A/N: Originally posted on AO3. I forgot how much of a hassle it is to publish anything on this site.

Lena Oxton had always been known to have a heart bigger than her own body. She was passionate towards everything she did, from her dream of aeronautics to her duties as an Overwatch hero. She wore her heart on her sleeves and kept a bright smile throughout the toughest of times.

The crash changed her.

Intangible. Unseen. Unheard. Never truly living. She wondered if she'd died, and sometimes wished that she actually did.

Coming back to the present, concrete and whole, was odd. It felt as if her body wasn't her own anymore, a container both too tight and too wide for her. It didn't feel like coming home, and she briefly wondered if she would never feel like herself any longer.

The chronal accelerator was her tether to the physical world, but it just wasn't enough.

Perhaps the gods took pity on her. That's what Lena liked to think, anyhow. It had to be some greater power, perhaps a being of science or something paranormal, that gave her the opportunity to not just have control over her own timeline through the accelerator, but also a duty that more vital than her job in Overwatch.

It was just one red string at first. She'd paid it no mind, thinking that someone at the Overwatch headquarters must have just been doing an experiment she couldn't even begin to comprehend. She'd learned not to let her curiosity win through at times, so she kept her distance.

For two days, the thread seemed to be everywhere she went. Frustrated, she picked it up.

Touching that thread opened the floodgates to something Lena had never even imagined before. She knew about the myth prominent in east Asia about a red string that bound people fated for each other, but she'd never thought they would be real. She never thought she'd be able to see them, touch them, feel them.

A researcher found her later, with tears spilling from her eyes. Doctor Ziegler spoke to her in gentle tones, asking about what she was feeling, but Lena couldn't give her a comprehensible answer. How could you explain that you felt it all? How could you explain feeling raw, unbridled emotion? It felt like anything she could come up with wouldn't be up to par, so she allowed the tears to fall onto Angela's lab coat and buried her face in the offered shoulder, the red string still held within her fingertips.

She traced it back the next day to a janitor that worked for Overwatch. He was an young man that Lena had never paid much attention to aside from the occassional hello, but that day she found herself asking about his wife. He told her of a love lost, and how cruel fate and foolish mistakes seperated him from those he cared about the most. Lena tugged at a knot on the string and unraveled it, and told the man to speak to his erstwhile lover again.

He returned the following day bearing great news, and the smile that Lena wore then was the brightest she had since the accident.

More strings showed themselves every so often. Some had more knots than others. Some didn't seem to have someone at one end. She did what she could to help, and when she divulged the information to Angela and Winston after a while, they both told her that she was given that gift because that was who she was: a hero.

Lena took a swig of her pint and watched Fareeha carefully. The bar around them was buzzing with excitement, and she could faintly see red strings forming and shriveling with every action made by its patrons. It was one of the things she found to be satisfying: fate was still held within your own hands. Your actions still decided where you would go, and people like Lena were just there to nudge things along.

Just like with the string she played with on her fingertips now.

"She'll say no."

Lena untangled another knot and gave Fareeha a look. "You've been together for how many years now? And you've known each other for how long?" She placed a hand on Fareeha's, stopping the shaking fingers from playing with the ring. "There's no two people more fated for each other than you."

She thought back to an earlier conversation with Angela. An earlier, and very similar conversation. The many knots of uncertainty she'd had to untangle there seemed to have found their competition in the other end of the string.

"That's the thing," Fareeha exclaims with a sigh. "She's known me since I was a kid. What if she sees me as immature, still the bratty kid my mum dragged around the headquarters?"

Another knot untangled. "She won't. You just have to ask her." Lena paused, and decided to go for a different approach. "Would you rather run now and regret it later, or ask her and regret it later?"

Fareeha's head dropped on the table, nearly spilling her own drink. After a beat, she finally answered, "Ask her."

Lena bit back a grin as she inspected the string, clear and free of obstructions. A hand was placed on Fareeha's shoulder. "You won't regret it."

The wedding was beautiful, and it was a very much welcomed break from the tense environment created by the numerous Talon attacks they'd encountered in the past few weeks. Even Captain Amari, who'd originally wanted to tear Angela limb from limb after returning and finding her with her daughter, had a smile during the proceedings.

Lena sighed into her dark. Why was it that the matchmaker had to go home alone?

She was a block away from her hotel when she heard it. A quick whirr of her chronal accelerator and she'd managed to catapault herself to the fire escape of a nearby building to peak into an alleyway. Four people, each holding a weapon, cornered a lone omnic. She wouldn't have it.

"Oi!" she called out, just as one of them readied to swing her bat at their terrified target. "Four to one just doesn't seem fair." She jumped down and in one sweep, disarmed one of the assailants. These weren't the trained fighters they fought with these days. These were just bigoted bullies, and Lena pitied them more than she disliked them.

The burliest one - their leader, she presumed - whipped out a gun, small but something that could still do some damage. "You better leave now, missy. Or else."

"I don't think so, mate," she fired back, and the moment he pulled the trigger, she recalled and took down the two others before blinking towards their leader and socking him in the nose. Satisfied, she turned to the omnic with a smile. "You alright?"

Before the omnic could reply, someone appeared at the mouth of the alley, screaming at the top of her lungs as she charged towards Lena. She barely managed to dodge the steel rod that the redhead had somehow managed to grab hold of.

"Leave Yvan alone!" she spat out, heavy accent coating her every word. Her arm reared back for another swing, but the omnic placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Emily. She saved me."

"Oh. Bugger. I really-" Emily turned to look at Lena without the haze of rage clouding her vision, and she froze. Realization dawned on her and the steel rod fell to the ground with a resounding clang. "You're Tracer."

Lena offered a lopsided smile. "That's me."

Emily mirrored with a smile of her own, and her next words fell in a revered whisper, "Thank you." A quick glance at her friend to make sure that he was alright, and Emily continued, "They saw me and Yvan, and just started harrassing us: him for being an omnic, and me for even associating with him. Their whole gang came at us, and we got seperated. Once I lost the ones following me, I looked for Yvan."

Yvan stepped up and gave Lena a nod. "Truly, thank you."

The redhead offered Lena a smile she could only define as charming. "How about we make it up to you? Tea?"

Despite herself, Lena found her cheeks heating up as she agreed.

Nearly three months of constant communication found Lena in Emily's apartment. Discovering in their shared flight back to London that their apartments were only a few blocks from each other, they made a promise to hang out together once Lena had her next free time in between missions. It had been all that Lena could think about in the past few months, and she found herself being called out by a teasing newlywed couple during their mission.

So she had a little crush on the fiery redheaded Scottish journalist. What was the big deal?

The big deal, Lena soon learned, was the red string she nearly tripped on on her way back from the bathroom. The sight of it froze her to the spot and deafened her to Emily's calls from the living room.

For the first time since discovering her ability, she dreaded the sight of that red thread.

Her mind flew to the possibilities of who was on the other end of Emily's thread. Yvan, her coworker and cameraman? Olive, Emily's breathtaking model of a neighbour? Some other lucky stranger?

She didn't want to find out. She never wanted to find out.

She carefully stepped over the string and determined that she wouldn't look at it for the rest of her visit.

A knot formed.

It had been two months since Lena had seen Emily last, and just shy of a year since they'd first met.

She was all Lena could think about.

"Just ask her out, Lena" Angela suggested over lunch, and her wife nodded next to her. "I know she already has a thread, but didn't you say before that they could change depending on people's actions?"

Lena nodded, but averted her eyes from the couple's gaze. It wasn't that she hadn't thought about it before. She'd even entertained the idea of snipping the connection, something she'd done only once before, and that was to free two people from a relationship so toxic. But she couldn't do that. She wouldn't do that to Emily. She deserved better.

She deserved to be happy.

"Or maybe, you're the person on the other side of the thread." The glint in Angela's eyes suggested that this was an expert opinion, and Lena wanted to roll her eyes. Her pinky was as bare as the day she was born. No red strings.

A hand was clasped over her own. "At least try to find out. Would you rather run now and regret it later, or find out and regret it later?"

Despite herself, Lena's lips quirked in a smile. "Find out," she relented. "I owe her that."

Fareeha grinned. "You won't regret it."

Later that week, when Lena finally returned to London, she headed straight for an address she knew by heart. Emily was still at the office, but she'd given Lena a key, one that she'd only first used then.

The door opened to reveal the dark apartment, and Lena resisted the urge to announce, "I'm home."

Instead, she turned on the lights and sat on the sofa, eyes set on the knot-filled thread that sat primly on the floor. She'd made up her mind on the flight over. She would do all she could to make Emily happy, even if it wasn't with her. She'd unravel the knots and trace it to the person Emily was fated to be with, and Lena would nudge them along, just as she'd done before. She could do it, she would do it. She'd see Emily smile.

She got to work.

Fear halted her hand centimeters from the crimson thread, but she steeled herself and took it within her hold. She kept the emotions within herself, treasured them, embraced them. They were warm, safe. They felt like a cup of tea held between your fingers in the middle of winter. They felt like holding hands in front of a sunset. They felt like a roaring flame, brilliant and bold, and powerful against the darkness that threatened to prevail.

They felt like coming home.

"Lena?"

She hadn't even heard the door open. When her eyes found Emily, through tear-stained eyes, she couldn't help the smile that broke through. "Emily," she breathed out, and the redhead was by her side in an instant, a comforting hand on Lena's back.

The red string looped around Lena's fingertips as she tugged at Emily's scarf and pulled her close. She tasted of tea and the wintry air, and the mint chapstick that Lena got her for her birthday. It was everything she'd imagined it would be and more, because Emily was kissing back and Lena could feel her smile against her lips.

They broke apart, and Lena swore that she'd never seen a smile that wide, that beautiful, on Emily's face.

"Finally," she said, and took Lena's hand in her own.

And oh, Lena breathed out, the red string tied in a delicate loop around Emily's finger trailed around them, encompassing them in the moonlight that filtered in through the window, and found itself ending in a similar loop around Lena's pinky. A single knot remained, and with shaky fingers, Lena unraveled it.

She looked at Emily - and by gods she'd never looked more beautiful than in that moment - and pressed a kiss on her knuckled, lingering on the finger holding a thread visible only to Lena. "I'm home."

Emily blushing as she bit back a smile was something Lena filed as one of her favourite things to see. She swore to herself that she'd bring about that look more often.

"Welcome home."