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Roadhog has a general rule not to make things harder than they have to be. Which is ironic because everything is harder when Junkrat’s involved. Making money is difficult, taking money is difficult, just getting in and out of Junkertown is a fucking chore.
His “job” is to guard Junkrat—follow him around, look scary. He even makes that hard. Something as natural as walking and looming is a hassle because Junkrat is so flighty and, at times, downright flaky.
Like now. Like nearly every day since he took this job; Roadhog stands near the giant hole surrounding the remains of the omnium like some kind of fucked up, irradiated moat and watches Junkrat dangle precariously over the edge to root around inside the jagged gaps in the metal or muttering to himself as he clambers over and under debris. Others keep their distance from Roadhog up top, and by extension, Junkrat down in the ruins. At least he’s still in view today. Sometimes he disappears and Roadhog has to just trust that his presence protects Junkrat wherever he is in the thing.
The thing’s pretty picked over. There was a concentrated effort at first, then the scrappers broke into factions and after a decade of fighting over the thing, activity slowed to a crawl. Only the ones addicted to the game of finding something new in the massive metal graveyard— or driven a little crazy by breathing in too much radioactive dust—still come around.
Roadhog thinks Junkrat’s draw is a little of both.
It itches to be so close to the omnium, but it’s a little less now that he’s gotten used to being here, what with Junkrat coming up with nothing again and again. He looks disappointed but not as disappointed as Roadhog is behind his mask. That means they’re coming back again. He wishes he could leave it all behind for good.
Junkrat, bouncing along in his side car, pats his shoulder as they ride and tells him they’ll find “it” tomorrow.
Roadhog grunts. While he hates the omnium, what it represents, it’s also the string keeping him and Junkrat tied together. There’s a relief in having that string. Knowing that for now he doesn’t need to make excuses to let Junkrat stay close. He doesn’t need to really examine why he and Junkrat do what they do if he’s just here for the money and the treasure.
The drive creates an artificial wind as they speed through the dust and rocks back toward Junkertown and Roadhog’s home. The dry wind—that feels nearly as brown and red as the dust billowing out behind them— nearly makes the temperature tolerable.
As they approach the hill that leads up to the shack, he slows and glares behind the darkly tinted lenses of his mask. They stop and he takes out a pair of binoculars. Someone is sitting on his porch. Someone small.
The person has adult proportions, but they’re lithe and short and clothed head to foot in a radiation suit. In the red light of the setting sun, the neon green of the goggles staring right back gives the impression that they can see Roadhog but there’s no way they’re able to pick him out from the rest of the browns and reds in the dropping light. More unnerving is that they even knew to face the way he was coming from.
They’re not from Junkertown— no one bothered with rad protection anymore, and even if they did, none of those fuckers could afford a setup like that. He doubts they’re from the city— the rest of Australia had abandoned them when they thought they couldn’t profit off of the gold and other natural resources that the outback still had to offer. It’s like they have an agreement that the outback doesn’t exist anymore. If they acknowledged it’s value, there would be decades of profit wasted because it was too risky to access.
“What’s up, Roadie?” Junkrat asks from his shoulder, squinting into the distance like he could see what Roadhog was looking at without assistance.
“Someone’s at the house,” Roadhog says, not even bothering to correct himself anymore. He used to pointedly say my house so that Junkrat wouldn’t get any ideas, but that hadn’t stopped him and it hadn’t kept him from inching those ideas closer and closer to reality.
“Yeah? What’s stopping us from just marching past and making ‘em leave old fashion style?” Junkrat asks.
“Old fashion style” started out as Junkrat banging around by himself and moaning Roadhog’s name over and over and ended up being how Junkrat just referred to loud sex now that they fucked regularly.
Roadhog lowers the binoculars and puts them back in his saddle bag before Junkrat can attempt to take them and look for himself. “Don’t overreact,” he says, but he knows it’s fruitless. As if Junkrat could be calm about anything.
Junkrat scowls at that. “Who is it? Slagjaw? Rust-with-a-z? I’m current on my payments! Those pervs just wanna listen in.”
Roadhog shakes his head. “They have a rifle.”
Junkrat dives into the saddle bag and digs up the binoculars to peer through them, his brows so low on his face Roadhog’s surprised they don’t interfere with his vision.
Junkrat draws back from the binoculars with his face screwed up and he looks more confused than angry, so Roadhog holds out hope that he’s not going to start raining retribution down on Roadhog’s shack. Simple as it is, it’s a bitch and a half to find supplies to rebuild. “I hate to say this, Roadie, but even if she’s got a rifle, I don’t think a tea drinking granny’s gonna just take us out. That big ol’ rifle’s gonna break her frail little bones.”
Roadhog stares at Junkrat, wondering if the radiation and sun finally fried what was left of his brain, then he grabs the binoculars and takes another look.
The helmet’s off now, and a single light brown eye looks back at him over a delicate china cup, as if she can see his face across the distance. Roadhog drops the binoculars again and feels Junkrat’s fingers dig between his, trying to pull it away to look again himself, but Roadhog maintains his grip on them.
How did she find him?
Roadhog puts the binoculars away and kicks the bike back on. Junkrat stops fussing for the binoculars and hops into place as well. He knows better than to keep fucking around or he’ll have to walk.
Roadhog takes a moment to steel himself before he slowly drives them up to his shack.
One spring day, the river ran gray. Not the gray of water, but of metal. An opaque liquid that smelled like ore and couldn’t be filtered through the usual means.
The animals got sick first. Then, the children. They didn’t know better than to go near it. It was dangerous but it was the river they had always played in and near. How could it harm them?
He remembers the silence of the streets. If a child wasn’t sick, they were confined to their homes and rooms.
The ALF made sure that there was water to drink—they always took care of their own— but they didn’t know what to do about the sickness. It wasn’t bacterial. It wasn’t viral.
He stayed home when the others went to Sydney to rail against the Omnium. He just couldn’t leave his sister with two sick kids.
He first saw her when he was out for fever reducers and soup— a wisp of a woman with a long coat and a felt military cap—holding a duffle bag almost as big as she was on her back. He stalked through the crisp aisle and towered over the tiny woman until she looked up and smiled.
“Black or green?” she asked him.
“Get out of my town.”
She raised a brow at him and craned to look up and see him properly. “Well that’s not a tea flavor.”
“This is my home and we don’t want your kind here.” Overwatch had been trying to get a meeting with the ALF since they crested a few thousand members a few years ago. Overwatch sticking their nose into ALF workings and business was the last thing they needed at the time.
“I’ll leave, but not before I help,” she said, her lips pursing as she turned back to the tea selection and picked up a tin of loose leaf black tea with wattleseed.
“I’ll get you a meeting with the boss, just leave,” Mako demanded.
“Not before I help,” she said, picking her bag back up and saluting him with the tea tin.
Mako called the boss, but he didn’t have anyone to help deal with her until the org finished petitioning the government. This was back when they still tried to be legit. People called them a bunch of terrorist thugs anyway, because if they didn’t get what they needed from the state, they found a way to get it done anyway. It’s the same thing that organizations like Overwatch did but they asked for forgiveness instead of permission.
Called themselves heroes for just going out and doing what needed to be done.
The woman made her way through the town methodically, starting at one side and going door to door because every family had at least one or two sick people. Mako heard rumors that she was a witch, a doctor, a saint. With the rumors, her name became as well known as her success. Ana Amari was saving their children when the ALF couldn’t. He resolved to be at the door when Ana got to his sister’s house, but when the doctor arrived, his sister pushed him out of the way and led her to the kids’ room.
Mako glowered from the door, daring her to make one move he didn’t like, but she just did a simple physical. She made a few light jokes about how his nephew must get his scowl from his uncle and let his niece prattle on about seahorses as she gave them a simple shot each.
“What’s in it?” he asked as Ana packed up. His sister smacked his shoulder and Mako shrugged. “It’s the smart question.”
“It is,” Ana surprised him by backing him up. “It’s an antitoxin. I used some of the… water from your river to make it. As you know, the run off from the factory is… well, it’s terrible for health. I would advise only using bottled water for drinking and keep to short showers, no baths. Absolutely no playing near the river until this business is sorted.”
Mako’s sister took notes while he tightened his fists in anger, but not at the woman in front of him. At the system that would let this keep happening. That necessitated Overwatch coming here, that the ALF couldn't fix their own problem when it was bigger than them.
“I owe you one,” he said as he stood outside the door with her and she waited like she knew he had something to say.
“You owe me nothing more than a walk and a chat,” she assured him with a smile. “Whatever the ALF is doing, it’s not all bad. I want to make sure we understand you properly.”
Mako huffed as she walked across to the next house.
The ALF hadn’t given them the time for a walk and a chat. Whatever Ana had to say to Mako was blocked by bureaucracy. As soon as the ALF found out she was there and gaining support for Overwatch from their own people, Ana was scooped up and before Mako knew it, things were so bad that he walked a bomb into the omnium and helped nuke half the outback. If Overwatch had a plan to deal with the toxic runoff from the omnium, they never got a chance to show it.
Ana looks well. Her gray hair is pulled back neatly in a flat bun, ready to go back under the helmet at a moment’s notice. Other than the hair and her left eye being covered with an unadorned eyepatch, she looks almost the same as she did back then— plus a few wrinkles of course.
“I’m calling in my favor,” Ana says lightly like it’s an old, familiar joke between friends. Her age is apparent in her voice, but it made her steely rather than reedy.
“A walk and a chat?” Roadhog rumbles as he swings off of the bike.
Junkrat is staring at them both with wide eyes as he hops off and follows Roadhog closely. “Roadie, who’s this?”
“Ana Amari,” she says with a kind smile at Junkrat. She extends her hand and Junkrat eyes it warily.
“Junkrat,” he says, then grabs Roadhog’s vest strap and starts dragging him toward the door. “We got somewhere to be—“
“Rat,” Roadhog says, his fingers pinching Junkrat’s wrist to get him to release his hold and then pulling him in close to talk to him. He lets him rest against his front to soften the rejection and gives his hand a firm squeeze. “Go inside and heat up dinner.”
Junkrat pouts, but finally lets go when Roadhog sighs and leans in to bonk their heads together. “Go.”
Roadhog waits until Junkrat is inside before he sits heavily next to Ana on the porch. She pours him a cup of tea into a second cup she has teetering on the barrel and he takes it with a grunt. He shifts his mask out of the way and the nutty scent of wattleseed is unmistakable.
“What do you want?” he asks, his voice raspy and parched. He sips the tea without worry of poison or tampering. It feels soothing if a bit hot.
“Just to talk. And a lift tomorrow when you go out to the ruins,” she says.
Roadhog doesn’t look at her, just sips his tea and stares off at the setting sun and the green-tinged dark red of the horizon. “Sure.”
“Excellent. How have you been, Mako?”
They have their tea and Roadhog catches her up on what little he’s been doing. After the omnium explosion, he lost his family— he doesn’t elaborate and she doesn’t ask him to— after that, he just wandered the wastes until Junkertown established itself.
He’s been working for Junkrat for a few years.
Speaking of Junkrat, he pokes his head out and only brings two bowls of soup out. After a terse word from Roadhog, he slinks back in and brings a third for Ana. Roadhog swaps it with his own bowl because he knows Junkrat spat in it.
The intensity of Junkrat’s pout just confirms it and Roadhog smirks a little and pats his thigh. Junkrat’s ass is bony and annoying but he’s a bit calmer with Roadhog close and lets them talk, so he’s allowed to keep his perch.
It isn’t until later, when he and Junkrat are in bed and Ana’s turned down in the loft that Junkrat whispers, “Roadie. How come you didn’t tell me none of that stuff?”
“Hm?”
“About your family. Didn’t know you had one. And it was sad. Never heard you talk about any stuff before we met,” Junkrat whispers—which is more of a dramatic stage whisper for anyone else on earth.
“You didn’t ask,” Roadhog replies after some thought, but he knows that’s not fair.
Junkrat is silent, though, and eventually he says. “Sorry I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t know to.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Rat, go to sleep,” Roadhog rumbles, pulling him closer and reaching for his sleeping mask.
The next morning, they all ride out to the ruins together. Ana jostles along in the sidecar and Junkrat clings to Roadhog with giddy excitement at how unsafe each bump is and how much it reminds them both of when they first started working together.
As soon as they start to slow, Junkrat leaps off the bike and hits the dirt running.
“He has an abundance of energy,” Ana says, her voice wry and kind even through the muffle of her mask. Roadhog lifts her rifle from the side car and carries it for her as they walk at a much more sedate pace toward the ruins.
“Overabundance,” he agrees, then looks down at Ana. “What are you here for?”
“A few radiographic readings, maybe some surviving video,” she says, but it doesn’t sound like she’s trying to hide anything from him. “There are those who think that the explosion was intentional.”
“It was,” Roadhog says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She hums noncommittally and then drops down into one of the metal walkways that a generation of junkers had cobbled together. “The initial one, yes, but the bomb you took inside wasn't meant for this,” she says, motioning to the dedicated land around them.
Roadhog watches her go, shocked that she knew he had been the one to take the bomb in. Shocked that she didn’t blame him. She just sounded matter of fact.
Roadhog sits by the edge of the hole like he usually does and every lift of his head sends junkers skittering farther away from him and his charges. He loses sight of Ana quickly, but he’s pretty sure she can actually take care of herself. Junkrat can too, he’s just— “got unique circumstances” is how he puts it. Roadhog would say he has a unique way of pissing people off.
Junkrat disappears after a while too and Roadhog tries to crane his head, but he must be on the other side of the massive support pole that held up the structure before it got scattered across the outback.
“Rat,” he calls.
When nothing comes back, Roadhog stands up and walks around the hole, his eyes trained for fluorescent orange or even neon green. He sees both just as he walks enough to see around a melted door frame.
He checks if there’s a cartridge loaded in the gun nearly on autopilot before looking down the rifle scope and keeping his finger well away from the trigger.
There’s two junkers on the ground behind them. Another one stands between them and the exit. And the rifle Roadhog holds. He takes a deep breath and tries to steady his aim, but he ends up coughing from controlling his breathing and the shot ends up in the junker’s shoulder.
They go down shrieking as purple mist hisses from the point of impact and Ana grabs Junkrat’s arm, encouraging him to run. Junkrat kicks the junker in the head as they flee, cackling like a madman as Roadhog goes to get the bike and pulls it around for them. He reaches an arm down to assist them both out of the pit and then they both tug him up from his knee as they toss a sizable box and a thin, clacking bag into the side car. Ana hops in with a delighted laugh and Junkrat jumps on the back, slapping Roadhog’s shoulder until he elbows Junkrat very nearly off the back of the bike at 120 kilometers an hour.
When they reach Roadhog’s shack, he looks at them both expectantly and Ana pulls her helmet off with a wide smile. “Your friend is very clever,” she tells Roadhog.
“I’m always telling him that!” Junkrat crows. “He never believes me.”
“I don’t... not believe you,” Roadhog says as he swings off of the bike.
Ana scoffs and pulls the thin bag out of the sidecar. She hands it to Junkrat and pulls the heavy box out herself. “Grab my rifle, please,” she says and her voice is so mild it doesn’t even raise Roadhog’s hackles until he’s already at his shack door and leaning it against the broken coat stand that has never seen a jacket in its life.
He follows the two in and watches as they splay their loot across the table like kids after a trip to a store.
Roadhog isn’t smart like Junkrat, but he knows what a harddrive looks like and there are sticks that slide out an usb prong. Ana walks over to her duffle bag and pulls out a small laptop that could probably fit in Roadhog's hand.
“What is all this?” he asks.
“Treasure,” Junkrat says gleefully. “I’ve been stockpiling some of it!”
“So you haven't just been doing fuck all down there.” Roadhog settles back and watches Ana work as Junkrat turns a hurt look on him and presses a spread hand to his chest dramatically.
“Roadie! you thought I was just yanking your chain? Climbing down into the greasy, dusty loneliness just to tickle my pickle in private?”
Roadhog rolls his eyes so hard his head moves with it. “No, you fucking idiot, I just thought you were looking in the same place every time.”
While they talk, Ana picks through the sticks, plugging them into a separate deck from the computer individually and typing rapidly on the keyboard that Roadhog’s thick fingers would probably break.
Junkrat laughs at Roadhog’s response and bounds over to drape himself across his lap, which is mostly taken up by Roadhog’s belly. “Only sometimes! Real easy to get lost in there and everything looks the same.”
Ana chuckles and looks up at them both. “We have what we need,” she tells them.
“We?” Roadhog and Junkrat both echo, Junkrat jolting to sit up and falling off of Roadhog’s lap.
“Yes.” She motions to the data sticks. “Contained within these are blueprints and they mostly match the officially released ones, but there was a gap in those plans that everyone assumed was a computing error by whatever omnic architect generated them.”
Junkrat’s nose wrinkles at the mention of omnics. “What’s the gap?” he asks.
“A room— the same room we got this box out of,” she says, dragging it closer and running her hands along the side. As her fingers touch it, a panel clicks open and offers ports for cords that Roadhog has never seen.
Junkrat looks like he’s vibrating as he leans over the table and plays with the switch to reveal the ports. “What’s on here?” he asks curiously.
“Do you want to come with me and find out?” she asks with a wide smile.
“Go where?” Junkrat asks, his brow furrowing.
“Overwatch,” Ana says. “I think it’s time I rejoined them. I can have a ride out of here in a few hours. You may come with me if you like.“
Junkrat’s eyes widen and he opens his mouth, but Roadhog says gruffly, “We’re staying here.” Junkrat can't know he caused all this. Even if what Ana implied was true, that the omnium was rigged to blow by more than just the ALF bomb, it would lead to too many questions. Roadhog is bad with questions. He can’t remember anything anyway and Junkrat would just needle him.
“What about you, young man?” Ana asks as if Junkrat would choose anything but staying with Roadhog.
His confidence that Junkrat will choose him slips as his metal fingers slide across the hidden compartment again and then his eyes linger on the sticks, the small computer in front of Ana.
“I’d rather get paid,” he finally says, though his curiosity is clear on his face.
“Very well,” she says. “How much? You did all of the work, it’s only right.”
Junkrat looks surprised that she agreed so readily and leans up next to Roadhog to whisper, “I’m just doing this so she thinks we got a plan.”
Roadhog grunts and holds up three fingers.
“Three million dollars!” Junkrat belts out.
Roadhog moves his index finger down a few times.
“Three hundred!” Roadhog moves his three up. “Thousand!” Roadhog gives a nod. “Dollars!”
Ana watches Junkrat struggle through the offer with an amused smile and she nods as she types something into the laptop. “Will that be in Australian dollars?”
“Whatever exchange rate is higher,” Roadhog rumbles.
Ana smiles politely and her fingers clatter as if she’s adding that to the end of a message before sending. “I’ll be in touch about the info we find,” she promises.
“Why?” Roadhog asks, his voice as acidic as his scowl.
“You deserve to know,” Ana tells him as Junkrat crowds closer to her and she lets him see what she’s working on.
Roadhog makes dinner for them and then settles into his bed while they work until Ana’s plane shows up. Junkrat leaves to see her off and Roadhog tells himself that he’s fully prepared for him not to come back—but he does. He makes a big deal about swinging the heavy briefcase of cash onto the floor and then shoving it under the bed before clambering up onto it and cuddling into Roadhog’s side even though his loft is free again.
“I’m glad we’re not leavin’, Roadie,” he says with a yawn when he sees Roadhog’s eyes are open.
“Hm?”
“Yeah, the heists and all were fun, but nothin’ beats the shack,” Junkrat assures him.
“Hm.”
Silence, then, “Roadie?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you tell me about your family?”
“Tomorrow.” If Junkrat remembers.
“Promise?”
“Go to sleep.”
Junkrat is beginning to make it hard to even keep secrets.