Chapter Text
They say don’t meet your heroes. That it’ll break your heart and break you. That they won’t be anything like you thought they would be. You never paid the phrase much mind. Meeting your hero would be impossible. You grew up with a poster of your hero on your wall. He was everything you wanted to be. Strong, brave, larger than life. A real knight in modern times. You doubted Reinhardt Wilhem would fail to live up to the dream you built up, but it didn’t matter. The two of you would never meet. That’s just the way it was.
You eventually outgrew your poster, though you never threw it away. You kept it folded up in your dresser. Safe and tucked away for when you really needed to remember what you were trying to be. You didn’t really hit the mark. Working for a high tech security company wasn’t exactly heroic. It was just, a job.
Most of it was boring too. The cobra suits were less flashy than other Helix teams; stealth was the name of the game. Black, save for the slightly visible scales on the gloves and boots. Because that was enough decoration. The hood didn’t even have anything on it. Slick, utilitarian, nondescript. Members of the cobra team were meant to protect less secure sites, hiding in plain sight in the crowds around their designated ward. Few folk knew about Helix’s cobras. It was intentional, but it also meant that most people in your life thought you were a desk jockey. No one understood why you frequently sported bruises on the way home. The suit blocked bullets but geeze. They still hurt.
Stealth. Ambush and eliminate. That was what your team did. So it confused you when the captain of the raptora squad messaged you out of nowhere asking for immediate aid. It confused you more when the message was signed ‘do not clock in’. You went. Amari wouldn’t have called if she didn’t think it was important.
You heard the rockets first. Explosions, one after another, followed by the sound of gunshots. Shouts and screams and trouble. You slowed down. Slunk through the shadows. Let your hood fall over your face. Tactical read-outs flashed. Body heat was identified. A pair of thin daggers slid from your gloves, the suit already dispensing a thin spray of clear unremarkable fluid onto them. From the dark alley you were crouching in you could see Amari clear in the sky. She wasn’t alone. But this was not the raptora squad.
It didn’t matter. Their enemies were polite enough to have come in uniform. Easily identifiable. When one got too close you sprung, daggers digging into his neck, a dead man before you pulled him back into the darkness. Amari was a fantastic distraction. You wished it would be easier to pull other teams into cobra operations. There was something nice about flashy jet packs drawing eyes away from you and your knives. Maybe you could still employ something similar. Snipers maybe. Fireworks?
One of their augmented caught sight of you as you left a trail of bodies behind. A massive man, coming at you with two guns too fast for you to dodge. His charge was too fast for you to dodge and you ended up breathless in a heap. He lowered the barrels of his machine guns just as you managed to take a last breath.
Poetic.
The shield flashed in front of you at the last second, the bullets causing cracks but not getting through. A second flash and a capsule cracks around you, surrounding your body in a flickering yellow shield. At your side is a pair of armored allies, one who was… very familiar.
“I’ve got you!”
You were a professional. Professionals stay calm. You do not get excited. You do not get flustered. There is a battle to end, as quickly as possible to avoid casualties. You hate having casualties. You reach into the pouch on your back and pull out a large cylindrical canister. You press a few buttons to begin arming the device.
“Amari. Get your people behind cover.” You murmur into your comm. There’s a moment of silence before you hear her shouting. Another shield flickers on the other side of the hoard of enemies and you throw the canister out. It bounced for a second, rolling to the stop in the center of the group before exploding. Thousands of barbed spikes, coated in the same toxin on your knifes, rocketed into the bodies surrounding them. Even if the poison didn’t get to them the giant shrapnel cloud probably would. You had always considered it overkill. Who needed to fill a bomb with poison and spikes. And then give it to a security team. A stealth security team. Let’s give them the cobras poison grenades. Yes sounds good. Let’s put spikes in them too. I’m sorry what?
“Haha! Excellent!” Reinhardt Wilhelm laughed, towering over you in a pose straight from one of your old desktop backgrounds. You didn’t even know he was still alive. The young woman next to him gave you a smile before charging in with swing of a flail. You shook the surprise off, slipping into her shadow, striking at anyone who attempted to get around her shield.
You kept an eye on Reinhardt as your allies converged on the remaining troops. The swing of his hammer, the finesse in which he dropped his shield at just the right times. His armored form was always so conveniently placed between the healers and an enemy shot. You were good, and perhaps you were far stealthier, but watching him felt like, like seeing a fairy tale come to life. A real living legend close enough to touch.
“Thanks for coming.” Amari shook your hand. “We needed just a bit more help, I appreciate it.”
“Anytime.” It occurred to you to ask what was going on. It really did. But it was sort of, drowned out, by an enthusiastic hand being thrust your way.
“A friend of Fareeha’s then, are you? Name’s Reinhardt Wilhelm, a pleasure to meet you.” He took your hand in his, raising it towards his face.
“Poison! I um. I deal in toxins, there are trace amounts on my gloves.” Professionals do not get embarrassed or notice a co-worker giving a suspiciously entertained smile out of the corner of your eyes. Reinhardt’s smile was a lot warmer, gently lowering your hand back down and chuckling.
“Then I will have to wait till another day. Are you joining us, Captain?” It took you too long to take your hand back. Way too long. You focused on the still-grinning Amari, hoping you could get your composure back.
“Joining you?”
“… Overwatch. I told them you might be willing, and that this was a good time for introductions.” Amari sounded hopeful. You looked at the mismatched group surrounding her. And then at your actual hero smiling at you with the warmest glint in his eyes. You smiled. Don’t meet your heroes hm?
“Yeah… I think I could get in a little moonlighting.”