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lightningbuggie · 5 years ago

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Honour Among Operatives - Sombra&Baptiste

Hey guys! I haven’t seen many fics exploring the friendship between Sombra and Baptiste, so I thought I’d write one myself! Enjoy :)

She didn’t particularly stand out when he first saw her. Short woman with short hair dyed red and cuts in her eyebrows. The only notable things about her were her Spanish accent and sharp purple eyes. They weren’t ever placed in the same squad on missions, so he had no real reason to speak to her.

He did hear things though. He’d been told that she was an incredible hacker, having run with a gang and taken down a few massive global organizations even before being recruited for Talon. He wondered what Talon was doing with someone that seemed so evil, but he decided to let it slide. She was not someone he ever wanted anything to do with, but as fate would have it, he didn’t have much of a choice.

Talon was infiltrating and collecting information from a small omnic militia group in Central America. Baptiste’s team was placed on the backlines, guarding an exit to the building and making sure that whatever backup the omnic group called couldn’t make it inside. Baptiste was in charge of keeping the Talon agents alive. Sombra and Reaper were at the heart of the mission, hacking and slashing (respectively) their way through to the military computers, wherein she would collect whatever they had asked her to.

It started off smoothly. The omnics had called for backup, but Baptiste’s crew was able to hold them off just fine. That is, until the mechs started coming in. Suddenly the Talon foot soldiers were tasked with fighting machines that towered above them like gods, and the mission began to fall apart. Baptiste heard Reaper tell everyone to evacuate in his earpiece, and the entire group, including him, scattered. Baptiste lost sight of the others within minutes, forcing him to find safety in an abandoned parking lot that was out of the way enough that he felt comfortable taking a moment to breath. Though as he did so, something caught his eye.

A small, purple device, with a ray of light emanating vertically above it, sat in a dark corner of the lot. He tried to call out to his group in his earpiece, but there was no response - no signal. Baptiste held his gun out in front of him and carefully walked toward the device. It didn’t look like a bomb, but he couldn’t be too careful. When he was within a meter of the metal gadget, the ray of light brightened until it was blinding. Baptiste instinctively dived behind a pillar and braced for impact, but instead of an explosion, he heard a grunt of pain and the slam of a body against concrete. He peered around the pillar and his jaw dropped as he saw Sombra, bleeding, with a leg that was clearly broken, lying on the floor where the device had been. She made eye contact with him and instantly reached for her gun, but kept it holstered when she took in his Talon attire.

“Hey doc, could use a hand here.” She spoke through bloody teeth.

Baptiste walked over to the hacker, pulling out his medical supplies from the pouch on his side.

“Your leg is broken.” He said, while collecting the materials for a tourniquet.

“Is it? You’re really good at your job.” Her sarcasm unrestrained.

“I could just leave you here to die, you know.”

“Haha, alright alright. I’ll be good.” She replied, but the smirk on her face told him that she was anything but.

He got to work cleaning up her wounds. She winced occasionally, but it was clear she was trying to keep herself in check, refraining from showing weakness even to a fellow Talon recruit.

The silence between them was getting uncomfortable, so Baptiste tried his hand at small talk.

“What happened?”

“We weren’t ready for the mechs. There’s more going on here than we thought.” She shrugged.

“What do you mean?”

She evaded his question. “At least it’s done.”

“Mission failed then?”

She laughed at that. Loud enough that Baptiste immediately looked around them to make sure know one heard it, but she didn’t even bother to lower her voice as she continued.

“You think I’d let them mess me up like that and not make sure I got what I needed? No manchez. ” She held up a USB stick and wiggled it in front of him. “Mission successful, doctor.”

“I’m not a doctor.” He said as he finished his makeshift cast on her leg.

She slipped the USB back into her pocket. “Well, you could’ve fooled me.”

Baptiste helped her rise to her feet, letting her lean the majority of her weight on his shoulder. He spilled the rest of his rubbing alcohol on the floor, washing the blood off the concrete and watching it disappear down a drain.

“Jean-Augustine Baptiste. It’s a good name.” She said to no one in particular.

“You know my name?”

“It’s my job to know things, amigo .”

“Talon keeps tight records on everyone, huh?”

“Not anymore than you’d expect. I just like to know who I’m working with.”

“I see.”

“Well Baps, I think it’s safe to say you saved my life. So here’s what I’m gonna do. You ever need a piece of information on someone, something, whatever, let me know. Sound good?”

He didn’t really know how to answer. They made their way back to base.

He started to pay closer attention to her after that. She didn’t fit in with the rest of the intense, painfully serious Talon team. She was fun and lively, and not as villainous as her history had made her out to be. Baptiste hoped to get on good terms with her. He began to sit next to her during meetings or at lunch and strike up a conversation anytime he bumped into her on base.

They became friends fairly quickly. Baptiste wasn't used to military life, and didn't exchange more than a formal greeting to most of his operative colleagues. Sombra was one of the few people he could talk to candidly. She was several ranks above him, seeing as she worked directly alongside some of the heads of Talon and he was merely a foot solider, but she always treated him as if they were equals. And when Baptiste talked to her about medicine, despite all her quips and snark it sometimes felt as if she viewed him as better than herself. She was one of the busier members of Talon, meaning that he didn't get to talk to her often, but when he did, they would chat through the night, ranting about their current missions and sharing gossip about other workers over drinks and pizza. She provided a sense of relief from all the stresses Talon life could offer. And while she never said it, Baptiste could sense a weight lifted off her shoulders the day after their talks as well.

They never dated, though they did once kiss in his hotel room after a week long, excruciatingly boring mission. Baptiste wasn’t sure whose fault it was, as although he had made the stupid, drunken decision to pull her onto his lap, Sombra had made the equally stupid, equally drunken decision to press her lips against his. And while Baptiste would be lying if he said he didn’t think she was pretty, he had never felt more uncomfortable in his life than during their small talk during mission prep the following day. The two of them silently vowed to never do anything like that again, and true to their word, things went back to normal within the week.

Baptiste was actually relieved when a month later, Sombra excitedly told him about her interest in another Talon member, though that fizzled out almost instantly. He fondly remembered her recounting a story from her Los Muertos days, sleeping with a man she had thought was merely a member of the Deadlock gang, but turned out to be Blackwatch as well. She swore up and down that she didn’t know of his Overwatch connection, but Baptiste was skeptical. That was, until he realized something: Sombra didn’t ever lie to him. If she didn’t want to talk about something she would say so, but even her most absurd claims would eventually prove themselves to be accurate. Sometimes she would use coded language, hiding her feelings in the subtext of her words, but Baptiste had long since been able to decipher her. She lied to everyone with ease, but with him she was honest. It was a startling realization of how close the two of them had become, which gave him anxiety but also filled him with a sense of belonging. That night was probably Baptiste’s favourite memory of his time at Talon, though it would also be one of his last.

Leaving Talon wasn’t difficult, he had planned to do so for months, but telling her was terrible. She seemed to already know though, answering him with a look of half disapproval, half understanding. He wasn’t sure which he felt worse about.

“Come with me.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

He knew the answer before she said it. “I have too much work to do.”

He didn’t tell her when he planned to leave, he didn’t even really know himself. A few missions later, standing watch on a port in Cuba while Talon operatives broke into its shipping facility, he decided it was now or never.

He made quick work of taking out the men around him, a blow to the head with the back of his gun did that well enough. He tied them up and planned his escape, before remembering the issue of surveillance. Baptiste turned to the nearest security camera in a panic, but his breath calmed as he realized it was shut off and pointed at the floor. In fact, all of the cameras in the room were, and their little lights that usually flashed bright red were instead glowing a soft purple. Baptiste stared at the lens in front of him, years of confusing feelings washing over him at once.

“I’ll miss you,” he mouthed to the deactivated camera, wishing for just that moment that it were on so she could see him.

He turned around and walked out - of the mission, of Talon, of everything.

Getting away was surprisingly easy: his fake passport worked when he was worried it wouldn’t, Talon didn’t seem to be able to track him, and work was easy to find back home. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that it was all coincidence.

He did think of her, and every time he passed by a security camera he gave it a little wave, wondering if she was watching. Hoping , is maybe the better word.

It was many years later that he got in contact with her. Or rather she with him. It wasn’t anything sweet or nostalgic. He was scrolling through the news on his phone when the screen flooded with purple light and morphed into her infamous sugar skull. Just as quickly as it came, the insignia disappeared, and his phone returned to its home screen. Only this time with an unsuspecting grey little app nestled in his ‘games’ folder. He clicked on the app and followed its setup directions until finally it presented him with an icon of a corded phone.

It took him two days before he worked up the courage to press the icon. It rang twice before she answered.

“Hey mijo, looking for me?”

Baptiste laughed, “I should've left you in that parking lot.”

It was hard to cope with the fact that she was still Talon, and it was lonely being out in the world without her to talk to after a long week of work. But when the time came that Baptiste needed help tracking down Angela Ziegler, Sombra was the first person he called. It was going to be a tough job, and Baptiste had planned on cashing in that favour he was promised so many years ago. He blurted out the request, and before he could even begin his pitch, he heard Sombra boot up her computer and begin talking out a plan of action. He was so relieved, he completely missed what she was saying.

"Baps?"

"Sorry, yeah?"

"Nothing. I just said thanks for calling."

Baptiste smiled. He knew what that meant, and Sombra never lied to him. "I've missed you too."

#sombra #baptiste #fic #friendship!!

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