You're probably having a good fucking laugh right now, aren't you? Yeah well yuck it up. One of us has to, and it certainly isn't me.

I spend an indeterminate time wandering aimlessly in the monastery, thinking the twisting in my stomach is going to get better, but only making it worse with my pacing. It's obvious, to you and to me, but the part of my brain that usually sorts out What The Fuck Sombra Is Feeling Right Now seems to have gone on holiday. I'm paranoid and angry and sad, so fucking sad all at once, but I don't have the emotional maturity to take a step backwards and realize why. Why did seeing that hurt so much? Why am I so- ugh.

So yeah, keep on laughing from way up there. Point at poor, stupid Sombra, who can't even figure out she's jealous.

I find what can only be described as a broom closet for candle enthusiasts and throw myself in, slamming the door behind me. My back presses against the wall as I slide down, but I don't give myself the relief of screaming into the darkness. I don't even allow my nails to sink into my scalp for more than a second before I remind myself, no. This is not how I want to handle this.

With a spark of purple energy, I open my hologram, and launch myself into the work that's kept me sane for the past eleven years. Numbers fly past, but they don't connect like they usually do. The data from Shíwǔ Gāo might as well be Widow's shitty poetry for all the sense it makes, and the thought springs the purple woman to the front of my mind like I've been hit in the head with a frisbee. Nothing makes sense, because why would I be jealous? Who would I even be jealous of? Why do I feel like Widow and Reaper broke into my home and took a shit inside my shampoo bottle?

Nothing is working. Trying to locate Iris just reminds me of Talon instead, how they're growing into a bigger threat by the minute. In a sudden twang of paranoia, I wonder if they have trackers on me too. Sure I never let those pendejosnear my implants, but I was there for three years…If I ever let my guard down for even a second…

Twitching, I bring up my implant logistics. Pointless. Any bug wouldn't be detectable by internal systems. My anxiety spikes higher, and but the ones that'd I trust to do a physical check of my implants are two people I very much don't want to see right now. In fact, I'd like to get as far away from them as humanly possible.

I stand, the purple in the dark room flickering back into nothing. It's burned my retinas enough that stepping out into the diffused light of the monastery makes me blink in discomfort, wandering around like Bambi in a snowstorm. But it's time to go. I don't have a logical thought to that goal, but I know it as certain as I know my own skin. I have to get out of here, if only to make the aching in my stomach stop—and when I do I don't know if I'm coming back.

So if that sounds familiar, you can probably guess what happens next.

But it's not Reaper that stops me this time. Nor Widow, nor even Zenyatta. Instead, the exit I happen to choose takes me over the monastery grounds, snowdrifts blowing under moonlight, catching in stones so serenely placed. Meditating among the white and silver is Genji, his back to me and his hands on his knees.

My toes are covered in a mesh that should leave my footsteps completely silent, yet my approach alerts him anyway. Damn cybernetics. Must have given him super hearing while she was messing around in there.

"You look very distraught for a woman whose friend has just come back from the brink of death." The mask in profile is odd—I'm used to Reaper's, but his has a very distinct style to it, and by comparison, Genji looks…blank.

I shrug. "It's a look I'm trying out. A girl can only be so incredibly fashionable before it starts to wear thin."

He's hard to read. More than Reaper, more than even Zenyatta. He could be looking at me with indifference or smiling at my joke—either way I wouldn't know. He pats the ground beside him. "Join me. If anyone is in need of some inner peace, it is you."

I could go. There's nothing stopping me from turning tail and continuing on my way. But the offer is open, and social convention is harder to get over than any brick wall.

"Thank you. It can become lonely out here, some nights," he says as I sit, clearing the stone tiles of snow.

"Well, then you picked the right company. I have an A in 'Friendliness and Approachability' on Rate My Professor." My voice carefully casual in the night wind.

"Is that so?" he says, disbelieving. "And how exactly did you come to be on a site for teachers of higher learning?"

"Same way I became an officially ordained minister in Venezuela," I say, wiggling my fingers.

I think he finds that funny. It's hard to tell, but the subtle shift in his shoulder could be a silent laugh, one chosen not to be filtered through his voice channel. We lapse into silence, unwelcome and overpowering. At least while we were having good banter, I forgot about the pit in my stomach and the yawning paranoia at my back. Plus, the stone we're sitting on is sucking all my body heat out through my ass.

I'm just considering telling him I need to get a move on when he speaks again. "When I first came here, I did not think there was any hope for me. I succumbed to the belief that I would live the rest of my life as I was: a monster. Without home."

The snow is so white it almost makes Genji gray by comparison, the drifts that have settled on his shoulder in his midnight vigil look like bunches of magic dandruff. He reaches out, scooping a handful of snow from the garden beside him. It doesn't melt in his palm, not like it would in a human's or a well-heated omnic's. Instead, it gets into the valleys between the metal, sticking to him like old memories.

He lets the snow blow from his palm. "But the Shambali are patient. Perhaps more patient than I deserve."

"Huh," I grunt. "I know that feeling."

Turning to me again, he disturbs the snow on his shoulders. It takes to the breeze. "What you have is beautiful, Sombra. Such harmony between people does not come around often in a person's life."

"No offense Shimada, but if you think we're harmonious, you know less about what you're talking about than you think."

"I know someone who is running away from their heart when I see it." He ignores my light snort. Instead, he grabs another handful of snow and lets it blow down into the valley. "Something must be let go of. Grief. Guilt. Shame. But do not think you have let everything else that is good go with them."

I want to tell him that it's not that simple, that the shame and the guilt and the blah blah bla blah bla is all tied up too tightly to try to just get what I want out of it, but I'm suddenly just so tired, I don't think I can leave this seat, let alone try to sort out everything for someone else. He doesn't even know what I'm so pissed about, he's just trying to be some Cool Cyborg Dude, so full of wisdom like his sensei but then he turns away suddenly, as though I'm not even there anymore.

"There is beauty everywhere. But that does not make it disposable."

He casts his gaze down the mountain, and I follow, landing at the little village nested below. Its glow is warm and orange, a bright speck in a world of bleakness.

I'm so tired. The urge to run is gone. In fact, I don't think I ever want to move from this spot again.

We sit out there, despite the fact that my legs have gone numb and my teeth chatter before the hour is out. Genji notices before I do, and he guides me back inside with little resistance. He finds me a room, one I think might be his, and leaves me there without another word. I pass out with thoughts blowing through me like so many snowflakes.


The next morning…I try to get it together a little.

I find somewhere to take a shower. I reapply my face. I do everything I can to return to some level of functionality, all the while talking myself down from running like a frightened jackrabbit. It takes well into the afternoon, but as I file my nails (my real ones, not my useful ones) I'm finally ready to think this through.

My implants might be hacked. The possibility is remote, but I know I won't be able to go forward without knowing for sure. One problem. One good solution. I go to find Widow.

This time, when I hear her and Zenyatta from outside the room, I don't stop to listen. Pushing in, I find them speaking quietly together; her sitting on the pallet and him floating a few feet away.

"Hey guys," I say, and hope I'm not as loud as I sound. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Always," Widow says, without missing a beat.

"Is there something you need, Sombra?" Zenyatta asks me, patiently avoiding our familiar snipes.

"I was just hoping to borrow Widowmaker for a moment, if you can spare her."

"Of course," he nods. He floats toward the door, but not before giving her hand a soft pat. I file that away for later.

When he's gone, I sit, crossing my legs in an attempt at casual confidence. "I'm going to cut to the chase, araña." Because dithering about will only make me lose my nerve. "You and Reaper both had bugs in your implants. I might have some in mine too. And I can't check them myself."

She pauses. And then… "What do you need me to do?"

That's it then. No finagling, no sizing me up. Nothing comes without a price but sometimes I feel like I've already paid it; I've placed confidence in Widow, and now she's returning the favor.

"You're gonna need to scrub me, but I can walk you through it." I stand, and find where they stashed my tools after I flew the coop yesterday. Everything's there in working order, and I lay them out for Widow. "It's like making a cake: turns out fine as long as you follow the recipe."

Widow wrinkles her nose. "I have always been a terrible cook." It's…cute.

"You'll do fine," I smile, boosting her confidence as well as my own. "And uh…thanks amiga."

She responds with a quiet mm, and watches as I turn and peel my shirt off. The implant trails along my spine, connecting my nervous system to my gear and effectively extending my philology beyond its god-given means. In that way, it's not too different than Widow's own.

"What am I looking for?" she asks my bare back.

So I tell her. Taking her step by step, I feel her hands poking around what's effectively my internal organs, combing them for any signs of Talon tampering. It's definitely an exposed sensation. Even if Widow's the person I trust most in the world, that's a very low bar, and anyone would be uncomfortable with the prospect of surgery performed on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. I feel a new appreciation for what Reaper and Widow let me do.

Thinking about Reaper makes my gut clench. Widow notices, but I assure her it's nothing she's doing. Instead, I ask, "So you and Gabe work out a plan for after this?"

She tenses. It must be because of what I saw yesterday, their reunion just as fresh in her mind as it is in mine. I don't know why I'm asking—do I expect her to just spill everything right here and now? There's a chance of it I guess, but I'm not going about this the right way at all.

"I thought you were the one captaining this voyage," she says after some hesitation.

I suppress a sigh. What I really want to ask is how. Has this been going on ever since Amélie started kicking around again? Or is this whole Making Out With My Teammate a recent development? So many things I want to know but not sure how to voice, and a lump that forms in my throat whenever I try. My own heartache doesn't fit with the narrative; maybe I'm just afraid that now that they have each other, they won't need me. I'm a distant third wheel, the part of the ~Talon Trio~ that came around too late and is never going to quite fit back in. That fear has to be what's burning me from the inside.

(I don't bring myself to consider another option.)

"There," she says, bringing me out of my stupor. "It was clean, Sombra. I did not find anything."

My first instinct is to ask if she's sure, putting a nice renewal on my own paranoia. But I've made her go through everything, even doing double and triple checks, like what I would have done if I were doing it myself. She's right. I'm clean.

I turn, letting the first strands of relief creep into me. "Thanks again," I tell her, now facing her completely. "Not that they'd ever get past me, but it's good to know." I give her a wink.

"More comforting than you think."

There's an odd note in her voice. I raise my eyebrow and ask, "…uh-huh?"

"…You were always outside their control. It was something that was hard not to be jealous of."

Widow's eyes never leave mine as she says it, and I swallow involuntarily. There's something intense in her gaze…sadness…longing maybe.

She keeps going. "Meeting you was my first taste of freedom."

It's only now that I realize that we're really fucking close to each other right now. I can feel her breath, still gross from fighting off her sickness…see the deep bruises under her eyes in intimate detail. My own skin feels hot, and I suddenly remember very clearly that I'm not wearing a shirt. Her hand is resting inches from mine, a small screwdriver clutched in her fingers, forgotten carelessly among the fabric. There's rhythm, an offbeat that hums between us and I swear I see her move-

I jump back. The vigor in the room crackles and breaks, leaving me standing next to the pallet with an awkward chuckle. "Well, that's um…good to hear."

Widow's face is completely expressionless, not even a register of surprise when I sprung away from her. Could I have imagined that? I swear she was leaning in to-

As I struggle to come up with a witty line to exit on, the monastery fills with the slowly rising whine of an increasing klaxon.

Now Widow blinks in alarm. The two of us share a look, gazing at either exit, trying to determine where the whistle is coming from. Zenyatta doesn't make us wait long. He opens the eastern door—with more speed than I've ever seen him possess—and tells us, "I suggest you retreat to some place more fortified. The monastery is under attack."