Welcome to my collection of Mercy short stories and one-shots. I intend for this to spread across many genres and play with several ideas I have, but I admit this first one was kind of random...just came to me on the walk home today. All that said, I'm kinda bad at updating and keeping on, just because I work on so much other fan fiction and original work in between my social and personal time. And speaking of personal time, a lot of it is being dominated by Overwatch right now, lol. We'll call that research though. ;)
Hope you enjoy Chapter 1 of In Strictest Confidence. I should mention things may get slightly/somewhat OOC, especially in regards to the Overwatch roster and timeline. To be honest, the story is kind of a mess, I don't know how closely I can and want to follow it, ha ha. And while you're here, make sure to SHOW how much you APPRECIATE the Mercy players on your team! (And other supports too). It ain't always easy, but it is always done for the greater good...or maybe they just love Mercy like I do. Please review!
The moon outside was already coming to its climax, perched upon a bed of stars that shone weakly in comparison. Mercy's window gave her a perfect view, overlooking a cliffside at Gibraltar. But at the moment, her eyes were focused on her computer screen, and when she really started needing it, the cup of coffee beside her.
The recent battle had brought great success, and many casualties with it. At the end of the day, she lost only two. Of the seventy-three other injured, nearly three-quarters had already been released onto active duty again. Now she had to bear the thoughts and memories of those two young men - boys really - as she filed all the paperwork, issued orders and itineraries for the long-term patients and assistants, and wrote up her staff report to Jack, naturally due in just a few hours. God she was tired...but she knew sleep wasn't what she needed now.
So she settled for another swig of the barely warm coffee, finishing it off. She hesitated to get another cup, but she knew she would be at least another hour at the computer. It was a long walk to the kitchens, so she decided to go at once.
Her office was at the top of the medical tower, situated above the break room and offices of her chief assistants, the OR, the pharmacy, and the Post-op, plus the triage center at the base of it all. It was lovely walk down when she was able to do it undisturbed. She couldn't decide, even after all this time, whether she took more joy in the beauty of the moon overhead, the cool night air when she passed by an open window, or the faint, happy sounds of sleeping made by those under her care. She supposed that altogether it made a wonderfully relaxing trip.
Where her domain ended, the central compound was situated. Here the training facility was entrenched into the rock, complete with firing range, ammo depot, martial combat training room, several obstacle courses, and more. The orbital center was on the other side of the large rock called Gibraltar, and other than that, it was just the command center, the barracks, and the mess hall and kitchens.
A few of the late night owls were training even now, mostly in the obstacle course. Out of habit, which itself stemmed from something she knew was closest described as prevailing altruism, she stopped on the way and checked the medkit in the gate office. It was up to date, as she knew it would be. So she moved on.
There was a sort of music in the air, she noticed, as she walked on, and it was coming from the obstacle course, where the men and at least one woman were training to the ends of their own betterment. Without the prevailing sense of violence and hatred, the pursuit of better health and skill was a beautiful thing, much like the lovely night around it. A song of sweat, a rhythm of harmony between mind and body which made both stronger. It was a chance to bond with your friends and yourself. If only warfare was this simplistic in application. But war was not beautiful, war was hell, or if one dared say, worse so, because all suffered from war, the just and the unjust.
She chewed on those thoughts a little longer as passed the command compound, noticing that Jack's lights were on. Like herself, he worked late nights, often with Gabriel and their trusted officers. Especially now, when tensions were running high, it worried her. They were always close, but the bad blood between each other was almost as bad as that between the organization and its enemies. The pressure from the UN wasn't helping anything.
But the rumbling in her stomach reminded her of her purpose in this stroll, and tacked on an extra objective: Complement the coffee with something to hold her over to breakfast. And so he hurried onwards, glancing back in the hopes of seeing Jack or Gabriel through the windows, but there was only light. The music of training was well behind her.
By the time she was entering the mess hall, there were only a few lights on, and she found only one other person inside. He was too engrossed in the book in his hands to notice her, but she decided to join him, as he had a perfectly untouched plate of muffins beside him.
"Enjoying the book, Jesse?" She asked with a devious smile as McCree's face jumped from behind the book, wary, then instantly relieved.
"In fact I am," He replied, offering her the plate first and setting it down.
"Who wrote it?" She asked, taking a blueberry muffin from the top of the pile.
"I did. What's finished of it."
"Really?"
"Got the idea 'bout a year ago...wrote down bits and pieces here and there, and behold, a half-finished western."
"Are you going to publish? What's it about?" She asked between bites.
"An outlaw and a dame, brought together by mutual troubles...struggling with the world and the people around them….maybe their feelings for each other…"
"Oh?"
"Nothing dirty, of course. I'm not that kind of man."
"I know," She giggled.
"Well, doesn't matter much. Been stuck on this part for days now. Can't seem to fit anything into the next sentence."
"Read to me."
He mulled it over for a second and smiled, taking a bite from his own muffin and opening the book back up again.
"The heat of high noon was sweltering. The pair looked in each others eyes from behind the rocks as the guns around them fired without stop. He wanted to say something, but the sound was so overbearing as it bounced around the earth with the stray bullets," He read, but as he went on his voice grew slower, something in his eyes changed.
"They put themselves together, daring to poke their revolvers out rarely, but man by man, they gunned down the varmints around them. Hours passed, death staring them down the whole time, lucky breaks few and far between...but finally...the last one dropped. And they rose from the dust, as evening set in and cold was coming down with the rare rain. He smiled and she laughed, and their arms wrapped around each other, and then the horrible sound…"
"Sounds like something bad it going to happen…" She dared say.
"Yeah….something bad happens…."
The silence was long and uncomfortable, but she set the remnant of her muffin aside and took his hand in hers.
"Want to talk about it?"
"...I don't know. Never been the sort for talking through his feelings."
"Tough guys get scars too."
"I know. I've given a lot of tough guys a lot of scars."
"Please tell me."
"I don't…"
"I understand it's hard. It must be, to be in Blackwatch."
"I'm fine. Really."
He started to stand up, but she stood with him and dragged him down.
"No. Tell me."
Their eyes met and they saw into the world of the other, if but for a moment. In his eyes she found the pains of battle, the blood and sweat and heartache that went with being a soldier in Overwatch. And in her eyes, she could tell, he found something that attracted him, the care that went beyond borders and nationalities and ideas, and the love that was required to be a doctor like her, and to treat anyone no matter the price.
"Blackwatch has nothing to do with this….It's just...I guess my book got too real. My life is hardly boring, but sometimes it hits too close to home."
And then it clicked for her.
"Eric Paine."
"Eric Paine. Blackwatch candidate, I was supervising him for weeks, molding him, almost...when the battle broke out a few days ago, we went in together."
"You saw him die…"
"I didn't just see it. I felt it. I haven't written anything in this book since before that battle.I couldn't help but smile at the time, how me and him were back to back behind cover, surrounded and outgunned, and hoping we could shoot or run fast enough to get away."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. There would have been a lot more like him if not for you...and you can't be everywhere at once."
"No."
It was a reality every medic had to come to grips with, that they went where the fighting was worst, the potential for loss or saving was highest. She remembered the first battle she'd flown into with Overwatch; she lost seventeen that day. It was embarrassing, it was heartbreaking, more than anything, it was a personal scar. Her wings could never spread far enough to shield everyone. Eric Paine and Lee Sparks were proof of that.
"I just….he was with me one second, and gone the next, you know? I felt the bullet tear through him right beside me. It was...unreal."
"Fact is often stranger than fiction, or so they say. I'm sorry this happened."
"Yeah? Don't be. Like I said, you couldn't do anything more than you did, you kept a lot of the good boys alive. I've just got to...make my peace with it."
"Of course."
"And, erm, don't tell Reyes about this."
"Never."
"Thanks," he bade farewell, grabbing his book and one more muffin as he stood up.
"Wait," She called as he took his first steps away.
"Promise me not to stop writing."
"...Hm?"
"Death has a cruel way of taking the joy out of everything. Don't let it kill the author in you I never knew existed until now. Please."
He smiled, "Never."
By the time Mercy was back in her chair the moon was lower, the night entering its peak hours, which was to say the morning had begun to bloom. The screen looked less imposing now, she had to admit, but soon the humming of the fan and the the clicking of her fingers on the keys grew wearisome, and she longed for sleep. It seemed sweeter now, like she could actually achieve it without a nightmare or a web of sorrow haunting her under the covers. The barracks couldn't be far enough for her to wish it otherwise, but the report needed finishing all the same.
She found herself shaking her head and reciting to herself what Jack Morrison would say if her report wasn't finished.
"We're not here to lounge about in our fancies, Angela! We have responsibilities and obligations, and we can't uphold them if we're not on the same page!"
Oh well...she'd faced sleepless nights before, she could bunker down and face one again. And when she did at last get to her neat, lonely bed, she would be eternally grateful that she was no miracle worker or any kind of angel, just a medical officer, and most of all, that it wasn't a bad thing.
Now she just needed a coffee maker in her office.