Dynamite in the Machine (Widowmaker/Sombra, Pre-Relatioship)
This submission is for kanekikiss, who requested Widow/Sombra and a detailed look on their relationship. Hope they enjoy. <3
From @maxaholic to @kanekikiss
Dynamite in the Machine
“Ah my favourite spider,” Widowmaker heard the hacker practically sing into her earpiece, “how’s it going up there? Having fun not shooting anything?” Widowmaker resisted the urge to shoot just beside Sombra’s foot. Talon valued her for her patience, her eagerness to get a single, precise shot and her willingness to cooperate with two of their most infuriating agents. She wouldn’t want them wondering any more than they already did about her – and in her opinion, wrongly so.
Where she started and Amelie Lacroix ended had always been something they had never quite understood and even with every check-up, every comatose state she had been placed in to monitor her, they still could not truly figure her out. So they had left her mind to wander: and wander it did, despite everything she tried to stop it.
It wandered to things she couldn’t remember but apparently did. Annecy in spring time, Gerard Lacroix’s laugh and his blue, sparkling eyes. Then the black outs, the pain, the torture. Gerard Lacroix’s blood, her hands stained red and her heartbeat not feeling anything but joy at the sight. The memories were a mixed bag, as though her brain wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be supplying her with.
Lately, for some reason or other, they had been filling her head with the local annoyance on the team.
Sombra…infuriated her like no other – not even like the British pest she had encountered in King’s Row.
Widowmaker withdrew her rifle from her perch and leaned against the turret’s stone wall. Eichenwalde had so far been a bust and had for once gone against every single bit of intel Sombra had supplied for them, a fact Gabriel had not stopped bringing up for the past five minutes while he and Sombra had scouted ahead. As if on cue he started again, his gruff voice sounding more frustrated than ever. “This better not be one of your tricks again, Sombra.” “Yeesh, you screw up once and suddenly everything is your fault from now on!”
Widowmaker felt content to at least have a reason for lack of love for the hacker. Her tricks had cost them in Russia, for her to do it again and so soon…
“It would be a shame if something happened to you on our next mission. A real pity.” She distinctly remembered saying and here they were: the next mission, the grand finale for the hacker if something was to go wrong for them once again.
The worst part about it was that Widowmaker couldn’t see herself shooting the damn woman. There was a pull to her that went beyond her looks, it was what she knew, the secrets she held that made Widowmaker want to crack her open and divulge in everything. And of course it would be a lie, a dirty, cold lie, to say that she wanted to know more about the woman she had once been and if it meant putting up with Sombra to get it…
She was not Amelie Lacroix. That woman was dead. But her memory and what she had once been…While not many things pained her, she couldn’t deny that this did beyond comprehension. The empty space and the desire to fill it. Sometimes it felt easier to talk to the space in her head and know that one day, many days, months, years from now, her voice wouldn’t echo back to her – useless and forlorn.
For now she would put up with Sombra. It would be as simple as that. Besides, aesthetically-wise? She was nice to look at and there were not many things in the waking hours she had that could grab her attention like the other woman did. And yes, it was as depressing as it sounded. Yes, she had gotten used to it.
A flicker of movement and Widowmaker’s finger leapt to the trigger.
And then moved away.
Sombra grinned up at her from her rifle’s sights.
“Just checking if you’re still concentrating!” Sombra chuckled with a wink. She turned quickly before Widowmaker could answer, catching up with Gabriel only to have him reprimand her for falling behind.
“I need you focused! Not flirting!”
“Ay, that wasn’t flirting Gabe.” Widowmaker watched as in spite of her shorter height Sombra threw an arm over their accomplice’s shoulders. “But if you want me turn it up a notch…”
“Don’t.” Widowmaker protested with a roll of her eyes.
“Aw, you two are no damn fun.”
x-x-x-x
They returned to Talon HQ with no less than several wounds each.
Sombra had winked at them both between the medics popping her shoulder back in place. “What did I say? The intel was right!”
Reaper, as he always did, grumbled. “You forgot to mention the damn sentries that would be waiting for us though, didn’t you?”
The flick of her hair and the nonchalant shrug had been Sombra’s answer. For Widowmaker it had almost been enough for her to damn the consequences and shoot the nuisance then. Almost.
Sombra was sadly still rather pretty to look at.
x-x-x-x
It was at night where Widowmaker found the hacker doing her damnedest to crawl into her web, uninvited and predatory in a way that when her golden eyes opened and saw the most sparkling purple staring back at her, she grabbed that inviting throat and tightened her grip.
Sombra’s eyes were bright and mischievous even with the threat of death a mere crushing moment away. Talon had made her strong enough to do such thing, with the right amount of pressure not even the tubes inserted into her entire body could hold her back…
Yet she didn’t. Self-control after all, was everything.
“What are you doing here?” She hissed and loosened her grip bit by bit until Sombra could breathe once more.
“Got bored of beating Gabriel at video games.” She replied as though it was as simple as that. But no, it couldn’t be. Sombra was not a simple person, there was no doubt in her mind about that. “Besides, I’ve been here for a few months now and I’ve never seen you in the mess with the rest of us. Can’t blame a girl for being curious now, can you, mon ami?”
Widowmaker rolled her eyes and released Sombra completely with a half-hearted flick of her wrist. It was not that she had no time at all for Sombra’s games (on the contrary with her condition she rarely needed sleep, she had all night to listen to her ramble) but she simply didn’t want to. Lies were a game of the past: in this present, the present of Widowmaker and not Amelie Lacroix, there was only terrible truths.
She rested back on the bed Talon had specifically made for her with a grunt. The reconditioning they did to her to keep her as sharp and intense was a delicate process – it would take forever now to get into a comfortable position with the tubes sticking in her.
Her discomfort must have shown on her face because Sombra leant over her again, elbow pressed against the bed’s railings with her chin in her hand. “You look awfully blue, spider.”
“How long did that one take you to think of?”
Sombra grinned and wrapped a black and purple strand around her static-gloved fingers. “Ahh, only a few minutes or so.”
“I’m glad to amuse you,” Widowmaker huffed, “now get out. I’m down here for a reason and I refuse to entertain that you had no idea why. You are not as slick as you imagine yourself to be.”
Sombra threw a hand over her heart and gasped. “Azul you wound me! I’m just a curious girl…Oh okay, no need to try and murder me with your eyes.” The hacker leant over her and Widowmaker froze until she returned to her original position, the only new thing being she had pulled up several screens up for Widowmaker to look at with a wave of her hands. “You’re being kept alive with this lot, huh? Do you even know what they do to you? I could tell you, if you’d like. Well…point it out. I’ve never been good with science that wasn’t computers.”
Widowmaker smiled a thin, unfeeling smile. Sombra would give something away about herself only to expect something in return. How very Sombra indeed.
“You’re smiling. Your 4 beats per minute heart want to know?”
“I am smiling at the thought you would think I want to know.” An honest answer for a surprisingly honest question. Widowmaker knew. She could see it on Sombra’s face. And was delighted (more than delighted actually) when that expression crumbled, replaced with something foreign to her face. Something Widowmaker had never seen before but something that the dead woman inside of her cried out for. “You pity me.”
The other woman pushed away from the bed and regarded the darkness of the underground room with a disinterested laugh. “Yeah, sure spider. I mean, there’s not even a light in here apart from your night light. That’s definitely something to be pitied over, you know?” The hacker flicked her wrist and with a popping noise the screens Widowmaker had barely glanced at disappeared into thin air. “You really don’t care what they do to you?”
Widowmaker watched as Sombra watched her. The pity in her eyes had become clearer now and instead of feeling the resentment and murderous rage she had expected, Widowmaker found herself feeling only disquiet. Empty.
She closed her eyes and gently moved her arm so that it pointed at the exit from her room. “Leave. If they find you down here they’ll wonder why.”
For what felt like centuries since she had last seen it, Sombra smiled at her. “I knew it.”
“Leave.”
“Oh I’m going amiga, but don’t worry,” the hacker threw her a sidelong glance and finger guns as she stepped out of the darkness and into the light, “me and you have a lot of catching up to do.”
x-x-x-x-x
Catching up to Sombra meant that she avoided Widowmaker like the plague. It had been fine at first, in fact the absence of the hacker had given her more time to focus on missions rather than consider calling in for a favour from her, a dangerous enough task without even thinking of the consequences that would come to her if her handlers found out…
But then even Reaper noticed that Sombra couldn’t stay in a room with her – something he again couldn’t help commenting on once after returning from a mission together, only to have Sombra flee from the room moments after landing.
“Whatever you did to spook her, well done.” He chuckled, slinging his shotguns under his arm as though he was carrying a small dog and not weapons.
“You will shoot someone if you keep holding them like that,” Widowmaker tutted and pointedly took one from him to hold as they walked to the armoury. “As for Sombra, I have done nothing. Nor am I complaining. She’s been doing her job far better than she used to, and if her acting spooked, as you put it, is the reason because of it I say we leave her be.”
“She’s fine with me, Widowmaker.”
“You have more patience with her than I do. Perhaps that is it.”
Reaper couldn’t grin, not like Gabriel Reyes used to, but like her some days it was difficult to tell the beginning from the end and today it was Reaper who smiled a snarky sort of smile at her. Wisps of black smoke escaped from the gaps of his teeth and his red eye seemed to blaze with mirth when he took in her answer.
“Suuuure.” Oh how she always lost her patience when he was like this. The knowing look, the sinister toothy grin coupled with the dark, inky smoke that surrounded his face. “Only, I don’t think she’s afraid of you at all. Rather the opposite, actually.”
Widowmaker made it a point to cut across him to get into the armoury first. Controlled or not, sometimes revenge was a dish best served petty.
He huffed out a gruff laugh as she slid Widow’s Kiss into its locked sheath before she chucked his one shotgun onto the workbench beside them. While Widowmaker did not ‘perform’ in such an aggressively emotional way as she was now in front of their handlers, with him she had at least opened up a hole in her walls. He could peer in sometimes, see the dead woman trapped inside of her and then, when she felt he had seen enough, she would close it up and together they would be the Reaper and Widowmaker.
There was nothing of Amelie Lacroix in her voice when she spoke again. “You are looking for trouble, Gabriel.”
“Again, the opposite. If I were you I’d tell her to back off a little,” he looked as though he was holding something back with the way his faded limbs seemed to twitch in hesitation. It was not the first time he would have kept something from her, it was the sort of relationship that being part of Talon’s guinea pigs together bred. Cracks and holes of trust and thoughts of the smallest betrayals. “She’s clever, but even Talon won’t be fooled by her forever.”
“I fail to see what this has to do with me—“
“They found her looking through your records,” ah, so that was the secret, was it? “Whatever she’s after it has to do with you. All I’m saying is be careful.” He placed himself beside her, his shoulder pressed against the exit door of the armoury. “She’s not loyal to Talon and if she isn’t loyal to Talon she isn’t loyal to me or you, understand?”
Widowmaker sneered out a dry laugh that made the black smoke around Reaper wisp through her hair in frustration. “Your advice is appreciated, but not wanted. I’m no fool to believe Sombra is anything but a meddlesome fly that’ll eventually be stomped out, whether it be by me or you we will have to wait and see.”
She didn’t have to believe herself to carry the message to Reaper and by the time he had left her alone in the armoury to go into the mess, Widowmaker felt convinced he had brought it even more than she was convinced of the opposite.
She needed Sombra. Sombra needed Talon. Everyone had their price and knowing Sombra had taken an interest in her made her certain she was more than willing to pay what the hacker truly wanted.
x-x-x-x-x
Widowmaker was no hacker but she did not need to be one to knock on the hacker’s door after hours at Talon HQ. And yes, technically she was not supposed to be walking around but she was not Talon’s best, most expensive investment for no reason – she knew how to work cameras, how to remain in the shadows and with her near lack of a heartbeat…
She was hard to detect. Talon had made her like it and it was foolish of them really to try and keep her talents contained only to suit them.
Widowmaker paused on rapping her knuckles against Sombra’s door again. It had been a long time since she had thought of Talon and their techniques in a negative light, or at least, it had been a while since she had acknowledged she had done so. But even with her being here in front of Sombra’s door, even she had to acknowledge that she had crossed a line.
Before she could ponder more on it the door slid open with a hiss and Widowmaker met the hacker’s sleepy, purple eyes with a stony glare.
Sombra arched a finely shaped brow at her. “Look at you azul, breaking the rules and wandering around after hours.” She yawned and to Widowmaker’s surprise moved back so that she could come in. “Come on, if you’re gonna break the rules you better give yourself enough time to do it before they find out.”
Widowmaker remained silent as she pushed past Sombra into her room. It was messier than she had imagined (though she supposed her not having a room that she could truly call her own like Sombra’s left her with little to compare it to) and smaller too. Mostly the room was taken up by a slim, computer screen that’s contents could hardly be seen through sticky notes the other woman had taken time and effort to make it into an eye. She tried her best not to stare too closely, whatever Sombra was looking for was her own business. She wasn’t here for that, she was here…
Well.
She took in the tousled clothes that hung on Sombra’s chair, the shirts and shorts and the jeans with holes in the knees. Before Sombra had joined Talon she had questioned her existence every now and then, like the way someone would think of a past acquaintance that circumstance would remind them of. A passing thought that would be there one minute and then gone the next, replaced by the uncontrollable need to be something that mattered, no matter what that something was.
Sombra hadn’t done anything special to change her mind to desire to be somebody rather than something. The other woman had just appeared and looked at her differently and for what felt like no other reason it had…repulsed her.
She was not a thing to be pitied. To be looked at as though she was lesser for accepting the role given to her, the one she excelled at in ways that not even Reaper could.
Apart from now it was becoming harder to convince herself that what Talon stood for, the bettering of humanity, was the true goal when in reality it felt like it had become so muddied and distorted that purpose and reason no longer remained.
And the thought of her being purposeless with nothing to her name apart from the past of a dead woman? No, she would not let that happen to her.
That was why she was here.
“Tell me what you know about the woman who I was before,” she said, ignoring Sombra’s sleepy protests at picking another time to talk about this, and pulled out the chair from under Sombra’s desk and sat. “You must know. It is why you’ve avoided me for so long, you must know who she was before and what happened to her. Tell me.”
Widowmaker remained impassive when Sombra simply stretched and collapsed on her bed with a dramatic, feigned snore. She would not lose her temper here, no matter how frustrated she felt at seeing the other woman treat the desperation she felt with such lack of care.
Sombra cracked open an eyelid. “What changed your tune, spider?”
“It is none of your concern.”
“Oh but it is,” Sombra had that grating voice that made Widowmaker sit up straighter. As dramatic and teasing as woman opposite to her behaved, she was not as brainless as she appeared. There was a reason she was infamous, a reason why she was feared. “I don’t give away secrets without first knowing why I’m giving them away.”
A fair question that reeked of a game being played. One that Widowmaker could not help but distrust.
She rested a cool, blue cheek in the palm of her hand. “If I answer your question, you will answer mine, ombre.”
“Ooh, I like this game.” Sombra practically purred, getting up to rest her back against the wall of her room. She extended a hand towards Widowmaker and pointedly twirled it. “Spider ladies first.”
“Why are you here?” Right in the heart. There was no use in dancing around a question that both of them knew she was going to ask.
“Where? In my room? To sleep mostly,” Sombra’s wit didn’t last long after Widowmaker let out a sigh and made to get up from her chair. “Oh fiiiine. Be a spoilsport. I’m here to gather information, happy?”
“What information?”
Sombra held up a finger and cocked it left to right. “Ah, ah. My question now, amiga.”
Widowmaker growled. “You looked at me.”
Sombra was rarely caught off guard and it was why Widowmaker didn’t bother repressing her smile when the expression appeared on her face. Her expression looked to be an odd mixture of someone smelling something bad and then, seconds later, realizing that they were allowing others to see their expression too. It explained why Sombra quickly averted her eyes and shook her head to the side to avoid immediate eye contact.
Widowmaker pressed on, relentless. “I have always believed that perhaps I was meant for a certain kind of purpose. The way the others stared at me, they respected and feared me both, it would be silly to think that Talon did not mean to make me greater, the way they stared. They have never, not even Gabriel, looked at me in the way you did. With pity.” She paused to look over at Sombra’s desk, a piece of paper that had her name on it catching her eye. “Even now, seeing this makes me wonder what you truly feel, Sombra.” She placed the paper on her lap, facing up towards the light. A picture of her schematics and anatomy, her face delicately drawn with fine, blue ink. “Am I a clue to you or a solution?”
Sombra turned to face her, her lips set into a grimace. “To what? What are you talking about?”
“That,” she pointed at the giant eye that seemed to stare at the both of them, unmoving and unblinking and yet so very prominent. “What is it?”
Sombra shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Sombra…”
“I’m being serious, azul,” Sombra cut across her before she could finish her threat. “I don’t know what it is, at least not right now. But-”
Suddenly sirens filled the silence that had once been there and the spaces on the screen that Sombra hadn’t covered in sticky notes lit up a bright red colour, filling the whole room and her and Sombra both in an unearthly crimson shade. The only thing that wasn’t red was the black font that appeared on the screen just behind Sombra’s notes, and which thankfully Widowmaker didn’t have to pick off to know what it said.
She got up and stretched as though there wasn’t the likelihood of their base being attacked by Overwatch agents happening right outside of Talon’s walls. “Get dressed, we’ll continue this another time.”
Sombra to her credit seemed to agree with her if stripping right in front of her to grab her clothes meant anything.
“You better get back to your creepy cave, spider.” Sombra muttered as she pulled a shirt over her head. “Who knows what those goons will think otherwise?”
It wasn’t often Sombra amused her, but when she did it was enough that it caused a dry chuckle, one that tumbled so carelessly past her lips. “Worried?”
“About myself? Yeah pretty much,” Sombra grinned at her over her shoulder. “Don’t know if you remember this chica but I’m not into the whole turning blue thing if I’m seen as messing around with you. Just saying. Anyway,” she pointed to her door. “Gabe is most likely out there kicking ass, I’d hate for you to miss that glorious show.” Sombra trailed off then and with a devious smirk she gestured with her eyes towards her body. “Unless you’re too distracted with this one.”
Widowmaker did the only thing she could think of: scoffed and hit the button to Sombra’s door with a jab of her thumb.
When she looked back over her shoulder she could see Sombra hadn’t moved from her spot and the deviant expression hadn’t even remotely faded from her expression.
“Don’t go getting yourself killed araña,” Sombra turned away to pull on her ridiculous looking feet-like shoes. “Me and you have a lot to talk about.”
“We do,” Widowmaker agreed. “Until then what’s to keep you from betraying me right now?”
A shudder ran through her, something that had not happened to her for so many years now, when she heard her own voice playback to her. Her owning damning evidence. And then, once the shock had played out in its own ugly fashion, she laughed. Of course Sombra wouldn’t play fair, how trivial and foolish of her to think otherwise.
“Where is the fun in playing fair?” She repeated Sombra’s mantra to her as smooth as silk. She had already betrayed enough of herself today in going to Sombra, she would not allow herself to give the hacker more evidence.
“Sorry amiga but I’ve got to watch my own back,” and despite everything that had just happened, Widowmaker believed the other woman sounded genuine. But Widowmaker wouldn’t look at her. She couldn’t. “It’s nothing personal.”
“It never is,” she replied. She wasn’t angry, not really. It was to be expected from someone who came to Talon to fulfill their own desires - and besides that, there was no reason to trust. Not just yet.
She didn’t bother to say her farewells and thus, left without a word. Her boots clacking on the metal flooring barely heard over the sirens and the sound of yelling, gunfire and her voice repeating the words ‘the way you looked at me’ over and over again.
