Chapter Text
“You have a shot, Widowmaker?”
“Yes,” she said easily, lining it up easily from her camouflaged position. “He’ll be here soon?”
“Should be,” Reaper growled. He was on-edge on this mission — his old history with Overwatch was complicated, and as far as Lacroix knew, this was it coming to a head. A more sensitive person would ask if he was okay right now. Lacroix almost hoped he wasn’t.
She wasn’t, after all. She hadn’t been in months.
“Should just be a few minutes now. Kanas is on their way to serve as distraction.”
“They should be here already,” Lacroix sighed. Makani Kanas was decent in hand-to-hand combat, and even better at looking rich and speaking like an aristocrat. Apparently they were good at being late, too.
“No. The plan is for them to be late — keep Morrison waiting.”
Jack Morrison was verging on useless, beyond his vigilante activity striking up some chaos, but there were rumours that he was working with Overwatch again. Honestly, the more Lacroix thought about it, the more she assumed it would be good for them.
They wanted chaos, and nothing had caused more chaos after the omnic crisis than Overwatch’s attempts at helping. Their power, their strength, should be beneficial to Talon.
But she saw what was happening here went beyond Talon. This assassination was for Gabriel Reyes. And besides, aggravating Overwatch couldn’t possibly hurt.
As the pinging sound came — indication that Morrison had arrived — Reaper went into his smoke form, gently gliding out of the room, and Lacroix waited for Morrison to be brought near the window.
“Asshole is late,” she heard Morrison say, her earpiece connected to a recording device in the room. She rolled her eyes.
She waited, less patient than she used to be. Eventually she heard the other pinging sound, indicating Kani’s arrival, and she prepared herself.
“About time,” Morrison grunted.
“Greetings,” Kani said smugly. “I hope your wait wasn’t—”
“Ugh, don’t bother with that. What is this, exactly? How did I spring your trap?”
She heard Reyes growling over the comm. “He’s onto us.”
“What trap?” Kani tried, but Lacroix could hear the nervousness in their voice. “I thought this was an exchange of information.”
“I know you’re with Talon.”
Lacroix sighed. “Just try to get him to the window.”
“And what about it? You’re not willing to discuss things with me?”
“You expect me to believe this isn’t a trap? We’ve already found your sniper.”
Lacroix blinked, shifting away from her rifle and looking around herself. No one there.
“He’s bluffing,” she said coldly.
“We can’t be sure,” Reaper answered, just as cold. “I’m coming in.”
Lacroix sighed, looking around herself one more time.
“Jack,” Reaper said as he entered the room. It was a greeting. A second later Lacroix heard the gunshot.
And then it was all that sounded; gunfire, shotgun against rifle. There was a pained shout one second, and Lacroix put down her sniper rifle, opting not to watch the battle play out.
A second later she felt hands on her shoulders, and she was ducking out of them, turning with a fluid duck and a low kick. Two faceless soldiers, nothing for her to worry about. She was trained for this — though she didn’t need to make use of the training often.
To start, you incapacitate one of them. She kicked high, aiming for the man’s neck but the balls of her feet got his cheek instead, probably dislocating his jaw but not stabbing into him like her heels had done before. He fell to the ground, and Lacroix quickly jumped back to dodge the next man’s attack, though his uppercut still managed to hit the edge of her jaw, shooting her head upwards for a second and sending a terrible ache over her head. She recovered as quickly as she could, shooting her grappling hook at him like a weapon and when he stumbled from the impact she stepped closer, slamming him over the head with her rifle, just slightly dizzy from the head impact.
He was out cold, and the other man was getting to his feet, but Lacroix could just shoot him. She breathed heavy as she looked over the two of them.
Idiots. She lifted her hand, pressing it against her earpiece.
“What’s your—”
Before she could finish speaking, an impact hit her on the back of the head, knocking her forwards. Her scope came undone, falling from her head, and as she tried to keep everything from spinning too obviously she made the attempt to at least shift to her arms and knees. But she was pressed down by someone’s boot, and she felt the weapon on her back.
Shit.
She flinched when she heard the gunfire, but somehow it took a second for her to realise it wasn’t her who’d been shot. Whoever had been about to kill her collapsed downwards, half on her, and with her ears still ringing from the impact she shifted her way out from under him.
“You good to walk? We need to get out of here.”
“Of course,” she said drowsily, trying to make her way to her feet, but it was all spinning too fast, her head throbbing and stinging. She fell back down after a few seconds, and then Reyes was supporting her, holding her up and dragging her away.
“Kani didn’t make it. Morrison left after getting some sort of message.”
“Did Sombra arrange this mission?” Widow managed to hear herself ask the question through her ringing ears.
“No. One of our other tech geniuses.”
Well, she’d be pleased to know that much.
She breathed in slowly when they landed.
“Can you walk this time?” Reyes asked as he stood, stepping out of the shuttle, and Lacroix hummed as she stood, holding onto the roof as she guided herself out.
“I think so,” she managed, walking slowly by his side. It was hardly spinning anymore, but she didn’t want to tempt fate. Reaper walked on without her, and she was fine with it, moving slowly towards the door to her old house.
“I’ve had the others meet us here. We need to work out what they’re doing.”
“Understandable,” Widow said, moving through old halls with far too many old memories. They found the dining hall quickly, with Akande, Dr O’Deorain, and Maximilien all seated stern and serious. They made quite the picture in a scene like this, but she couldn’t admire it long, the blood-boiling fury in her veins telling her they didn’t belong here. It was supposed to be hers.
“What happened, exactly?” Akande leaned back calmly, mostly just paying attention to Reyes as Lacroix moved to her position at the far end of the table, tensely pretending she was stoic and uncaring as ever.
“Morrison was aware it was a trap. We came to blows, and then he suddenly left. As if there was something more important.”
“Alright,” Doomfist nodded. “We’ll have Sombra do some prodding when she gets here. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We just need to make the crossfire wider.”
Moira nodded. “If there’s a target on our back, we can reposition ourselves. Tearing it off just wastes everyone’s time.”
“Things are already tense in King’s Row. Maybe we can make it worse?” Maximilien leaned back, tenting his robotic fingers.
“Sounds good. I imagine the two of you had a long journey. We’ll discuss this further when Sombra arrives.”
“Very well,” Reaper stood. “You might want to look at Widowmaker, O’Deorain. She seems to have suffered a concussion.”
“Indeed?” Moira stood. “I’ll do that then.”
Lacroix sighed, standing obediently. These people all treated her like — like an object, as Sombra had said, so very casually.
It only even occurred to her now that Sombra didn’t. That Sombra’s treatment was what made this so apparent.
Why did she want to see her so much?