#bubbly and insufferable friend? also experienced and wise and mentoring!

[thoughtfulfangirling]

it's not always like this, Pharah and Tracer

Omg I am so out of the writing mood. I had to sit in front of my computer and stare at the handful of prompts before I could get anything started. It’s rusty and forced but HEY! It’s a THING and it’s DONE. Oh and of course I’m drawing heavily from Doc’s Hon Hon Hon series here, though there’s at least one nod to Rose’s OW stuff ☆～（ゝ。∂） (Prompt comes from here)

Fareeha set her steaming mug of coffe down on the furnished oak desk inside her in-home office before opening her laptop and bending over her chair to type in the password — something long and secure which Lena would never guess. The little monster jested about pranking her one of these days after guessing an old, easy to remember password Fareeha had had on all things she liked to have quick access to. Lena wouldn’t do anything truly bad of course, but that didn’t mean she wanted to give her smug friend the satisfaction of getting into her accounts a second time. 

As her settings booted up, Fareeha pulled out the chair, bemoaning again that she hadn’t gotten herself a standing desk herself yet. She had meant to, but Angela’s had been needed first, and after Lena flitted around Angela’s, vibrating with excitement, Fareeha had given hers up to Lena’s side of the office, knowing she’d be utterly insufferable if Fareeha herself had one but Lena did not. 

The sacrifices she made. 

A grin she’d suppress in front of Lena broke across her face as she indulged that thought. 

Sitting down, Fareeha sipped from her mug as she pulled some old Overwatch archives up. It had been natural somehow, that Pharah had ended up in charge of parts of the new Overwatch launch, but having never had anything to do with the original group, she found herself unprepared in ways Mercy and Tracer took for granted. This meant Pharah found herself digging into the old case files, reading reports of old incidents, trying to catch up with the practices and procedures of the past, not just in theory, but in practice. It’s not that she wanted them so much as a road map, but as a means of understanding the language Mercy and Tracer and Winston spoke about those times, things they would take for granted about the way they would respond and operate. Mercy for one seemed to have her hesitations about Winston’s new launch, and Pharah knew her wife well enough to trust that they were well founded and might mean some changes of things that otherwise may be assumed. 

And after all, wasn’t part of the reason they’d put Pharah in the position she was in to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past? One might see that and assume they could operate from there, not bog themselves down in what came before, but Pharah felt that this would only be blinders to her perception of how her team worked, and so she read about the uprisings, Overwatch’s actions, their Blackwatch files and their webs of influence and deceptions — except many of those she was finding was so far redacted, that despite some protests, she found herself having to reach out to members of those old operations, people the others might rather stay away. 

Pharah sipped slowly at the hot drink, using the bitter taste to keep her mind from wandering as she read: 

“Agent 12 responded to the main corridor, heading outbound of the city where the reports of omnic activity were sighted. The agent reports responding in quickly after hearing the sound of a scream. Off the main corridor, 12 meters outbound from the river crossing, he encountered a civilian being held by the throat by an omnic unit, a metal baseball bat at the civilian’s feet. 

“Agent 12 reports that there were five omnics in the immediate vicinity, and he had not yet met back up with the rest of his scouting unit. He reports the omnics did see him, and two approached. In his accounts, he surrendered to their inspections, losing his firearms and emps to their confiscations before moving on down the street. 

As they passed, Agent 12 moved to inspect the civilian who had been later dropped by the omnic. Upon checking the civilian’s welfare, he found their throat had been crushed, and he attempted first aid without success.”

As Pharah read the report, a section of story she had been reading the night before from a horror book came to mind. She’d taken it up to suit the season. In it, a man had tried to fend off an uncaring monster who proceeded to smash the man’s skull into the side of a building repeatedly, written in loving and careful detail by the author. 

“CHEERS Dear!” Tracer’s booming voice made Pharah start, nearly coming out of her chair but banging her knee under the desk instead. She cursed loudly and pressed her palms against her knee to soothe the ache.

“Good grief Tracer,” Pharah groaned through clenched teeth. 

Tracer was nearly rocking on her feet as she stood just inside the door of their office. “You didn’ ‘ear me coming?” Tracer asked, a note of concern in her tone. She moved further into the room and came to sit herself down on the edge of Pharah’s desk, swinging her feet. “You always hear me comin." 

Pharah closed the files in front of her and pulled up her email. She hadn’t told them how far she was digging into the old reports yet. They might think she was silly or worry that she was trying to reconstruct the old ways, so she hadn’t been quite sure how to broach it. Sometimes it didn’t really feel necessary, as it seemed they could forget she hadn’t been right there with them on the team. Sure, she was a soldier like they were, having worked with other organizations, but Overwatch had still been… different. 

"Well I didn’t this time.” Pharah replied as she did this, still annoyed after her start. Her heart was beginning to calm down at least, but she still was a bit disconcerted by the imagery that had seemed to come from nowhere. 

“Still reading our old files?” Tracer said it so casually, that Pharah looked over at her, eyes narrowed. 

“You do Not know my password.” She said it with conviction, certainty, but she was far from certain now. 

“Nah,” Tracer said, waving the thought off and laughing at Pharah… as she did. “I just know you. An I know Win sent everything over. So, you’d read it. S'a lot though to go through." 

"It’s a lot you went through.” Fareeha noted, a bit soberly. She’d seen death enough — pretty much any amount, especially any not of old age, was enough. But mostly it had been soldiers, medical emergencies. They had been hard. 

“it’s not always like this, though.” Lena said, looking down as she rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “I dunno, there’s something about official files that manages to capture the horrors that we saw out there, but they just don’t manage to show the hope. Y'know?" 

Fareeha gave a short laugh. "Not everyone’s you Lena; we don’t all see hope where you do." 

Lena gave a big shrug. "But you do. Okay. Not like I do, exactly, but a way… in a way that means you can do this. And you’ll make it impactful.” The small woman gave a curt nod. “It’s why we trust you. And you’re gonna do great! Just follow me and Ang’s lead!" 

"Lena, I am leading." 

Lena hopped up off the desk and waved her hand dismissively. "Only officially. Just a title. You know who’ll really be in charge." 

Fareeha put her elbow on her desk so she could rest her forehead in her hand. "Gracious, you are just going to do whatever you want aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question. 

Lena hopped over to her desk, on the other side of Fareeha’s own. “Yep! I always do. That’s how I ended up with this glorious office space! It’s it wonderful, dontchya think?" 

Fareeha took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out slowly, saying in self reassurance, "It’s not always going to be like this."