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Four months, fifteen days, eight hours, twenty-two minutes and thirty-three seconds.
In retrospect, perhaps he should have thought it over more before committing to this course of action.
The altercation with Talon had left him grievously injured. They hadn't pulled any punches after he declined their shallow offer to join forces. They should have tried harder if they wanted him to buy the false smiles, the hollow promises.
His sole mistake had been attending the meeting alone as requested; he was lucky the nonfunctional arm and shoulder had been the worst of what he escaped with.
How all that led him to Hana Song’s penthouse apartment, however, was a far more difficult thing to justify.
The location of the wound rendered it impossible for him to fix himself. His subordinates lacked the necessary knowledge of dexterity to successfully rewrite the delicate wiring there. If he did not reconnect it within thirty-seven hours, it was likely he would lose the arm entirely, and ravager parts were not an easy find. The flight here had already consumed ten of those hours. If this did not work, he had no other options, no choice but to limp home and lick his wounds.
Hana had saved his life once. Perhaps it was naïve to think she would do it again.
Ramattra wondered if he had been needlessly cruel about the whole ordeal. It was an unhelpful thing to wonder that in no way affected him, but the thought clung to him, unshakable.
Four months, fifteen days, eight hours, twenty-four minutes and forty-nine seconds since he last saw her. Since she pieced him back together, painstaking in her attention to detail, rebuilding a stranger that only intended to condemn them both to war. Foolishly naïve, blindly trusting. A paradox. The star around which MEKA and Overwatch orbited.
And he could not remove the thought of her. Despite his best efforts, indelibly she remained.
In the few times he had encountered her on the field since, the force of her loathing had been palpable. More than that, though, it was the hurt that perplexed him. Anger, he could bear, but the wounded look in her eye when she saw him, the hesitation before she pulled the trigger… he did not know what to do with that.
And yet, even still, for some reason— of which he was unwilling to parse out at present— she had been his first choice.
Messaging the woman that had saved him— who he'd thereafter ghosted— with no preface nor forewarning that he required assistance two hours before arriving at her doorstep had not been his most strategic move. Or, if nothing else, he should have been a little more eloquent.
There was one door on the entire floor. Squaring his shoulders, he lifted a hand and knocked once.
Nothing.
He knocked again, several times now. Deafening in what was otherwise utter silence.
Hana opened the door, brow furrowed and mouth half-opened with some snide comment or another. When she saw him, she stopped short, which he supposed was a reasonable reaction to finding a ravager at your doorstep.
She looked worse for wear, deep into recovery. One arm was in a hinge splint, the other taped in gauze to the elbow, and she favored her right foot more than her left. A large gauze patch took up the right side of her neck, recently changed. Marbled with bruises, deep and dark. She was wearing her flight suit half-done, tied at the waist, and a plain white tank top, her hair done up beneath her mechanic’s cap.
“Oh-kay," she said, the word drawn out, gathering her bearings as she stared up at him. She did not reach for a gun, as he thought she might. Perhaps she could read his intentions. If she could, she certainly knew more than he did— he still had yet to make an excuse for his presence. "So this is new."
"You are injured," he said. It was flimsy, and still no excuse.
"Yeah," she intoned. "So are you." She sighed, waving her good hand as she disappeared into the apartment. "Well, come in— not like I can stop you."
He ducked through the doorframe. Her decor was bright, but minimalistic, concrete floors with tasteful rugs, an open floor plan. A news outlet droned on the massive holo, something about D.Va being missing in action. A poppy song played over a distant radio, words blending together to a toneless beat. Something about the space made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t place why.
“Make yourself at home,” she said, making her way toward the kitchen. Stilted steps, barefoot.
Ramattra tried to identify what it was about this place that felt so off. Large, lofty, clinically decorated. It didn't feel like her style at all, remembering what he did from her quarters in the MEKA base. It lacked all personal paraphernalia. It reeked of solitude.
“Is this yours?” he asked, unable to help himself. It was too strange not to point it out. Hana blinked at him, then looked around to try to see what he was referring to.
“What, this place? I mean, kind of. It’s a sponsorship house. APM owns the floor, so as long as I stream with them, I own the floor.” She tugged open the fridge. “Been moving a lot. All my places keep getting leaked, so I've been bouncing around, and I can't be on base for safety reasons, so. This is me, for the week.”
Her tone was too blasé for comfort. Fact of matter. This was an undeniable truth in her life, as certain as the way the sun was due to rise in a few short hours. Her life was a product, an advertisement. Something her government could sell to keep the people feeling safe and secure in their homes. Something to feed the frothing masses— our superstar. Your superstar.
“That sounds… inconvenient,” he said, aiming for sympathy. As much as he could, at any rate. It was the least he could do for disrupting her at this hour.
Hana smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's fine. I'm used to it. These sorts of things happen all the time when you're a female celebrity.”
So entitled were they to her presence that they hunted her down, flushed her out. Anything to catch a glimpse of her again. He rolled his shoulders, an aggravated motion, and settled for folding his arms over his chest. "Well, they shouldn't," he fumed.
She shot him a look around the edge of her fridge door, one eyebrow raised. “Hey, if you want to wage your next war on misogyny, I’m all for it. You’d be doing all women in eSports a favor.”
A tempting thought, but a complicated one. Taking on that fight, even on her behalf, meant accepting not all humans were as fundamentally evil as he previously thought. Accepting that they didn't all share the same guilt. That Hana was not just an exception to the rule— that others shared in her suffering. Everything had been so simple, so clear cut before her. Once, he never would have hesitated, never would have found himself at the enemy’s doorstep begging for aid like a whelp. Never would have considered going to war for her, just to smooth over the tired lines beneath her eyes.
How irksome, that she had become so essential to him. As his enemy, his savior, and everything else in between that existed solely in this interstellar space between one crisis and the next.
“How habitually repulsive of man,” he said. Trying to find some safe middleground between conciliatory and condescending. Thankfully, Hana snorted a laugh and went back to her search.
“You’re telling me. It wasn’t so bad before I started hitting the hundred-k’s in views. Even being in a secret vigilante org can only get you so much by way of protections, and that’s past MEKA. Nothing can beat a horny man’s determination, I guess.”
The more she elaborated, the worse it got, somehow. He had half a mind to point that out, but he did not want to say something she already knew. He stepped further into the space, glancing up through tall skylights. Thick glass, matte sheen. Bulletproof. Had to be a custom addition.
“Do you think they will try again?”
She made a victorious noise and pulled out a large, colorful can.
“I mean, yeah, probably. Easy clickbait title, if nothing else.” It was more than indifference, something beyond exhaustion. So detached from the issue, prattling off a practiced speech, recited and reiterated to someone else. He didn’t like that he wasn’t the first. Disliked more that it didn’t seem to make a difference.
“I could—”
“Hold that thought,” Hana interrupted. Her phone was ringing, and she tucked it between her ear and the shoulder of her broken arm. It could not possibly be a comfortable position, but she seemed needlessly determined to keep hold of her drink. “Hey, boss. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I did! Nope, false alarm. All good here. I just—” she shot a furtive look at him. “I just have someone over right now. Someone. You know, a booty call? A little hanky-panky? A smash and dash? I am! Okay, I don’t want to hear it from you, of all people.” She rolled her eyes with tremendous force, and pretended to gag. “Ugh. Barf.”
She was insinuating something, but what, he did not know. Ramattra honed his audio, trying to catch pieces of the conversation. A feminine voice, accented. He couldn’t make out any words, but Hana didn’t seem overly bothered by whatever she was saying. Just fond, playfully annoyed.
“I’m not gonna pull my stitches, mom. Yeah. For sure.” Another sidelong glance at Ramattra. He didn’t know what to do with it, with himself. The allusion that he was, in some sense, the topic of conversation. The realization that he must have triggered some alarm after all, and that she was lying on his behalf. “Yep. Goodnight!”
Hana ended the call, but she didn’t put down her phone immediately. She had pulled something else up, words reflecting off the dark brown of her eyes, brows drawn, lips thin. Ramattra leaned over. A glance at the screen showed a chat forum of needy, parasocial delinquents wondering where she was, as if they were entitled to her existence. Hana paused over each of the nastier comments. Wonderings of where she was. Who she was with. Accusations of her abandoning her country when they needed her. When her team needed her. When the world needed her. It seemed a little self-flagellant.
Four months, fifteen days, eight hours, and so little had changed in that time.
“How have you been, Hana?” he allowed himself to ask, hoping, for her sake, that she would not try to lie to him. “Injuries aside.”
She looked up at him— surprised, perhaps, that he'd asked, or that he'd spoken at all.
“Been better,” she admitted, finally tossing her phone aside, collecting herself before his eyes. It certainly did not take her long to shore up her defenses, to plaster every crack in the wall. Leaning back into that comfortable gray area where Hana ended and D.Va began. “Been worse, too. Definitely doing better than you are. Which, speaking of, what even happened? You're about as bad as you were last time.”
At least he was not the only one that remembered those nights in excruciating detail. He settled into the sudden amiability of the conversation, even knowing the risks.
“Talon. This was their idea of diplomatic negotiations.” He knew, but he had to ask: “and you?”
Hana lifted her bad arm, as much as she could, anyways, testing its limited flex. The pull of stitches sure to lie beneath. Still, the corner of her lips twitched at a smile. “Null Sector. Singapore. Thought you would have known that, oh illustrious leader.”
“Hilarious,” he deadpanned, if only to distract from the fact that he had, in fact, known that. “It is a large operation. I cannot be everywhere at once.”
“But you always seem to pop up wherever I am. Maybe you’ve been missing me.” She rested her chin on her good hand, leaning over the counter. “If you’re trying to get my attention, you could always just send me flowers. Every girl likes flowers.”
Then she noticed after all. How annoying. Was there any answer that would not condemn him?
“You know, I was surprised to receive your message earlier. I didn't think you kept my number,” she continued. Conversational, to hide the underlying steel. “Interesting, too, that I'm the first person you'd call.”
“You are the only one that knows my systems intimately,” he said. That was the least complicated way to put it, anyway.
Hana hummed, still staring into her fridge like it was hiding something from her. “Is that all?”
Ramattra scoffed. “Why else?”
She shrugged, the lights of her apartment glinting off the silvery scar tissue along her shoulders. “I just thought you might be lonely,” she said.
He knew what she was insinuating. That he had missed her, inexplicably, for four months, fifteen days, eight hours, twenty-seven minutes and two seconds.
He watched her crack open a can with her own face printed onto it, with a jaunty tune and a Nano Cola, enjoy! Staring herself in the eyes as she took a long, long drink. Nano Cola had three-hundred milligrams of caffeine. Nothing that would help settle the exhaustion poking through the cracks in her composure, despite the strong front she was putting on.
“Why are you here, Ram?” she asked, dark eyes searching his face. Bruises wrought by the consequences of his actions. His war. “You still haven’t said.”
He thought about the MEKA base, about the small room he’d called home for three weeks, and her hands, deft and careful, putting him back together. Maybe that alone was reason enough. Maybe he did not have to fight so hard to find reasons to justify indulging in her presence.
Though, he couldn’t exactly tell her that. It skirted too close to the truth they were both so good at avoiding. But he’d already paused too long. “I required assistance,” he said. Staggered words. He set his shoulders. “Given that you put me back together, I hold you responsible for the effortless state of my disrepair.”
“Right,” she said, slow and sly and thoroughly unconvinced. “How did you know where to find me, anyways?”
The truth was that she had been an immovable presence in his life since she saved it. A debt unpaid, unfinished business. A fascination. A fixation, at times, in ways that he prioritized over his life’s work. There were too many things to contain into a definite answer.
“I have been keeping an eye on you, given your penchant for danger.” As evidenced by her allowing the leader of Null Sector into her home. There were no security cameras anywhere. There hadn’t even been any outside. Nothing and no one to stop him from making his way up to the penthouse. “Since our meeting, before. Somehow, you manage to be both extremely injury-prone and injury-susceptible.”
“Aw,” she said, smirking. “It’s cute that you worry.”
Ramattra startled. “I do not worry.”
“Uh-huh.” She pushed away from the counter slowly and made a beckoning motion with her hand. It was a miracle she didn't spill her drink. “Come on— tools are on the roof pad. I can take a look at that pretty face and busted shoulder of yours.”
Of all the things Ramattra had ever been called, he supposed pretty wasn't so bad. Not enough to comment on, at least. He followed as she turned, watching the ridges of her spine, the rippling scar like wings across her back.
He wanted to reach out, trace the jagged lines until he had them memorized. He didn't. The desire remained.
Hana’s face pinched as she led him up the sloping stairs to the roof, the knee she’d been favoring buckling beneath her weight. Before he could fully process the action, Ramattra moved to steady her, his hand at the small of her back.
She flashed him a smile that was more of a grimace, and he let her use his arm as a crutch as they made their way up together. Slow steps, weight-bearing, to keep pressure off of her knee.
A large glass door met them as they made their way to the top, opening to an expansive space that served as workshop and garage both. It was large, larger than he’d anticipated, polished concrete with a spanning view of the city. Hana’s mech stood there, already in some state of dismantling.
It was the same way she'd done it with him, back then, back when nothing but scrap metal and spite held him together. Dismantle, then identify the issue. Easier to fix something when one could see all its pieces. An engineer’s line of thinking. He had to wonder how much of the mech was her ingenuity alone.
Deep scars and scorch marks painted its pink surface. Blasters, he thought, from his dropships.
“Alright, take a seat, big guy,” she said, limping her way over to a tool cart and kicking it loosely in his direction. She was quite deft for someone so seriously injured. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”
He settled into a cross-legged seat, letting her putter around him. There was a small flashlight wedged between her teeth, and she had a few small, fine tools strapped to her fingers. Things for small, fine machinery. He recognized them.
She settled into his lap, seemingly content in her disregard for his personal space. He didn’t complain.
The resemblance ached in a way he could not fully reconcile. Different injuries. Deeper bags beneath her eyes, sleepless nights spent watching MEKA throw her to the wolves.
She raked a hand through her bangs, the flashlight still bitten between her teeth. She had a new scar on her collarbone, a starburst where the bullet must have punched straight through. She had a lot of new scars, now. He wondered how many were his fault.
“I was really betrayed, you know,” she started suddenly, colloquially, setting down the light to lean in closer, wires snapping together. “When I found out who you were.”
Who. Not what. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, focused on her work. Her expression was carefully crafted, artificed neutrality. Her voice did not shake.
“I thought you’d been using me for a while, in the immediate aftermath. When Toronto came up on international news. Honestly, I was more surprised you didn’t use me, somehow, to your advantage. I’m sure it would have been a handy card to play.”
Something ghosted over her face, some flickering pain, deep and complicated, because there was nothing between them that wasn’t.
“Everyone thinks I love this job, but I don’t. It’s the worst job in the world.” She closed her eyes, brow pinching. “Somebody has to do it, though. Somebody has to make all the death and war digestible.”
She laughed, a boneless husk of breath. Her hands, refitting his artificial nerves, remained steady.
“Later down the line, I thought I was jealous of you. I mean, you got out! You beat the system, beat the game. Beat your own coding, even. Not me, though. I’m player one. I won’t be getting out until we either save the world or I die trying.”
The brightest stars always burn the fastest. She’d told him that, in one of those quiet, distant nights. It was an unsustainable form of life, the candle that burned at both ends, the inevitable supernova.
“I thought you would despise me,” he said. Anger was the least he deserved, anyhow. She had saved his life, and he had left in the veil of night to go start his revolution, and where did it bring him but back to her doorstep like a cowed dog.
“I mean, I did, for the first month or two. But then I thought— well, what would I do, in a situation like that? And I realized it wasn’t who you were that hurt so bad.” Her forehead thudded against the plate of his sternum. He stilled immediately.
“I would have understood if you’d told me,” she murmured. Low vibrations, thick with loss. “I would have gotten it, you know. I would have helped.”
He stared straight up, at the stars overhead, peeking through the Busan smog, as if they had any answers for him. “I thought you hated my people.”
A hum, caught in the back of her throat. “I hate the mindless version that’s destroying my home, but not you. Never you.”
What was the difference? There was plenty else he had destroyed. She knew that. What then? “Even now?”
“Even now.”
It was a recklessness he would never fully understand, something he wasn’t capable of. Her capacity to trust, to throw herself again and again into the line of fire for ally or enemy, simply because it is right. Omnics destroyed her home. They tried, over and over, every few weeks, rising from the ocean below, coming back better and stronger and she batted them back every time. He allowed Null Sector to descend upon Busan and he still could not win her ire.
“Why did you save me?” he asked, staring at his shadow on the far wall.
Hana paused, her hands stalling in their work.
“I dunno,” she said, moving once more, but slower. More thoughtful. “I guess… because I could, so I thought that maybe someone should. That maybe it would help things make sense. If I could fix one of you, maybe there was hope to fix things in the future with all of you.”
If there was any hatred that omnics deserved, it was hers. And she still could not give him that, could not let him lie comfortably in the belief that fueled his rebellion. He owed her his life. She owed him nothing. He had called her out of desperation and, injured and with no way to defend herself, she had let him in, unworried, unafraid. Like she had known. Like she knew from the start.
“What about you?” she asked, wiping a hand over her forehead as she gave up on trying to reset his shoulder plate for the time being. “What would you have done, if it had been me lying there? Would you have saved me?”
It should have been easy to answer. The answer should have come immediately. No. Because what did he owe humanity after years of imbalance? What goodwill did he owe his tormentors? But the idea of finding her, bloodied, piecemeal, and walking away? Maybe his perception was forever skewed, forever tainted by the memory of how deliberate she’d been, how attentive. How dedicated she was to her care, to learn how to build him in a way that did not ache.
He did not know if he was capable of such gentleness. He did not know if he was capable of such cruelty, either. Nothing was certain when it came to her.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually. It was not a hypothetical he could fathom.
“Good,” she said. “It’s not so easy, is it? Being heartless.”
“What could you possibly know?” He didn’t mean it as an accusation, but the words came out sharper than he’d intended.
“I saw you, inside and out. There’s a heart in there somewhere. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be feeling so guilty.”
“I do not feel guilty,” he groused.
“Sure you do,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice, small and reckless. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
Ramattra had no response for that. He did not know what he could say that would be true. Did he feel guilty betraying and abandoning the only human to have shown him any kindness? Did guilt even cover the full extent of what he felt?
“You deserve a second chance,” she continued, and there, he paused.
He'd already been given a second chance, and a third one, and a fourth. All of them, wasted on his own pride. How many chances did he have left? Did he even deserve any more?
“You have given me too many chances,” he replied, turning his head away from her.
“Then take one more,” she pressed, either bravery or ignorance fueling her passion. “I don’t know what you’ve been through or what you’ve seen. I don’t know how you feel, or how much you've been through. But I do know people. I know what it looks like when someone is just bad. I’ve traveled all over the world, seen just about every flavor of shit there is, and I know you’re better than you believe.”
“It’s not about belief. Whatever you may have convinced yourself I am, I am not. I have no reason to stay. You have no reason to want me. It’s as simple as that.”
Hana's eyes glinted, exasperation surging to the surface, but she restrained herself, sighing deeply. Her anger was wild and eager but she was going to many lengths to tame it— why? He deserved the rage. Perhaps he would venture drawing it out just to feel its heat.
“You, sir, don’t get to decide that for me,” she continued after a long pause, her voice deliberately light. “You’re hard work, sure, but that’s not exactly news. Besides, I love a challenge. And the thing is, I know what I want, and I think you know what you want, and I’m done wasting time. This is all just foreplay, at this point.”
“Are open chest operations arousing for you?”
“Extremely,” she deadpanned. Eyes bright and playful.
“I will keep that in mind. For the future.”
“I’m sure.” She tucked the light back into her cheek and leaned in again, checking over the wound. Fingers prodding gently around the edges, making sure it’d all been reconnected properly. Ramattra let her. He’d probably let her do anything she wanted, right about now.
She said, pulling the light from her mouth and leaning back to look at him better. “Everything looks fine from here, not that I doubted my work— you’re in tip top shape, pretty boy.”
Ramattra had known that, of course. He’d known it when he asked. He just wanted her close, to feel the careful touch of her hands again, the way she could take him apart. Trusting her to put him back together, after, even though he shouldn’t. Even though it would only serve to ruin him later.
She was still watching him, eyes flinty, a smile tugging at the corner of her lip. Like she could see straight through him, down to the structural framework. Maybe he was that transparent. Maybe it was just her.
Smiling roguishly, she reached into his chest, giving the cluster of wires that connected his servos to his sensory systems a tug. The reaction was instantaneous. His body convulsed, systems firing. Unexpected, but hedonic. A low noise like a growl left him, hands falling to her hips automatically. Whether to pull her close or push her away, he couldn’t resolve.
“Hana,” he grit out.
She grinned, looking unapologetically pleased with herself. “You’re distracted,” she said.
He grumbled, but settled down, appeased for now to keep her close. It did get him thinking, though. Maybe she had a point. Maybe this was all false pretenses to dance around what he'd known for four months.
“I never thanked you for saving my life,” he said.
Hana squinted up at him, face pulled into an expression he could not read. Catlike. Keen. She expected something from him. “Are you going to?”
He thought about it. Everything was always a competition with her, and he was loath to let her win. But the desire to impress, to earn her approval remained. To have her fingers tug against his wires, just to feel that skittering spark. How terribly annoying.
He shifted forward, in that momentary confidence, the bolstered fervor. “There are better ways I can show my gratitude.”
She smiled, slow and satisfied. So he’d read things right, after all.
“I like your style,” she said, but the exhaustion shadowed her eyes again, smile dampening, pain seeping past the impressive painkillers she must have been on. “Unfortunately, my feeble, human body’s not up to the task right now, but soon. Really soon, if you play your cards right. Or whenever the oxy kicks in again.”
She sat heavily on the concrete and waved a hand at nothing. “If you really want to be useful, you can help me run diagnostics on Tokki. She got pretty banged up, too. Reactor isn't working like it should.”
“I resent that,” Ramattra said, getting to his feet and stooping to help her up, after.
“Hey, it was your bird that shot me out of the sky,” she retorted, but she was smiling as she said it, as if the cosmetic damage and broken arm were no big deal. “You’re liable for the damage costs. She’s an expensive ride.”
“Property cannot be made liable for damages.” How long had it been, he thought, since he was last able to joke like this? With Zenyatta, surely. Older days. Halcyon.
Hana elbowed him, not hard, but hard enough to make a point. “Okay, hey, you don’t get to selectively be the leader of the omnic uprising.”
Amusement rumbled across his chest, and she sat heavily next to him as he began to work.
The reactor was unlike what he’d thought it would be, which he supposed suited her well. Small, warm, polyhedric in shape. A complex construct, highly volatile. He pulled up the mech’s diagnostic spread from where it always lingered in the back of his processor.
“Your problem is here,” he said, rotating it carefully, to show her the cracked side. A slight scuff, not enough to make it bleed, but the likely suspect between the spotty bursts of power.
“That’ll do it, yeah. Damn. I’ll have to work Dae-hyun for the spare.” She sighed, rubbing at her brow, suddenly tired, or like maybe it was finally sinking in how bad of condition she was in. She and her mech, both. She would be out of commission for some time, yet, and he knew the inaction must sting.
Four months, fifteen days, eight hours, and he was tired of pretending.
“I… apologize,” he started, slow and careful, choosing each word beneath the weight of her judgment. “Not for what I did; I will never apologize for protecting my people. But I am sorry that I did not tell you who I was. That I had nothing better to offer in the light of your confessions. Your compassion. It was cruel. I will do better.”
She tilted her head, considering him. “Because you want to?”
“Yes, but not for you. Because of you.” He paused, staring at the nuclear reactor in his hands. A neutron star, a pulsar. “I… thought about what you said. And if I have not squandered things entirely, I would like to try again.”
“Ramattra,” Hana said, scandalized and playful. “Are you propositioning me?”
Ramattra turned to look at her, haloed by the lights of the cityscape behind her. Injured, yes, and exhausted, but radiant nonetheless. Lips curled into a teasing smirk, even at his behest; it should not have flustered him as much as it did.
“Yes,” he said, because there was no point in trying to lie to her when she would just see through it.
Hana’s smile softened, her cheeks reddening, and Ramattra was pleased to know that at least he had the same effect on her, if nothing else.
“I'd like that.” She held up a finger. “On one condition.”
Ramattra hated diplomacy, but he stayed quiet. She met his gaze, fearless and uncompromising.
“You have to let Overwatch help you. Null Sector has to end. We do this the right way.”
Right and wrong were so subjective when it came to omnics. Humans spoke of fairness loftily until they had to grant it to something else, sentience of their own creation. Treated fairly, but only so long as they were subservient. So long as they understood they would always be less.
Ramattra tried to find the lie in her, the waver in her gaze that told him she didn’t believe it was possible. There was none to be found. Even through the levity in her tone, she was as serious as she was capable of being. So certain that there was justice to be found in a partnership with Overwatch. With MEKA. With her.
It was an unhappy medium at best, what they had now, whatever it was. It would not last. Something had to change. She wasn’t offering him an out, but a compromise.
“My people would see it as a betrayal. A surrender. They would never accept an end outside of total victory.” Once, he would not have accepted that, either.
“And who better to convince them? Zenyatta has the speech ready and everything.”
He relented. “And you're certain Overwatch will be amenable to this?”
“I'm very persuasive,” Hana said with a smirk. “Besides, I'll have Mercy on my side, and they'll all listen to her, anyways.”
“And she will not mind that we are…” whatever they were, exactly. Hana rolled her eyes.
“Please— I'm hardly the first person to flirt with ex-enemies. You should see Lúcio.”
She leaned into his side, then, in a way that surely could not be comfortable, given her injuries. He wondered, not for the first time since he’d arrived, when the last time she slept was. She looked tired. She’d been tired for so long.
“Ramattra,” Hana said, staring out at the city below, the neon nightlife she would only ever see through a lens. “Would you like to stay the night?”
It had to be intentional, the way she always left the choice in his lap. He would stay if she told him to. She wanted him to want it, too. He could not recall the last time anyone cared about that enough to mention it. He hadn’t been designed to make choices of his own. His very existence was a design flaw, a stripped parcel of code that snowballed sentience into ultraviolence; one small act of spite into a turnpoint of war. The fight had been the first thing he ever decided for himself.
She wanted him to choose her, like she’d chosen him four months ago. All that misplaced hope and trust, persistent past his barbs, a bullet through every defense he’d tried to put up, always toeing the line.
He watched her watch the city, watched the taut line of her shoulders; she asked him if he wanted to stay when really she was saying, I’m tired, aren’t you?
He shifted slightly, moving so the hard cut of his chest formed a gentler slope to support her. “I would.”
“You won't leave until I wake up, right?” she asked, voice thin like it had been then, when the weight of the world once more settled itself upon her shoulders.
It was so lonely at the top. Ramattra understood that, perhaps better than anyone. Maybe that was why she had never given up on him. Maybe that was why he’d never let her go. Why, even now, he regretted leaving her the way he did.
He craved the small touches of comfort, the back and forth on the battlefield, running his fingers through her hair. Her small, private smiles, the huff of her laughter whenever he managed to amuse her, the warm calluses of her hands— all of the things he’d endeavored to bury beneath his gravitas.
Was it so wrong of him to consider abandoning all he’d built so far because of her? Would his people forgive him, if he chose now to wave the white flag?
He loathed how soft she made him. He would not trade the feeling for anything.
“No,” Ramattra said. It was as much as he could offer her that she would ask for. Maybe that was enough. “I will stay.”
She smiled, a fracture across her face, frail as bone. Relief. “I’m glad.”
And he thought, no. He was not wrong about this. It could not be a bad thing, to be wanted.
And later, long after Hana had fallen asleep against him, he would lift her carefully and carry her to bed. Afterwards, he would return to the roof to finish the diagnostics and work on the damaged left firing mechanism until the sun broke through the skyline. And perhaps, even later than that, when Hana woke again, he would allow her to coax him back into the bedroom, and he would watch her close the blinds, broken arm and all.
For now, though, he was content to sit among the stars above her city, adrift in the endless possibility of it all. Her heart beating against the armor of his chest in a place that neither war nor fame could touch. And he let himself, perhaps for the first time, contemplate a kinder future.