You people have no idea how hard I have been trying to make this chapter work. I have written and rewritten this chapter at least three times before this attempt. And I mean scrapped kind of rewritten. Three over 3k word attempts just gone, because they sucked, if I'm honest. So I hope you know that I've been trying, it just hasn't been working. The only way I got it to work was to make it super long.

Hopefully you guys like this. It took a while.

Also, I find it hilarious that all of the hate comments are anonymous xD Like come on guys, if you're going to try to insult me, do it to my face. And if you're trying to make me feel bad, it ain't workin, hun. If anything, I find it flattering; it means that my story is big enough that people think they'll get an angry fan reaction if they insult it. Compliment in a weird way, if you think about it. Not to mention that I have no insecurities about my writing capabilities. I think I'm fine :')

Anyways! On to the long overdue story. I have a feeling that once I get past this chapter, it's going to be a breeze to finish the rest. (This is future Meg. I was wrong).

April 3rd, about a year and a half after Genji left.

"Hey Angie, Fareeha keeps bothering me to organize a girls' night with you, says it's long overdue, and it wouldn't be complete without her big sister."

Angela smiled weakly at Ana, who had sought Angela out in the hospital ward of the base in Switzerland, probably because the doctor hardly ever answered calls anymore. All she really did was work, read, sleep, rinse, repeat. It was unfair to her makeshift family, which consisted of her "parents" Ana, Morrison, and Reyes, and her "sister" Fareeha (Ana's daughter), but she couldn't help it. As much as she hated to admit it, she was still quite torn up over Genji leaving. She had never been one to heal emotional wounds easily, much preferring to ignore them. And the best way to ignore them was to focus on work, which was exactly what she had been doing.

"Ah, that sounds lovely, but I don't know if I can take any time off of work right now. I'm pretty booked." Angela knew she was a terrible liar, so it came as no surprise to her when Ana scowled at her fake smile. Apparently her smiles never reached her eyes when she lied. The doctor wondered in passing how long it had been since a smile had reached her eyes.

"I already spoke with Jack and Gabe about it. We all believe that you deserve a few days off. You've been working much harder than anyone would ever ask of you, and the three of us are concerned that you might overwork yourself at this rate." Ana's tone left no room for question; Angela would be taking a break, whether or not she wanted to. If the motherly sniper had to drag her "daughter" out of the hospital by the arm, she would most definitely do it. The Amaris had an odd way of convincing people to do what they wanted.

"Oh, alright." Angela finally relented, sighing and rubbing her temples. "When does this leave start?"

"Why, Angie, right now, of course!" Ana cheered gleefully. It was all Angela could do to suppress a groan. While she loved Ana and Fareeha dearly, it was going to be a stressful week.

November 4th, exactly 2 years since Genji left

Angela had experienced many long days over the course of her lifetime, which should have come as no surprise to anyone. No one could be the best doctor in the world without a handful of long days and even longer nights, and today was among the few that could stick out for being particularly bad. A surgery that she had started the day before had lasted twice as long as it needed to, meaning she worked throughout the entire night and into the morning. After that was a meeting with the other higher ups in Overwatch about some nasty business with the UN. She had attempted to get out of it, but they specifically wanted her to be there. For whatever reason, the UN was absolutely in love with her, probably because of her pacifistic nature. She had more than once resolved a conflict between the two organizations that would have otherwise ended in disaster, and she had to do it once again after hours of negotiation.

Normally after a day like that she'd waste no time crashing in her bed as soon as she stepped into her house. But today was no one of those days. It wasn't her bedroom she made her way into this time.

Tired beyond belief, emotionally and physically, Angela cautiously opened the door to Genji's old room. Immediately, she broke out into a fit of coughs. While her experiments with her own health in the Valkyrie suit had taken away her allergy to dust, along with almost every other medical ailment, there was no way to avoid the layers upon layers of the irritating stuff coating almost every surface in the room.

Genji's room was almost completely untouched, and purposefully so. It was as if the good doctor didn't want to disturb what Genji had left so long ago. He had been here in this very room when it looked exactly as it did now, and ruining that felt like disturbing something sacred to Angela. However, after two years of neglect every surface was caked in dust, and the light that filtered through the room displayed more of the stuff floating through the air. Angela had even kept from changing the bedding, despite how stale it smelled from being unwashed.

The only thing that had changed was what was on the nightstand next to the bed. There sat a small framed picture, immaculate compared to everything else. It was a picture that she and Genji took with one of the children they had rescued from the Shimada clan. The girl was clutching a stuffed bear, smiling up at the adults with her. Genji had a peace sign up, posing for the camera, but Angela was completely unaware of the picture being taken of her, caught mid laugh. It was one of her favorite pictures now, a window into a time so long gone it could have been a dream.

Angela paused in the doorway of the room, taking in the almost completely empty space. With a resigned sigh she passed through into the room, immediately collapsing onto the old bed, her legs dangling off the side. She lay back and rubbed her eyes wearily before finally focusing on the picture, which she had been purposefully ignoring up until that point.

"Hey," came the soft whisper of Japanese. "It's been two years, you know. Exactly two years. And man, have I felt every second of it." Angela still wasn't perfect at the language, but she was significantly better than the last time she had been around a native speaker. She had been practicing, after all.

"Everyone is doing as well as we can be. With the omnic problems finally nearing an end, I guess we're all just wondering what we're supposed to do afterwards. Well, I'm not wondering too hard. As long as I have my work, I'll be okay. The world could always use a few good doctors." She smiled lightly at this. Everyone at Overwatch never hesitated to remind her how good she was at what she did. It was like having a constant cheerleading squad behind her.

"Gabe is still an endearing ass all of the time, and Jack is still a boy scout. Ana is doing well too; she's bringing her daughter in a lot to have her learn from us. Do you remember Fareeha? She's a lot like a little sister to me. Which is fitting, seeing as those three old farts still insist on acting like I'm their adopted daughter. I don't think you got to see enough of them to understand that dynamic. After all, most of the time we spent together was in Japan. But they're my family in almost every sense but blood."

She let out a resigned sigh. "They keep saying that I need a new best friend. Everyone does, even Lena. And she's too oblivious to notice if she forgot to put on shoes. You didn't get a chance to meet Lena, did you? They recruited her pretty recently, all bright eyed and ready to be the world's greatest pilot. She's a sweetheart, that one. I can't wait to see what she'll be able to pull off in a jet. But back to the subject at hand, I don't think it's as easy as they think it is. I bond with people so closely that it takes a while to move past it. Lena and Fareeha have also teamed up to try to get me a date. They keep claiming that I'm wasting my opportunity to find a relationship, since I just turned twenty eight, which is apparently geriatric in their eyes. I shut them down immediately."

"I just don't think I'm really the dating type; after all, I'm practically married to my work. I can't imagine anyone who would be willing to date someone who is never around. Not only that, but I don't think anyone who isn't in Overwatch would ever be able to understand what the members go through. And I don't want to date someone in Overwatch because I'm scared of what might happen to them, or me. So those two are really just wasting their time."

There was a long pause before Angela spoke again next. She mulled her thoughts over in her head, choosing her words carefully, as if the person in the picture could actually hear them. "I… I gave up on you coming back. I started that process about a year ago, and believe me, it was a process. But I think I've accepted that I might never see you again, and I'm learning to live with that." Her eyes widened and she hastily added, "Don't take that the wrong way, if you ever do come back I'll be so happy! You have no idea how much I missed you all this time. It felt like a chunk of me had gone missing. I was closer with you than anyone else in Overwatch, after all; you were my best friend. And while that piece of me is still gone, I'm learning to live with its absence. You'll always still hold that spot in my heart. But I've gotten used to the ache, and it doesn't define me anymore. There are days when it does, yes. But they're few and far between now."

Angela looked away from the picture, blinking up at the ceiling vacantly, lost in another world. "I just hope you don't miss me the same way that I miss you. I hope that wherever you are, you're truly and utterly happy. How is Nepal, if you're still there? Have you met any nice people or learned anything new? I definitely hope so. You deserve wonderful people in your life."

Angela sat up slowly, groaning as the sore muscles in her back ached. "I think that's all I really wanted to tell you. Thanks for letting me get that all off of my chest. I caught you up on pretty much everything, too. Well, I guess I'll see you in another year, huh?" She smiled fondly at the picture in the frame, leaning over and wiping a few specks of dust off of it. After she was satisfied, she stood up and made her way to the door, waving at the empty room before latching the door tightly behind her. Another year had come and gone, and it was time to face the next with open arms.

October 23rd, nearing three years since Genji left.

Another day, another conference. That seemed to be Angela's life since the problems with the omnics ended. Never a day to rest and hardly any time to work on any of her personal projects.

However, as she neared the conference hall, something seemed… off. She couldn't quite place her finger on it, but there was definitely something wrong with the atmosphere. Normally she could hear Gabe and Jack bickering at each other like an old married couple (occasionally much more violently than that, especially after the end of the war) or the sounds of Winston preparing his newest experiment. Every once in a while she'd walk by and hear raucous laughter from one of Lena's terrible jokes. It was never all of these things, but there was always something. Never this… almost bone chilling quiet.

She pushed open the doors to the conference room enough to poke her head in. Sure enough, they were all there; Jack was standing in his normal position at the head of the table, but there was no light in his eyes today. No one was saying a word. The only noise was the soft sound of crying coming from Fareeha, whose presence alone meant something was off. They never let her into important meetings, considering she wasn't even an Overwatch agent.

"What's going on?" Angela finally asked, breaking the sacred silence that had held the room's occupants captive. All eyes snapped up to look at her, most containing a strange mix of sadness and pity. The off feeling in her stomach turned into a sense of dread, eating her up from the inside.

"I'm sorry, Angie." Jack finally said. His blue eyes were lifeless and bloodshot, evidence that he too had been crying at one point. "I know that you two were close, and I'm so sorry." The pit of dread grew. That could not be good. "It's… Ana."

No. No no no. "Where is she?" Mercy asked frantically, her eyes wide with shock. "You have to let me see her if something is wrong, I can do something! I can…"

"She's gone." Gabriel mumbled, his voice deadpan. "She went on a mission and the cadets with her told us she was shot through the scope, right into her head. They retreated immediately, couldn't go back for her body. Angie, she's dead." Angela stood there in shock as Fareeha's crying renewed in earnest. It had to be a lie, it just had to be. There was no way a woman like Ana Amari could be defeated so easily, not on such a basic mission. There had to be an inconsistency.

But at the same time, she had never seen Jack cry. Gabriel had never been this morose, as much of a griping ass he could be. Hell, neither of them had called her Angie in years. Only Ana, who had come up with the nickname in the first place, still called her it on a regular basis.

Grief washed over her. Ana, her makeshift mother, the woman full of nicknames and smiles and girls' nights, was gone. No soldier in their right mind would have left her if she was still alive. Ana was gone, and there might have been something that could have been done, had Angela been there.

"I let her die…" she whispered softly to herself, tears pooling in her eyes. "I wasn't there for her when she needed me to be. I could have… I should have…"

Gabriel spoke up once again, his tone much softer than normal, "There was nothing you could have done. You can't blame yourself for this, there was nothing you or anyone else could do. There was no way for us to know that anything serious would happen on such a routine scouting mission."

"You can't just say that and expect me to be okay with this." Angela hissed, lashing out at Reyes. "Because if I have that mindset, what happens when it's another one of you? You guys are my family. I can't lose you. I've already lost too much." Tears swelled back up into the corners of her eyes.

"That's the price you pay for joining an organization like this." Jack retorted. "People will die and people will leave. We have to accept that and move on."

"How can you say that!" she screamed, slamming her fist into the table. She knew it was unreasonable to be acting like this. Jack and Gabe had known Ana for much longer than she had, and Ana was Fareeha's actual mother. But that didn't make her any less angry, or make her feel any less responsible for failing someone yet again. "How dare you make it sound that easy! How dare you! She is so much more than just another member of Overwatch. She is family!" her voice caught in her throat. "She… she was family. And you don't move on from people you love that much so easily."

"Angela…" Winston started carefully, "this isn't just about Ana, is it?"

The shock in the good doctor's eyes told everyone at the table the truth. No, it wasn't just about Ana. It was about losing not just her, but one of the only other people she had ever held dear to her heart. A silent mutter of "I can't do this anymore" along with the sound of a slamming door only verified what everyone knew already.

Angela spent that night in Genji's old room, curled up on his bed crying. She took the next couple of weeks off from work; her heart hurt, and it would take a while to patch it up this time.

She hadn't had time to work on her large project for a while. It was the same project she had started back when Genji was still there, the one that she kept secret from everyone. But now she had plenty of time; she began again with earnest, partially because there was nothing else for her to do, but mostly because of one reason: no one she loved would ever die in battle again, at least not on her watch.

December 17th, over two years since Ana died and five years since Genji left

The good doctor had been through her fair share of hardships. Everyone could agree that she had been through enough trouble already for most people's entire lifetimes. So she couldn't possibly understand why everything unfortunate happened to her.

Her heart had stopped when Athena called her. The same words flooded through her head on repeat as she scrambled to leave the house, playing like a broken record – Jack, Gabe, headquarters, explosion, sabotage, collapse.

It had only taken her a moment to put on her Valkyrie suit, but it took at least ten times as long to decide what she should take with her. Her staff was an obvious choice, but if Jack and Gabe were in a collapsed building and they really hadn't been found after this long, her staff might not be enough…

The door to her lab caught the corner of her eye. Inside lay the untested prototype of her grand project, the secret she had kept from everyone. She had vowed that she wouldn't lose someone else. Despite the potential risks of using something so unproven, she might have no choice.

She grabbed the small device, shoving it into a pocket in her suit before she raced off to her headquarters, dreading to see what had become of it.

When she arrived, it was worse than what she had anticipated. The entire massive building was reduced only to rubble and fire. Recovered bodies with life no longer left in them were piled around the scene, and hundreds of wounded were being treated by every medic that had been available. But they weren't what concerned Angela, as much as their image would haunt her for the rest of her life. No, what concerned Angela was that neither Jack nor Gabe had been found. And if they hadn't been found yet, they couldn't have much time left.

Her heart pounded as she made her way to the section of rocks that had once been the grand entryway to the headquarters. She desperately fought back tears as she began to dig through the rubble, searching for any signs of life. It was hard not to choke and cry when the two people who had been your fathers for years could now be laying lifeless in a pile of stone, but she did her best.

Angela yelled their names for what felt like hours on end, getting desperate as time went on. The loss of time meant the loss of them, and she couldn't lose them. Not when she had lost so much already in this collapse. Though the body count would be smaller because it was nighttime, it was still hundreds of patients, fellow doctors, fellow soldiers, and friends, not to mention hours upon hours of research in her desk. She just couldn't lose her two father figures as well. Fate couldn't possibly be that cruel.

She was on the verge of giving up hope when she finally saw a black combat boot sticking out from under a pile of rubble. More importantly, it was a Blackwatch boot, and there weren't very many Blackwatch agents stationed in Switzerland at this time of year. Her heart skipped a few beats as she flew as quickly as she could to the shoe, praying to every god she could think of that it was who she was looking for.

The rocks and metal scraped her already worn out hands as she dug furiously through the pile, grunting from exertion. Everything was heavy, and she really could have used some help, but she knew that she probably didn't have the time for such a luxury. If this was who she hoped it was, he would have been stuck down there for quite a while.

After what felt like a few millenia of lifting more rocks than she could count, though it was probably only a few minutes, Mercy felt a weight lift off her shoulders. There was Gabriel. Or, at least what was left of him. His head was cracked open, and his limbs were all still trapped under piles of rocks, so there was no telling what damage he had sustained to the rest of his body.

Despite her complete exhaustion after searching for her makeshift father for so long, adrenaline rushed through Angela's veins as she pulled Reyes's limp body out of the pile. He must have weighed twice what she did, but she managed anyways, barely even noticing the way her limbs screamed in protest. She just had to see what the damage was.

When Reyes was completely freed and Angela had a chance to appraise his limp form, there was no helping the sob that escaped her throat. He was totally, utterly dead. His eyes slightly open and glazed over, unable to see her as she cried over his lifeless body.

"Gabriel… No, this can't be happening. You can't leave me too." She whispered pitifully, sitting down next to her makeshift father and resting his head on her lap. "There is no way for me to get to Jack in time now. I've lost him for sure. I can't lose you too."

After a few moments of grief, Angela fished her experiment out from where she had stored it. This could end in a disaster, she knew. It hadn't been properly tested yet, never tested on humans, and the tests she had conducted only worked when the patient was recently deceased. There was no telling how long Gabe had been dead for. 'What's the worst I can do,' she thought grimly to herself, 'kill him?' That thought elicited another loud sob from the poor doctor as she started the device that could potentially resurrect Gabriel Reyes from the dead.

She set the activated device on the man's chest and began to card her fingers through his rather short hair. "You can't leave me, Gabe. The world needs you. I need you. I need one of my parents to stay around. I've already lost my biological parents, Jack, and Ana. I can't lose you too. The three of you saved me from heaven only knows how much loneliness and pain. You're a hero, my hero, and heroes should never die."

A small whirring noise started in the device as it began working its magic. Yellow and blue light emitted from the small thing, wrapping around the man in her arms, turning him a bright gold. Angela closed her eyes and winced as a blindingly bright flash of light burst from the small thing before everything went completely dark. Angela immediately noticed that the weight in her arms was significantly less than it had been. When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of the night, panic swelled from within her. Reyes was disappearing. The atoms of his body were turning into a reddish-black smoke and disappearing into the night wind.

"Gabe? GABE!" She screamed as she knelt over his form, eyes wide with fear as his body, clothes and all, vanished into the night air. And that was it, he was gone. Instead of saving him, her resurrection technology had caused him to evaporate. There was nothing left of him.

She sat back with her legs under her, eyes still wide with terror. Fear only had a few more moments hold before despair crept in, seeping through her veins like a deadly drug. She had failed him. And not in the same way that she felt that she had failed Ana in not being there for her. She had been there for Reyes and still she failed him. There had been nothing for her to do to save him. The only thing she could have done was work harder on her resurrection technology instead of moping over the people she had already lost, whether to death or separation.

The good doctor let out a quiet, desperate cry as she collapsed into the place where Reyes's body had just been, crying over her broken heart. "I'm sorry, Gabe, Jack, Ana. I couldn't do it; I wasn't enough."

Another first responder was the one who finally found her, curled in a ball, shielding herself from the outside world with her arms and legs. They had immediately brought her to be checked on, though they found nothing but severely scraped arms and sore muscles, which her Valkyrie suit had already begun to repair. Nothing physical was wrong with her, which was the problem.

Because while scrapes and scratches can heal, you can't exactly mend a heart so simply, can you?

March 20th, three months after the explosion at the Swiss Headquarters

News was always slow to reach the monastery. That was something Genji had learned after five years. The omnic monks that went on errands only ever brought back extremely pertinent information, and even that happened only a few weeks after whatever event it was.

So when one of the younger, newer monks came sprinting back to the monastery at top speed, something he had never seen in his years of being there, Genji was more than intrigued. This omnic looked about as close as a machine could to being out of breath, but he immediately straightened up and ran over to Genji as soon as he caught sight of him.

The young omnic waved a DVD in front of the cyborg's face, a piece of tech that hadn't been used regularly in ages. "You have to see this," the robot said. Although there was no way to tell from his face what his emotions were, the omnic monk seemed distressed, which worried Genji even more.

He finished up his meditation session, much to the dismay of the young robot, before finding an old DVD player and setting the system up to play on a small television in his room. There was a few seconds of silence before the DVD began playing, lighting up the room with the soft glow of light. Genji couldn't see immediately what was so pressing about this disc. It just looked like a old, large courtroom.

The judge called the court into session, and his heart skipped a beat as soon as the case was announced. The words "explosion in Switzerland" set his mind abuzz. Angela couldn't possibly be… no, he didn't even want to think about it.

It took about ten minutes for the video to get to the important part, but Genji found what he was looking for as soon as the first witness was called up. Relief instantly swept over him, though it washed away as quickly as it came. There was Angela, looking as young physically as the day he left, meaning she was still alive, but she looked at least ten years older emotionally.

She was dressed in a simple black suit, formal and businesslike and completely unlike anything that Genji had ever seen her wear. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail as opposed to the million loose, messy ones he had seen her in. But as the camera zoomed in on her, all Genji could see was her eyes, partially hidden by glasses. They looked completely, utterly, helplessly dead. There was no emotion in them, none of the life that had once inhabited the blue orbs so peacefully. Under them were endless dark bags, the likes of which he had never seen on that beautiful face, no matter how many nights she had stayed up in a row. It made his heart clench painfully at how unhappy she seemed while still looking perfectly professional and formal to the untrained eye. That was part of what unsettled him; Angela didn't know formal existed, yet here she was, the dictionary definition of the word.

The doctor was sworn to answer truthfully before questions started rolling in. Angela's questioner paid no attention to her, just scribbling down the information she spewed. The television crackled as words and sounds came out of it for the first time in years.

"So, what is your account of the explosion, Dr. Ziegler?"

Angela let out a small, resigned sigh. It was the sound of a person who had given up. "I was at home, getting ready to go to sleep, when I got the call that informed me of the explosion. It was hard to focus on much, so I don't remember what exactly was said to me. All that I remember hearing was that something had been sabotaged, and Reyes and Morrison were in the building when it happened. I rushed to the scene as quickly as I could and dug through the rubble myself to try to find at least one of the two of them. I ended up finding Reyes, already unable to be saved, though I tried everything I could." Genji was stunned at how emotionlessly she spoke of Reyes's death, not to mention the fact he was surprised that the aging soldier died. It was obvious that he and Angela had been rather close, even though Genji had only seen them around each other for a few months; was she just that hardened off to his death?

"And why did you not recover his body?"

"I tried new tech on Reyes, stuff that had not had a thorough testing. He was already at death's door, and nothing else had worked, so there was no point in holding back on something that might save him. After using it, he appeared to get slightly better before his body disintegrated completely. I have a few hypotheses as to why it happened, but my current one is the chemicals that turned him into a super soldier had some sort of adverse reaction to the nanotechnology, and it tore his form apart. He was already dead when the disintegrating process happened, so he should have felt no pain from it."

"And what of Morrison?"

"I was unable to find him. It's our belief that he was probably crushed beyond recognition, and therefore he couldn't be found. Though you know that we didn't find him, so I'm not sure why you asked." She shot the inquisitor a scathing look, which he completely ignored. That hit Genji hard too; Morrison, dead? It almost seemed like an impossibility. Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes were formidably resilient soldiers, and about as integral to the Overwatch organization as oxygen. Not only that, but they were Angela's family; she would have tried absolutely everything to save them. What possibly could have killed them?

But even though Angela seemed completely clinical in the way she was addressing their deaths, his heart went out to her. He couldn't imagine how painful it must have been to lose them both. He had only lost one family in his lifetime; now Angela had lost two.

"Just checking. Now, what is your theory on what happened? Or, rather, the official theory, seeing as you have been placed as head of Overwatch for the time being."

"First of all, I am not the head, I am simply helping lead it with Winston while we go through this troubling time. But that is beside the point. The current theory is that Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison were having an argument in the main entrance to the headquarters, an argument that someone behind the scenes either staged or egged on. The building was rigged with explosives, causing it to fall on top of their heads. Unfortunately, it seems as if this was an inside job."

"Who do you suspect is responsible for this?"

"It would be foolish of me to point fingers at any one person. All we know was that it had to be someone within Overwatch, or someone closely tied to Overwatch, and the explosives had to have been planted to day of the explosion. It's customary of us to do a sweep of the grounds every morning, since that is when most people show up."

"Alright, now I will need to ask you the locations of some of your agents on this day. Where were you the day this took place?"

Angela rolled her eyes. "If I remember correctly, I spent the entire day with you lot in a UN meeting, if you're attempting to accuse me of rigging the explosives."

"Jesse McCree?"

"Visiting his family in the United States."

"Lena Oxton?"

"With McCree."

"Winston?"

"In Gibraltar, handling another meeting of the UN's." At that moment the camera panned over to the large scientist who was sitting among the crowd, along with the rest of what he assumed was the current Overwatch leaders; they certainly looked strange enough to be members of the orginization. The monkey gave Angela an encouraging smile before the camera panned back over to her.

"Fareeha Amari?" the names continued for a while, Angela looking absolutely bored the entire duration of it, though answering the man's questions politely enough. Genji almost zoned out until he heard something he certainly hadn't expected to.

"Genji Shimada?"

At the sound of his name, the doctor's polite expression of patience turned into a grimace. It looked like someone had slapped her in the face. It was an expression that Genji never wanted to be associated with his name ever again, not by her. "That's not information I am willing to give out."

The questioner for once looked up from his notepad, looking mildly offended, though Genji himself was intrigued. She knew where he was? "And why is that, Miss Ziegler?"

Angela chewed at her lip before replying. "Patient confidentiality. Genji was my patient before anything else, and he hasn't been a member of Overwatch for years now. He left of his own accord and gave us no ideas as to where he would be going. If he wanted us to know where he was in order to seek him out, he would have said something by now." A pang of hurt flashed across her face, quickly masked before anyone in the room seemed to notice. Guilt bubbled up in Genji's chest again; had he made her hate him? Was that why talking about him was painful to her? "And besides that, I really do not know where he is. I have kept anyone from tracking him since only a few months after he left, and I only checked then for my own peace of mind, to ensure that he was safe. He could very well not be in the same place he was the last time we checked."

"So he just left, and you had no interest in keeping tabs on him?" The man questioning Angela stood in shocked disbelief. "How could you let something so dangerous go out into the world with no supervision?"

Angela flashed him a sweet smile, masking a look in her eyes that was pure venom. "I believe you mean someone. And it was none of our business where he chose to go. It was his life, and he was allowed to live it as he saw fit. He owes no one here anything." Any doubts about Angela hating him immediately washed away with those words; she was still just as fiercely protective of him as ever. It made him smile a little, despite his guilt.

"Hm…" the man seemed deep in thought for a moment, tapping his pencil to his lip. "Would he ever have a reason to return to Switzerland?"

Angela's face fell slightly, her fake smiling dropping immediately. "Excuse me?"

"Would Genji Shimada ever have a reason to come back to Switzerland?"

The doctor stared at her lap for a few seconds, the professional demeanor she had held to herself so dearly completely gone. She seemed so small at that very moment, as if she was trying to make herself disappear into the back of the chair she was sitting in. "No," came the quiet reply after a long moment of silence. It felt like she didn't want to hear the words she was saying. Hell, Genji didn't want to hear the words she was saying. They sounded so incredibly hopeless it was heartbreaking. "No, I do not believe that he would have any reason to come back."

Genji stared at the television, shocked beyond belief. Did she really believe that? He whispered, "Angela… that's not true. You know that isn't true," as if the doctor could hear him from beyond the screen. As if his words would make a difference.

"Really? Was there really nothing at all? No family, friends, or home to come back to? No one he cared about?"

Angela was visibly shaking at this point. Even with her head lowered, Genji could clearly see the tears emerging from the corners of her eyes. "If he did have someone, would he not have come back already?" There they were, the words that would absolutely destroy him. Genji stared at the screen, his heart hammering painfully in his chest as he looked upon the face of a girl who had lost so much, loss he had only added onto. Angela swiped at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve before continuing, her voice unsteady. "I do not think there is anything in Switzerland that he would want to return to, no."

"Hm, none of you made any sort of impact on him? That's quite-"

Suddenly, a loud voice erupted from the crowd of people. "I believe that's enough." The camera panned over to Winston who had stood from his seat, glaring at the questioner who was beginning to protest.

"But I have more that I need to-"

"I said that is ENOUGH." The Winston boomed, immediately shutting up the man and turning the entire room deadly quiet. "Angela, come back here."

Mercy nodded and obediently came down from the stand where she had been, sitting down next to Winston. The video cut out a few seconds later, but it lasted long enough to show Angela hugging the gorilla tightly, shoulders shaking as she cried.

Genji sat speechless as the television turned off with a loud click. Eventually he fell onto his back, glaring at his ceiling as if it was the cause of all of his problems. "I'm so sorry," he finally mumbled, looking back at the now black screen. "I don't know why I expected any different. I told you I'd come back someday and then disappeared for five years. You felt like I abandoned you because I practically did. I left you alone to end a war and watch as your family died for the second time in your life." He felt tears well up in the back of his eyes, the first time he had cried in years. He hadn't been sure if he was still able to cry, yet here he was. "Angela, I am so god damn sorry."

Zenyatta found his pupil later that evening after he had missed out on their evening meditation. He had still been lying on the floor, unable to function with the guilt coursing through him. His mentor had immediately understood that something was terribly wrong and encouraged Genji to get some rest so they could work through the issue tomorrow. Genji had nodded dumbly, agreeing just to get the omnic to leave.

Little did Zenyatta know, Genji wouldn't be around the next day for them to talk.