Chapter Text
From: [email protected]
Subject: Widowmaker
Hi Lena
Look, about your mission tonight. I know we’ve already discussed this, but I just want to say again that assassination really doesn’t sit right with me, especially so soon after putting the gang back together, and ESPECIALLY since this is exactly why we got shut down in the first place. And using Amélie!? We only just got her back, we should be trying to break Talon’s conditioning, not use it for our own ends! I know I say this a lot, but sometimes it feels like it’s only me (and Angela) who’s saying it…
That said, 76 made his case and the intel he's dug up checks out, so I guess we have to act on it. If we take your target out we should be dealing Talon a major blow, and I pray the benefits outweigh the costs.
Just try and keep a low profile tonight, okay? We really don’t need any attention on this one.
Also, I spoke to Zenyatta and he said he’d talked to you about Amélie and Mondatta and what happened last time you were in London. I hope that means good things? You’re not going to try and get revenge, right?
Okay, I’ll quit rambling now. Good luck out there!
Winston
P.S. Hana says we should start calling 'Soldier 76' Morrison occasionally and see when he notices. You in?
It was, Widowmaker thought, a little bit like history was repeating itself.
Here she was again, in the dead of night on a London rooftop, aiming down a sniper scope while a luckless bodyguard twitched his last a few metres behind her. Except this time the person in her sights was a human, not an omnic, and the man whose windpipe she’d crushed just moments before wore the black-and-white mask of a Talon commando.
She’d expected her old masters to come looking for her after Overwatch captured her, if only to tie up a loose end. She doubted they’d ever expected she’d find them first.
For a moment Widowmaker zoomed her scope out, checking no-one had spotted her on her perch twenty storeys above street level. Across the street was an enormous wedding cake of a building, all soaring stone pillars and marble domes. The Royal London Opera Presents: Madame Butterfly was projected up its flanks in blue hard-light. Paparazzi scuttled around the doors like ants and a small crowd of citizens had gathered behind a cordon in the hope of glimpsing a celebrity or two.
And here he came, the man she was here to kill. Two police riders on hoverbikes cleared the way for his gleaming black limousine, which pulled up to the kerb with a hum of engines and a rustle of displaced air. A few paparazzi jumped out of the way before they were flattened.
An omnic bodyguard unfolded itself from a small compartment in the side of the limo and stalked round to open the passenger door. Widowmaker eyed the man who stepped out calmly, taking in the scene, lining everything up. For a moment the man was framed perfectly beneath the opera house’s adverts.
It’s a boring opera anyway, Widowmaker thought. I’m doing you a favour.
She zoomed in again, crosshairs perfectly tracking the base of the man’s skull. He was walking down the red carpet now, arm-in-arm with a woman. His wife? His mistress? Irrelevant. That omnic bodyguard trailed a couple of steps behind. Could be a problem.
In four seconds the man would step through the doors of the opera house and she’d lose her shot. Plenty of time.
Windspeed, negligible. The slightest breeze coming from the south-west. Coriolis effect, accounted for. Bullet drop, likewise. The man was climbing the steps in front of the huge oak doors. Widowmaker’s finger tightened on the trigger and she felt an electric tingle of anticipation in her chest.
The bodyguard behind her target raised a finger to where its ear would have been, if it was human. Behind her the corpse of the Talon guard she’d killed emitted a burst of radio static.
“Rooftop, check in.”
Trop lent, l'ami. Too slow. Widowmaker held her breath, licked her lips, waited for the pause between heartbeats…
“Rooftop…? Rooftop, respond!”
…and pulled the trigger.
The rifle barked. The bullet scorched its way through the air, crossed the street in an instant, and drilled neatly through her target’s head. What had a moment ago been an important British politician and secret Talon operative, and was now an already-cooling bag of meat, dropped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Widowmaker exhaled.
She permitted herself a half-second to confirm the kill – yes, he was definitely dead, that looked like his brains all over the shoes of the screaming woman next to him – and then ducked back out of sight, flattening herself against the rooftop she was perched on. And not a moment too soon. A moment later another gunshot echoed and a shower of pulverised brick dust rained down from a spot just above her head. That damn omnic bodyguard, she guessed. A human might have panicked when their boss’s head exploded three feet in front of them, but certain models of omnic didn’t have that problem.
Another shot whined past her as she shimmied backwards, scrambled to her feet and began sprinting away, vaulting over chimneypots and sliding under air vents. Behind her she could hear screams and the first wailing sirens, the sounds of a job well done.
Now for the hard part, she thought to herself with a grimace.
“Kill confirmed, target down,” she hissed into a microphone that ill-tempered dwarf in Overwatch had built into the collar of her suit. “Need immediate extraction.” Footsteps across the rooftops towards her, other security guards she hadn’t spotted. Merde.
“Sorry, love, think you’ve got a wrong number,” came a sing-song voice in her earpiece. “This is a private channel… who is this?” With just the faintest emphasis on the ‘who’.
Widowmaker ground her teeth as another shot rang out. Sparks sprayed from a metal fire escape behind her.
“This is Spiderwoman calling Fly Girl, and so help me God you are never picking our codenames ever again. Now get me out of here.”
A barely-suppressed giggle on the other end of the line. “Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it, love? Hold on, I’ll have you out in a jiffy!”
Widowmaker wasn’t sure that was even a word but she was in no position to argue. She chanced a look behind her as she sprinted onwards. Three figures on her tail, all of them in Talon’s black uniform. Not good.
She ducked behind a chimney, pressing her back to the rough brickwork, listening to the footsteps coming closer, slowing down, the Talon mercenaries more wary now they’d lost sight of her. She flicked her goggles down, the lenses in them glowing blood-red, and the outlines of the three mercs glowed though the brick behind her.
Two split off to check behind a distant water tank, the third kept coming towards her. Perfect.
In a split second she had rounded the chimney, dropped to one knee, raised her rifle and planted the merc’s forehead right in her sights. One shot and down he went. He didn’t even have time to raise his gun. The other two span round at the sound of the gunshot.
Widowmaker grappled away as the two surviving mercs filled the air where she’d just been with bullets. She heard one of them bellowing into his radio as she skimmed over the brick and slate rooftops and landed hard on the flat concrete top of a building that afforded dismayingly little cover.
“Time on that evac?” she said into her own radio, trying to keep her breathing under control, as she sprinted for the edge of the roof. Another glance behind her. The two Talon soldiers were too far behind to ever catch up with her now but by the gestures one of them was making he was co-ordinating other soldiers to her position.
“Umm… soon, soon!” Tracer replied. “Any moment now, like, really soon! Honest!”
“Please tell me you’re in the air,” Widowmaker gasped, suddenly seized with the awful realisation that Overwatch could have just set her up to be retaken by Talon rather than deal with her themselves. And after what she’d just done, Talon would be anything but merciful…
“Of course I’m in the bloody air! I’m over London now! I’ve just run into a little snag, is all!”
“Explain,” Widowmaker snarled, keeping the edge in her voice to keep the fear out of it. She took a running jump at the edge of the roof, soared over the street below, landed on the roof opposite in a neat roll and kept running. Behind her she heard a fire escape door slam open and booted feet echo.
“Well… this VTOL… it’s not stealthed like the fancy Talon birds you’re used to,” Tracer began.
“So?” Gunfire behind her. She jumped, span, fired, kept running. A Talon soldier twisted and fell, clutching his belly. The rest ignored him, kept on her heels.
“So, air traffic control spotted me! And I can’t tell them who we are, can I? So I just had to keep flying, and now they’ve sent someone up to investigate!”
“And this is a problem?” Widowmaker gasped, incredulous. More sirens behind her now, it sounded like London’s police were finally waking up and doing their job.
“Nah, not really,” Tracer shot back, that familiar confidence seeping into her voice. “I just have to lose this stupid guy before I can come pick you up…” She trailed off. “Wait, hang on…” Another pause. “Oh… oh you’ve gotta be- shit!”
A burst of static and the line went dead. Widowmaker’s heart nearly skipped a beat – for what that was worth.
“Tracer?Tracer?”
More dead air.
Merde, merde, et encore merde .
She glanced behind her and counted six armoured soldiers before she decided to stop counting and just keep running. An air conditioning vent came up on her left and almost without thinking about it she slapped a venom mine on it as she dashed past. A moment later she heard the bang of it detonating and a pair of choked screams.
Two down, she thought with a sneer. She tried her microphone again. “Tracer, do you copy?”
Another burst of static, making her heart sink, and then-
“-sus Christ! You still there, love?”
“Despite all efforts.” Another rattle of gunfire. A window ahead of her splintered crazily and then shattered.
“Great! Okay, do you want the good news or the bad news?” Tracer yelled.
Widowmaker didn’t dignify that with a response. Her grapple shot out again, yanking her up onto a rooftop several stories above the one she had been on. The Talon mercs would have to climb some stairs to follow her; she’d bought some precious seconds.
“Well, the good news is I ain’t dead yet!” Tracer cheered. What depressing good news, Widowmaker thought, but said nothing. Around her the spires of central London towered around her and she thought she could see the Thames in the distance. She aimed for a distant parking garage and picked up the pace, cool evening air whipping her hair out behind her.
“And the bad news?” she asked.
“That bird that came up to check me out isn’t government, it’s Talon! They just tried to shoot me out of the sky!” Tracer sounded more indignant than scared, as if deeply offended that some Talon rent-a-pilot thought they stood a chance against her.
This was rapidly turning into an evening where the word merde was getting overused, Widowmaker thought.
“Can’t you lose them?” she asked.
“What, in this old cow I’m flying? You gotta be joking! This is Overwatch’s old junk we’re using here, not the latest Talon tech!”
“Shoot them down?”
“This thing ain’t armed, love, it’s a cargo VTOL. Best I can do is pull alongside and flip ‘em the bird.”
“So what are we going to do?” It would take an observant person to notice the worry in Widowmaker’s voice, but it was there.
“I dunno, I’ll think of something! Where are you?”
Widowmaker looked around. “Ah… near a clock. A big clock, at the top of a tower. I can see the river beyond that…” She stopped. A white skull-like helmet popped into view over the rooftop and she sent it tumbling back down with a bullet in one of its eyes.
“Big Ben? You’re at Big Ben? How did you get all the way over there!?”
“I ran,” Widowmaker replied, and ran again as more Talon mercs began to swarm the rooftop.
“Christ, wish I had your legs!” Tracer said. Widowmaker tried not to read anything to that. “Okay, I’m coming in from the south – that should be on your right – I’ll try and- aw, hell!”
Widowmaker glanced up and to her right. Up in the sky were two dots of light, one bright blue and one a deep red. As she watched a streak of light leapt from the red towards the blue, missed, and exploded in a burst of smoke and flame.
“Bloody bastards!” crackled her earpiece. “I’m okay! I’m okay!”
“Glad to hear.” Another venom mine left in her wake, another set of choking coughs and sounds of falling bodies. Widowmaker stopped in the cover the opaque smoke afforded her, flicked down her goggles, picked off a few stragglers who hadn’t made it to cover of their own. The mercs were close enough that she could hear their commander yelling at them.
“Command wants her dead!” he was yelling. “That means a nice, fat bonus for whoever brings me her head! Now move up!”
She blew the head off the first brave – or greedy – soldier to try their luck but by then the venom gas was dissipating and she turned to run again. But when she did so she saw exactly how much further the rooftop she was stood on extended, and it wasn’t nearly far enough.
“Evac would be appreciated,” she hissed into her microphone, and decided, what the hell, she might as well die fighting. She ducked behind some nameless chunk of machinery bolted to the building's roof and looked up again. The lights were closer now, discernible as the twin blue-hot thrust jets of Tracer’s craft and the red anti-grav engines of the Talon aircraft behind it.
She could hear the roar of the engines now, loud and getting louder, and before she could meaningfully react another streak of fire shot out from the Talon jet – missile! – and bore down towards her. The VTOL span out of the way and the missile streaked harmlessly past. Widowmaker threw herself down as it sizzled overhead and exploded somewhere between her and the soldiers trying to flank her.
“Evac’s on its way! Where are… I see you! I can see you! Get to the edge of the roof, love, I’m coming in hot!”
That was an understatement if ever there was one. Widowmaker sprang to her feet and began sprinting for the edge of the roof.
“Actually, I’m coming in too hot! Abort! Abort!” Tracer screamed.
“What?”
The VTOL wasn’t even slowing down, she realised with dismay, but she was out of cover now and there was no going back. She kept running. Over the roar of the two aircraft’s engines she could hear boots and bellowed commands.
Tracer’s VTOL screamed through the air above her and the shockwave sent her stumbling sideways. A moment later Talon’s ship followed with the furious growl of straining anti-gravs. Turbulence buffeted Widowmaker, slamming her this way and that. She tripped, fell, scrabbled to her feet, kept running right to the edge of the rooftop.
Above her the two aircraft soared up into the sky, flying almost vertically, Tracer dodging another Talon missile.
Behind her footsteps clattered and she span around. The mercs had her cornered. They approached her slowly, cautiously, wary of another trap. Guess I killed the reckless ones, Widowmaker thought with bitter satisfaction. Behind them, the one she assumed was their leader shouted in frustration.
“What are you idiots waiting for!? Shoot her!”
She kept her gun trained on them. “First one to raise their gun dies,” she snarled, loud enough for them to hear.
The mercs faltered, stopped advancing. One or two of them lowered their rifles. One even took a step back.
Widowmaker smiled in satisfaction, then realised they weren’t doing that on her account. She followed their eyes, and looked up.
The aircraft were coming back down. Fast.
“Time for take two!” Tracer yelled in her ear. “Hold on to your hat and get that grapple gun ready!”
You cannot be- Widowmaker began to think, but then she quashed that thought because yes, Tracer really was serious. The VTOL plummeted towards the rooftop, engines howling, coming so close there was no way it wasn’t going to slam into them, so close Widowmaker thought she could almost see Tracer sat there in the cockpit…
And then the VTOL’s engines, housed in nacelles on the ends of its stubby wings, span round a half-circle and all of a sudden those twin lances of thrust were pointing down, towards her and the Talon mercs. A wave of scorching air blasted over her. In her ear she heard Tracer’s “oomph!” as the deceleration knocked the wind from her. The VTOL screamed to a half and for a few short seconds it was suspended in mid-air mere metres above Widowmaker’s head, its exhaust jets creating a burning curtain between her and the mercs. In the flank of the craft a rectangle of light popped open and in one fluid motion she raised her arm, aimed, exhaled… and fired. Her grapple shot up, through the open door of the VTOL, and she was yanked up towards it.
A rushing mass of moving air battered her as she shot upwards: the Talon craft, its pilot trying to pull up out of the dive they had stupidly followed Tracer into, tumbling past her. She heard the scream of its anti-grav engines as they tried to make a turn they couldn’t, and thought that she may just have heard the screams of the mercs below as they realised where that aircraft was headed. It was in her vision for only a moment, an afterimage of red engines and black stealth cladding, and then it and the rooftop below her disappeared in a cloud of dust and twisted metal with a noise like the end of the world.
All that took maybe half a second as her grappling hook reeled her in, and then she was inside the cargo cabin of Tracer’s VTOL. The grapple dumped her unceremoniously on the floor and she reached over to slam the door shut behind her.
“And that’s why you can’t beat a good old-fashioned twinjet!” Tracer cried with glee as the VTOL began to pull away from the wreckage below. “None of this anti-grav nonsense!” She paused. “Oh, no, now I sound like Reinhardt…” She chuckled, and then groaned like she was in pain. “You all safe and sound back there, love?”
Widowmaker staggered to her feet and pushed open the door between the cockpit and cargo cabin. “All present and correct,” she gasped with an exhausted sigh, flopping into the co-pilot’s seat and yanking her earpiece out.
“Smashing!” Tracer grinned. “Now let’s get out of here, before the rozzers show up.”
Widowmaker had thought herself fluent in English before she met Tracer. “Quoi?” she asked, as the VTOL soared up towards the clouds fast enough to make it feel like she was leaving her stomach behind.
“The rozzers!" Tracer said. "The fuzz…? Coppers…? Bobbies…? No?”
Widowmaker looked at her blankly.
“The police,” Tracer sighed at last.
If Widowmaker had been a more expressive woman she’d have buried her head in her hands.
They flew in silence for a few minutes, the bright lights of London slipping past below them.
“What is the matter?” Widowmaker asked at last.
“Huh?”
“Your arm,” she said, pointing. “You’re favouring it. And you keep grimacing. When you think I’m not looking.”
“Oh! Umm… it’s nothing,” Tracer mumbled.
Widowmaker just gave her a look.
“Okay, so, maybe it’s not nothing…” Tracer said sheepishly. “I, ah… might have cracked a rib. Or two? Not sure, really.”
“How?”
Now it was Tracer’s turn to give Widowmaker the scathing look. “How? Love, I just made this bird go from full speed ahead to a dead stop! I’m lucky my eyes didn’t fall out!” She grinned. “Guess now you know why I wear the goggles,” she joked.
Widowmaker thought about that for a while. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but Tracer cut her off.
“Save it,” she said.
“What?”
“Save it.”
“But…”
“No. I know what you’re about to say, love. Some garbage about how I shouldn’t pull stunts like that, right? How it’s not logical to injure myself to save a teammate?” She glanced over at Widowmaker, her expression not hostile but not entirely kind either. “I dunno whether I should expect you to understand or not, if what Angela says Talon put you through is true. But… we do that a lot in Overwatch. Get hurt so others don’t. It’s kinda right there in the job description, so you’d better get used to it fast.”
Widowmaker thought of something to say, thought better of it, closed her mouth. They flew in silence for a few more minutes. Below them, the tangle of London’s centre gave way to the regimented grid patterns of its suburbs.
“I was actually going to say thank you,” she said at last.
Tracer blinked in surprise.
“Eh?”
“I said-”
“No, no, I heard you. Umm… you’re welcome.”
Another awkward silence. Tracer busied herself with an instrument panel, Widowmaker stared out of the window.
At last Tracer broke the silence. “Bollocks,” she muttered under her breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“Air traffic control just revoked our clearance. I guess they were still tracking us even after that Talon bird went down.” She sighed in exasperation. “So much for our clean getaway back to Gibraltar!”
“So… what now?”
Tracer thought for a second. “First thing first, ditch the VTOL. Whole country’ll be looking for it by sunrise. Then… I don’t know. Head back to London, I guess? Overwatch has a few safehouses we might be able to use. We’ll probably have to lay low for a couple of days until old Winston can arrange something else to get us home.”
“Back to London. And you don’t think that’s risky?”
“Nah! They won’t think to look for us in the city we just wrecked. They’ll think we’ve gone to ground in Birmingham or Manchester or New Durham, somewhere up north.”
“Right.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh come, on! A few days lounging around in London, it’ll be fun!”
Trapped in a disused safehouse, eating British food, with the most energetic woman alive. Widowmaker could clearly add ‘fun’ to the list of English words she thought she understood before meeting Tracer.
Welcome to Overwatch, she thought to herself, as the VTOL banked around and headed back towards London.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re:Widowmaker
Attachment: BBC News – CHAOS IN LONDON! VICE CHANCELLOR ASSASSINATED, AERIAL BATTLE FOLLOWS
Goddamn it, Lena
Winston