It's not until Angela is safely deposited in Milan that she learns the full scope of the disaster her first deployment has turned out to be. Hers, it turns out, was not the sole transport hit. One other was shot down while another managed to crash land with minimal casualties. That the omnics scattered and laid in hiding until an opportune moment to strike the returning planes must've been the plan from the beginning, or at least a part of it - the munitions factory did go up in flames, after all. Regardless, all flights over northern Italy are called off for the time being while the Italian army combs the land. For the moment, Angela finds herself stranded.
Just as well. The entire incident has put a strain on the Milanese hospitals that Angela is all too eager to help alleviate once confirmed whole and hale by a fellow professional. It's not just agents and soldiers who'd been hurt, either, but civilians unlucky enough to have come across the fleeing omnics, as well.
It's a restless, busy night, and she's glad for it. Work has always held a meditative quality for her, and it leaves her mind occupied with something to do besides conjuring images behind her eyelids.
Even so, the thoughts persist:
Could she have done more, back there? Short of an earlier arrival, made impossible by her own fall, bisection, and dismemberment, she's finding it difficult to think of anything. Following the debacle with Mr. Shimada, her PFUSMN variant, is still prohibited for use without the Commander's explicit authorization. For her own nanites, she would've needed a device to reset them on, and strawberry milk to enable the tampering in the first place.
The question, really, isn't what she could have done in the field, but before then. The most obvious and safe option would've been to exchange their hearts for her PFUSMNs. With this measure alone, Angela knows for certain, all but two would've survived for sure, and there would've been hope even for them as her nanites do possess limited capacity for live brain repairs. It would've taken some convincing, but based on Mr. Shimada's and her own (fraudulent, admittedly) example, Angela's sure she could get it past the Commander. At which point it would've been entirely up to them whether they wanted to be so enhanced or not, and in no way her fault. But she never even put the idea forth for anyone to so much as frown upon. They weren't supposed to be in danger.
It chafes to admit, but Mother might've been right. Not about any risk to her, obviously, just- generally about this field duty business.
She could've pushed more for them to sign up for her trials, she supposes. If nothing else, the nanites would've stabilised their brains, thus giving them hope for recovery. Angela may not be aware of the exact timetable of what had happened, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before her fall and arrival on the crash site. It wouldn't even be a proper participation in her experiment - extended resuscitation, really. They might've come out of it somewhat worse for the wear, but alive! She needs to talk the point over with the Commander once she gets back.
Angela has a sinking feeling they're going to have one whether she wants it or not.
The Cowboy seemed accepting enough of her… unorthodox display of bodily capacities, but she's under no illusion the story won't make it back to Morrison. She's fairly certain it'd reached Commander Reyes before she ever made it off that field. Her expedient recovery from the mishap with Mr. Shimada she could easily ascribe to the damage being less than what it'd actually been. An autonomous limb crawling back to her for reattachment, not so much. Her tech just doesn't do that (although it is certainly something on her bucket list, now). Quite frankly, she doesn't know how to proceed. Try and develop the additional function in time for a demonstration? Who knows when such would be demanded. Another, different experiment, maybe? The man wouldn't be thrilled, but it's her body to do with as she pleases, not his.
It could work. Maybe. If not for the naked half of her skull, free of any and all synthetic material that her own technology would've left. Not only would claiming it's her own doing be impossible to reproduce, it would put in question her years-long insistence that synthetics are the only way forward. Even the truth will do similar, just- what a mess.
Then, also, there's the matter of bodies. She might need to rethink her approach towards acquiring them once volunteers turn up. The night had seen the worst casualties Overwatch has suffered in two years, and she didn't even know about most of it until it was all over. What use of a volunteer whose body she gets access to hours after the point it was of any use? They might not have been her subjects anyway, but if any of the corpses she saw at the field hospital were of use, she failed to spot them. The dead don't get a priority evacuation off the battlefield, for obvious reasons. She can't exactly ask someone to risk their life getting a corpse out post-haste for the sake of her research.
God, but she just wants to work in peace. Why does it all have to be so needlessly complicated.
The morning finds Angela in the cafeteria, where the local staff have in their ignorance banished her after mere eight hours of uninterrupted work. Thankfully, they've dealt with all the critical and near to all urgent cases by then, leaving her with little to do but pick at her sandwich as the same ten clips of ruin, wreckage, and smoke play on the TV screen over and over to the running Italian commentary. She tunes it out for the most part. She's seen enough such reels throughout her life to know their ebb and flow without understanding a word of the language. It's only when the scene changes to show the Commander in the HQ conference hall that she perks up, although this, too, quickly passes as the translator tunes out the man's English.
"Ah, there you are."
She doesn't recognise the voice, at first. Too quiet. Too serious. Not at all like the Mr. Reinhardt she knows. The crusader is boisterous, and loud, and flamboyant. Always. And only part of it an act. The loudness at least, she knows now, is largely the hearing loss - all but inevitable after such long and storied service. It feels wrong to hear him like this. Almost as wrong as seeing the ageing crusader in the hospital pyjamas with a number of sutures running across the sharp edges of his jaw and brow.
"Reinhardt!" She jumps upright, her breakfast forgotten. "What happened?"
The giant casts a sidelong glance at the screen, then pulls a chair to sit across her with a strained grunt.
"From what I've heard, similar to you. Though it seems you handled it better."
Angela doesn't wince, if only through a concentrated effort of will. Better. Yeah, maybe. She supposes one could call it that without hearing the full story, which, evidently, he hasn't, and here's to it remaining that way for as long as possible. She's had enough questions about her wellbeing tonight to last her a lifetime.
Still. Better her than anyone else. Had she been on one of the planes that made it through, two more people would've lost their lives tonight. It's a rotten sort of luck - the lottery which decides whose transport is hit and whose remains in the air. For all his might and legend, had Mr. Reinhardt's plane been the one shot down, they would not be speaking right now, or ever again.
An icy grip clutches her heart without warning.
"What about Dad? Is he alright?" The two usually stick together when deployed. If Reinhardt's here, but Dad isn't…
"He's fine." Angela collapses into her seat, suddenly feeling light. "He boarded a different plane. I just spoke with him, actually. He's beside himself with worry. Athena told him what happened but then you went offline."
This time, she does wince. It honestly hasn't even occurred to her until now that Father could well have been on one of the destroyed aircraft. It's so foreign a thought - a world without him. Likewise, she hasn't at all thought to call anyone. She was fine and there was work to be done, lives to be saved. Calling home wasn't so much low on her list of priorities, as excluded from it altogether.
"Right. Do you have a phone?"
He doesn't. Same as her. Though, unlike her, the man simply never took it from Zurich in the first place. Instead, she's led to the terminal he made the call from, then helpfully inserts the correct number once Angela proves herself unable in the absence of her contacts list, before retreating a respectable distance.
It is at once obvious Father hasn't found a wink of sleep throughout the night the moment his visage appears on the screen. It's in the bags forming around his eyes. The drawn skin pulling at his features. Even the way he holds himself, so different from usual as to be immediately apparent.
"Hi, Dad." She waves, trying her best to appear appropriately sheepish.
They don't talk for long, just enough for Angela to get her bearings in regard to what Father knows, and to show him she's doing just fine, working even. And if he's not going to bring the matter of her temporary dismemberment up, be it for Mr. Reinhardt's presence, her own safety, or simple lack of awareness, Angela certainly won't. She also leaves it up to him to inform Mother of everything, or however much he deems necessary. The man has years of experience on her in terms of downplaying the awfulness of battle. More importantly, by the time they meet face to face, Mother will have calmed some. Probably. Hopefully.
When Angela and the other healthy eligibles disembark in Zurich the day after, the woman's embrace is still noticeably tighter than usual, and twice as encompassing for the added presence of Brigitte, with Father standing off to the side with Commander Morrison. They're not alone in such enthusiastic reception, either. Many a family has come to greet their returning members.
Many more will come when the caskets arrive.
"How are you holding up?" Mother leans back, hands lingering on Angela's elbows once Mr. Reinhardt distracts her other daughter away the way he always does.
"Upright?" She tries putting on a smile.
"Angela."
"No, really, I'm fine. I promised I would be." There was never much of any danger posed to her person. It was… decidedly unpleasant and painful, true, but to do her actual harm the omnics would first need to know she's immortal and how to deal with that. Or else field a titan to vaporise her by default, but there was never any danger of hiding one of those in the open plains of Lombardy, so.
"Right, you just got shot down on your very first deployment. No big deal." Mother's voice cracks, even as heat creeps into it. "I hate it when you get hurt."
Well, it's not like she enjoys it either, but as opposed to everyone else, she can actually take it in stride.
"I'm not exactly planning those things, you know?" She wriggles in Mother's hold, silently asking to be let go. "But better me than someone else, don't you think?"
Judging by Mother's sour expression, the woman doesn't share the sentiment, even if she can't disagree with it.
They spend the whole day together as if it were a holiday. It is, she supposes - to give returning field operatives a few days off. Privately, Angela finds it excessive for the occasion, especially as she was looking forward to getting back into her lab and drowning all her thoughts out with the help of a particularly loud album, but if such is the price of mollifying Mother then so be it. Plus, so far as taking her mind off things goes, it's no worse than crunching numbers, if less productive. At least, among the myriad of leisure activities her parents orchestrate, Angela manages to squeeze in a much-needed emergency visit to her hairdresser in order to make something approaching presentable of her again. Apparently, undercuts are in style.
Half a day later, home at last, Angela finds sleep elusive, and only partially because of her sister's presence in her single-sized bed; the girl absolutely insisted on staying the night with her, and she's never been much good at denying Brigitte. Disregarding the fact she's never slept well with another in near vicinity, even had her sibling been absent, it's unlikely she'd have found much rest on her own. Three days later, and still her mind won't leave Lombardy given a moment to spare.
As Father has duly informed her, she'll be taking part in the ceremony when the bodies arrive - and there will be a whole ceremony, she's told. Military honours and everything. The death of four her teammates has left her the acting officer along with the obligations of one. She wasn't planning on attending beforehand, never having a chance to get to know her field team better, but that is not an option now.
Only, she's never been to a graveyard before, never mind a funeral. Hell, she hasn't even visited the Zurich monument. For all three to so suddenly happen at once is more than a little overwhelming. Which is her own fault, admittedly, not that it lessens the feeling any.
For years now she's meant to go. Ever since university, actually, and yet she never did. Not for the lack of time, or any other good reason. It's just that whenever the thought surfaced in her mind, she would ultimately put the trip off. Again and again. It's not like she knows which, if any, among the hundreds of the mass graves contains her parents' remains. Years had passed before Zurich was retaken; few bodies remained that could be identified, and even then, the sheer volume was far too much to deal with in the war's aftermath, with matters further complicated by the thousands unaccounted for.
Before she knew it, years have passed, and simply just… going - began feeling wrong. So she didn't. For it to finally happen for the first time at somebody else's funeral?
Careful as she's able, Angela slips out from under the covers so as to not disturb her sleeping sister, then changes out of her pyjamas and into her day clothes. Yet for all her attempts at quiet, she hasn't even put her jacket on when she's startled by Brigitte's voice.
"Are you going out?"
She jumps a little, unused to any such interruption here of all places.
"Yeah, uh- I couldn't sleep. I thought I would stretch my legs a bit."
"It's the middle of the night."
She gives the girl a shrug. "You know I don't get tired like normal people do."
Neither she nor their parents ever did explain to the younger girl the full extent of Angela's unique bodily properties. Certainly not the process through which she acquired them. They had to give some ground, there was never a way around it - Brigitte knows well all the myriad of scars littering her sister's body. In a way of true explanation, the promise to tell her everything once she grows up has held so far, as has her sister's oath of secrecy.
"Can I go with you?"
On instinct, she's about to say no. She never took her parents up on their offers to go with her until they stopped offering. But, mouth half-open, Angela finds the words stuck in her throat.
"Okay," she relents at length. "But we're going a bit out of town, I don't want to hear you complaining. And don't tell our parents, alright? You should be sleeping."
"So should you." Brigitte crosses her arms with a pout.
"Yeah, but I'm an adult."
Theirs isn't a particularly long walk. Zurich was never any great metropolis even before the war, and for all its international importance, the city remains a fraction of what it once was. A prosperous, shining sliver composed in no small part of the many nations of the world whose work in the UN has drawn their representatives here, such as herself. Most of the rest has been settled by refugees from other parts of the country who were promised a new home after losing their old ones, and far too few repatriates. Barely over one hundred fifty thousand, all told, making for a much more compact city than the one in her earliest memories. One can now easily get from one end of it to another in an hour on foot.
Well. Angela can, with her tireless pace. Having to account for her little sister slows the pair down significantly.
"What is this place?" Brigitte asks once they pass the tenth of the plaque-adorned stone slabs interspersed along the inclined road.
"You'll see. Come on." Angela tugs at her sister's hand.
It's a while longer walk up the well-lit slope, and dozens and dozens more samesuch stone markers passed on the snaking way, before, hand-in-hand, they finally arrive at their destination - a simple, white obelisk towering in the centre of a circular plaza carved into the slope, half-surrounded by a colonnade, the other half open and facing the city in the distance. The view is spectacular, and she imagines equally as beautiful during the day.
Fresh flowers lay at the foot of the monument. A field of them. Nowhere near as many as in the photos taken on the annual memorial service, but hundreds of bouquets still. She doesn't look, but can tell the moment Brigitte connects the dots from the tightening grip of her hand.
"What's it say?" The younger girl breaks the silence.
For the first time in her life, Angela reads the words carved into the stone.
"The people of Switzerland dedicate this memorial to the fallen in the Siege of Zurich. May they never be forgotten, and the crime never forgiven." She dutifully translates.
Forgotten. As if any of them could ever forget. With years' passing she's come to think of her old parents less and less, true. Such is only natural. But forget? How could she ever forget? How could anyone who lived through the war? Memorials such as this dot the breadth of the world, if not for the cities then for their fallen who died so that what happened to Zurich and its people wouldn't happen to their own. Rare is the family who's not lost anyone in the war, and for each the day is different but they all have one on which they couldn't forget if they tried. Birthdays for most. Mother's and Father's days for herself.
No. They won't ever forget.
But, she supposes, such monuments are not solely for the likes of her, but also, perhaps chiefly even, for those who never experienced the war and the billions more yet unborn. It's the best form of immortality humanity could hope to aspire to throughout its history - the memory of the long-dead being passed into the future.
The best until she came around.
"Do you- um… want to- talk about it?" Brigitte shuffles nervously at her side.
Angela considers. What is there to talk about? She remembers so little about Mom and Dad. Their names and faces feel like those of strangers; the former she only learned in the orphanage from the registry, the latter she still remembers solely thanks to the few photos Mother and Father have kept of their friends. In fact, she can count the clear memories of them that remain with her on one hand, the vague ones; memories of memories, impressions really, on two. She's had her new family for longer than her old one. When she thinks about her parents she thinks of Mother and Father, not-
"No." She chokes out on her second try. "Let's go home."
Neither sister speaks a single word the entire way back, for which Angela is grateful. The lump in her throat only eases some halfway there, and even so, it feels a word away from clogging up again.
"Are you okay?" Brigitte joins her on the bed she doesn't remember sitting down on.
"Fine." All things considered. "I think I'd like to get drunk."
"Uh…"
"Don't worry, I'm not going to." She tries for a smile. "I can't, actually. Did I ever tell you?"
"I- don't think so, no." Her sister's eyes are wide, filled with confusion at the sudden pivot.
Aged twelve, Angela thinks it's high time for Brigitte to do away with all the secrecy around the circumstances of her health, but that's not her decision alone to make. Still, another bit to add to the pile won't hurt.
"I tried to in my first week of university. You were two, back then. We had this party and I got a couple of beers in. Nothing. I was this tall, three beers should've knocked me on my ass."
"You went to a party?"
That's what she got from all that?
"I can go to parties just fine, thank you, and I have invitations to prove it." On paper, even. "I just choose not to."
"Yeah, Dad gets them, too. Your job doesn't count."
Nonsense. Of course it does. Bless her sister's entire twelve years of life experience telling her otherwise. She'd like to see the smartass do better after entering the workforce.
"Anyway, don't worry about me. I just survived falling from a plane with no parachute the other day, I'll be fine."
"Wait, you fell out of a plane?"
"What. Dad didn't tell you?"
"No? He just said you were shot down and didn't elaborate, so I just assumed?"
Oh. She never knew Father had such talent for understatement.
Well then:
"Don't… tell Mom?"
