#e-54

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The first time Bastion saw the armor, they ran.

The day had otherwise been peaceful. Happy, even. Two new friends had arrived, friends of Torbjorn’s, which of course made them both Bastion’s friends by default. There was the tall, enormous man named Reinhardt, with a loud voice and a big smile. Then there was his smaller companion, a woman named Brigitte, with long red hair and a smaller but still muscular build. Torbjorn seemed equally fond of both. 

After the introductions, Brigitte and Winston had brought something in from the outside. Something big and covered in a tarp. Brigitte had smiled and pulled the tarp down. Silver glinted off metallic angles, twinkling, catching Bastion’s attention. They couldn’t look away.

The crested helmet and bulky frame crawled from their optic and into the deep recesses of their memory bank. It reached in and pulled forth shambling strings of a memory that might not have been their own, pulling, pulling, until the fire licked the edges of their vision and warnings spilled throughout their most primal systems.

Crusader.

It was suicide to turn one’s back on a Crusader. Bastion’s systems told them that. Their legs did not want to move and their torso did not want to turn, but a last-ditch override took care of that. Diverting power from threat analysis to hydraulics was also a horrible idea, but they did so anyway.

Active processing began to null as more power transferred, their speed picking up. The door ahead did not open so they tore it down with their momentum.

They were bathed in sunlight and their optic adjusted to the outside. They barreled past further buildings in the complex before thinking to take shelter. Too many open angles, too many lines of sight. They turned, sliding across the ground as they readjusted their trajectory, to an alley between buildings. 

The alleyway ended in a solid wall which housed a decrepit dumpster, which they noticed too late. Bastion crashed into it and it crinkled like a leaf underfoot in the fall. The impact rattled loose the protocol they had been trying their hardest to avoid.

The transformation sent old damage warnings shooting up their frame as they configured into sentry mode. Their barrel swung around to the entrance of the alley.

The Crusader was coming, it had to be coming, but Bastion couldn’t tell whether the thundering they heard came from its footfalls or from their own shaking as they spun their barrel up.

No threats registered. No threats registered. As long as it stayed that way, then they wouldn’t do something that they knew they would regret.

Footsteps from the other end of the alley.

“Bastion, luv. Bastion! Where did you go? No need to be scared. It’s all okay.”

A blink of blue. Target registered. Bastion fired.

The vibration of their firing pins hitting the ends of cartridges, one by one by one, was a well-oiled symphony. It felt familiar. Bastion hated how it almost felt good. It was their purpose, after all- raining metal hell upon whatever was down range.

The chorus stopped. Their clip had run out. 

Nothing followed but silence.

The urge to reload was mounting the longer they stayed configured, but a quick justification- the target is gone, must go find -let them transform back to recon mode.

But they did not investigate. That urge was far more easily quelled. Instead, they turned to face the wall. With no visuals to distract, they focused on turning off their combat protocols. They dug in their memory banks and brought up images of the forest. Sunlight filtering through trees. Butterflies sunning themselves on rocks by a stream.

With a click, their targeting overlay disappeared. The commands keeping their body rigid disappeared, and they sagged forward, letting their gun arm sink towards the ground and putting their hand against the wall to steady themselves. They stayed there until their cooling fans spun on, venting the heat from the strain from their systems. 

A small background notification appeared and they let it through without thinking. Target confirmed eliminated?

Bastion jolted and turned their head down the alley. Immediate visual scans did not turn up a body. 

“B-bastion, luv?” called a meek voice from the other end of the alley.

A head poked around the corner, just revealing a set of eyes, before jerking back again. Then it crept out once more.

Bastion didn’t know what to do.

“Lena, get away from the thing! Now!”

Bastion recognized Torbjorn’s voice. It scared them to hear the man so angry and afraid.

The peeking person disappeared. There was more conversation in quieter tones that Bastion could not pick up on, so they came forwards. They at least tried to muffle their footsteps.

Bastion peered out of the alleyway. Torbjorn and- their processor finally cleared enough to recall -Tracer huddled against the front of the building. Her chronal accelerator glowed only a faint, dusty blue.

The blink of blue. She was. . . unscathed.

Bastion let out a whine of relief. This caused the both of them to turn. Torbjorn flinched and his mouth opened, curses pouring out. Bastion ran back into the alley. They thought up pictures of the forest again, as a precaution. Just in case. Just in case.

There was a pitter patter of footsteps. Torbjorn had followed.

“Damned Omnic! You were supposed to be peaceful! You weren’t supposed to have any battle protocols!” He shook his fist in the air.

Every declaration bit into them worse than a bullet ever could.

“You could have killed her!”

Bastion turned off their audio sensors. They watched as Torbjorn circled around them, his eyes wide with anger, his mouth opening and closing in sharp rhythms that caused him to spit. 

He stopped mid-syllable, before giving a glare. Then he pointed a finger right into Bastion’s chest and yelled. The vibration traveled through their plating and they flinched away at the unexpected sensation. Torbjorn’s fury only grew. Soon he was pounding a fist against their leg.

They knew they deserved this. He had every right to be angry. They had lost control. 

Bastion slowly turned their audio sensors back on to ease into the man’s voice again. At a certain point they realized that they were whining out loud. They silenced themselves. 

“So you’ve finally decided to listen again, hmm?” Torbjorn said.

Bastion made a sad, downturned noise. A noise of regret. There had been no place for regret in a vocabulary made for war, so they had invented the noise in the forest. They had given it to the animals many times. It was the first time they had given it to a human.

“So sorry, aren’t you?” Torbjorn’s tone was mocking.

Bastion nodded.

“Like I’d believe that. You’re one of mine. I should have known you were programmed like the rest.”

Bastion shook their head.

“Come on. No more frolicking around for you. You’re going into my workshop and staying there.”

Bastion knew they deserved it but they didn’t want to go.

“I said, come on, you lump of lugnuts!” 

Torbjorn was behind them now, and kicking at their back legs.

“Did you turn off your audio sensors again? Damn tin can-!”

“My friend, stop.”

Bastion whirled their torso around. A new person had come around the corner. It was the tall man, Reinhardt, only he was not smiling now. 

“Reinhardt! What are you doing here? You need to get out of here. It might kill you if it gets the chance!” Torbjorn shouted.

“Says the one who’s kicking the Bastion.” Reinhardt replied.

This caused Torbjorn to pause. “Touche.”

Whereas Torbjorn was all hard lines and tension, Reinhardt was calm. He was muscled and large, trained for combat, Bastion’s targeting system added unhelpfully, but he didn’t register as a threat. His movements were slow and thoughtful and the only defined lines on his face weren’t from a harsh expression- they were wrinkles, wrinkles from smiles and laughter past, gently juxtaposed with the scar that went down his eye.

Reinhardt walked towards them. Bastion stepped around to meet him.

“Hello, friend.” Reinhardt spoke to them. His tone was as gentle as wind ruffling the grass.

“Wait, are you talking to it?” Torbjorn said.

“I’m sorry to have scared you.” He continued.

Bastion at first thought the apology was meant for Torbjorn, but the man’s steady gaze into their optic told otherwise. Bastion could only cock their head in response.

“The armor holds many bad memories for you, doesn’t it?”

Crusader. Bastion chirped as the word appeared again in their processor. They nodded.

“Reinhardt, it wasn’t scared. Don’t be silly. Given its origins, it’s programmed to engage combat protocols when it sees your armor.” Torbjorn huffed.

“Then why did it run?” Reinhardt asked.

Torbjorn opened his mouth to retort but no words came out. He shut it again and frowned, before kicking the ground.

The hostile motion caused a flutter of activity in Bastion’s threat analysis systems. They began to glance around and realized they were cornered.

“Easy, my Omnic friend! You are not trapped.” Reinhardt took one step aside.

Bastion took a small step. Torbjorn conceded his space as well and went beside the wall. Bastion walked forward, exiting the shade and dark of the alley and entering into the bright sunlight once again.

It was late afternoon, they noticed. The wind whistled across the rooftops, carrying the songs of birds from the sea below. Details they hadn’t noticed before.

“Better?” Reinhardt asked from behind.

The pavement lined with metal had some cracks, from which dandelions grew. The walls of the buildings were soft gray with accents of blue and orange. There was a peculiar pattern in the wall right ahead, many holes upon holes-

The realization was instantaneous. Bastion sunk down with a long, dull whine.

“You are ashamed.”

The statement was not framed as a question. It was a statement of fact, to which Bastion did not know how to respond. They were somewhat certain that regret and shame were similar, but where one ended and the other began was a mystery.

“The war left its impact on us all.” Reinhardt continued. “It took me some time before I could look an Omnic in the optic. Forgiveness comes slow. It can take even longer for the fear to fade.”

The statement, though softly spoken, was unsettling. Bastion looked at Reinhardt’s height again, this time taking an exact measurement. They recalled Torbjorn’s use of a certain possessive in regards to the armor. The armor. Its height. The measurement.

His armor.

“Crusader?” Bastion sputtered in Omnicode, their first comprehensible code in a while.

Reinhardt gave a sad nod. “You used that phrase when you saw my armor. I take it you figured out who I am?”

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense. The man before them was kind and gentle. He couldn’t be, it couldn’t be.

“Does it make you afraid?”

Bastion looked him up and down. They tried to run a threat analysis, but it fizzled out when they saw his face where a steel helmet should be. They started the program again, and again, and again, but there was no conclusion.

Eventually, they shook their head.

“That is good to hear.” Reinhardt placed a hand upon their shoulder pad and grasped it firmly. “It means we have a place to start.”

 Bastion tensed. They did not move.

“That is alright as well. I understand you may not be ready to be too friendly yet.” He dropped his hand.

“Are you done coddling it?” Torbjorn asked.

Bastion turned their head around and realized Torbjorn was behind them. Likely, he had been back there for some time.

“Maybe. Are you done scolding it?” Reinhardt replied.

Torbjorn gave a huff. “Yes.”

“Very well. I shall give it back to you.”

Torbjorn came in front of Bastion. “You’re following me. Back to my workshop. Clear?”

Bastion gave a glance to Reinhardt, before nodding.

Without another word, Torbjorn marched in the direction of a nearby building. Bastion hesitated, before urging their legs to move.

“Wait, my patient Omnic friend!”

Bastion turned their torso around to look.

“Take good care of Torbjorn for me. Make sure he doesn’t stay up all night working on you!” Reinhardt laughed, before growing serious again. “And when you are ready to try and overcome your fear, I am here.”

Bastion paused. Reinhardt wore a close-lipped smile. There was something in his eyes. Something knowing. Bastion nodded.

“Come on, rustbucket!” Torbjorn called.

Bastion turned back around again and jogged to catch up. Torbjorn opened a big steel door and they followed through. The door shut behind them, sealing the sunlight away. There was only the dim light of fluorescent bulbs overhead. Torbjorn began to navigate down the many halls.

“. . . I suppose he thinks he’s getting closure.” He mumbled as they both traveled.

Bastion gave an inquisitive chirp.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

But Bastion did not forget.

---

The second time they saw the armor, they froze. 

It was a few weeks after the first time. Bastion had gained their peaceful reputation back, for the most part. Tracer was quick to forgive (“Poor thing, just startled, that’s all”) and the armor had been hustled away to some deep recess of the Watchpoint, out of sight and out of processor. 

So Bastion did not have any incidents and was allowed to leave Torbjorn’s workshop.

They did notice, however, that people kept an eye on them. There were more people now. Torbjorn didn’t know all of them. New members, he called them. The only thing they all had in common was that they all looked at Bastion whenever they entered a room.

Humans told a lot of emotions through their eyes. Bastion was programmed to read eyes for hostile signs, so they knew a thing or two about what the eyes said. They knew that some eyes were kind and some eyes were angry, but everything else was more difficult to discern.

The constant gaze of the eyes, demanding to be read, was exhausting. They did not spend much time among the others during what was considered their ‘down time’. Instead, they set about exploring the complex they now called home base.

That was when they had found the auxiliary workshop. That was when they had found the suspicious-looking tarp, with its telltale peaks and valleys, laid across a platform.

Bastion turned the lights on. The room was bathed in lights brighter than those out in the halls. Light beams reflected off of the plastic-coated tarp, accentuating the mass that laid beneath. 

They were not stupid. They knew that shape. Their threat analysis systems ticked on in the background, heightening their senses. The buzzing of the light bulbs above was the only sound, and the tarp, like any normal tarp, lay unmoving.

Bastion walked forward. They grabbed the edge of it.

They pulled.

Their systems screamed in perfect harmony as the glint of an orange visor appeared. Threat analysis, targeting overlay, engagement protocols. A thousand different strategic choices bombarded them from every direction- stay, fight, transform, run -and in an instant their processor had selected for them the best course of action. This action, of course, was to fill the room with lead.

They did not want to do that. They remembered the consequences.

Their systems scrambled to find an alternative. Target within melee range. Door is four meters away.

Bastion dismissed those thoughts and every thought that followed with the same reasoning. Consequences.

And they stayed very, very still.

Moments passed like great big clouds rolling across the sky on a sunny afternoon. Their targeting reticule, an angry red symbol brimming in omnicode threats, remained trained on the helmet of the armor. There was no movement. There was no other sound besides the buzzing of the bulbs.

The buzzing became louder. Louder. Their audio sensors maxed their limits. Missing a single sound could mean death. 

But there was nothing more than the vibrations that traveled through the floor as the building shifted on its foundation. Nothing more than the faint whistle of air circulation units. Nothing.

Their targeting reticule faded from red, to orange, to a dull yellow, but it did not disappear. It was still a threat. . . but not an active one. 

Bastion realized their cooling fans had spun on, providing some relief from the tension in their frame. With a deep intake of air, they continued pulling off the tarp.

They disposed of the tarp to the side. The Crusader lay bare before them on the platform. They poked at its side, and their targeting reticule flashed back to red, causing them to flinch backwards, but the armor did not move, so they approached it again. They prodded it again, more firmly. Nothing.

They picked up one of its limbs. It did not resist, and as far as they could tell, it contained no power or life. They let it drop out of their hand and back onto the platform. The sound boomed in their audio sensors before they recalibrated back to normal levels.

They traveled around to the helmet. They tapped the orange visor with their finger. They grabbed the crest that extended from its forehead and pulled. Without much tension, the helmet popped from its mounting. 

Their targeting reticule disappeared. Target eliminated. Bastion could only chirp in confusion.

They looked down to the helmet, then back to the rest of the body. There was no obvious connection port as far as they could tell. They picked the helmet up off the ground and examined it. No results either.

They pressed the empty opening of the helmet back against the empty hole in the armor, but this did not cause the two to join. They pushed harder, then let go, but it fell to the floor again. They tried twisting it, turning it, tilting it, all to no avail. When gravity reunited the helmet with the floor once more, Bastion beeped and kicked the thing with their foot.

It bounced along the concrete floor before rattling to a stop. Bastion beeped at it again for good measure.

“Having fun?”

Bastion flinched and turned to look. In the doorway stood. . . Reinhardt.

They walked over to the helmet and picked it up again, bleating out apologetic noises as they did so. They glanced over to Reinhardt and the power of the man’s gaze pinned them to their spot.

“I. . . understand if that’s how you feel about me.” He said, his voice like a winter wind.

Bastion jerked and shook their head. “Negative, negative,” they told in Omnicode.

They walked back towards the armor. With every step, they looked back to Reinhardt. His expression did not change. 

Bastion pressed the helmet back onto the hole, then let go. The helmet fell down again. Bastion then gestured at it with their hand and made the same beep they had at the helmet before.

Reinhardt’s features unfroze. The corners of his eyes crinkled as his lips formed a smile. He let out a laugh that rang from floor to ceiling, punctuated by thuds as he slapped his hand against his thigh.

Bastion found that they were imitating a giggle as well.

“Ha! That helmet never stayed on right.” Reinhardt pointed as he strode into the room.

He was filled with such vigor and speed and volume that Bastion took a step back. Reinhardt paid no mind, grabbing the helmet out of their hand. He held it out, the crest pointing towards his chest and the open end presented to Bastion.

“See, right here?” He pointed to the rim of the inside. “There’s a little lever you must push.”

If Bastion focused their optic, they could see a tiny mechanism flipping back and forth as Reinhardt pressed on it. They nodded.

Reinhardt tossed the helmet in his grip before aligning it with the rest of the armor. With both hands, he shifted it until the two finally joined. When he let go, the helmet stayed in place.

“A finicky thing, that helmet is!” Reinhardt gestured. 

Bastion nodded. They looked at the complete armor, then to Reinhardt, then back again.

Their targeting overlays sputtered on and off again, never on the man, but on the armor. With the head back on, it was a full suit again, and therefore dangerous, but other observations clearly contradicted that conclusion. With one final notification, the overlay turned off, and stayed off. Bastion could relax again.

When they looked to Reinhardt again, he had taken a step back and his expression no longer bore such joy. Bastion took a step towards him and gave an inquisitive chirp.

“Your optic.”

Their optic. What about it? They reached their hand up and trailed their fingers across the glass of their optic. They couldn’t detect any changes. They repeated their chirp.

“You do not know?”

Bastion brought their hand back to their side, then imitated a shrug.

Reinhardt laughed, but it was a different laugh than before. Something much shorter and more abrupt, but it eased the tension in his shoulders. Then he brought a hand to his chin.

“Bastion, did you know that your optic has a habit of turning red?”

Bastion knew a bit about what they looked like, based on what they saw of their reflection in ponds and streams and what they could see when looking down. They knew that their optic was about the same blue hue as the sky. 

Then again, Reinhardt hadn’t said ‘just red’. He had said it ‘turned’.

Either way, to answer the question, Bastion shook their head.

“It tends to do so whenever you are, shall we say, distressed?” Reinhardt continued.

The targeting overlay. It had to be the targeting overlay. With the way it changed their vision and how sometimes there was a distinct clicking noise when it turned on and off. Bastion nodded, and imitated a noise they had seen Torbjorn do whenever he made a realization.

“Ah, you are aware!” Reinhardt nodded along. 

Bastion searched their vocabulary for a string of codes they could use to tell him exactly what they meant, but all they could pull together was “Danger-warning-moving-sensor.”

Reinhardt’s eyebrows furrowed. Bastion repeated the phrase and tapped their head.

“Apologies, but I only know a few phrases of yours.” He said.

Bastion gave a warm tone with no meaning and nodded. Reassurance, hopefully.

He seemed to get the intent. “Thank you.”

They stood in silence for a few beats, before Reinhardt stooped down to pick up the tarp from the ground. He talked as he did so.

“Brigitte always covered my armor in this tarp when we transported it in the van. I, at first, objected. Who would not want to see such a shining beacon of justice?”

He shook the tarp with one motion, and specks of dust went flying into the air. 

“But as we traveled, she proved to be correct. Some of the places we traveled were not so hospitable. They did not want our help. It hurt, seeing my own countrymen reject me.”

He reached over to lay the tarp back down across the armor, but stopped.

“I realize now that I- my face, the armor, my legacy -only reminded them of the hardships of the past. When they saw me, they only saw the war. I cannot blame them for that.”

With great care, he spread the tarp across the great frame. The silvery metal disappeared from the light. Reinhardt put a hand on where the armor’s shoulder pauldron was.

Bastion brought up their own hand. They closed it into a fist, then opened it again. They then looked to their other arm. The arm that caused people to scream and run whenever it even twitched. 

They remembered the barrel on their back that everyone else could see but they could only notice if they turned their head around. They remembered how others would flinch at the sound of their footfalls.They remembered just how tall they were compared to most humans, and that alone was enough to make them shrink away. 

Yet, they certainly weren’t laying under a tarp in Torbjorn’s workshop.

Bastion grabbed the edge of the tarp and gave a tug. Reinhardt let go, startled.

“Are you sure?”

“Affirmative,” they coded with a nod.