That Day, That Sorrow
A Man's Distress
At night, Angela only heard silence from this war-torn corner of the world. It was one of those rare nights, where Angela wasn't downstairs working overtime and keeping tabs on her patients and monitoring their stocks and resource.
The air cold but not like the biting ice of her home country. The senior doctor liked it. She just hated the daylight as the heat can be unbearable in and out of her suit. Her suit was in the corner charging and she was lying on a thin makeshift mattress with a cotton shirt and black shorts. The locals' way of thanking her with their hospitality. Lying beneath the window, she looked up and saw the moon and stars. With hardly any city lights here, she could see more stars than she ever could.
Normally, she would be sitting on the window sill to watch and hear the night, but that was unwise in this place. Exposing her head to being shot by a gun was an incident that could happen here. Far different from the city she used to work in and attend conferences at.
The soft flapping of cloth, the curtain-door that gave her privacy in this room rustled from a breeze. The doctor sighed at that before shutting her eyes.
"Quite a place you have here, good doctor."
Mercy acted, her hand already wrapped around the blaster tucked between the wall and mattress beside her. She glared at the intruder. For someone to slip in without notifying the security she had set up in this place, the Swiss-German doctor thinned her lips.
"Easy there," the man responded, both red gloved hands raised in the air. The moonlight glinted the red visor, she saw dim blinks of light from whatever it was reading.
"You, I know you." There was a quiet accusation and a small hint of anger in her voice as Angela slowly rose up from the mattress. Terrorist, miscreant, thief, arsonist, and killer with no absolute redeeming quality. He was no McCree definitely.
"76," he introduced with both hands still raised. "You know you would be dead already. Honestly, you should be." His rough voice deep and grating, chiding her.
She motioned with her blaster for him step back towards the wall. He did, but too slowly.
"Remove that gun of yours," she demanded at the rifle on his back.
76 moved his arms only to dash forward... fast, inhumanly fast. Before she knew it, a painful grip around her wrist that wrenched her blaster of her hand. With a hateful glare, the doctor moved to kick.
The man took it like a rock, then twisted her arm. Angela gave a cry and fumed. Her eyes glanced at her staff, a few feet away, but set right beside her charging Valkyrie suit in the sacred chest
"You done?" he asked when she squirmed violently while he still squeezed her wrist.
She opened her mouth, but her blaster was pointed at her head before a sound could escape.
"What do you want?" she demanded as she felt the cold plastic-steel of her gun against her forehead.
"Answers," 76 told her then surprisingly released her and walked away, blaster in his hand.
The doctor grumbled and rubbed her wrist sorely as she lasered her eyes on his turned back.
"You are Doctor Angela Ziegler, right?" the man said and stopped in his stride, glancing back at her from over his shoulder.
She remained silent as she watched him.
The masked man leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
"We could do this all night," he told her coldly as he stood there. "I won't go away until I get what I want."
"I have no reasons-" she began.
"You do," he snarled. "You were Overwatch's top medical scientist. You brought people back from the brink of death, especially on that day when Headquarter was blown up. You would know what happened and who lived and really died on that day."
"And why should I answer to you?" she snapped.
"Reaper," he said one name.
A flash of thoughts, Angela inhaled sharply before back to glaring. "I still do not understand-"
"What happened on that day?" he interrupted.
"You know already," she said calmly. "A fight broke out between two leaders-"
"The aftermath. Tell me exactly what happened," 76 interrupted again and she inhaled deeply from frustration.
She stared long and hard at the cold visor and mask that hid much of his face. She noted the scar that ran down from his forehead. Scars were not rare, but they do tell stories, commonly those without a proper doctor nearby to treat the wound.
"Smokes," she began. "Smokes, rubble everywhere. And the dead, the dying all around," she said quietly. "Burnt corpses, ashes. If my equipment and lab weren't taken down from the explosion a lot of good people would have survived."
Morrison. It was a battlefield she never expected to happen on Overwatch's home base. She glanced down briefly, wishing to move around restlessly from the memories stirred on that day, but to expose her backs onto an enemy was unwise.
How could they've been so selfish, to drag their quarrel onto the rest of the organization. Taking down many good souls who should've been alive. Even after all these years, her anger hasn't simmered.
"I tried to save as much as possible, but how can I when I can't even find the bodies hidden amongst the rubble," Angela continued quietly.
"Except for one," 76 added.
"What do you mean?" she said with annoyance laced in her tone.
"Try to remember. A particular body, a patient vanishing under your care, perhaps?" the Soldier went on.
Ashes. Smokes and ashes. A body recovered from the rubble that was burnt so bad, she would've thought it was a hopeless case. And that took a lot for a doctor like Angela Ziegler to admit a soul was too late. But he was alive. Before she could rebuild, she had to stabilize the body from slipping. But with such little equipment, and no lab and limited resource, Angela had to do a patch-up job of healing the cells and keeping them alive even if they were far too damaged. As a temporary solution.
Except it didn't work out. One moment she was rushing to another patient as Athena monitored and kept their life stable, then the next there was a pile of ashes.
And the smell of decay. She knew what happened. Accelerating the body's natural healing process was all good and solid strategy, but can be backfired and speed along the process of decay instead. Especially a body that has been too wounded - too burnt. A body too exhausted and didn't have much to work with. Better to just rebuild and replace flesh, but with no equipment, there were little she could do.
Many things went wrong on that day. Overwatch Headquarters had many facilities dedicated to the other field of science. Some she knew were volatile and were behind the explosion that took all. And some research were worked on behind her back, particularly those on counteracting nanites and biotics.
She was not the only one to work on the bodies. She remembered aircraft littered the skies, taking them in. Dead ones, they claim. If she had time and her way, she would've inspected each and every one.
"Well?" The Soldier gestured with his hand.
"There was one body. One that survived even though badly burnt, to the bones," she admitted. "He didn't survive for long. Just ashes were all left of him." Angela turned to look away.
"Do you know who he is?" There was a biting anger in his voice.
Yes. If her scanner wasn't wrong on that day, "Yes. Gabriel Reyes." Oh, she knew. Soldier 76 was out for vengeance. Vengeance behind the destruction of Overwatch. It was why she was here, interrogated by him.
Who lived and really died on that day?
Call her an enemy or whatever, she didn't care the anger she felt from the soldier for trying to save the man who was partly at fault of the destruction.
"You would even save the man who was behind the devas-"
"He was not the only one to instigate the battlefield at our Headquarter," she snapped and turned towards the selfish vigilante. "He and Morrison were known to quarrel. But their violence!" She shook her head in fury. "They're dead now. Their payment for those they've brought down with them."
"I wouldn't think so," Soldier 76 muttered more to himself as he shuffled his feet a bit in his standing.
"What would you know?" she said sharply, now standing right in front of her suit. Just one step back and she would have her staff.
The staff was a versatile tool, it helped a person's pain tolerance, heal any fresh wounds. But the pain tolerance was the key point. Numbing the nerves could go too far, to the point one could force the muscles to relax too much. Hindering movements and reaction. If she set it up to be like that.
"Like I said, Reaper," Soldier 76 pointed out. "You know what he is. And maybe, who he is."
"A man who plays tricker tricking?"
"That's a good one." There was a huff of amusement from him.
She snapped, hand wrapped around her black caduceus staff, but she felt the intense heat of the pulse rifle instead. The staff dropped with a heavy clatter.
Her hand burns! She gave a yowl like a cat caught in a corner, her blond locks draping down her face as her body curled slightly in instinct.
"Be glad I didn't turn the safety switch off," the Soldier said with the rifle raised and pointed at her. "You should have someone behind your back, especially in a place like this. Already, the enemy is on the move, hunting down your former colleagues. And here you are, playing doctor and nurse."
There was a knock downstairs.
"Doctor Ziegler!" a thick accented middle eastern voice called out in the night. "Are you alright?" a girl called out.
Angela froze as the Soldier stared her down. Silent panic ran through her, her jaw creaked as she opened and closed mouth.
A shove to the air towards her direction from the rifle was the only motion of approval from him.
"You shouldn't be out here at night!" she called back. "Go back to your home."
"But-"
"I'm fine!" she shouted forcefully,
There was a sound of annoyance, an exhale of frustration before footsteps in the sands disappeared off into the distant.
Silence. The two stared, she noted how he was a step away from the moonlight shining on him. Not willing to show his head in the window's view. The blue of his jersey pale in the darkness as the soft sound of rustling from leather and cloth hinted his breathing.
"What more do you want from me?" she whispered and hissed.
"Leave this place, Angela," he told her softly. Heavy boots thumped as he turned and moved towards the open window. His white hair stark when it shone under the moonlight. "There's a war out there, and they need you more than you are needed here."
"No lives are equal." The doctor narrowed her eyes onto him.
Nothing. No huff. No expression she could tell nor a twitch of his body.
"Than yours worth more than any others," 76 admitted finally and raised his rifle. A gloved hand reached down to his belt.
Her blaster tossed down before her feet. She snatched it, but when she looked back up, he was gone.
"Men," she said in annoyance. McCree, Genji, even Reinhardt and Torbjorn always had that moment they want to show off. It never ends. She rolled her eyes, then glanced at her burn hand.
The redness of her pale skin receding as the biotics in her worked.
No lives were equal. Souls here were just as worth it than the souls out there. To say they were equal would justify sacrifice instead.
Than yours worth more than any others.