#Meme by requireminx

[bellsybuilds]

[Overwatch] Old friends (G; Angela, Zenyatta, 1.4k)

Because I have no chill over the new support hero and have a mighty need for lore explanations, specifically re: discord, harmony and the Iris.

Old friends (Can also be read on AO3)

Angela Ziegler, Tekhartha Zenyatta, Soldier 76 | Jack Morrison

Angela asks Zenyatta to help her review some old footage and it reveals something quite upsetting.

“Watch closely.”

On the double monitors of Doctor Ziegler’s private workstation, the still image of the broken city street spilled into motion. The glass sheet of a high rise building streamed past like a rush of water, abruptly tilting away to a glimpse of white clouds on blue sky, clustered skyscrapers, the sun flaring in a blinding arc as the image flipped upside down into the scowling face of Doomfist who rushed up to meet them.

“This is the footage from Doomfist’s capture?” Zenyatta asked, though he already bore his suspicions. There were few who could scale a building as swiftly and at such an angle like his student.

He had heard the story: a slim and costly victory.

“Yes.” Angela paused the footage as Genji cleaved through the car hurled at his head. “There. Did you see it?”

Zenyatta glanced between her and the monitor, waiting. “I have perfect recall, Doctor, but specifics are an advantage.”

Angela wound back the footage. Before them, Genji scaled the building, and the world tipped as he threw his body in a controlled fall. Sky and buildings flashed by in the smother of the sun’s glare.

The footage stopped.

“There.”

Zenyatta’s optics scanned the input, three times for her benefit, but it was a smear of misshapen white. “Um….”

She wound back the footage once more. Zenyatta noted Angela watching his face as it replayed, attentive to his reaction.

“The moment before he falls,” she explained, gesturing to the area on the monitor, ”There is a reflection in the glass.”

Zenyatta waited and watched politely with new focus.

Then hesitated, feeling something hitch and stall in the chassis of his chest.

Wait.

“Again,” he requested, leaning in.

It rose like the bloom of a dandelion over Genji’s shoulder, throbbing and fragile at its ephemeral edges. It wobbled in frame for less than one tenth of a second, but Zenyatta’s tracking and predictive systems were more precisely tuned than any human eye or non-military program, and he understood how it rebounded off the glass window in the moment Genji tipped toward the sun.

In addition to tracking, Zenyatta’s colour perception was flawless.

He would recognise the deep, violet hue of discord anywhere. But he had never seen one cast so large or that could behave in such a way to redirect itself.

He did not realize he had pushed himself back from Angela’s desk until he registered her light hand on his shoulder.

“I did not imagine it, did I?” Angela’s tone was quiet with apology, but she was not the one who to apologise for the disquiet coiling in Zenyatta’s core, or the high whirring in his audials as he premised and calculated the odds for a thousand possible explanations in the space of Angela’s sigh, arriving at a distressing lack of conclusion.

Zenyatta would know. He had to know.

“Who has done this?” Zenyatta asked, flatly. “Who among your kind has unlocked the secrets of the Iris, Doctor?”

Angela pulled her hand back and Zenyatta nurtured a brief sting of guilt. Only briefly.

“I hoped you could tell me,” Angela shook her head, and Zenyatta watched her capture the images, prepare to export the files to what looked like a report. Who would she report it to? The unconscious scientist in the ward beside them? “How many omnics do you know who can do what you do?”

That was an easy answer.

“None.”

Angela stopped and stared at him, expression slack in shock. “Excuse me?”

Zenyatta folded his hands in his lap. He hoped it would not be a mistake to divulge to the doctor. But Genji trusted her. Zenyatta trusted the doctor with Genji’s life, but what of the secrets of his own people?

The cables and servos of his hands clicked softly as he clenched and flexed his hands. How could something like this have developed without their knowledge? Their isolation and silence had not protected them. It was unlikely to save them now.

For the sake of his people and Genji and Tracer… and all the others who didn’t understand what was coming, Zenyatta would have to hope his faith would not be misplaced.

“It took me many years to understand the nature of discord and harmony, following the teaching of my brethren. Even longer to understand it could be harnessed and relayed for the benefit… or harm of others. I have not yet met another omnic who has achieved the same feat. It was not commonly understood… and encouraged even less by those who did.”

Zenyatta focused his attention and reached within the core of himself to the well of his being. After so many years, it was the work of a thought to summon the swirling, golden glow of harmony into his palms, basking them both in its wholesome warmth.

“The size of an orb is determined by the well of its maker. The power core of any omnic with the capacity to manifest harmony and discord naturally limits us. This is the product of a life’s meditation, but it started as nothing more than a spark.”

The orb between Zenyatta’s palms soured and darkened to its natural complement. He dipped his fingertips at its crackling tendrils of chaos, his sensors alighting with warnings of signal disruption and bursts of electric charge. Seductively numbing, to your death.

“No sentient omnic could physically manifest an orb of the size in that footage,” Zenyatta extinguished his own with a flick of his wrists, and felt the dip in his core as the energy was relinquished to the Iris. “It is… highly improbable.”

The power that would require… even the possibility made him uneasy to consider it.

Angela’s jaw had clenched, muscles of her neck standing tight. She was searching his face as though for truth when Zenyatta looked up to meet her gaze again.

“That is a concern,” Angela chose her words, careful and measured. The diplomacy of her bedside manner revealed room for improvement.

Still, Zenyatta appreciated the attempt. “It is of great concern when a terrorist organization possesses the means to both take… and give life. It is my concern that balance will not be on the minds of those with this power.”

Angela glanced to the page on her report, fingers tapping the desk’s edge. Her lower lip pulled between her teeth. “You have been most enlightening, my friend. I am grateful for your insight. It looks like we could be dealing with an entirely new threat from Talon. Do you have any recommendations of how we should proceed?”

Zenyatta placed a consoling hand on her forearm, pleased when it earned him a small smile - though it fell at his next words.

"Rest easy, Doctor. I will pursue this myself. ”

//

“Zenyatta–”

The door hissed shut behind the monk. Angela sank into her chair with a heavy sigh, feeling her heart sink even deeper for the pieces unfolding before them.

There was something about this whole situation. It felt like the same tension that frizzled and built in a hundred small discomfiting incidents, before Gabriel’s unit abruptly crumbled upon itself, and the Swiss headquarters imploded.

Angela reached for her intercom on the desk, and waited for “Soldier 76” to accept her call.

Jack’s gruff tone spared no pleasantries. “What did he say?”

Angela frowned at the still images of that reflection in the glass, the manipulation of discord that had so clearly upset Zenyatta. The uneasiness stirred tighter in her chest. “Are you sure it’s her?”

“ID was positive. It’s O’Deorain.”

Angela closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her lids to relieve the building pressure.

After all these years. That lunatic, still alive and at Talon’s right hand.

She swallowed moisture down her throat before she could respond. "Zenyatta was certain. She’s somehow attained knowledge of discord, Jack. It’s precious knowledge to him, I know it. And I think he’ll try to go after her.”

Thankfully, Jack did not growl at her for taking more than seven years to notice. And this detail may have gone unnoticed forever if Doomfist had not broken from his imprisonment, and compelled Overwatch to review what little they knew of him.

Jack scoffed. “He’s right to be upset. We have a real problem.”

“He can’t pursue her himself, Jack. He will be killed.”

“I agree, Angie.” And she smarted at the nickname after all these years, the assumed closeness, even though it ached bittersweet with nostalgia. Jack then deigned to give her orders. The nerve. “Pack a bag. We leave for Oasis in the morning.”