#dvaxbrigitte

[benevolenterrancy]

strong gfs

(because darn it guys, hana is military and she’s stronger than people give her credit for)

[benevolenterrancy]

Dva/bridgette, "Built" (cuz my girl lindholm is built as fuck amiright)

last but not least of that inbox game, because I couldn’t just write a summary for this. I’ve never even considered this ship, but I am delighted.

-

“Built”Dva/Brigitte

Hana Song lay slumped across the hoodof her mech, defeated.  What was it that had finally felled thisintrepid hero, so much beloved by the South Korean people and theworld of online gaming?  A hoard of omnics, overwhelming in numbers? A final battle, glorious in its ultimate failure?  A moment ofreckless bravery that for once she wasn’t clever and lucky enough tosurvive?

That, at least, might have been moredignified.

Currently, Hana Song was laid low bya technical difficulties.

She had only been with Overwatch afew months so far, and it was both everything she could have dreamedand nothing she had expected.  They were doing so much work. Hana valued what she contributed to the front lines of the Crisis,of course, she was here first and foremost to defend her people,but… sometimes when you were getting up every morning and beingdeployed again and again before a persistent press of omnics, youbegan to feel like you weren’t making any headway.  A constant grindwith no objective in sight.  Overwatch was different.  Overwatchwasn’t just playing the game, it was rewriting the rules.  It wasexciting.  It wasfull-tilt, life-or-death, world-hanging-in-the-balance sort of work,and Hana was thriving.

Hermech, unfortunately, was not.

Because this wasn’t Overwatch of thegolden days, this wasn’t like the heroes her dad had told her storiesof as a girl.  They had no funds, no support, no legitimacy.  Winston(an actual, talking gorilla, how cool!)was sending out hooks all over the world and they were getting bites– people were slowly, covertly, trickling in, but it meant that thegreat workshops of the Gibraltar Watchpoint were almost entirelyempty.  One corner, near the massive bay doors, now housed her andher mech.  Over these months, she had been alone in her efforts torepair the damages as they appeared; she fixed what she could andignored the rest.  But now that one of the mech’s arms had gone dead(in the middle of a fight too, with everyone watching!  Uh, she musthave looked like such an amateur) she couldn’t really look the otherway anymore.  Something needed to be done, and she couldn’t figureout what it was.

In anothersection of the room, Lucio had a table that was covered in wires andtubes – for maintaining his skates and amp.  He smugly told her allabout how he’d pilfered and repurposed the tech from some companycalled Vishkar, and he at least seemed to know what he was doing. More so than her at any rate, though even he had been rather helplesswhen she’d brought her mech problems to him.  

Then there wasthat weaselly guy, Junkrat.  Hana wasn’t sure how she felt about him. He could be pretty funny, but she also couldn’t shake the feelingthat if push came to shove he wouldn’t hesitate to render her asmoldering crater.  He was given a space the furthest away fromeveryone else and very explicit orders from Winston about conduct. Because Junkrat?  He worked with explosives.  Hana didn’t know muchabout explosives beyond the “stick in mech, fire at omnic” sideof things, but she couldn’t help but feel that someone so… twitchyshouldn’t be messing with them.  She knew for a fact that he wassomeone who shouldn’t be messing with her mech.

And then therewas that short, grouchy guy, Torbjörn.  His portion of the workshopwith filled with a massive forge and huge work tables – he was theonly one who really seemed to know what he was doing in here, theonly one not self-taught or learning on the fly.  He had a tendencyto mutter when he caught anyone else trying to work in the shop, asif they were all just little kids trying to play with lego in hisworkspace.  Rude.  

Though, Hanathought, rather moodily as she kicked her feet accusingly against thehull of her mech, she did feel a bit like that right now, like a kidpretending to know what she was doing.  She was a soldier though, nota mechanic!

The fact of thematter was simple and unavoidable: the mechs weren’t made for thesort of sustained abuse.  Normally, with MEKA, they hadmicro-rotations.  They’d be deployed, hit hard, and as soon as thebattle was finished or relief was deployed, the previous pilotsreturned so that the mechs could be serviced, strengthened, andreadied for the next deployment.  After a certain number ofrotations, the entire mech would be replaced with a new one.  Themechs were made to take damage, but they were still complicated,delicate machines and for that sort of tank role to be maintained,the mech must be as well.

Sowhat options did that leave her?  She was, technically,on loan to Overwatch.  Sort of.  It was very hush hush, under thetable.  Overwatch wasn’t supposed to be operating at all, but someonein the South Korean government (or military, or something) must havedecided that if the omnic-crushing force of old was looking toreassert itself, it would help to have Overwatch as friends.  Hanawas very aware this was conditional though.  If it looked like thingswere going to go bad with Overwatch, or if it became too complicatedor too inconvenient, all association would be denied and she wouldget pulled… and that had quickly become an unacceptable outcome. She needed to be here. So she really didn’t want to ruffle feathers with HQ by requestingher mech be taken halfway across the world for servicing.  So thatleft figuring it out herself, or capitulating and asking Torbjörn. He got a funny look in his eye when he stared at her mech though, andso far she had avoided letting him feel it up.

It might be acase of the lesser of two evils though, she had to admit.

She was savedfrom needing to confront this sad reality by the sound of theworkshop doors sliding open.  Without looking up, she called out“That you, Lucio?  Please tell me you had an epiphany because Idon’t know what to do.”

“Uh, sorry todisappoint, but I’m not Lucio,” said a clearly strained voice, itsaccent one that sounded familiar but which Hana couldn’t quite place. Given that this was a secretive paramilitary base on a mountain thata bare handful of people had access to, this was alarming.

It was with thisshock that Hana jerked up and swung herself around, peering down fromher mech to stare at this strange newcomer.  It didn’t actually tellher much, because the person was almost completely hidden behind atowering stack of strangely shaped hunks of metal.

“Who are you?”demanded Hana, before she could think better of it.

“Brigitte,”said the person as she staggered across the room.  “BrigitteLindholm.”  It was strange, there was something asalmost-but-not-quite familiar about her name as about her accent.

Brigitte wasstill talking though, “Is Reinhardt in here?”

“Who?”

“Ofcourse he isn’t,” she grumbled.  “He saidhe’d bring the rest of the armour in here so I could get set up andstart repairs but no,of course not.  Uh, knowing him he’s found some old friend.  I washoping to avoid that until we got set up, or else I’m never going topry him away.  You have no idea how much that man can talk.”

Hana slipped downfrom the hull of her mech and landed heavily on the ground.  “Who’sReinhardt?  Are you new members?  Do you need any help with that?”

Brigitteseemed to take the barrage of questions in stride.  “Massivebonehead,” she said.  “Also just massive, trust me, you can’tmiss him.  And, uh, yeah, kind of new memebers, I guess?  Lena justdropped us off like twenty minutes ago.  I mean, technicallyReinhardt used to be a member before and he’s coming back – again,because he’s a bonehead – andso I guess I’m here too.  Dad’s going to throw a fitbut I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  And oh god, yesplease.”

Hanawas already reaching for whatever was in this new woman’s arms and sodidn’t register the following warning: “Be careful, this stuff ispretty heavy–” until she’d tried to heft one of the pieces, wascompletely thrown off by exactly howheavy it was, and promptly dropped it on her toe.

It was a goodthing she was the only one who spoke Korean on the base; her tonguehadn’t exactly been squeaky clean as a professional gamer but joiningthe army had not helped matters and there was nothing like anunspeakably number of kilograms of metal falling on your foot toencourage one to show off that sort of vocabulary.

“Sorry,” saidBrigitte, “let me just…”

With a deafeningclattering, the rest of the woman’s load was dumped onto the nearestwork table, and Hana got her first real look at Brigitte Lindholm. She promptly forgot about the pain in her foot.

Ittook her a moment to remember to close her mouth because wow…which had pretty much been the first thought in her head.

Thesecond thought had been: arms. Because Brigitte definitely had those.  Two of them.  Two very,very, very musclyarms. Yes sir.

Hana doublechecked to make sure her mouth was closed.

Brigitte was alsogetting her first look at the room.

“Wow,I’ve heard stories of this place but it’s really nothing likeactually being in here, you know?  Seriously, there is so muchroom… nothing likethe Ironclad Guild, but considering I’ve been working out of a truckfor the past few years this is like – whoa!  Whoseis that?”

At first Hanaassumed she must have caught sight of Lucio’s gently thrumming amp,which was partially disemboweled and casting beats of yellow andgreen light across the ceiling, or the terrifying toxic waste dumpthat was Junkrat’s corner, so she felt herself swelling with pridewhen she realized Brigitte’s gaze was hard-locked on her mech.

“Mine,” shesaid, as if it was no big deal, what girl doesn’t have a spare,million dollar, top-of-the-line battle mech sitting around.  “I’mHana.  Hana Song?  Top pilot in MEKA?”

“Ohmy god, I’ve never seen one up close before,” said Brigitte, alittle breathlessly.  “These are amazing. Like a mix between power armour and proper battle ship – you’vegot the protective hull of an armoured assault vehicle, but way moremobile than anything imaginable in that class… it’s even got theCrusader beat on that front.  It’s almost as versatile as powerarmour, but it’s not going to crumple like paper towel if it getscaught in a firefight.  These are brilliant. And adapting them to be piloted by people – MEKA is seriouslyworking on a different level with these.”  She rounded on Hana, hereyes gleaming with fascination and admiration; Hana beamed rightback.  “And you actually pilot it?  It must be unbelievablydifficult… it was originally designed to be run as a drone afterall, the sheer number of functions for one human to keep on topof…”

Hanashrugged with as much modesty as she could muster.  “I was thenumber one StarCraft player for three years in a row.  That’s whythey went for gamers, you know?  Better response times, multitasking,on the fly strategizing, working in teams and solo…  It was apretty natural transition, when you’ve got a knack for it,” shesaid, leaning against one of the mech’s pink legs.  This would lookmuch more impressive if she was actually wearing her flightsuitrather than the grease-covered work jeans and a baggy old sweatshirtthat used to be her father’s, with a faded picture of a droolingmurloc printed on it.

Thenagain, Brigitte was wearing what looked like steel-toed boots and ashirt with the sleeves (gloriously, gloriously)torn off so maybe Hana could pass this off as an aesthetic and notjust grubby laziness.  She wouldn’t know unless she tried, right?  Sowith the same sort of confident bravado that Hana faced most of theproblems in her life, she jumped in feet first and hoped for a goodlanding.

“You,uh… you want me to show you around?”

“Absolutely!”

Hanacould have crowed with delight.  Nailed it. Of course, the next problem was that this was a compact,single-person mech and there was only so much “showing around”that you could do, but Hana would happily use it to stall for timeand she thought out her next smooth step.  Besides, she loved talkingabout her baby.  With practiced ease, Hana used one of the mech’sarms to swing underself up onto first it’s crouched leg, and then soshe was perched in the crook of its elbow.  Brigitte followed suit,and Hana tried to resist watching the swell of her biceps as her feetsearched for purchase on the mech so she could haul herself up.

Andso Hana talked Brigitte through the ins and outs of the battle mech. Brigitte peered in at the complex array of controls inside thecockpit, listened in rapt fascination as Hana described its featuresand the battles she’s seen with it.

Soonit became much less about impressing a really gorgeous woman, andmore just… talking.  Brigitte was really, really nice.  She laughedeasily, and had a sharp, snide sense of humour, and kept up with Hanaeffortlessly as she got into the more interesting minutia of themech’s features.  Oh, lots of people were interested in here theexploits of Hana Song, South Korean MEKA defender, and they would oohand aah at all theright parts when she told stories about being flung into the ocean bya towering, twenty foot brute of an omnic, or when she had had notchoice but to self-destruct her own mech, barely escaping that onewith her life, but she had never had someone stop her mid-tale to askabout the actual model variants of said omnic or what expulsionmechanism the mech used that managed to get her clear of such ablast.  It wasn’t even annoying to be interrupted – it wasexciting.  Likesomeone was taking the time not to speed run the conversation but topoke around and unlock all the secrets along the way.  Or something.

Completelyoblivious to the emotions banging around in Hana’s head, Brigittepeered at the newly upgraded missile system Hana had been pointingout and said, “I knew I was behind on the latest and greatest,since I was following the big guy around the boonies for the past fewyears boonies, but how did I miss this? MEKA must have gotten a new energy core if they managed to pullsomething like this off!  Keeping this thing mobile, flight-capable,and defensive was already pretty much clocking their core as much asyou could safely expect… how the heck they did keep all that up andadd a missile system?  I mean, you can’t just go make the core biggerwith a living pilot in there, that’d be getting way to chancy.”

Hana rolled hereyes.  She’d commented about the mech’s wimpy power core before, senther complaints as far up the chain as she could manage, only to get areply back telling her to stop being a fool-hardy daredevil thatwanted to throw her life away and to smarten up… or, well, theprofessional, military equivalent.  It seemed to her the only way abigger power core would really be that much of a compromise was ifyou were letting omnics blow you up, and Hana had not intention ofletting omnics blow her up, thanks, so really it was a non-issue. High risk, high reward.  But whatever.

“Nope, sameold, same old,” she told Brigitte.  “It was more of a remodeling. I’m the first to test it out.  We diverted some of the power thatwould have otherwise been used by the defense matrix and fed it tothe missile systems.”

Brigitte’seyebrows went up.  “What?  You’re compromising defense for this? But the defense matrix is one of the things that actually makes amech remotely viable against heavy projectile damage, otherwiseyou’re just a big,” she gestured vaguely to the mech, “pinktarget waiting to blow!”

“Pssh,no.  We’re supposedto be mobile, that’s the whole point!  We’re not there to shield,we’re there to hit hard and fast and get out before too much damageis laid down!  The defense matrix just makes us sitting ducks –with the missiles we can actually attack from a distance beforeneeding to get up close.  Waybetter strategy, trust me.”

Brigitte hummed,but seemed to be considering it.

“Any chance Icould see a test run?” asked Brigitte.  “I’ve only ever seenvideo.  I’d love to see it in person.”

“Absolutely!”said Hana, without hesitation.  How was she supposed to say no tohaving the admiring gaze of a cute girl on her while she did what shedid best?

And then came thecrushing recollection of why she was here in the shop in the firstplace.  The arms, while not as crucial for movement as the thrustersystem, still acted a little like rudders; they were directionconnected to the yokes which controlled all movement.

…Still, it didmean flying the mech would still be doable, even with one arm down. A little clunky, maybe, but she’d managed to get herself through thatlast battle with it down, right?  And it’s not like there would evenbe Talon agents trying to shoot her down this time.  It would befine.  Completely fine and totally work it.

She hesitatedagain.  Common sense was screaming at her to listen for five seconds.

Because on theother hand, she couldn’t help but suspect that an genuine, bona-fidemechanic might not think it was brave or daring or romantic to getinto a damaged craft and push it even harder rather than runningmaintenance.

Damn her and herbad luck.  She was going to have to say “no sorry, I broke thesuper cool mech and am grounded” and watch this amazing woman say“oh no problem” and then remember she had her own work and leaveand never get another chance to talk to her.

Better thannever getting another chance to talk to her because you fly yourselfoff the cliff face and burn to deaths on the rocks below, hermind rebuked, in a voice that sounded frustratingly like her father.

“Actually, Ican’t,” Hana admitted bitterly.  “I’m having some issues with oneof the arms.  Kinda goes past my expertise.  I’m probably going toneed to contact MEKA and see about getting it replaced or something.”

“Well you’realready doing better than Reinhardt on that front,” said Brigittedryly, with a nod towards the pile of metal she’d hauled in.  “Youhave no idea how long I’ve been hounding on him to take a break andget some actual replacement parts for that scrap metal he keepsinsisting on strapping himself into.  But it you like, I could take alook at the mech with you?  Maybe we can figure out what’s wrongtogether.  No idea when Reinhardt’s going to actually show up and Ican’t work until I’ve got the rest of the armour, so I’ve got time. We could make an afternoon of it, get to know each other a littlebetter.  And give me an excuse to dig into some really awesome tech,”she said cheerfully.

Hana couldn’tactually believe her luck.  This was too much.  “You know how oneof these is built?” she asked.

Brigitteshrugged.  “Not really, no.  Not besides for the basic schematicsthat anyone can access with a bit of digging.  But I didn’t know howthe Crusader worked either besides for some of Dad’s stories, and most  of those were just complaining about how Reinhardt treated itand which bits he’d needed to bang out today.  I’m pretty good withthis sort of stuff.  Let me poke around a bit, and I’ll bet I canfigure out what’s wrong and how we can get you mobile again.  …Um,you okay?”

Hana wasn’t eventrying to hide her staring.  What were the odds – she was lamentingabout needing to contact MEKA and risk losing everything over thisstupid mech, and here comes with woman with her pretty eyes andpretty hair and pretty arms and pretty impressive knowledge ofhigh-tech combat systems offering to fix all her problems.

“I couldkiss you,” said Hana, words shooting cheerfully past her mentalfilter and straight to her mouth.  

Brigitte laughed,but Hana still hadn’t decided if she was joking or not when theworkshop door opened and a voice boomed.

“Brigitte! There you are!”

Brigitte roundedon the speaker, hands on her hips.  “You mean right where I’msupposed to be?  Yeah!  Where were you?”

This had to beReinhardt.  When Brigitte had said massive, she’d been understatingit.  The man had to be nearly as tall as her mech, with a shaggywhite beard and huge, blinding grin.  Tucked under his arm like itwas a jacket on a warm day, was more of the insanely heavy armourBrigitte had been lugging when she first got here.

As Reinhardtmoved further into the room, Hana caught sight of who was with him –oh joy, Torbjörn.

“Brigitte!”he called.

Brigitte eyesimmediately locked on him, and the stern face she’d been directly atReinhardt immediately melted.  “Papa!” she called, and racedover.

Papa?

Hanawatched with a sort of mute horror as Brigitte wrapped her father –her father – up in ahug and pressed her face to his shoulder, clearly ecstatic to see herfamily – her family– again.  Torbjörn was patting her back warmly, and theconversation quickly switched to a low, warm Swedish.

That would explain why the accent had been so familiar, just said in a different voice. That would explain why the name was so familiar, though she’d only heard Torbjörn’s surname the one time, when they’d first been introduced.

Atsome point during this, Reinhardt had ended up closer to Hana, givingthe other two space.  He introduced himself, and offered Hana amassive hand to shake; his grip was bone-crushing, but Hana was stillto shocked by all the revelations she had been hit with in the pasthalf an hour to care.

“Theyhave a big family,” he told her companionably.  “They would neveradmit it, but I think both have been missing it.  Very protectiveover each other.”  He chuckled a deep, rumbling chuckle.  “It’s agood thing I brought her back in one piece, I’d hate to think whatTorby would do if I hadn’t.”

Hanamade a vague noise of acknowledgement.

Brigitteand Torbjörn were no longer hugging, and by the tone it sounded likethings had descended into some sort of disagreement over something. Hana choice to take that moment to make herself scarce.  If Brigittewas sticking around, she could always find her later for engineeringhelp.

-

Hana Song layslumped across the length of Lucio’s bed, defeated.

“Were you…flirting vicariously through your mech?” said Lucio from where hewas perched on the edge of his desk, amusedly watching the unexpectedguest who had thrown herself into his room half an hour ago.

“You’re reallynot focusing on the important part of this story,” Hana told thebedsheets.

“Right.  She’sapparently Torbjörn’s kid.  Which is… bad?”

“Yesit’s bad!  It’s sobad!  Can you imagine needing to go up to Torbjörnand saying ‘Hi, your daughter’s arms are builtand I would love for her to cradle me sensually in them’?  Huh?  No! I’m doomed!”

“Uh,yeah, no, I would really not recommend that being your opener forlike… anything, ever.  Especially if you want to actually get adate with her first.”

Hanagroaned pitifully into the mattress.

Hoppingdown from the table, Lucio gave Hana’s shoulders a sympathetic pat.

“Justdon’t think about how awkward breakfast is going to be tomorrow, whenyou’re sitting across from him and trying not to project how into hisdaughter you are,” he said cheerfully.

Agroan.  Hana Song was doomed.