Widowmaker looked down from her perch at the milling people like ants.

Fools. They know not what they are nor what they do.

Stop it! Just stop it! screamed the child inside.

No, you pitiful thing. You cannot protect yourself. You allowed yourself to be taken in by refugees and then hurt yourself. You cannot be trusted with this body. Her face ached from the strange expression that'd fallen over it - a cruel smile.

She didn't remember being this explicitly malicious before, but then again, she didn't like to think about anything other than the present. Too much happened in the present to be distracted by anything else. Her focus had returned with her fulfillment of overtaking this body from the weak usurper.

Huddled atop the west corner of the easternmost Parliamentary building, Widowmaker watched people off all types drift lazily in rivulets from the building set, wondering which were faithful to her organization. She could not go back to them, not after all this time and the Usurper's actions, but she could very well do Talon's work on her own.

You know Reyes has taken over Talon. Please… You know his intentions are different.

Widowmaker brushed away the child's pleas.

She had no loyalty to Reyes, and she knew very well that he would fall eventually. Talon as an organization was her home - her core.

She'd been taught to not contradict Reyes despite the sour flavor he brought to her tongue and the metallic remembrance of blood on her teeth, but she did refuse to acknowledge him as her authority… within reason. She wouldn't deny his authority over her in position, but acknowledging him as Talon's leader? Never. Her duty wasn't to authorities. It was to the people that upheld the revolution against those like her, and if she could be only a fragment of help against the surging tides, then she would do her part until she was no longer functional.

Without irritation, Widowmaker unfolded her legs and squinted against the glow of streetlights clicking on with the setting sun. If she had her visor or her rifle…

Qui est comme ça, et voilà comment il va, snapped the voice inside.

Widowmaker didn't have to piece out the wording. She knew the sentiment.

She should have been able to stifle that obnoxious voice within, but it had reemerged in the last few days louder than ever. It had taken enormous willpower to suppress it enough to ignore it for the most part, but that didn't stop the Usurper from knocking - no - beating on her mind's doors.

What am I doing here?

The question bored its way though Widowmaker's mind, an insidious worm threatening to eat her alive, and her brain felt feverish. She tried to cast it aside, but pain in her hand bloomed like a time lapse photo, dull flares centralizing on a point - an angry gash from concrete, still yet to fully heal.

Amélie stirred underneath the pain that blossomed so furiously, and Widowmaker clenched her teeth, trying to hold the reins in her ever weakening hands. She tried to hold onto the pain - the reins - to help it ground her until she could feel it no longer.

Instead, the pain brought back searing memories electrified by currents Reyes forced through her until she was nearly unconscious. Unconscious… Sleep… sleep…

Amélie burst forth, feeling her body snap back to her like a rubber band snapping back against skin. She shuddered in the cold and pulled her jacket tighter around her. Her mind felt foggy as if she'd overslept a great deal, and her muddled thoughts seemed dull and too blended, unable to separate thought, action, and spatial awareness.

How long had it really been? How long had she been out?

Her stomach rolled with a tremendous groan and she mimicked the noise in protest. It's been too long. I had to leave but…

She strained her dizzy mind, pushing through the detached mental fog to find out where she'd come from. More specifically, what routes she took to get to the roof of a very heavily surveilled building.

More importantly, what did I do while I was out?


"When things pop off, they're gonna really-"

"EXPLODE?"

Lena sighed for what felt like the billionth time. Junkrat had been interjecting exactly when and where everything needed to blow up, which was everywhere and all the time.

She looked over the plans once more at Emily's house, feeling a little guilty that they were leaving while she was at work, but she couldn't sit around and wait. Things had to happen today.

A flash:

Emily's soft hair tickling her own bare stomach.

A gasp.

A name - something between Emily and Amélie.

Lena felt her face burn like the hardpan dirt in the scorching sun. There were a lot of reasons that she wanted to leave while Emily wasn't home. She didn't want to have to look Emily in the eye after the night they had. Emily had tried for some in the morning, too, but Lena declined politely as she could, saying that she had to get ready to meet the boys and be off, but by the time she'd gotten out of the shower, Emily was already off to work at the warehouse.

She collected herself when she saw the judgmental mask of Mako Rutledge gazing down upon her, waiting for her to finish her statement she'd started seemingly an eternity ago.

"As I was saying," she wheezed then cleared her throat of embarrassment and lingering lust. "When things pop off, they're really gonna pop. If I figure right, there's probably two hundred in just the central hall and approximately another hundred in the surrounding wings."

"small."

Lena nodded at the big boy. "Yeah, it's a small base, all things considered. From what Emily-" Emily moaning Lena's name like she had all those years ago. "From… what Emily said, the base was intended to be expanded into a full fledged base, but it never got off the ground after the territories in Australia collectively decided to become a neutral continent."

"Even small things can make a big, big boom!"

It hadn't taken much to convince Junkrat, especially after Lena had mentioned that there were probably new weapons and improved explosives that he could salvage, sell, or otherwise tinker with. The word "weapons" hadn't gotten much of a reaction other than a thoughtful chin-rubbing, but the word "explosives"... well…

It hadn't taken another word from Lena to convince the puppy-man.

"When do you think we should get going, since we all kinda know the schems?"

"Now!" shouted Junkrat despite Lena and Mako standing right next to his face hole.

Lena cringed away from him but nodded her agreement. She didn't want to waste any more time than she already had.

What happened to me to make me so slow finding Amélie? Don't I care?

The answer was that she knew very well that she needed to take care of herself and find her own way of doing things rather than rely on any kind of training, but she also knew the answer to her second question - yes. Something within her was convinced that Amélie was as dead as her long forgotten friends at the organization, but another part of her hoped that she was safe somewhere or at least out of sight. Confirmation of death would probably be the only thing that Lena would find in Alice Springs, and she wanted to put off that revelation as long as she possibly could. She also faced the fact that Amélie might be safe somewhere, out of harm's way and out of Talon's servers, which would make Lena's whole journey near pointless.

Sombra wouldn't do that, would she?

Probably not.

Sombra, Lena thought, had a nasty habit of popping up in unexpected places, taking too long to respond, and sending people on what felt like useless missions, but she would never cause any intentional hardship… unless you really pissed her off somehow. Lena was pretty sure she hadn't pissed off Sombra directly, so she felt partially safe from the small woman's wrath.

"I can move out as soon as you guys can." Lena looked around the small house where her former girlfriend lived and sighed. She didn't want to flee into the desert like Emily had done to her that first time around, but she couldn't see another way this time. But… she would come back.

"Stop being so selfish, Lena," cried a multitude of voices in her mind, an angelic cacophony of the worst kind - the actual biblical kind… not the fun kind. It scraped at her mind and tore at her heart.

She didn't know what she did or said to attract the attention of both Junkrat the oblivious and the watchful Mako, but she felt Jameson's hand on her shoulder. "You look a little…"

"bad," Mako finished.

Lena laughed, but she heard how weak and tinny it sounded. It sounded like the laugh of a child right before they burst into tears, much like she felt right this second. "I think I'm ready to just… get going again."

You're going to have to stop running sometime, Lena.

Lena pushed back against her rational mind. Yeah, but now, I have to go find her. I've waited too long already.

Junkrat fidgeted and clicked his straps with his flesh hand and then started pinging his prosthetic leg on the floor. "Then what are we waiting for?"

With that, Lena and the boys started gathering their few things and threw them in the car to fly into the desert at top speeds. She'd not forgotten how the wind felt in her hair, but she did forget how bad her carsickness could be. They stopped more than once on the side of the road for Lena to wretch and gag. About forty-five minutes in, Mako spun the car in one direction, throwing them widely off course to stop at a gas station and pay for her a ginger ale and some crackers. He also pulled a sealed roll of antacids from his pocket, and she was mostly positive that they were only barely retaining their shape in the wrapper, crushed beyond all hope or repair.

She smiled up at the big man who only nodded in response, his face (thankfully) obscured by his usual mask. Roadie, the only one allowed to do any driving in the old, scary car, barreled down the road again and into a storm brewing on the horizon.

Junkrat began to get testy with the swollen, bruised clouds hanging overhead rumbling out their warning call. Lightning laced between the clouds, connecting them with blue-white umbilical cords, and the loud cymbal swish of rain cranked up over the engine's roar. It was only with the rain that Lena remembered how Junkrat was so protective of his non-waterproofed prosthetics. She peeled off her jacket, though sweaty, and threw it at him.

Her chronal accelerator glowed blue in the encroaching artificial darkness, and they all sat in silence, looking more and more like ghosts as they barreled toward the few stark, black buildings on a barren red landscape in the distance.


Amélie was waiting for her, and Lena knew it. Whether in life or in death. If it was in death, Lena would have to face the way she'd always been with Amélie - off to the side and pining for all eternity, but that would be okay for Lena, as long as she saw her Amélie again.

"The only one allowed to take her life is me."

And if it came to that

It scared her at first, but now, she thought she could make peace with that. She sure as fuck didn't want to die by Reaper's hand. She didn't want to die by his minions' hands either, but if it had to be…

You're getting stuck in that thought process again, Lena.

Lena shrugged off the comment made by Zenyatta's wise voice. She didn't want to die, but she didn't want to be without Amélie… At least… Not for long… Another part of her drove her to spite everything that had happened to Amélie. She wanted to live long and be peaceful to live for Amélie - to give a part of her life to Amélie to make up for all the years she'd been in so much pain.

A building creaked in the battering rain as they crept along on foot, and Lena jumped a little, as did Junkrat who went for a cannister on his harness. She put a hand out and steadied him and gave the unflappable Mako Rutledge a dirty look at his total lack of a reaction.

The buildings surrounding the low, central concrete structure in the center were all but completely destroyed. From a distance, the town just looked dark and low, not completely decimated, but there were still buildings there that smoked lightly in the falling rain - chemical fire and oil. Acrid smells drifted up through the abandoned streets, and tire tracks dug deep in the earth, ridged scars on the earth's sunburned skin.

They knew you were coming, whispered the most rational voice in her mind.

This is a trap. It was Emily. She sold you out again. She's going to feed you to the wolves, screamed the least rational, most paranoid part of her.

Lena pushed down her feelings like a good girl, focusing more on the mission than her own feelings.

They torched this hours ago but kept the fires burning to make sure that there wouldn't be anything left behind other than husks of buildings. She noted as another beam crumbled and sent cinders flying like dying lightning bugs. That means there are others still here even though they've mostly mobilized.

"this is a garrison city."

Junkrat hushed him more than Lena wanted, but the big man continued anyway.

"i've seen something like this before. they move the major force out and fall back in."

Lena caught his drift. Chill despite the hot rain made her hairs stand on end. False retreat.

"It's a trap," she breathed.

She tensed, her hands creeping closer to her pulse pistols, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to do too much damage unless she was close, and she didn't have proper armor, but then again, neither did her boys.

But.

Nothing happened as they inched closer to the central building - low-lying, unadorned thing it was.

No troops filed in.

No shots arched over the desolate landscape.

Nothing stirred except the three people in hot pursuit of phantom knowledge.

They reached a back entrance where Junkrat wiggled excitedly and was ready to blow the lock, but Lena tried the doorknob first, keycard still stuck in a scanner in hasty forgetfulness. The door swung inward on silent hinges, and the dim light of the stormy outside illuminated an even darker interior.

Lena started forward, plucking out a pistol and raising it up a good bit to prepare for an attack, but Roadhog's chains clinked and tinkled loudly in the quiet and he put a heaving, meaty hand on her shoulder.

She glanced up at him, and he was pointing to himself. "tank."

But she knew he was smiling under that fuck-off terrifying mask. She could hear it in his voice.

He shoved his way by and raised his scrap gun, a thing by his side that Lena hadn't seen him use even once in a threat. She followed him, unable to see around him but trusting him, and Junkrat followed from behind.

The tinkling chains of Roadhog's hook would far forewarn any still in the building, and it drove Lena nuts. She started to skirt around the big man and caught a shift in color out of the corner of her eye as the three of them passed through a doorframe.

Without thinking, she blinked, taking a step forward and launching herself several feet, the breath coming out of her in a whuf. She found herself standing a good bit away from her partners and she hunkered, peeking around another concrete corner to find a man in a lab coat clicking frantically on all panels he could his little hands on. Lena slipped away much to Roadhog's disgruntlement, and crept behind the man, pistol raised to the back of his head. He froze as the weapon brushed his short hair. Lena leaned in with a cold little laugh.

This man was helping people stay on this destructive path that would surely kill them all if it wasn't stopped. Ultimately, this man was helping Reyes, the man who took Amélie so so far away from her. Who took Gérard away from her. Who took her family from her.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" Her voice sounded impish even to her own ears but she didn't mind. She reveled in making this small man feel even smaller.

The man's hands lifted off the panel in front of him. He started to turn.

But he didn't make it that far.

Lena Oxton pulled the trigger.

Large, hot droplets of blood caught her face and arms on the back splatter, and a mist painted the wall and control panel crimson. It was quick and probably painless. Probably only painful for a split second before he died.

Old Overwatch training kicked in almost instantaneously. Don't feel sorry for the enemy.

She didn't. That's what scared her. She knew that she'd have to deal with her cold blooded killing later, but now…

Amélie.

She poked her head back around from the small control room and blinked back fast, a giant rusty hook flying toward her at top speed. After the hook passed and snatched back, Lena poked her head out again.

"sorry," said a nearly unrepentant Roadhog.

"You almost killed me!" Lena shouted against her better judgment. She knew damn well that would just attract attention. But then again, this is a good bottleneck.

"But he didn't!" interjected a helpful Junkrat.

Lena scowled over at Junkrat, her heart pounding a steady, quick beat in her ears and temples. It was so loud she almost missed the heavy boot clomping that came from down the next hallway, an uneven sound that broke regulation march and sounded more like panicked running than anything organized.

Why would Reyes leave behind his least capable?

She knew why.

Culling the herd.

She shot a frantic look back at her boys, and Junkrat smiled wickedly with a reproachful glare from Roadhog, which deterred him exactly none.

He giggled a near mad scientist laugh and pulled an expandible beartrap from his harness - an inch thick disk with a metal ridge- and threw it far, farther than Lena thought possible for such a skinny man. Midair, the trap unfurled into a relatively large trap, teeth gleaming in the clinical light of the base's fluorescents. Just as it landed, a small force of men burst through the doorframe and barreled toward them all until two got caught on the trap, triggering it and getting their legs chomped off.

Lena wished she hadn't seen that.

She really wished she hadn't seen that.

To put it so lightly in her mind was the only way she could stay focused on the task at hand rather than fade out mentally, but her hands still felt numb as the blood spray showered so eerily similar to the man she'd killed only minutes before. But… she'd watched friends die by her side, covering her in their blood. Wasting a few soulless flesh bags didn't bother her. No...

Their screams. Their screams are what unnerved her most. They screamed and shrieked like the damned, clawing at their dark clad comrades beside them only to get bullets in each of their heads… by their own friends' hands.

She found herself in a crouch by Roadhog, who the men trained their rifles on first. On the other side, Junkrat had pulled out his frag launcher with one hand and the detonator for his concussion mine in the other. Suddenly on seeing how fearsome and well equipped they were, she was very, VERY glad these men were on her side.

There were only ten men, though, which was going to be less than no match for the three of them, even if ten would have given her some shit by herself. They might have given Roadhog a hard time alone. And they probably wouldn't have even touched Junkrat by himself, but against all three, there was no way they could get out alive. Three people had already died.

Lena put the pistol grip of her pulse pistol on Roadhog's massive side in a hang on kind of gesture.

"We'll give you lads one minute before we completely lay you the fuck out. You can leave, and no one will stop you. If you turn on us though, you won't make it out."

She must have sounded incredibly forceful or Roadhog cracking his knuckles by gripping his scrap gun must have done some convincing. Three men lowered their weapons and four others wavered, but three held their ground, eyes hard as steel and as flat as the concrete floor underneath their feet.

The three began to depart, backing away slowly, and Lena started feeling a little better about not shedding as much blood until the hardened three turned, shot, and returned to having their weapons trained on the formidable trio. The uncertain four straightened a little as their comrades' blood showered them in deceptively artistic scarlet puffs and bathed them in terror of compliance to Talon over any rational thought of fleeing.

Shit…

Lena gripped her pistols a little more firmly and felt her legs become tight, ready to fly into battle or flee. And, as she'd become accustomed, her left leg panged with a familiar hurt. She held onto that hurt and made the first move.

She dashed to the side and heard the men behind her shift and start firing - the ka-chunk, ka-chunk of Junkrat's frag launcher and the sha-ping of the slow firing scrap gun in Roadhog's hand. But she couldn't worry about them now. She had to worry about not catching a stray bit of garbage, sure, but they were big boys. She threw herself in a blink, arms drawn back as to not smack herself in the face when she stopped, and trotted the few steps out of The Blue Space and behind the loose formation outside the doorway. If anything, she could use bodies as shields from any stray grenades.

Her arms raised and her fingers pulled triggers as if someone else moved her body for her. Blue warped halls and distorted bodies from her blinks. Her movements mimicked a marionette, moving and sliding in ways that didn't feel quite natural. Blurs of motion. Quick taps of triggers. Loud, concussive blasts. Her fingers went cold on the triggers as hot, gelatinous organ meat bespeckled her face and hands.

Had she done it?

Had it been spray from her companions' fire?

Lena descended from a blink and onto the back of one remaining Talon grunt, and his gun skittered away as he toppled face first to the floor. Her knee was firmly planted between his shoulder blades. If she remembered right, he was one of the less willing participants. Did this man deserve to die? She looked at the smooth face against the concrete floor. No, did this child deserve to die? In a split second, she had her decision made for her.

With an unanticipated hardness entering this boy's eyes, his jaw moved in a way that made Lena's heart stop. Before he started convulsing, she knew what he'd done before she could stop it. His neck cracked and his chest heaved under her body, snot and spit and foam coming from a bloody mouth connecting to a stream from a bloody nose. The whites of his eyes were all that were left of the green that had been before, and Lena threw herself backward in disgust and shock and horror.

Cyanide was so… archaic and barbaric

She didn't think Reyes would have reinstituted this…

She found herself scrambling on her hands and pushing herself further backward away from the last convulsions of the man who was barely older than a boy.

Lena found gaps in her memory later that she couldn't quite place what happened, but her memories linked together Mako scooping her up off the floor and dusting her off, Junkrat giving her back her jacket to cover the leavings of the shirt she'd all but ripped off trying to get the blood off her. The suit underneath was made of the same material as her typical orange and yellow suit, a material that let liquid of any variety roll right off without staining. Her tanktop hadn't been of that material and was completely drenched from the rain outside and the bloodbath of which she'd partaken.

The next consistent memory was standing in front of a large console, three more bodies lying about, but not from her hand. She didn't think, at least.

She heard the violent crack of Roadhog's shrapnel gun echo from down a hallway and winced. Her hands still felt warm from blood spatter even though she (at some unknown point) had cleaned them. In the dark screens, the panes below her fingertips reflected her face - spattered with new bloody freckles and smeared with darkness, probably more blood or machine oil. She reached up with shaking fingers and touched her face, but the freckles of someone else's life were immovable, dried and sealed as the fates of their former owners. The blank panels looked back at her judgmentally, and eerie echoes of Junkrat's mirthful laughter rang out in the chamber just off of the intelligence chamber.

The chamber she was in, other than a wall full of screens, only had ten desks, all immaculately cleaned and empty, a large central panel where she now stood, and a large folding table with stacks and stacks of loose papers wedged between file folders and manila envelopes.

Her fingers prodded every button and switch, but there were no labels on any buttons. Finding the power switch proved impossible, so with a heavy, defeated sigh over the chorus of Roadhog's thunderous and rumbling laughs complimented by the whipcrack bursts of Junkrat's high pitched squeals of glee she went over to the long plastic table and kicked it lightly before pulling off a thick folder and sitting in the table's shadow. The folder in her hands proudly held a smiling, bright face of a small child, sitting atop a very large, four legged sentry unit. Lena turned the page but quickly found that all of that folder was dedicated to a child genius and the sentry - OR1[5]4, otherwise known as Orisa. The only page that interested her past a mild intriguement was the one that showed Lúcio Correia dos Santos gesturing wildly in what looked like Numbani, but Lena had only been there once so she had to piece together context clues from the file. That particular bit of sleuthing hadn't been very productive.

She gumshoed her way instead into another folder than continue reading on the mysterious child prodigy. This one had a familiar face of a very foxy but very dangerous woman with purple in her hair and spite in her eyes. The folder was nearly empty save for selfie-esque photos of her flipping off cameras and making smug looks. One picture did intrigue Lena though. A grainy picture of a small girl with wide, frightened eyes standing with her back against a wall as large omnics stood around her. Lena frowned and plucked out the picture, folding it neatly and putting it in her sports bra.

She sifted through approximate fifteen other folders of varying interest levels until she settled on one loose leaf of paper wedged at the bottom of the third stack. This one had a purple card with a skull and triangle shapes around the eyesockets paper-clipped to it. Sombra's calling card…

The leaf of paper was simple with very little description, a large picture taking up most of the simple sheet. A gritty, grainy picture that looked like it was from a traffic camera. Lena felt a chill the depth of an arctic blast frost over every vein in her body as though she'd been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

The curve of an overly bony shoulder. The high cheekbones and a haughty smirk of cruelty. Grainy but there. Grainy but so very there.

Then Lena realized that she hadn't anticipated something other than death or Amélie going on without her. She hadn't anticipated this.

Her cold, hard eyes. Eyes that could be as warm and soft as honey in summertime were not. Instead, they were cold, flat amber threatening to encase Lena and destroy her.

Shit…