"Hold still, this may hurt a little." Mercy was tending to the new woman in the medical wing. Sombra was fairly sure her name was Symmetra, but she wasn't sure. She was more occupied with the guy throwing a plate at her.
Sombra had come with her to the medical wing, mostly due to a lack of any other options. Mercy had said they would give her more daily duties in time. She said both of them, she and Symmetra, would be fully inducted at the meeting later.
At the moment, Mercy was cleaning the scrape on her forehead. She, Symmetra, was doing a pretty good job of sitting still, but she still fliched every once in a while from the pain of rubbing alchohol in an open wound. Sombra took the opportunity to study the woman. One of her arms seemed to be some type of prosthetiec, and their were various computers throughout her outfit. Sombra thought she recognized the technology. She racked her brains for what they could be. They seemed to be linked together wirelessly. What seemed to be a gun hung from her side, but even it looked strange. There was no place to put in ammunition, and it seemed far to fragile to fire and survive the kick back.
She sat down in a chair opposite Mercy. She rested her hands on her temple. What had that guy said? He called her a fascist, right? Yes, he did. Okay, so she must be from a orginization with very complex technology that could also be critisized for being to controlling, or maybe just generally shitty. She took another look at the woman. Who had those designs? Who had she worked for? ...
Vishkar. That was it. With a swipe of her hand, she pulled up a hologram and started working. It felt great to be doing this again. She noticed Symmetra turn and look at her, the sudden movement catching her eye. After a few minutes and a easily hacked firewall, and she had found confirmation. Satya, codename Symmetra. Vishkar's best hardlight architect. The file said she had repeatedly challenged the companies ethical standards.
Sombra rolled her head. She was more than familiar with the Vishkar corporation. They were backhanded and sneaky. For every town the built in a ruined country, they blew up another for political purposes. They were a power hungy giant masquerading as a decent coporation. She guessed Satya had been duped. Though, she really couldn't blame her. Even some of the highest chairmen of the company didn't have access to the documents Sombra did. From Satya's perspective, they may have actually seemed reasonable. Though Sombra could hardly believe that.
She turned to Symmetra. Mercy was finished, and they were about to leave. Sombra laughed to herself. She loved doing this.
"So, Satya, how did Vishkar treat you?" Sombra said in a mocking tone. Symmetra was stunned.
"How did you know-" Symettra started.
"Oh, I have my ways." Sombra responded with a smirk. Mercy sighed.
"Might as well introduce you two. Symmetra, this is Sombra, another new agent. She's a hacker, the real 'mastermind' type. She just hacked into Vishkar's servers and pulled up your files. Am I right?" She asked Sombra. Mercy turned back to Symmetra after Sombra gave her a scowl. " Don't be surprised." Mercy said dryly. She turned to Sombra. "I'm guessing you already know Symmetra, Sombra. Please don't do something like that again. It's a lot more annoying than it is intimidating."
Sombra huffed. "You're taking all the fun out of it." Symmetra sat there in unshakable silence, observing. She seemed like the quiet type. The type that preffered isolation and stillness. No wonder she was with Vishkar, they were always yapping on about order and such.
Mercy laughed. "I see why you got caught. Keep on acting like this and you'll wind up dead."
Sombra smirked. "I think I've done pretty well for myself so far, thank you." Mercy walked over to the lab, preparing her next remark.
"What happened to your hair?" Symmetra blurted. Sombra turned to look at her. "Its wet." Symmetra clarified, as if she didn't know.
"Initiation ritual. Swirly. We do it to everyone." Mercy said. She turned back around. "Everyone."
"You can't be serious." Symmetra said, eyes wide with disbelief. Sombra chuckled.
"Run while you still can." Sombra joked, tone overtly serious. Symmetra finally let out a laugh. That made Sombra strangely satisfied with herself.
"You two should get a move on. I have responsibilities and such. Don't have time to deal with you two." Mercy said. Both women nodded and left.
They walked down the hall in awkward silence. They got all the way to the kitchen without a word. Then, suddenly, Symmetra couldn't shut up. She barraged Sombra with questions, rnaginf grom where she was from to what perfume she used. She seemed strange, unaware. She did all she could to strike up a conversation, but got nothing back. Sombra didn't feel like talking anymore.
As the minutes ticked on, Symmetra got more and more restless. She turned to Sombra a few times, about to say something, but stopped herself before any words came out. Her eyes darted aroun the room, desperate to find anything to focus on. Unfortunately, the base's design was naturlly minimalist. The kithcen had few interesting sites, as did the rest of the base. The only thing interesting about it, in fact, was who inhabited it.
Symmetra's fidgeting continued for some time, distracting Sombra from ignoring her. Sombra sked herself why she was so desperate to find something to say, something to do. The ansercame to her next to immediately, and was laughably simple. She was scared.
"Hey, Symmetra." Sombra said. The other woman looked at her, expression mostly blank, but also inquisitive. "You'll be fine. You're a good person. The files were acurate enough to show that." The other woman smiled, but it faded quickly.
"I don't know. I did bad things for Vishkar. I, I should have known better." Symmetra said in a downtrodden tone, then cupped her head in her hands. "It's my fault."
Sombra scoffed. "Come on, it couldn't have been that bad. I probably did worse." Symmetra turned to her.
"What did you do before you came here? I still don't know that much about you." Sombra crossed her arms across her chest.
She let out a long sigh. "Well I traveled a lot, I stayed on top of politics, didn't have much of a love life really. But not for lack of trying." She let out a short laugh. "And I may have just found a new lead." Symmetra cocked her head to the side.
"Oh!" She shouted, then fiddled with her hand nervously."I, I'm uh, on that team, I guess, well both really, I just, uh..." Sombra burst out laughing.
"Finally got a rise out of you. I knew I'd get it eventually." Sombra laughed. Symmetra chuckled nervously. Symmetra was finally seeming to calm down. "Oh yeah, and I also killed a buch of people."
Symmetra's eyes lit up. "You did?" Sombra nodded. "How many?" Sombra eyes lit up in turn. She was taken aback.
"I-I don't know." She responded.
Symmetra cocked an eyebrow. "Why not?" Sombra looked away, lost in thought.
"Well, I think I just lost count." She paused. "I kept track for the first few years. I counted to thirty three, that one was the in the middle east, some rich guy with a bunch of oil fields. I killed him, and after that, I just, stopped trying. That was when I was," She paused, trying to remember. "Eighteen. After that, every kill felt the same. It always hurts, but I just tell myself it will make the world better, that what I'm doing is important." Sombra said. Her voice steadily grew more shaky. She felt much to vulnerable again. God, why did she say all that. It had just started spilling out.
Symmetra sat in silence for a few minutes. She was obviously in deep thought. "I, I understand. I told myself that for years. I knew Vishkar was lying to me, but I ignored it." Symmetra stood up, and created a holographic map with her prosthetic hand. "I remember one country, in Africa, it was trying trying to expand its economy. They made a commercial carrier, one of the largest in the world, to carry their shipments of iron." She paused. "It exploded. The country happened to be competing in exports with one of our suppliers. They said it was an accident, and I bought it. It was a flimsy lie, but I still bought it." She looked Sombra right in the eye. "I could have stopped it. I just went along with what they said. I just told myself it would work out in the end and that I was making a better world." She sighed. "I guess that didn't work out for either of us." She sat back down, and they sat in silence once more, but this time the atmosphere was mcu diferent. It was one of grief.
Sombra felt, strange, to say the least. Both women seemed to know that they were at odds with each other from the start, that they had different perspectives on the world. One on top, the other on bottom. They had this in common, though. They both had blood on their hands, they were both killers. In this one, crazy ass way, they were similiar.
Sombra sighed, then pulled up her holograms. Symmetra left with a polite farewell. They both knew they were done. Sombra spent the next several hours watching videos. She tried to ignore the pit in her stomach. Even though they were similiar, she couldn't shake the feeling that Symmetra was better than her.
Sombra drummed her fingers on the table in the meeting room. Symmetra sat next to her, even more shaken than she was. Only a few members had shown up for the meeting so far. Winston had been the first to enter, ever responsible. Symmetra's reaction had created a moment of levity, but it hadn't lasted long. Symmetra seemed quick to adjust to him. Her only reaction was initial shock. After that, she was more curious than anything. Sombra would have taken much longer to adjust if not for the extensive Talon reports and old files she had read over Winston.
Next had been the "Old Timers", Soldier 76, Ana, and Reinhardt. They had entered together, still in the midst of sharing old war stories. Sombra imagined that they didn't get to see each other often. Everyone in the room soon joined in on their conversation, all laughing and letting out oohs, and ahhs, but all that died down when Lucio entered.
He hadn't tried to be confrontational. He had only given Symmetra one look, and then seemed to try to ignore her. His stature may have even been said to be apopologetic, if it were not for the unmistakable look of accusational rage in his eyes. Sombra guessed even he was a buzz of nerves right now.
Soon nearly every agent was in the room, with the exception of Bastion and Tracer, who were nowhere to be found.
Sombra checked the time. 4:13. They were thirteen minutes late. Where the hell where they? Soldier let out an awkward cough. A second later, three more followed, each more violent than the last. Mercy asked him if he was ill. He said no, quickly and definately. That was the only noise in the room. Sombra let her eyes wander over the rest of the people. All looked almost as fidgety and nervous as she did. She caught them giving Lucio stares every now and then, more often than they did her or Symmetra. It must have been really out of place for him to act the way he did.
Suddenly, the door opened. The old omnic and british woman entered. "Sorry we're late, luv! Or, luvs I guess. Heh." Tracer tried as hard as she could to act casual. Of course, that was hard when every eye in the room was on you. She coughed into her sleeve. "Anyway, Bastion here was running low on juice. Only had a few hours left of charge. He came to me to try and help him find his charger. It took about half an hout of charades before we finally just realized he could type it out. Anyway, we found and it charged him up. He should be fine for about a month now." The explanation was good enough. A few people let out a grunt.
"Okay then," Symmetra stood up and said. Despite obviously being nervous, her voice still had some authority to it. Sombra thought she must have been fairly practiced. "Should I explain the circumstances leading to my inductment into Overwatch?"
"In English, please?" the girl in the pink suit said. Sombra recalled her name as .
"Hana, English isn't even your first language." Pharah said.
"You now what I mean." , or Hana it seemed, retorted. Symmetra cleared her throat.
"Do you want me to explain why I'm here?" She said aloud.
"Uh, yeah." Lucio responded. His voice was filled with both humor and accusation. A few chuckles could be heard throughout the room. Symmetra blushed slightly.
"Okay. I-I um," Symmetra began, and then cleared her throat and said again, with much more confidence, "I worked for the Vishkar corporation. I have been becoming more and more suscpicious of them as time has advanced." Sombra knew what was coming. She had already heard this speech. She was just curious what the straw was that had broke the camel's back. "Their practices' have become steadily more ethically questionable. And, and I am somewhat to blame for that." Lucio shifted in his seat.
"Recently, Vishkar suddenly cancelled a natural disiater relief program I was working with. I had no idea why, I talked with them and pleaded, but they insisted on cancelling it. They said it was to expensive to maintain. I didn't understand why. The funding seemed fine when I looked at it. So, I did some investigating." Her hands began to curl into fists. "I found out why. An email I found showed a conversation between a Vishkar excecutive and one of the directors of public relations. The director said that the program was attracting a lot of attention because one of the projects was rebuilding an omnic village. He said it seemed like Vishkar was taking a political stance on the omnic issue. He said if the program was continued, it would damage several business deals with other corporations. He suggested cancelling the program entirely, claiming a lack of nescary funds and changing the financial reports. That way no one was angry. The omnics wern't being helped, and they couldn't blame Vishkar."
"When I came forward with the emails, the board,... wasn't happy with me. They said I had to get rid of the evidence or be fired. I-I still believed I could do good for the world, so I did what they said." She looked at Lucio. "And after a lot of thought, I changed my mind. I still believe I can do good for the world. But not as part of Vishkar."
Lucio looked down for a while, obviously in deep thought. No one dared interject. They all knew that this was between the two of them. "Why didn't you leave earlier?"
Symmetra face was momentarily painted with shock, but it quicky changed to ... guilt. "I think that I, I was in denial. I didn't want to think that they were like that. That Vishkar had done such awful that I," She paused, her voice choking up. "And that I had helped them."
Lucio brought his hands to his face, and then rested his head on his palm. His face wore a shade of grief. Sombra thought that he understood Symmetra, but simply wasn't ready to forgive her. She could understand that. But what had she done to him? The way he was acting, this was to personal to just be a simple grudge. Symmetra, or possibly Vishkar, had done something to him. Zenyatta spoke up next.
"I like to think of this place as a place of redemption. Symmetra is asking for that redemption, and it is our duty to give her that chance. We should-"
The very short man, Torbjorn Sombra thought his name was, interrupted him. "Shut up, you bag of bolts!" He turned to the old timers. "He's right."
Soldier 76 grumbled. "I'm not sure. Just because she wants to be better doesn't mean she deserves the chance. Not everyone deserves to be forgiven."
"Really, Morrison?" Reinhardt said. "I thought you still had a heart in that chest! How could you still be so cruel?"
"Would you forgive Reyes?" Soldier 76, or Morrison, yelled back.
"Oh, please." Ana said with a snort. "You think this woman is capable of the things Reyes was? You think she would run off and join Talon?"
Sombra decided, stupidly, to put herself in the middle of this. "And besides, I worked for Talon, and you gave me a chance!"
"You worked for Talon?" Lucio asked, startled.
Sombra turned to him. "That was a long time ago."
"That was two days ago." McCree responded. The girl, Hana, let out a quick spread to a few other agents, then to the entire room. Then, McCree spoke up again. "Actually, that reminds me. What are we goinf to do about this whole mess?" He asked the room, and the sense of gravity the situation held returned to everyone. To most everyone, at least.
"What situation?" Symmetra asked, confused.
"World War 3." Morrison resopned.
"WHAT!?" Symmetra yelled. "How did that happen?"
"Terrorist attack on a top secret US base holding a new super weapon they found from the Russians. The US blamed the Russians. Predictably." Morrison answered back. "They had been set up."
"What! Who would be stupid enough to do something like that." She snapped back.
Sombra waved her hand. "Heeeeeey." She said weakly. Symmetra gave her what have been the best you have got to be kidding me faces Sombra had ever seen.
"You?"
A loud snort blared from across the room. Lucio, of all people, slapped Symmetra in the back. "Welcome to Overwatch. It only gets worse. Speaking of which..."
Sombra never would have gussed Symmetra could have ran that fast. Not fast enough, but pretty damn fast.
One swirly and way more obscenities than Sombra would have ever thought she would have heard out of Symmetra's mouth later, and everyone was back in the meeting room. Sadly, amount of distactions could ever change what had happened. What Sombra had done. And so, Overwatch still had to agree on a course of action.
"Okay," McCree said, "What if we just told them what really happened?" Everyone stared at him. "I mean, we all know that it was really Talon," he paused, "And Sombra." She glared at him. "Why don't we just tell everyone that?"
Everyone paused, and thought. It seemed like an obvious solution. Why wouldn't it work? Sombra spotted Symmetra moving out of the corner of her eye. She seemed to have something to say. "What is it?" Sombra asked, purposefully putting her on the spot.
"Well, uh," Symmetra stammered, then regained her composure. "I don't think that they would believe us. If you told me is true, people have already died. When that happens, people want someone to blame. Someone tangible. If we, Overwatch, the banned group of mercenaries, say it was actually a shadow terrorist orginization called Talon, it would probably just sound like some crackpot conspiracy theory. We just aren't a credible scource of information. From the world's perspective, I mean."
"Hmm, sounds about right." Ana responded, dryly.
"So what do we do?" Tracer asked, finally speaking up.
"We should probably start with providing relief to damaged cities. A lot of people will be hurt." Mercy declared.
"That won't do much. It's only damage control. It doesn't solve the problem." Pharah responded, and Mercy gave her a look, one that perfectly communcicated just how many times the couple had had this argument before.
People started to squabble, not really contributing to the overall discussion. The whole meeting was being derailed. Somebody needed to get this back on track. So Sombra tried.
"I know this isn't the best plan," She announced, loudly, putting everyon'es attention on herself. "But we could side with someone. Work for them secretly. It wouild probably make the war pretty lopsided. The war would be over quickly."
"Sombra," torbjorn suddenly said. "That is the worst idea I've heard in my entire life. And I'm old, mind you. I was around when they decided to ship the first war omnics after the first test."
"Oh god, that was bad." Morrison said. Ana was about to clarify, but Winston interrupted.
"Enough! This is serious! Does anyone have an actual plan?" Winston yelled. The room fell silent. Winston's composure dropped, and he sighed sorrowfully. "I thought not." With those words, it weemed even the faintest strains of hoped had finally died.
Sombra racked her brains for a way out of this. She qwasn't one to give up so easily. She thought of everyithing they had all said, any way to stop the world from hurling into disaster. Anger boiled up inside of her. Damn Talon, bunch of assholes. This was all their fault. God, she wishe dshe could kill all the higher ups. Wait.
"Oh my god, I know what to do!" Sombra yelled out, startling everyone. McCree's eyes narrowed in on her.
"This had better be good, Sombra." He said.
"It is. All we have to do is prove that Talon exists!" Sombra yelled. Everyone stared at her.
"Um, didn't we just go over why we can't do that? People blaming someone tangible and all that?" Tracer said.
"Yes we did, but that's if we just say Talon. Okay, you guys obvoously wouldn't know this, but Talon's has a 'Board of Directors' that decides what all the agent do." She chuckled to herself. "Or at least, they try. Anyway, they tried to keep all their information secret from the agents, but of course they failed." She smirked. "We know that all of them are world leaders, in some form or another. A few agents cracked that before being, taken care of, and that sliver is all that we held on to. If we get their identities, people will know the real culprit. They won't blame each other anymore, because their will be a real enemy. The assholes who pitted them against each other in the first place."
"Okay, so how do we prove who they are?" Morrison asked. Sombra's face dropped.
"Well, we'd have to get into a Talon base." She responded. "Which we can't, because they'll kill us all on sight."
"What about you?" Symmetra asked. "Didn't you work for them? Couldn;t you infiltate them?"
"Well, yes, but I just backstabbed them! They won't let me back in now." Sombra responded.
"Right, because I'm sure you've never done anything like that before." McCree said, sarcastically. "This is definately the first time you've ever been disobedient."
Sombra was quickly losing ground. "Well, yeah, but not like this. I've never done anything like this before. It was always small things." She quickly argued. McCree gave her a questioning look. "Smaller than this!" Sombra yelled out. Her limbs started trembling.
"Sombra." Ana's voice cut in. "Are you afraid of Talon? Are you afraid of what they may do to you?" Sombra froze. It was all she could do to not start crying. Ana walked over to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Have they hurt you before?" Sombra nodded. Ana paused, not sure if to continue. "What did they do?" Ana asked in a cautious tone of voice.
Sombra sat down, and wrapped her arms around herself. "I-I don't want to talk about it." Sombra responded. She could feel the others look at her with pity. It almost made it worse. No, it definatley did.
"Sombra, this is importnat. We need you to go back to Talon. For the sake of the world." Ana said. Sombra curled up further.
"That's really easy for you to say." Sombra said, coldy.
"Alright, let's break this up." Morrison stood up, and said in a raised voice. He chose his next words carefully. "This might be our best shot, but it's obviously going to take a bit of work to glesh out." He paused. "And some time, definately some time. Meeting adjourned."
Auothor's Note: By the way, this fic is going to be pretty campy. It's going to get worse pretty soon, though.