Widowmaker
They're trapped in the ruins of their failure. The bomb had gone off too soon, their plans revealed, betrayed by someone in their inner circle. Gabriel's mask is cracked in half, a shatter of bone fragment still swinging loosely from one ear while the other lies at his feet. With their arms tied to a frigid pipe, rushing with cold water, they sat back to back and struggled to breathe.
"If our subterfuge specialist could get us out of here," Gabriel says, his voice as always unnervingly smooth, "That would be greeeat."
"Aren't you ex-Blackwatch?" Sombra snaps, the cut on her forehead stinging with sweat. She squirms, her feet scrabbling on gravel as she tries to reach a nearby broken shard of cement with her toes. Just out of reach. "Don't they train you to break out of handcuffs? And why aren't you going ghost, huh? Poof us out of here already, idiot!"
"You won't be breaking out of these."
Sombra and Gabriel both glance up with matching expressions of distrust. Lena Oxton, otherwise known as Tracer, stares down at them with nothing but hard fury in her eyes.
Amélie stands just behind her, watching this all unfold. Sombra hardly recognizes her with the programming wiped away, her skin white as bone. The only thing that remains the same are her eyes, genetically modified to be sharper than a hawk's, and just as golden.
Help! Sombra wants to shout, she tries to shout. But she doesn't dare; not after how she'd failed her partner. Not after learning the truth. The files on the Widowmaker project had been enough to make her gag, but she'd turned a blind eye, hadn't she? She'd ignored it because to act would compromise her position within Talon.
She'd been a fool to think her little gestures, the talks they'd had, meant anything. That Amélie understood, or even cared, about her vague promises and urges to be patient. That soon she'd have enough power to break her free from her own mind. Amélie had blinked and nodded like she understood, but that had just been a side effect of her programming, too. Just a little doll who did whatever she was told.
She might as well have been talking to a wall, these past few years. She realizes it now that Amélie's eyes are free, shimmering with emotion though she schools her face into neutrality.
"You'll stay right there until backup arrives," Tracer continues, twisting a dial on her watch. Sombra scans it immediately, recognizing it as repurposed slipstream tech. The same anchors that keep Tracer locked in one form are being used against Gabriel, she realizes in a flash.
Gentler, Tracer lowers her voice when she turns to Amélie. Setting a palm on her back, she guides the other woman away. "Come on, love. Let's get you out of here. You don't need to see this."
"Where am I going?" Amélie asks, softly.
"Somewhere safe." Another hand joins the first, to squeeze Amélie's arm reassuringly. "It's all over now. I promise."
Just as she's about to be lead away, Amélie digs her heels in. Twisting, she turns and hugs Tracer tight, making the smaller woman go completely still.
Tracer makes a confused noise, but after a whispered conversation, she allows Amélie back to the prisoners. Sombra and Gabriel both glare up at her, and Sombra is sure he's thinking the same thing: Had Amélie been the traitor? Did she trade in her freedom for theirs?
"I just want to say goodbye," Amélie says. "Thank you, Sombra."
For what? Sombra doesn't have the faintest idea. She never actually broke Amélie free. Clearly Overwatch has beaten her to the punch, though they probably were a lot more nauseatingly heroic about it.
Still, she forces herself to smile for Amélie, knowing it must seem ragged and feral. "It's been real, babe."
She tries to think of something else to say.
Then Amélie leans down and kisses her, and Sombra can't think of anything at all.
It's deep, more intense than it has any right to be given her predicament. But it's a spot of pleasure and hope in a dark situation; she takes it, as she hopes Amélie had taken from her during those years together as comrades.
Her tongue slides inside Sombra's mouth, and in shock, Sombra finally understands.
Then Amélie leaves, following Tracer outside.
"Well," Gabriel says. "I didn't know it was like that."
"Ih hih nint eever."
His head twitches to the side. "I'm sorry?"
Mumbling, Sombra turns to the side and puckers her lips to display a small metal key, clenched tight between her teeth. "Ih didhe idh hiehi ntemnt," she says again, or tries to. Bending over, she unlocks Gabriel's handcuffs and he does the same for her, allowing her enough freedom to get her systems running, to call for an evac.
"I didn't either," Sombra says at last, rubbing her wrists and staring off in the direction Amélie had left.
.
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Ana
The butcher bird was calling, and Sombra had every intention of answering the call. Shrike was one of her more valued customers. Always on time, always with cash to burn, always hungry for knowledge, and always unerringly polite. In her profession, Sombra was more likely to be greeted with bullets than anything else. So she desperately valued Shrike, and her occasional offer of tea if they were meeting in Shrike's hotel room.
Good customers were hard to find.
"Hey, preciosa," she said, walking circles around the mercenary. They stood in an alleyway outside a crowded bazaar, watching the flood of people and heat and color and movement. Shrike stood, as always, some distance away from the action. Always detached, even in the heat of battle.
The babble of people and animals hid her voice and footsteps well enough, but Sombra also threw her cloaking tech on. With Shrike's helmet on, no one could see her lips move, and so no one knew this conversation was taking place.
"Did you miss me?"
"More than I could bear," Shrike said, dry and smoky as a bonfire. "Did you get me the information I requested, kit?"
Sombra slid it into Shrike's pocket before resting a hand on the other woman's hip. Just to let her know where she was standing. And also just to touch her. "Wire me the money to the usual account. Then you can go murder whatever poor bastard you're hunting."
Since Shrike never revealed her appearance, Sombra could only guess as to what her expression was. But she swore she heard a smile. "I try not to kill, these days."
"Could've fooled me." Then, without pause, "Do you want to go grab a drink?"
Sombra had to hand it to Shrike, nothing seemed to phase her. She responded smoothly, as calm as ever. "I don't drink."
"Then... do you want to grab a..." She struggled for the words. "Food? Sometime? It'd be my treat."
Shrike didn't respond. The blue lights of her mask flickered, and she turned her head incrementally to the side. Though they couldn't see each other, Sombra felt distinctly judged.
"Should I ask you when you're not on the hunt?" Sombra pressed.
Shrike laughed under her breath.
"I'm not kidding. I'm curious." There wasn't much to see under Shrike's baggy clothing, but Sombra had been pressed up tight against her enough times to know there was a firm body underneath. And hands, calloused, strong enough to bruise. "Aren't you?"
"You can do better than an old bird like me." She hummed. "I'm not very pretty under the mask."
Sombra did her best to project offense, since she had no body language to rely on just then. "So you think I'm that shallow?" Because she enjoyed contradicting herself, she added, "I know you sound hot. That's all that matters in the dark."
The other woman shifted uncomfortably. "Arrogant." She mumbled. Then she rolled her shoulders, hooking her thumbs under the latches of her mask and pulling it free. "You won't like what you see, child."
Excited, Sombra stepped closer only to get a hand tight around her wrist. That Shrike knew exactly where to grab despite Sombra being invisible was impressive enough, but then she followed it up by interfering with her cloak. Pixelated images crackled down around her, and then Shrike was dragging her further into the shadows.
She pressed Sombra to the alley wall, thin lips definitely curved in a smile. Shrike was sun-scorched, her face leathery from scars and age. A knot of ruined scar tissue bubbled over one eye, the other sharp as a knife, peeling Sombra apart.
There was a tattoo under that eye. Curiously, Sombra trailed a thumb nail over it. It struck a chord in her, almost nostalgic. Like something she'd loved as a child; superheroes, figures larger than life. A relic of a more innocent time, when the answers weren't always so complicated.
"Ooh," Sombra said. She ran her hands up Shrike's arms, feeling rock hard muscle underneath the fabric. "What's not to like?"
That pleased her. Shrike smiled wider, then leaned down to give Sombra a kiss on the forehead.
"You're my daughter's age," she said, upon pulling away.
"Interesting," Sombra said, like she didn't know, like she wasn't running a dozen calculations at once. She recognized the other woman on sight, of course, but she knew better than to use a name that had been discarded. She hated it when people did that to her; she wouldn't pass the feeling on. "Is she anything like you? Is she single?"
Shrike rolled her only eye, then pressed the mask back to her face. "Until next time, kit."
"Happy hunting," Sombra said with a little wave, vanishing from sight again as they went their separate ways.
.
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Mercy (nsfw-ish)
When she's sick she visits Angela. Usually, she's homesick.
Coiled up with her under the blankets, she presses her chest to Angela's bare back. Her skin, so white and pure, is marked all over with proof of Sombra's presence. Sombra operated like that in everything she did; only arriving in the night, only leaving footprints. Never staying.
She licks up the length of one claw mark, left from when this had all started. She couldn't get her gloves off in time before Angela had her pinned down, fucking her senseless, making her forget everything except searing pain and blind pleasure.
When she looks at Angela, she sees a shadow of herself. A refraction, the way light cast on a crystal can split away in two separate directions.
Sometimes she wonders if they would have been friends. If they met before this.
But no. As a child, Angela was the kind of girl Sombra would have taken pleasure in being cruel to. Pulled on her pigtails like a little boy, because she didn't know how else to vent the frustration of seeing something she wanted.
As a teenager, they would have already been too different. Sombra down in the dark, Angela rising to the top.
"I bet you had pigtails as a girl," she mumbles into Angela's ear. Her voice sounds husky to her own ears, rough from screams and moans that the bare walls failed to soak up. She kisses Angela's neck, making her shake softly with a laugh.
"You say the oddest things."
Turning around to face her, Angela pulls her closer. Sombra rests her face against Angela's breasts, sighing in bliss. "It makes sense if you take a peek into my brain."
"A terrifying concept. I'll pass."
It could have been like this all the time if you were different, says the darkness to her.
It can be like this all the time if I stay, she counters, tilting her head back to kiss Angela firmly.
Angela gasps against her mouth, hips eagerly canting forward as Sombra slips her hand down between her legs.
