#when the person u can talk to is a grumpy ol bastard

[dimensionalspades]

. He knew. perhaps not the exact same as her, but he knew. He remembered issues coming up as Strike-Commander, wanting to scream and talk about those issues with others but being bound by law and confidentiality.

. He had wanted to explode on too many occasions, lambast politicians and strategists out of earshot but he had followed rules, unwilling to put his people in any danger of repercussion for something as simple as impulse control.

. But now he was curious about her, about this issue. He couldn't say Sombra was his favorite person (he didn't know her well enough for that, and he was never rid of the feeling that she was speaking down to him on more than a couple occasions), but he at least cared about her well-being from the standpoint of counting her as a tentative ally.

. "Yeah," he finally said when he was sure she wasn't going to continue. After the thanks, he shifted just a bit. "I don't mind," he added after a moment. There was a pause, hesitant to speak again, but curiosity ate at him like an untended wound. "Mind if I ask what it is?" He assumed she did mind, but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'.

"I don't know." She's looking very intently at her shot glass and there's a queer smile on her expression. She really doesn't know what even possessed her to bring this up, when it's so fucking dangerous. That moment just sixteen years ago now when she saw how small she was, how pathetic - her hubris.

Teenagers and the silly, silly notion that they're immortal and that they know it all. How it ruined her life so utterly that now, here she was, 32 years old dropping the vaguest of hints to a man who had more than enough of his fair share of demons.

The hacker shakes her head, drinks more of the liquid that burns like fire all the way down her esophagus. "Es que... you know sometimes shit weighs on you and you can't really say much but if you don't say something, it feels like you're going to scream? It's something like that." Her smile grows and it doesn't quite reach her eyes, but hey, it's something. "No te preocupes. I got it handled. But thanks for listening anyway. You didn't have to."