Angela had never liked these university talks. There was hardly a point in spending time and resources pulling a person away from where they did their best work. Besides, audiences always seemed to make her palms sweat, or worse.
Jack would have known how to handle this.
"Dr. Ziegler?" The professor's hand on her shoulder took her out of her thoughts. "I'll give the introduction now, if you're ready."
She took a swig from her water bottle and smiled. "Yes, I think we can proceed."
The old man nodded and hurried past her out of the wings, greeted by a burst of applause. A glass podium stood in the middle of the auditorium stage: he tapped the microphone a few times and cleared his throat. "Good evening, and welcome to the Crossroads University Presidential Lecture Series. Tonight, it is my honor to present Dr. Angela Ziegler…"
She could mouth the introductory remarks along with him, she had heard them so many times. No one had ever warned her that hearing her accomplishments listed to hundreds of people would be this boring. Her mind drifted to other things again, as it had taken to doing in the last five years, and she barely registered the speaker gesturing for her to follow him onstage. It was the renewed roar of the audience that caused her to shake her head clear and make her feet carry her forward.
When she saw the audience, she hesitated. At every other talk it had been nothing but older folks out there, and a scattering of them at that: this room was packed to the rafters, and mostly with students. The cheering grew even louder when they saw her, and a few kids in the front rows looked like they were about ready to spring out of their seats.
The professor smiled and nodded, pretending to have an idea of what was going on. Angela could tell, from the way they all sat up a little straighter when she walked past. They had come to hear her, the famous doctor, and yet they hadn't: this was a generation that had grown up knowing her by her callsign. The white pantsuit probably didn't help either.
It seemed like forever before the noise died down, and somehow she had made her way to the podium. The same old speech was in her hand, wrinkled and covered with notes in fading ink.
Angela looked out at the sea of faces and tried to imagine that she wouldn't disappoint them. "Thank you for the warm welcome. It's lovely to see so many young faces here tonight…"
She kept her references to the Omnic Crisis vague and fleeting: she could see a handful of them up near the rafters. Instead she surged past the first round of dark memories and spoke of working her way through the ranks of the University Hospital, doing her homework by the light of day and studying the rare papers on nanobiology by night. "And you can thank me for summing them all up for you," she added with a smirk, and the audience laughed.
It made for a stirring narrative, she supposed. The little orphan girl who became an angel, determined to blot out the wickedness of the world with the sheer force of her light.
Then the smoke and rubble cleared, and the fairytale had been just that.
Angela didn't even realize she had stopped talking until the professor reappeared, a wireless microphone in his hand. "Dr. Ziegler will take some questions from the audience now."
Nearly every hand in the room shot up.
The professor sighed. "Questions not relating to Dr. Ziegler's past involvement with Overwatch."
They all went down.
"No, no, it's fine," Angela said. "I'd be happy to answer whatever questions you have."
The professor glanced at her. "A-Are you sure?"
"Yes," she answered, her voice firmer now. "Quite sure."
A young woman in the front row was the first to raise her hand again. Angela smiled at her. "Yes, dear?"
"I had some questions about your Valkyrie tech," she said. "Specifically the composition of the Caduceus Staff's repair beam."
Ah, some familiar territory. Good. "It's an interlocking nanobot construct," she answered. "Their kinetic energy is what creates the light emission. The arm components of the Valkyrie suit are similarly equipped. They allow me to administer emergency medical attention to those in an inaccessible position. Say you have a child trapped in the rubble of a house who's bleeding out and the response team wouldn't be able to evacuate her quickly enough. I can buy her some time while the debris is cleared. It's an incredible invention, really. Something I never could have developed working independently."
"Is that why you joined Overwatch?"
A chill seemed to pass over the room as Angela paused. "Excuse me?"
"Is that why you joined Overwatch," the girl repeated. "For assistance in your medical research."
For a while, Angela didn't say anything. The professor started to ask for a different question, but she held up a hand and he fell silent. "I suppose that was part of it," she said at last. "When Overwatch requested my services, they told me that my work would be instrumental in making the world a safer place. And I believe they saw it that way as well. They just couldn't have seen where their methods would lead. Or they weren't willing to."
"So you stand by your previous opinion that the Geneva Incident was an eventuality."
Angela bit her lip and gripped the sides of the podium. "I'm only going to say this once," she said, the microphone barely picking up her now-faint voice. "John Morrison and Gabriel Reyes were the bravest and most honorable men I've ever known and will ever know. But when you have two firebrands like that and you put them in the same room, they'll burn themselves out trying to be brighter than the other. And they'll take everyone else with them, whether they mean to or not."
The girl who had started it all was still staring up at her, and she spoke again before the professor could stop her. "So would you say that you regret your involvement with Overwatch, Dr. Ziegler?"
Yes. No.
"And I'm afraid that's all the time we have for questions this evening!" the professor said, speaking a little too loudly into his microphone. "Thank you all for your attendance!"
The faculty tried to apologize to her as she left, asked her to stay a few more hours and share some drinks. She brushed them all off: there was a plane waiting for her. Word of another Talon attack, this time in Afghanistan. Her services had been requested.
It felt like days had passed by the time she had a moment to breathe. They were over Egypt, the pilot had said. Nearly time to suit up.
And yet here she was, still in her chair just looking at the damn thing and trying to think of an answer to a question that didn't matter anymore. So maybe she did regret Overwatch. What of it? That part of her life was finished. It was dead. And as for Morrison and Reyes, there was nothing she could have done. That was the official narrative, wasn't it? Why any need to doubt it?
Because you were there, Mercy.
She turned on her phone and stared at the picture on the lock screen. A Halloween party – ten years ago, fifteen? She wasn't certain anymore. It was that year Reinhardt told that story about the scientist and the witch, and Gabriel had made her costume…
"…I'm sorry, Gabe…"
Her phone buzzed, and she looked down at it in bewilderment. A text? At this hour? Who could possibly be –
She froze.
Three words were flashing across the tiny screen: OVERWATCH RECALL INITIATED.