The news comes late in the evening.
Reyes is the last to hear—a fact that annoys him more than he can put into words because how the fuck is he supposed to get anything done around here if no one fucking tells him anything?—and storms to the place where he knows he'll find answers.
"Where is she?" he asks roughly, shoving the doors to the infirmary open and sweeping his gaze around the room, unsurprised to find no sign of a particular Swiss doctor.
Jack stands off to the side, wiping down a stainless steel tray full of equipment. Reyes' narrows his eyes. Angela never lets anyone touch her equipment. And she never leaves things just lying around unless she feels she's urgently needed elsewhere.
"Gone," is Jack's causal reply, as if that wasn't abundantly clear. He flicks his gaze up. "Her hospital—"
"I know about her fucking hospital, Jack, okay?" Reyes interjects with a scowl. He may have been the last person on the goddamn base to know, but whatever. Details.
They stare at each other for a moment—both waiting for explanations. Reyes cracks first. He always does, where she's concerned.
"You let her go?"
Jack stills his movements, eyebrows raised. "You didn't see her, Gabe. You'd have let her go too."
Reyes shoots his friend an irritated look, lip curling slightly at the remark. Indignation swirls up in his chest—bull-fucking-shit he'd have let her go—but he forces it all down.
"Whatever," he spits, one hand falling down to rest heavily on his sidearm. It's a nervous habit he can't shake. "Everyone else stays here, okay? And I don't care what the fuck they say. No one leaves this base until I get back."
Jack just stares back evenly at him. Reyes knows he's going to agree—because he's Jack fucking Morrison and he follows every order he's ever been given and he's not the one of the two of them who was once jailed for insubordination—but it's the kind of agreement that rankles Reyes in a way he can't quite name.
"Of course," Jack replies easily. "Commander."
There's not even a trace of malice in the other man's words. For some reason, that bothers Reyes too.
The silence bleeds on, and Jack lifts an eyebrow.
"Did you…want me to come?" he asks hesitantly, and the words taste so wrong because Gabriel Reyes doesn't prioritize himself nearly enough to request backup, but Jack doesn't seem to know what else to say.
"No," Reyes snaps in a voice that is harsher than strictly needed because he is harsher than strictly needed and why the fuck did you let her go, Jack?
Jack just shrugs. "I don't know why you're so worried. You of all people know she can handle herself."
"Everyone in Overwatch can handle themselves," Reyes retorts sharply, turning to stride out of the room. "But I still go to funerals every week."
He hears Jack sigh behind him. "Gabe. I didn't mean—"
He slams the door to the infirmary shut, dully cheered that Angela isn't around to scold him for storming off instead of sorting out differences.
The door is quietly opened and Reyes rolls his eyes as he hears Jack pursue him.
"Don't you have an infirmary to clean?" Crass and callous and cutting. Quintessential Gabriel Reyes.
"Don't be like this, Gabe. You're only going to upset her more." Honest and open and steady. Quintessential John Morrison.
Reyes turns to face him. It's either that or deal with the other man relentlessly following him around, spouting off perfectly sensible responses.
"They found a package on the helipad and that motherfucker openly threatened—"
"I know, Gabe, I know," Jack insists. "He said he was going to bomb her hospital—said he was going to shoot it up. But he's in custody, he was transferred to our base, and it's up to her to decide how she wants to handle the situation."
Reyes throws him a dark look. "Yeah? Well if she's calling the shots, why the fuck am I even here? Why not just name her Commander?" Because, apparently, even in the most serious of situations he just cannot stop being an insensitive asshole.
Jack crosses his arms, the action making the Overwatch logo on his sleeve shift. Reyes eyes it with distaste. Talk about wearing your fucking heart on your sleeve.
"If you think you can tell Angela Ziegler how to respond to an attack on her hospital, be my guest," he remarks, just a whisper of rebuke in his tone. The closest Jack can get to condescending. "I'll start planning your funeral."
Reyes ignores him and turns to stride away. He does that a lot.
-0-
She's not wearing her Valkyrie suit, and that somehow makes her more intimidating.
"I don't know why you are here," she tells him lowly, treating him to a dark look as he walks up.
"Jack sent me," Reyes mutters, folding his arms. "Said he was worried about you."
She arches a single eyebrow that tells him quite clearly where she thinks he can shove that lie, and turns her back on him.
"I'd prefer to be alone."
"I'd prefer you not be," he responds. "Oh wait, I'm the Commander. I order you not be."
She rolls her eyes—he can't actually see her do it, but he knows her well enough—and she places a hand on the doorknob that will lead them to the holding cell.
"You don't have to do this, Doc," he tells her lowly. "Really. There's no need. Let me take care of it." He shrugs his shoulders. "I'm pretty good at scaring people shitless. Kinda my thing."
Angela turns to look at him over her shoulder with an expression that could have been carved from stone.
"And what makes you think I cannot do the same?" she asks him lowly.
Reyes blinks—stunned—but she's already stepped into the room.
Inside is a simple setup. Reyes wanted to throw him into a cell (well first Reyes wanted to kill him but he'd been ignored) but Jack insisted for a lighter penance.
Angela seems to glide into the room, her gait elegant and airy. Reyes stands at the door, watching.
"Mr. Parker," she greets the man. "I am Dr. Angela Ziegler. I am the medical director of the hospital you threatened yesterday afternoon."
The man—a skinny beanpole of a human, more boy than man—stares back at her. His hands are cuffed before him, but as Reyes trails in after her, he spies at least five other items in the room that could be made into weapons. His hand drops to his sidearm as he watches Angela carefully.
"I am not going to ask you if you have anything to say for yourself, Mr. Parker," she continues. "Because I do not care what you have to say for yourself."
His eyes are like shards of sea glass—a pale and washed-out green. He tracks the doctor as she approaches him.
"I'm truly not even going to ask for your take on the issue, because the fact is that people think you were going to attack my hospital. And that is quite enough for me."
Parker shifts, uneasiness flickering across his face. In the back of the room, Reyes hasn't taken his eyes off of Angela.
"I am a doctor, Mr. Parker," she tells him. Reyes is both deeply unnerved and slightly awed by the careful cadence of her voice—a delicate blend of silver and steel that promises nothing but fierce retribution if provoked. "I heal people. I make them better. It has been said that I am a miracle worker."
She takes another step, impossibly close now. Reyes wants to catch her arm and pull her back—wants to put himself between them and guarantee her safety. But he can't move. He's absolutely rooted to the spot, staring at this woman and dully realizing that he—the soldier, the Commander, the only one with a fucking gun—might not be the most dangerous person in the room right now, and Angela isn't the one at risk of getting hurt.
"But with the ability to preform miracles comes a very personal knowledge on how to do the very opposite." Reyes is used to fiery anger and hot tempers. Angela's chilly, icy wrath is something he has never encountered before. Her voice is soft and sheer cold. He stares at her as she glares up Parker.
"You see, Mr. Parker. When you know how to make people happy, you invariably learn how to make them unhappy." She shifts her weight in an action Reyes instantly recognizes—it's the same move she pulls when they argue. A subtle stint that—had she been wearing her Valkyrie suit—would have kicked her wings out in what is undeniably a power play.
"I've made lots of people happy. Thousands, in fact. So when I tell you I know how to hurt people, you need to understand that I do not mean a broken jaw or a simple wound."
Reyes is reminded of the old legends of his home—his cousins whispering ghost stories to him late at night about a woman who granted her wards safe passage and good health. A woman who personified death. "Señora de las Sombras," they'd tell him, their grinning faces hidden in the dark so all he could see was shadows. "Santa Muerte."
Holy Death. He stares at Mercy—a wariness he's not used to creeping up his chest.
"I can destroy you, Mr. Parker. Utterly. I am a doctor—I know how to make people beg for death."
Her eyes are dark and dull—none of the shining, sparkling sapphires Reyes' has come to expect. Her expression is drawn and set in a way he's never seen before. This isn't anger—anger is a gross simplification of whatever bitter, savage, tempestuous thing has gripped her in this moment.
He doesn't have a name for this kind of thing. He doesn't think it's the kind of thing you do name. It's the kind of thing you run from.
"You do not scare me, Mr. Parker," she continues. Her voice is soft and unkind—a rose with a particularly sharp set of thorns. A smile with a bit too many teeth. "But I am very certain that I scare you."
Parker shrinks from her. Reyes does not blame him.
She takes a step back then, but it really only reminds Reyes of a boxer pulling back, winding up, preparing to deliver the real punch.
"If you have any love for yourself, you will never come near my patients, my staff, or my hospital," she tells him coldly. "I'd personally suggest never entering Switzerland again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
Parker bobs his head. She offers him a tight-lipped smile.
"Good. Because I have friends, Mr. Parker. Lots of them. And I am not above calling them out on every favor they owe me to dispose of you. Because the staff you threatened at my hospital are not the only coworkers I have, do you understand?"
She leans forward, and her ID badge flashes in the light—Overwatch's logo standing out starkly below her name: Angela Ziegler. Call Sign: Mercy. Support Unit.
The moment hangs there—Angela Ziegler, Overwatch's angel, the saint from Switzerland—standing over a man who had crossed her, armed not with threats, but a promise of vengeance.
"Bedenke, dass du sterben musst," she murmurs.
Then she's gone. Pulling away to stride from the room, not a hair out of place. Her white coat snaps as she moves, and Reyes treats the man to one more dark glance before following her out.
Once they're alone, Reyes wastes no time. "What the fuck what that?"
She treats him to a dark look not unlike the one he just gave Parker. "What was what?" she counters harshly.
He flings a hand back at the door to the cell. "That!" he nearly shouts. "Fucking Christ, Angela, did you hear yourself—?"
"What do you want me to say?" Angela flings at him. "I'm sorry? He didn't deserve it? I was too hard on him?" She scoffs—the ugliest sound Reyes has ever heard the elegant doctor make.
He gives her a flat look. "Don't be stupid."
She scowls back at him. "Do not ask questions you know the answers to!"
"Doc…" he trails off. "How…when did you…your fucking voice I mean—"
"If his attack had gone through, he would have struck fear into the hearts of my patients and my staff," she cuts him off deftly, eyes hard, voice harder. "My hospital is linked to me, and I am linked to Overwatch. If I stumble, Overwatch stumbles. The fear spreads. Soon, people don't want our help, and we're turned away when we're needed most."
Reyes blows out a frustrated breath. "Angela, you can't hold yourself accountable—"
"I cannot fix fear, Gabriel." Her words are fierce and broken and fall from her lips with anguish. He just stares at her, stunned into silence. "Fear is not a disease or an illness. It doesn't break bones, it beaks people's wills and I cannot fix that."
Her chest heaves as she draws in a shaky, unsteady breath. Reyes speaks broken bits of at least seven different languages and can't for the life of him piece together a single sentence.
"Ange…" The nickname is unwarranted—it slips off his tongue before his teeth can bite it back.
"I am not a sure short," she tells him lowly. The heat of her eyes could smelt iron. "I am not a soldier. I don't draw up strategies, and I honestly only understand half of what you say in mission briefings. But I have seen enough of war to know that fear claims more victims than any bullet."
Reyes drops his gaze on instinct, drawn to a spot on her lower back where he knows a bullet wound rests.
"The only way to beat fear is with fear," she goes on. Her voice is a dying fire—smoldering embers and hot coals. Reyes would believe anything she told him in such a voice. "You cannot be better than the thing they're afraid of—that's not enough. You have to be able to scare whatever scared them."
"Ange…" he tries again—this time intentional—but nothing comes. He can only stare.
She laughs humorlessly to herself, tucking stray locks of hair behind her ear. "I will always defend my patients, Gabriel," she murmurs. "That is my charge—my honor." She sighs, looking down at her fisted hands. "But how do you help someone who has been made to believe they don't deserve help? How do you heal someone who has been frightened to the point where they don't trust you? Where they don't trust anyone?" She shakes her head. "I can have all the medical knowledge in the world, but it doesn't make a difference if the person who needs it won't accept."
Reyes says nothing. He can't find his voice.
"My job has humbled me—has made me relearn compassion and grace and kindness," she whispers, and Reyes wonders if she's even talking to him anymore. "But it has also taught me how to be cruel and unkind." She turns to leave then, but Reyes catches her elbow. She turns back to look at him and their eyes clash—obsidian and sapphire.
"You're not cruel, Angela," he insists lowly. "You're not. You're a doctor for god's sake."
She considers him for a moment, and the juxtaposition of this woman who stands before him—soft and kind and gentle—with the woman who had stood in the holding cell is jarring.
She's Mercy. With or without the suit.
"Gabriel." He's never understood why she insists on calling him by his full name, but he's never corrected her. "Why do you think we take an oath to never play god?"
She smiles, touches his cheek, and walks away.
So this came from a kind of dark place, in case you couldn't fucking tell.
I've mentioned this briefly on my tumblr, but I get a lot of my Mercy headcanons from my mother, who is a cardiac cath lab nurse (basically she fucks around with people's hearts. pacemakers and stints and open-heart surgery and fun stuff like that) My mom saves people's lives every fuckin day.
And like, not to bring my personal life into my writing life (even though they are so intertwined I don't know how I've kept from writing my autobiography in these author's notes) but my mom's a fuckin badass. She's had a rough fuckin lot in life and she's made the absolute best of it. So when I see people (and boy do I see a lot of them) who categorize Mercy as this frail, breakable, timid lady I wanna bash down their doors because you obviously have no fuckin clue the kind of nerve it takes to work in the medical field.
Mercy is gentle and compassionate. Of course she is. That's indisputable. But to suggest that because she's kind and tender she can't also be strong and tough and gritty and cruel is fucking lunacy. It's laughable. It's absurd. My mother has had to put patients in body bags and then twenty minutes later leave work to go pick up her six year-old daughter from school without missing a fucking beat. And it's not because she doesn't acutely feel the pain of losing a patient. It's because that's the nature of her chosen profession.
So kindly get the fuck out of my face with these "Mercy needs X Character to take care of her" "Mercy can't bear to see sadness" "Mercy needs to be carried off the battlefield because she couldn't handle the kickback of a fucking pistol" (I really read that. Someone wrote that headcanon you guys someone genuinely believes Mercy is too weak to handle the recoil of her puny blaster are you fucking-)
MERCY LITERALLY BROUGHT GABRIEL REYES BACK FROM THE FUCKIN DEAD. YOU GONNA TRY AND TELL ME THAT'S NOT THE MOST BADASS THING YOU'VE EVER HEARD? WOULD YOU FUCK WITH A GIRL WHO COULD BRING PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE?
tl;dr - characters are multifaceted and capable of many emotions and natures. please stop putting mercy in a box to fit a certain trope. I'm not saying mercy can't be nice in your fic I'm just saying please don't make her faint at the sight of blood (another real thing I read) like she's a doctor okay.
deep sigh okay, rant over. Sorry.
If, for some reason, you still wanna read more of my stuff even that shitshow of an author's note (they aren't all like that I promise I just really got riled on this one) you can find me on tumblr under midwestern-duchess and dominodebt.
Have a good day, make good choices, and be safe!
And if you see me wandering around with my face in my phone know that I'm catching Pokemon and please pull me out of the road okay thank you.