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"What do you want?"
The woman behind the counter is sharp at every angle — her eyebrows, her cheekbones, her frown. Her light hair is partly loose from what's holding it out of her face, the dark color on her lips pursed out like a warning. Impatience oozes from her posture, leaning against the counter's surface next to the register. Her left arm from the shoulder down is nothing but metal and circuitry. Needles of various sizes and tools poke out from the side, within easy grabbing distance for when she's painting a new look onto someone's skin.
Her name is Rosa, according to the tag on her shirt, and she's waiting.
The girl by the door hums and laces her fingers together. At this hour, the shop's empty; it's only them.
"Something different," the girl answers.
Rosa straightens and says, "Sure." Something different — it's a request she's heard a thousand different times by a thousand different people.
Los Muertos knows Rosa well. She's responsible for much of the work that goes onto the bodies of the group's members — flashy, useful, creative as she is. Los Muertos would have requested her help for the girl, had her already waiting, if she'd asked it of them. But she's trying to be a ghost, and her name on anyone's lips would be a problem.
Rosa doesn't shy from the work when the girl asks, as tall an order as it is. Cybernetics aren't hardly anything new to her, even if the grafts that the girl wants are far more extensive than most.
"It'll take multiple sessions," Rosa tells her. "It'll cost you."
But someone wanting something like this already knows what it'll cost. The girl has emptied every account she had her hands in. She's gotten rid of her old equipment, too. It's obsolete. She'll be better.
She pays up front.
Rosa counts it all out, metal fingers gleaming in the low, flickering light. Looks at her. Doesn't ask questions. She obviously appreciates the quick deal made and values her time. She values people thinking her name's really Rosa too, so the girl keeps that tucked under her tongue and behind the teeth of her smile. Some information doesn't need to be used, but it's always good to come prepared.
"We have a back room," Rosa says while putting the money away. She's not as blade-sharp now that she's been paid, but she still reminds the girl of a knife in all her movements, the quick way she turns, how her hand cuts through the air, gesturing impatience, come on.
The grafts hurt, but she's hurt plenty worse before, and she is excited. Sparks of pain flutter bright against her back, the curve of her spine becoming heavier, something weighted, but her excitement dulls it all to nothing. The girl can't stop being aware of this newness, her own anticipation burning every corner of her concern out of existence and into nothing but satisfaction. She presses her cheek to the chair she's in, body lax as she lazes, curls her toes and flexes her fingers to feel her winding nerves react.
The second session, Rosa has to shave her head again, just to get to her scalp better. She doesn't mind, just pulls her hair to the side and feels the buzz against her skin.
It hurts more this time.
She gets used to it.
"Sombra."
There's no functional reward really if she pretends that she doesn't hear him, but it's funny. So she pretends she doesn't hear him.
"Sombra."
Pushy, she thinks, and continues to pretend.
It isn't much of a game for him, their interactions like this. But it's a game for her, regardless of whether he's entertained or not.
(It wouldn't be half as fun if everyone found it as entertaining as she did.)
Her feet, heels resting on the table with toes pointing up, are pushed off; she makes a face from behind her countless, scattered screens as her shoes hit the floor. The formless smoke that shoved her feet from their throne is not so formless now, and then becomes broad shoulders and a white mask and everything else that comes with it.
Sometimes, he stands so expectantly looking down at her, so still and quiet, that she expects him to be a statue.
But he's not a statue. He's just annoyed.
"I'm busy," she says. Her fingers shut, twist, toss the purple-tinged holograms in front of her face to the side where they flicker into thin air. A practiced, familiar motion for a practiced, familiar thing.
Then she peers up at Reaper.
He splays those claws of his across the table. Digs the sharp tips in. She looks on, unbothered. She has claws if she wants, too.
"I need you on a mission," he growls.
With that mask of his on, he could be anybody, could be nobody. Under it —
Well, she knows better. But she knows everything, so it comes as no surprise.
"Tell me about it," she says with a pleased smile.
She is mostly not a person.
Sombra can't be a person, because Sombra is too busy being a shadow. Sombra is a threat and a promise and all the dangers in between. She's got all the cards and then some, plans upon plans upon plans hidden behind security so tight that there's zero chance anyone can pick the lock in her head. She's certainly no hero (and the thought is enough to have her laughing, have her gagging), but she's not on a vengeance kick and she's really not brainwashed, either.
(Sometimes, she looks at Widowmaker. And sometimes — sometimes, she wonders — if they rewired her so sideways, what's stopping her from rewiring her right again? And the thought's so curious, couldn't she do it? Why not? What's a brain if not the most fancy computer in the world? It tickles at her, makes her want to try and see
but then Widowmaker looks back and there's a curl to her lip and an irritation to her voice and nothing about her says there's anything of Amélie Lacroix to snag from backup and restore
so Sombra stops looking.)
But mostly, Sombra is not a person.
And she's alright with that.
Jesse McCree shoots her.
It isn't that she forgets that she's still flesh and blood. There might be nanomachines and tech running through her veins and nerves and muscles, but there's nothing like a bullet to serve as a brutal reminder that she's still so boring and human.
She doesn't so much as gasp as she cloaks herself, forced to run. He'd shot her translocator out of the sky, not a second after she'd thrown it. The second bullet was the one that got her in the side, ripping her out of the failed translocation.
Reaper finds her eventually. Or maybe she finds him. There's blood all over her gloves, her nails. By the time he's paying attention to her, she's flipping through pictures of McCree and shows him one (looking so much less world-weary, standing in Blackwatch getup; some blurry candid from the leak of all that Overwatch crap, years ago) with her free hand, the other one pressed to the oozing wound.
"He's got great aim," she says, all of her anger and pain turning into dry derision. "Let me guess. You taught him how to shoot like that?"
Reaper is silent for a long moment. She's shaking, with agitation, with hurt. He's a statue.
Finally he shoves a gauze pad through the hovering image between them, his talons reflecting the purple lights as he breaks through the picture of the original Overwatch crew, Jesse McCree smiling away and one Gabriel Reyes making up the other bookend of the group.
"If I had," Reaper rumbles as she takes the gauze with a snatch of her fingers, the photograph disappearing in flickering pixels, "you would be dead."
She laughs like it's the funniest joke she's ever heard as he melts into black and gray and nothing, and she's still laughing even while it hurts.
Sometimes they talk.
"I felt nothing as I aimed my gun at his head," Widowmaker says almost curiously, but mostly she sounds uncaring. "It was no more difficult than anyone else I have pulled the trigger for."
"Nothing at all?" Sombra asks, hardly distracted by the myriad of things pulled up in front of her but doing well at acting the part. She knows all about Gerard, she's got all the files and reports to prove it, but there's nothing wrong with getting some primary sources from time to time.
"Mm."
Widowmaker is quiet — so is Sombra. Reaper, hunched over, pores over blueprints displayed on his tablet, his back to them as he sits in the corner and keeps to himself. The room is near silent outside of the rain tapping lightly against the dark windows of their little safehouse. The curtains are drawn. It's their kind of peaceful.
Eventually, Widowmaker draws her legs up onto the couch with the rest of her. Sombra glances at her, takes in the slightest furrow of her brow, the gleam of something in her eyes.
She waits.
"I have dreamt of him," Widowmaker adds bitterly.
Sombra hears the muted slide of Reaper's claws against the tablet screen stall. Her own fingers, previously plucking away at news and headlines, stop moving. Widowmaker tilts her head down, her long hair falling over her face. The thin, dark strands nearly look like silk, and in this darkness, her skin seems colder than ever.
"Then, sometimes, I may wish to feel something," she finishes. She tosses her silk hair over her cold shoulder and shrugs, straightens. "But it does not matter, non? He is dead."
Widowmaker says nothing more as she reaches for her gun, beginning to take it apart. Sombra watches the back of Reaper's shoulders as he starts messing with his tablet again, the glow of its screen the only light coming from his corner of the room.
She goes back to reading.
They're all here for different reasons. In other circumstances, she likes to think that maybe she'd get along great with Reaper. After all, they're both making good use of Talon, and isn't that all they want? And she and Widowmaker have their moments. Sometimes they get along just fine, and sometimes Sombra's seemingly careless attitude gets on her last nerve.
But they get the job done when they need to. And Sombra gets what she's there for.
Doomfist, though. She doesn't care about his agenda. He's driven in a way that nobody else is, here. She doesn't care about starting any wars again, and she knows that Reaper doesn't, either. He's got his own war already.
She hasn't asked Widowmaker. She might, later.
But what it boils down to —
What really matters —
Isn't any of this.
Things go dark at Talon, once.
(She's found what she wants to know.)
And by the time everything's online again, she's gone.