The first hour went past like it was the first year.
Angela wasn't wearing a watch nor was there a clock in physical view, but she kept a reasonable sense of time as each second moved by like molasses. The hope was that it would keep her focused on the task at hand, but sitting motionless on the floor for hours on end, watching Fio in the throes of trauma and trying not to be overwhelmed by her own empathy, took the choice out of her hands.
How, she kept asking herself as time inched onward. Why?
Over the course of a twenty-plus year career, the doctor and seasoned battle medic had seen people take the worst cracks she could conceive. Memories of grief counselling for children orphaned by Omnic extremists, aiding maimed and bitter Crisis veterans, people and Omnics that she'd treated for post-traumatic stress after Overwatch had rescued them, and even for her former colleagues themselves. She'd lost track of just how many broken bones she'd healed, how many fractured minds and hearts she'd soothed, how many times she'd seen and heard the effects of terrible people doing terrible things. She'd even lost track of how many times she'd seen people like Fio utterly broken, though thinking about it never failed to play her heartstrings like a violin.
Before the pilot's retirement, Angela remembered, she'd been one of the bright points in an otherwise dark era for the organization, equal parts a consummate professional, quick-witted smartass, and a warm-hearted joker. When Blackwatch's best pilot wasn't pulling Genji and McCree out of tight spots in covert missions gone awry, she was comparing notes with Tracer over the most recent refits to the dropships, or sharing a laugh with Brigitte at Reinhardt's expense over a sticky prank, or light-heartedly schooling the entire team at pool on game night until Torbjorn, ever the sore loser, snapped his cue stick over his knee and stormed off in a huff to the workshop. It had even been on one of those Thursdays, the first one after Venice, when she'd announced her intention to retire and marry the lawyer from Chicago she'd been dating for the past couple years.
The memories of those days came back even clearer. Even in the middle of the nuclear fallout from the unauthorized mission to King's Row, when the team had been more divided and derided than ever, Fio's marriage had been an oasis, an easy period in the most trying of times. The entire team was at the ceremony: Angela was a bridesmaid, Jack gave a speech at the reception...
The doctor had even caught the bouquet...
She sunk her head into her hand, rubbing her temples vigorously. Even if she'd seen people fall so far, nothing before today had ever made her feel physically sick, or divided her emotions in such a murky way. Worst of all was that the more she struggled to put it out of her head, the deeper they dug their roots in until there was no option left but to address them.
How, she asked again. Why?
When the second hour came, Fio's sobs grew gentler, if only because her voice itself had turned to gravel and cursed her with a hacking cough whenever she was short of breath. Hoping to begin making progress again, Angela crawled over at a pace that would make the passage of time seem swift, pausing frequently to make absolutely certain her every move was telegraphed. The pilot's squirms and whimpers got neither worse nor better as she approached, but in a scenario such as this Angela knew that was the sort of improvement to expect.
Another hour passed where she lay on her stomach right next to Fio, then another hour spent at eye level, and another hour still getting her accustomed to a gentle touch on the shoulder. Eventually, like a stone in a field being worn down, inoffensive persistence and overtly pacific intentions allowed for the blanket to be draped over Fio's shoulders with no protest, and Angela counted it as a major win when the attempt to slide the pointy end of the IV drip into the protruded vein of a bony arm was not shut down by terror-stricken shrieks and violent thrashing. The untainted solution within that had saved countless civilian and Overwatch lives flowed freely down the plastic tube and into her bloodstream, where its peerless powers of healing could take effect.
If the past several hours had passed sluggishly, then what happened next came at the speed of a rocket. Barely ten minutes, by Angela's own estimate, had passed when the grotesque fractures began to realign into their proper places, clumps of necrotic tissue peeled off the stump of her ear and fell to the floor, and placid lucidity returned to her bloodshot gaze.
The pilot's face contorted with confusion as she looked around with purpose for the first time. "W-where... where am I?" she asked, barely audible.
The issue of how to respond wasn't one that Angela struggled with. "You're in a very bad place," she replied. "but I want to help you get out."
"How did I get here?"
Again she didn't struggle with how to respond, but she couldn't bring herself to look Fio in the eye for it. "I don't know."
Slowly, the recovering pilot raised a finger and pointed it directly between Angela's eyes. "You-you're... Overwatch."
"Yes, I a - was. I was."
"Like the commander."
"You mean Reyes?"
"Like the... the commander."
In the space of less than a second, Fio's face went ghostly pale and her eyes grew to the size of grapefruits. The quivering lip she'd been speaking through froze stiff, as did the rest of her body save for the finger, which inched its way down until it was limp on the floor with her hand. At the same time Angela's brow furrowed with the lines of personal experience and her scar burned like the touch of heated iron.
Oh no.
"Donald?" she called out. Her voice was ethereal and detached, yet totally invested, as though she were a ghost talking to ghosts. "Donald, come back."
Angela blinked rapidly with uncertainty, but she knew there was only one way forward. "I'm here, honey," she responded, filling in the role of Fio's husband. "I'm here. Is there something wrong?"
"I, don't know. I mean, I don't think so, but I have this... this feeling, like something terrible's happened."
"Maybe I can help. Can you tell me what you're feeling?"
"I, I don't- It's just that I'm... It's hard to explain, it happened so-"
Angela matched the rising fear in Fio's voice with her own soothing tone. "It's okay. Just start at the beginning."
Fio's chest rose and fell with a series of breaths silently prompted by her spouse. Shallow as they were, they seemed to do the trick. "Well, I guess - I mean, first the, the doorbell rang. I opened it and the commander... just stood there. I hadn't seen him in so long, and he wanted to come in."
Angela felt like she was about to be turned inside out, but she convinced herself to stay on course. "Do you mean Commander Reyes?"
Her eyes began scanning over the room, looking at everything and yet nothing all at once as tears welled up. "Are you still there, my love? Come back, don't leave me."
Angela/Donald leaned in to offer a hug, which the recipient took as though it wasn't happening. "I'm here," she reassured. "I'm not going anywhere."
Cracks began to fill in the stutters in Fio's words as she spoke. "It's just that, you answered the door too, and there were fireworks outside and they made you tired so... so you lied down on the floor as the commander came in, and he went - he started to play with them."
Angela's own cracks were beginning to fill as she pulled back from the hug, only they were like pieces of the most disturbing jigsaw puzzle she could think of. "With who?"
The tears welled up again and her voice took on a shaky vibrato. "Donald, please, don't leave. I'll do anything, just come back."
"I'm right beside you," Angela said again, holding her hand gently at first then gradually tighter to reaffirm her words. "Everything will be alright."
Fio's skin went icy to the touch, and Angela could hear her heartbeat grow until it sounded like the thumping beat of one of Lucio's songs. "The commander was playing with the kids," she said through a gulped breath, "wi-with Tina and Jason. He brought them downstairs and, and he held onto them, and he kept asking 'Where is he? Where is he?', but no one knew."
A sixth sense told Angela that the dam was about to burst, and she rolled in her lips and bit down on them to tell herself that nothing was set in stone yet. They were nearly there. "What happened next, honey?"
"He, th-the commander asked them again 'where is he? Where is Reyes-"
Now Angela was on the verge of breaking. Oh no.
"and then, th-then there were more fireworks and... and..." The words crawled out of her mouth like a mouse, but they carried the weight of mile-long train. "Oh my God."
At that moment, the dam erupted and a deluge of tears consumed the women who'd lost everything. "Oh God!" Fio screamed through heavy cries. "He murdered them! Tina and Jason, Jack Morrison murdered our kids!"
Angela leaned in closer than she had all day, embracing Fio as tight as she possibly could in a futile effort not to be swept away in the torrents of sorrow and empathy as the pilot screamed on and on.
"Donald, come back! Stay with me, don't die! Please God, I'm begging you! Leave him, take me! PLEASE!"
Angela didn't keep track of how many hours her and Fio wept together in that little corner of Hell on Earth, but even if that did matter she didn't care. Everything, every repressed memory of an unspeakable atrocity had been laid out in front of her in the hardest therapy session she'd ever conducted, and it had utterly destroyed any sense of professionalism she had left.
But like the time, that didn't matter. Everything that did was either being healed as the tears rained down, or would be soon enough.
Eventually, the comfort of shared emotion embedded itself deep enough into Fio that her wails simmered down to a more quiet despair, one that manifested with a return of Angela's hug that the doctor could feel spread a cathartic warmth deep into their respective cores. Even further down the road, tender love and care proved a fertile ground for fatigue to grow in, allowing the pilot's head to droop down and back, her breathing to even out, and for her to swiftly fall into what her angel knew had to be a sleep of the dead.
Angela, however, had no such urge, not when her internal dialogue was stirring her mind and boiling her blood.
Now do you believe what you saw? Now do you see what Jack has become?
You're in this deep yourself. What are you going to do?
The only thing that can be done.
The decision she made right then and there sat in her stomach like bad oysters, but she frankly liked it that way for now. It was something that she could channel, use to fuel her determination to take the next step. With the care and concern of a mother laying their infant down to rest, she used Fio's embrace to hoist her up and drag her along, still asleep, to the couch before lying the recovering victim of tragedy down and tucking her in with the blanket. For some reason, a little piece of Angela's subconscious demanded she take note that the blanket in question was a hand-stitched afghan.
Whatever that notion was, however, simply had to wait as Angela looked over her shoulder at the door leading to Jack's room. In an instant as her expression hardened, her feelings of sweet, empathetic gentleness were overtaken by the sour, enraged bite of venom on her tastebuds. As she made her way over to the door, another piece of her subconscious pushed in its contribution to her stirring mind.
She shook her head and seethed at the thought: Earlier, she'd been reminded of what she considered the traits of a monster. The ashes of good men, the drive past a point where there was no coming back, the horrible things that they did to innocent people, and who she had branded those traits onto.
The reason why she was about to enter, she knew, was proof that she'd been right. As such, it was time to brand another.