Chapter Text
When Zarya enlisted in the Russian Defense Force, she didn't begrudge the loss of her weightlifting career. She knew then, as she does now, that she would be fighting for something far more important than international renown, or a trophy or a belt.
Zarya was honored to fight the omnic threat, as her parents had done before her. But she wondered if their country could endure another Omnic Crisis. Defeat was an impossibility in her mind, but what was the point of fighting if the omnics just kept coming? Would it ever end?
Then Overwatch reached out to her. Zarya had to school her reaction when she saw the letterhead in her work email.
They wanted her to join them.
Zarya allowed herself to imagine that the viral video of her ripping an omnic particle cannon off an armored vehicle must have made for a compelling resume.
She didn't consider that aligning herself with Overwatch would feel like leaving her homeland unprotected -- that it would mean cooperating with the very machines that even now are laying siege to her country and her people.
It was all very bureaucratic. They couldn't throw small, specialized forces at a fully functional omnium. That would just end in a bloodbath ("and what do you suppose my people are facing," Zarya doesn't say). They have to gather intelligence, weigh their options, see if there isn't another solution apart from a second war ("and in the meantime, do you suppose the war will wait for my people?" Zarya doesn't say).
And so biting her tongue, the Siberian would-be heavy weight-lifting champion and freedom fighter finds herself in a cramped jet with five other Overwatch agents, fast approaching one of the deactivated American omniums. The one in Australia would have been ideal, they said, since peace efforts had already been made, but the Australian Liberation Front had gone and exploded it and turned the surrounding area into a nuclear wasteland and now it was useless.
Also it was in Australia, which was a much greater undertaking than the one hour flight from the Grand Mesa Watchpoint to the isolated omnium in America's dust bowl.
This one is inactive, but they hope to find some useful intel inside.
Zarya is hoping to find some active omnics, and an excuse to beat them into the ground.
Ironically, just such a one is seated beside her for the duration of the flight. Her trigger finger itches, but she isn't a fool. Though it wasn't made explicit that killing this particular omnic would have dire repercussions, its presence alone tells her in no uncertain terms that it isn't something she's allowed to destroy.
It hasn't made any threatening overtures, either, from what Zarya has seen -- though that, to her, is even more nerve-wracking than the alternative.
She gets the feeling that it's looking at her as they unstrap themselves from their seats and prepare to dismount the jet. Something hard and mistrustful in her core prevents her from letting the potential challenge lie. "I've got my eye on you, omnic." The transport jet rumbles as it makes its landing half a mile from the omnium. Zarya doesn't let it jar her, holding firmly to the overhead guard rail.
The omnic is floating implacably, impossibly. It tilts its head toward her in acknowledgement. She tightens her grip on the rail, prepared to demonstrate her ability to follow through on the implied threat, if it comes to that.
"And I will watch your back in turn," it says simply.
Zarya stares, not sure she understands -- almost misses the hangar doors opening, but the whir of Tracer racing past them is enough to rouse her from her thoughts. Zarya descends onto the barren desert scrub lands with her (temporary) comrades. Dust immediately buffets her face, though her arms are saved by the grace of the coat she wears (Siberia is colder than this by far, she had thought, but accepted the protective garment regardless). A tumbleweed bounces in the distance, punctuating with its absurd unfamiliarity the surrealness of the moment.
English isn't Zarya's first language, but she likes to think she knows it fairly well by now -- knows the differences between turns of phrase that tend to stump the beginner or intermediate learner. She knows, for example, that a slim chance and a fat chance both describe something unlikely, and that guns can sometimes mean biceps, and shotgun can sometimes mean the passenger seat of a vehicle, depending on the context.
On the other hand, telling someone to watch their own back (threateningly) is different from saying you'll watch it for them (assuringly).
So either she understood the phrase correctly, and the omnic was promising to ensure her safety -- or she had fundamentally misunderstood the phrase, and the omnic was threatening her in kind.
Though Zarya is confident in her understanding of the English language, she is even more confident in her knowledge of the cruelty of omnics, so she settles upon the latter explanation.
Regardless, she needn't linger on the words of a machine. Irritated at herself for her lapse in focus, she shakes her head and takes off after her (reluctant ) comrades toward the looming shadow of the omnium.
Memories of the interaction threaten to distract her on the mission, but she's here to keep a lookout, and she'll hardly lose sight of that just because an omnic deigned to speak to her.
Zarya patrols the halls while Winston mines the servers for whatever data remains, and Reinhardt keeps watch at the door. If she were the omnium, she would have wiped everything once she knew she was going to be deactivated.
But Zarya does not say this, either.
There are many things Zarya does not say.
The facility is clearly ailing under the inclement weather conditions of the American dustbowl (which, if she understood the woman correctly, was precisely what Mei had gone outside to observe), and as Zarya wanders its halls she finds comfort in its creaks and groans. She is hardly an expert in the field of omnic production, but this place is far from a day where it could be capable of reactivating.
It is almost a comfort.
Venturing boldly deeper, she is close to the end of a long hall when she hears Tracer saying, "Kinda eerie, innit?"
Curious, Zarya looks out into the room Tracer is speaking from and understands the sentiment immediately: hundreds of omnics in various states of completion are hanging from a complicated series of conveyor belts and assembly lines. Zarya feels cold when she imagines the havoc even those could wreak, were they suddenly made active -- feels grateful that this omnium was shut down when it was.
For a moment she believes Tracer must have heard her coming, and is directing the question to her -- but before she can respond, Zarya hears another voice:
"More disturbing than the unknown is a distortion of the familiar." The voice is electronic, reverberating and modulated: the omnic. Zarya, now resigning herself to eavesdropping, foregoes approaching and leans against a nearby wall. "It is disconcerting to see, held captive in a moment of time, what this place once was. To imagine what destruction it might have caused, given time. To imagine what my siblings might one day have become, given an opportunity."
Zarya is a little surprised by the machine's articulate speech and turn of phrase, but supposes she shouldn't be. The thing probably has thousands of pithy motivational and philosophical phrases for every occasion saved to its drive. It couldn't be hard to analyze when a particular one might be appropriate.
"Oh... Chin up, luv!" Tracer says. "Now that a Russian omnium is active, this one could come back to life any day! Only..." Tracer trails off, and Zarya can't help but cringe at the very thought.
"Yes," Zenyatta says, as if in answer to Zarya's private reaction. "The situation in Russia is not what one might call... a glowing recommendation of omnic-human relations."
Zarya barely manages to conceal a snort at the understatement, then curses silently at her indulgence. What is she doing? Some 'glowing recommendation' of her reliability it would be, if it turned out she was just snooping on her teammates on their first mission. In fact, that would actually look quite bad. She should go, she thinks. She's on a mission, has a job to do -- only, everyone else on the team seems to consider this a low intensity job. Why else would Tracer and the omnic be exchanging philosophical niceties in plain view of an omnic assembly line? So with only a small measure of guilt, she resolves to stay within earshot.
The next time Tracer speaks, Zarya almost doesn't hear her: "I want to believe we can come together -- omnic and human, in understanding and tolerance. But with things the way they are... it's hard to see a way forward sometimes."
Zarya grows somber to hear Tracer speak so sullenly. Such idealism is naive beyond comprehension, but Tracer's grief is real. It's difficult for Zarya not to sympathize with the suffering of a fellow woman.
"I have been in your place. Uncertain. Afraid that the path was lost to me. And never more strongly than when my dear friend, Mondatta, was..."
Zarya leans forward, intrigued. She has never known an omnic to leave a sentence incomplete.
Though, really, she's never personally known an omnic in her life, so what does she know?
"All we can do," Zenyatta begins again, "is be an example of the harmony we want to bring to the world. Put our best foot forward, so to speak."
"That'll be the day when I see you put your feet on anything, Zenyatta," Tracer says with a watery laugh. Zenyatta laughs gently with her.
When they finally make to leave the assembly room the way they had come, the hall is as empty as when they arrived.