Chapter Text
The sun was wrestling the clouds, trying to reach the roads of London. It was midday and the clouds had remained undefeated so far, leaving the atmosphere feeling heavy and damp.
Back when Lena was in Overwatch, feeling the wet air meant that she was on a break, on her way to Emily’s home. Emily would have hot tea, or cocoa, depending on the mood, ready. They would talk and kiss and do other things, putting their anxieties and problems away for a few days.
Now she would rather be anywhere but here. Then again, there wasn’t anywhere she could go to avoid the suffocating feeling that current Overwatch’s surveillance had forced upon her. She could feel the tiny robot flying exactly a meter behind her. The bloody thing was always there, recording everything.
She sighed and opened another clothespin. She took a white shirt from the pile in the basket and threw it over the clothesline at the balcony. They would probably not dry until the next day but their drier had broken down just this morning.
The next shirt was black with some purple scratch marks painted over it. A few small holes had formed at its bottom. Lena kept it at her hands for a minute, reminiscing. It was the only shirt she had kept from her teenage years. She smiled. Back then she rocked a purple mohawk, always dressed in black, purple or neon blue. Her only worries being if the cops were about to catch her painting graffiti on the walls or her mum catching her returning in the middle of the night. Now getting out at night was punishable by spending at least two days in custody and a thousand questions from the police.
As she was putting the old shirt on the clothesline, a buzzing came from the earring Amélie had given her. She placed her finger on it.
“Amélie?”
“Your friend’s connections have been compromised Remove the earrings and throw them away. The self-destruct function begins when the earrings loose skin contact.” a robotic voice whispered in her ear.
“What?! How?” she yelled, then remembered the surveillance bot behind her. “Where’s Amélie and the others? Are they alright?” she whispered.
“Please remove the earring and take ten steps back.” the robotic voice whispered back.
“No, no. Are they alright? Come on, I need to know!”
“Please remove the-”
“OK, OK, got it, shush.”
The earring stopped talking but the buzzing remained. Lena looked around the surrounding buildings, trying to get her thoughts in order. Before she managed to do so, Emily got out on the balcony with her. The redhead was acting calm and relaxed but the look she gave to Lena was everything but that. Emily hugged her by the waist and leaned on her.
“Did you got that message as well?”
“Yes... If they got Sombra, there’s a very good chance Amélie got caught as well.”
Emily stayed silent for a bit.
“Maybe they weren’t caught. Sombra has been running all her life, Amélie is, well, Amélie and you said they had Ashe with them. Isn’t she an outlaw?”
“Yes...”
“What I’m getting to is that all of them know how to hide and run from the law. Maybe Sombra sent us a warning because Overwatch got close to them but didn’t get them.” As Emily talked, Lena relaxed a bit.
“Maybe.” she sighed. “Well, there’s nothing we can do anyway, I only hope they figure it out. Whatever the problem is.”
“Right. So let’s take these things off now. Throw them in the drier or something.”
Lena nodded and gave a reassuring smile to her wife. When she turned to get inside, she came face to face with two tiny robots. They were so close she had to squint to see them. Whoever was behind the cameras had definitely heard them.
“Bollocks. They heard us.” Even if there wasn’t a person checking the feeds, Sombra’s name was definitely the number one keyword for the alerts to sound.
“What do we do?” Emily’s voice trembled a little as she nervously checked the streets.
“Get rid of the earring first.”
They put the small earrings in the broken drier and run out of the room. There was a muffled sound like someone punched a pillow and thin lines of smoke began escaping the machine.
“Right, now what?” Emily’s brown eyes were fixed on Lena’s, hopping for a plan or some way to get out of this mess.
Lena didn’t have either of those. As far as she could tell, there were only two options. Wait for Overwatch and cooperate with them, telling them everything in hopes they wouldn’t get locked up. That would mean selling out Sombra and Amélie, but Emily would have a better chance of being safe. Or, they could run and fight Overwatch off. Lena was confident she could deal with Overwatch’s small capture teams in a fight. But she didn’t know where to go or how to hide from Overwatch’s surveillance. She could use her chrono-accelerator to run from Overwatch, but keeping Emily away from getting captured would be almost impossible.
With that final thought, her decision was made. She hated it with every atom of her body, but they would have to answer Overwatch’s questions.
Gritting her teeth, she was about to tell Emily her decision, when the doorbell rank. Emily jumped at the sound.
“They’re here already?”
“No way. Stay here, I’ll go.”
Lena first ran to the chrono-accelerator and put it on. The doorbell rang again. She blinked to the door, took a big breath and opened it.