I Want to Believe in Heroes – Overwatch, semi-OCs [see notes]

[thecrazyalaskan]

Title: I Want to Believe in Heroes
Author: TheCrazyAlaskan
Fandom / Setting: Overwatch – Dorado, Mexico
Characters / Pairings: Alejandra Pérez, Elías Solos (semi-OCs)
Rating: T
Word Count: 1419
Recommended Viewing: Overwatch Animated Short: "Hero"
Warnings / Notes: Written for the Hurt / Comfort Bingo Round VIII: Atonement; set after the "Hero" short.
Summary: I want to believe in heroes—and I guess part of that means being one, too.

Y'ALL CAN HAVE THE BG OMNICS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS

On a more serious note, I tend to take the background Omnics and give them names and stories. Elías is one of them, and this is what happens when you let me re-watch the Soldier 76 short.

-- -- --

Mamá didn't believe me when I told her about the Hero.

Well… she said she did, but she said it in that way that adults do when they don't want to hurt your feelings—but that doesn't matter. I know what I saw and what happened.

And as amazing as the Hero was, when I think about what happened… I think of what happened before. The Omnic.

I guess he has a name, but I don’t know it. I don’t think anyone knows it—there's only a few Omnics in Dorado, and they're all called… well, Omnic—but he won't be too hard to find. He's the only one with an antenna. (And it looked awfully bent when… before.)

That's my job today. Find the Omnic with the bent antenna—well… that's my biggest job. I have another job first.

Convincing the sisters to let me get clothes from the poor box was the easy part. Maybe lying to them was bad, but I wasn't technically lying when I said there was someone in Dorado who had nothing, so I guess it evens out.

Hopefully he doesn't mind having an old pink backpack to keep it in. (I'm eleven now—I'm so over pink.) He looks like he's the same size as my brother, so that makes it easy to find clothes—pants, a few shirts, a hat and belt. Shoes are harder, but the boots look like they might fit. As long as I can squish them into the backpack, it's okay.

Okay. Now I just have to find him.

It's hot, and not a lot of people are outside. It's easier to look around for him, but it's hard to ask if anyone saw him—but humans asking questions about Omnics is kind of bad, I guess. The adults don't trust them, because of La Medianoche—even though that was a long time ago.

I spend an hour looking, and for a minute I think that maybe he's gone forever—and then I see that he's not. No, he was gone working all day—apparently in one of the quarries just outside of town, because he's covered in dust. He keeps his head down, one hand trying to fix his bent antenna.

Definitely him. I wonder if he remembers me—and I really hope he isn't upset about before. "Hey!"

I smile wave as I approach him, but he still flinches back like he's afraid. I guess if I was an Omnic and people beat me up just because of that, I would be scared of people too. "Hi!" Maybe hey sounds too mean. "I'm Alejandra—uhm… Ale."

His hand lowers, and even though his face doesn’t move like a human's, he acts like he recognizes me. "Hello, miss…"

"I—here." I take off the backpack and hold it out to him. "Para usted."

He looks from the backpack to me before taking a step back. "It's nothing bad," I promise. "Look—" I open it up and pull out the hat. "I got you this—and these." I open it up more and show him the folded clothes inside. "And there's boots too."

After a moment, he slowly reaches for the bag, and he seems kind of surprised when I don't pull it away. "Thank you," he mumbles, his hand reaching up to mess with his bent antenna again.

"Does it hurt?" Even though I don't want to, I think about what it sounded like last night, the metal on the bat hitting him.

He shrugs. "I can fix it, miss," he promises.

"I can help," I offer. "I fix my little brother's radio cars all the time!" Oops—was that a mean thing to say? "Like—you're not a toy car! Y'know, but I can—"

"You think you can fix it?" he asks softly.

"Come with me." I walk with him to a bench and we sit down. "I can touch you?"

He nods to give me permission, and I start to try to fix it. "What's your name?"

"Elías." He doesn't like to talk a lot, I guess.

"That's a good name." This doesn’t look as bad as I thought. "If I hurt you, tell me to stop."

He shrugs. "…Miss?"

"You can call me Alejandra," I tell him, "but what's up? Does it hurt?"

His hands grab the straps of the backpack. "Why are you helping me?"

"…I feel bad," I admit. "I saw you getting beat up by those jerks yesterday—"

"You didn't hurt me, though," he says.

"Yeah but… I didn't stop them either." My throat gets tight and my face gets hot, and I don’t want to cry in front of him because I think me helping him is embarrassing him a little and I don’t want to make it worse. "I should have stopped them from beating you up."

"You would have gotten hurt too." He makes it sounds like he knows exactly what's going to happen if I do something. Like a fortune teller, but the kind that only tell bad fortunes.

"Maybe but… I don’t think they should beat you up because you're an Omnic. It's not fair." I let go of his antenna—it's not perfect, but it looks better, and it's not bent and droopy anymore. "I hate those Los Muertos pendejos."

"A little girl shouldn’t use those kinds of words," he says, lifting a hand to touch his antenna.

"Well they are—and I'm not a little girl. I'm eleven." I watch him check out his antenna. "Does it feel better?"

"Yes—" Even though he doesn't smile like a human, I feel like he's smiling. "Thank you, Miss Alejandra. It feels better—and I like these clothes."

He looks down at the backpack, and I look down at it, too. I think I'm the first human that's been nice to him in maybe his whole life, and it feels good to be the first nice human he's met.

Someone throws a rock at us—not at us, at him, and it hits his shoulder. A few more follow—most of them hit his arms and legs, but a couple hit his head too. I look up—there's three boys, older and bigger and meaner than both of us put together. "Wanna fight?"

Elías just keeps his head down, trying to zip up the backpack—but those stupid jerks keep throwing rocks at him and laughing. "C'mon, máquino diablo—"

They start throwing that at him too—devil machine, devil machine… And Elías just sits there—maybe that was how he protects himself, but he looks so sad, like the words hurt more than the bat last night did—

"Hey! Stop!" I jump up and stand between them and him. "Leave him alone!"

"Go away," the biggest one says. "It's just a bucket of bolts—"

That's what they said last night too, and it sounds so ugly and mean. "Leave him alone!" My feet feel my tree roots in the ground—no one is going to move me, just like they're not going to move a tree.

"What are you going to do about it?" They tease and laugh, like that's supposed to make me stop.

I pick up one of the rocks they threw—and throw it back, hard. "Leave him alone! He's not a bucket of bolts!" I pick up and throw more, and I hit them more than I miss.

I guess me yelling and throwing things makes them think they're going to get caught, so they run away. I drop the rest of the rocks far away and sit down next to Elías again. "If anyone hurts you again, come to my mamá's bakery—you can be safe there."

"You didn't have to do that," he mumbles. He looks almost surprised that I scared them away.

I'm surprised with me, too. "I don't want to see anymore Omnics get hurt…"

His hand pats mine. It's cold and bumpy, but it's like what a grandma does, and it feels nice.

We don't talk a lot after that. Elías walks me home, and then he goes to wherever he lives. Mamá thinks I'm crazy for doing what I did, but she says I'm brave and that I did the right thing.

I think about Elías, and about the Hero, and about what I did. I want to believe in heroes—and I guess part of that means being one, too.