"Yes?" The comm at the door activated.

"Hey, it's Hana. Can I come in?"

"Of course."

Angela looked up from the report she was filling out as Hana entered her room. "Good evening. To what do I owe the visit, is something troubling you?"

Oh, right. "Yeah, I... have a, um... headache?" Reeaal smooth there, she totally bought that.

Angela chuckled at Hana's flusteredness. "You know, you can just come by if you feel like company or whatever, there's no need to come up with excuses. In fact I'd much prefer if you didn't have any complaints."

"Uh, right. Thanks."

"But now that you're here anyways," Angela continued "How is your eye?"

"It's keeps itching." As if on cue Hana had to stop herself from rubbing the patch that was currently hiding her left eye. "But other than that I think it's fine."

"That's good. You actually were really lucky there, you could easily have lost your eye, if not worse."

"Guess so." During a recent mission a minuscule crack in MEKA's windshield had suddenly given way under an explosion and Hana had taken a bunch of shrapnel to the face, "lookin' like a bloody zombie" afterwards, according to Tracer. So she'd done the only logical thing and taken a selfie before going to Angela to get it treated, and admittedly the array of small cuts all over the left side of her face on top of the – surprisingly painless and ultimately harmless – bleeding inside the white of her eye had indeed made for a rather gruesome image.

However the worst of the damage had been a corneal abrasion and a rather nasty sensibility to light, so Hana was stuck wearing an eyepatch for the time being – which she'd promptly decorated with her trademark bunny icon, much to Angela's amusement. The lack of depth perception was occasionally inconvenient, but looking into a mirror Hana had found that the eyepatch paired with the band-aids over her face didn't look half bad, in a way. Just tack on an arm sling, some bandages around her chest and blue hair, and she'd have the perfect cosplay going.

"I'm going to have to at least finish this report." Angela said, returning Hana's attention to the present. "I'll need five minutes, at most, in the meantime feel right at home."

"Sure. Take your time, doc." As Angela returned her attention to whatever form she was filling Hana closed the door behind her, and after a slight pause started wandering around the room. It was funny how it was already starting to feel familiar to her after visiting just a handful of times; well, at least the main room was, Hana had only ever gotten a cursory glance at Angela's bedroom, but there was no real need for that either, the couch sufficed completely.

In fact, the last few days Hana probably had probably gotten back to Angela's offer for company if she had trouble falling asleep more often than not, and a few times she had ended up falling asleep on the couch as well, every time waking up to find herself covered with a blanket, even if she hadn't had one the night before. A small part of her kept nagging this was childish, like a little girl that needed her mommy to sleep, but she ignored it; as Angela had promised, she hadn't told anyone else about this, and it definitely beat lying awake in 'her' bed for hours, staring at that unfamiliar ceiling.

Hana came to a halt in front of set of shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling, holding among other things some decorative stuff, a few board games including a chess set, and a whole bunch of books. Following an impulse, Hana started inspecting the books, maybe there was something interesting in there.

Let's see... As expected, there was a lot of specialized medical literature, both classical and modern from what Hana could tell. The Hippocratic Corpus, Huángdì Nèijīng, Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch, … English, Latin, German... even the ones Hana could actually read would probably be way over her head. But then, so would most of her gaming knowledge or MEKA's technical details for Angela. And if you put the medic into the cockpit, Hana figured odds were she'd end up falling straight on her face in short order, like the protagonist in the first episode of that one anime.

Hana pulled out a large illustrated anatomy atlas, solely out of curiosity, and a piece of paper that had been lodged in between the books fell out, fluttering to the ground. Huh? Hana picked it up to take a look at it.

It was a standard-sized photograph featuring Torbjörn and Angela posing for the camera. The former was wearing a horned viking helmet, but otherwise looked much the same as he did now, including his red cybernetic eye. Angela, while not visibly younger either, was wearing an oversized witch's hat, a short capelet and a red and orange dress of sorts with a very generous cleavage showing off – and emphasizing – her chest quite nicely.

...Not bad. Clearly Angela's normal wardrobe wasn't quite doing her figure justice; neither the Valkyrie suit nor her usual black turtleneck she wore under her labcoat were really letting on Angela was so ...hot.

It took several seconds for Hana to realize she was rather blatantly staring at the photo, though thankfully Angela was still engrossed in her paperwork and didn't notice. Get a grip, Song-Hana. This wasn't quite appropriate, was it now? She put the photo face-down atop the row of books, but after a few moments her curiosity got the better of her and Hana picked it up again before walking up to Angela and placing the photo next to her report. "Say, where's this picture from?"

"Oh?" Angela looked up and inspected the picture. "Where'd you find that?"

"It was stuck in your bookshelf."

"So that's where that ended up, I wonder how it got there of all places." Angela finished the final report with her signature and put it into the tray, then spun around on her chair as she continued. "Anyways. It's from a Halloween party a few years back, during the time of the original Overwatch."

"That's like six years back, right?"

"This particular party was closer to eight, I believe. ...Or was that nine?"

"Nine years? You don't look any older than back then."

"Why, thank you."

Hang on... Hana just noticed something. Eight years ago, and Angela had told her she'd joined Overwatch at 27, that added up to no less than... "Um, Angela, if I may ask, how old are you anyways?"

"How old do you think?" Angela tilted her head with a smile.

"You'd have to be 35 at least, – basic math – but you, well, don't really look the part."

Angela let out a bright laugh "That's sweet of you; I'm 37, actually."

"Seriously? I totally would've bought if you'd said mid-twenties." Going purely by her looks at least. At times Angela's expression and her eyes in particular would have... something about them, that hinted at her age, and the experiences she'd made.

Like right now. But a split second later it was gone again. "Would you." Angela lightly shrugged. "I suppose I just got a lucky predisposition from my parents, and I do take care of my appearance a little bit at least." After a brief pause she continued "Seeing as the photo somehow wound up between my books, now I wonder if that costume is still in its place."

Hm? Hana perked up "You still have it?"

"Well, yes. Even if I normally don't have much time for parties of any sort, there was no reason to throw it away, and it wasn't all that cheap either."

A slightly improper idea was forming in the back of Hana's mind, and before she noticed it had already made its way to her mouth. "How about you put it on for the evening?"

Angela raised an eyebrow "Huh, why?"

"...Why not? I'm sure you're gonna look good in it."

"Are you sure this isn't just a little inappropriate?"

No. "Yes. And if you find that embarrassing or whatever, I can make it up to you with a few pictures of me I could send you."

"And what kind of 'pictures' would that be?" Angela sounded kind of dubious and Hana grinned at her.

"Expecting something indecent?" Angela quickly shook her head, but her slightly flustered expression told Hana she had at least considered the possibility. Funny. "It's some pics from when I was like 7, my mom recently sent me the whole album; she says I'm adorable, I say it's embarrassing. That way you'd have a bargaining chip to make sure I don't tell anyone."

"That's... I don't think something like that will be necessary. But I suppose you're right, there's no harm in trying on the costume for a bit." Angela stood up, stretching her arms and back. "Wait a moment."

Angela went to her bedroom, closing the door after her, and as Hana waited she distracted herself looking for something they could do this evening, and after a few moments had an idea. There was no way Angela had seen this movie. "Athena?"

"Yes?" The AI's computerized voice answered after a brief delay.

"I need you to find a movie for me and send it to Ang- Mercy's tv, please."

"Of course. Can you give me the title or name of the director?"

"It's the 1954 movie Gojira, directed by Ishirou Honda."

"... I uploaded the movie to Doktor Ziegler's room. Is there anything else?"

"No, that's all, thanks, Athena."

"You're welcome. Have a good evening, DVa."

"Yeah, um, you too." Could one really wish an AI a good evening? Well, Hana considered true AI to be people too, so a bit of politeness definitely didn't hurt, but as a being without a physical body or day-night-cycle, was 'evening' specifically even relevant to Athena at all... However before Hana could continue her train of thought even more off the rails, she heard the door to Angela's room open and turned around.

Whoa. Hana's assessment had been very much right, Angela was still pulling off the costume perfectly. The large hat was slightly tilted forward, hiding Angela's eyes and giving off a hint of mysteriousness. The dress was a little frilly and pretty short, showing a lot of leg which Hana was assuming would be complemented by heeled boots and/or stockings, possibly fishnet, in the full costume, but right now Angela was barefoot, which ultimately was fine too.

"So... what do you think?" Angela asked after several seconds of silence and Hana realized she'd been checking her out for way too long and hurried to answer.

"Right. You look" Hot? Sexy? Hana couldn't really say that, could she? Gorgeous? "seriously great. I told you."

"Know what?" She continued a moment later "There totally should be some kind of Halloween party this year too. I already know what costume I'd wear."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I'd have to borrow one of those eyepatches and some other bandages and stuff, though."

"Those are medical supplies, not dress-up accessories. And besides, what would you need things like that for?"

"For a cosplay."

"And as whom?" Hana had half expected Angela to ask for clarification, but it appeared she'd actually gotten the distinction right.

"You wouldn't get the reference. Although... I totally should catch you up on that one at some point, it's still one of the best anime series ever made." And almost eerily similar to her own story with MEKA and the Kaiju Omnic, except less mind-screwy. So far. "But for today I already found another movie we can watch."

Hana took the remote before dropping onto the couch and gesturing Angela to sit down, and after a short deliberation she complied, leaving the costume on. "Lucky this is an old film anyways, with one eye 3D kinda falls flat." Wow, she hadn't even intended to make a stupid pun, but apparently Angela completely missed it, which was probably for the better.

"What movie is it?"

"You'll see. And I'm willing to bet you never watched this one before. So get ready for a piece of movie history."


0.1892, 0.1874, 0.1860, 0.31- Moment mal. Angela blinked a few times to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her or she'd jumped a line. Nope. ...0.4226 ...0.5103 ...then it was back to 0.10-

Next row to the right. 0.1901, 0.1870, 0.18, 0.4, 0.5, 0.3, 0.3, 0.09... The two rows after that weren't painting a better picture either. After two or three values in line with what she'd expect, the absorbance would be way too high for several readings, then drop down to sensible values again.

Oh, verdammt. Angela didn't even have to look at the reference series to the far left to see the concentrations were off by multiple orders of magnitude; the data was useless. There was next to no way the experiment could have gone wrong in a way as to produce such a mess of data, even less so in this particular manner, so most likely she had made a mistake while filling up the microplate and splashed something over some of the wells without even noticing.

Angela dropped her head into her hands. It would have been enough for her concentration to lapse for a mere two seconds to ruin everything. Was für ein Anfängerfehler. She'd have to redo the whole experiment tomorrow.

With a frustrated sigh Angela crumpled the printout of the readings and tossed in the general direction of her bin. Of course she had a whole bunch of other work left she could be doing, but right now she wasn't feeling like it anymore, especially after a look at the clock confirmed it was rather late already.

Instead she turned to her – by now – semi-regular visitor. Hana had stopped showing up almost every night – under however flimsy or valid pretenses –, which probably was a good thing in as much as it meant she was having less trouble sleeping and generally feeling better, but the pilot still visited her often enough to spend the evening before returning to her room – or falling asleep on Angela's couch. Not that Angela minded any of that in the slightest, in fact she'd found she rather enjoyed the younger girl's company and found it oddly refreshing. Sometimes they would watch a movie or show together, chat about whatever, mostly the day's mission, or just each do her own thing, silently keeping each other company.

Like right now. While Angela was frustrating at her messed-up measurements, Hana was sitting on the couch with her laptop, wearing a headset and fully absorbed in a... video, probably. By now Angela had picked up on the amount of rapid clicking – and occasional muttered curse or cheer – that accompanied DVa actually playing; but currently apart from short bouts of typing Hana was just intently following whatever she was watching.

After a brief pause Angela got up and silently approached the couch, looking over Hana's shoulder to see what had her so captivated. It clearly was a video game, or probably a recording of one, seeing as Hana ostensibly wasn't the one doing the playing.

Seeing as she didn't want to distract Hana, Angela tried to make sense of the game herself. Her first impression was that the camera was twitching and jumping a lot, which made the whole thing rather disorienting, but probably that simply was her inexperience with video games in general. Once she'd gotten used to the movements a little, Angela could make out numerous small figures and structures, and lots of red and green markers, probably denoting friend and foe. In a corner of the screen there was a small map with several red and green dots as well as various other symbols that weren't telling her anything.

To the side of the main game there was a small window showing a young man with a headset who appeared to be the one playing the game, and below him were variously colored lines of text and symbols scrolling by. Just now Hana typed something and a moment later her handle appeared at the bottom of the screen

DVa: PaleAsh Grounded right now b/c of injuries :( check the pic I posted a few days ago. Be back to battle as soon as I can ;)

So this was live? Then it wasn't a recording, but a... what was the word Hana used... stream, right. Judging from the chat, the player she was watching went by 'Raz0r', though a few were referring to him as 'Keith' too; his opponent seemed to be a girl by the the equally fine-sounding and oxymoronic name of 'Scarlet_Jade'.

In light of this, Angela... still had little idea what was actually going on. Best she could tell, over the next few minutes, the units and vehicles in green mounted an assault on several red buildings, destroying them one by one, and going by the – progressively more caps-filled – chat, 'Raz0r' was winning. And true enough, a little later the screen showed a large VICTORY and the chat filled with congratulations and 'gg's; Angela had heard Hana use that acronym before, but even if context made it mostly apparent, she didn't know what it actually meant, she probably should ask her about that.

As the video went to what looked like a collection of statistics, Hana closed her laptop and took off her headset, and only now seemed to notice Angela's presence as she turned to the side – and nearly butted her head against Angela's, who hadn't even noticed she'd been inching closer and closer to the girl.

"Whoa!" Too close. Hana flinched back and Angela startled, almost jumping backwards against a shelf.

"S-sorry!" Angela actually felt herself blush a little, flustered both for needlessly surprising Hana and for invading her personal space like this.

"You could've said something!"

"Sorry, I didn't want to distract you."

However Hana quickly recovered from the surprise and just laughed it off. "Fair enough. Don't know how much you watched, but that one was a pretty good match, wasn't it?"

Angela gathered her composure and walked over, sitting on the couch next to Hana before answering. "Truth be told, I didn't understand anything that was going on, all I gathered was that this 'Raz0r' was streaming the game, and that he won. Correct?"

"Yep." Hana nodded "And pretty impressively at that, games normally don't end nearly this one-sided. Jade just made one small misplay and Raz0r was able to capitalize on that and perfectly snowballed from there. Right at the start when she-"

"Sorry, Liebes," Angela interrupted her before she really could get going "but I only saw the last five minutes or so, and either way I don't know anything about this game. ...Actually I don't even know what game it was."

"Oh, right." Hana's enthusiasm visibly deflated. "You're not into gaming."

"No one here is." She continued a moment later "I thought maybe Tracer would, but turned out she's a... casual." Hana pronounced the last word almost as if it were some kind of horrible swear; Angela had no idea what the word was supposed to mean in that context, but her best bet was that it related to that one time Lena had brought some sort of 'party game' to the common room and tried to get everyone else involved, much to Hana's thinly veiled derision. But before she could ask for an explanation Hana already went on "And everyone else is – no offense – too old and boring to care for this stuff."

Angela chuckled "None taken. But what would you think instead of complaining about boring grown-ups not knowing anything about video games, you explained your video games to this old woman?"

Hana's face practically lit up. "Wait, you actually want me to tell you about that stuff?"

"Klar, warum nicht? But you have to be sure to start with the really basic things. Like if I were to explain the Asklepios nanites to you, the sort of basic you'd want me to start with."

Hana positively beamed at her with a wide smile. "Cool! So, the basic things, huh? ...You do know those so-called 'computers'" she actually did air-quotes with her fingers "can play those things called 'video games', right? That means-"

"Very funny." Angela cut her off. "I'm at most a single generation older than you, not from the last millennium. Maybe start by telling me what that game you just watched is called, and what it's about."

"Well, that's easy. That was Starcraft II." So that was 'Hana's' game, so to speak, the one she'd held the title in for three years, Angela remembered that much at least. "It's an RTS ...Sorry, real-time strategy game; as opposed to turn-based strategy. The point is to gather resources, build a base and troops, and use those to destroy your enemy's base and troops before he does the same to you."

"That sounds simple enough."

"It is. But there's also a ton of strategy involved. For starters, you have three factions: The Terrans, Protoss and Zerg. And they..."

Hana proceeded to explain the game in great detail, and even though she kept jumping between discussing gameplay mechanics, professional-level strategy and the game's plot – which had no bearing on competitive play whatsoever, but apparently was very interesting nonetheless –, and at times would get hasty so Angela had to remind her to slow down, in the end Angela felt she had gotten at least a basic grasp on the core aspects of the game. And thus was able to follow Hana's recap of the stream just now, and what made that victory so interesting.

"...and, I mean, you have to admit that was pretty good play, from that one small opportunity." Hana finished "Right?"

"I suppose so." According to what she'd learned at least.

"Though I did notice one pretty big flaw... okay it's not all that big, but it's big enough, if you know what I mean. We just saw how a small mistake can snowball an entire game."

"That we did. And what would that flaw be?"

"This is far from the first time I've seen him do that, but the way Raz0r tends to set up his base-" Hana's stomach audibly growled and she interrupted herself with a sheepish grin. "Oops. I totally forgot to get dinner before the stream started."

"Hang on, I've got some nutrient packs-"

Angela moved to get up, but Hana stopped her. "Don't bother."

"Hm?"

"Nutrient packs don't count, I need some actual food."

If anything, the packs were much more practical than normal food, if a little bland. But seeing as Angela was in fact just as hungry, and she wasn't working anyways, it wasn't like she had to save time or anything. "Fair enough. Let's go find some dinner, then."

"Fay, Angela, fhy-" Hana stopped to swallow her bite before she continued "why'd you ask me about my games and stuff anyways, you're not even into gaming."

Good question. Why had she? ...After a few moments Angela simply shrugged. "I'm not sure. I was just curious, I suppose. After all, those things pretty much were your job, and they still mean a lot to you, don't they?"

"Well, yeah. You could almost say gaming is what I am."

"And you're DVa."

"That's right!" Hana struck a pose – as much as she could sitting at the table –, nearly knocking down her glass. "The number 1!"

But was she really? Most of the time Angela was clearly talking to Song-Hana, not DVa. ...On that note, what was she herself? Angela or Mercy? When she was patching up the team after a mission, Doktor Ziegler. But other than that... However before Angela could go off on that philosophical tangent, Hana spoke up again.

"You know, you're the first one ever since I got here who's actually interested in my gaming at all. You'd think at least someone would've asked out of politeness at some point, but nope. Not even the – kinda – young ones like Tracer and Pharah."

"You are aware Fareeha is some three times closer in age to me than to you."

Hana shrugged. "I still figured there was a chance she'd play some video games too. But instead I got the feeling she hates fun."

"I can assure you Fareeha does know how to have fun too. It's just that she's trying very hard to be as professional as she can at all times. ...Maybe a bit too hard even; I suppose that's what growing up the daugher of one of Overwatch's founders will do to you."

"Whatever. It's nice that at least someone here who cares about me- ...my hobbies and junk." Hana seemed legitimately happy about Angela's interest in her games, and in fact she had been particularly upbeat the whole evening. Was it really that unexpected? Angela just wanted to know her a little better. Even though she actually weren't quite able to put it, why this loud, still-half-a-girl of all people was so-

"Hey," Hana called back Angela's attention, indicating the desert she'd left on her plate almost untouched, lost in thought. "Are you gonna finish that?"

"And you're sure I'm not boring you or anything?" Hana asked as they were making their way back to Angela's room.

She asked after well over an hour of talking, somewhat late, wasn't it? But Angela shook her head. "Not at all. It's quite revealing, actually. I never would've thought there was this much depth to video games." Truth be told, until now she simply had never cared enough to learn anything about them at all.

"That's still far from all there is to it. And Starcraft isn't even that complex, mechanically. In fact it's rather simple, the main part is that you're playing the game just as much as your opponent."

"So not unlike chess or some card games." Hana nodded. "Speaking of, I do own a rather beautiful chess set I get to use far too seldom. Would you mind playing me at some point? It's the original RTS after all."

"It's not an RTS, it's turn-based."

"Right."

"But sure, we can play. I even used to be kind of good at it; a classmate got me into chess for a while when she learned I was a fan of strategy games. I'm probably totally rusty by now, though."

"So am I. That means we're about evenly matched." They reached the room and Angela opened the door, letting Hana enter first, then closing the door behind them.

"If you say so. But not today anymore, I'm kinda tired, so I'd play totes garbage. Let me show you something instead."

Hana turned on Angela's PC and waited for her to enter the password, motioned for her to open the internet browser, then leaned over her shoulder to type in an address, expertly navigating the site until she reached a list of ostensibly video thumbnails. "Check it out, all of my streams. Starcraft, including the the championships, my sorties with MEKA, Overwatch, and whatever other games and stuff." Hana quickly scrolled down, showcasing the length of the list.

"That's... a lot of videos."

"Gotta keep the fans entertained somehow. ...You weren't planning on doing any more work today, were you?"

She really should, but her screw-up from before still irritated her, so "I don't think so."

"Good, because then you get to see the number 1 in action. Let's go with... this one." Hana picked a video seemingly at random, a game of Starcraft, with a cut-in showing a visibly younger Hana in front of the camera. "As you can see this is a pretty old one." Hana commented. "Gods, how did I ever think make-up was a good idea? I clearly look better all-natural."

After a short inspection Angela found she had to agree, but..."Aren't you still wearing make-up?"

"Huh?" Hana's fingers moved to the – somewhat faded – whisker-like markings on her cheeks. "That's no make-up. It's war paint. I actually wanted to get a programmable nano-tattoo there so I can simply turn it on and off instead of renewing it every few days. But those things are expensive and my mom wouldn't let me until I was of age, but I never got around to getting one for whatever reason, and then I got drafted into MEKA, which took up even more of my time, and yeah..." She trailed off. "Whatever. Just ignore that stylistic fail in the corner and watch the gameplay instead."

Even though in principle Angela figured she understood how the game worked, in practice she still had difficulty actually following the game; Hana's commentary helped her make sense of some things, but especially the way the camera would erratically jump back and forth between various units kept throwing her for a loop. But somehow Angela found that didn't matter all that much; she understood enough to get the gist of what was happening and who was winning, and Hana's genuine enthusiasm, both recorded and live, easily made up for it.

After the game ended – not very surprisingly – with a victory for DVa, Hana returned to the couch with her laptop, and Angela tried to force herself to get some work done, at least make sure the other experiment wasn't a total failure too, but to little avail. After a few minutes she gave up on it, and turned around to Hana – only to find the girl curled up on the couch, sleeping soundly.

Angela quietly stood up, dimmed the lights and gently draped a blanket over Hana's sleeping form, then brushed her lips against her forehead in a good-night kiss, before returning to her desk.

Now, what was the address of that site Hana had just showed her...


AN: A reminder that the fic is (partially) in anachronistic order; both scenes happen in between the first two chapters, though the second bit could equally well happen afterwards. This chapter contains assorted Neon Genesis Evangelion and other references, foreshadowing, an odd philosophical tangent, and then some.

The injuries to Hana's eye do behave like this in real life. And the photo she finds is canon and in-universe, as seen attached to Winston's screen during the 'Recall' short (link: imgur,com/qHU0pgz Obviously replace comma with a period).

In the second scene (which is a completely different evening some time later, I just wound up putting both into one chapter because individually they would've been a bit too short) the results from Angela's experiment are not just random numbers. Instead they're made to resemble photometric measurements of the absorbance (which is logarithmic, thus unitless) of the results of an ELISA, with the sort of error that you'd get if you screw up big time and contaminate half your experiment. This is university-level stuff, either take my word for it (I used to study that stuff, and did a practical course in a biochemistry lab) or google it if you have to. However I don't know anything about Starcraft II, hopefully I got everything mostly right; if not blame it on artistic license, or maybe pretend in-universe Blizzard pushed another major patch for the game that completely changed the gameplay/meta.

Lastly I do apologize for the long wait for this chapter, but I was struggling with some highly annoying writer's block for a while, as well as some RL stuff (nothing dramatic, though). Once more with thanks to /u/'s anons for proofreading. And as always any kind of feedback/opinion is greatly appreciated.

Peace out