Hello all :) Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who has read/ reviewed, and also to answer a question I've been getting asked a lot. This is an AU where Tracer was never part of Overwatch; that is why they have not sent any kind of rescue team after her. The rest will be explained in later chapters; hope that clears everything up :)
Angela frowned, checking her watch again. Her session with Amélie was scheduled to start ten minutes ago. She knew the French woman didn't particularly enjoy their sessions, but it was not like her to be late.
The blonde stood and went to the door, opening it and peering out into the hallway. Her gaze fell on Ana, who was sipping from a steaming cup of tea, her gaze focused on the tablet in her hand.
"Ana, have you seen Amélie?" the doctor asked. "Did you perhaps send her on a mission and neglect to tell me?"
Ana looked up, her brow furrowing. "I have not sent Amélie anywhere, but let me see if I can find her."
Amélie was not difficult to find, particularly because she was not trying to hide.
"Planning on going somewhere?"
Amélie looked up from where she had been packing, seeing Ana in the doorway. A hundred different lies and explanations went through her mind for a brief moment, but the sniper merely said, "I am leaving Overwatch."
Ana frowned; she had been afraid of something like this. "Amélie—"
"Please, don't try to change my mind. I cannot work with a team that does not trust me; I cannot work with people who would believe that I would betray them."
Ana couldn't argue with Amélie there; the captain trusted her charge, but she couldn't make everyone else trust her too, especially not after what Jack had done. "Though I hate to see you go, you must do what you feel is best. I wonder if before you go though you will indulge me one final mission?"
Amélie let out a sigh. "Captain, please—"
"It's just a guard detail, nothing terribly difficult."
Despite herself, Amélie found her curiosity piqued. "That isn't a usual job for Overwatch."
"This situation is a rather historic one, or it is going to be. Our presence has been kindly requested." Ana could tell she had Amélie interested. "What do you say? One last mission with your mentor before you leave us?"
Amélie knew she should say no; she should refuse the mission and just continue her packing, though her curiosity was getting the better of her. "Fine. One last mission, but that is it. After this, I leave Overwatch for good."
This was it; this would be the first real test of Tracer's abilities. The culmination of all of Moira's hard work.
"I still have reservations about this," Moira said, giving Reaper a look.
"She was separated from you during our last mission, and she did just fine. She refrained from killing Vaswani, just as you instructed her, even when she was attacked." Reaper crossed his arms. "She can handle this, and we need to show the Council that we know what we're doing." A pause. "Unless you want them to send in someone else—"
"I can handle Tracer," the geneticist growled. "I just think we should have waited more than three days before we undertook this mission." She looked back at the file on her tablet, swiping through a few pages.
King's Row. The place Tracer had been pulled from. Moira hadn't asked about details when Tracer had first been brought to her, of course, but she had heard the brunette say enough to recognize her accent. Moira honestly didn't know how Tracer would react to being brought back to her home; she had erased her memories, yes, but there was always the possibility that some sort of trigger could bring them back.
Moira paused upon reaching the photo of the target, and she looked over at where Tracer was sitting. The assassin was staring out the window of the transport; if she recognized the area, there was no sign of it in her expression. The redhead stood and approached her, turning the tablet to face her.
"Listen carefully: this is your target," Moira said, showing Tracer the photo. "Once we drop you off, you will track and eliminate the target. Your target is the only thing you kill; no one else dies. Eliminate it quickly and then immediately report back to the transport. Do not delay. Do you understand?"
Tracer nodded, though her expression was almost impossible to read.
"We will see."
The door to the transport opened, and Tracer exited, looking back at the redhead.
"Do not disappoint me," Moira said before the door closed, leaving Tracer on her own.
-/-
Find the target and eliminate it.
She was on her own now… this was her first solo mission, and she had to prove that she could handle herself. Just like before at the abandoned complex, the thought of running went through her mind for a brief moment, but to where? Talon was the only life she knew; she would never be able get along on her own, and being in constant pain with no way to end it… well, it wasn't ideal.
So her only other option was to do as she was told, and do it exactly how Talon wanted.
Tracer started through the streets, keeping to the darker alleys; she figured it would be better if civilians didn't see her and start panicking. She blinked and clung to a nearby wall, pressing the button on her helmet to activate the heat signature display as she scanned the nearby buildings. There were multiple humans moving inside, but her target was not a human. The assassin continued to scan the heat signatures, eventually locating two omnics. Tracer blinked to the next wall, repositioning herself so she was facing the window and could see inside. She switched her helmet back to the normal view so she could identify the two omnics.
Her target was one of them.
With one more blink, Tracer went crashing through the window, sending glass shards scattering. Her gaze fell on her target as she slowly straightened up, and she was acutely aware of all the guns trained on her.
The target began to flee, and Tracer let out a yell, beginning to give chase, but was immediately met with a hail of bullets. The brunette quickly blinked backwards, clinging to the wall.
Get rid of them.
No, I'm only supposed to kill the target.
Tracer paused a moment before she blinked again, cutting through the nearby guns with her blades and rendering them useless. She blinked forward before they could react, skidding out into the hallway. A quick scan of the area didn't reveal anything, and she activated the heat signature display again.
Her target was currently running up the staircase, and Tracer began blinking up the walls instead of climbing the stairs themselves. She managed to just beat them up the stairs, sliding in front of them at the top. The two guards with them opened fire, driving the assassin back and forcing her to blink out of the way. She let out a yell as she blinked forward, tackling the guard hard enough to cause his head to hit the floor, knocking him out. She kicked the second guard, sending him tumbling down the stairs. She whipped around to locate her target, spotting the omnic just in time to see them entering a room. She blinked forward just as the door to the room slammed shut, causing her to ram into it.
Tracer let out a feral yell, attacking it with her blades, though they had little effect on the metal other than creating a shower of sparks. Once it became apparent that she wouldn't be getting through that way, Tracer took a step back, her chest heaving slightly as she examined the area.
I can't fail… I have to eliminate the target.
"We should be safe for the time being," Zenyatta said after the pounding on the door had stopped, and there was silence for a minute or two.
"Did you hear the sounds she made?" Mondatta said, sounding troubled. "She is in a state of distress and pain; whatever has been done to her, it is forcing her to behave this way."
"Sympathy for a would-be assassin?" Zenyatta understood where his brother was coming from though.
"You know as well as I that we cannot turn our backs on anyone, especially those who need us most—"
The window behind Mondatta suddenly shattered as Tracer launched herself through, landing between the brothers. Before Mondatta could react, Tracer let out another yell, blinking forward and tackling him around the middle, sending them both hurtling out the broken window.
As they were falling, Tracer began to relentlessly attack the omnic with her blades, causing the familiar dark substance to spatter against her armor. She knew they were almost to the ground, and she blinked away, clinging to a nearby wall and allowing the body to hit the ground with bone-chilling thud.
The brunette blinked to the ground and approached the motionless omnic, looking down at dark stains on his clothing.
You shouldn't have killed him.
I had to.
Why?
Because he was the target.
But he wasn't bad.
It doesn't matter. Dead is dead.
"Freeze."
Tracer paused at the voice, looking over to see a woman aiming a rifle at her. Her gaze fell on the familiar patch on her sleeve, and her eyes widened behind her helmet.
Overwatch.
Overwatch was the enemy. Overwatch needed to be eliminated. If this woman was Overwatch, then she needed to die.
-/-
They were too late.
They had only just arrived in King's Row that afternoon, and were supposed to meet with Mondatta that evening. Obviously someone had managed to beat them to the omnic, and Amélie had a feeling that Talon had struck again.
When Mondatta had gone crashing through the window, there was little they could have done to save him. Against all better judgment and against her very nature, Ana had decided to approach his killer, instructing Amélie to take up a higher cover position. Now, from her perch on a nearby roof, the French woman watched the two through her scope. She knew what her role was; if this assassin made one wrong move, she was to take the shot.
"Put your hands up," Ana said, keeping her rifle trained on the assassin as she approached. She had looked at that picture so many times that it had only taken her a moment to recognize the figure in front of her. This was the assassin responsible for the massacre at Antonio's estate, and yet… something had changed. The assassin had killed Mondatta, there was no doubt or condoning that, but the scene in Venice had been bloody and frenzied. This… this was calculated; Mondatta had been the sole target. There were no bodies strewn about, and the chaos inside indicated that many people were still alive. Even now, the assassin did not attack, even with a weapon trained on her.
So what changed in you?
Despite all that, Ana still had little confidence that she would be able to talk this assassin down, but she at least had to try.
Tracer kept her gaze trained on the sniper as she approached, her brain not registering what she was saying. All she knew was that this was Overwatch.
You're only here for the target—
Overwatch must DIE!
Amélie could read her body language, and she knew what the assassin was going to do before it even happened. Despite all that, something held her back, and she did something she had been trained never to do, something Ana had drilled into her time and time again.
She hesitated.
The consequences were immediate.
The assassin moved with unnatural speed and was on Ana in a second, before the sniper could even let out a cry or noise of distress. Amélie could see it all happening in slow motion through her scope, and she felt as though her limbs had been filled with lead; moving seemed impossible.
The assassin let out another feral noise before bringing the first blade down.
A spurt of blood, and Amélie's brain finally managed to contact her limbs, as though she'd touched her tongue to a car battery.
She fired off a shot, which caught the assassin's helmet and caused them to recoil, looking towards the source of the shot. Half of their helmet was now missing, and Amélie could see that it was a young woman.
Her eyes were frenzied, teeth bared. An expression of hate and rage so intense that Amélie held her breath, knowing that she was too far to be seen, but she felt that hate rock her to her core.
The assassin was a person; flesh and blood and breathing. A real person, not some machine.
"What have they done to you?"
The assassin let out another feral yell before she blinked away, and Amélie fired at her retreating back, missing by inches. The sniper paused for a moment before she grappled off the building, quickly running to her mentor's side.
"Captain!"
Ana was clutching the right side of her face, blood staining her hands and running down her skin and onto her clothes. There was so much blood… Amélie knew it was only a matter of time before the captain fell unconscious or bled out.
Gerard was lying in the bed motionless, a drop of blood falling every few seconds from the tip of his finger onto the floor, his blood was staining the sheets and it was her fault, her fault—
The French woman quickly pressed a hand to her ear as she desperately said, "Captain Amari is down, we need an emergency evacuation now!"
"You're late," Moira said as Tracer entered the transport, the door closing behind her. "I told you not to delay; next time we won't wait for you." She frowned slightly upon seeing the damage to Tracer's helmet; she had expected some sort of resistance, yes, but that was more than she'd anticipated.
Tracer didn't respond (not that Moira expected one), and the redhead let out a sigh.
"Did you eliminate the target?" Reaper asked.
Tracer nodded.
"We'll see soon enough," Moira said before she added, "Stay still." She approached the assassin and removed her bloodied blades, her brow furrowing slightly. She expected the darker blood spatter; the target had been an omnic, after all, but there was brighter blood as well. Human blood. "Tracer, I gave you very specific instructions to only kill the target."
Tracer held out her hand, which Moira noticed was closed tightly.
"What do you have?" Moira held her own hand up, and Tracer dropped what she had been holding.
Sitting in Moira's hand was an Overwatch patch, obviously ripped from an official uniform.
"Overwatch," Reaper growled. "Did they try to interfere? How many were there?"
"You know she can't answer that," Moira said, her gaze still on the patch. "But we'll know soon enough. Remove your helmet."
Tracer did so, and Moira took it from her, handing it over to Sombra. "Can you still pull the video from it?"
Sombra reached for a cord, plugging it into Tracer's helmet and typing for a few moments before the picture appeared on the monitor. "All right, let's see what our assassin was up to."
Tracer's brow furrowed as she watched the screen. They were watching the same thing she had seen… they were somehow able to see what she had done.
"Very resourceful," Reaper commented upon watching Tracer's method of extracting Mondatta from the building.
"And there's Overwatch," Moira said upon seeing said agent approach Tracer. "Captain Amari; she still hasn't hung it up, I see."
"Perhaps this experience will change her mind," Reaper added as they watched Tracer attack her.
The video suddenly cut out, and Moira frowned. "That must be when the helmet sustained heavy damage. Unfortunately we can't see who caused it." The redhead turned back to Tracer. "Did you see the second person?"
Tracer shook her head, letting out a low growl and swiping at the blood that was running down from her hairline and into her eye.
"Hold still," Moira said, catching the assassin's face and raising her hand, using her biotic healing to close the wound. "That will stop the bleeding at least."
"If Ana is injured, then Overwatch will be here in force soon enough," Reaper said. "We need to go before that happens, or we'll get caught in a city lockdown for sure."
Moira nodded, already taking mental notes of Tracer's condition and what she had seen on the video. The assassin had followed her orders better than Moira had expected; only Mondatta had been killed. Of course, the attack on Ana Amari could be understood; Reaper had made his distaste of Overwatch quite clear. It was only natural that Tracer would feel the urge to attack upon seeing any marked agents.
Moira was honestly surprised at how relieved she felt. Her hard work was finally paying off. All the doubt and second-guessing she had been receiving, and now she finally had something to show for it.
"So a job well done, wouldn't you say?" Sombra said as Moira sat down, feeling the transport lift off the ground.
"A success today, but we cannot congratulate ourselves now and become complacent. There is still much work left to be done." Moira looked over at Tracer, who was sitting on the floor, her gaze fixed on her hands. "Much work."