Winston hums to himself whenever he works. He remembers how the others used to react. He would be wielding a soldering gun or adjusting blueprints with Pachelbel's Canon practically dancing from his diaphragm when someone would walk into his cluttered, messy lab.
Angela and Reinhardt would always try to guess which composition he was humming; Angela almost always guessed right, and Reinhardt only ever guessed Beethoven. Commander Reyes would shake his head condescendingly or laugh; something about a gorilla and classical music didn't sit right with him. But his favorite song, the one they played on the Overwatch holovids, Reyes didn't seem to mind as much. But that didn't stop Winston from humming Requiem as his designs took form beneath his hands, or thinking of Fur Elise as he peeled a banana during a break.
Today, he hums the nocturnes, because he's tired, as he works on his power armor. He's had so much time of late, he has little left to modify except its polish, but out of habit, he still refers to the blueprints he keeps pinned to the walls.
Each of them is a story of its own. His armor. His armor's thrusters.
The rocket he first designed to get to Earth, its schematics expansive and detailed and marked over the chalk with red marker because that's all he had left. The centerpiece of the blueprint, the module, still hangs over him now, suspended from the ceiling of his workshop as a reminder of how enigmatically profoundly space flight sucks, and as a souvenir of when the second chapter of his life began.
The communications satellite's blueprint, the one he'd launched only a few months ago, hung next to the rocket's. He'd sent it up in hopes of using its signal to reach Overwatch agents, those that were left, around the world; he is still waiting to broadcast a message, the Petras Act's liturgical outlawing of his family ever meeting together again still booming in his mind.
The shield generator he still can't get to work, so many of the original drawings and words crossed out and erased, replaced with frustrated, jagged lines of white, a stain over the right corner when his drink had spilled and he'd cussed its loose bottle cap, sounding like Jesse used to.
Then there was the chronal harness.
Winston first learned about an Einstein-Rosen bridge on the moon. Harold had taught him, and even showed him the age old metaphor of folding a piece of paper in half, punching a hole through it, then unfolding it again to show him how it worked. A theoretical connection between two points in space time. Theoretical.
The day of the Slipstream's first test flight is cold. Stereotypical English weather; the Thames was grey, the sky was grey, the wind was still and the air was damp.
Today was the only day any of the agents had wanted to talk about for the past month. Winston was not yet an agent, more of a contractor while his situation was processed by higher, and while the others were still getting used to him, there was plenty of hype around the R&D labs. The technology, the innovation, what it could mean for Overwatch and the world if they were able to produce teleportation technology. The beginning of a new era, they had called it. If it worked.
Winston was not on the team that developed the Slipstream, but he knows enough about how it is supposed to work to know how dangerous today's test flight will be. The teleportation drive was revolutionary, but it had to work perfectly in order to work at all. The fact that the drive was directly under the cockpit was only part of the reason they had had such a hard time finding pilots to volunteer for the test flight.
An Einstein-Rosen bridge. A wormhole. A theoretical connection between two points in space time. It was no longer theoretical.
It started with a penny teleported only a few meters away from within a concrete bunker built to withstand JDAMS. After that, it was an entire sleeve of pennies. Then a car. Then a mouse. When the mouse survived the teleportation, the project transcended its experimental phase and had hundreds of millions of dollars in funding thrown at it. The result of that funding was on the tarmac now, its elegant wings swept back and its missile bays empty as it fueled up for its christening.
It amazes Winston, how everything Overwatch does somehow ties itself back into war. He's only been here a few months, but he has been able to pick up on this fact, both through his own eye and the media's constant coverage of the organizations every action. Genetic therapy that could be used to eradicate genetic diseases and birth defects is used instead to breed super soldiers. Teleportation technology that could be used to transport anything anywhere, that could completely replace the pollution caused by vehicle borne transportation, that could bring food to billions in the blink of an eye, is instead used to make a fighter jet.
As he watches the Slipstream being taxied out to the runway, like a model onto the red carpet, through the lab's window like many of the other esteemed scientists he works with, he wonders why. He wasn't around to see the Omnic Crisis. He's seen the holovids, as everyone has, but when he sees the omnics that work on the Watchpoints, looking and behaving like people with metal skin, he doesn't see towering specimens of death and destruction. But, when he sees Commander Morrison, or Captain Amari, or Commander Reyes look at the same omnics, there is a kindling of a fire in their eyes.
"They should all be destroyed," Commander Reyes had said, "It's only a matter of time before they gun for us again. Hit 'em first."
He wasn't the only one who thought that way, and in following all trails of logic, that sentiment was what made Winston know why every project that came into his workshop, more or less, was martial. After all, to the leaders of the world, the starving could wait; there was another war brewing. Nevertheless, every time he sees a new weapon roll off the line, Winston thinks:
"This isn't what Overwatch was meant to be."
The Royal Air Force and the press are all over Watchpoint London like ants to a pile of sugar. Winston remembers seeing a swarm of reporters with their microphones and holopads and cameras crowding around generals, their chests practically gleaming from the metal on them, on the tarmac. And among those generals is Commander Morrison, far below them in rank but above them in fame, about equal in respect. The face of Overwatch, smiling and answering questions with the same open ended responses Winston had heard a thousand times, mostly on a screen.
But, among the gaggle but not quite part of it, is a young woman, no more than 25. She wears an RAF flight suit and aviators, her hair is messy and her smile is radiant. When the press asks her questions, she giggles and answers with jokes, her voice pellucid and eager.
At first glance through the rainy window, Winston can tell this young woman is to be the pilot of their newest gem of technology. But the more he looks at her, the harder it is to look away. It feels like a curiosity, why, before she is about to undertake one of the greatest feats of the past century, she is not nervous. The closest venture Winston had made to what she is about to do was when he launched himself from the moon to Earth in a homemade rocket. He had been terrified, so terrified he had no spit in his mouth and had to truly focus, aggravatingly, on even the tiniest movements. It had taken him nearly an hour to get inside the module and buckle up, he was trembling so badly. And here she was, looking like she couldn't wait to get into the air.
Winston makes sure, that when the plane goes to take off, he is on the tarmac with Commander Morrison and half of Overwatch, and the press, looking up.
Take off goes smoothly. The subsequent climb goes well also. The jet streaks into the air, yellow streams from the afterburners following its ascent to heaven until the Slipstream is no more than a speck against the overcast sky. The cameras move to track the jet like buds of flowers follow sunlight, and a hush of anticipation falls over the spectators with their hands over their foreheads, shielding their eyes from the rain and menial light.
Winston overhears Dr. Tavington, the head developer of the Slipstream, explaining to one of the generals that such an altitude is necessary, as should the drive malfunction or be calibrated even slightly wrong, there is a very real risk of teleporting the jet below the ground. Needless to say, such a failure would be rare, but could be catastrophic.
As the engines' noise dulls, Winston hears Commander Morrison, the RAF brass all around him, calmly speak into the radio.
"Tracer 2-5, this is Eagle 1. Stand by for test of teleportation drive, break. Test 1, set for three hundred meter teleportation. Bearing, 12 o'clock. On my mark. 3… 2… 1… mark."
The jet suddenly blinks forward in a subtle flash of blue light, and Winston is reminded of a video skipping a frame.
"Tracer 2-5 this is Eagle 1. Report, over," beckons Commander Morrison, barely over the soft pitter patter of rain.
The crowd, in suspended animation, waits for a response, before the voice of the pilot crackles over the radio.
"Test successful Eagle 1! She handles like a dream!"
Winston watches as slaps on the back and handshakes work their way through the crowd. As congratulations are being shared the Slipstream dives, and levels off no more than two hundred feet off the tarmac. The entire crowd of witnesses watch as the jet screams in overhead with humid air folding around its wings, and does a barrel roll. Winston smiles; Tracer 2-5 is showboating, buzzing the brass in the tower like Maverick at Miramar. He can imagine her giggling inside the cockpit, and he finds himself smiling as she once again climbs back into the clouds for the next test of the teleportation drive.
The second test is the one that makes headlines.
Prototype Jet Disappears: Pilot Missing.
Winston is woken up by the sound of a small alarm, more of a notification. Startled, he shoots awake, interrupting a nasally snore and he hurries to compose himself, adjusting his glasses and wiping drool from his mouth. Drowsily, he looks around, and sees a small red light above a counter flashing, the source of the sound that had woken him. The counter reads 00:01, and it tells the time since the last chronal event inside the isolation capsule.
As he realizes what has happened, he turns, and briefly sees his reflection in the glass of the isolation capsules' window. But something inside the capsule stirs, and the automated lights switch on, revealing a young woman inside. She wears flannel pajamas and slippers, courtesy of her employers, as if they could provide her some comfort in spite of her… predicament.
Her back is to the windows, and she turns slowly. Through the glass, their eyes meet. It is almost comical, how identical their expressions are, wide eyed and startled, and slowly, their tense muscles relax.
Winston goes to look away, averting her brown eyes, but in the process bumps his workstation. Frantically, he tries to catch the objects as they fall to the rhythm of the first movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, left on from when he'd fallen asleep at work: a soldering iron in one hand, a schematic in the other, a central processor in a foot. He does not save the jar of peanut butter, and it clatters to the otherwise clean floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the girl, whom he recognizes as the pilot of the Slipstream, giggling at him.
He gets back up with about as much grace as he first fell with, the sound of his workstation table grinding on the floor as he leans on it for support resounding through the cavernous room, and reorganizes everything as it was. As he hobbles over to retrieve the jar of peanut butter, picking it up and blowing it clean of dust, his eyes once again stray to the isolation chamber.
The pilot is right up next to the glass, her hands leaning against the window. She smiles, and waves at him, only with her slender fingers moving. Winston waves back.
He can tell she's bored and wants his company; she sits cross legged just inside the glass, watching him intently; but he doesn't know why. No one else has wanted to talk to him. It takes her beckoning him over with a wave for Winston to actually approach the glass.
"You're very shy, aren't you?" she asks as he walks up on all fours, and sits down cross legged on the opposite side of her window; the sound of her voice is muffled inside the chamber, but he can hear her.
She speaks with a Kings' Row accent, English but far from the refined, uppity accents of Kensington or Notting Hill. Her skin is clear and she is well groomed, aside from her hair, which looks almost as if she had just gotten out of bed. Something about her demeanor reminds Winston of bubbles.
"Only around strangers," he answers, imitating her smile.
"I'm Lena," she says cordially, "I'd shake your hand, but…" she gestures at the glass as she finishes.
"Winston," he responds, tapping his chest with a curled fist.
It is a spectacle to be witnessed, the petite woman and the massive ape in matching postures, facing one another as they share introductions through the glass. Lena giggles briefly, covering her mouth politely with one hand, and she musses her already disheveled hair a bit.
"I've never met a talking gorilla before."
"Oh I've met hundreds," Winston says in jest with a grin, and she laughs now out loud, no attempt to conceal it, "There were plenty of us on Horizon."
"That's right," she says suddenly, leaning forward with interest piqued, "You're the one who came here on the rocket! You were all over the news for months!"
Now Winston laughs, "You're the only one on the news lately. For the past four weeks…"
Suddenly, the smile disappears from Lena's face, and Winston is cut off by the shock in her eyes.
"A month?" she says quietly, barely audible through the chamber's walls, "That's all it's been?"
Winston hesitates, and he pushes his glasses farther up his nose as he looks down, avoiding the desperation in her eyes for a moment; when he does glance up at her, it is almost as if she is pleading for someone to look at her, but she says nothing.
"You are suffering," Winston begins, sounding like a doctor with bedside manner, detached from the patient as if all that existed was the diagnosis, not the life it affected, "from a very unique condition called…"
"Chronal disassociation," she interrupts slowly, and Winston looks back to her for a second to see her half-heartedly smiling, the kind of smile when one is trying to be courteous instead of happy, "Dr. Tavington tried to explain it to me when they first put me into this… box."
There is a moment of silence before she continues, and Winston is reminded of how it felt when his life was regimented on Horizon, how he was confined to two rooms with one window and a view that never changed. Now Lena is the one in the cage.
"Has the Slipstream turned up too?" she asks hopefully.
Winston shakes his head 'no'.
"Poor old girl," she laments, "This whole thing is madness."
"You can say that twice," Winston agrees, his voice a growl, and Lena subtly, cautiously, leans away from the window for a moment, "Time is a funny thing isn't it?"
He gets up and goes back to his workbench as he speaks over his shoulder, retrieving some things from the scattered tabletop.
"We spend our whole lives thinking we understand time, day in, and day out. It was Einstein who discovered time is relative. And here most of us think it moves in one straight, constant line, when really…"
"It'a a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff," she interrupts, smiling brightly once again as Winston sits back down; her smile grows even brighter when she sees her company understands her reference.
"The Doctor was one of my favorite characters on the telly when I was a girl," she says as she starts to look disappointedly at her cell, "I never thought I'd see the day I was actually in a real life episode."
Winston suppresses a chuckle at the irony, and he begins fiddling with his latest design to make something productive of the time.
"Watcha got there?" Lena asks, leaning as far forward as she can to see the sleek, white contraption in the gorilla's massive hands.
"This?" Winston asks, holding up the device in question, "Your cure."
She jumps up as he finishes, excited and demanding.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" she yells, "Get it on me!"
"I'm afraid it doesn't quite work the way it should yet," Winston explains as the device limply hangs from his fingers; Lena disappointedly sits back down, her lower lip almost, but not quite, pouting.
"Well how much longer until it does work?" she asks, quite literally unable to wait any longer.
Winston does not have the heart to tell her that he honestly has no idea how to even begin to make it function. All he has so far is the idea and the shell; what he is showing her is no more than the house for the device itself. Instead, he smiles.
"I only have a few more tests to run," he lies, "but I have to wait a few hours before my tools cool down."
She sighs, her shoulders slouching.
"That could be a lot longer for me than for you."
Winston nods agreement and understanding before gesturing back to his hand.
"I call it the chronal harness. Mk. 1," he explains.
Lena smiles briefly.
"So you're to be my savior?" she asks, a playfulness in her voice, "My furry knight in shining white armor?"
Winston cocks an eye at her, and Lena's poker face only lasts so long.
"God, I sound ridiculous," she giggles after bursting out in laughter; she recomposes herself quickly, and goes on almost nostalgically, "You know, I made a point of actively avoiding being the damsel in distress. And here I am, a fighter pilot in the greatest Air Force in the world, waiting to be saved."
She sighs again, burying her forehead in one palm with a short chortle.
"Oh, this whole thing has turned into a nightmare."
Winston begins pawing at the harness in his hand, the size of Lena's chest fitting inside his palm, and his gaze still downward, he grumbles.
"Can I ask you something?"
Winston looks up to see Lena's head still in her hand save for one brown eye, watching him through parted fingers and waiting for the coming question.
"The pilot application for the Slipstream was volunteer only," Winston begins, "If you knew the risk involved, why sign up?"
Lena's answer is quick.
"If no one did anything because of the risks involved, nothing worth doing would ever get done!"
Winston admires the response for a moment, especially the passion in Lena's voice as she said it, before he goes on.
"I mean, really; why did you do it?"
"For the same reason you do anything," she shrugs, "Oh come on, you can't tell me you never did anything just to see if you could do it!"
Winston lets his hands fall into his lap, and his attention is seized by the girl on the other side of the glass, her hands gesturing furiously at nothing while she explained with a childlike wonder in her eyes.
"I know it failed, but imagine if it hadn't! Imagine how different the world would be! And I would have had a part in it!"
Winston nods appreciation.
"Alright, you got your question, now it's my turn," Lena says suddenly, once again grabbing the gorilla's ear, "Why are you all alone working in here, instead of working with the other scientists?"
Winston pretends to be adjusting the harness as he makes an answer, more for an excuse to avoid looking her in the eye than because he was doing anything to his creation.
"I was working with them, but they…" he trailed off, putting familiar memories of Horizon at bay as he chose words to minimize the context of his involuntary isolation, "They are very selective in who they believe in. That, and they thought I was being a disturbance to their work."
Lena, for the first time in a while, does not have a smile to respond with.
"So you set up shop in here? Alone?" she asks.
Winston nods.
"That's very awful of them," she says empathetically.
She pauses to herself before she continues.
"But I'm sort of glad they did," she says, drawing a somewhat defensive look from Winston before she explains, "If they hadn't I never would have gotten to meet you. You're very charming."
"Nor I you," Winston smiles back; he realizes now he has been mimicking her expressions since the conversation started.
"Do you still have the wristwatch you wore when the incident occurred? It should still keep time as you experience it. I'm curious as to how long this has gone on for you."
She holds her wrist out. The accident happened on March 25th 14:03 military time. Winston knows the date is May 3rd and the time is now 22:37. Lena's wristwatch says that the date is December 2nd, 13:55. No years are on the display.
Winston doesn't know what to say, so he settles on the only thing that makes any sense with a hint of empathy bouncing through his mind.
"You're very brave, you know."
Lena laughs, but this laugh is different. It is less friendly, like she is laughing at what he said instead of laughing because of what he said.
"Brave?" she scoffs as Winston's eyebrows dart up, "I'm terrified!"
"Every time I end up back here, there's cameras or some doctor with white teeth and clean hair watching me and I always smile, but I'm more scared than I've ever been in my entire sodding life! I don't understand why or how any of this is happening and I can't do a damn thing about it!"
"Lena," Winston tries to say consolingly, but she pays no heed; she's standing up now, pacing back and forth in front of the window like a caged lion, her hands balled fists at her sides.
"What if I never get better!"
"Lena, wait now," Winston tries again to no avail.
"What if I'm like this forever?"
"Lena," he tries a third time to the same effect.
"I wish I had died with the Slipstream! I would have been better than this!"
"Lena!" Winston roars suddenly, and Lena stops to look at him, her expression a tearful glare though not at him, and her breathing keeps its rapid pace.
"Do you believe in fate?" Winston asks, his fur beginning to come out of place; she looks at him bewildered, so Winston continues.
"Are you aware how astronomical the odds are of you even being here right now?"
She's starting to calm down now, at least becoming less angry.
"If you've gotten this far, then you're meant to make it all the way back. You're going to make it through this, and I'll make sure you do, with everything I have, I promise!"
She sits back down at the window, obviously sorry for her outburst but no less emotional. Winston keeps on.
"A friend of mine once told me to see things as they could be. I'll make what could be a reality. Just hold on. Keep holding on, and never let go. Because as soon as you give up hope… we've lost already."
Slowly, she looks up at him.
"Okay Winston," she nods, her voice cracking, "I believe you."
She waits before she leans forward, and says something that steals the gorilla's breath.
"I believe in you."
Amber eyes grow wider for a moment, and Winston's heart skips a beat. It is the first time someone had said anything like that since he'd lost Harold, and it nearly stopped him in his tracks. Four words more profound than he remembers any being.
As he looks to Lena, her outline begins to buzz out of focus, as if she were on a fading television screen. She realizes what is happening at the same time Winston does, and she sighs as her head bows, wiping a tear from her eye before it falls.
She looks at Winston as his expression grows even more concerned, straight to fear, and one corner of her mouth draws up in a reassuring smile. Her eyes don't hide how terrified she really is. With two fingers, she touches her eyebrow in a small salute, and as she begins to fade away, her voice becomes a whisper.
"Cheers, love."
And then she is gone, leaving Winston to make good on his promise.
He neither sleeps nor eats until he sees that promise through.
And many days later, with red eyes, a stomach that had been sustaining itself off his body's tissue and hands clutching onto a completed chronal harness with its blue power core glowing, he barges into Lieutenant Lena Oxton's isolation chamber and straps the device onto her chest.
With bated breath, they wait and watch as slowly, her silhouette becomes less transparent and more solid, and weight returns to her body. They look into each other's eyes almost in disbelief when they think maybe, just maybe, it worked, Winston waiting to see if she fades away again and Lena waiting to see if he smiles or tears his hair out in frustration.
When both saw what they were looking for, they laugh in triumph together, Winston throwing his head back and his arms up and Lena jumping up and down shouting "Yes! Yes!" over and over again.
Then she hugs him; she jumps up and throws her arms around his neck and holds on like she's never letting go. She cries tears of joy into his fur, and Winston is so surprised he falls back onto his haunches, and slowly, cautiously, he brings an arm up to console her.
"Thank you. Thank you," she sobs over and over again, and Winston cannot decide if he wants to cry with her or just hug her back, like it's the first and last embrace of his life.
After minutes, she eases her grip, and pulls back enough for Winston to see her tear stroked face and her beaming smile. And at that moment, to this day Winston remembers the thought that crossed his mind.
There, sitting on the floor of the isolation chamber with tears soaking his neck and his stomach growling and his mind dreary and Lena still holding onto him, he thinks:
"This is what Overwatch was meant to be."
Winston considers the chronal harness his greatest accomplishment, not because he bent the laws of space and time to his will, but because of the look on Lena's face when he gave it to her. That look said more than any song ever could.