Bot Couture

"God this place is going to the dogs."

Lena Oxton grimaced and took another sip of her coffee. Do tell, she reflected, as the liquid moved past her lips. You always do.

"Bloody wankers can't even get the coffee right." Her father took a sip of the coffee regardless. "And then there's that."

Lena turned around on her chair and looked across the street. "What? The snow?"

"No. That. That bloody store that's been set up here."

She looked at a flower shop. "You mean Rose Blue?"

"No." Her father waved a hand. "That!"

Lena shifted her gaze a bit and her face fell as she saw what her father was looking at. "Oh. Right. That." She looked back at her father. "Terrible. Truly terrible."

Her voice was laced with sarcasm, and it didn't escape Lionel Oxton's notice. "You think this is a joke? You think everything I did was a joke?"

"Dad…"

"I mean, I know you've treated life as a joke as long as you could understand what a joke was."

"Dad!" Lena yelled. "Can we please not do this today? Just once?"

Lionel scowled and sipped more of the coffee. He made a face that Lena figured was divided between his distaste for the liquid, and his distaste for her.

"Too bitter?" she asked.

"Too sweet." He leant back in his chair. "Still, that's what happens when you start employing metal-heads. What the hell would they even know about taste?"

"I dunno dad, some of your old films might tell you."

"What?"

She sipped some more coffee. "Never mind."

She made an effort, she told herself. She really did. Lionel Oxton had been born in 1998, and whatever else she thought about him, she had to concede that he'd seen more of the world than she had. Including, but not limited to, terrorism, a financial crash, Brexit, xenophobia, climate chaos, said chaos spurring mass migrations that fed said xenophobia, and to top it off, the Omnic Crisis. That point in time where humanity realized "oh shit, we had no idea how bad things could really get," and managed to escape extinction at the cost of over a hundred million lives. So when he complained about "metal-heads" serving coffee, when he applauded the government cracking down on the omnic populace because of Null Sector, when she saw his cybernetic leg stick out from beneath his trousers, she tried to understand. She really did.

But across the street was a Sigma shop. Sigma, as in, that fashion line that was based in Numbani, complete with its tagline of "Bot Couture." Run by omnics who made clothes for omnics, who'd managed to break into the UK's market. Of course, when you were setting up shop in London, in the midst of heightened security because of omnic terrorists, that tended to piss some people off. Lena could already see that one of the windows had been boarded up, and what few omnics were walking in seemed intent on hiding themselves from the eyes of the crowd, whether they be bemused, aggressive, or both.

She could understand it. She hated it, but she understood it. She hadn't been alive during the Omnic Crisis, but she'd grown up in the aftermath. A hundred years before she'd been born, parts of London had looked like they did as she'd grown up in the streets. Over two decades since the war, there were still parts of the world that had never recovered. Null Sector did its thing, the government cracked down, more omnics joined Null Sector, more humans came to despise omnics, and the cycle of hatred continued. Hatred, she could understand. The lack of attempts to move past it? Not so much.

"So," her dad said. "Last day together eh?"

"I'll write, don't worry."

Her father grunted.

"Yes, dad, email's still a thing. I know how to use it."

He grunted again.

"Y'know," Lena continued. "Round about this time you might be saying something about how proud you are that I've got into Overwatch, or-"

"Who said I'm proud?"

She sighed, gritting her teeth. "I know you're not proud, but good fathers tend to try and pretend they're proud."

"You're eighteen years old, you're well past the stage of needing participation trophies." He took another sip of coffee. "Still, guess that's all the RAF was to you. Stepping stone to move onto better things."

"Dad, you know that wasn't the plan."

"I don't care Lena. You want to gallivant around in the Spacestream-"

"Slipstream."

"…that's your thing. But I don't have to give you my blessings for it."

"No, of course not. I mean, why start now?"

An icy silence lingered between them, one not even the coffee could break. Thing was, as far as Lena was concerned, it was pretty good, and did a good job of keeping the chill of the January snow away. On the other, a quiet rage had resided in her father all his life, and even in his calmest moments, she'd always known it was there.

He'd fought in the war. Most of that fighting had been done thousands of metres above ground, in what had begun as airstrikes on omnic positions and the omniums themselves. That had proven to be useless, and before long, air combat of the mid-21st century had devolved to resemble something out of the mid-20th. Swarms of fighters engaging each other much closer to the ground as the omnics tried to overwhelm their foes en masse. Some called it the Second Blitz. Some called it the end of the world. She didn't know what her father had called it, only that Lionel "Trigger" Oxton was flying a Typhoon V fighter, and that he'd survived when thousands hadn't. Even when he crashed his plane in Ireland and lost his leg in the process, he'd survived. One of the reasons Lena had been able to keep her anger at him in check as he ranted about the changing world and the metal-heads and "stolen valour" was that she knew that to this day, Lionel Oxton was just "surviving." Which was more than she could say for her mother, all things considered.

She'd almost said no, when the Overwatch representative had offered her a place in their own fighter program. She knew her joining the RAF had made her father happy, even if he could never admit it. That they'd seen her flight records in both the simulator and the Typhoon VI, and that as Overwatch only accepted the best of the best, she, Lena "Tracer" Oxton, was therefore the perfect candidate. Tomorrow, she'd be on a plane headed for Switzerland. That, after accepting it a month ago, and both kindling and dampening the fire in her father's heart in the process. And try as she might, all the coffee and conversation in the world wasn't changing that.

"I said get out!"

She spun her head round. An omnic employee outside Sigma was chasing out some teens from the shop. Teens that were younger than she was, and teens who were doing what teens did best, according to her father – making the lives of adults miserable. She winced, and looked back at her father, who was watching the scene with a stony glare.

"Let me guess," Lena said. "Next generation is going to be better than mine."

"Excuse me?"

"Kids putting the metal-heads in their place." He said nothing, so she continued. "It's what you said to me a lot."

He still said nothing.

"Y'know, I figured that joining the force that defeated the omnics might make you a bit more reciprocal to the idea."

He murmured something.

"Excuse me?"

"They didn't save the world," he murmured. "The people did."

"Dad-"

"I know the garbage you grew up watching Lena, but you're an adult now, and even you've got to realize that it's all bullshit."

"I dunno dad, I think listening to you kinda whizzed my bullshit metre."

That hurt him. He could hide it in his face, he could hide it as he rubbed the part of his leg where flesh met steel, but he couldn't hide it in his eyes.

Good. It was meant to hurt.

She finished off her coffee.

Liar, her conscience whispered.

"Can I take that?"

She looked up at the waiter. An omnic with a tray in hand.

"Yes, thank you," she said. "Very nice."

Her father grunted, but nevertheless let the omnic take the cup.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"Um, if you could bring-"

"You could piss off for starters," Lionel grunted.

The omnic paused a moment before saying, "of course." It headed back inside.

Lena looked at her father. In her youth, it had been embarrassing. In her age right now, it was getting excruciating.

"So," Lionel said. "How's Emily taking it?"

Oh that's right, change the subject why don't you?

"She pleased that you're only going to be communicating by holo?"

"Um, Emily's fine dad, thanks for asking." Lena leant back in her seat and closed her arms. "She realizes that this is a big opportunity and that I have to take it."

"Hmm." He leant back in his chair. "You told her you love her yet?"

Lena stared. "What?"

"You told her you love her?"

"Um…" Lena began rubbing the back of her neck.

"It's a simple question."

"Dad, you don't…I mean, I can't just blurt out-"

"I told your mother I loved her before I took to the air for the first time."

Really? Did you tell her that before she left?

"Something I thought you might have said by now. You've been going at it for a year now, right?"

"Two," Lena murmured.

"Ah."

Lena kept rubbing her neck. No, she hadn't said it. The whole thing had started in the girl's locker room back at penultimate year at school, and by the day's end it had involved kisses, a towel, and a lot of soap and water. But love? No, she hadn't said that yet. Last few months had been a whirlwind that had barely left any time for each other.

And yet in all that storm, I managed to find time with you, Lena thought to herself, as she looked at her father. Wondering what he'd be like twenty, thirty, even forty years from now. Wondering how much more the world was going to change, and how much she'd have to change with it.

She only stopped wondering when there was the sound of breaking glass from the other side of the street.

Oh hell.

It wasn't the kids this time. It was a pair of grown men throwing stones into Sigma. Yelling something about metal-heads, and Null Sector, and uttering no shortage of expletives that began with "f" and "s." She got to her feet.

"Lena."

She looked at her father, and before he could say anything, she babbled, "dad, I love you, and I'll always love you, even though not loving you would make things a whole lot easier."

"Lena…"

"I know the world's been shit to you, and I get why you can't look at an omnic and feel your heart race, but I'm not you, okay? I have to do my thing, my way, and if that means getting my nose broken again, I-"

"Lena!"

She glanced round again at Sigma, before hissing, "what?!"

"I was going to say kick their arses, but…" He smiled. "It was nice to hear that as well."

She stared at him.

"I never said I agreed with your decisions. But you've at least had the conviction to stay by them."

Lena stared at him. Then, after a moment, gave him a smile.

A moment later she was on the other side of the street, breaking an asshole's nose.

A/N

In case anyone's wondering, yes, Bot Couture does exist in the Overwatch setting as a background dodad, and no, this wasn't written to tie in with the Sigma character. I actually wrote it before he was announced.