The nights are the hardest.
For Angela, they always have been; silence and shadows are not the friends of a child who has lost both her parents when she still sleeps with a nightlight, and while she has grown well past the age of fearing the darkness (she has seen men gunned down in the brightness of day, a man ripped near to shreds by his own brother and left to die at dawn; her monsters walk the day as easily as the night) it is still the silence which bothers her. In college and during her residency, it worked in her favor to work well into the night, papers and patients calling at all hours meant that sleep came quickly and painlessly whenever the opportunity presented itself. But now, as Overwatch's head of medical research, she has plenty of papers but few patients when she isn't out on the field, and her forays out of the base ever since Amélie's defection (not betrayal, she cannot bring herself to say it) have been minimal at best. Most everyone else is on missions though, desperately trying to force something against Talon to make things even, and the base is quieter in light of it.
She knows that she isn't the only one who feels the tension, for whom the silence is deafening. She has walked empty halls to see Jack's office light on and his door cracked to reveal him working at his desk, or gone to make herself some tea late only to find that Ana has beaten her to it, and neither she nor the sniper questions what has brought the other there so late at night. She wants to help them somehow, but she lacks the means to help even herself, so she doesn't presume to offer.
One night she decides that a lack of sleep will do nothing to help her solve the newest riddle her research has thrown at her, and reluctantly turns off the lights in her lab, hanging up her lab coat, and heads out. She is tired but knows she won't be able to sleep; Jack and Reinhardt have gone to lay waste to some Talon warehouse, Tracer and Genji accompanying Ana on a scouting mission for separate facilities. So many of them being gone at once makes her days feel emptier and leaves her with a weight in the pit of her stomach that she knows will never quite go away until they are all safely back home. She needs something to take her mind off their absence, and as she passes a window she sees that it's a beautiful night outside and decides to head out for a while.
There's a particular view near one of the landing pads she has always loved, and she imagines it is as breathtaking at night as it is during the day. The whole of Gibraltar has that effect, really, it is all steep drops and beautiful greenery where the base has nestled in with the existing landscape, and she's always loved heights to begin with. Sure enough, the moon is bright enough that even though the floodlights don't reach this far out, she has no difficulty navigating the rocky terrain to find a good seat near the edge of the cliff where she can look out at the ocean.
"Wunderschön," she breathes, and for a while it is so easy to forget everything but the expanse of the sea under the cloudless sky. She doesn't know how long she sits there for, just enjoying the view and the feel of the wind through her hair, but after some time she hears the slightest crunch and, before her mind can register the source, a voice.
"Hope you're not plannin' to jump, doc."
She does jump, and is glad she didn't opt to sit closer to the edge when she turns to see Gabriel Reyes looking down at her with an amused smirk and a cooler slung over his shoulder. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!" she exclaims, very much aware of the way her response doesn't help her.
He is, too, and he barks out a laugh in response. "Pretty sure a deaf guy woulda heard me coming," he says without venom, moving over and seating himself next to her, setting his cooler off to the side. "It's alright though, doc, you can probably science yourself up some matching hearing aids for the suit. Maybe give 'em some tiny wings to match..."
She shakes her head in mock dismay, but cannot help the smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "What's in the cooler?" she asks instead, looking over at him.
"Glad you asked." He reaches over, opening it and pulling out two cans. He hands one over, popping the tab on his. The light's not enough to read the label, but she doesn't need to; she can't imagine Gabriel being the type to cart out a cooler full of ginger ale. It is an amusing mental picture, though.
"Beer, hmm?" she muses, opening her own after a moment. "You know, those studies on beer's relation to heart health do specify moderate amounts..." She's eyeing the full cooler as she says it.
He snorts. "My heart's plenty healthy, doc, now drink your damn beer."
She does so, appreciating the fact as she takes her first sip that he has brought out one of the better ales the base has stocked. She takes a longer drink, wondering as she does if it is worth asking why he came out here.
He ends up broaching the subject for her, though he waits until he's popping open his second can. "Doc, I know you were close with her and all..."
Her. There is only one her to which he could be referring, and emptiness settles in her chest. "Please," she begins, cutting him off even though she doesn't think he'll continue before she can respond. "I can't. Not yet."
They look at each other for a moment before he nods, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. "Ready for another?"
She manages a tight smile. "Not yet. I thought I would enjoy mine."
"I'm enjoying mine just fine," he responds, taking another swig and, just like that, the subject drops.
Silence falls between them, punctuated only by the crash of the waves and the opening of Gabriel's third beer. She's starting to consider asking just how drunk he intends to get when he speaks again.
"So what're you doing out here, doc?"
A sigh escapes her, and she takes another drink to find that she has finally finished her first can. She sets it aside. "I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep with everyone gone, so I decided I may as well get some fresh air. You?"
"Same here," he says with a shrug, reaching into the cooler and pulling out another can. He nods in the direction of the empty one she has set aside. "Try not to drink this one too fast."
She smiles slightly, taking the can and opening it. "I'll try." After a moment she asks what she has been wondering since he sat with her. "How are you holding up?" It's been almost two weeks since Gérard's death, and other than the bandages she'd had to wrap around his shredded knuckles, she knows nothing of how well he has been coping.
He chuckles without mirth. "Plan was to drink all these by myself, if that answers your question."
It does and it doesn't, but it's more than she expected him to offer her and she appreciates it all the same. They have always gotten along well in their own way, once she learned not to take his silences too personally. That doesn't mean they don't fight, but they don't dwell on their fights afterward, either. "Gérard was a good man," she offers.
"He was," Gabriel agrees. There's a pause where he takes a drink and she knows he's working his way to something more, so she takes a sip of her own drink and waits. "Amélie...she was one of the good ones, too. Great, even."
"I miss her," she admits quietly. "But after everything, it feels..."
"You're allowed to miss her, doc. No one'll think you condone what she's become if you do."
"What they made her," she corrects, turning to look at him.
He holds her gaze for what seems like an eternity, and she knows him well enough to know that he is trying to decide whether or not to argue the point. It's all just semantics, she knows this, whether it was brainwashing or betrayal that led to Gerard's assassination, neither changes the fact that he is dead at Amélie's hand. Neither brings her friend back.
Neither is going to help her sleep later tonight.
She shakes her head and speaks before he does this time. "I think..." she begins, pausing to choose her words correctly because she has never, even in her own mind, given voice to the fear that's been eating away at her ever since Amélie was taken. "If I were taken, if I were faced with whatever they did to her..."
"Don't," Gabriel cuts her off, and she's shocked to hear a note of pain in his voice. "You're not gonna get taken. And you're sure as hell strong enough to resist whatever they'd do if you were."
"What if I'm not?"
The implication hangs heavy between them. She knows he has no answer for her; she does not know herself what she would even want should something like that come to pass. Beside him, one of the empty cans falls to its side, the sound of it hitting the rock seeming impossibly loud in the still night. Distantly above them, a plane passes overhead. She isn't aware she's holding her breath until he heaves a sigh, leaning back and bringing back a hand to hold himself up.
"Way I figure it, doc," he begins, looking up at the sky. "Someone's gonna kill me one of these days. And if I had to choose, well...you'd do a damn good job of it at least."
She's shocked into silence for so long that she just stares at him. When he finally turns to look at her a giggle bubbles its way forth and she's laughing before she can stop herself. "That's an awful way to think about it," she manages when the laughter has subsided enough for her to breathe again, reaching up to wipe her eyes as she meets his gaze again. He's looking at her like he has no idea what to do, which she thinks might be a first. When she smiles at him, it's the first time in a while that it doesn't feel forced. "Thank you, Gabriel."
He just chuckles, raising his can slightly in a mock toast. "Any time."
Thanks for reading!