So, y'all are gonna hate me but here's another thing. This is an Overwatch fic, not the RWBY fic I'm working on. It's primarily set in WWII, with flashbacks to WWI, but a form of paranormal style universe. Right now, the ship choice is Tracer/Mercy, because I am a crack shipping bastard, or Tracer/Widowmaker. There will be a poll up shortly after I post this on the subject. Without further ado, here goes!
It was mid-1918, the French countryside just outside Amiens. The forces of the German and British Empires were a scant hundred yards from one another, trenchwork that hadn't been moved so long as she could remember. The sun was rising in the sky ahead of her, to the east, over the German position. To her right lay her partner for this little mission, her chin peeking out underneath her helm, her frame of hair.
"You can almost see the end from here, don't you think?" The figure questions, and for a few moments, Tracer doesn't realize she wanted an answer. She stumbles in her speech, her though, feeling a sense of loss at those words, as if it was too soon yet not soon enough. The woman merely nods her head in affirmative, and a light smile reaches the lips of her partner.
"You know, we finally have some time to ourselves. I'm surprised you're not being as clingy or overprotective as when we're in our trenches. At least there's medics close by there if we get here, out here though, out here we're kaput. Alone." The woman says, and Tracer must resist the urge to pin her to the floor, to rip off their helmets and be damned with this recon and just have some time with her partner.
"You know Morrison would have our heads, plus, who's to say I don't have tonight planned out?"
"When we get to the trenches you know you'll either end up sleeping, eating, or challenging Reyes to yet another game of football."
"True. Wait, you hear that, love?"
"Hear what-... Merde! Gas, Tracer! Masks, now!"
Something covers her face, and her vision is reduced to two portholes as she hastily grabs her gear. An SMLE MK III carbine is slung across her back, an American-issue M1918 BAR in her hands, courtesy of Reyes. Her partner carries another SMLE MKIII, but this one's got a telescopic sight for scouting and sniping. Tracer pushes the woman from their dugout, ears perked up to, trying to listen for the hissing of the canister shells as she rushes the other back.
They make it three yards when the shelling starts, and the machine guns begin to chatter. Her lithe form is grazed once or twice, but her lover isn't so lucky. With a cry threatening to shatter Tracer's world she falls, clutching at her abdomen and hissing in pain. The crimson soon turns a once khaki uniform into the colour of the mud at Gallipoli, and Lena's rushing to patch the wound, shells still falling and bullets flying.
"Bloody fucking hell, couldn't those lousy gobs wait a few hours for us to get back!" Leaving the sniper rifle behind, Tracer shoulders the other woman and begins running back to Anglo-French lines, desperately dropping into a trench and screaming for both Morrison and a medic. Morrison gets there first, and he immediately pulls a healing field from his belt where an ordinary officer would have ammunition, deploying it. They set the woman down, unconscious by now, and as the defenders recover, they realize the Germans are all too soon, and aren't Germans at all.
"Jack, Jack fucking listen! It's Talon, they've seized the lines and are pouring through! Fucking wraiths, man! We've got to pull back!" And they realize the voice is right, the forms slinking through the mud and decay aren't near human enough. They're whispy and opaque, like shadows in moonlight despite the rising sun, and all but incendiary rounds pass through them. If these were normal troops, and not members of the Entente's crack Overwatch Battalion, the forms would only be shadow, invisible to the naked eye. Screams line up the trench as Tracer shoves the woman into Morrison's hands.
"Save her, Jack. Get everyone home safe, okay love? I'll catch up, I'm the fastest here. Just let me and the boys cove you." She's nervous, lying through her teeth, know she'll die here. But if she lets Jack stay, if they're overrun, then all of them will die, or get captured, or worse. Her choice had been made for her.
"Oxton, if you think I'm leaving you here you're out of your fucking British-. "
"Jack! The first trenches are already Talon's! Get. Going. Now!" She says, chestnut eyes alight with the sort of passion only Fae can manage, the fires of a forest's spirit.
The blonde American, one of the first to arrive, sighs resignedly, shoulders slumping as he takes their unconscious compatriot. He knows arguing will only kill their already limited time, knows Tracer is right. "You better be right behind us, kid. You know Gerard will have my head if I let his kin hurt 'em more than him." Morrison was never good at goodbye.
"Aye aye, cap'n!" She replies, sending them off with her classic two-finger salute before turning to the scene in front of her. There's a steady stream of wounded and otherwise fleeing past her, the shock of the attack, of the attackers, hitting home. Dashing forward, the Fae makes it to one of the last holdouts, pulling hard on the trigger of her rifle. Wraiths are cut like wheat by her and her comrades, but for every one they cut down, two more fill its place. There's only a handful of Allied soldiers left now, and amongst them fewer are fit to fight.
That doesn't stop them, however. Their screams and battle cries fill Tracer's ears as they fall beneath the tide, as she pulls her carbine and charges into the fray, gun blazing and bayonet tearing into the wraiths about her. She realizes only now that she never said goodbye.
Morrison makes it to the chateau that forms Overwatch's HQ, and their hospital. Tracer never shows.
She awakens in a cold heat, hand wrapped around a drawn pistol, barrel smoking as she comes to. Tracer is alone now, always has been, always will be. She's in her room, deep in the catacombs under Paris, unperturbed but for her dream. A nightmare's more like it. Who were those people? She thinks, clawed hand clutching her head. She'd have to ask Reyes, he would know. And If it was none of her business, she'd get reconditioned again. Perhaps I shouldn't. Not like I haven't dreamed this before. And true, Tracer's been having snippets of nightmares and dreams, so real she could almost swear they were memories. A weapon has no memories though. At least that's what she's told by Reyes, by the others.
When she rises, and looks in a mirror, she must focus herself into form. Chestnut eyes have faded into a greying iris, as a dying forest does. Pale skin, once as perfectly warm as an English spring, has grown cold enough to frost. Something about how she looks doesn't sit right, but Tracer brushes it aside. She's been this way for well on two decades now, not alive yet not dead. Her uniform consisting of a black bomber jacket with a red patch on each sleeve, long black pants, a grey tanker's top, and grey tennis shoes is forces by herself onto her form, even if she can already see them becoming as whispy and lost as her. Deep down, she knows today's different, that the fact her nightmare was so clean and long lasting meant something, but she doesn't care. Tracer needs to feed, and she needs yesterday.
Jack Morrison, formerly of the American Expeditionary Force, rests against the counter of a pub in London and sighs. He knows what day it is, and how hard It is on the woman before him currently drowning her sorrows in drink. Everyone back at Overwatch does. But he has news, orders, and maybe it will bring the stiff form in front of him some closure for a few weeks.
"You know, I would like to think Lena would've wanted you to move on by now. It's been two decades, and we all do miss her, but you can't keep doing this. We have orders, we're shipping out to Paris in a week. If you sober up, you can come, and we'll visit her together."
"We left her to die, Jack. I… I can't move on, can't forgive, can't forget. She was my everything, my Mate!" The woman screams, and if the pub's owner hadn't been a friend he was certain she'd have been escorted out by now. Tears stream down her cheeks, body heaving with emotions repressed for too long. Her glass almost looks clearer, but it could just be the salt in Jack's eyes. "She was my Mate, and I was too weak to stay awake and drag her with us. Gods, Lena, I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry…"
"It's okay, it's going to be fine. I'm sure she's in a better place, someone as good as her just has to be. You'll see her again." The American says, yet even to him the words feel hollow even if he can't place why. Placing a few bills on the counter, Morrison hauls the emotional mess he calls a friend away from the bar. "We'll visit the memorial on base, then we'll get you home and prepared. Let's go."
It's 0500 as I finish and post this. I'm too tired to edit, and I know if I save it with the intentions of editing, dissociation will stop me later. Please review, favourite, like, and follow! Don't forget to check out my other stories too, and Happy New Year's!