Winston isn't a fool; he knows Overwatch was forged by war.
Of the original six agents, five were soldiers. The other 1/6th part of the team was their armorer, Torbjorn. He was Hephaestus, the anvil behind their swords and armor, and even he wasn't above swinging his hammer in a fight. Like every kid in the world, Winston has seen the holovids.
Reyes, Morrison and Liao up front behind cover as they trade shots with some Omnic monstrosity bristling with guns. Amari, covering them from somewhere far away and up high with her rifle. Reinhardt, bashing metal with that massive hammer, more often than not laughing while he does it. And Torbjorn, wherever he needed to be, either fortifying someone's position or flying through the air, ready to knock skulls himself.
So when he was finally initiated as an official agent of Overwatch, no longer just a recovered asset lingering around a lab, Winston knew what he could be in for. Nevertheless, he knew he could do more good in an Overwatch laboratory than a battlefield.
Winston was the last of the old breed; the final member inducted into the elite rankings of Overwatch agents before it was shut down; not Overwatch employee, not Overwatch asset or operative, Overwatch agent.
It was something he had wanted for a very long time.
But just because he was in didn't mean he was instantly a member of the family. Amari, Reyes, Morrison, Wilhelm, Lindholm: they were the family, a family of soldiers who had been through hell together and came out the other side with the demons crying for mercy. At least, that was how Winston saw them.
It's common knowledge to never meet your heroes.
Winston expected his first meeting with Strike Commander Morrison to go something along the lines of the propaganda, for him to be in his trench coat with a rifle in one hand, a recently saved child in the other with the burning wreckage of something terrible behind him, and for him to walk up and say something like, "Are you with us!?"
Instead, he was wearing what most of them wore in garrison, a skin tight grey and orange shirt tucked into black pants bloused over black boots. His hair is longer than he expected, the beginnings of whiskers beginning to crawl their way forward from the skin they had been shaved down to that morning. He was on the phone when Winston first entered the room beaming, but the Strike Commander was begrudgingly engrossed in whichever delegate or politician or bureaucrat was on the other end of the phone. His first words to Winston, as he hung up, were, "Welcome aboard," and a clap on the shoulder before he started disdainfully dialing the next number.
He expected Commander Reyes to slink up behind him from a shadow, his hood up and his voice menacing. Instead, he met him in the weight room, and his first words were neither menacing nor threatening. Insulting, yes.
"Jesus, are we a traveling circus now?"
He expected to meet Captain Amari on the weapons range, nailing targets a thousand meters out. Instead, he met her as he passed her between the R&D building and central HQ. Reinhardt wasn't in his power armor, posing in front of the sunset. He was in the mess hall, eating currywurst with a fork that was too small for his hands. Torbjorn wasn't hammering molten steel in a dark forge, creating Zeus' thunderbolt or Ares' new sword. He was at the coffee machine, grumbling about a lack of sleep.
Winston was utterly disappointed, until he had the sudden and profound realization that they were people. People capable of extraordinary things, yes, but no less people than anybody else. And in that moment he realized what someone could become when they were pushed. That people could be capable of amazing and terrible things.
The second time he met them it was a few days later at his induction ceremony with banners and certificates and medals and cake, along with all of the other agents, Tracer and Mercy and Genji and McCree. Things seemed more fitting then, but that first impression never went away.
The more he worked with them the more he learned about them, obviously, but what he cherished was that these little tidbits, these little quirks, were his. They all had their callsigns, their catchphrases, their battle rigs that looked identical to the action figures in their image little kids would buy; those were for the world.
If you asked any child in the streets of Dublin who Tracer was, they'd throw up a peace sign and feign an accent before saying, "Cheers love, the cavalry's here!" But very few people knew Lena Oxton's favorite movie was My Fair Lady. Do the same thing about Strike Commander Morrison in Chicago, and people might think of the statue in front of the museum in Numbani, but they wouldn't be able to tell you that Jack Morrison loved to stay up and look at the stars.
The celebrities of Overwatch belonged to anyone with access to the internet or a television, but the people of Overwatch… you had to be in to get that.
Forged in war, yes. But as the years turned over Overwatch became more. By the time Winston was in, it was an organization capable of anything and everything and run by some of the most famous people on the planet.
They even made a calendar.
But then again, they were still warriors first.
On their first op together alone, Winston saw Amari shoot the gun out of a terrorists hand at 900 yards as he threatened to execute a hostage during a three hour standoff in Prague. He saw Morrison and Reyes breaching and clearing rooms like they were dancing, moving like water flows with incredible outbursts of precise aggression. He witnessed Torbjorn blow out the wheels on one getaway car, sending it crashing into a light pole, and Reinhardt, armor clad, launch the second car from the road with his hammer, laughing.
They were practically superheroes, and here they had chosen him to be one of them.
Winston had the science thing figured out, but fighting was never his forte. Combatives was an essential part of training, but Winston was always the one pulling his punches. Even his go-to weapon, the Tesla cannon, had started as a tool and then evolved into a weapon more aesthetically fitting than a gun. Angela understood, but Reyes didn't like it.
"One of these days monkey, you're gonna have to rip someone's face off, and Papa Gabe is gonna be so proud."
Of all the people Winston scrutinized, trying to get under the hood and figure out, Commander Reyes was the hardest.
Gabriel Reyes was a walking paradox. Idealistic enough to think he could change the world, but realistic enough to know he was a dog chasing his tail. He dealt in absolutes, in total blacks and whites, but he was always at home in the moral grey area. He would kill one crooked politician or CEO, or the leaders of a drug cartel, in order to save thousands; in that way he was righteous, a hero. But as soon as shots came his or his team's way… the kill ratios for Blackwatch in firefights were almost supernaturally in Reyes' favor. He would kill dozens or even hundreds to save himself, or those few at his side. And in that way he was a punisher more than a savior.
Winston did not know him until after he was made the Commander of Blackwatch, but it didn't take a scientist of his prestige to deduce Gabriel Reyes' reasons for fighting. He fought so that the world might know peace, but it didn't take long to realize he probably couldn't live without war. It was his purpose, and he was good at it.
Everyone in Overwatch knew what he had done during the Crisis; it was his leadership that won the conflict for Overwatch, his courage and planning that won it the faith it needed for the UN to authorize a trial run. They were all strong, but without Reyes, they were all pulling in different directions. It was his conviction that focused them in, that showed them that it was about more than their home countries, and that they were a team. But, it was Commander Morrison that made them a family. So when the organization needed a head, Morrison was chosen.
However, it might take a scientist of Winston's prestige to deduce why Reyes did what he did in Switzerland. Even with his own mind, both for the logical courses of action and the illogical courses of human hearts, Winston never fully figured it out.
Reyes was there when the foundation for Overwatch was laid, as they all were, but he was unique in that, shortly after it became so famous and decorated and loved, he was removed. From there, he was a spectator, looking in from the outside as, over the years, it became more political. It became more about the bureaucracy, the funding, the agenda, and it was his job to handle the dirtiest side of all those dirty politics.
Winston doesn't think it was being forgotten in Commander Morrison's shadow that drove him crazy; all the glory in the world wasn't enough to break their friendship, even when it was shaky at best.
Winston knows it wasn't the years and years of combat and bloodshed either. In many ways, Reyes lived for those fights, those whip cracks of bullets snapping by and those loud, thundering explosions, and the mix between a game of chicken and chess it all became with him behind one piece of cover and whichever asshole was shooting at him behind another. He was a lion; he was not always safe or kind or gentle, but he was always passionate and dangerous and good. It was his nature. He believed moderation was for cowards and that the world wasn't enough to stop him. Reyes never pulled his punches. Sometimes, he wouldn't even dodge a fist just so he could taste blood before he started dealing it back out.
What got to Reyes was what got to Deadalus: watching as his creation plummeted from the sky until it became something impossible to reconcile, to justify, something so far from what it was originally supposed to be. Overwatch, the people that saved the world, putting out hits on people and peoples' families it doesn't get along with. Their enemies like weeds, it became hard to focus on an objective, so hard that the new objective became killing and the secondary objective became justifying it.
Winston knows from experience, the line between evil and necessary evil can only grow so thin.
Reyes was a walking paradox; idealistic enough to believe he could fight for something bigger than himself and everybody he knew, but realistic enough to know that to save the world it had to change, for better or for worse.
Every time Winston has thought about it, he's ended up here, with Reyes' black and white conscious torn in half and dancing around a campfire mocking him in his own mind. Save the world for a day or two and destroy Overwatch? Keep watching it bastardized?
Winston's leading hypothesis is that it drove him mad, so profoundly mad that the Gabriel they all knew died before any bombs ever went off. He had to resolve his paradox; he had to defy his nature. He had to choose between who he loved and his duty to protect the world from itself. So, he chose.
Winston knows it was a conscious choice; Reyes was too good otherwise. If he had tried, the world would have never known Blackwatch existed. But a careless fingerprint, or a paper trail not burned, or one minute piece of evidence left behind did most of the hard part of bringing down Overwatch for him. In a way, Overwatch was already dead when the Swiss Watchpoint went up; the fireball was more of a formality.
When the Petras Act first passed, Winston blamed Reyes; Winston hated Reyes' corpse, for years. But now, he finds it harder. He doesn't think Reyes was right; not by a longshot, but he does understand.
At least, he thinks he does.