oranges and cyans, drowning out the stars with its own unique beauty and warmth. Glimmers of gold and red envelop Sage in a soft embrace as she runs a finger across the glossy photo, almost feeling the city air waft into her senses while doing so. She hovers over a boat captured in the moment, one that continues to live in her memories, drawing solely from the power of nostalgia. Somewhere in the distance, she hears it – the sounds of cars whirring by in a choir of hums. Somewhere in the distance, childhood laughter that’s been lost to time.
She realizes the sounds aren’t as clear as she once remembered, that they’ve been washed with the faintest layer of static. She smiles anyway. She fills the static with the sounds she wants to hear in the scene she remembers: the voices of her second family, of Valorant.