legionworld | Didya catch that trick?

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Didya catch that trick?

The swear-in ceremony had been a little bittersweet, if Lena was being honest with herself. Even with the recall out to the other Overwatch agents, not many of them had answered -- international affairs, coupled with the PETRAS act tying their hands and the bitterness stewing in how swiftly they had all been shut down meant the risk was too great. The Second Omnic Crisis was being contained in Russia for the moment -- until it threatened the interest of other countries (and it would, if history had anything to say about it), something like the ceremony she had just walked away from would never have been possible.

Home would need her back eventually -- but for now, it was easy to remember that there were others closer that needed her help right now.

She doesn't draw as many looks on Legion World; part of her is glad for it. Aside from the fact that she was so distinctly recognizable as one of the world's heroes at home, those who hadn't kept up with all the pomp and circumstance usually took a second look at the chronal accelerator. To be somewhere where she almost blends is a surreal feeling, but it means she's smiling all the way up to the wall of screens as she consults them for information. The interface is easy enough to read, but more importantly, she feels the need to introduce herself to everyone in the room.

A few people walk up to her on their own, but every now and then, she'll slide into a space that's not too personal, but that can't be ignored either, and offer a question in her chipper cockney accent:

"Whatcha lookin' at?"

Observation Deck

She had been a lot of places all over the world, but space -- that was a different story. There was no need for Overwatch agents out there, not when the omniums down below were causing the world so many problems just a few years prior. So Lena is naturally drawn to the deck, eyes wide behind her goggles when she gets a full view of all the stars.

There had been a few places in the world where she could see them as clearly as she could now. King's Row wasn't one of them. She feels like she's twelve again, one hand curled around the ring slotted on her finger. It had taken her a few tries to figure it out, but she was flying again. Sometimes, she had forgotten how much she had missed it. Freefalling through the chronal acceleration Winston had given her came close -- but this was different.

"Wicked."

The echo of footsteps draws her attention back to the catwalk, and when she turns, she has all the appearance of a child who's just been given their haul of Christmas Gifts.

"You alright down there, love?"

Habitat Deck/King's Row

Its easy to get lost in a deck full of multiple pocket areas to explore. Every now and then, a flash of blue will appear and disappear as Lena makes her way across the deck, excitedly dipping into wherever she can managed to fit herself. Its addicting, seeing new things -- and some re-imaginations of places she is certain she should recognize.

It takes her a few tries, but Tracer eventually figures out that just walking into the biomes of others might be a bit rude. When that moment comes, she returns to where she had started: King's Row. Her old stomping grounds, as she often used to say. Without Overwatch, she'd found herself spending a lot of time there, trying to help who she could without getting into too much vigilantism. The fact of the matter was that law enforcement couldn't catch her if they'd tried, but that didn't mean she wanted to ruffle too many feathers. England was still her home country; she'd never aim to upset them on purpose.

She finds a familiar balcony, above the entrance to the Alderworth Hotel, and parks herself there. Its strange, seeing it so empty, and she suddenly finds herself feeling homesick.

When Valor Day comes, she spends at least half of her morning making sure her space fits the part. Today, she is slower to greet anyone who happens to find their way to her. In record time, she's managed to do most of her own decorating in the form of wreathes on various doors and garland strung across the briefing room where she's set up her cot temporarily. She can be found blinking around in brief flashes of blue in order to get to higher and higher places to hang her decorations.

Dangerous, with all the snow and ice around? Probably.

Wildcard

[OOC: Got something else in mind? Different location, or a spin off of one of the other prompts? Go for it! Tracer is extremely friendly, and will want to walk up and introduce herself to everyone without much prompting. If you're not sure, feel free to hit me up at stabs]

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She might not have supersonic hearing, but Tracer hadn't been that far away to start with, and the sound of at least one ornament breaking draws her attention. From afar, she frowns on her rooftop.

"Oi! Careful with that--"

Hang on. She recognizes that visor -- anyone who was involved (read: overinvested) with a global peacekeeping initiative kept tabs on the more scrupulous vigilantes and criminals. Soldier: 76 might have generally avoided her area of the world, but she knows of him. By proxy, he's really the first person she's come to recognize from home. Why would they bring someone like him here?

One step, two step, one ping two ping and Lena is in front of him a few feet away with her arms folded, a frown in her brow that doesn't look as if it belongs there.

"Can I help you?"

Ah. Well, this makes sense, though 76 doesn't think he'll ever get used to people from Jack Morrison's past showing up all the time. He's a little hard-pressed to look surprised when she blinks in front of him, but it's easy to see that she's displeased. It could be because he knocked a wreath off a door, but more likely she recognizes him as the vigilante breaking into old Overwatch bases and stealing all their stuff.

McCree wasn't happy to see who he thought of as Soldier: 76, either, but Lena has pesonal investment in his activities. He's seen the museum footage. To say his feelings on the subject of Winston's recall are complicated would be an understatement.

"I was just looking."

He knows that with Reinhardt and Ana here (not indulging his vigilante crusade in the slightest), he needs to come clean on his own terms, especially while he has the chance. Knowing is one thing, however. Doing is another entirely.

"Oh, right then, carry on."

His assumptions are easily proven correct when her eyes drop down to his pulse rifle and then back up to where she imagines his eyes should be, her normally chipper tone dripping in sarcasm. He may or may not recognize the look on her face: the one where she's about to launch into a full blown scolding. Lena skips picking up the wreath in favor of it.

"You got a lotta nerve, you know that? And you're wastin' your time showin' your face 'round here."

There was no way he'd catch her to swipe anything of value -- that was all he was, wasn't he? A petty thief, just like everyone involved in Talon.

He supposes he should be glad this is happening here, now--76 would be lying if he said he hadn't entertained the thought of Winston sending recalled agents after him to gauge or put a stop to his activities. Like this, she has no real leverage. None of this is really a threat to him, but he's going to have to have this conversation before she hears it from someone else.

"You're mad about Grand Mesa."

Coming clean is...difficult, to say the least.

Maybe she's being too sentimental. Grand Mesa had been a source of conflict for ages, even in peacetime. It wasn't as if one rifle was going to change the course of -- anything. Arguably, it was better off away from the once-base of one of the more arguably powerful God Programs. But that wasn't really the point, was it?

"Maybe if you explain why, I'll be less cross," Lena quips back, arms folded. It was very unlikely, really. People didn't just steal weapon stockpiles and things related to them if they weren't planning something. Maybe she's gotten a bit cynical over the years, but with all the hullabaloo surrounding the rising crisis in Russia--well.

This guy doesn't exactly look or act like a freedom fighter.

"Don't count on it."

He wants to laugh, because she's the same as ever--but 76 lets a sigh escape him and not much else. It's good news, he guesses, that she hasn't put two and two together, but the flipside of that is the fact that he has to do it himself.

"Haven't figured it out, huh?"

Stalling for time. Clearly she hasn't, and at this point he's just dancing around the real answer.

"You ever stop and think about what really happened to Overwatch?"

Not just the convenient story they fed the public.

Edited 2016-12-21 12:28 (UTC)

Lena tries to fight the impatient foot tap that she inevitably starts, resting all of her weight on one hip. She doesn't like his line of questioning, but she knows that he likely knows as much. 'Tracer' hadn't exactly faded away with the rest of the heroes of old. She couldn't in good conscience.

Sometimes, its easier for her to understand why the others kept themselves out of law enforcement activity. Other times, less so.

"What about it?"

McCree had been easier because McCree had run away, with information that could have stopped Overwatch from ending the way it did. Sure, he'd probably be court-martialed and made to testify against Gabriel in the UN hearings, but 76 considers that acceptable in the face of what actually happened. Confessing to McCree wasn't difficult. There was leverage he could use against McCree.

Lena, however. Lena never did anything but believe in Overwatch's mission. Been one of the best examples of what an agent could be, and he'd let her down. How is he supposed to tell her that he's been alive these six years after running off and letting them all believe he was dead? She doesn't deserve any of this.

She's resilient, at least. He figures she's going to need it.

"It was bigger than most of you know. Someone wanted it gone."

Dramatic, maybe, but oh well. If talking is hard, then showing will have to do. 76 reaches up to either side of his visor, unclipping the whole thing and lifting it off.

"I'm trying to find out who."

Her nose wrinkles slightly when he reaches up for his visor, just as she's about to quip back the obvious less-than-scathing reply. Lena had been at Jack Morrison's funeral like everyone else, but like everyone else, she hadn't seen his body. She imagined there wasn't much to see after you've been crushed by a building following an explosion.

At first, she doesn't recognize some of those new scars -- but his wasn't a face she'd soon forget. Its a slow dawning realization, like she's trying to rationalize what she's seeing with her eyes with what she had thought she knew. He was dead. He had to be dead -- surely he wouldn't have just let them all think that. He would have gotten the recall message. He had to know about his own funeral.

There's no doubting it. One arm falls, the other reaches up to slide her goggles off her eyes to get a better look at him, expression full of a mixture of emotions.

"--Commander Morrison?"

"I'm not your commander anymore."

He'll be adamant about that, as much as he imagines it will be a hard habit to shake. Her face says it all, really, and this is everything he was afraid of. How can the recall even hope to be successful if they know he's alive, planting bombs and breaking into old Overwatch bases? That he crawled out of the wreckage and made the deliberate decision to stay dead, leaving them all to UN hearings as they pulled the organization apart? He doesn't deserve to be called commander, even if he wand the title.

His expression softens after a moment, something pained in it. If she wants to close the distance and punch him in the face, he certainly isn't going to stop her. 76 wishes he had some kind of legitimate excuse to explain all this away, but it still won't change how thoroughly he let them all down. He can't even offer her anything comforting or reassuring--he thinks he's forgotten how.

"It's been a while, Oxton."

Lena does approach 76, looking up and down in disbelief. She hasn't even thought about what his status of living means for the recall, especially in the context of what he's been doing. All she can presently process is that Jack Morrison is alive and in front of her, and that he's been living alone in relative silence since the explosion.

Whether or not she hears his correction on his title, its not clear.

"Why?"

Its the only thing that comes out of her mouth at first, quiet and hurt. 'Why' encompassed so many of her questions -- the most important ones, anyway. Its clear she wants to reach out, to touch and verify that she's not imagining things -- that this isn't some strange hologram messing with her.

"We all -- I thought you were dead."

She skips the 'sir', so it seems she took some of what he'd said to heart.

"It wasn't safe."

Maybe that's just a lie he's told himself, but even after the most cursory amount of digging, he still believes it. No one was really to blame or complicit but him and Gabriel--sure, everyone else had to testify at UN hearings, but the only people who could logically be convicted of anything were dead. He maintains that if he were to come back to life, they would have dragged everyone else down with him. He wasn't going to put any of them in danger, not when he didn't know who burnt down Overwatch in the first place.

That's only part of it, however, a rationalization he found for himself after the fact. Really, he'd been so blindsided by the attack and so incoherent after dragging himself out of the wreckage of HQ that all he could think to do was run. By the time he managed to recover and form some kind of plan, he'd been so overwhelmed with the sheer profundity of his failure that it just seemed better to stay dead. Let them remember him fondly while he quit playing by the rules and got to work, getting his hands dirty now that he could.

Not that they'd ever been clean in the first place.

"Seemed better to let everyone get on with their lives. Would've dragged you all down with me if I came back."

Lena very nearly recoils with the answer he chooses. It was meant in good heart, she has to believe that, but she can't help her reaction. None of them were ever 'safe', even in peacetime. None of them had joined to stay safe, they'd joined to keep the peace.

"Safe? You're not serious." Lena's voice cracks slightly out frustration. There was no life to return to after Overwatch -- even she, with a social life and expectations outside of her vigilantism. There would never be a day where she'd hang up her proverbial badge and retire. The truth is, she wants to be happy she's seeing Jack again -- but considering what he's been doing, his decision to leave them behind.

Well, its hard.

"Come off it, Jack." It feels weird calling him that -- she'll have to find another nickname for him if he won't let her call him Commander anymore. She hesitates before she continues. "Talon's got agents huntin' us all down, with or without you around. They almost killed Winston tryin' to get all of our locations."

He is, unfortunately, very serious, and he’s spent a long enough time convincing himself that it is a matter of keeping his people safe that he believes it, even if the face of the attack she describes. He wonders if she knows who was behind it, really. If she fought Reyes in the museum aware of who is behind the mask.

“I know what happened at Gibraltar.”

Just in case she thought for some reason that he isn’t on the up-and-up when it comes to what Winston has been doing. There’s an edge to his voice, like he doesn’t approve of something—the Recall, of course. Jack is stubborn, that much about him hasn’t changed, and he’s had plenty of time to become convinced that staying dead was the right decision. They’re the ones trying to drag everything up again.

“You think painting a target on your back is the answer?”

Because that’s what the Recall is.

To this, Lena folds her arms and stares at him. Its a searching stare, somewhat hurt and somewhat confused. The Jack Morrison she knew never would have blinked at painting a target on his back -- and maybe he isn't doing that now, but he's suggesting that she and Winston (and anyone else, if they ever answered the Recall -- but she wasn't going to think about that) couldn't take care of themselves.

He's just making excuses. But even if she's hurt, she can't exactly blame him. The details about what had happened were still unclear, but two men had been incinerated and crushed by a building that day. She can't even pretend to understand how that must've felt, so she doesn't try.

"Better a target on my back than lettin' a bunch of loonies run around unchecked," she replies, not necessarily snapping, but definitely disapproving in its own way. However he might feel, she isn't about to let herself be scolded for doing the right thing -- if Emily was alright with it, then she had nothing to apologize for. "Ain't nobody else gonna fix it, or they woulda done it already. 'sides: they'd have to catch me first."

"Yeah? And how much good do you think you'll do when the UN throws you in prison?"

This isn't exactly how he wanted this reunion to go, but now that he's inadvertently touched on the Recall, it's a bit difficult for him to keep his feelings about it bottled up. With the push of a button, Winston undid all of Jack's efforts to keep the rest of them out of it, and though he should have known something like this would have happened, he can still curse himself for making them all this way in the first place.

All he wants is for the rest of them to just get on with their lives, but of course he can't possibly be so lucky. They have to throw themselves in the line of fire all over again.

"That's where this ends, Lena."

"Rubbish," Lena replies with a candid rolling of her eyes. The UN would have to pull some serious weight to catch her, or to keep Winston down. She'd bet every pound to her name that Winston could outsmart the lot of them faster than they could respond and -- well, her only limitations were based on what the accelerator could handle, and she's had it long enough to know when to fight and when to flee.

"You can't stand there and tell me we're doin' it all wrong when you've been runnin' around doin' the same thing by yourself."

She's wound tight, and she realizes it when something in her back cracks uncomfortably. This was stupid -- she'd mourned Jack and Ana and Gabriel for all those years, here Jack stood, and what was she doing? She was arguing with him.

"And if I wanted a different life, I woulda lived it," she says, in a manner that brokers no argument. Her arms come apart, and without any further warning, she approaches him and throws her arms around his midsection. "Now cut it out, will ya? I missed you."

He opens his mouth to argue, but she's moving before he can speak, opening her arms to him and throwing them around his waste before he can stop her. Jack instantly stiffens, a sort of full-body flinch that's a testament to how unprepared he is for this kind of physical contact. Lena might be able to guess that it's been a very long time since he's allowed someone to get this close to him.

It takes him a long moment, like he needs a second to process (and perhaps to bite down any further argument), but soon his arms curl around her in turn, albeit somewhat tentatively. His shoulders slump and he bows his head, suddenly at a loss.

He thinks he'd almost prefer it if she just slugged him one. When he finally chokes out words, they're more than a little despondent.

"I'm sorry."

He's covered in body armor, and he doesn't know how to hold her or keep his own weight when his shoulders slump, but it doesn't bother Lena. She just squeezes him tighter, pressing one cheek into his chest for as long as he'll let her. The moment he apologizes is when she'll relax her grip a bit, just enough to turn her head and perch her chin where her cheek had been.

"You best be," Lena replies, her tone light. She'd be lying if she claimed she wasn't still upset with him for pretending to be dead, or upset that he disapproved of the Recall but--well, considering how close she imagines he really had come to being dead, maybe she could go a little easy on him.

For now, anyway.

"You'll just have to make it up to me, eh?"

He tries to laugh--wants to, he thinks--but it ends up being an entirely hollow sound which he imagines comes off as either exhausted or unconvincing. Jack certainly feels like both, the hug becoming increasingly unbearable the longer they draw it out.

Jack wants to tell her that he isn't the same--that he's just going to end up disappointing her again, but he can't bring himself to voice that, either. Not when perhaps the starkest reminder of all the people he failed has her arms around him in a gesture that might as well be forgiveness he doesn't deserve.

"I'll try."

That's about the best he can offer, nowadays.

"There's a good lad," she replies teasingly (Lad, as if he wasn't nearly 20 years her senior), apparently indifferent to his tone of voice. She takes it as her cue to release him from the embrace, taking two steps back in order to give him space. What she's really doing is finding the ledge behind her, pulling her legs up and pressing her back to the building.

"Let's start by you tellin' me what you've been diggin' up." Lena pulls her goggles off the top of her head and tosses her hair with one gloved hand.

“It’s a long story.”

He accompanies that with a heavy sigh as she pulls away, more thankful for the space than he’d like to be. After a moment, Jack sits next to her on the ledge, trying to think of where to begin. Overwatch, Blackwatch, the UN, Talon—so many pieces of the puzzle that he’s only just begun to fit together. Still, he imagines he owes her this much, after everything.

“But I guess we’ve got time.”

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Didya catch that trick?

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