The Language Barrier

"I'm not going to say I told you so, but…I told you so."

Jack looked at Reyes. "What did you tell me?"

Reyes looked back at him. "That we should have gone in at the start?"

"You never told me that."

"I'm pretty sure-"

"No, you didn't," Jack said. "You might have implied that I should have ignored the PM and sent in Overwatch from the start, but you never outright said it."

Reyes opened his mouth, but said nothing. At least not immediately. Instead, it turned into a smile. "You're right," he said. "Silly me."

Jack forced a smile of his own. Once, decades ago, he wouldn't have to force a smile in the presence of Gabriel Reyes. In the days when they'd fought together on the battlefield, smiles were few and far between, but they had been genuine. Now, smiles were common, but forced. He told himself that it was part of being the commander of Overwatch, that the chains of command had driven the wedge between them.

Half of the time, his inner voice didn't tell him that was a lie.

Nonetheless, they were here, standing in the streets of King's Row. Omnic bodies littered the streets, all of them being taken away for disposal by the British Army. No smiles came their way, Jack noticed. An Overwatch team had done in a few hours what the Army had been unable to do in a few weeks – shut down Null Sector, rescue the hostages the terrorist group had taken, and prevented a second Omnic Crisis. He suspected that half of the men and women before him resented Overwatch for doing their job for them. And that the other half resented Overwatch for not having intervened sooner.

"So, your meeting with the PM," Reyes began. "How'd it go?"

"Rescheduled it."

"As in, you rescheduled it, or he did?"

"He did," Jack said. "Which is just as well. I have a meeting with the prime minister of Japan tomorrow as well."

Reyes frowned. "Mitzumbi still got a stick up his arse? I told him-"

"I know what you told him, and God help me Gabriel, I'll tell him the same thing, if a bit diplomatically." Jack met Reyes's gaze squarely. "You haven't given reason for me to lie, have you?"

"No," said Reyes firmly. "You know Blackwatch does what has to be done. That doesn't mean we go beyond the boundaries to do it."

Was that a contradiction, Jack wondered? His inner voice told him yes. His heart told him to move on and keep walking down the street.

King's Row was a warzone. There was no other word for it. If this kind of thing had happened two decades ago, it wouldn't have been out of place in the first Omnic Crisis at all. All that had changed was the colour of his hair, the hardness of his skin, and the technology available to human soldiers. The omnics Null Sector had employed had used the same weapons and the same tactics, both of which had proven devastating against a regular army. But-

"Huh."

Jack looked at Reyes, who'd stopped in front of a wall. Something was sprayed on it – No Human.

"Look at that," Reyes continued. "They communicate in English now."

Jack laughed – a genuine laugh. It had been ages since he'd done that. Enough for Reyes to look at him.

"What's that about?"

"Oh, that," he said. "Just didn't think Null Sector would use English. Most omnics use omnicode anyway."

"Right." Reyes's amused look had now turned into a scowl. "Well, we know how that went don't we?" He spat on the ground. "Omnica Corporation programs its bots with a language no human can read. Just made our job that much harder." He kicked a pebble. "Theory of human conflict, isn't it? The idea that conflict arises between peoples because they can't understand each other."

"That's a bit simple of a theory isn't it?"

"Well, the omnic problem is a simple one," Reyes said. "Omnics aren't human, they don't write in a human language, and we're still playing the politically correct game of assuming that'll change."

"Gabriel…"

"Don't 'Gabe' me Jack," Reyes snapped. He drew out a pistol and began twirling it like that cowboy McCree. "If we'd clamped down harder on the omnics after the war, this wouldn't have happened. Instead we get nonsense like Turing Green and those monk weirdos who think that God or Buddha or whatever has a place for them in the afterlife." He gestured towards one of the Null Sector omnics. "Think any of these maniacs are going to Heaven, Jack? You think any of the people they killed are going to welcome them?"

Jack remained silent. He didn't like omnics. Never had, never would. But he'd never strayed from the belief that he had to at least give the omnics of the world the benefit of the doubt. That if groups like the Shambali or cities like Numbani were to succeed, he had to give them a chance to succeed or fail on their own terms. Reyes…wasn't so generous. That was the best way he could put it. Not the most accurate way, but the best. For his own sense of ease at least.

"Anyway," Reyes continued. "The idea of mathematics being the universal language? It's bull. Only universal language is violence, and-"

"You done?" Jack asked.

Reyes stopped short. He opened his mouth, and Jack noticed that he was gripping his pistol tighter. But only for a moment, before he holstered it. "Yeah," he said. "I'm done."

"Right," Jack said. "Because you don't need to go on a lecture about omnics to me."

"Or anyone, right?" Reyes sneered. "Well, of course. You get to have your meeting with the PM, drinking tea and eating crumpets, and tell him that this would never have happened if the Brits had treated their androids better, because that's what every bleeding heart wants you to say. Meanwhile, I'll be doing the hard stuff that allows those hearts to keep bleeding rather than bleeding out."

"Blackwatch is under suspension," Jack murmured.

"I know," Reyes said. And walked off. Jack watched him go. Walking past soldiers, and giving a Bastion unit a good kick on the way.

"Commander?"

He wanted to go after him. To say…something. Anything. That Reyes was still his friend, that he understood him, that he knew the allegations against Blackwatch were false. Because they just had to be.

"Sir?"

But he couldn't. Cadet Oxton had walked up to him. Covered in dust and sweat, but thankfully no blood. Fighting robots was cleaner than fighting humans after all.

"You alright?"

He forced a smile. "Fine," he said. "Absolutely fine."

A lie. And he could tell that she knew it.

But what were lies, if not a universal language of their own?

A/N

An idea I've encountered a few times is that conflict between humans can be traced to the existence of different languages - people don't understand each other, and therefore resort to violence. I don't think that idea really holds much weight - certainly not in modern history, and even in ancient human history, you'd have reasons for violence nonetheless (resources, religion, etc.) But with Overwatch lore stating that omnicode can't be read by any human (not sure why), it did generate this little ditty as a result.