Chapter Text
In the flurry of meeting-room politics about if, when and how to hold an Overwatch Christmas party that’s compliant with the new ‘inclusivity regulations’, Soldier 76 is particularly grateful for the mask that covers his agonised expression as he has to forcibly restrain himself several times a minute from snapping that it never used to be so goddam hard to throw a Christmas Party when he was in charge so why the hell can’t they cut the frigging bullshit and just do it already.
“Then it’s settled,” Winston announces in a way that almost sounds conclusive, shaking 76 out of the cynical haze he’s been stewing in. “Overwatch’s… Snow Festivities… it is.”
“Yes, sure, Winston – anything,” Tracer pleads, having been seen literally banging her head on the table at various intervals throughout the meeting. Why she insisted on joining the planning committee in the first place beggars belief, though deep down 76 knows she wrote her name on the sign-up sheet to make sure the majority of the budget is spent on booze; which, of course, new regulations is bound to make difficult.
The only reason he’d joined was to make sure they didn’t do something stupid like hire the wrong kind of ‘helper’ for Santa and end up with a room full of candy-cane swinging ‘Miss Santas’ who’d been on the Naughty List every year since they turned legal… again. Coincidentally why no one with a surname beginning ‘Mc’ and ending ‘Cree’ is allowed to join by a special top-down order that no one can seem to trace, although he's fairly sure the cowboy had been the fall boy for…
Never mind. Even if it’d been an excellent party all things considered.
“No, no,” Winston insists, poring over a tiny sheet of A4 paper with his oversized hands. “It’s explicitly clear, funds cannot be expended on non-inclusive amenities, so because some members of Overwatch cannot consume alcohol-”
“The drinking age here is eighteen, big guy,” Tracer lobbies.
“I’m aware of that, Lena,” he rounds back on her. “However, some members do not imbue such spirits for medical, religious or…” He scrunches up his eyes at another sheet of paper, mumbling as he reads, “’dishonourable things happen’… reasons, so it is simply not possible to spend Overwatch funds on a vodka fountain.”
“Vhat about beer?” Zarya comments from the far end of the table. “Iz not really alcohol.”
“Yur talkin’ nonsense,” Torbjorn cuts in. “The head would foam up far too much, it’d be nar-undrinkable!”
“At least I am offer solutions!” Zarya belts.
“Yes and that’s much appreciated,” Winston intercedes before things get heated – it’s only the second meeting of the planning committee and its ranks have already doubled, a larger room needing to be booked as soon as word got out that a ‘Snow Festivity’ party was actually going ahead at a yet-to-be-agreed location. “However, the guidelines are very clear on this and it’s simply not possible.”
At this point a vocal majority of the meeting room break into furious complaints about the nonsensical nature of inclusivity policies, while a smaller but equally vocal contingent start to argue in favour, and that a Christmas – sorry, ‘Snow Festivity’ Party is not just an excuse for a massive piss-up, besides which maybe certain members of the committee could leave off abuse of their livers for a-
“So Overwatch funds can’t be spent directly on booze, right?” Soldier 76 cuts in from the back of the room, where most of the committee had apparently forgotten he was there.
“Uh… yes, correct,” Winston confirms warily.
“So subcontract it,” he delivers through the tinny casing of his mask – fortunate, or everyone would see him grinding his teeth and wondering exactly how many of these screaming children he could whack upside their heads before they’d get the picture and start finding solutions instead of screaming like babies who can't find the tit. “Hire a supplier who can offer a range of drinks, alcoholic or not, then put money behind the bar for people to spend on whatever they damn-well want.” He pauses for a moment as the entire room falls silent, staring at him like the goddam messiah. “Would that work?”
The eyes, almost in unison, turn back to Winston at the other end of the room like an audience at a tennis match.
“Well…” he begins, “I suppose it would.”
The crowd breaks out in unanimous cheers.
The ‘Snow Festivity’ Party, as Winston and only people within earshot of Winston will refer to it as, is proving to be an unlikely success.
Nowhere off-base would agree to the insurance premiums of having so many ‘high risk’ assets within its walls, to say nothing of ‘persons on more than three different nations’ most wanted lists.’ Even the third meeting of the planning committee - namely, most of Overwatch - agreed that holding the big bash anywhere except the aircraft hangar was probably foolish.
However, it doesn’t look half bad covered in a solid foot of snow, an impressive array of snowflake-themed hard light installations, and folded paper decorations the planning committee had made in their fifth meeting as a ‘cooldown’ exercise after a discussion about what kind of snacks should be stocked on the buffet table ended in physical violence.
Soldier 76 arrives later than the more enthusiastic attendees, stuck behind a desk and mountain of paperwork even death can’t keep from him, apparently. However, given the agonising birth this project had been subjected to, it’s at least somewhat gratifying to see it flourish into the irresponsible young adult stage of its life cycle. In other words, nothing is on fire yet, but that’s probably only because of all the snow.
“Look who finally decided to show up,” comes a sing-song voice from behind him, and he turns around to clock none other than Hana Song sitting on a storage crate above his head. There’s very few people who can get the drop on him in any sense of the word, but outside of that MEKA he could probably pull her out of his pocket without noticing until she’d filled him full of bullets from that party-popper pistol she runs; though he’d taken enough stray friendly fire out there to know they sure as shit hurt. She’s marginally more careful in the monster of a machine she rides, as the holes it makes don't heal up so easy, but once she pops outta it quickly turns into a trigger-happy slip of almost nothing that didn’t stay still for a half-second, much less stop firing. It frightens the life out of an old soldier like him in a textbook of ways.
Whatever she is outside the battlefield – which is unprofessional, undisciplined and wilfully ignorant of the meaning of confidentiality agreements – she gets away with it for her stalwart dedication on it. However, if Talon wants to know what Agent D.Va, youngest member of Overwatch and ‘social media superstar’ is doing at any given point in time, they need only check her latest updates. He’s repeatedly requested her access to ‘any and all social medias’ be blocked when she's on-base, but the terror keeps finding ways around it.
He’d confronted her about it once; no longer an office to call people into or authority to lean on when he gave orders and expected people to take them, but he stuck an arm in front of her in a hallway once and demanded to know exactly what she thought she was damn-well doing by putting all their lives at risk leaking information like a busted faucet. She turned her chin up at him and managed to look down her nose in spite of the foot-and-something he has on her.
“What?” she spat like a piece of the bubblegum she always seems to have on the go – he stuck his finger through it once when she wouldn’t stop blowing bubbles during a briefing. “Like they don’t know where we are anyway? At least if everyone knows then we’re all on the same playing field, right?”
Whatever she is outside the battlefield – which more often than not is a pain in his ass, she isn’t stupid, nor is he enough of a jackass to act like he doesn't know it. She was born into a world that was already falling to fucking pieces, and had seen more in her supposedly-tender years than a lot of people would in a lifetime.
“And besides,” she’d added like if she had a box to climb on top of and continue lecturing him from there’s no doubt she would. “We’re still alive, aren’t we? If the bad guys wanna come and do something about that – bring it. I’m not scared of dying.”
No wonder she hits the self-destruct button on those damn expensive machines like a gameshow contestant: watching everything around her explode is her normal, and she’s made it perfectly clear whose hand she prefers slamming the button.
“You should be,” he’d growled, lacking anything else smarter to say and muttering as he stomped back down the hallway he came from, “I’d know.”
But that isn’t how it works, no one with a deathwish started caring about whether they lived or died because some torn-up old soldier told them so. She keeps flying across the battlefield like she’s ready to hit that goddam button regardless of whether she’ll get away in time – even though she always did, just, even if it meant barrelling into him at what felt like 100mph and throwing them both behind a road block as the blast singed the top of his hair off. Bald jokes for weeks after that – and she’d grinned like a sycophant about it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he retorts ankle-deep in snow Mei had championed a three-day marathon to lay down, arms crossed as he glares at the feet swinging slim inches away from his head, candy-cane striped socks that run over the knee and out of sight over the edge of the crate.
“Thought you weren’t gonna show up,” she replies. “You’re the last one to arrive, you know.”
“Who’s counting?” he comes back snappishly; full of Christmas – sorry, Snow Festivity spirit.
“Me,” she counters belligerently, drumming her heels against the crate until he wants to grab an ankle and hold her still for a damn second in her life.
“Says the person who didn’t show at any of the meetings,” he mutters, and yes, he was counting. After half-expecting her to be at the forefront of the board-room battlefields, she never graced any of the increasingly large spaces they’d had to book with her presence – only one on the team not to show up at all, which included those who’d legally changed their names in order to join the final meeting as entertainment manager only to discover every ‘festive dancer’ in the city had been mysteriously sent on a paid spa day. She must have had better things to do, he imagines – like the goddam rest of them.
“That stuff’s so boring,” she dismisses. “Everyone fighting about all the little things instead of just doing it already.”
He chuckles, leaning back on the boxes she’s perched on top of and gazing out across the room through the ever-present tint of his visor; after all the noise about the booze budget, just about everyone had shown up with a side-supply, and the liquor is certainly flowing. Mei and Zarya appear – at least from a distance – to be having a heated argument and/or drinking contest about the superiority of baijiu over vodka (and vice versa), something that Junkrat is proposing to judge, and nothing good is on the cards when people get into that rotten stuff.
“What’s so funny?” she demands, stopping the bang of sneakers against the crate; he knows a hothead when he sees one, had known it from the first time they met, though they’d recruited her anyway. ‘She’s too young,’ some had protested when her name had been raised, like the best of them hadn’t been her age or younger when they joined. Like she could be young enough to die in war but not to fight in one, as if that made any kind of sense. Besides which they hadn’t drafted her in the first damn place, and her command back home sure hadn’t cared about making soldiers out of kids. They did – and do – whatever they have to in order to stay alive. It makes him nervous every time she’s called back to her home front; good soldiers on the field without him always do.
“Nothing,” he rumbles, settling that temper like a pot on the boil. “You just ain’t wrong.”
She gives a permissive huff, like he’s gotten away with it on this occasion, and resumes the quiet drumming of her heels against the crate in a way that might send him crazy if he listens to much more of it.
“Anyway,” she starts back up. “It’s people being together that matters, not all the stuff that goes around it.”
Is that what she’s doing, he wonders, waiting by the door to make sure they all showed face – waiting for him?
When she vaults off the top of the box and lands slim inches away from him, his first thought is what she’s wearing is a disgrace: as usual. Candy-cane striped Christmas (Snow Festivity) socks that keep on going up, and she’s challenged as ever to wear shorts that end anywhere decent. The concept of an on-duty dress code is apparently well beyond her off-the-field capabilities. Not that he dares to breathe a word of complaint about their youngest member seeming content to spend the majority of her downtime cycling through pyjama outfits that are cut apart should they not be quite exposing enough and wiping the dust from her eponymous corn-chips on her clothes – the scarce parts of her they do cover – as she wanders around the base like she’s free run of the place. Except commenting on it would suggest it bothers him, which is exactly the last thing he wants anyone thinking. Especially when it does.
“So try to enjoy the party, eh?” She turns to face him so expectantly it almost makes him feel guilty, like he’s kept her waiting all night for a date he’d no idea he’d made.
When she steps forward the only reason he doesn’t take one in the other direction is the immovable pile of boxes at his back, just pressing harder into the crates as she raises a hand and taps her finger on the front of his visor; it’s nothing personal, or nothing much personal – he doesn’t like people getting close in any sense of the word. Not anymore. “Even if we can’t see if you’re smiling or frowning under there anyway.”
Then she saunters away, seeming content now that he’s shown face (figuratively, at least) and leaving him wondering why she of anyone – of all of them – would actually care. Perhaps because she doesn’t know any better.