Chapter Text
Winter announced its arrival one day with a howling wind blowing down out of the mountains, bringing snow and a round of sore throats and fevers for Angela and the rest of the medical staff to take care of. She finished up a bioemitter treatment on a young cadet with the beginning stages of the flu and looked out of the window at the fresh layer of snow that had fallen in the courtyard that the medbay overlooked. It covered everything in an unbroken blanket of white, turning shrubs and benches alike into blocky shapes and hiding the decaying vegetation underneath. It was all so pristine and white and perfect that suddenly she couldn’t stand it anymore. She grabbed her jacket off of the hook, her arm whirling softly as she did so, and she stalked outside, stomping footprints into the snow as she went. She pointedly ignored the looks other agents and staff members threw her way and eventually followed the path out of the courtyard until she was walking around the outer grounds of headquarters. Everything was overly loud in the crisp winter air, the crunch of her boots in the fresh snow, the sound of her breathing, the rustle of fabric as her arms brushed against her side, and for a while it blocked out the thoughts swirling in her mind. But not for long.
Genji, Ana, Jesse, Amelié, Gerard, and how many others would be lost before all was said and done? She still believed in the mission of Overwatch, to protect those who could not protect themselves, but did the ends justify the means? Watching Moira study her notes and scribble in the margins of medical readouts made her skin crawl.
Something wasn’t right.
Angela scowled at the ground and took a deep breath. She was being overly dramatic and paranoid. Things would be just fine and maybe one day she would wake up in the morning and not miss Genji.
She focused on not thinking about anything.
Eventually, she found peace in the crunch of snow beneath her boots and in the white cloud her breath made in front of her as she plodded her way across the grounds. She walked far enough that her toes began to go numb and she couldn’t feel her face. The stillness of the air made some of the unease dissipate from her stomach. Angela squared her shoulders and brought her chin up. She would continue to do her job as the head of medical research and if the opportunity presented itself, she would ask Jack if he was proud of the way everything was heading.
She so rarely saw her friend these days that she knew the chances of that were slim to none.
When she went back inside, the warm air settled over her like a blanket. There were fewer cheerful greetings from the agents walking in pairs through the corridors as she made her way back to her quarters. A sudden exhaustion gripped her and all she wanted was to curl up in the thick blankets of her bed and sleep. She glanced at her comm to check the time and decided that no one would miss her if she took a quick afternoon nap. After all, if people needed medical assistance, they could always go see Moira.
***
She was back in New Orleans, soaking up sunlight in a rocking chair on Ms. Josephine’s porch and enjoying a glass of lemonade. The humidity was strangely absent and a slight breeze made the leaves of the oak trees rustle and sway. A streetcar rumbled by and she could hear the sound of a radio playing music drifting through an open window. A sense of peace that she hadn’t felt in months sat warm under her breast bone as she took a sip from her glass.
“I brought you more lemonade, Angela,” Genji said, placing a glass pitcher decorated with little sunflowers on the table next to her rocking chair. This, more than anything, clued Angela in that she was dreaming. She hadn’t seen Genji in almost a year.
“Thank you,” she said and poured him a share. He looked very handsome today, face plate gone and brown eyes sparkling in the sunshine.
They sat in comfortable silence and sipped on their lemonade. Genji reached out and clasped their hands together, thumb tracing idle circles against the back of her hand. Green appeared from nowhere and curled up in Angela’s lap. The dragon’s scales were viridescent in the sunshine, shifting from a deep emerald to something lighter and softer before changing back. She could feel her purring and the slight vibration made Angela laugh.
A sudden gust of wind whipped the trees into a frenzy and made the large clumps of moss look like ghosts floating in the wind. Stunned, Angela looked closer and saw that they each bore the face of her friends and the young agents who died at Gibraltar. The sky grew dark as she looked closer and watched them morph into bodies hanging from the tree. Lightning flashed and lit up the faces of Jesse, Ana, Reinhardt, Jack, and Gabriel. Green disappeared from her lap and she looked frantically at Genji.
“It’s a nice night,” he said, smiling serenely.
“Genji--” The ground trembled and she stopped talking.
“It’s a nice night,” Genji repeated with the same smile fixed in place.
The porch beneath her feet shook again, harder this time.
“It’s a nice night,” Genji said. “I wonder if--”
A screeching siren cut through the rest of the dream and Angela shot up in bed drenched in a cold sweat.
“Athena, what…?” She struggled to free herself from the tangle of sheets and ended up falling to the floor. Her knee hit first and the pain helped clear her head. The emergency klaxon wailed over her bed as she struggled to her feet and tried to think. The smell of smoke thread its way into her quarters and she could hear the sound of people yelling.
“Dr. Ziegler, please follow your designated evacuation route. There is a fire,” Athena intoned. The AI continued to repeat the message over the sound of the blaring siren and Angela struggled into a pair of boots. She looked around desperately for her caduceus staff, relieved to see it still leaning innocently against the wall where she had set it after tinkering with the boosting mechanism she had recently installed. The grip felt cold and sturdy to her cybernetic fingers, and she already felt better holding it. If there was a fire, there would be burn victims, and nanotechnology worked wonders on burns.
Angela shrugged on the jacket that was hanging on a peg beside the door and sprinted out into the medbay. The smell of smoke was stronger out here, but the fire suppression system hadn’t kicked in yet. The sprinklers remained dry over her head and the air scrubbers designed to purify the air stayed silent.
It was the first indication that the fire may not be accidental.
A handful of orderlies were helping to evacuate the medbay and she didn’t hesitate before joining the fray. Anyone capable of walking was sent running along the evacuation route but not before being handed some of the more mobile pieces of medical equipment. Others were tasked with helping to wheel the few patients that were still bedridden from the medical bay.
Once the last patient was sent out of the bay, Angela began searching the drawers desperately for her backup drive which had all of her research saved on it. She could connect to it with her commlink, but couldn’t download anything unless she plugged the actual drive into a terminal.
I thought I had it in here, she thought desperately. Giving up on rifling through the contents of the drawer, she ripped it out and dumped everything on the counter. Bits of paper littered the counter and pens rolled off onto the floor, bouncing against her feet. There was even an old fashioned photograph of her and Jack eating ice cream together. But still, no hard drive.
She stared in horror as the realization that someone had taken, stolen her research kicked in.
This can’t be happening. The lighting in the room darkened to a sickly shade of orange as smoke filtered down from cracks in the ceiling.
“Dr. Ziegler, please follow your designated evacuation route. There is a fire.” The sound of Athena cut through the shock and Angela’s survival instincts kicked in. She grit her teeth and began running for the exit.
The corridors were completely devoid of people as she sprinted her way towards the stairs. The breath began to burn in her lungs and she started coughing the further down the stairs she went. Things felt hotter down here and she realized that the fire must be burning on the floors below as well as above. When she reached the base of the stairs, she threw the door open and stumbled out coughing into the freezing snow. The cold night air made her raw throat burn even more. She followed the footprints from the other members of Overwatch fleeing the building and didn’t stop running until she reached the evacuation point. She frowned when she counted how many of them were already there waiting.
Seven.
Seven people had made it out to this evac zone. She spun around and gasped at the inferno that their headquarters had become.
Flames engulfed the entirety of the building. As she watched, a window blew out in a burst of hot air and glittering glass and their little group all jumped back in response. Black smoke rippled off of the roof and they could hear the emergency alarm still shrieking. A figure burst forth from the stairwell Angela had just vacated and sprinted in their direction. Her tall, slim figure gave her away from this distance before she slid to a stop with the rest of them.
Moira was out of breath but looked strangely triumphant. Sirens wailed from all around them as the firefighters arrived to take care of the destruction, momentarily distracting Angela from Moira’s arrival. She watched as they sped by and shouted at one another, gesturing at the burning building before them. When she turned back to look at Moira, Angela saw her tuck something into her pocket and felt a chill go down her spine that had nothing to do with the snow she was standing in. It was her backup harddrive. Moira winked at her just as a terrific explosion ripped into the night sky.
The force of the blast lifted them off of their feet and flung them backwards into the snow. She felt the impact of debris making contact with the snowy ground around her and did her best to curl up into a little ball. All she could hear was a high pitched ringing in her ears and she lost her grip on her staff. When Angela managed to sit up a minute, an hour, years later, the gleaming headquarters of Overwatch had been reduced to a crater.
And Moira was nowhere to be seen.
Angela stared at the spot that Moira had disappeared from and felt an empty, black chasm open deep inside her. It wasn’t fear and it wasn’t even anger. It was a rage, deep as the ocean and calm as ice. Moira had done this. She was certain of it. The only question that lurked beneath that certainty was why.
A gasp went up from the people around her and she turned just in time to see an entire section of the building collapse in on itself. She stared at the black smoke that belched out, the flames that lept even higher, and the first responders regrouping to head back into the building and knew what she had to do. She hadn’t been able to save Max from that building all those years ago in Phoenix, and hadn’t been able to save Genji from his demons, but she could save the people still trapped in there.
After years of compartmentalizing, it was almost too easy for her to box up her fury to save for another day.
Angela scrambled to her feet and pulled her staff out of the snow with her. Hands clutched at her sleeves, trying to keep her back but she pried them off. The people here were safe and uninjured. Who knew what kind of horrors those still stuck inside faced? She heard someone shout her name, but she ignored them and charged forward.
A command center was taking shape not far from her evacuation zone and she made her way through snow turning black from soot to find a grim woman giving out orders. She stood with her back straight and shoulders back, but the lines around her eyes gave away how stressed she was. The sound of commlink chatter and people shouting filled the air as Angela got closer. When no one tried to stop her from getting closer, she realized that this was a civilian operation.
“Doctor Angela Ziegler, reporting for duty.”
The other woman looked up from a report she held in her hands and Angela watched as she took in her appearance. “Have you been cleared by a medic?”
Angela shrugged. “No. I’ve had some minor smoke inhalation but nothing too extreme. I’m a medical professional, trained in extraction. I can help.”
The woman sighed. “I know who you are, Dr. Ziegler. We’re setting up a triage tent over there,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “We can use your help there.”
“No. I’m going in.”
“You Overwatch idiots are all the same. Someone else already went barreling in to help.” She pinched her nose. “Besides I’m pretty sure you outrank me here. Take a mask and a comm with you. We’re using channel two.” Someone handed her another report and just like that her attention was fixated on something else.
Angela grabbed a medical kit and oxygen mask from a supply crate and fitted it over her face as instructed. It was attached to a small tank that sat in a harness between her shoulder blades, small enough that she hopefully wouldn’t get caught on anything once she went inside. As soon as she put the commlink in her ear, she was inundated with chatter but one voice boomed louder than the rest and she allowed herself a moment to close her eyes in relief. Reinhardt was reporting a collapsed wall and several agents trapped beneath it; he needed a medic and wasn’t too far from her current position.
Quick as she could, Angela picked her way through the debris littering the lawn and headed for a large, gaping hole in the wall that several EMTs were currently using as an egress point.
Inside was even worse than she had imagined. Halls that had become her home were reduced to rubble and smoking ruin. The emergency lights barely cut through the smoke in an eye straining flash. A pipe had burst somewhere and water sprayed out across her path. The stench was incredible, even through the mask. Burning plastic and rubber, hair and paint mixed together to form a noxious scent that burned her eyes. She activated the caduceus and lent herself a bit of healing energy to stave off the heat that tickled her skin and soothe the burning in her throat.
Through it all there was a dull roaring sound which she came to realize was the fire itself, still uncontained and consuming the building around her. She had a moment where she started to think about how foolish it was to charge off into this hell when the sound of pained voices in the air distracted her from her growing fear. She had finally reached Reinhardt.
He was holding up a section of a wall while two other people were on their bellies beneath it, straining to pull someone free. Angela put on a burst of speed, heedless of the holes in the floor beneath her feet.
“That’s it! Almost there!” Reinhardt was saying when she skid to a halt next to him. “Angela! What are you doing here?” His voice was hoarse and he didn’t have an oxygen mask. On a normal day, he probably could have held the wall all night, but she could see the tremble in his arms and knew the smoke was getting to him.
“I’m here to help,” she said in greeting. She turned her staff on to him and watched him breathe a sigh of relief as the nanotechnology began its work. Below them, the two others freed their trapped companion and together their bedraggled group limped out from under the wall. Reinhardt set it down as gently as he could, but the floor still rumbled ominously beneath them.
Just don’t think about it, Angela told herself and began examining the people in front of her. The man who had been trapped beneath the rubble was bleeding profusely from the femoral artery and Angela knew with a sinking heart that there was very little she could do. It had taken too long to pull him free. Triage, focus on the next patient. She ripped a piece of fabric off of the bottom of her pajama pants and tied a tourniquet high up around his thigh. Her heart thumped in her chest when she pinned a red tag from her supply kit to his chest. Maybe he would get lucky. The others were in much better condition. A broken arm, several abrasions, smoke inhalation. They each got a yellow tag.
“Reinhardt, you need to get them out of here,” she said. “This man will need to be carried.”
“I won’t leave you Angela,” Reinhardt said, every other word interspersed with a cough.
“I’ll be fine. Follow this hallway down to the left and you’ll make it out.”
“No.”
“Reinhardt, you’ve inhaled too much smoke.” She touched his arm in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “I’ll be fine. I promise.” She pinned a yellow tag to his chest too.
He still looked torn but gave a short, sharp nod, gripping her hand tightly before letting go and bending to help pick up the bleeding man. Angela didn’t waste any time watching them go. Instead, she delved deeper into the building.
The smoke was thicker here but the heat less intense, like the fire had already burned out. Without really realizing it, Angela found herself making her way towards Jack’s office. She heard Reinhardt over the commlink when he reached the triage tent outside, but his was the only voice she recognized. The fact that Jack wasn’t the main voice leading the rescue and evacuation effort was wrong. She wanted to believe that he was alright and leading the charge from some other command post and working in tandem with the civilian authorities, but then why wasn’t he on the main commlink? Twice her path to his office was blocked by the ceiling caving in and once by a sparking wire. She didn’t encounter anyone alive on her trek through the wreckage and she left several bodies behind her with a black tag pinned to them.
Just don’t think about it.
The door to Jack’s office had been blown off of its hinges. She stared into the dark room. Something ancient and primal within her told her not to go into the hungry blackness waiting on the other side of the threshold but she shoved the feeling down and crept inside.
At first glance, everything seemed normal once her eyes adjusted. Jack’s chair was still neatly tucked in behind the old fashioned wooden desk he sometimes slept on when the paperwork got to be too much. There was an unfinished cup of coffee balanced precariously on a stack of folders and an innocuous Overwatch coffee mug filled with pens stood on the corner. It could have been a normal day at the office except for the blown out lights and the long, deep grooves carved into the surface of the large desk. When she reached out a shaking hand, her fingernails fit neatly into the indentations. Something dark and viscous dripped off the corner of the desk and puddled on the floor. It looked too thick to be blood.
A soft groan made her nearly jump out of her boots. She looked around for the source and all of the breath left her lungs in a big whoosh. Jack was lying prone on the floor behind his desk, his face a ruin of blood and his arms were covered in slashes so deep she could see white peeking through the torn flesh.
“Jack! Jack it’s Angela, can you hear me?” She was by his side in a second.
He moaned in response. Angela turned her staff to its highest setting and took a closer look at his injuries. “Jack, what happened?” The nanites slowly began to stop the bleeding in his arms but his eyes...God his eyes!
“Gab...riel…”
“I don’t know where Gabriel is, Jack, but we’ll find him. I’m sure he’s okay.”
“No...Gabriel…”
“I just need to clean you up a little bit, Jack and then we can get you out of here. It’s--” her voice broke off when she started wiping some of the blood off of his face. Jack would never look at anyone with his beautiful, cornflower blue eyes again. “It’s going to be okay.”
She worked in silence while healing Jack and trying to put him back together. She tried to keep up a steady stream of chatter to distract him from the pain, but he kept moaning out the same thing, asking for Gabriel. Involuntarily, she was reminded of how Genji had called out to someone he loved the night she had found him too and it tore at her heart. The wounds on Jack’s arms healed first, and Jack began to try and sit up. She put a firm hand on his chest to force him back down.
“Not yet, Jack. I’m almost done.”
“Ange,” he used that nickname for her that she hated, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him to stop. “Ange, I can’t see.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Maybe if I can get you under a bioemitter I can--”
“Ange, I can’t see!” He yelled and tried to sit up again, grunting in pain and flailing a hand out. She watched as the marks on his right arm opened again.
“Jack, please! You’ll only hurt yourself more!” She tried to use her most intimidating doctor-to-patient voice but the wobble in it made it less effective. She could feel tears forming in her eyes as she made Jack lay back again. After a moment of struggling, he went willingly. Tears mixed with the blood still on his face and slid off of his cheekbones to splatter on the floor. Silence fell over them again while Angela continued to try her best to save his eyesight.
“Gabriel,” he said again.
“We’ll find him Jack, don’t worry.”
“No, Ange. Gabriel did this.” Jack’s voice was hollow, completely devoid of emotion.
Angela paused. “What?”
He knocked her hand away and covered his face with his hands. “He did this,” he repeated in that same dead voice. “But it wasn’t him. It was...some sort of monster. And Moira was with him--”
“Moira!” Her cybernetic hand clenched into a fist so hard the gears whirled in protest. “Moira did this, Jack! She wanted my research. I saw her--”
This time Jack cut her off, speaking faster and faster but making no more sense. “She came in here with him and she was just kind of standing in the back and then we were arguing and she was egging him on and then he...then he just attacked me. I didn’t want to hurt him, Angela. I didn’t! But he just kept coming and then she did something to him and he changed.”
“What do you mean he ‘changed’”?
“I have to go after him. I have to find him.”
Angela shook her head even though Jack couldn’t see her. “Jack, you aren’t in any condition to go anywhere. We need to get you to a hospital!”
He laughed a humorless laugh. “Don’t you get it, Ange? I’m already dead. I died when the love of my life tried to kill me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Angela, please. Tell them I died. Tell them you couldn’t save me in time. Let someone else be Strike Commander and I’ll--"
“Do what, Jack? You can’t even see!” She watched him try and squint up at her, but the muscles around his eyes barely moved.
“You’re wearing a coat over pajamas.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can see that you’re wearing a coat over pajama pants.”
Angela stared down at Jack laying on the floor of his office, miserable and covered in blood. He shouldn’t be able to see anything. Her caduceus staff was good, but it wasn’t that good. She looked at the settings dial on the shaft and gasped. In her haste to heal Jack, she had set it to both heal and strengthen vitality. It shouldn’t have worked and yet...Jack was a super soldier. Genji could summon a dragon at whim and Winston was a talking gorilla. Surely healing something that should have been permanently damaged wasn’t entirely out of the question. But she had to be sure.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” She asked, holding up her index and middle fingers.
“Two.”
“Scheiße.”
“Angela, please,” Jack said again. “I can’t do this without him.”
Angela felt a tear slide down her cheek. She would have to testify to seeing his dead body, provide some proof that there wasn’t enough left of him to try to bring back. “Okay,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do.”