It wasn't easy, thinking of what to say to someone you hadn't seen in five years. Genji experienced that firsthand as he stood outside of what was once his old home, debating what exactly he should do.
First of all, he wasn't even sure that Angela still lived here. Yes, she always spouted on about how much she loved the building way back when, with its perfect small size and amazingly convenient lab/basement, but a lot can change in five years. Maybe his leaving had made the place full of bad memories for her – god, he hated that though.
And even more importantly, what was he supposed to say if she was still here? Sorry I left for five years with a single post-it note worth of explanation? You're the most wonderful person in the world and I hate myself for leaving? I know I needed to do this for myself but that doesn't stop me from feeling unbelievably guilty about it? Every option sounded stupid in his head, no matter how many times he mulled it over. There were so many unknowns, too many variables to account for. What if Angela didn't actually still care for him, and all he did was bring back bad feelings? What if his presence would only hurt her more after everything she had been through?
He didn't know. He couldn't know. And that was what had him moving for the first time in what felt like hours. He couldn't know how Angela felt until he asked her, until he talked to her. Talking to her was the very least that he owed her.
With that in mind, his hand was on the doorknob. It hadn't occurred to him to knock, so he didn't. Back when the two of them had lived in this house together, he had never knocked, and old habits die hard – even old habits that have lain dormant for five years. Luckily, the door was unlocked anyways, and he stepped inside the small living room.
The first thing that he noticed was that the room still unmistakably spoke of Angela, which was a good sign that she still lived here. All of the décor was the same, minus a few details here and there that had changed. The photos on the wall were different and significantly more sparse; gone were the dozens of pictures of the crew at Overwatch that had once been plastered over the walls, most likely taken down due to grief, although the fireplace still held three framed pictures on its mantel that hadn't changed in five years. The largest one was of the entire gang of higher ups in Overwatch huddled together in a crowd, all laughing and cheering. The other two were pictures of her two families, the biological and the adopted. It warmed Genji's heart to realize that some things never change, no matter what happens.
The living room and kitchen were both hauntingly empty. Blankets were scattered on the floor of the living room and the kitchen had piles of dishes in the sink, which was completely unlike the doctor. She must not have been in the room for a while, because the mess would have killed the Angela he knew. That, or she had a change of heart about cleanliness while he was gone.
Genji poked his head into Angela's room. She wasn't there, either. Maybe she wasn't at home? He couldn't imagine her being at work so quickly after the trial he had seen only two days ago, but she was a workaholic. It wasn't unreasonable to think she might use helping others as a way to distract herself, though he doubted that was the case.
His theories were all shut down when he looked through the open doorway to his old room. There was Angela on his old bed, sitting and facing the wall across from the doorway. Her knees were tucked into her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. Quiet sniffles, only just barely audible, came from the pitiful looking woman. What was almost more surprising was the state of the room that she was in. It was exactly the same as how he had left it five years ago, save for pictures of the two of them together sitting on various shelves. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, from the blades of the ceiling fan to the floor. It almost looked like grey snow had settled upon this room alone in the house. Genji stood frozen in the doorway for a few minutes, unsure of what to do or say. This was the last place he had expected her to be, especially in this state.
"If you're a Blackwatch asshole here to kill me, could you just do it already?" the girl on the other side of the room finally said, not even bothering to lift her head, though her voice was quivering. "I can't be bothered to fight back anymore; it's not like there is much to fight back for. You're going to kill me eventually anyways, so I might as well just get it over with." She tossed the pistol that he hadn't noticed was in her hand across the room so that it landed at his feet, clattering when the two pieces of metal collided. "Here, you can even stage it like I committed suicide. That'll be sure to get Overwatch shut down even more quickly. Just think of the headlines: 'Corrupt Organization causes Doctor to take Own Life.' The media'll love it." There was absolutely no mistaking the bitterness in her voice, nor was there any denying the hopelessness. This was a lost woman with nothing left to hold onto, and for a split second Genji doubted whether or not it was actually a good idea to come back here.
But then he realized that thought was stupid, because he was being stupid. How could he think something like that? He sighed quietly and took a few steps forward towards the bed, all of the sentences that he had prepared flying out of his head. "I'm not here to hurt you, Dr. Ziegler."
Genji had never seen someone turn around so quickly, not even on the field of battle. Angela's eyes widened in shock as her shoulders shook with some emotion that he couldn't quite interpret. In fact, her emotions were so rapid and all over the place that he had no idea how to name them. They passed through her so quickly there was no way to tell which ones were important and which ones to ignore. Though he saw a common theme through all of them: disbelief.
Angela moved from where she was sitting, eyes still wide with shock, and stood directly in front of him. He squirmed under her unblinking gaze, not wanting to say anything for fear of scaring or hurting her. She seemed almost like a deer in the headlights, a fragile thing that could run away at any second given the opportunity.
After what felt like a millennium to the nervous cyborg, Angela's arm slowly lifted, her hand pausing as it almost reached the side of his face. She flinched, fear flashing in those round blue eyes. He immediately knew what that meant; she was scared that he wasn't real, that this was her imagination. And after everything that had happened, everything he had done to her, he couldn't blame her in the slightest.
This time the emotions that worked through her face passed by much more slowly. First was the fear before the most intense grief he had ever seen in his life. That one emotion encompassed all of the sadness, the loneliness, the heartache that she had felt over so long. It was a grief that ate away at him, that filled him with the guilt and shame that he deserved to feel after leaving her for so long. After that grief washed away came clear anxiety, but, after all of that, the most brilliant light of hope shown through those bright eyes. It was so absolutely gorgeous, that speck of light shining in a place that looked so lost and dead, that it took his breath away for a few seconds.
Then she finally touched the plating on the side of his head, and that hope spread into a smile, which quickly bubbled into laughter. Angela mirrored the position of the first hand with her second, pulling Genji's face towards hers and pressing their foreheads together, laughing uncontrollably and gleefully as she did. She looked so damn happy like that, eyes squeezed together tightly and whole body shaking with giggles, like she had just heard the most amazing joke in her life. If that was an expression that Angela associated with him, Genji could die a happy man.
"It's really you," she managed to squeak out between fits of laughter. "I never… I never thought I'd see you again. It's actually you."
Genji had expected this scene to play out in a lot of different ways. In the short amount of time between now and a few days ago when he had decided to return to Switzerland, he had replayed scenarios like this time and time again in different settings with different words and reactions. He had anticipated nearly every reaction she could give, from anger to tears to happiness, and every response he could make to those emotions; he hadn't expected Angela to laugh, sure.
But he certainly hadn't expected to be the one who cried.
Nonetheless, here he was, tears rolling down his face uncontrollably as he looked into the face of the woman he loved so dearly and left so unceremoniously. He felt one of his hands cover hers, holding onto it tightly like it was the only thing keeping him standing. "I'm so sorry," he whimpered out, hating himself for being so weak as to cry in front of someone who had lost what he had twice over. "There aren't enough words to describe how guilty I feel. Angela, I'm so, so sorry."
Mercy got her laughter under control quickly as she realized he was crying, shaking her head slightly and looking at him with a ridiculously fond expression. It was an expression he had seen before, back when he as a child had gone out of his way to impress his brother with some technique he learned. It had taken him a while to realize what it meant back then; it was his brother's way of saying that there was no need to impress him, that he was already proud.
He felt his face mask come off with a soft click as Angela removed it and set it on the bed behind her. She took his actual face into her hands this time, wiping away his tears with the pads of her thumbs. "There is nothing you need to apologize for," she began in soft Japanese, the words crisp and clear and perfectly pronounced, a stark contrast to when they had first met. "It's alright. You kept your promise; you came back. That's all that matters to me, okay?"
"But I…" Genji was at a loss. Angela was too forgiving for her own good, and he at a loss as to how to tell her that; she was giving him forgiveness that he didn't deserve all too easily. "I left with almost no warning. And then all this crap happened to you and I wasn't there for you like I should have been, like you deserved. I saw the trial. I know what happened and I… I'm sorry I wasn't there."
Angela paused for a moment, reflecting on her own thoughts, before responding. "But you're here now, are you not? Isn't that what matters?" He blinked at the question, unsure of what to say. Surely that wasn't all there was to it? But one look into those bright blue eyes revealed nothing but honesty. "All that matters to me is that you came back for me. Lena gave up on me after seeing how I had reacted to my losses over the past few months. Winston couldn't handle my meltdown after the trial and dumped me off here to deal with everything myself. Jesse is pissed at me for outing Blackwatch, even though he was no longer a member of it. Fareeha is too buried in her own grief to help me through my own. Reinhardt is too busy saving the world to realize that his friend might need saving too."
"If you saw that trial, you saw me at one of my worst moments when I fell apart and admitted that I had given up on you. And you know what? You came back anyways and proved me wrong. You came for me when everyone who knows me and knows everything that has happened to me over these years couldn't handle it anymore. That means more to me than you could ever understand. And I don't expect you to believe that right away. But I do expect you to know that I mean it. Knowing something in your head and believing it in your heart are two very different things. I get that because I've lived that. However, I do expect you to know that I am not angry with you, and that I don't want you to be angry with yourself, even if you can't believe it yet. Okay?"
It sounded like a fair enough proposition. He nodded slightly. "Okay."
Angela smiled widely and patted his cheek. "Good. Now, I believe we have five years of catching up to do. But let's do it in the living room, shall we? It's terribly dusty in here."