Overwatch AU

Only Human

The colours blossomed under his brush. He watched dreamily as each stroke illuminated the canvas, the picture forming. His hands were steady. He flexed each finger, watching the way they curled around the brush. Flesh and blood. He could feel the wood under his fingers, rough against his callouses.

"Steve?"

He was trying to concentrate. The voice was distracting him.

"Steve sweetheart, can you hear me?"

"Vitals are good. Heart rate has increased. It's likely he can Mia."

The light was too bright when he opened his eyes, and all he could see was white. He squinted, and slowly the world came into focus. His mother's face was the first thing he saw, although it was more lined than he remembered, and her eyes were red rimmed.

His aunt Sophia was next to her, her long blonde hair scraped back into a ponytail. "I'll lower the blinds," she said, heading over the window.

"Hey baby…" his mum looked like she was holding his hand, but he couldn't feel it. "How are you feeling?"

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but his throat was too dry.

"Here." Sophia appeared next to him with a damp cotton bud. "You're not ready for fluids yet," she said, gently swabbing the inside of his mouth. "But don't worry. You will be soon."

"C…Cat?" Steve hardly recognised his own voice. It was harsh and croaky.

His mother's face darkened, her eyes sparkling with unshead tears. "She's gone."

Steve felt his stomach drop. "D…ead?" he managed to rasp.

Mia shook her head, and he realised that her eyes were angry. "She ran. After what happened to you. We haven't seen her since."

What had happened to him? Steve couldn't quite remember, but there would be time for that later. What mattered right now was his little sister. "How…long?" he gasped. Maybe she'd come back. Come visit him once she realised he was hurt. Their relationship had been a little rocky since Dad died, and she started messing around with the gang, but she was still his twin. They'd been through everything together.

"Three months," his mother said, and he felt his heart contract in his chest. Something must have happened to her. She must be stuck somewhere, maybe too hurt to find him after whatever horrible accident they'd been in.

"Is she…hurt?" he said. "Maybe…she…"

"I'm sorry, Steve," Mia said, reaching out at touching his cheek. "She's not coming back. Not after she did this to you."

Steve inhaled sharply, but that wasn't the cause of the stabbing pain in his chest. He slowly raised his head and looked down at his body. The only reason he didn't scream was because when he tried to, it hurt almost as much as the fact that his world was falling apart around him.

"That's wonderful Steve!" Sophia's voice was warm and full of praise, but it did nothing to ease the cold numbness which had taken up permanent residence in his chest. "Another step…wonderful."

He hated the mechanical whirring which accompanied each motion he made. It wasn't loud; on the contrary, it was softer than the hum of a of a bumblebee. His mother and Sophia were top of their fields after all. But he noticed it. It was slowly driving him mad.

"You'll be running laps around us all soon enough," Sophia said. He couldn't stand the kind patience in her eyes.

"I'm done for today," he said, using the physio bars to lower himself down into the wheelchair.

"Okay sweetheart," Sophia said, giving him another smile. "You did really well today, I'm so proud of you!"

"Yeah." He wheeled himself towards the door. "Really well."

He rolled himself along the hall and took the lift back upstairs to his room. His mother had had them installed after the accident, despite his protests. He knew how much she loved the period feel of their home, and the modern lift was a jarring sight, set between the oak panelled walls she loved so much. But still, it wasn't like she couldn't afford it. Being one of the best inventors in the world had its perks. Sophia and Blaze had moved in with them after his 'accident'; Sophia to act basically as his live-in doctor, although she still worked at her hospital most days, and Blaze to act as Mia's emotional support, although he hadn't explicitly said that. A husband and daughter lost, and a son maimed. He wondered that his crackpot mother was keeping it all together. Somehow, she had. She'd even tried to cook for him the other day. She'd made cookies. He'd forced a couple of the sad, blackened biscuits down just to keep the hopeful, proud look on her face.

He wheeled along the landing and into his room, shutting the door behind him. The stillness consumed him. He'd ordered his mother and the maids to keep out, and a haze of dust floated in the air. The easel sat across the room, covered in a sheet, taunting him.

He wheeled over to the wooden frame, and pulled the sheet away, revealing the picture he'd been working on. Nothing special, just a view of the woods that covered their land. He reached out a hand, and winced when he saw it in front of him. Gleaming chrome where human flesh should have been. Sophia and Mia had said that he could customise them however he wished, but the place where his well of creativity had once been was now empty and parched, cracked like paint that had been left out for too long. He took a brush in his hand, but he couldn't feel the wood against his callouses because they weren't there anymore, and neither were his real fingers. They were gone, like most of his body.

He turned and glanced in the mirror, seeing the scar stretching across his face, the small tubes sticking out of the side of his neck. The paintbrush snapped in his clenched fist.

"This is an intervention."

"I'm sorry?" Steve rolled over in bed and scowled up at his cousin.

"An intervention. You've been a mopey git for too long."

"Cillian, I've lost an arm, both of my legs and half of my torso. I am entitled to be a bit down in the dumps about it." Steve rolled back onto his side, facing away from his cousin.

"Oh no you don't." Cillian rolled him back over. "It's been six months Steve. You can walk. You can use your arms. So why the hell are you hiding away in your room watching Korean gaming videos?"

"Because A-Yeon Seung is cute. And she kept the fanart I sent her last year. She's still got it on her wall."

"Steve. Go meet girls who live in your country."

"No girl is going to look at me, Cillian," Steve snapped. "I'm a monster."

"Don't be such a drama queen."

"I'm half bloody robot!" Steve snapped.

"So?"

"So?! You know the amount of shit Omnics get. I'm basically one of them."

"I'm pretty sure the main issue with Omnics was the whole AI thing."

"Yeah. Well. People don't see it like that, do they? They see mechanical limbs and their minds go to death, destruction, and beep boop beep."

"You're a hero. Not many people can say they helped take down Doomfist."

"That was years ago."

"Only two years ago. Come on. Steve, we were the youngest agents on that mission. You, me, Robyn and Cat. That doesn't just disappear."

"Overwatch was shut down. And Cat's gone. Robyn's in America. And you've got your fancy job back in Mexico."

"Well, my fancy job is on hold, Steve."

Steve frowned at him. "What do you mean 'on hold'?"

"Pack a bag. We're going on holiday."

"What?"

"I told you." Cillian grinned at him. "This is an intervention."

She was waiting for them in arrivals.

"Steve! Cillian!"

Steve felt his heart lighten at the sight of the joy on Bryony's face. He'd missed his little cousin, and her sunny smiles. She didn't even flinch as she gathered him in her arms, feeling the hard metal underneath his knitted sweater. "I've missed you both so much!"

The path up to the temple was so narrow that Steve and Cillian found themselves perched in the back of a rickety yak driven cart. Bryony floated along behind them, her hover rig keeping pace with the cart as she chattered away, telling them about the history of the mountain, the old abandoned temple that the Shambali had come to inhabit and rebuild. Even so, Steve wasn't prepared as they came to the top of the path, and stared across the Himalaya's.

"Wow." He stared out across the clouds, which were stained pink and peach in the light of the setting sun. "It's…"

"I know." Bryony reached out and took his hand. "After I lost my legs, for the longest time I didn't think I'd ever find anything beautiful again. I was rather a horror to be around, I'm afraid. I was rather mean to my mum and dad."

Cillian snorted. "What did you do? Forget to say thank you once or twice?"

Bryony rolled her eyes. "No, not quite."

"I can't imagine you being mean, Bryony," Steve said as the three of them headed into the sanctuary.

"Oh, trust me. You've not seen the worst of me, Steve," she said, pushing open a door. "This is where you'll be staying. I'm just in the room next door." She smiled at the them both. "Welcome to Nepal, boys."

Two weeks in, Bryony found his hiding place. He had managed to scramble to the top of the temple and perch on the top, staring out over the mountains.

"The view up here is lovely," she said, perching next to him.

"How did you get up here?" he asked, turning to stare at her hover-rig.

She shrugged. "My friend Angkasa made some modifications. If she wasn't a Shambali nun, she'd make a great engineer."

"She's an Omnic?"

"Of course!" Bryony gave him a smile. "Steve, when Talon tried to take me, when my life was at risk, the Shambali took me in. My mother trusted them with my life, and I think that says more about them than anything else, really, doesn't it?"

"Human…Omnic…" Steve looked down at his arm, pulling back the sleeve of his sweater. "I'm neither. I don't belong anywhere."

"Of course you do." Bryony's voice was calm. "You belong with the people who love you. Your family and friends. You belong on this earth, where you were created."

"You don't understand!"

"Don't I?" she raised an eyebrow, and gestured down to her legs, where they rested on her hover-rig. "I'm cybernetically enhanced too, Steve."

"But it's not the same! I'm part robot, Bryony!" Steve exclaimed, getting to his feet and pulling away the scarf he kept swathed around his neck and chest, the hide the machinery and tubes which kept him alive, which now formed his body. "Look at me!"

She smiled. "I am looking at you. And I see you. Steve. Your soul. It doesn't matter what you're made of, whether it's flesh or metal. You're still you. And that won't change."

Steve dropped to his knees, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. "I can't see myself anymore." His voice was a whisper. "When I look in the mirror I see a stranger. I can't even paint, Bry. I've lost my art."

"I see you," she said again, reaching out and pressing her hand against his chest. "And we'll find it. Together. I came here for safety Steve, but I stayed because it's here I found peace. And I want to help you find it too."

After a moment, he reached out and took her hand in his. The metal one. And for a moment he could have sworn that he could feel her warmth.