She leaned against the wall, clutching her abdomen, feeling the blood seep between her fingers. She tried to raise her gun, but it was no use, and it fell to the ground with a clang. Each breath sent daggers of pain across her ribs and chest, so much it made white spots dance on her vision. She reached for her radio, but her fingers were too shaky and she couldn't find the trigger for the distress signal.

She has everyone's vitals, Pharah reassured herself. She'll read mine and come.

And then footsteps approached, loud and confident, and there he was – former agent Gabriel Reyes, now known as the Reaper, clad in back, strolling confidently her way, shotguns in hand. She knew he could be there in an instant if he wanted, yet he seemed to enjoy seeing the life slowly leak from her.

The corners of her vision blackened, her legs wobbled, and she grabbed a pillar to steady herself, leaving red handprints over the chipped wall paint. And then he was there, pressing the barrel of his gun against her cheek, the metal still hot from the shots leaving a burn in her skin. She didn't flinch, didn't move when he moved the weapon to her ribs instead – she'd be a fool to think he'd grant her a quick death – she didn't blink when he laughed, cold and cruel.

Fareeha raised her chin defiantly so that he would know she was not afraid – but when the pain exploded against her side, she couldn't hold back a scream. Her Raptora suit was damaged and battered, but not even intact it could have held the blow of a point-blank shotgun blast. She felt it rip inside her, tearing her organs to shreds. She felt liquid clog her airways – blood, her own blood – just as she slipped in the puddle forming around her feet and fell to the ground.

She coughed, expelled a mouthful of bright crimson. The pain was unspeakable. Reaper knelt to her side, and through his mask she could see his eyes, how they glinted as he watched her wither and die.

Two loud bangs rung through the air, and the man shuddered, eyes widening. She saw him turn, weapons in hand, heard more shots, saw him shake. On the corner of her vision, there she was – her angel of Mercy, unloading her pistol on the enemy until he fell – and then Fareeha saw her lips move, but whichever words were spoken were far beyond her hearing and understanding.

She was so lucky to catch him off guard oh thank you gods thank –

She was dead before she could finish that thought.


Before she could open her eyes, before she could even make a sense of self, there was pain. Pains as if every nerve of her body was being set on fire, and she was suddenly acutely aware of things she had no business knowing – how the nervous impulses traveled down her body, how her blood flowed in her veins, how her organs slowly but surely resumed their functions, how her cells multiplied to make up for the loss – and then her heart started beating and it hurt.

She would have yelled, pure animal instinct, but her lips were not under control – not until suddenly they were, back with every muscle, and only then she remembered she was Fareeha Amari, thirty-two years old, Overwatch captain and up until a few minutes ago, dead. She counted to ten before gathering the strength sit up and greet the world.

"Holy fuck –" she hissed.

"Captain Amari," Mercy greeted. "Glad to have you back. How do you feel?"

Her words were flat-toned and rushed and her face was serious. During any given mission, the two were always the personification of focus – no longer Angela and Fareeha, but a soldier and a field doctor.

"Stable. Ready to move." She pushed herself to her feet with some difficulty, checking the state of her suit. It was a wreck – all of the abdominal and most of the thorax armor were gone, and so was her radio. The thruster, fortunately, still worked – enough to get her out of there.

"Good. We have a distress call from Tracer – estimated extraction time, five minutes, forty three seconds."

A beep on her helmet told her the coordinates had been received, and Pharah rubbed her hands together, her mind buzzing. Her fingers were sticky with sweat. "My comm is offline – initiate fallback in my stead and let's get moving."

"Yes, captain," the blonde agreed, then pressed the button on her own speaker. "Overwatch agents, Captain Amari orders retreat. I repeat: initiate retreat." She let go of the microphone and grabbed her caduceus staff. "Retreat initiated."

Pharah grabbed her gun where she'd dropped it, absently wiping the bloody fingerprints from it, and the two ran outside into open fire, ducking from cover to cover. She saved her thrusters for a critical moment, running to the point marked in her visor instead. They had been expecting the open warfare, that was the very reason Overwatch was there on first place, but the ambush had been a surprise.

Whether Reaper was working on his own or with Talon and whether the two were involved on local conflict, dealing with one side or the other or perhaps even brewing it, was a mystery for Jack and Winston to figure out later. At that moment, however, her job was clear; they wouldn't be able to put an end to the fighting, not with that twist, and she had to get her agents out safely as fast as possible.

The visor beeped, indicating they'd reached their objective. She kicked the thick wooden door that led into a ruined building, but it didn't buckle.

"Extraction time cut down to five seconds, captain," Mercy reported, and the true meaning behind those words didn't escape her.

Tracer's dead.

She kicked it again, with much more urgency, then hit it with her shoulder once, twice. It gave in with a crack.

Four.

She ran in, guns at the ready, her visor telling her that her teammate was three floors up. They skidded to a halt in front of a broken staircase, cursing.

Three.

She wrapped one arm around the doctor's waist and hit the accelerator. Immediately, the two were launched upwards, and she shielded her face with her arm, breaking through the debris. The low fuel light flashed inside her visor.

Two.

They hit the ground running, the glow of the charging caduceus staff illuminating their way, and turned the corner. Tracer was there, on the ground, a bullet hole through her temple all the way down, her jawbone visible through ripped skin and muscle, little bits of brain spread over the ground near the feet of two men –

One.

She shot them. Tra-ta-ta. One bullet through one's neck – blood squirted out in jets painting a grotesque picture on the walls – two bullets through the other's heart – he clutched his chest and stumbled out a gaping hole and went crunch and lord, did he scream – and she closed her eyes and prayed, prayed with all her might that they were on time.

"Helden sterben nicht!"

The room was engulfed in light and for one tense moment she was completely blind. And then she heard coughing and whining and Tracer was up, cursing, hugging herself, nails digging so hard on her own skin it drew blood, and Mercy was holding her head, stroking fresh skin, checking the healing. Pharah had an impulse to run to them and hug them and god are you all right –

No time. She heard rather than saw the missile zip their way and hit the building, shattering half of it to pieces. The structure groaned and the ground started crumbling. She was quick on her feet, dodging below a metal beam to reach her companions. She grabbed Mercy with one hand, Tracer with the other, and dug her heel at the thruster accelerator, the autopilot aiming itself to their escape route.

They half flew, half were thrown out the structure, and she clung to the two so hard her fingers ached. Below them, living hell – guns fired, Molotovs thrown, people wailing so loud the sound reached them god knew how many feet in the air. And then the engines of her Raptora suit coughed and wheezed and the low fuel beeping got more urgent.

You've gotta be fucking kidding me!

Mercy opened her wings to deaccelerate their fall, and even though the Valkyrie was designed to be able to carry the doctor and a patient, the weight of three was far too much and the battle had taken its toll on the equipment. They lost any sort of hope in steering, the ground approaching them at alarming speeds.

It was Tracer who saved them at the very last moment, switching something on her accelerator that seemed to bend the very air around them. Pharah had the bizarre feeling of both stretching and falling in every direction, her stomach turning, and then her feet were on the ground even though the world seemed to spin around her.

"Go, go, go!" she placed a hand on the back of each of her teammates, guiding them, and the three stumbled out through side streets and around corners in a frenzy, until they reached the extraction vehicle and Genji extended a hand, pulling them in and hopping to the driver's seat, and she could finally, finally take a breath. She heard the car's engine roar and the tires sing and grabbed a support beam to steady herself.

"Wait," the soldier yelled over the sounds of war as Tracer pulled the doors to the back of the van shut. "Where's McCree?"

Mercy let herself fall down to the seat with a loud thud, and roughly ripped the metal halo from above her head. "He's not coming."

"What?!" The air was stolen off her lungs. "What do you mean he's not coming –"

"He's gone." The blonde rested her head on her hands. "Dead. I lost him."

On the corner of her eye, she saw Tracer close her eyes and slide to the floor of the car. "You what?!" She raised her voice. She couldn't help herself. "When was that?"

The doctor turned to her, expression emotionless. "At fifteen twenty-six. Eighteen minutes ago."

She gritted her teeth, her head pounding. "And you didn't fucking think to tell me? Given that I was lacking a goddamn communicator and I'm the fucking Captain of this mission –"

She saw the woman slightly change in posture, eyes flashing. "Pardon me, Captain Amari, it might have slipped my mind to inform you – perhaps because, you may be surprised to find out, the resurrection window lasts about five seconds, and at the moment of his asystole you were dead."

The words were like a punch to her face, and she felt nauseous again. Letting go of the beam, she sat down, feeling as if something was stuck on her throat. In an outburst, she hit the side of the van with a fist. Mercy didn't blink. "You should have told me. We could have attempted a rescue –"

"Do you mean before or after I resurrected Tracer and we were thrown off an exploding building?" the doctor hissed, then ripped of her gloves and her bracers and threw them hard on the floor. "Overwatch was shut down for a reason. Perhaps it's best it stayed that way. I can only hope that someday you'll understand that fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity."

Pharah had faced death that very day, and yet she found right then that she couldn't meet those blue eyes.


It would be a lie if she said she hadn't planned to get completely wasted that night. What she did not plan yet should have expected was that she'd end up knocking on the doctor's door at two in the morning, completely out of her mind with regret and grief and a bundle of other feelings. She wasn't surprised to find Angela awake at her quarters, and she wasn't surprised at the face she got when the other opened the door, either – though it still hurt anyway.

"Captain Amari," the tone was cold and formal. "Unless we're on emergency call, I find your disturbance deeply unprofessional."

"Fuck that," she snapped, pushing her way in, ignoring the flash of anger on the doctor's eyes. "I need answers."

The blonde didn't follow her in, standing at the door instead, arms crossed. "Very well."

Fareeha had planned on doing this in a much more dignified way, but the moment she opened her mouth, her voice broke and she felt tears run down her cheeks. She sat down on the other's bed, because standing was suddenly way too demanding. "You had to choose."

Angela looked away, giving her back to the Egyptian. "Yes."

"And you chose me." She paused, waiting for an answer. She got none. "Why? Jesse was your friend. You knew him from – from before."

A long moment of silence. "It doesn't matter," the doctor finally spoke. "My feelings on the matter are hardly important. You were the captain. You were in charge of the mission. You were priority."

Fareeha hid her face in her hands, scoffing. "That's it? Because I was the captain?" she dug her fingers on her scalp. "Because of – of words in a paper, I got to live and he didn't?"

"Because of words in that paper, those people are killing and getting killed," Angela retorted, emotionless. "It's naïve to think it would be any different with us."

The Egyptian hugged herself, immobilized by heartache and the other's indifference, staying quiet and still for many minutes. Angela didn't move either.

"You were against the mission," she began.

"Yes."

"You didn't want to be there."

"No."

"I'd be dead if you weren't." She closed her eyes, which conjured an image of a burning shotgun barrel against her cheek. The scars on her body were gone, but the ones on her mind remained. She shuddered, fluttering them open. "I'd be dead. And Tracer… we all would."

"Probably."

Talk to me, she wanted to scream. "Do you blame me for it?" she asked instead.

"Looking for blame is a pointless exercise," Angela deflected.

"But do you?" she insisted.

A pause. "A little, yes."

She didn't think she could hurt more at this point. She was wrong. She shut her eyes again, letting the tears run free, trying to elaborate the thoughts in the back of her mind that needed to be let out. "You know, the worst of it is – is that part of me is glad. Glad, you know? That it wasn't me. That I lived to see another day."

She felt hands touch her shoulder, felt the bed move when Angela sat next to her, and then she was pulled into an embrace and the two fell on their backs together, and she buried her face on the doctor's shoulder and let her body shake with sobs, until the soothing hum and the steady caress on her nape calmed her down. She looked up to see a slow trickle of tears running down the blonde's cheek, and it made her chest tighten, raising a question –

Who takes care of the caretakers?

She switched places then, hugging her, and her arms were large enough to envelop the whole of the other's smaller frame. Angela didn't protest, and Fareeha pressed her stomach on the woman's back, and her cheek against the doctor's neck, taking comfort on their shared warmth. The proximity made her flush, but Angela wasn't looking and right then, it didn't much matter.

Eventually, their breathing slowed down. Eventually, she felt her consciousness begin to slip.

"I'm sorry," Angela whispered, making the Egyptian stir.

"I'm sorry, too," she replied, feeling a weight lift off her chest.

"I don't regret it," the blonde suddenly blurted, then rolled over to face her. Fareeha was too dazed to react to the movement or to process the statement, but she still felt her cheeks respond with a burn when Angela touched them with her index and middle fingers. "I'm glad you lived, too."


The Queen Baby - Thank you for your review! It's a matter of time before Pharah's patience runs out, hahah