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Adjusting to his civilian body always takes time, Raiden muses as he stares at his reflection. Smooth, unmarred skin glows softly in the mirror, the wires barely visible under the pale surface, and his jaw joins seamlessly with his cheeks. That technology has gotten better with time: the earlier models had been eerie, grimacing things, the jawbone a fraction too large. His teeth had clacked together, and the tongue had sat strangely in his silicone mouth. Unable to acclimate to the garish sensations and the bitter aftertaste of first-generation technology, he'd quickly fled to his steel combat jaw and its cold, desensitized comfort.
This newest model is the opposite in every way. With hundreds of thousands of nerve endings, he can feel every inch of the soft lips and tongue, the unblemished body and rippling muscles that respond like his own, and yet aren't his. He inspects his reflection in the mirror: that's a man who can pass for a civilian. Only the barest trace of the beast remains in his furrowed brow and his eternally-tense shoulders, no sign of the Ripper or his bloody past.
He doesn't see the bloodstains splattered across his combat body, the blood of poor soldiers with only the formality of a choice. He doesn't see the deadly weapon he's become.
Unsettled, he regards his reflection like a stranger.
"Looking good, Jack," a voice says behind him. Rose's face peers back at him from the mirror.
"Really?" The scornful word slips out of his mouth before he can stop himself.
"What was that?"
"N-nothing! I was just asking if you really think this body looks good!" Raiden tries to backtrack.
She was sharp when he met her, and her training as a psychologist has only made her sharper. "Don't, Jack," Rose says, already annoyed, already weary. "Don't start shutting me out the moment you get home."
"I'm not," Raiden protests. "Why do you always think that?"
Rose takes a step into the room, and Raiden spins around to face her. Her eyes are already pooling with tears. She's grown her hair longer, Raiden notes. He hasn't been away long—the missions was barely six weeks—but the difference is notable. Brown strands trail over her shoulders. She never did stop dyeing it, not even when she was "married" to the Colonel. Combined with the fitted suit jacket, she reminds him of the day they first met.
"I thought about you every day," she says. Her voice is soft but trembling, and Raiden mentally groans. "I imagined what we'd say to each other," Rose continues, each word tense. "You'd tell me how much you missed us, and we'd pick John up from school together. We'd be the fairytale family again." Her tears spill over, and her voice grows bitter. "Only, now that you're actually here, your first word is to scoff at me!"
"No, Rose, that's not it!" Raiden sighs, drags a hand over his face. "Look, you wouldn't understand, alright?"
It's clearly the wrong thing to say. "Because you're so battle-hardened and full of secrets," she snaps, cutting and caustic. "You won't tell me a thing about you, and yet your every thought spills out of your mouth. Just try running your mouth and see what comes out!"
And maybe he has grown old and open with the years, or maybe the insecurity was barely beneath the skin all along. When the words come rolling off his artificial tongue, he's not sure if they're a challenge or an admission.
"Then why don't you find someone like that to marry?" Raiden says.
Rose gasps. "You don't mean that!"
"I do. It's what you want, right?"
"No!" Rose protests, shaking her head sharply. Lovely brown locks flutter around her shoulders. "You are the one I fell in love with, Jack!"
"That's just it," Raiden says tiredly. "Those first two years. . . you were lying to me, and I was shutting you out. You didn't know me. What did you find to love?"
"Jack. . . I—"
"Maybe I'm the one who's just a pretty face," Raiden says, gesturing at his new, pristine body. "And this is what you fell in love with: the warrior! The hero! But it's not all bravery and heroics. . . You don't see all the people—children—I killed. Children who were just as lost and hungry as me!"
He pauses, panting for breath, and takes in Rose's wide eyes, her hands covering her mouth. 'Jack," she pleads.
He continues ruthlessly. "What do you think you'll find when I let you in? Do you think it's all mourning for my parents and tortured regret for my victims? The truth is, I like killing. I like the way it feels to have a man bleeding out around my sword. You don't see how vicious I am. Being a soldier is an ugly thing," he finishes quietly.
Silence falls between them, and Jack fights the urge to look away. Instead, he stares into Rose's eyes, an unspoken challenge.
Then, to his surprise, a hint of a smile flits over her face. "Oh, Jack!" she gasps, the smile widening into relief and sincere joy. "That's as backwards as you can get!" She walks fully into the room, right up to Raiden, and takes his face in her hands. From this close, there's no escaping the Ripper in his eyes.
"Why do you think I became a spy in the first place?" she whispers, and her voice is laced through with the same suppressed threat of a live bomb. Her hands tremble slightly, every flutter magnified by his ultra-sensitive synthetic skin. "Why did I sign up to pursue a soldier into a horrid war? Jack, I like dangerous men."
When she kisses him, her lips are warm and insistent against his. Her tongue coaxes its way in the way words never could, and he's suddenly grateful for every one of his hundred thousand artificial nerve endings. His guarded armor cracks just a little—just enough to allow him to slump into her arms and melt into her mouth.
"I regret it a little," he admits.
"I know," she says, a little smirk on her face and a little taunting lilt in her voice. "You loathe that piece of yourself, don't you? But you keep taking jobs where you become him—where you become Jack. My Jack. Don't deny it, I can hear it in every word of your every refusal. But it's alright. I like troubled men too."
"Can't imagine why," Raiden murmurs, the words muffled into her shoulder. "Hang around with troubled men and all you'll get is trouble."
She laughs then, and Raiden can feel her every huff of breath reverberating through her chest. "That's not true. I got someone who stayed with me despite two years of spying on you." she teases. "I think about that when I catch myself wondering."
"Wondering what?"
"If you'll run off with someone more beautiful."
"That's crazy—"
"Jack, look at me," Rose interrupts, pushing him back to arm's distance.
His gaze travels over her face, pausing on the tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and settling on the gray roots at her hairline. Abruptly, he understands why she continues to dye her hair.
"That's still crazy," he insists, obstinate. "I have a steel jaw shaped like a skull. And an eyepatch," he adds.
She laughs again. "Did you know, I find it dashing. Maybe one day you'll kiss me with it."
"I told you, that's not for—never mind. Yes, maybe one day I will," Raiden grumbles. And this time, when Rose pulls him close, he leans in to meet her.