Speed prompt, written in 35 minutes.

He was impossibly tall—even taller than I'd imagined as a child—and his armour shone even more valiantly than it did in the highly retouched publicity pictures of him. Helmet off, his thick grey hair tussled in the breeze and despite the fact we were about to go to war he had a broad and friendly smile on his face.

Reinhardt was justice personified, and truly everything I'd always imagined he'd be, and I was about to fight alongside him: beside my childhood hero.

He filled his lungs like a captain inhaling the salt air after months on land. "Not long now," he told us all in a booming voice. "We should prepare ourselves!"

As he was holding up his helmet, readying himself to put it on, he caught sight of me standing by the side door. Helmet forgotten, his smiling eyes lit up. "Look who it is!" he announced, taking thundering steps towards me in his heavy armour.

I reflexively stood to attention. Despite the fact he and I ranked the same in our rag-tag band of misfit mercenaries, he felt like a superior. I had to stop myself from saluting him.

He didn't seem to notice. "Fareeha, right?" he said, clapping a colossal hand on my shoulder. "Goodness, me! You look so much like your mother!"—I flinched as he said that—"She was always telling us how you'd eventually join Overwatch—such a pity you never got a chance to, because you certainly look the part!"

I looked down at my suit, caught off-guard by the reference to my mother. Yes, I certainly looked the part… "Thank you for saying so," I told him stiffly anyway, and then left that hanging in the air.

There were a million things I wanted to say to him: 'You were my hero', 'You are my hero', 'I used to look at your poster and imagine my father had been just like you'. In another time, another place, in a universe where my mother hadn't married so young, from what people said he might even have been my—

"Thirty seconds," Athena's synthetic voice advised us.

He wagged his eyebrows. "Well, then, let's get moving!" he told me as he lifted his helmet onto his head and checked the signal on his shield. "If you're half the soldier your mother boasted you'd be one day, it will be an honour to protect you!"

My mother…

I didn't say anything to that; what would I say? She obviously hadn't told him what I'd done, and I certainly wasn't about to.

While I was listening to the countdown and trying to imagine how I could ever tell anyone what I'd done—and if they'd all turn their guns on me if I did—a gentle glow enveloped me.

"You look like you could use some assistance," a voice told me with a soft smile—Mercy, her call-sign was. Since I was clearly in top form, I figured that she might be joking a little.

I forced a smile in appreciation of it. "Thank you, but you can't cure what I have."

She laughed pleasantly, but there was gentle conviction in her voice when she said, "Try me."

I didn't get the chance, though, because the countdown reached zero and the gates began to open.