Reacquainting

If Angela Ziegler could use a single word to describe the rate things had been going at since the RECALL initiative had been activated "busy" would almost certainly take the win in her rich vocabulary. As it happens she had been busying herself with a particularly fussy patient, one who had been ever eager to leave the care of her clinic since they first arrived. Speaking of which.

"Miss Oxton... Lena. Just where is it you think you're going." Agitation, though minor, caused a lilt in the Swiss doctor's accent to make itself better-known. Despite her time speaking English having spanned over two decades of practice not even the great Doctor Ziegler was immune to such things when she edged on emotional.

"It was just a scratch, really, why I'm feeling better already can't imagine there's a need to keep going. It's a right terrible bother it is." Antsy and far less accustomed to sitting in one place for long Tracer attempts to once more dart passed the steadfast physician. It's met with said doctor's body blocking the only escape from her clinic.

"Doctor's orders now I don't want to repeat myself when it comes to ensuring my patients' safety." An immovable object if there ever was one, Lena could only breath out a sigh in defeat. Just about to concede she's stricken silent by something, or more precisely someone in particular.

As it is at this time that a sound fills the halls of the Watchpoint. One that certainly has not graced it for the better part of a decade as the 'jingle-jangle' of spurs echoes off metal walls. A wafting scent of gunsmoke and tobacco follows as a flash of red and yellow falls into view right behind the doctor's back. Lips set into a lazy smile as tanned digits pluck at the brim of a worn hat.

Just as quickly as it is tipped so do the same digits tap beneath it to push it right back into place as honey brown eyes stare down at the two there. "Evenin' ladies, ain't interruptin' anything now am I?" A matured face both familiar and entirely foreign greets them as the words spill from his lips.

Of the aforementioned ladies one is currently in a state of pure exuberant surprise as she almost cheers at another of the old guard's return, already shooting her mouth off about how good it is to see him. The other is silent in her own state of shock. Memories and emotions flood to the surface only to wind up quelled and suppressed as she keeps up her air of professionalism.

"Did you just get here? Who else knows? Of course they all need to know, you sit here and keep the doc busy I'll be back in a jiffy!" Before Angela could even bring herself out of her own state of surprise and follow what it had been that Lena was stating the girl was gone and she likely wouldn't be returning as quickly as she claimed.

An uncomfortable silence fills the space between them both once the speedster had fled. It lasts almost an eternity as neither quite looks the other in the eyes. One never quite regarding the other fully before she makes the first move, her words filling the vacuum between them both. "McCree, just what are you doing here?"

She can see it in his features, weathered and rough as they may have gotten he seemed to have winced with the way she addressed him. Colder than she had been speaking with Lena moments prior and a far cry from how she had spoken to him when he decided to run. "Well, I was told I needed to see a lady about an updated physical evaluation. See if I ain't just fit as a fiddle an' mission ready when they need me here."

"I see. I suppose that is for the best, come in then and please remove your hat and anything else that will get in the way of the procedure." Her door is shut behind him and she moves to gather up what she'll need to conduct the tests. Never once batting an eye at him her tone even and far from playful. If he was hoping to pick things up where they had left off on that night he had another thing coming.

He's topless when she finishes gathering what she needs. Always a fast worker in this regard she can see he's even flexing a bit with how his posture is maintained. Still trying to impress at this point? The man in as incorrigible as ever and she can't quite help to let the barest ghost of a smile grace the corners of her lips though she finally pays attention to the state his body is in and her mood sours.

"You look as though you've been cobbled back together from other men with all these cuts and stitches, McCree." Again using a more impersonal method of speaking to him even when showing a mild sense of worry in his condition.

"Take it that it won't much make things better if I tell you that you ought to see the other fella?" A quirk of a brow and that lazy grin does shift into something more wry as he asks it. The look on her face makes it falter and he breaks eye contact immediately. "Yeah I thought as much…" Her stance on violence the same as ever and as an unsanctioned rogue element to find out he had been getting into trouble did little to uplift her spirits.

As her eyes continued to dart across the myriad of former bullet wounds and the remnants of what were likely deep gashes across forearms and his abdomen her eyes fall to rest on the unsightly section of metal affixed to his elbow. Taking up the space his left arm ought to be in. "What happened here?" Her accent slips into the way she says it, her jaw setting as it doesn't seem to be a gauntlet slipped over skin. Scarring running over the skin and just above where the brachialis connects with the antebrachium.

Her hand almost reaches out to touch the spot, prove her suspicions right though she can't bring herself to do so. She hesitates and if he notices he doesn't act on it. Rather he raises his arm up, flexing metal digits as his attention moves to the limb. "Suppose it'd wind up comin' up sooner or later. Lost it sometime after I'd left, job gone bad an' I wasn't quite able to save the limb, sorry to say." The laugh that he exhales rings a bitter chord while his attention is on the prosthesis.

Angela all the while watches the object with disdain. Ugly jealousy festers in her chest, just beneath the heart. He had gone to someone else to fix him. It had been the first thing to come to mind with something such as this, he sought out aid from another when she had been fully capable of building a sturdier replacement if not saving the limb in its entirety. Her teeth sink into the flesh of her bottom lip as if to quell the caustic feelings that continued to run rampant inside. Her facade teetering on the edge of crumbling as this continued to go on.

"No doubt due to your own recklessness, if you had been more careful perhaps you wouldn't have found yourself in such an unfavorable situation in the first place."

"Makin' it sound like I'm lookin' for trouble now." Looking at her once again he was quick to retort this time.

"Only because you have this incredible talent of winding up in the mess of things." He was certainly trying her patience now wasn't he? Mouthing off like this so easily, so casually? Acting as though nothing had happened.

"I'm tellin' you it ain't nothin' too bad. Jus' a scra— "

"Don't you dare say it's nothing but a scratch, Jesse McCree, don't you dare!" She had never intended to raise her voice to the degree she had but it's now far too late to correct herself. The floodgates had broken and all the bottled up emotions she'd kept just poured out. "You have always been like this. Acting as you please, pretending consequence will never reach you when it can and has! I mean look at you, your body is a map of wounds and you've lost your arm."

The exasperation in her tone couples with the sheer frustration of having to deal with this man, with Jesse McCree. It ultimately culminates into her pressing her forehead in against the center of his chest. Fist balled and with its underside affixed to his shoulder as if it will do him harm. The other holds a grip on the unfeeling metal of his left limb, squeezing it as if to find any sort of give it may hold. Anything to connect it to the limb lost rather than keeping it this unfamiliar stiffness she now must acquaint herself with.

She doesn't cry, she's shed far too many tears over the loss of her lover and that of a commanding officer she regarded in some paternal manner all in close proximity to one another. Now she's simply tired, so very tired and he's still able to radiate that similar comforting warmth that he had been able to those years ago. How she loathes and appreciates its proximity at the moment.

As if able to pick up on her feeling towards it his hand, the one that still remained flesh and blood and human, did reach out. Petting against the back of her head in as comforting a manner as he could. "Reckon I ought to start things off with an apology then, for the worryin' among other things."

She chokes out a forced laugh at his words, how easy he makes it sound. "What makes you think I will accept such words so easily?" And yet she remained as close to him as she had been for some time. Head bowed and pressed against his solid frame. The sudden rumble of his chest as a warm and throaty chuckle escaped him disturbed what peace she'd held.

"Seein' as I wasn't chased out by you after showin' my mug 'round here proves that you're at least holdin' out a bit of a soft spot for me here. Ain't that right?" How dare this man try to show confidence in his standing with her after all that.

What's more how dare he be right in that very regard.

"Hmm," the noise she let loose behind closed lips did little to hide her feelings now. "In a manner of speaking, it would have been rude to kick you out when you have just come back home is all."

"That mean I'm actually welcome back home now?" She can practically hear the brow of his quirking as he asks that.

Of course it takes everything she has not to let the smile creep into the tone of her reply. "We shall see about that now won't we?" Pulling away from his chest at that she lets the faintest traces of her smile continue to linger as she stares into that now grizzled face of his.

A face both familiar and entirely foreign to herself.