You wouldn't expect a monastery to have a private helicopter, but wadda ya know?
I'm standing with Reaper outside when it lands, spitting snow and whipping my hair against my face. The weatherproof doors slide open, revealing the ex-Blackwatch agent as he glows in the half-light.
"…Reyes," he says, as though he still can't quite believe it.
"Genji," Reaper nods. "You're looking very…green."
"Is that how you are choosing to begin this?" I would say Genji snaps it, but everything about his tone is perfectly neutral. If you didn't know any better, you'd never guess that this guy was meeting his former mentor whom he'd thought dead for half a decade.
"What do you want me to say?" Reaper says gruffly. "'By the way, I've been alive this whole time, sorry I didn't call?'"
"It would be a start." Genji's faceplate glares, somehow, and Reaper snorts. "The only reason I am here despite your flimsy explanations is your supposed need for medical attention."
The helicopter finally whirs down and the omnic pilot gets out. Another one, presumably a paramedic, appears behind Genji, and he gives them a nod.
"Assuming you weren't lying about that just to orchestrate a reunion…?" he prompts stiffly, and Reaper grunts.
"She's inside."
Finally the tension breaks enough that Genji and his omnic buddies move. Reaper and I follow them inside, through the lobby that had been wisely cleared of omnic body parts. Still, Genji casts a look around as he helps lift Widow onto the stretcher.
"…What have you gotten yourself into, Reyes?"
"I ask myself that every day," Reaper says. His mask turns to me ever so slightly. I whistle and try to fade into the background.
The uncomfortable electricity between the two men lasts the entire time it takes to get Widow to the chopper. And the takeoff. And the ride back to wherever-the-hell Genji sprung up from. I spend it sitting near Widow, watching as she falls into an uneasy sleep and resisting the urge to brush a strand of black hair that's fallen into her face. By the time we're cresting mountaintops I'm literally dying from the nuclear radiation that's just pouring off the former Blackwatch agents.
We land in Nepal, and Widow is immediately whisked away, prompting both relief and a new sort of anxiety. I don't follow, but I can't stand another minute between Genji and Reaper either, so instead I roam the monastery in solitude. At first, I'm surprised that the omnics are letting me just wander free, but I remind myself that the monks have no reason to see us in suspicion. I'd like to keep it that way. Even if we aren't with Talon anymore, the whole "wanted murderers" thing probably won't go over well with a bunch of pacifists. Plus, I'm pretty sure Widow's enemies among the omnics would be plentiful if they realized she was the one who offed Mondatta.
Snow glitters and swells, catching the morning light. I can see the sun rising in between the windows, turning the sky an ambrosia pink. It settles in squares and against my skin, though no warmth is able to penetrate the wind.
The corridors are long and mostly empty. The few omnics I see aren't speaking any human language, opting instead for the little pings over private networks, to which an outsider has no clue except the faint feeling they're being left out of a joke. Giant golden statues line the paths, all floating precariously. I would not like to be around if those anti-grav fields ever lose power.
After a winding while I've found myself in the central chamber. I guess you can't call it an altar really, since I'm pretty sure Buddhism doesn't do the whole transforming blood thing. Or I guess…not Buddhism? I don't know—I never really paid attention to omnic religion. I only need to hear the phrase "pass into the Iris," to get some heebie-jo-jeebies.
There's a small bench, inset into the wall and facing down the mountain. I don't really realize what I'm doing until I've pulled open my data files and am thumbing through them, reassuring myself with their presence now that I finally find myself alone. I was able to sneak back into Shíwǔ Gāo (after the nerve agent wore off, of course) and scrub the place clean before Genji showed, but here there wasn't much more that I hadn't gotten from my initial scan. At least the side-trip gave me a little peace of mind.
"Miss?"
The question snaps me back to reality—I immediately panic-close tabs like I'm a fourteen-year-old boy when he hears his mother come home—but when I get a hold of myself, it's not some suburban woman in her mid forties, but another omnic, waiting patiently near the side of the bench.
"Hola, Sparky," I grin, completely innocently. "How can I help you?"
"Your friend is stable, if you'd like to see her."
I draw in air through my teeth. Do I? Tough question, since I know going and standing over Widow's sick bed isn't going to make her wake up any faster. Looking at her might also just make me depressed. Honestly the more I stay away from the monks, the less chances they have to make guesses about me.
"Sure," the words fall out of my mouth. "Why not?"
Back through the corridors, and although the stone halls are mostly open to the elements, they're cleared of snow. Either the wind is kind to the architecture or the monks do a pretty nifty job of keeping it clean. The monk finally takes me somewhere that could be considered "inside," and the heat radiating from a central lamp reminds me what it's like to not be freezing my ass off.
I stop taking off my coat mid-zip.
Widow's there, sleeping on a covered pallet and breathing steadily, but above her is something my mind can only process as magic. There's a little ball, a sphere of beautiful golden light, hovering over her like how I always imagined faeries would look. The sphere is tethered to her, a bare bulb hanging from a single wire, only in a world where gravity pulls it skyward.
"What." I stare at the sphere. The sphere stares back.
"Greetings, I was just-"
"Ahhh!" I shout, leaping away from the sudden voice. I'd been so absorbed with Widow's soul floating out her body, I hadn't noticed the omnic sitting in the corner of the room.
He glides forward. "I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you."
"No yeah. It's uh…fine." I place a hand over my heart and try to shove it back in my chest. "Just a little on edge. So um…" I look between the omnic and Widow. "Mind explaining…the thing?"
I gesture at The Orb.
"Ah, yes. Do not worry, it is perfectly harmless." To show it, he moves his hand slightly, and The Orb sways over Widow. "Gabriel Reyes was interested in it too, but I assure that though my methods esoteric, they are not used without precaution."
"…I see." So The Orb is his doing. I've heard of nanotech like this before, but never used quite so…homebrew. Now that it's not so menacing, I slip into my Meeting New People smile. "Whatever works up here, you know~?" I fall into a chair placed conveniently next to Widow's pallet. "You the temple medic, then?"
"Indeed. I am Zenyatta." He gives a slight bow. "And I do not think anyone has said this to you yet, but the Shambali welcome you."
"Shambali!" I snap my fingers. "That was it. I knew it was something musical."
Despite not having a face, Zenyatta looks amused. As he walks(?) over towards Widow's head, he says, "Your friend is quite the case. There is some extensive genetic modification, and I am working on removing the toxin from her since her body seems incapable of doing it on its own."
A sour look crosses my lips, one that I can't fight down. I usually try not to think about what they've done to Widow, what they've…made her. Personally, she seems at peace with who she is now, but that doesn't mean I'm entirely comfortable with it. My own modifications are one thing, but extensive physical reconditioning after mentalreconditioning never sits quite right. Ugh, this is why I don't dwell on it. After all, if she'd never gone through it all, we wouldn't have met, right?
Whatever. Selfish way to think about it or no, at least I'm better than those pendejos. They made her so strong, yet so breakable—a person that can shatter at the slightest touch. The amount of times she'd had to be wheeled into the infirmary numbered in the dozens, and that was just as long as I've known her.
It makes me wonder how much longer Talon planned to get some use out of her before throwing her out like a broken toy.
I feel a hand on my own. "Do not worry, my friend. She is in good care. In time, we will be able to wake her up again."
"Pshh," I wave, trying my best to sound nonchalant. "I believe you doc. Besides, she's been through worse."
Zenyatta tilts his head at me. "There is no need to suppress your worry, my friend. It is only natural to be anxious over the future of those you love."
I snort. "Love is a strong word. I'd go with…Fond acquaintanceship."
Why do I feel like he's humoring me when he looks at me like that? "I saw you and Gabriel Reyes both, when you were departing from the helicopter. People express their love differently. Some worry themselves to death over those they care about, others distance themselves, afraid of losing what they have."
Gently pulling my hand away, I tell him, "Alright doc, you've made your point."
A small robotic hum replies, but he leaves me alone after that. I still spend another few minutes with Widow, just making sure The Orb isn't some eldritch eye of deceit, and thinking Zenyatta probs shouldn't make assumptions on people he's just met.
I mean, feelings? Gross.
"You and Genji done having your heart to heart?" I ask Reaper when I find him, lurking in a village further down the mountain. "I assume that's what you were doing this whole time."
Reaper huffs like the grumpy baby he is, sinking further into the shadows. "…Something like that."
"You're going to have to offer up a little more insight búho," I say, pacing casually around him. "Unless you want me to go ask the cyborg himself~?"
Reaper grunts, and I can tell it's with barely restrained exasperation that he doesn't rub his temples. "He's…tolerating us. I've told him enough that he's not pestering me anymore, but things aren't exactly peachy."
"Eh, to be expected. You haven't let slip where we've come from, I hope? Wouldn't be good for word of Talon's destruction to come through the grapevine and have the Shambali put two and two together.
"No," he affirms. "Not that. But bits and pieces of the truth, enough to keep him off my back." And Widow in his care, but he leaves the last part unsaid.
Together, we look over the morning bustle of the Nepal village, people going about their everyday lives. None of them are fleeing anywhere, or uncovering some giant conspiracy—if the world ends, they'll be the last to know. I think when I was younger, I used to be jealous of folks like that. Now I just think it's sad.
"This whole reunion making you reconsider your list?" I ask him offhand as a woman lays down some fresh bread at a stall. "I mean, considering you haven't tried to make a murder-pass as of yet."
Reaper seethes, agitated smoke rolling off of him. "I'm…putting a pause on the list. For the moment." It feels like he's eyeing me. "Your little escapade is going to take up a lot of my Designated Revenge Time."
"Sorry about that," I say, not sorry at all. "But when this is all done, at least he's right here. Easy access."
At first I think I've ended the conversation. Reaper goes back to watching the bread-seller, and I stick a bit of gum in my mouth.
"Genji," Reaper says, suddenly picking up on the conversation again, "was…never on the list. Blackwatch, not Overwatch."
I hmm. Not as I'd guessed, but not altogether surprising either. He's always had a spot for his team. At one point, he even convinced himself that McCree could be persuaded our way when the going got tough. When he first called Genji (after a brief shouting match where we couldn't get the signal out and were both too dumb to realize Widow's scrambler was still on), the way he'd talked into the phone had almost sounded…resigned. I hope that in the ever changing mish-mosh that is Gabe's loyalties, Widow and I get the fond nostalgia that he's allotted for Genji and McCree, instead of getting tossed in the Morrison bin.
After he's stewed in his self-imposed mission a bit longer, I remind him of my own. "It might be good to get out of here for a while. Arouse less suspicion. We don't have to dodge questions if we're not here to be asked."
He looks over to where I've fitted myself against his side. "You've got somewhere in mind." Not a question.
"I've been looking through the data I got from the center. Another target." Not a good one. Barely a lead, and I'll need a long time to sort through the terabytes of data I've collected from Talon, but it's a good enough excuse for now. "How do you feel about a little detour to Australia?"
"…Let me go buy some sunglasses."
I knew he wouldn't need much convincing. No matter how worried he is about Widow, he's just as anxious about this place as I am.
I blow a bright pink bubble. He's the closest thing I have to someone I can trust, which is both sad and unwise. But what are you gonna do? "Nice. Hazmat suit while you're at it, though."
The monks, after some…persuading, are willing to loan us a transport craft that can get us to Australia and back with minimal amounts of radiation poisoning. Genji, bless his heart, tried to finagle us into telling him what we're doing in the world's armpit. Reaper quickly breaks him of that, and I think the argument eventually comes down to that we're not going to drop off the face of the Earth as long as Widow's still here in pacifist-prison. That, and I slipped the monks a cool 3K to use their shit while Genji wasn't looking, so they were more than happy to pressure him to give up his line of questioning. I wonder what they're going to use the money for. Probably another giant floating statue.
I catch Reaper with his mask off, just before we go. My mental autopilot takes me to Widow's room—refusing to acknowledge how cheesy a 'just-in-case goodbye' is—only to find he has the same idea. He's sitting near the head of her now cot, watching her chest rise and fall with an expression I can't quite place. That might be because his face is hardly human, let alone readable.
The mass of scar tissue seems to sway even as I look at it, the mouth full of more teeth than should be possible. I've caught glimpses of it enough times that it doesn't catch me off my guard, but it still manages to be unsettling.
"Ready to go, Gabe?" I ask, making myself known with the fizzle of my camouflage.
The only response I get is a beleaguered sigh. The pause stretches on and is just threatening to become awkward when Reaper sighs a second time and flips his mask down. Subconsciously, it's a comfort. Not because his condition is particularly horrific, but because I've long ago come to think of the bleached owl-mask as his "real" face.
"Let's blow this place."
I don't realize how huge a relief it is to be gone from the temple until we're 1500ft up and we're chipping the corner of India. The two of us are bad at hiding it, what with the way we melt into the seats, our bodies taking more space as the distance grows (And that's metaphorical only in my case).
We shouldn't have left Widow as a bargaining chip. The only reason she's good as a bargaining chip is because anyone who talks with Reaper for more than five minutes can see that she's his Achilles heel. Which is a very, very bad thing for people like him to have. It's his problem, and my problem by extension, but I wonder where the hell it all went wrong that it became one. After all, he wasn't this doting before Talon blew-
Oh. Right. That might have something to do with him suddenly developing separation anxiety.
My bad.
It's not something we can really work on now though, not when she's out of it. Maybe when she wakes up, we can have a nice long chat about keeping our personal lives secret from people who might not be so friendly when the wind blows differently.
We're only three hours in when I turn to Reaper, asking if he'll pass some of the in-flight peanuts, and get an alarming PING in response.
"What the hell was that?" he asks, sitting straight up in alarm.
Another PING comes from the dashboard, and I'm a half-second faster than him getting into the cockpit. "Um…not good is what it is." Two more pings and our little green dot is surrounded by a bunch of red dots on the radar. "We've got incoming! Four aircraft on our left!"
Reaper has just enough time to say, "Sombra you better not be-" before a rocket cracks into the side of the transport.
We're tossed into the opposite wall, and I catch a brief glimpse outside the window of the black planes launching the assault. Where the hell did they come from? And who the fuck did we piss off?
All questions that aren't going to get answers as the transport shudders with another impact.
"Dammit!" Reaper shouts, scrambling to his feet. "Launch what we have! Aim for the center of the formation!"
"It's a fucking transport craft, Reaper! It doesn't have any guns!"
Another rocket knocks me off my feet, sending me crashing into dozens of bags of tiny pretzels. That is apparently the limit of Reaper's tolerance for my shenanigans, because he grabs the craft's controls and overrides the autopilot.
"I'm taking us down!" he yells. While he does, I look up and see another missile streak past our window.
"Can't go ten minutes…" I mutter as we race toward the jungle below us.
We're in worse than freefall, green absorbing the view, and I strap myself into the closest seat with wild hands. I realize I don't actually know what kind of pilot experience Reaper has, if I should trust that he knows what he's doing, but it's too late to doubt. We land. Hard.
Metal tears, ripping the cabin with awful screams as we break the dozen or so innocent trees in our path. I can tell when we stop more by sound than by feel, mainly because my brain's still rolling with unwanted inertia.
Now hanging from the ceiling by several exhausted seatbelts, I call, "when you said, 'take us down,' I didn't think you meant like that."
A pool of black smoke seeps out of the cockpit. Somehow, it still manages to look annoyed.
Reaper yanks me out of the seat instead of letting me unbuckle myself, but there's no time to yell at him since just then the other crafts arrive overhead. We stumble out our mostly-trashed transport, me fizzling into nothingness and Reaper turning back into goo.
The boom of rockets crashing into our former transport just makes me run faster, the heat on my back reminding me of a certain base explosion. Only there's no Widow this time, just a shadow I follow like my life depends on it, who trusts me to keep up and probably won't slow if I couldn't. The aircrafts hesitate above us, a pack of vultures not sure if the kill is fully dead and they're alright to feed—it's only when my lungs are beginning to burn with exhaustion and second hand smoke that the first plane drops down to investigate.
"As soon as they're spread out, we'll eliminate them," Reaper says, rematerializing for the first time. "The terrain's at our advantage. Purple Doppelganger should work out well."
"Alright, but who are they?" I wheeze, glaring at the smoke seeping through the trees. "Indian government?"
Reaper doesn't reply, (Heh. REAPly.) but I guess I wasn't expecting him to. Instead, he begins to retrace our steps, the both of us fanning out to surround the craft as it lands near our own hunk of burning wreckage. I don't think I'm getting that safety deposit back.
We wait. And wait.
But it becomes obvious as the black-clad assailants poke the undergrowth that they're the only craft that's going to be landing, the other three not kind enough to let us finish them off easily. It puts a dent in our plan, but Reaper and I can't exactly reconvene at the moment to come up with a better one, so I have to sit on my thumbs and wait for his signal.
He doesn't make me wait long.
He delivers a shot to the base of a man's spine, creating a bloody scream that draws the attention of the whole forest. He can eliminate all of them like that with so many places to hide, but that won't get us anywhere unless I get the other planes to get down here.
"East side!" one of them calls, thankfully one close to me. "Redirect, I want two pinning him against the wreck while the rest of the squad pulls in."
Aaaaannnddd…that's enough. I snap my recorder off, un-stealth, and empty my entire clip into the back of talky-guy's head. The others fire on me, but I translocate back out immediately, appearing under some ferns and getting to work.
Reaper finds me three minutes and eighteen seconds later, legs folded and chewing a brand new stick of gum while I tap on my holo-screen.
"Are you done yet?" he demands. He's leaking from his shoulder, fluid that one might mistake for blood if it wasn't so disturbingly watery.
"Almost-" And I snap on the connection. It's not perfect, but my little project might be enough to fool those in the other crafts if I've done my job correctly. As my line to our assailants opens, I begin to play a message.
"Multiple hostiles still present. Several casualties, requesting backup." The synthesized voice is an exact replica of the man I'd killed minutes ago. I did the best I could with such a short clip, but with just enough "static," the people on the other side just might fall for it. They sure have the previous 6.5 times we've used Purple Doppelganger.
There's a tense moment of silence when…
"…Acknowledged. We'll come down for cleanup."
The rest is pretty standard. It helps that I'm helping shooting now, and each crew goes down craft by craft as they land and their communication is subsequently cut off. Most of them don't even know what hit them.
"Well," I say, once Reaper's killed the last remaining pilot, "this was quite the vacation. Next time let's go somewhere more beach-y." I stretch, taking stock of the cockpit we've found ourselves in.
Reaper's silent, staring at the woman whose head he's just blown off. I've never seen him contemplative after a kill, and the sight unnerves me enough that I skirt around the chair to see what he's so transfixed on. It takes a moment of sorting through blood and Kevlar to realize he's not looking at her, but her uniform.
The Talon insignia is stitched into her left pocket.
"What," I mutter, the shock overpowering my ability to form a decent question. "How is…?"
Reaper looks up, and I can swear his eyes are meeting mine. "Now might be a good time to tell you that Doomfist is still alive."
