Reinhardt strolled the house alone, deep in thought and hoping everyone was asleep. He wished he could be one of them, but he just lay in bed and stared at the folders and reports sent to his holophone, trying to assemble the bravery to actually open all those he left unseen. He eventually deleted them, and regretted it almost immediately. Everything that Zarya had confronted him about were replaying in his mind, and all the other things that could happen in the reports filled the rest.

"Reinhardt"

"Oh" Reinhardt hid his grimace behind a blank slate before turning. "Zarya. I was looking for Angela, about her new suit"

"She's in her room with Lena, door locked. You want to interrupt, be my guess"

"Ah".

"It's about time me and you talked about those reports" Zarya motioned with her hand to follow, and began to lead the way to the living room.

Reinhardt swallowed, but knew that if he didn't follow he would look doubly as guilty. As they went deeper into the house, Reinhardt felt more and more like he was about to be led up against a wall and blindfolded.

Zarya instead brought him to the settee, and sat down on the chair opposite.

This is ridiculous. It's my own house! She can't force me to do anything!

"Now is the time to explain yourself" she motioned to the settee calmly. "And you will do so, if you have a good reason for those files to be kept safe from the world"

Reinhardt was brought out of his reverie, and sat meekly before Zarya like he was to have a counselling session.

"First of all, I never did any of those things in the report. What I said in the forest was true" He started.

"I noticed the reports never mentioned you. It was only ever Reyes, Morrison, Torbjorn and Ana"

"No" Reinhardt replied firmly. "The worst of the worst; the assassinations, that was always done by Reyes. The others only supplied smokescreens" Reinhardt looked down in shame. "I was always able to avoid the missions that disgusted me. They knew I knew too much, and could reveal everything if I wanted. They tried to justify the missions. They always sounded such weak excuses"

"Oh, how so?"

"The mission where we… they were planting drugs. They were mostly refugees from the Decimation, one of the excuses was that a possible biological weapon was released by… I'm not sure it was Pakistan or India really"

"No biological agents were released though. It was all Nuclear"

"Obviously. Everything was chaos though. It was the only mission I hesitated over. France and the UK are hardly as important as they think they are. Why do the really dirty stuff when they can leave that to the US and keep their budgets low?"

"And how did Overwatch try and justify the support for US backed dictators?"

"That was back when Morrison and Ana were the only permanent members, before Blackwatch took over the darker stuff. Overwatch was still in the early stages. We had a lack of oversight and even today our actions aren't told to the General Assembly or the other members of the Security Council. Our only mission objective was to crack down on Rebel Omnics, which opened us up to whatever missions the permanent members want us to do at their own discretion. Reyes' actions were completely secret. US helped set up a dictatorship in Brazil following the environmental fallout of the decimation. Then used Reyes to take out the leaders of rebels. At least, that's what the CIA reports say. A smokescreen was made with the Overwatch team acting as presidential security against "Omnic Radicals". As the USmedia focused on Overwatch, Reyes got busy. Twelve Labour Union leaders, two professional agitators and more Journalists that can be counted. No excuses. That's as far as I got in reading that one. I asked Ana once. Wish I hadn't"

"Using Overwatch as a smokescreen for Reyes seems rather excessive" Zarya probed.

"At the time it was just Morrison and Ana. Two highly trained UN employed soldiers with a messy command structure. The US took control of the mess and ran with it. Very easily to manipulate"

"What was the US's interest in Brazil?" Zarya felt she would know, but wanted to hear it from Reinhardt personally.

"Simple. The world economy was in chaos following the decimation. India was destroyed, what did you expect? The US needed another cheap labour economy for their businesses. TMFR especially. They had a lot of cheap gun factories in India. The Brazilian government was welcoming to the new factories, but the US wanted less regulation. So rather then persuade the Government they called the Government corrupt and repressive. They placed sanctions, the Military committed a coup, and then Overwatch was used as a smokescreen" Reinhardt closed his eyes. "God, it's like we're back in the cold war"

"Speaking of, Russia and China?"

"False flag operations to justify crackdowns in Ukraine and Xinjiang respectively. By having Overwatch do it we added an extra layer of secrecy"

"Another Smokescreen?"

"No. Basically they positioned us; or them, in Kyrgyzstan, supposedly for anti-drug measures and, yeah they burned down a couple Poppy fields, but why would they have shipments of low-quality assault weapons? They transported them across the border and gave them to local Uighur separatists and told them to go insane. The Uighur Separatists had been a thorn in the CCP's side for too long, and the public were getting sick of so much money wasted on a desolate piece of sand. Of course, Beijing was now "justified" in its crackdowns because every Xinjiang "Seperatist" Had guns, things got out of hand and now China can expel and ethnically cleanse Xinjiang with the excuse that every action of resentment from a people being repressed and forced into Internment camps is a danger to national security, with the public backing of course"

"Jesus" Zarya looked down at her feet. "You don't need to tell me about Ukraine. I imagine it wasn't so different"

"No. Only we were in Belarus that time" came the reply.

Zarya put her head in her hands, and breathed heavily. She knew he was telling the truth, but he was avoiding certain parts. Zarya knew more from the data, but it was horrible all the same.

"How come Pharah was never in the files?" Zarya finally asked. "The latest cover ups were done shortly after she joined, but she's never mentioned?"

"She gets a bad rep. Truth be told she was always a good soul with a bad habit of mouthing off. True, she said some things, and ignored some of the stuff that the Egyptian army did during the African Aerial war, but I think that was always to impress her mother" Reinhardt lightened up. "She was a good woman as well. Was"

Zarya nodded, it was as she expected. She had heard interesting rumours of Faheera planning to leave Overwatch, and gave her advice when it came to it. She motioned to the holophone.

"Files these sensitive are usually destroyed. Why did you keep them?"

"Could never bring myself to delete them until today" Came the shamed reply "Kept telling myself I would read them one day"

"And you never did because?"

"Because how would you like it to know you're friends were doing that" Reinhardt snapped. "Me and Ana were making plans to move in together! Torbjorn has been my best friend for years and Bridgit… Verdammt. My god-daughter is little more than a thug. How did I let that happen?" He sobbed as he tried to hold back his tears, and thankfully accepted the tissue offered by Zarya.

"Danke" he said. Zarya watched him closely. "Ah, there's no point hiding it. The more you ignore the easier it is to pretend that it doesn't happen. That it somehow doesn't affect you. That it's not people you know doing it. That only monsters are capable of doing monstrous things" He shook his head. "I should have known. I should have left years ago. God forgive me"

Zarya's face was stone, neither condemning, nor supporting. Simply accepting.

"The more you ignore the dark stuff" she said. "The more it builds. Eventually it bursts. That's the difference between peace and justice. To be Just means to never ignore such things, while seeking the easy way to peace would ignore all this to prevent causing a stir" she stood.

"You've given me a lot to think about," she told him.

"Oh" Reinhardt replied miserably. "What's about?"

"Zens replacement" Zarya replied, and Reinhardt's head shot up.

"Lucio and Angela are great people. You have a lot of catching up if you want to be considered as our fifth member. The other one I'm bringing on is a gem, but she'll learn" She brought out her holophone and moved it to the data she had downloaded. Then she left the phone on the table. "You know what to do. You're smart enough not to try and delete them like you did before"

She left the phone with him, for him to ignore or to accept.