legionworld | (no subject)

76 is not exactly thrilled with this turn of events, if these events are even real. He’s not convinced this isn’t some kind of simulation meant to ply him for intelligence—he wouldn’t put it past some of his enemies, but he has to admit this is extremely elaborate.

He doesn’t take the oath. Says that he needs time to consider, but that’s sort of a lie because he doesn’t intend to concede unless they can come up with an extremely good reason for him to do so. This isn’t his fight. The Legion, as it’s been described, reminds him all too much of Overwatch, and he’s not sure he’s ready to walk that road again, not after how that went down. Saving the world (universe? multiverse?) is all well and good, of course, but 76 has learned the hard way what an impossible task it really is. He’s not keen on doing it again—doesn’t trust that they’re not making the same mistakes he did.

It wouldn’t frustrate him so much if he hadn’t been right in the middle of progress back home. He’d found Ana. Felt for the first time in a very long time that he was on his way to answers, and now this. Is it any wonder he doesn’t want to sign himself over to this?

The observation deck is almost laughably appropriate for this kind of introspection. 76 could have gone to space (or at least into orbit) whenever he wanted, but he’d never exactly found time, like he never found time for an innumerable list of things. Now, he spends his first few hours out of the medbay staring down at the Earth, wondering what he could have done differently, or if this was inevitable all along.

This huge dude in full tactical gear and deep contemplation is definitely someone you want to talk to, right? Right.

2 - Sim Room/Training Gym

But he’s not about to let himself be idle. Hallucination or simulation or not, it pays to keep sharp, so when he’s not trying to learn every inch of this new place, he’s running himself through almost everything he can get his hands on in the training facilities. Since he can't do anything to solve his current problem (one which is still a little baffling to him), he figures now is as good a time as any to go blow off some steam by shooting things.

76 isn’t especially creative when it comes to this sort of thing, so he programs up a relatively simple target range, which he guesses is a nice thing to be able to do. Being kidnapped to space and/or being stuck in a space hallucination is no excuse to let himself slip.

You might not want to interrupt him while he’s shooting (his very big gun), but maybe, possibly, he will not react badly to being approached. We can hope, anyway.

3 - Wildcard

((I can roll with whatever you want to throw at me. I can write you your own starter. I will do anything and everything. Hit me up on plurk at whitticus!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"He's dead. Put me down."

With that growled out, 76 knew he just invited a gigantic headache of an argument by saying as much--even more of a headache than this already was, but it was becoming more and more clear to him that there was a fundamental disconnect at play here. If only things were as simple as Reinhardt wanted them to be.

He continued whether he was set down or not, newly incensed by the implication that all this was understood, truly--

"You've got no idea what really happened, do you?"

Reinhardt's predictability would have been comforting in a familiar sort of way if it wasn't so frustrating. It was so easy, wasn't it, to talk about fighting the good fight when he clearly didn't comprehend how deep Overwatch's fall really went. What it did to him.

"I know enough to understand why you're acting this way."

Ana, who had been smiling broadly not a minute ago, was now stoically staring out the elevator's window as more and more floors sped past.

"I may not have gone as deep down the rabbit hole as you have, but I did look into things too. I know it wasn't as simple as the papers said. I know that someone did this to Overwatch."

She turned, and looked Jack dead in the eye.

"But you can't carry this all on your own, Jack. You weren't the only one hurt by this. Lena, Winston, Angela, and all the others..." Her eyes momentarily darted towards Reinhardt, and then back down, almost as if in shame. "...They all lost their home, their family that day."

She knew she wasn't much one to talk. But someone had to say something to Jack, in the way she had wished someone had told her this a long time ago.

"A little over seven years ago, after that hostage rescue mission where I was...presumed dead." More shame. But she pressed on. "I woke up in some god forsaken hospital in the middle of nowhere. Every day, I watched the news on an old t.v. in the corner of my room as Overwatch fell apart. Every day I thought about contacting you all. But every day, the shame, the pain, it made me crumble. My family was being torn apart and I didn't know what I could do to stop it."

She hesitated, gripping the rail along the elevator wall, tight enough that her hands would have been raw if she hadn't been wearing gloves.

"And then H.Q. was destroyed, you and Gabriel presumed dead...I just gave up. I didn't have any strength left in me. Our family was broken, and half the world was happy for it. So if the world wanted Overwatch dead, then I would stay dead. And you know what?"

Once again, she looked Jack straight in the eyes.

"It was stupid. Unhealthy. I was wallowing in my own misery for seven whole years. I didn't even tell Fareeha, for God's sake! My own daughter!"

She wasn't even sure what she was feeling right now. Anger at herself? At Jack? At whoever had done this to them? In the end, even she hadn't fully gotten over what had happened to her.

"But then, with the recent crises happening all over the globe, I saw everyone fighting...not as Overwatch, but as heroes. They weren't ordered to...hell, they were explicitly told not to. But they fought anyway, because they couldn't turn a blind eye. Because it's the right thing to do. And I knew I had to do the same."

"That's why we want you to join the Legion, Jack," she said quietly. "Not because we expect things to be like the good old days, or that everything will be alright if we pretend like nothing ever happened, but because it's the right thing to do."

"The Jack we know might be dead, but I'm asking you to see if a small part of him lives on in 'Soldier 76'."

76 wanted to argue that all of this was incredibly unfair, of course. Here he was, slung over Reinhardt, a literal captive audience with no real chance to retaliate as Ana more-or-less talked at him. Like he didn't understand what the fall of Overwatch meant. Like he didn't know, intimately, what it did to all of them.

What he'd never been able to properly tell Ana was that he took full blame for the botched mission that lost her. He'd been the commanding officer, so it was on his shoulders, and he'd never forgotten that. Hell, Jack never even managed to find out whether they'd lost communications because she shut her reciever off, or if she was taken out.

"If you wanted to tell me you were alive, you would have."

The implication being you let me think I got you killed. His voice was cold, words deliberate, implying that some part of her didn't want him to know, even after all they'd been through. Ana could say that she didn't know what she could have done to stop the fall of Overwatch, but Jack will always pinpoint the day he lost her as the point of no return. It was the final nail in the coffin for him and Gabriel. He couldn't hold it together without her, and he suddenly realized that now, knowing she'd been alive, he might have some pent-up resentment on the matter.

Especially in his current position, slung over Reinhardt's shoulder, listening to what he could only interpret as a lecture.

The world was more complicated than all of this. There was no point in trying to save something that didn't want to be saved.

"You think the recall is going to do any better than we did? They don't even know what happened in the first place."

76 said 'the recall', but he meant the Legion, too. He knew intimately where good intentions lead, and he wasn't ready to trust something like this again. "Say what you want." Make him take the oath; sign himself over to Overwatch on an even broader scale. It wouldn't change his mind. "This is a mistake."

Edited 2016-09-27 03:37 (UTC)