The Parisian authorities arrived just after Overwatch had taken off. Paramilitary troops had stormed the gates of the palace and broken down the doors to find the destruction that had been wrought only a few minutes before. The ballroom was immediately cordoned off and a crime scene was set up, forensics experts combing over every singed, bullet-filled, and obliterated piece of debris. Junkrat and Roadhog had been carted off in a paddywagon as the prime suspects, the former yammering about who was going to get the bounty that had been on their heads while the latter shook his head in disbelief. Any evidence of Talon having any involvement was nowhere to be found.

Camera crews had also arrived and they clamored over what the police didn't immediately redact or deem classified. The camera drones, or rather what was left of them, were one such thing that the media was able to get its hands on, and it was barely a half hour after the tragedy had transpired that practically every news outlet on the planet was covering the story, showing every second of footage from the grand arrivals to the dignitaries recoiling in fear as Tracer tackled down Widowmaker, accompanied by such gruesome headlines as:

REST IN PIECES: OMNICS AT GALA SHREDDED BY VICIOUS CRIMINALS-

OVERWATCH SUSPECTED INVOLVED IN GRISLY MURDERS: A MARKED TURN FOR THE WORSE, EXPERTS SAY-

MECHANICAL MASSACRE AT VERSAILLES: WORK OF LONE WOLVES OR MULTIPLE CROOKS?

Accompanying these headlines, in stark journalistic contrast to the talking heads that had broadcasted the joyous announcement of the gala and its culmination of peace, greasy-haired personalities and gaudy pundits shouted in sensationalized tones and pointed fingers over everything.

"I, for one, don't like to think about little things like that; All I need to know is that the Omnics are dead and this whole peace thing, that was never going to work by the way, is behind us-"

"Of course you'd say that you don't like to think about it; That's because the only thing to think about here is that the humans hired those Australian killers, and probably Overwatch as well, to sabotage the rise of the downtrodden Omnic to the same level as the high-and-mighty organic-"

"The crooks known as Junkrat and Roadhog are the focus of attention here without a doubt, but lemme ask you; should they really be? I mean, we've got suspected Overwatch associates on the guest list, even showrunning on that night, and footage of a confirmed member of their little cabal tackling an innocent guest to the ground right before the footage cuts out. You ask me, that looks more than a little suspicious-"

At Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Winston scrolled through the endless debates, the name-calling and blame-shifting, the grotesque photos of Omnic corpses being draped in police blankets, the shaky cameras showing that the jubilant crowds from before had turned on each other; Where humans and Omnics had once stood with arms linked together, they now took to rioting and committing hate crimes.

Tossing the banana in his hand aside, Winston no longer could stomach what he was seeing. It had been over a day since the tragedy had happened, since the plans that he'd formulated had gone so horribly wrong and nearly gotten his friends killed, since they had limped out of the ship as it landed, alive but bloodied and battered. As the stories on the computer screen faded away, he looked up at his line of pictures again, his attention turning to a group photo of the reformed Overwatch. In the dark lighting of the control room, the shadows that the lights in the rest of the base cast laid out at odd angles, one in particular casting over the half of the group photo that included Tracer, McCree, Faheera, Genji, and Lucio, with the gorilla himself wrapping his arm around them all as they smiled for the camera.

Next to the photo was the ever-present picture of the infant Winston and his namesake, the doctor that had raised him. Where as reminiscing upon the wise words of his father had brought happiness and resolve before, though, now it only brought regret. Winston reached up at the picture and grasped the bottom corner of it.

"I failed you." he whispered, fighting back tears. He again looked at the group photo and the friends covered by the dark shroud. "All of you. I'm so sorry."

His sorrow was interrupted by a British-accented voice, peppy but compassionate. "What've you got to apologize for?"

Winston rotated around in his tire chair to see Tracer standing a few feet behind him. She was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt with a pink heart on the chest and a pair of sweatpants, and there were several adhesive bandages and gauze strips across her cheeks, forehead, and arms.

The look he gave her suggested though he was always glad to see her, he didn't think it a good time right now. "Why are you here? Concussion protocol's in affect; I told Athena to make sure you all got some rest."

Tracer smiled. "Everyone's out of sick bay. Jesse decided he was going to light up inside the building, saying that-" She put on a comedically bad southern drawl. "'Ah didn't git mah five minutes then, but ah'm shure as hell gonna git 'um now.'"

Her attempt at emulating the gunslinger's voice prompted chuckles from both her and Winston. "We tried to kick him out, but he said he couldn't wait any longer. Athena kept us from forcibly throwing him out the door by letting us all go take a walk and stretch our legs after being cooped up for a day." she explained. "Everyone else is doing OK. Lucio, I think, is trying to come up with a new song and Fareeha said she needed to make a phone call back to Egypt."

Winston smiled back, but it dimmed quickly. "How's Angela?"

"She's doing good. Still out cold in bed, but on the mend. We've all given some towards it; Genji was first in line after Athena told him his blood type was compatible."

The gorilla's head drooped down so that he was looking at the ground. "Well, at least she's still alive."

Tracer caught on to what her friend was feeling and took a seat on the edge of his tire, placing her hand on his back to comfort him and speaking in a tender whisper.

"Hey, big guy. It's not your fault. None of us caught on 'til it was too late."

Winston craned his head up slowly, but he didn't look her in the eye. "Yes it is. None of you did anything wrong. You and Jesse were being smart and seeing that we needed to act, while I was being a stubborn, short-sighted idiot."

Tracer rubbed her hand up and down his back, scratching at the fur underneath the carbon fiber and stretchy polymer of the space suit he wore. "Don't put yourself down like that. You did good and you don't deserve what you're saying. Honestly, I should be apologizing for being testy."

"Don't I?" His shoulders raised and his chest puffed out. "I didn't do what needed to be done, I left gaping holes in our plan that nearly got the team killed, and because of me, the world is at each other's throats again and we're all sitting around powerless to do anything about it!" He gritted his teeth and raised his fists above his head over the computer. Tracer could see under his glasses a spark of lightning race across his pupils before it disappeared and he dropped his posture again.

"Shh, it's OK." she reassured, patting him on the back and scratching him on the head.

He sighed heavily as he picked up her hand and moved it elsewhere. "When I started Overwatch back up, I thought we were going to learn from the mistakes we made back then. I wanted to be able to save lives without all the procedures and red tape again. But after last night, it's clear that all I've done is make everything worse. The rest of you are amazing, but I'm not being the leader we need."

"You're not the only one who's angry at themselves over mistakes at the palace. I've been kicking myself over not nabbing Widow when I first spotted her, Jesse's been grumbling over getting jumped by those Blackwatch goons,"

"-And you'd both have nothing to complain about if I hadn't been so stupid!" He raised a fist and punched himself in self-loathing until he tucked his head inbetween his shoulders and massaged a migraine he'd given himself.

Tracer regarded her friend worryingly, trying to decide what to say next. She'd never seen Winston, who was usually as much of an optimist as she was, this down. She tried to look him in the eye, but his head was stooped over too far. As she looked back up and patted him on the back again, she saw one of the pictures on the wall.

"You know Winston, one time I heard someone say-"

"If you're going to quote Dr. Harold to me, you're wasting your time. Athena already tried." he blurted out.

"Hold your horses, love. Hear me out." She placed her hand under his chin and raised his head so that they were looking at each other in the eye.

She spoke slowly and with empathy. "When I graduated the field training program, a good friend told me, 'Lena, congratulations. You've got spirit, but you should know that out there, in the field, it's not all fortune and glory. There will be times when you'll lose, when you'll make choices that will get you into trouble, when something will go wrong and you'll hate yourself for overlooking some small detail. It's then that you need to be able to recognize what happened, dust yourself off, and most importantly, learn from your mistakes. That's how we grow as living beings, and that's how we'll make the world a better place.'"

Winston scowled. "Who said that?" he asked, certain he knew the answer.

Tracer plucked a picture off of the headboard and held it in front of the gorilla's face. In the image was the two of them shaking hands and holding diplomas.

"You did." she whispered.

Surprised by what was far from the answer he expected, he slowly took the picture out of her hand and studied it carefully. He remembered that day well; He had just graduated field training himself when she entered field training, but he had yet to finish his entrance exams to Overwatch's science division. Despite the differences, they quickly struck up a friendship, promising they'd do everything they could to help each other pass. Working in tandem and putting more than their fair share of long hours, they both did so with flying colours. At the ceremony, the same ceremony where Winston's photo of the core team of the Golden Age had been taken, they gave introductory speeches for each other as they accepted their accolades.

Tracer continued. "It looks bad now, but last I checked the world's still turning and we're all still breathing; We've got time and we've got hope. We'll go over what went bad, figure out how to fix it, and we'll make sure that next time Talon makes a big move, we'll be ready for them. What do you say?"

Winston held the picture up to the headboard and reattached it with a thumbtack before looking back at Tracer. "We've got time, and we've got hope." he softly whispered as he interlocked his arm with Tracer's. He stared straight at her and spoke with resolve. "Never accept the world as it appears to be. Dare to see it for what it could be."

Tracer smirked. "I thought you said quoting Dr. Harold was a waste of time."

"Well, it just sounds better when it comes from me."

The two of them shared a laugh before Tracer suddenly winced in pain and clutched her forehead. Winston wrapped an arm around her as he picked her up off the tire chair and guided her out of the control room.

"First thing's first though, you still need to recuperate. Jesse's smoking habits or not, concussion protocol is in affect. You need rest. Afterwards, we'll get to work, fix what we did wrong. Deal?"

Tracer grinned resolutely. "Deal. We'll make your dad proud yet."

"He always was. This will make him even more."

Just as they were about to walk out, comrades in arms united to the end, Tracer spoke up again. "Oh, just one last thing big guy."

"What is it?"

"Do you remember back about eight years ago when you couldn't find that one jar of peanut butter and you turned Geneva upside down looking for it?"

Winston looked at her perplexed. "Yeah. I still don't know where it went. Why?"

Tracer rolled her eyes and laughed sheepishly. "Um, well, about that..."

THE END

Author's Note: And so concludes War of Peace, a story that took me over a year to formulate and six months to write down. I hope you all enjoyed it; I certainly had a fun time writing it (you know, when I had the time and the inspiration and the willpower and when other people's work wasn't making me feel inadequate). Next up: Altered Reality, which will possibly be written at the same time as Fallen Angel since I'm currently having good ideas for them both. Until next time, so long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight!