Chapter 2

The Doctor is In

There was so much blood, and nothing Angela could do about it. Her tiny hands could only press on one gaping wound, when her mother had three. She wanted to press on all of them, and her father's too, but it was too late for him, she knew. Amidst her teary eyes she could see her mother's conscious fading with each passing seconds, and there was nothing she could do. Yell for help, perhaps, but her pleads stayed unanswered. So she tried, one more time, before it was too late:

"Help! Someone help!"

Her watery voice, even as she shouted to the top of her lungs, could only travel so far, and barely passed the door. But someone would come, she trusted. Someone would see the blood, and the busted door, and the bullet holes in the walls, and they would come.

"Angela..."

She looked away from the door, and to her mother. Tears had filled both of their eyes, and Angela only saw the blurry figure of her mother through them. To her mother, Angela was also a blur, but for a different reason. She held out a bloody hand, to caress her daughter's cheek one last time. The light in her eyes disappeared, but Angela didn't notice it. Instead, she felt her mother's soft grip on her cheek slacken, and her hand fall.

"No... N... No... Mum! Stay with me! Mum..."

Angela pressed harder on the wound, not realizing that it was too late, not believing it.

Someone did come, an hour later or so, only to find Angela still desperately pressing on her mother's wound, which had stopped bleeding a long time ago, just like Angela didn't have any tears to spill anymore.

Longs days of study and even longer nights, practical work and class work, and even simulations. Nothing could have prepared her for the slaughter that was a battlefield. Her hands spent so much time over wounds, and in them, that she knew they had forever taken the smell of rusted copper. And when she wasn't working at the pathetic excuse they call a base of operation, which was nothing more then a few tents, she was on the field, running behind soldiers, avoiding bullets to the best of her ability. She stopped when she could, and even then stopping meant that she was fixing someone. A squad member, and civilian, sometimes even herself.

She would always remember the first time she took a bullet to the torso. It was right under her sternum, straight through her diaphragm. Less than an inch short of the aorta, which, should it had been touched, would have killed her on the spot, in a pool of her own blood. She tried not to think too much about it when Lieutenant Wilhelm carried her back to camp. She was lucky, though. Her lungs where okay, her liver had been barely grazed. She should have been happy. Her heart was okay. Physically speaking, of course. Her heart had not been okay in a long, long time. And with each passing battle, with each soldier she couldn't reach in time, it crumbled even more.

Genji gave her hope once again. Saving his life when he was in such a dire condition was nothing short of a miracle. But it didn't last. Tracer would have been a failure without the help of Winston. Ana she wasn't even there to help. And then Zürich. Jack she couldn't find in the wreckage, even though she searched until it became useless. Gabriel she tried, but, it was a mistake, one she regretted her entire life.

Time passed, things settled, and she became tired of the nothing. Fixing someone's heart was nothing compared to removing a bullet from a shoulder while being gunned down by a bastion unit. She thought she would appreciate the calm, since the bloody battles and the losses had reminded her so much of her parents, but it was in those calm moments that she realized how much she missed them. She knew there were a few things wrong with her, but it was nothing she couldn't drown in work.

Then, the Recall happened. Fareeha happened. The calm was gone, and she chose that time to fix the broken pieces of herself, amidst more bloody battles, and more losses. And surprisingly, it worked. Because Fareeha was there, mostly. Until she wasn't.

Never in her wildest dreams would she had imagined what was waiting for them, hidden behind an eye, and a conspiracy Sombra had been digging through for the past ten years. Never would she had imagined to see Talon and Overwatch collaborate. It would be the first time, and the last. They'd been ambushed by an army of omnics before they could disable the machine, and then all of the healers in their team was not enough to save everyone. She couldn't quite remember how she'd lost everyone else. Bullets, explosions, blade strikes. But Fareeha she knew, it would be embedded in her heart for the next hundred lifetimes to come. They were flying over the room, Pharah blasting the omnic army pouring through the doors with her rockets, and Mercy, boosting her. There had been a few explosions close to them, until one had come too close. Pharah had tried to protect her by taking the rocket directly. The blast had pushed Mercy to the ground, and blasted Fareeha against the wall, where her suit had set on fire. She didn't yell in pain, Angela assumed because she was already dead, but there was nothing she could do but watch her girlfriend's body burning.

Her ribs she had broken so time later in the battle, after being blasted against a wall, and falling strongly on the concrete ground. For the rest, it had been a blur.

Angela was in a room of light, contemplating her hands. Hers had never been soaked in blood, or in nothing more than a paper-cut. She was trembling from all that she'd seen, and her knees threatened to give under her. What had been that dream that she hadn't left yet? A life of self-sacrifice and sadness, one she hoped to never have to witness again.

"I don't disagree with you."

She looked to her right, and her eyes grew wide. It was her, yet it wasn't. They were the same size, or would have been, if not for the heels her other self was wearing. Her other self looked older, though she couldn't pinpoint her age for certain. She was dressed almost like an angel, with wings in her back, and a halo over her head. Gone was the blood, and the wounds, and the stains on her outfit. Angela herself was still in her pajamas, a simple tee-shirt and shorts, her blond hair free. Her older self smiled, and a feeling of weirdness washed over her.

"You have already had an easier life than mine, I suppose. I hope it stays that way."

"I..."

Angela thought longly to what she wanted to say.

"I'm sorry, about everyone. Your parents, and your friends. Fareeha."

Sadness passed through Mercy's eyes, and she looked down.

"She's probably busy, right now. Somewhere. Maybe with your Fareeha."

Angela blushed at the use of the possessive, even if she understood what Mercy meant to say.

"Do you regret your life?"

Mercy shook her head.

"Not one second of it. Though I wish..."

She let out a sigh.

"In my nightstand, back in Gibraltar there's a ring. I wanted to propose to Fareeha before the mission but I thought it would be better once this whole mess was sorted."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I had it coming. I'm always waiting, and pushing things like there's always time. I thought there was always time. I guess I was wrong."

Angela considered longly what her older self was saying. She did recognize herself in her words, how she would always wait and wait. She'd been crushing on Fareeha for a good four years now, but hadn't said a thing, simply because she thought it could always wait. Graduation was only in a few months away and she still hadn't said a thing.

"Maybe I should do something, then." she declared.

"Perhaps."

Angela looked longly at her double, then asked:

"What is going to happen to you, now? Are you dead?"

"I don't know. I have no idea what dying feels like. What do you think?"

"I don't know either. That machine you were trying to destroy, what did it do?"

"It was just another weapon of mass destructions but... I don't think it worked the way it was supposed to."

Angela nodded.

"I wouldn't want you to be stuck here all alone. Do you think I can come visit you?"

"Who knows? Maybe Lena knows. She's been out of time for a year or so, she probably knows."

Angela fell silent then, not sure what to add. She almost thought it would be the right time to wake up, and found that she didn't want to.

"I don't think I want to wake up. Not after that."

"That's what I thought almost every morning. I didn't want to sleep at night, too, but that's different."

"I wish I could help you, you know."

"I know, that how we are. We, Angela Ziegler, always trying to help others."

Angela looked around the light room, but couldn't really find an exit hole, or a door, or something which would pull her out of her dream.

"I guess I should go."

"I guess you should. But I have the feeling I won't be far when you wake up."

"See you when I wake up, then."

Angela woke up with a start. She'd been sweating like crazy, and her mouth was dry as if she'd slept on a deserted beach in the middle of a summer day. She suddenly blinked back tears she didn't know she was holding, but decided against it and let them roll down her face. It was only three a. m., her clock told her, but she knew she couldn't go back to sleep, not right now. So she got up and sat on her chair. She opened her computer without turning the light in her room on, and went online. The words omnic gave no result. Neither did Overwatch, Talon, or any other name she tried. Angela Ziegler only gave her her own Facebook page. She let out a sigh, and was about to close her computer when her phone vibrated on her desk. She took it, and noticed it was a message from Fareeha.

Farreha "Angela? Are you up?"

Angela "Yes."

Fareeha "The most amazing thing happened to me. You probably won't believe me."

Angela smiled.

Angela "I'm pretty sure I will."

I know you have a high tolerance to caffeine, but shouldn't you go back to sleep?

Angela almost let out a yelp of surprise, which she caught in time by placing her hands solidly on her mouth. Once the initial shock was passed, she whispered:

"Mercy? What are you doing in my head?"

It appears your head is my new permanent residence.

A/N: Hi guys! Not only am I happy to say that this story is picking up, and in only one day it more than doubled the views it had made in the previous two (which, let's face it, is always satisfying to see), but I also wanted to thank Trujillo Giron and Malifacter0605-XxKINDSOULSxX for the reviews you've left, so thank you! One last think, I just posted a Symbra story called "Queen of the Quokkas" with an interesting backstory, shall we say, so if you really want proof that those two are adorable together, go and read it! See you on Monday!