Chapter 14: Stargazing

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An entire day.

"You're so loud," Isabell complained. "How do you even manage that?"

"Why can't we just blow them up?" Jamison whined. "They'd even be cooked!"

"No," Isabell sighed. It was like taking care of a five-year-old. "They wouldn't. Now do you want food or not?"

An entire day. Nobody had come for Isabell. The sun was setting, and she was trying to snare some of the rabbits bounding about everywhere. But Jamie was being a pest and kept trying to use his explosives - even though he was still reconstructing his leg.

I--

Isabell sucked in a breath, and Jamie glanced at her. "Got the chills, mate?"

I-- I-I-I

Isabell banged a fist against the side of her goggles, where the auditory speakers where. The strange noise that sounded oddly voicelike cut out, and Isabell returned her gaze to the snares she'd set up haphazardly. "No. But if you don't be quiet, I'll leave your body out for what should have been your food to nibble on."

"Jeez, touchy much, mate?"

"Let's just sleep," Isabell snapped, frustrated. "We can check the snares in the morning."

Her stomach growled loudly in protest, and Jamison laughed. "Can't fool me. No Aussie goes a few hours without a meal."

"Alright, so I'm hungry," Isabell grumbled, walking back to the tiny clearing where the cinders of last night's fire were smoldering. Isabell had thought she would already be home by now, so she hadn't bothered to keep it burning.

It took her a moment to realize that she'd just called Overwatch Headquarters her home. "Why do you care?"

"I don't," Jamison told her, sitting in the crooked roots of a pine tree and clicking together his leg, piece by piece. He looked nearly done. "But I love pissing you off."

Isabell sighed and started feeding the fire with whatever bits and pieces of tinder she could find and slowly got a good blaze going. She'd never really done it before but it was pretty self-explanatory. She held her fingers over the fire as the temperature rapidly dropped, the sun having just dipped below the horizon. Isabell hadn't expected for it to be so warm during the day while the ground froze over during the night - but she was glad that it was.

After a few minutes of silence, Isabell tried again. "I need to set your leg."

"No," Junkrat said matter-of-factly. "You'll screw it all up."

"It'll heal like that and you'll have a screwed-up leg for the rest of your life. At least let me see if--"

"I said no."

Isabell growled. "You don't seriously expect me to--"

"How did a Junker," Jamison looked up at her, "turn out like this? How did someone, I wonder, who lost her entire family, end up actually caring whether anyone else lives?"

Isabell tried to speak, but Junkrat interrupted. "'Cause the rest of us sure don't. So what went wrong with you?"

"I," Isabell fumed, "decided to actually do something with my life, rather than let everyone else tell me what I was. I wanted to define myself and so I did. You're just a broken promise."

She snarled and sat down on the opposite end of the clearing to him, curling into the trees. "If you don't want my help, then fine. Lose your other leg, I don't care."

Isabell buried her head in her arms, trying to conserve warmth as the chill of the night crept into her bones. Snow slowly started to fall, and Isabell couldn't stop her teeth from chattering. This sort of cold, this didn't happen. This was unreal. Isabell had known that the world could get pretty damn cold, but she felt like she was in Russia in winter. But it was the middle of summer, she'd have to be in Antarcti--

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