Summary: "Zarya, it is my understanding that you hold no fondness for Omnics. I find myself wondering, however, if you hold a particular grudge against me. Have I offended you in some way?" Zarya snorted. "You're not special, not even for an Omnic. I hate every other robot just as much as I hate you." "That's a lot of hate to carry around." "Don't fucking lecture me, bolthead."
Hey folks! Another Overwatch story. Does not mention my OC. My first one-shot! Enjoy and review.
My trigger/tagging/warning policy: I err on the side of caution. I tag and warn for things even if I don't think they'll be "triggering" per say, because 1) I might be wrong, and 2) some days you just don't need that kind of negativity in your life now matter how good the story is.
Rated for canon-typical violence and mild language.
Disclaimer: Blizzard owns Overwatch and all associated characters.
Warnings: explicit physical torture, explicit psychological torture, frightening flashbacks/waking nightmares, references to war, mentions of blood, attempted brainwashing, prejudice against a minority [Omnics as a symbol for racism/ableism?]
Here's what Overwatch knew:
A scatter of specialized EMP grenades took their strike team by surprise somewhere along the Japanese coast, on the way to Hanamura. Weapons malfunctioned, prosthetics shut down, their transport vehicle ground to a stop… It was chaos.
Zenyatta was holding a bridge with Genji, Hanzo and McCree when one of the blasted things landed in their midst; he used a pulse of discordant force to push the three of them over the bridge's edge and into the water below. It saved their lives. Half a second later, Zenyatta went down like a puppet with it's strings cut. Zarya, when the ambush hit, was far forward of the bridge, scouting ahead with Tracer. The explosion an EMP instigated in Zarya's plasma cannon originally took them both out, but Tracer blinked backwards in time and into safety. By the time the team was able to salvage a retreat, Talon had taken two prisoners and disappeared.
For two weeks, Overwatch searched desperately for a trail. Then Athena reported an Overwatch SOS beacon blaring GPS coordinates fifty miles out of Numbani. As the team prepared to smash their way into the hitherto-secret Talon lair to rescue their two kidnapped teammates, the older members were tense with worry, remembering the tragedy of Amelie's capture so many years ago. The younger ones were merely worried that Zenyatta and Zarya would be dead.
What none of them anticipated was arriving to find a base full of dead and incapacitated Talon agents and two extremely drunk heroes exchanging very bad puns in Russian and Hindi. [How does an Omnic even get drunk? Tracer had asked.]
Over course, as soon as they were each recovered, Zarya and Zenyatta were back to normal—back to ignoring each other. Zenyatta continued to take erratic breaks to wander the world and connect with humanity. Zarya continued to spend most of her time in target practice with Pharah, McCree and Hanzo. The two barely saw each other. Interested parties just shook their heads and thought it was a shame that not even two weeks of torture together could convince the two to get along.
That was what Overwatch knew.
Zarya woke in white room with burns all over her face and arms and half of her lovely pink coif—her one feminine vanity—burnt and blackened. Her armor was gone, leaving her chilly in her undershirt and pants. The climate conditioning was blowing hard cold air—that meant she was somewhere rather south. Only in warm climates did people overcool their buildings. Zarya was rather proud of that deduction, considering her head felt like she'd dropped half her bench press record on it. A moment later her satisfaction dropped right through the pit of her stomach as she realized her cell had another occupant.
The goddamn Omnic, the self-satisfied one that could talk instead of just whirring, greeted her with one of its usual banalities. It inquired about her health. She told it to fuck off.
Zarya ignored it for the first hour. She checked her wounds more thoroughly, picked at an oozing scab, searched the room for cameras and then used the self-explanatory drain in the lowered corner of the floor to relieve herself. She tested the walls and the heavy door, but she couldn't force her way out. She pulled the burnt bits out of her hair. She paced. She paced a lot.
"Is something troubling you?"
Just the fact that she'd been captured by Talon and trapped in a cell with a robot that could turn on her at any second. Maybe they'd planned for that. Maybe the sick bastards had a secret video feed and were waiting for her to let down her guard. "Don't talk to me unless you want me to come over there and start breaking your fingers off."
Zarya had stayed far away from the Omnic while pacing; now she settled down against the opposite wall and watched it suspiciously. It was not, surprisingly, hovering. It sat calmly on the floor, perfectly still. There was a device around its neck Zarya didn't recognize as part of its body. A restraining device of some sort? A hitherto hidden weapon?
"What's around your neck?"
"It is an electroneural dampener. It prevents me from exercising many of my defensive functions."
So no levitating. None of those unnatural pulses, none of that "discordant" mind-control business. Zarya had made it a priority to be familiar with the Omnic's abilities; this dampener, it seemed, reduced its combat effectiveness to zero. It wasn't as if those delicate metallic parts could take any kind of beating.
This fact was illustrated when their captors arrived. Four Talon mooks and one Talon suit. The mooks did the beating and and the suit did the questioning. Where was Overwatch's new HQ? What was the organization's agent roster? What were their weaknesses? The usual bullshit, Zarya supposed. She'd never been interrogated before, but it didn't seem too complicated to just keep repeating "Up yours, asshats" in Russian. She fought too, of course. They had guns, and a cattle prod, but Zarya landed the suit a good one in the nose. She heard it crunch. The robot didn't fight. Didn't talk either, except for a few sentences of nonsense about true unity or something in the beginning. After the Talon agents left, it sat back in its original position, but now there were small twitches and blips of light as the left over energy from the cattle prod worked its way through the machine's metal body.
There was no way to measure time. They were not fed; the lights did not change. Zarya was thirsty and hurting and growing more and more tired—but she could not possibly sleep with the Omnic in the room. To let her guard down like that? Suicide. She moved to sit directly underneath the overhead vent, hoping the cold air would keep her awake. Once she caught herself nodding off; the second time, she did not even notice until the Omnic's voice jerked her back to an alert state.
Realizing it was closer to her than when she had sat down, Zarya bolted to her feet and swept the robot into the wall, hard, pinning it there. "Don't you understand what 'leave me the fuck alone' means, you bucket of bolts? The only reason you're still alive is because I swore to Tracer I wouldn't kill you until you became a threat." Tracer's exact words, actually, had been 'unless he threatens you' but Zarya considered it a case of when rather than if.
The robot remained infuriatingly calm. "I merely wanted to alert you that I have harvested enough electricity from our interrogation earlier to use as power for a healing aura, if you wish."
Zarya rolled her eyes, releasing the Omnic and stalking back to her corner of the room. She told him where he could put his help and concentrated on picking at her burns. The pain kept her awake this time. Unfortunately, the robot did not take the hint to shut up.
"Zarya, it is my understanding that you hold no fondness for Omnics. I find myself wondering, however, if you hold a particular grudge against me. Have I offended you in some way?"
Zarya snorted. "You're not special, not even for an Omnic. I hate every other robot just as much as I hate you."
"That's a lot of hate to carry around."
"Don't fucking lecture me, bolthead."
The mooks and the suit returned at some indeterminate point later. Zarya figured it had to be many hours later, since the lack of sleep was starting to split her skull in half. The same questions, interspersed this time with offers and bribes. Zarya reacted accordingly: she aimed for a second blow at the suit, this time swinging for his crotch. A cattle prod to the chest stopped her short. Time started to slow down—Zarya was only vaguely aware that the bastards had left when she heard the goddamn Omnic asking her if she was alright.
"I'm fine!" she growled from faced down on the floor.
"You do not look fine. You are bleeding, and this is hardly a restful position." It's voice was quite close.
"I'm perfectly comfortable. Get away from me."
A few moments later, Zarya felt warmth. Not the uncomfortable warmth of her burns, but the warmth of sunlight on a rare summer day. It was soothing. She could almost smell new tree growth and the crinkle-sound of melting snow. Just like home…
"Whoa!" Zarya sat straight up, muscles screaming in protest. "What the fuck are you doing?" She already knew, however. The Omnic's healing aura bathed the white room in a ethereal yellow glow. The Omnic was, as usual for such a state, utterly unresponsive to Zarya's reproachful shouts. She decided to make the best of the situation: she swore steadily at the thing for several minutes in the worst language she could think of, emptying out all her frustration from the past few days. Then she settled down to take advantage of the healing aura.
Not even fifteen minutes passed—Zarya's burns had all scabbed over properly—before the the Talon mooks returned, making a beeline for the meditating robot. They ordered it to stop.
"It can't hear you," Zarya said preemptively. They ignored her.
The healing aura failed as soon as the mooks started in on the robot, battering it back and forth among the three of them before slamming it against the wall, letting it slump to the floor, and issuing a warning against future mischief-making. Zarya did not go over to help the Omnic after they left. She didn't speak. After a while it's lights blinked back to full brightness and it resumed its usual place and position on its side of the cell.
The mooks and the suit came back again and again. Zarya caved in to the urge to sleep at least twice, but she didn't wake up dead. She didn't wake up rested, either. Both Zarya and the robot had started showing serious signs of wear, she knew. With her it showed in unbidden groans, gnawing hunger, and a rainbow of bruises—with the robot in dents and creaks and an odd grinding noise when it moved too quickly.
"Zarya."
"What." It wasn't a real question, just like Zarya didn't have any real interest in answering yet again that she was fine. The robot threw her a curveball, however.
"You have threatened to terminate me on several occasions before."
Zarya perked up, alert. Was this finally it? Would it attack her now, out of desperation? "You got something to say about it, bot?"
It made no move toward her. "Do you think you could do it without any weapons, as you are now?"
"Of course." Zarya snorted. A few scratches and a hungry belly wouldn't stop her from turning the weakened Omnic into a handful of metal toothpicks. "Are you volunteering?"
"Not presently. I just…" It stopped. Zarya frowned at the very human hesitancy in its tone. "…worry."
"We've been over this, Omnic. I promised not to hurt you until you become a threat."
"Exactly."
Zarya sighed in frustration. "Whatever the fuck it is you're being cryptic about, just come out and say it."
It paused before answering. "Talon has a history of forcefully reprogramming unwilling subjects as new agents."
"Ja, I hear them talk about Widowmaker, and the other bastard. Reaper." The older Overwatch members went gray in the face every time the subject was mentioned. Suddenly Zarya's own thoughts took a dark turn: "You think their gonna try it with me? I won't break so easy."
The robot didn't answer her for several hours. Then it suddenly spoke as if no time had elapsed: "I wish for you to know something."
"I don't want to know anything."
"It is about your promise."
"Fine," Zarya said, rolling her eyes. "What?"
"As an Omnic, I may be more vulnerable to Talon's reprogramming than you are. In the case that they make a successful attempt to convert me into a weapon, you are relieved from your vow. You should feel no guilt in terminating me at such a time." Their was no hesitancy in its tone this time.
Zarya blinked several times, trying to parse the Omnic's motivations. It was giving her permission—no, asking her to kill it if Talon succeeded in turning it. It was a surprising display of loyalty to their cause, from a machine. Wait—What kind of mind game was this? Surely the thing didn't really mean it, surely it would defend itself. Zarya thought of all the interrogations they'd suffered and how the Omnic had not lifted a hand against their captors once. Of course, that could be because it was really a double agent, but… Christ, it was all too confusing for her aching brain.
"…I wouldn't feel guilty anyway, bot. Now shut up and stop being so depressing."
The mooks came for her the next day. They walked her out of the cell at gunpoint and she memorized everything she saw of the complex until they ushered her into another white room and strapped, locked and pinched her into a rather complicated looking medical bed. Zarya dared them to do their worst.
They did.
When they deposited her twitching form back into the cell she was still seeing hell, still feeling it. They'd tried to turn her inside out. She could still hear the taketa-taketa of Omnic guns and the screams of people being cut down in the streets. She could feel the rough grain of the inside of the closet where her uncle had hidden her from that taketa-taketa as a little girl.
The Omnic wisely did not come near her, but Zarya realized as she shook off the waking nightmare that it had talked to her softly, continued talking to her for god knew how long, until her breathing slowed and she could actually comprehend the meaning behind its soothing voice. It was talking about jokes, about how it was hard to translate Hindi jokes into English and English ones into Hindi. If it thought that was hard, Zarya thought, it should try doing it in Russian.
The next time they came for her, Zarya fought, tooth and nail, with a ferocity that walked the edge of panic. As they strapped her down again, she tried to clear her mind and think of something calming. Target practice with McCree soon morphed into the taketa-taketa of Omnic guns, however. There was blood. When she could no longer taste its iron tang, or feel the restraints against her body she tried to find the soothing voice amid the taketa-taketa. She lay quiet for a long while, listening to her heart beat and to the Omnic's treatise on global humor. She recognized a joke, and spoke up suddenly in Russian.
"Zarya?"
"That joke. In Russian it's funnier because of the pun with eggs," Zarya explained, without getting up or opening her eyes.
"I will take note of that," the Omnic said seriously.
Zarya had been thinking. "Oy, Omnic."
"Yes? Do you require assistance?"
"What you said, earlier, about reprogramming," Zarya began. She hesitated. "If those fuckers manage to turn me inside out… make that shit a null program, you understand?"
A pause. Zarya knew that the Omnic was considering her words carefully. "I do. I will do my best to make sure it does not become necessary."
A promise to kill her from a robot should have been anything but reassuring, but it was. After all, Zarya thought wryly, Omnics were killers. It was as if that one piece of her world had not yet turned upside down.
The next day—The next night? Who knew in this hell?—when they came for Zarya, she tried to pretend she wasn't trembling. She wouldn't fight. She would conserve her strength. She could not become a weapon for Talon. The mooks approached—
The Omnic stood in front of her.
It had moved so fast, Zarya only knew it from the unhealthy grinding noise its inner workings made as it moved. Both she and the mooks towered over it as it planted its feet feet between them. It was absurd, and yet Zarya saw in the robot's stance a trace of… well, in a human warrior she'd call it steel, ironically enough.
"Let her be. I will go with you."
"You'll get your turn later, toaster. Move aside."
This time Zarya heard the steel in his—its—his voice: "I assure you that you do not wish to cross me."
The mook rolled his eyes at his fellows, and shoved at the Omnic with the tip of his gun. The bot's reaction was instantaneous, surprising and swift enough that Zarya only caught flashes: a twist of both hands on the gun's barrel—it went flying—and a jab to the mook's stomach, shiny metal feet swiping human boots out from under their owner. Then the metallic grinding turned into a very loud, ringing crack, and the Omnic stumbled. Zarya recovered her senses and went diving for the gun. She almost had it—but then there was a boot on her back and a gun pressing the back of her head. Her heart fell.
They ended up taking the Omnic, and Zarya realized for the first time that she was alone without him. She paced in order to chase away the emotions swirling inside her. She did not stop, even though her knees and feet began to ache, until they brought back the Omnic. They had to practically drag him in; when they let go, he swayed dangerously and the grinding sound was back.
Zarya caught him.
Zarya caught him and realized with horror that if this Omnic died she would be sorry, and not only because his presence was keeping her alive and sane.
"My internal balance circuitry must be damaged. My apologies."
Zarya found her mouth had gone dry. "I got you." Balance circuitry… Why did he have to remind her that he was just a machine when she was holding his delicate frame as carefully as she would hold a child back home? He was warm to the touch, not cool like Zarya expected metal to be. What was she supposed to do?
"Do you want to hear another Russian joke?" she whispered.
His voice was less focused than usual. "I would… be delighted. To learn. More about your culture."
The Omnic regained all of his acuity, most of his balance and very little of his mobility. A critical piece of hardware in his spine had finally broken, he informed her. Zarya sat him in his usual spot and watched him for dizziness and pretended that she wasn't worried about him. She paced a lot. They had to get of there. Neither of them was going to last much longer. They had to make an escape while they still could.
It had to be when she was out of the cell. Somehow Zarya had to take down four mooks on the way to the reprogramming room, go back and fetch the Omnic, remove the dampener, and get them both out of the Talon base. When Zarya consulted the Omnic, he concurred with her assessment of the security. Together they made a plan, quickly and desperately—aware that either one of them would be taken away again soon. It was a reckless, chancy plan and they knew it.
"If it is meant to be," the Omnic told her calmly, "it will be." Then he did that thing with its lights that Zarya was beginning to associate with humor, and added: "Do not worry. We machines are very good at computing odds."
Zarya would have liked, for the sake of her pride, to say that she hadn't laughed. She would have been lying.
Things did not go according to plan, because the next time the mooks came they took the Omnic, not Zarya. It was not ideal, but Zarya held onto the hope than the bot would be okay and the mooks would come for her next, allowing them to start the plan.
Unfortunately, they never brought him back.
Zarya was still pacing when they returned empty-handed save for their guns. "Where's the bot?" she demanded.
All she got in reply was a shove; they hustled her down the corridor to the reprogramming room. Zarya's heart pounded as they strapped her into the bed. She'd have to change the plan. She could find the Omnic after—as long as she could first survive this. He had given her tips on resisting the nightmares. Hoping with all her heart it would work, Zarya closed her eyes and started humming the cossack lullaby. Softly, to herself. Not with a melancholy tone like her parents used to, not when losing them featured so prominently in the nightmares, but instead like Zarya herself had sang to a frightened little boy two winters ago, on a Siberian train full of refugees and soldiers speeding away from the Russian Omnium. The pain kicked in; the snow outside the train windows threatened to turn to turn pink with blood. Zarya remembered instead the pain in her biceps as she had worked for those last few kilograms up to 512, cameras flashing as she broke the world record; she remembered the burn of the tattoo on her shoulder to commemorate the occasion. She remembered feeling strong enough to take on the world. She remembered what it was like to use that strength to comfort and protect, bouncing a little boy on her shoulder to the tune of the cossacks riding—and gently, so gently supporting the failing body of an Omnic so strong it had never tried to kill her…
Zarya took great satisfaction in the shock on the Talon agent's face when, upon being unstrapped, she leapt up and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break his neck. The guards outside went down just as fast; she liberated each of their guns. Now… where was the Omnic?
Zarya blew through the base like a hurricane, mercilessly dispatching anyone who couldn't give her answers. Presently she hit the jackpot: a suit who begged for his life before leading her to a heavily secured door. "…but you can't go in there! It destroys everything around it. Something went wrong with the programming—" Zarya shut him up with the butt of a gun to his head and inspected the door. She wondered if Omnics dreamed, and if they did, what kind of experiences this one had to fuel his nightmares.
Zarya braced herself for some kind of maelstrom and opened the door. It was another white room, this one with the debris of what used to be a lot of computers and delicate equipment. The lights were out, shattered; the air vents had been sucked from their slots. In the center of the mess was the Omnic, standing rather shakily. The dampener was gone, probably exploded if the rest of the room was anything to go by, and smaller pieces of debris were swirling in orbit around his feet. He didn't look up at Zarya.
"I said I wished be to grieve alone, Genji," the Omnic said in a sharper tone than Zarya had ever heard him use. She grew wary.
"Hey there, bot," she said, as softly as she might coax at a feral wolf.
He shook his head, tone softening. "I came as soon as I heard. You cannot blame me for being halfway across the globe. I wish to take my place with the brotherhood in mourning."
He was too deep in the nightmare to recognize her, to even recognize she was there. Zarya crept closer, despite every one of her instincts screaming at her to run away now from the dangerous Omnic. "Hey, you gotta wake up. Can you hear me?"
The debris around the Omnic's feet picked up speed. "Why? Why do you insist on believing I abandoned you, my brothers?"
Zarya took another step forward. It was a mistake. The robot latched onto her presence, made her the focus of his address. His voice gained an imperious tone, his body language shifted and he suddenly seemed much bigger and scarier than a moment ago. "I loved him as much as you all did! How dare you keep me from this?"
Zarya's heat was beating so fast she thought she might pass out. She had no idea how to wake him up. The room seemed to have grown darker, and the darkness prickled at Zarya's skin. Bigger objects began to shift along the ground. "Zenyatta!" she shouted.
He flinched back as if she'd struck him. His shoulders slumped and he grew small again, although the worrying storm in the room didn't.
"But this is my home…" If Zarya had ever heard a human sound as heartbroken as this Omnic did just now, she must have suppressed the memory. It gave her goosebumps. The blackness was beginning to pick at the edges of Zarya's vision and the nonexistent wind beginning to pull the air out of her mouth. Zenyatta's tone rose to a wail. "It is not my fault Mondatta is dead!"
Zarya darted forward, grabbing the robot's hand and calling his name again. He pulled away from her, and she struggled to be gentle. Her skin itched like a thousand ants were marching to war on her. "Zenyatta!"
"I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be alone."
Zarya pulled the Omnic towards her and wrapped herself around him. "You're not alone. I got you. You're not alone. Please wake up," she said breathlessly. For a moment, chaos swirled around the both of them. Then it vanished. Everything was silent except for the grating of the poor bot's damaged spine. Zarya didn't move.
After a while, the Omnic spoke. "That is… not something I would have wanted anyone to see."
"See what?" Zarya murmured. "I didn't see anything. I definitely did not see Aleksandra Zaryanova hugging an Omnic."
The Omnic in question straightened up, only swaying slightly. "I did not see that either."
They cleaned out the rest of the base, locking the living Talon agents in cells. They found the control hub and set off an SOS beacon that would get Overwatch there in a few hours. Then, because Zarya was near faint with hunger and pain and the bot wasn't much better, mechanically speaking, they hunted down the mess hall. Zarya found a frankly improbable stash of alcohol that included some good strong vodka; she proceeded to get drunk as fast as she could in between self-administering first aid and stuffing herself with frozen mini-pizzas. The Omnic's brand of first aid included pulling the wiring out of the stove and siphoning the base's electricity to supplement his slightly damaged power core. It was not a perfectly compatible power source, he confided, and the trick was one that tended to make an Omnic temporarily very irrational. Zarya, to whom the Omnic's increasing light-headedness was incredibly amusing, told him not to be a buzzkill and proposed a rousing Russian drinking game to celebrate their victory over the forces of evil.
Here's what Overwatch didn't know:
During those two weeks, Zenyatta and Zarya had both danced on the edge of giving up. They had witnessed each other at their best and their worst. Impossibilties had occurred: Zarya had befriended an Omnic, and Zenyatta had shown he could lose control like anyone else. They had exhausted two entire languages worth of drunken humor. Zarya had killed more agents than had actually put up a fight while taking the base; Zenyatta had not stopped her.
After returning home, they returned to their familiar roles. Zenyatta continue to take erratic breaks to wander the world and connect with humanity. Zarya continued to spend most of her time in target practice with Pharah, McCree and Hanzo. The two barely saw each other. Interested parties just shook their heads and thought it was a shame that not even two weeks of torture together could convince the two to get along.
But there were changes that nobody noticed until so long after that it was hardly worth bringing up. Zenyatta no longer took care to stay far out of Zarya's reach; he could brush close by her with no uneasiness from either party. He no longer left the room when Zarya entered. Zarya stopped joining in on Junkrat and Roadhog's loud, crude anti-Omnic jibes. She gave Genji a nod when they passed each other. In combat, the two survivors could work together as a team.
And there were other things Overwatch didn't know about: the dainty music box that played the Cossack's Lullaby which Zenyatta brought back from his travels and left in Zarya's room, the cheap but effective groin shot Zarya gave Junkrat when he teased Zenyatta about his relative delicacy compared to the other team members, the long midnight talk they had after a mission at a Tekartha Temple in which all but a few people on the Overwatch team were very confused by the cold reception Zenyatta received.
It was not the kind of knowledge that needed to be shared.
Notes: Oh my god this fic just came out of nowhere. Zenyatta is my husand and Zarya is my lesbian lust goddess and I was very upset that they obviously would not have an easy time chilling together in Overwatch. I wrote this with a platonic headcanon in mind but since I'm aromantic all my headcanons are platonic and I can understand how the dearth of fics in this fandom might make shipping hard to resist, so ship if you must.
Also I wrote this in eight hours and it in now 7am. This is b/c I have PTSD and writing was better than sleeping. Unbetaed. Please review!
Dedicated to Hyourin MaruIce.