Chapter Text
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PART I: FALLING STAR
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It’s supposed to be an easy mission, which Hana tries not to be too offended about.
D.Va doesn’t typically do run-of-the-mill escort errands. She battles gargantuan omnic monsters that rise out of the sea; she serves as her country’s first, last, and best line of defense; she inspires the public as the greatest ace pilot and action hero of her generation.
(Their words. A mantle she wears with a practiced smile, happy to play the role for the world’s sake.)
But for Overwatch, Hana will make an exception and play along without complaint. Maybe if the vibes hadn’t been so off from the very beginning of the mission briefing, she wouldn’t even question it—but she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right here.
She’d done nothing but excel at every task and mission since the first day she’d arrived at Gibraltar. If she’d made a mistake worth grounding her over, she would’ve been the first to notice.
“Radar’s still clear,” Hana reports for the third time that hour, tapping her foot against the metal floor of their airship to a rhythmic beat. There’s not much for sightseeing considering they’ve been flying over the Indian Ocean for the past several hours, and she’s long-since grown bored of any mobile games on her phone.
Cole Cassidy must be able to tell, because he lets out a low chuckle.
“Well, don’t look too excited that we’ve had some peace and quiet,” he tells her, and Hana has to force herself not to roll her eyes.
Contrary to the fact she’s about two or three smart comments away from smacking him in the arm, she really does like Cassidy. He’s the one who’d brought her into the fold 9 months ago, and even when the “Old Guard” hadn’t known what to make of her—young, brash, and absurdly talented—he’s never treated her any differently.
But there’s also only so much Cassidy that she can take in close-quarters with nothing else to occupy her mind.
“You know, you should just be grateful I haven’t asked you if we’re there yet,” Hana says, crossing her arms over her chest and shooting him a playful glare. “Because I could. I could make this ride sooo miserable for you.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” Cassidy chuckles. “Ears are bleedin' just thinkin’ about it.”
Despite knowing that it’s probably not conducive to being seen as a soldier rather than a child, Hana sticks her tongue out at him in annoyance. It only encourages him.
“If you’re that bored, we could always play ‘I Spy’ to pass the time,” Cassidy volunteers oh-so-helpfully.
Hana snorts at the thought of it. All they can see for miles is deep blue ocean. Now he’s just being an ass.
But if there’s one thing the brimming restlessness accomplishes, it’s finally pushing her to voice the thought she’d been ruminating on for hours.
“Or, and here’s a better idea, you could finally tell me what the real mission is.”
Hana levels a no-nonsense stare at him. When his eyes flick over briefly to meet it, she crosses her arm and arches a single eyebrow. A faintly amused smile crosses Cassidy’s lips.
“That so?” he drawls. “And what makes you think there’s a real mission?”
“If Overwatch needed someone just to make sure you don’t crash the ship, they could’ve easily sent Lena,” Hana points out. “But right now, Tokki’s sitting in the cargo bay collecting just as much dust as those poor omnics.”
“Lena’s out of town. ‘Sides, if this mission is such a vacation, you think your time’s more important than hers?”
The banter between them dissipates immediately.
Hana, so sure of her sharp observations a moment ago, falters at the sudden tonal shift. He's still smiling, but there’s an edge to his tone that she’s never heard from him before. It’s an edge she recognizes all the same.
She’ll take this secret to her early grave, but she’d had a poster of Tracer in her room at the Academy. Just like her friends, she’d torn it down when Overwatch had disbanded, but even through furious tears at the time, she hadn’t brought herself to trash it like the others had.
It’s probably still folded and tucked away somewhere in a box at her parents' vacant house. Just like all other remnants of a childhood that has no place at a military watchpoint, in the middle of a war with no end in sight.
“No, that’s not… That’s not what I was trying to say.”
Cassidy whistles lowly.
“Ain’t it, though? You think D.Va’s too good for an escort run?”
“No,” Hana says firmly this time, her confidence returning. This has never been in question, and she has to force herself not to bristle that Cassidy would even insinuate it.
She tries not to distract herself with the fact that part of her frustration is directed at herself for even leaving her words open to being twisted. Just because she likes Cassidy doesn’t mean she’s not on the clock. D.Va is always under scrutiny.
“We all do our part, no matter how small,” Hana states without room for argument. Cassidy wisely doesn’t try. “Each of us has our role to play, and we don’t always get to decide what is. But the size of it doesn’t make it more or less important than another’s.”
She might be the face on billboards, the star of their fucked-up reality show, but she wouldn’t be able to shoulder half of this weight if she’d let it get to her head. The glory and stardom is meaningless to anyone that peels back the layers of the MEKA squad’s existence and sees the crushing responsibility they’re bearing for their people.
(Glamor tastes like ash in her mouth when it’s tainted with the knowledge that one mistake will cost them everything.)
And yet D.Va is still nothing without her team, and that includes every single person that makes her fight possible. Even Dae-hyun saves the world every single day, whether or not he accepts it. No part is too small. No mission is too trivial for her if it helps further the fight.
But that doesn’t change the fact that this mission in particular doesn’t sit right.
Cassidy’s silent for a moment, nodding slowly. Then finally, he turns to look at her directly, his expression for once unreadable to her.
“Repeat the mission objective to me. In your words.”
Hana hesitates for a moment, before her spine straightens in perfect military posture. She addresses him like she would her superior, and in the midst of their playful banter, she had forgotten that technically he is.
“Escort the omnics that were compromised by Null Sector to a compound in Russia for safekeeping and study. Return to Gibraltar immediately after delivery for our next instructions.”
Cassidy nods in approval. “Alright. Now go on. Start again. Tell me why you think there’s more to it than you were told.”
With that sharp reminder that ultimately she’s a soldier with orders to follow, Hana’s more prepared this time.
“Jack Morrison knows how to use the resources at his disposal,” she explains stoically, as if delivering a report. She does see Cassidy’s brow furrow slightly at the term ‘resources,’ but she doesn't waste time questioning it. “I’m a frontline fighter, best suited to confront Null Sector forces directly. Unless he thought there was risk of an attack, it would make more sense to send me to a hot zone instead of here. So if there was the possibility of an attack, why wouldn’t he mention it during the briefing?”
Morrison had been holding something back. She’d seen it in the guarded flash of his eyes and the half-beat he’d paused before answering her questions. It infuriated her.
“You’re always gonna find trouble where you least expect it,” Cassidy says, but the weariness in his tone makes it seem like he’s not really explaining it to her, not in the sense that he thinks she doesn’t know. It sounds more like an automatic response drilled into him with muscle memory. Expect things to go wrong at all times, because they most certainly will.
But Hana’s not willing to take that for an answer quite yet.
“Oh, I know. What I don’t know is why you were briefed separately.”
Now that does catch Cassidy by surprise. Hana watches him weigh his words carefully, looking more like Morrison in that moment than he must know.
“Really. And what makes you say that?”
Despite her professionalism, Hana still grits her teeth. She can’t understand why he’s dodging every question with a question of his own. He’s never spoken to her like this before, as if she’s a fresh-faced cadet instead of a decorated leader in her own right.
“You didn’t ask a single thing in the meeting.” Unlike now, which is grating on her nerves. “In fact, you almost didn’t say a single thing. You’re supposed to be leading this mission, but you let me handle all the questions. So I asked myself, why would Cassidy not care unless he already had the details?”
Cassidy starts to nod, but Hana’s not done.
“And that’s when I realized you had snow boots on. You already knew where we were going.”
There’s silence in the cabin as she waits for him to respond. She sees his eyebrows go up as he mulls it over, before a crooked grin stretches across his face.
“Y’know, I told Jack that keeping you in the dark was gonna last all of ten minutes ‘fore you made him look stupid.”
Hana huffs. “It lasted about three, actually.”
“’Atta girl.”
The unexpected praise makes Hana feel warm. Compliments are low on her list of interests, despite—or perhaps because of—the sheer volume that she receives. But compliments aren’t the same as proving herself, and even if she won’t admit it out loud, proving herself to Overwatch is what she’s wanted for months now.
“Were you going to tell me about this before we landed?”
“’Course I was. Call me curious, but I was just waitin’ to see if you’d ask.”
Cassidy flicks his wrist, and almost like a magic trick she’d seen as a kid, produces a small data chip that he passes over to her. The updated mission details, Hana assumes correctly as she plugs it into a datapad and watches the information start to populate across the screen.
He gives Hana a minute to read. When she’s ready, she looks back up at him with her lips parted and brow furrowed in confusion.
“We’re busting a Talon weapons smuggling ring in Japan,” she says, almost not sure she’d been given the right data chip. “Whiiile we’re supposed to be in Russia delivering broken omnics.”
But before Cassidy can continue with his brand-new habit of grilling her for her own conclusions instead of answering with anything useful at all, it clicks.
“No— no, we’re not. We’re using the Russia delivery as cover to get into the area.” Hana pulls up the navigational display on the ship’s control board with practiced ease. “Our return route is going to take us right over the area in Japan that we’ll be investigating, won’t it?”
“Bullseye.” Cassidy reaches out to zoom in. “We’ve got a few leads on potential Talon bases, but we’re starting with a small port-side town called Kanezaka. Mostly a tourist destination these days.” He sighs then. “Un-fortunately, it’s also under the complete control of a known criminal organization. Call themselves the 'Hashimoto clan'. We think Talon’s sourcing weapons from them, and we want to know why. And see if we can’t crack some of their skulls while we’re at it.”
Hana swipes through some photos of the town, taking stock of the quaint buildings and small population. She lingers on a photo of an Inari fox shrine, its red-lacquered wood worn with age but obviously well-kept and well-loved.
Kanezaka looks…peaceful. It’s hard to imagine a place like this could pose a threat to anything more than a tourist’s wallet.
“Not saying I couldn’t do it, because I definitely can, buuut rooting out Talon and a violent gang at the same time feels like a job for more than two people.”
“We’ll be meeting up with some friends in about a week or so,” Cassidy assures her, before hesitating briefly. His tone falls flat. “But Talon’s our target. Our only target. Be sure not to lose sight of that, Hana.”
She looks over at him sharply.
“Okay, but you just said they’re under their complete control. ‘Complete control’ and ‘known criminal organization’ aren’t really words that go together.”
“We’re stretched thin as it is.” Cassidy grimaces like the words taste sour even to him, but to his own chagrin, he’s not lacking in conviction. “We can’t fix every single problem for every single person in the world. Trust me, we tried that before. And right now, we’re barely able to go toe-to-toe with the problems we can fight. We can get Talon out of their hair, but it’d take years to do anything with the Hashimoto.”
This doesn’t feel fair. Hana knows the world isn’t fair, but it’s a special brand of helplessness to have the power to save the world, but not the power to save a tiny town.
She turns the navigational board off so she doesn’t have to look at Kanezaka right now, doesn’t have to meet the fox-like wooden gaze of its alleged spirit protector.
Even D.Va can’t be expected to have all the answers in less than thirty seconds. There’s still time to figure out what she can do for them.
If she can do anything at all.
The two of them are left in silence for a time after that. Hana holds the datapad in her lap as she watches the waves pass through the airship windows, mulling over everything she’d just learned.
Sometimes, Overwatch feels even grander and more complicated than she’d anticipated. She’d known she’d be walking straight into a hot mess that was trying against all odds to pour water on an even hotter mess, but…
No. She’d done the right thing by leaving Korea. She’s making a difference in the entire world, not just in one place. She has to think about the bigger picture.
“Cassidy?” Hana says finally after a long stretch. He just hums in response, but she doesn’t look away from the window. “Morrison’s secrecy, having to use another mission as cover… Overwatch doesn’t want anyone knowing where we’re going until we’re already there.”
“Right.”
“Overwatch has busted smuggling operations like this before. We flew in and flew out without a problem.”
“We did.”
“There’s an intel leak somewhere, isn’t there?”
A beat passes.
“Yeah, kid. Somewhere.”
Hana pictures the faces of her colleagues— no, her comrades by now. She tries to think of a single one of them that could be feeding information to the enemy when they know full well what Overwatch stands for, what everyone has sacrificed to be there.
What she has sacrificed to be there.
The look on her face must be darkening with fury, because Cassidy unexpectedly places a hand on her shoulder. She jolts in surprise, and before she can say anything, he retracts it out of respect, shooting her a faintly apologetic look for the misstep.
Hana doesn’t acknowledge that she’s slightly disappointed. Overwatch is barely one for hi-fives, nevermind a hug after a long mission.
She misses her team.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Cassidy promises her with an almost uncharacteristically gentle tone. Hana suddenly remembers hearing rumors about his relationship with the last turncoat Overwatch had found in their midst. “And for what it’s worth, nobody thinks that it’s you. Jack is just… He’s a stubborn old man, alright?”
Hana cracks a small smile despite the sinking feeling in her chest.
“Takes one to know one.”
Cassidy chuckles lowly, tipping his hat down.
“That stings, but I’ll let you have it this time. Don’t let any of this get to your head, now. We still got a job to finish.” Cassidy pauses, before adding, “Not that anyone’s gotta tell you that.” It’s an acknowledgment of everything that D.Va can do, but Hana can’t muster the warm glow right now.
She unlatches her seatbelt—being one of the only agents that regularly wears it in the cockpit, military protocol ingrained too deeply despite popular perception of her—and stands up. She needs to stretch her legs after all this.
“I’m gonna go check on the omnics again,” Hana tells him, popping the datachip with the mission details out of the pad and tucking it into her suit for safekeeping.
She hesitates slightly before she passes Cassidy, and without allowing the time to second-guess herself, she gives him a brief albeit awkward pat on the shoulder. Pat, pat, pat. “Try not to crash while I’m gone, old man.”
She hears him chuckle behind her.
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Hana hadn’t caught the small, wistful grin that flashed across his face before she’d left.
As soon as he’s alone, Cole contemplates it for a few moments before giving in to the growing throb in his temple called ‘a sense of responsibility towards the youth.’ He tips his head back in the chair and lets out a groan. One hand is all that keeps his hat from toppling off his head.
“Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes closed, before opening them again with a sigh. “Coulda went better. Least she didn’t quit.”
Damn you, Morrison. And your paranoid mind-games. Treating the new blood like outsiders is just going to backfire on all of them, and then they’ll be back to square one.
Hana’s a bright kid. The brightest he’s seen in a long, long time. It’d be a shame if he let Overwatch chew her up and spit her out, just like it’d done to every other bright kid that’s come before her.
Cole pinches the bridge of his nose.
He’s never taken anyone under his wing before. He’s never had a reason to be that cruel.
“How the hell did you all of people make it look so easy?” Cole mutters under his breath with a bone-deep vendetta and a bittersweet nostalgia all at once.
Damn you too, Reyes.