収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Yep, still working on Old Soldiers. It's really difficult to switch gears between the Oilliphéist and Venom/Fear of Spiders universes, it really is, but it's happening.

This chapter is worksafe. [AO3 link]

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[All dialogue in «angle quotes» is translated from the Spanish. Amélie's thoughts are translated from the French.]

Amélie awoke, early. She often woke before Lena, regardless of where they were, but she didn't mind that. Usually, when it happened ahead of the alarm, she'd doze, and wait, so they could rise together. But sometimes, it there was time, she'd slip out, sneak over to the kitchen, make coffee and tea and get out cheeses and creams and preserves and the morning's good bread, delivered, and the scents would reach over, across, to their bedroom, and awaken her partner, and she'd stumble out, eyes still half-closed, usually remembering to put on a shirt, following the delicious smell of breakfast, and she'd say, "y'know what this needs? Bangers!" and she'd grab the sausages she'd bought a day or two before out of the refrigerator and get to work, and everything would be wonderful.

This was neither of those sorts of day.

The spider plucked at her web. What is it? she thought. It is... something. What?

She didn't really care all that very much about this mission. Morrison had been someone her husband knew, the person to whom Gabriel Reyes reported. They'd met, no doubt, at some function or other. But his time for shaking the world had passed, taking care of him - justice, of a sort, their way - was important to Lena, and so, she was willing to put Talon behind it. And finding herself thinking about that, she let her mind trace that strand further, further down, lower, into thinner, lesser strands - but strands nonetheless.

And she was very surprised to discover that for some reason she did not know, some reason she didn't understand, something had changed.

Jack Morrison, left to his own devices, was going to do something very bad indeed. And it had to be stopped, before anyone else even knew it could happen.

"How did you know?" she whispered, shifting up, and looking at her wife, sprawled across the bed, arms akimbo, hair even moreso. "How did you know before I did?"

Lena stirred just as the alarm rang the chimes of Big Ben. She blinked, groggily, looked up at her wife, and smiled. "G'morffin'," she managed, flopping over onto Amélie's legs.

The assassin smiled back at her partner, but there was a firmness to it. "Get up," she said, firmly, sliding out from underneath. "Something has happened. I must find out what. Suddenly, I think, this mission may be... important."

-----

Amélie pulled her helmet off, frustrated, frowning. Nothing, she thought. Nothing of interest, at least. No new news items, at least, nothing that affected this situation. No outbreaks of violence, of disease, no disappearances, no interesting thefts, not even any strange new conspiracy rumours reaching high enough to matter, not even to her...

Perhaps Sombra has had more luck, she thought, climbing out of her lotus position and off the bed. Or perhaps we can make it not matter. She pulled on the rest of her field kit, and walked into the safehouse's living room, where Sombra sat, intently, poking at virtual keyboards and screens, Lena and Angela keeping each other company, occasionally watching.

"Anything?"

"Nothing, araña - sorry." Sombra turned around, facing the spider. "If he's done something, it's too quiet even to make my ears. And I don't miss much."

"Gabe's almost here, though. I was about to talk to my old friend again, too. See what he thought about our little video."

"Good," Amélie nodded. "I'll make some coffee. Anyone else?"

Lena waved her off, holding up her mug of tea. Angela smiled, though, and said, "I would. I always liked your coffee."

"Sadly, this is not the best version," the assassin smiled back, fondly, "...but I will do what I can with what I have."

I've missed her more than I realised, she thought, as she walked into the kitchen, glancing over the cluster of information monitors Sombra had set up for her, but seeing nothing new. She pulled the pitcher of water and coarse coffee grounds from the small refrigerator, pulled out a filter, and drained the cold brew into a second pitcher, giving it a taste.

Much better, she thought, pouring two glasses half-full, adding milk, some sugar, and ice, and tasted. Yes. The beans are good. It is just a shame the water is so hard. Still, it will do.

She walked out in time to hear Sombra speaking in increasingly agitated Spanish with her friend in Los Muertos.

«What do you mean, he left?» she said, confused.

«He left! This morning! We'd watched your video and were trying to figure out how to get rid of him without getting ourselves all killed by whatever the hell that was, and he walked in and says he has an outside job, needs to take a couple of weeks to work on it.»

«Well... did he say anything about where he was going?»

«We weren't about to ask, we were just glad he was gone. We're gonna pick up and relocate before he comes back. You're gonna tell your friends in Talon about that, right?»

«Of course I am - and you're welcome.» She thought for a moment. I think he's telling the truth, but we'll have to check... «Did he say anything about where he was going?»

«No - just that he had to get training for some special mission. He wouldn't tell us what, or when, or where - he just made some joke about the animal at the heart of the animal? Which I kind of think probably worked better in English.»

Lena largely kept up, listening as the Spanish went by, and looked confused for just a moment before her eyes went wide, and she whispered, "No!" She looked up at Amélie, who looked confused by the metaphor.

"The animal - the beast. The beast at the heart of the beast," she whispered, as Sombra joked with her friend, trying to weasel out possible training locations without actually sounding like she wanted the data. "I think that means us, and I think... I think the beast means Winston."

Angela's eyes went wide as Amélie tested the idea and nodded, eyes half-closed to slits. It fits, she thought. "It is possible. We must send a warning."

"Embassy security's pretty good. I'm pretty sure he's safe as long as he stays in Geneva," Lena said, nodding, as Sombra told them to shut up, can't they tell she's talking to her friends? And the junior assassin waved everyone into the kitchen.

"I knew we should've just capped him from th' start," she said, closing the kitchen door behind her. "Could've avoided all this."

"I did not take this seriously enough," her wife acknowledged, adding another cube of ice to her coffee, and motioning to Angela if she wanted another herself.

The doctor frowned, not at the ice, but at the entire situation. "I do not speak Spanish, and did not catch enough of your English - what is going on?"

"Jack's bugged out, luv. He's headed off somewhere - don't know where, Sombra's workin' on that - t'get ready for some mission, and I think that mission is Winston."

"Winston?!" the doctor exclaimed. "Why? That makes no sense."

"'The beast at the heart of the beast' is what he told Los Muertos, yah? Given what we know about his obsessions, I'm pretty sure we're the beast. Which means the beast at the heart of it is Widowmaker..."

"Let him try," she sneered.

Venom giggled, briefly, before getting serious again, "...or Winston, if y'want the 'joke' t'make any sense, right?"

Angela sipped at her coffee - quite good, still - and thought. "Ana thinks," the temporary Talon field medic said, "...that she knows 'everyone' you are. Given what she said in person, we can assume that means Talon. She also said that I'm involved. Which means she thinks I am involved with Talon..."

"Not wrong, now. Ironic, innit?"

"Quiet, I'm thinking..." she said, not wanting to think about that too closely, "...and if Ana thinks that, then... what? She thinks I am your... contact? Your superior?"

"...her creator, perhaps? Perhaps also mine." Amélie sipped her coffee, still thinking, as the other two women looked at her, surprised, and she shrugged. "That ludicrous set of documents from the investigation - if Overwatch and Blackwatch actually believed the official story about my 'abduction' and 'conditioning' to be who I am..."

"You're thinkin' that all came from her?" asked Lena, half a smile on her face.

"No. But if she went to Jack, after sending that letter to Fareeha..."

"...it could've come from him," Venom nodded. "Yeh. He signed off on both reports..."

"And he's latched onto Winston, because, because..." The doctor stood up very straight, very tall. "Because of your accelerator! Of course! It couldn't just be me, because I am a medical doctor, not a physicist - it would have to be Winston!"

"It almost makes sense," the Widowmaker said, "in an oddly... detached-from-reality sort of way."

"We need to get Gabe in on this," Lena said, shaking her head. "He knew Jack best, before. And that Los Muertos fighter, Delgado. She might know something. She said he talks in his sleep."

"It means bringing her in on this side of the fence," Angela frowned. "Please do not do that."

"He can talk t'her, we can talk t'him. He should still be an hour out of customs, we should try t'raise him. I'll do it."

The door opened, and Sombra walked in, her expression a combination of bemusement and outright disbelief. "You guys aren't going to believe what I think is going on."

"Yeah?" Venom grinned, happy to have an even better reason to kill Jack Morrison. "Wait'll you hear our version. But g'wan, luv - you first."

-----

"How...?"

Ana Amari looked around the pocket valley not too far outside Jalpan De Serra, a hidden spot deep in the nature reserve. Under a canopy of forest, a small, single-storey house sat in good order. But the interesting parts were around it - the cleared, low-level training camp hidden from overhead view, boxed off in most directions by steep slopes and cliffs.

"Pretty sure it was originally cleared during the war," Morrison replied. "Local resistance against the Omnics. Deep cover. Well hidden. People stay away - bad memories, I guess." He chuckled, a little. "I try to encourage that."

He pointed with his rifle over towards a particularly green patch. "Latrines used to be over there, I think. Found a bunch of old tent stakes, too. Probably didn't want anything too permanent, so they'd just tent up and go."

"Either that, or it was a campground," she smirked. "So this is where you go to hide."

"Hide, or think, or train, Ana. Different things, but it's a good place for all three." He gestured towards the house. "C'mon inside. It's comfortable - I've got a combination of solar and geothermal, and there's an uplink towards the top of the cliff. I figure we'll want to get to San Jose a week before Winston arrives, and until then, we should just lay low, and plan."

I don't like it, Ana thought. It is too steep, and the cliffs are too close. "A hidey-hole is also a trap, Jack. You know that."

"Nobody else in the world knows I know about this place, Ana. Not anymore. If there's any safe place in the Western hemisphere..." He opened the door, and threw his knapsack onto the couch against the far wall of the small living room. "...this is it."

This chapter contains a scene some readers may find disturbing.

All text in «chevron quotes» translated from the Arabic. All text in "double quotes" translated from the Spanish. All thoughts in italic translated from the native language of the thinker.

[AO3 link]

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[Geneva — 2070]

The blue-helmeted Spanish soldier stepped around another piece of debris - a large chunk of glass, heavy, thick, still attached to a piece of wall, and partly buried into rocky ground. Probably fell from pretty far up, she thought, looking around it.

Infirmary, she read, knowing at least that much English. Ironic.

She pulled on it, and it tilted a little to one side in response - not buried deep, not much larger than it looks. Recording its location, she continued on, following the fall pattern of the outer tower's shell. Most of the complex had fallen inward, not outward, the result of the implosion device used to bring it down and end the Overwatch resistance - but some parts had flown out, and away.

She made her way to the next large chunk of debris. ¡Cáspita! she thought, that's a big one! Large enough to have been a small room, or even two, flattened, collapsed in on itself, it lay strewn across several square metres of mountainside, the trail left behind by its impact clear in the landscape.

I wonder if it's more of the infirmary? She logged its location as she walked towards it, skirting its outer perimeter. Something... huh. Something's... hot? Is that steam? What is that?

As the mist flowed towards her, she did not have time to draw, much less fire, not that it would've made any difference, not that she'd even have considered it - it's not as though anyone can shoot the fog. And indeed, it wouldn't've made any difference at all. All she had time to do was recoil in horror and fear as her hands, first, then her arms, and then the rest of her, melted away.

Several minutes later, Jack Morrison awoke, and shook his head, violently, confused, feeling deeply out of joint, trying to place himself. What the hell... how did I get out? He looked down at himself, in UN blues. Or into this uniform?

Must've blacked out, he thought, and looked around, evaluating the situation. The battle was over, the complex in ruins, UN forces above, up the mountain, where Overwatch HQ had once been. We've lost. God damm you, we've lost. He looked the other way, down, towards the lowlands. I guess... it's time to live to fight another day, he thought, and followed the water down, running, running, running away.

-----

"Morrison."

"Amari."

«It's been a long time,» the sniper said, changing to Arabic.

«Not that long,» the mercenary retorted, looking up from his chair in the small outdoor restaurant on the outskirts of Tampico. «You were just shooting at me a few months ago. Nice replacement eye, by the way.»

«Thank you,» the former captain said, archly. «By all rights, I ought to be shooting at you now. But... I have been astonished to discover that you seem to be the lesser of monsters, so, here I am.»

The soldier took a drink from his tall glass of ice water, followed by a sip from his whiskey, before pointing to the opposite chair. «Well, if you're here - want to take a seat? Or are you going to stand there and glare at me like some sort of angry owl?»

Ana shrugged, pulled out the chair, turned it around, and sat, facing the table. «You'll forgive me, I'm sure. I'm just finding it more difficult than I expected to look at the man who got Reinhardt so meaninglessly killed though anything other than a rifle scope.»

Morrison winced. «He was a good man. Loyal, to the end - unlike a lot of people I could mention. I miss him.»

«I do, too.» She glared. «Obviously.»

«You're not being fair, though. It wasn't me.» He picked up his whiskey and took another sip. «It was Talon. I know you'll never believe that, but...»

«I have cause to change my mind, on that. Or at least, to reconsider. You gave the orders, but... you may, after all, have had reason to give them.»

Morrison put down his shot glass and stared at his former executive officer. «You... what?»

«I told you, in my message - I had new information.»

He nodded. «You said you had information about Talon. Information I'd want to see, that'd I'd pay anything to get.»

«Yes. It regards Overwatch, as well.»

«And? What's the price?»

She snorted. «I've never been in this for money, Jack.»

He nodded. «I know. None of us were.»

«At least there's that.» She flagged the waiter, walking by, and asked - in Spanish - if he could bring her a strawberry soda. He returned with a can and a tall glass of ice, a few moments later.

"I'll get it," Morrison said, also in Spanish. "Just add it to my bill."

Ana's head tilted, just a little. "Your Spanish is much better than your Arabic. You'd pass for a Madrileños."

Morrison just snorted. "I've had a lot more cause for practice."

"I suppose so."

«But... you were about to say?»

Ana took a long drink of her soda, put it back down, took a deep breath to fortify her resolve, and dove in. «The person calling herself Lena Oxton - whoever or whatever she really might be - is a Talon agent. She is, specifically, the Talon assassin known as Venom. She is also the supposedly-freelance sniper Mockingbird, and the so-called Hero of London, Tracer.»

The former strike commander slammed his hands on the top of the table. «I knew it! I knew it wasn't her.» This is what I've been waiting for, he thought. Vindication. At last. «She was probably the sniper who shot my tactical visor in New Mexico... but can you prove it?»

«I'm not even finished with what I know.»

«Please!» He leaned forward. «Go on!»

«She appears to change who she is, becoming different people to suit a task - I have video of this, of her changing from Tracer to Mockingbird. She can be any of them, and possibly even more people - I do not know.»

«Of course... I never thought of that. That explains so much. She can't be the only one. Maybe they're all shapeshifters.»

«I... don't know that, either.» She closed her eyes, pain across her face. «But I do know... that my daughter's wife is her handler, and she is the one who controls the changes. Or, at least, she is one person who can.»

«Your...» He thought about it. «Angela?! Angela Ziegler was the mole?»

The old soldier dipped her head, once. «It appears likely. In the video I have, she changes Tracer into Mockingbird, using that 'healing staff' of hers. Clearly, it does more than we ever imagined.»

«So.» He took another sip of his whiskey, imagination running with this new information, galloping along unhindered. «Reyes, Ziegler, and Oxton, all Talon, all guiding the new "Overwatch," all under the nose of the Swiss and the UN. Or with their cooperation.» He let out a long, slow breath. «You're right,» he agreed, «I would pay anything to have this.»

«I believe it's clear now that the entire Overwatch revival effort is a Talon project - for what purpose, I do not know.»

«And... if Angela's involved...» He dreaded the answer to the question he was about to pose. «...Fareeha's involved, too?»

Ana's eyes closed, her face scrunched into a knot of pain. «I... I fear so. God, Jack, I stayed away too long, chasing after you... I should've been there, I could've kept her from that witch... I contacted her, when I contacted you, begging her, telling her what I knew, telling her, leave Overwatch, leave Angela, while she still could... if she still could...»

His mouth set into a firm line. «She didn't?»

She shook her head. «No. I... I have to presume she... can't. Or doesn't want to, given her messages back to me. I have to presume... that she isn't who she was. That she...»

«Ana, I'm...»

«...I fear my daughter is gone, Jack.»

Her mask broke, and all at once, she dissolved, in sobs, and Jack Morrison took her in his arms, comforting her as best he could in his own gruff way. «Ana, I am so, so sorry.»

She cried for a moment, then, as quickly as she broke, she forced herself back together, sniffled heavily, coughed, and sat back up. «My apologies, Jack. That was... unprofessional.»

«No,» he disagreed. «It was natural. I've never had a daughter to lose, but... she was kind of all of ours... we all cared for her, very much.»

«And you... you're... not exactly who you were, either. Don't lie. I know.»

He looked into his whiskey, did not take another sip, and looked back up. «I've done some awful things, Ana. Things I didn't even know I was doing. They - they made me a monster, too. During the attack, I stumbled into Angela's lab, thought I was patching myself up...»

Her eyes widened. «So, that's how...»

«I can't be sure, but - I think so.»

She shuddered. «Even back then, she was... with them. Working on such unspeakable things. And we never knew.»

He nodded. «Is that why you've been after me all these years?»

«No - not originally. I thought you were a monster, but... only metaphorically. I thought I was avenging Reinhardt. But then I saw what you could do, and... put pieces together, and had another reason.»

«I can control it now. It, it took a while, but... I can control it.»

«And you didn't even know, until,» she shook her head, «when?»

«Someone - Mockingbird, I think - shot off my tactical visor, last year, on a convoy run. Then I had another one, suddenly, somehow, and the old one was on the ground, broken. There was dashcam footage, and then... I spent a few months shooting myself to watch what happened. Learning to control it.»

«That's... grotesque.»

«Desperate times, Ana. Desperate times and desperate measures.»

Ana looked into her former CO's eyes, thinking, for longer than he was comfortable, but she didn't care. He wasn't so wrong, about the owl-like stares. After several moments, she nodded, curtly, once. «So. Now, I have the pieces I have been missing, and you have the pieces you have been missing. What can we do with what we've both made?»

Morrison gave his executive officer half a smile - he knew he'd passed a test, even if he didn't quite know what kind. «I know this - the governments are corrupt. They're all in Talon hands, or, at best, Talon-infiltrated. So we have to take the fight straight to the heart of the beast.»

«That's a tall order, Jack.»

«It is. But I've been building Los Muertos into a real fighting force - I wasn't even entirely sure why, it just felt like I needed to do it.» He took a long drink of his water. «Guess I've finally figured out why.»

Captain Amari nodded. «My message to Fareeha - or...» barely suppressed pain flashed across her face, «...whatever she is now - will have tipped them off. If we're going to act, it will have to be soon.»

«All the more reason not to waste any more time here.»

«No,» she said. «Jack... it's been a long while. We should... if we're going to be working together again, we should take a little time. Catch up.»

The strike commander smiled a very old smile. «Hardly feels like any time at all, to me. Feels good to talk again, too - despite everything. It's almost like picking back up where we left off.»

«I guess we haven't changed as much as we like to think, have we, Jack?»

«Guess not. You still like corn cakes?»

«I do.»

«They make good ones here.» He let himself relax, just a little. «Let's... just have brunch. Catch up, like you said. For a little while.»

She nodded, and then looked over to the waiter who had brought her soda before. "Excuse me?" she called, in Spanish, bringing the young man back over. "I think we're finally ready to order."

This chapter is worksafe. [AO3 link]

---

Angela Ziegler looked over the boxed-up contents of her laboratory, everything safely put away, new access codes on the doors and cases. The last round of prepared auto-aid kits - capable of handling most of the sorts of injuries an Overwatch agent was likely to encounter in the field - were neatly stacked on the cart outside her office, ready for transport up the elevator and across to the Lunar embassy.

She picked up her bag and backpack, and grasped the cart's handle, making her way to the elevator, then up, to the courtyard, where Fareeha and Winston waited for her, at the line marking the boundary between Swiss and Lunar territories.

"One last time, Angela," the scientist said, "Are you sure about this?"

The doctor nodded, firmly. "I care about this project as much as you do, Winston. We are needed, and... we need her. If this is what is necessary to repair the damage I caused, so be it."

"Then... thank you. And good luck." The ambassador took the cart from his friend, and wheeled it aside, well into Lunar territory.

"You look very much like you need a hug. I know I do," Fareeha said.

"Yes, I do. But - think of it as just another mission. We have been apart before."

"Not like this."

"It's just Lena, liebchen. She's not so frightening as all that."

"But it's not just her. It's all of Talon, and you are going into the heart of it."

"I know. But I should not be gone for so very long." The two embraced, kissing both fiercely and tenderly, before Angela broke away and stepped back to the Swiss side of the line. "They want no one else in the courtyard, so..."

"Come back to me," said the rocketeer, as she stepped back, into the Lunar Embassy's entryway.

"I will."

The courtyard now clear, the doctor pulled a violet hexagonal device from her bag, and placed it on the ground in front of her. "The beacon comes in two parts. I don't know why, but I know they will respond quickly," she said quietly, knowing her wife could still hear her nonetheless. Then, from a small, round, metal box, she extracted a smaller, round, black device, clicked its power cell into place, and depressed the top button until it beeped, twice. "That's all there is to it." She looked up, looking for a ship. "See you when I see..."

And then she vanished.

-----

"I was not expecting that," said Winston, from inside the building. "But we have the promised proof of life." He threw the image up on the wall of the conference room - Mercy, in a small, featureless cabin, holding up a padd with the latest news headlines as of half an hour before. Mei-Ling let out a big breath. "Thank goodness!"

Gabriel almost let himself laugh a bit. "Talon has a top-level software and hardware hacker - I don't know her real name, but she's head of the Sombra collective, the one behind that hacking spree last year. That teleporter trick has to be her work."

Hana flipped the image showing Angela's disappearance onto her personal padd, examining it curiously, as Winston said, "An extraordinarily powerful tool, regardless."

"I wasn't worried," said Fareeha. "Not any more than I already had been. If Talon had wanted to kill her for what she did, they'd've already done it." Or, she thought, at least, tried. "They wouldn't hide behind special effects."

Winston shook his head, no. "I wouldn't've cooperated - ever - if I was afraid of anything like that. Widowmaker is very strange, in some ways, but she is also very rational." And still Amélie, he thought, but could not say. "There are confidences I'm keeping, but it comes down to one thing: they trusted us, and we blew it, and now we have to trust them."

Fareeha nodded in agreement. "Exactly."

"So what are you worried about, Ree?" asked Gabriel.

The rocketeer's expression grew sober. "I worry about... what Angela might decide she needs to do."

-----

Doctor Ziegler felt herself being led off the small transport ship. She'd been blindfolded since the photograph, but felt now the heat of what she suspected was a Mediterranean sun. "Are we there?" she asked the pilot, a woman she did not know by sight, and who did not identify herself.

"Yes," she heard the unnamed woman reply, the one who had blindfolded her, the one with the Talon patch on her shoulder. "The way forward is flat. Follow my lead and the direction of my voice, please."

The doctor stepped carefully along a hard-surfaced walkway. It sounded like concrete, but could've been stone, or anything like it, really. She heard the sounds of seagulls, nearby, and sandpipers, in the distance. "When may I remove the blindfold?" she asked, nervously, when she suddenly felt the sun fall away from her skin with a last pair of steps, and she stopped, at a half-height metal gate. Behind her, she heard a door close.

"Now," said the pilot. "Here, I'll do it," and she removed the cloth.

After the blindfold, even the inside seemed bright, bright like midday. Behind her, a grey metal door sat framed in a small concrete entry leading back, presumably, to the aircraft. Directly before her, the gate, unlocked. And ahead, a stairwell down.

"Don't worry," said the pilot, "it's quite safe. Please proceed."

Through concealed camera feeds, Venom and Widowmaker watched Dr. Ziegler walk down the cement stairs. Everything was being recorded, of course. Perhaps they couldn't entirely trust Angela Ziegler on her word alone, but having just a bit of leverage changed the situation entirely. And if proof of active cooperation with a globally-notorious terrorist organisation didn't count as leverage, well - what would?

"I'm surprised she went along with this, honestly," the teleporter said. "But I'm glad she did."

"I am, as well," said the spider. "But I am... less surprised than you, given what I remember, and all you've said. I do not think she is as much of a rationalist as she likes to believe."

"Wot," she said, a small smile quirking up on one side. "You sayin' she's doin' all this just 'cause she's fallen for me?"

"No," her wife replied, "but... that is part of it. She has strong emotions."

"She's married! And - the doc? Strong emotions? You serious?"

"The first," smirked the spider, "I do not think has to matter so much. And the second... I suspected, even in the old days, but is it not obvious now? Everything she's done screams it. Particularly at the end - she didn't even try to triage you, she just swept in like a goddess and rebuilt your body." Her smirk relaxed into a smile, almost sympathetic. "As one who controls her own passions tightly, I recognise it in another. It is part of why I am not so angry at her... poor decision-making."

"F'real?"

"Oh, yes. Seeing her again, even if in video - it is enough to confirm it. She may hide it from you, and from her current friends - but not from me."

Venom shook her head, and grinned a little. "Y'know... knowin' that... I almost wish it was returned."

"I have always found her quite attractive. And I suspect she is an absolute beast in bed."

"Oh, now, don't you start."

Widowmaker laughed. "Do not worry, cherie, we were only friends - if close ones. And... one time, perhaps a little bit more. I think I will remind her of it." She squeezed her wife's hand. "But it was not serious. I have already fallen, I have no need to fall again."

"I wouldn't mind tho'. As long as y'always came home."

Amélie leaned over and kissed Lena. "J'adore."

"Aw," said the junior assassin, blushing just a little. "I love you too."

-----

Dr. Ziegler walked ahead of the Talon agent, down the well-lit stairwell, once her eyes adjusted to the light. A storey down, and then an elevator with an access pad and locks, and then a hallway, empty of people, at the end of which stood two metal doors, the left of which lead to a comfortably-appointed room, with a set of wooden french doors on the far wall, a couch, a large, round, wooden table, a set of chairs, and an older, Sicilian woman, accompanied by a younger man with a broad, pleasant smile.

"Doctor Ziegler!" said the grey-haired woman, motioning to a chair, as the pilot disappeared quietly back out to the hallway. "It is an honour. Please, sit down. Would you like anything to drink?"

"Some water would be lovely," said the Swiss woman, as she sat. The older woman nodded to her companion, who scooted over for a bottle of water, and two cups of hot tea, from the sidebar.

"I am Dr. Geanna Mariani, and this is my nurse assistant, Taviano Bonsignore. And it is a pleasure, finally, to meet you."

"I suspect I am familiar with your work?"

"More than you should be, I think? But yes."

"Not actually so, but what I know of it is miraculous," Dr. Ziegler said, sincerely. "You have been described to me as a fan of mine - I am, I think, an admirer of yours. But... amongst other tasks, I have a data delivery to make. Will anyone else be attending?"

"Ah, I'm flattered. Thank you. Yes, and they should be here any moment," she said, as the second set of doors opened, and Venom and Widowmaker - both in full Talon field gear - stepped out. "Ah, there you are!"

"Venom," said the Overwatch doctor, nodding, carefully neutral, getting a small but polite smile in return. "Widowmaker," she said, nodding again, a little wary despite herself.

The senior assassin smiled. "It has been a long time, Doctor Ziegler, has it not? Perhaps too long." She reached out her hand to the Swiss woman, who offered her own only to find her fingers brought to cool, blue kips, and gently kissed. "But there is no need to be so formal. Surely, Angela, you have not forgotten Tripoli."

She remembers, thought the doctor, relief cascading through her. It is you. It was always you, the whole time. I knew it. "Of course I haven't," she whispered, smiling, and kissing that cool blue hand, in turn. "It truly is wonderful to see you again in person... Amélie."

I'm writing this thing and even I'm being surprised at how much Pharmacy milage is in this chapter.

[AO3 link]

---

Fareeha read the letter again, face grim, shaking a little, enraged. How dare she. How dare she?!

"Angela! Come here, please!" she called into the other room. This will have to go to all of Overwatch, but... she should know, first.

"Fareeha? Are you all right? You sound..." Her wife leaned around the doorframe and saw that, in fact, her wife was tightly, rigidly angry. "Oh, no. What is it, liebchen?"

"Come here, and hold me, while you read this."

Angela stepped quickly forward to the flying agent's chair and wrapped her arms around her neck, reading over her shoulder. "...I... I... this has to go to the entire team."

"I know. I wanted you to see it first."

"Do not hold any of it back, send it unedited."

"That is not why." The Egyptian turned in her chair to face her wife. "I've decided. I will do it. I want to do it, now. How long will it take to prepare a set of nanites for me?"

Angela gasped, and covered her mouth with her left hand, her heart leaping, and she stepped half a step back, then threw herself around her wife, holding her tight, so tight, so unready for that declaration. "I... That is not the reaction I..."

Fareeha held her wife gently, pulling her head against her strong shoulders, her eyes closed, brushing her fingers through her wife's hair. "I know."

"But... why? I am..." The doctor took a long, deep breath, and pulled back. "I... have committed a serious ethical lapse - it was not my first - and ... I have wanted this for too long. I, I have to be sure. I have to know. You are not doing this just to spite your mother?"

Fareeha laughed, a little bitterly. "No."

"Have I put pressure on you? Have I been..."

Fareeha chuckled and smiled. "No."

"Then... why? Why now?"

Her wife grew quite sombre, quite quickly. "I..." She pursed her lips and looked at the floor, and did not speak for a moment, and then not for another moment, and not for another moment after that. She covered her eyes with her hands, then covered her entire face, sliding her palms slowly down, collecting her thoughts. Softly, looking up, but to the distance, she began, "I was always taught life had phases, and that it mattered to go through all of them." She bit her lip. "That they all have a purpose. That everything has a time, and a place, and that all the phases of life are equally valuable, in different ways. Part of that is... that age brings wisdom."

"I do not disagree," said her wife, softly.

"Mother - Ana - believed in that, particularly. That the wisdom of age is important to humanity. That there is value - and knowledge - in understanding the decay of time, in understanding" - she looked at her own strong arms, and her own strong hands - "that this does not endure."

Angela Ziegler nodded, and her expression subtly changed, as her thoughts raced ahead of her wife's speech.

"I have lived long enough to understand that, at least, a little. But - if she... if this is what she calls wisdom..." She glared back to the screen, with its softly glowing text, anger in her eyes. "This is not wisdom, it is insanity." Her gaze whipped back to her wife, and she looked deep into her eyes. "Is this what awaits me in old age? This... paranoia? This capriciousness? This... madness? I will have no part of it. I beg you to save me from this."

Angela met her wife's sight, falling into the dark pools of her eyes, reaching across to her wife, touching her cheek and chin and hair. "I have wanted nothing more in my life." She closed her own eyes, for a moment, and opened them again. "But ... I have to do this correctly."

"Whatever this is," she gestured to the text on the display, "it is not genetic. If it is environmental, it is not in you. You carry nothing that makes this inevitable, or even likely. I do not know what has happened to your mother, but ... I do not think, not even for a moment, that you would share her fate."

Fareeha nodded. "Good." Slowly, she looked down again, contemplating Angela's declaration carefully for seconds, then for a minute, then for another, before looking back up. "But it doesn't change my decision. The only reason - the only true reason - I have said no, is my belief in what she taught me." She reached over, and touched the display, with its texts, with its threat. "I no longer have good cause to think it has value."

"I'm sorry," said her wife. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm not," said her lover. "Illusions do not suit me." She shrugged. "Besides, it's not like you can't turn the nanites off."

"No," acknowledged the doctor. "But they will begin repairs immediately. You will lose your scars, over a period of weeks. They are part of your life, your experience, and they will fade completely, over time."

The younger soldier nodded. "They are mostly hidden, anyway."

"Not from me," smiled the doctor. "I treasure them, as they are a part of you."

The flying officer snorted. "They hurt in rainy weather, you know that. They bother me every time we visit my father. This one, in particular," she pointed to the left side of her ribcage, "I will be most glad to see this one gone."

"You will look younger. Not very much, but somewhat. Overwatch ignores it, in me - but they may not, in a field soldier. In you."

"I will demonstrate to them that I do not care what they think."

"Then you are absolutely sure?"

"Yes," she said, mind clearly made up. "I have no idea what it takes to start the process. If I could take the first dose, receive the first infusion, whatever the procedure might be - if I could do it right now, this very instant, I would."

"You're sure."

"Yes."

"Right now."

"Yes."

Angela laughed, just a little - "I have been waiting to do this for so long..." - and sat in her wife's lap, and kissed her, breathlessly, tightly, hard. Her lips tingled against her wife's, like electrics, but without the shock, and Fareeha felt her pulse quicken, and it felt to the rocketeer almost as if their hearts were moving into sync as the electrics moved across her skin, and her eyes widened as the low, persistent, ignored ache in her left shoulder faded, and she realised... Now. And she pulled her wife against her, harder, and they kissed until neither could avoid breaking away for a breath, as hard as they fought against it, and so they broke away, both panting, both shaking, just a little.

"That... was not what I expected... in a nanite delivery system." She laughed, in little huffs, feeling somehow light, somehow bubbly, all over. "But I approve of it."

Her wife took a deep breath, giggling throughout, no, more than that, but she did not have words for the kind of burbling elation running through her mind. "I," she laughed, "I thought it would be a gift on our honeymoon, but I've kept it to myself until you were ready... I am so happy... but... how do you feel?"

The Egyptian laughed, and pulled her wife back against her body. "I feel, doctor, like I need another dose."

Angela grinned broadly, eyes alight like stars. "You don't, but - isn't it convenient I just happen to have one ready?" She leaned in, and they kissed again, 'till nothing else mattered at all.

Two hours later, Fareeha forwarded Ana's message to the rest of Overwatch, flagged "Mission Critical - Urgent," recommending most strongly that regular Embassy staff be warned, that Swiss and UN authorities be notified, and that Athena step up security on all exterior access points. "If Ana Amari has decided to play it like this," she said, in her forward, "we need to take her seriously. I will do what I can to talk her back to sensibility, but this is a threat, and it should be treated as such. And so, unfortunately, should she."

-----

Venom ignored her mail. Venom often ignored her mail, particularly her Overwatch mail, when she wasn't at Overwatch, when she wasn't playing Tracer. Venom liked not being in charge - despite being on Talon's executive council - and while at Overwatch, if push came to shove, she was in charge, and she knew it. But she couldn't keep ignoring Winston forever, no matter how much she didn't feel like talking to him, and so, eventually, she didn't.

The assassin hit [Acknowledge Signal] on her padd, and jumped in first, saying, "Fine," exasperation in her voice. "I'm here. First things first tho', did Angela tell you..."

"Check your mail. Right now. I'll wait."

Lena glared, angry again. "No. First. Did Angela tell you what happened?"

"Yes," said the scientist, "We know. The whole team. We know all of it, I'm pretty sure. She offered her resignation, I refused to accept it. Lena, check your mail right now. It's important."

Lena looked sideways at Winston, anger in her eyes, but pulled up her Overwatch mail in another window. "That's quite the thread you've... got..." She blinked. "...oh."

The scientist nodded. "That's why I haven't been letting you cool down. I'm sorry, but you can see why."

"Wow," said the Talon assassin. "This is bad." She read Ana's mail - and Fareeha's commentary and recommendations - again. Or maybe, she thought to herself, it's good. Maybe now they'll just step aside. She looked back towards Winston. "Do you know what this means?"

"Fareeha is trying to talk to her. No luck so far, but she's still trying."

"Do you know what this means? Winston, I need to know."

"...yes. I do."

"Good." She sighed and shook her head. "I tried, luv. I really did. I could've solved this weeks ago. But I was nice, and I played it your way... and look where it's got us."

"We don't know that. And I don't like your way of handling these things. I'll never like it, and I'll never not prefer our way, and I'll never stop insisting we get first shot, when it's our jurisdiction. But..." he looked down and to his left. "You had a right to know about this mail. Even if I knew how you'd react. Even if I knew what you'd do."

You made sure I was informed, the assassin realised. You didn't delete the mail. You even called my attention to it. She breathed. Bloody hell, this has to be hard on you.

Lena's face softened a little, and she smiled a sad smile. "Thanks, big guy." She closed her eyes. "I need to talk to Angela - using my codes. I'll drop a new set of keys in the usual place; she'll need access to that drop, or you'll need to ferry the files." She looked back at her old friend. "Will you do that for me?"

The ambassador nodded, deciding not to ask why. "I will."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. You're glad you've got a reason."

Venom snorted. "Fair cop. I really am sorry, though. Not for what we're gonna do, but for how hard it is on ya."

"This is not the first time I've had to be a little complicit... but it may be the most difficult."

Lena nodded. "I didn't want..." Damn you, Morrison - do you have to destroy everything you touch? "I didn't want to put you in that position again. That's all."

"Look, Lena," said the scientist. "Just don't go out of your way. Not with Ana. I know what Jack's done, that's one thing, but Ana..." he said miserably, "Do what you have to, just... don't be extra about it. Can you at least do that for me, if not for Fareeha? Please?"

The Talon agent thought about it, hard. If we can get the video, if we can get that damned gun of hers before she hands off imagery... then she's just another batty old conspiracy theorist who doesn't make any sense. And we don't risk losing Pharah. She gave Winston a dubious look - the most dubious of looks - and set her upper lip, but nodded, just a little. "I'll try. No promises."

"None expected," he said, knowing it was the best he'd get.

She pressed a few buttons on her padd. "I've dropped new codes for Angela. You'll relay 'em?"

"She'll have them in a few minutes."

"Thanks, big guy. For all of it, but... particularly for not trying to hide this from me."

"These were colleagues of mine once, Lena. Yours, as well. Don't make me regret this any more than I already do. Please."

"Gloves off, luv. We're gonna do what's needed." She shook her head, and tapped the tabletop in front of her. "But I'll do my best t' keep it to that."

"Thank you."

"Thank me when it's over - if y'still want to. Y'may not. But right now..." She put her hands on the table. "I need to debrief my team."

"Good luck," Winston said, "...I think."

Lena smiled, ruefully. "Best I'll get?"

"Best I've got to give. Winston out."

Special thanks to bzarcher for feedback on this chapter, particularly regarding the need for the first section to exist at all. [AO3 link]

---

"Still no sign of him?"

"Nope. Not a word. He's laying low - real low."

Tracer leaned against the table set off to the side of Gabriel's office, against the north wall. "It's been weeks."

Gabriel shrugged. "Intelligence is like that."

"I know, I know," she said breezily, but not without a hint of irritation. "So were the Forces."

The strategic advisor snorted knowingly. "It's no coincidence that 'Hurry Up and Wait' has been a running joke in every army ever."

"There's got to be some reason, though. He won't just have buggered off."

The Angelino nodded. "Most likely. Who knows what it is, though."

"It bothers me, luv, it really does." She fiddled with the buttons on her grapple, a nervous habit. "He's doing something. Don't know what, but... it bothers me."

"Me too. But Morrison'll surface when he's good and ready." He flipped through more pages of intel, some from his own sources, some from Lena's friends. "We just need to be good to go when he does."

-----

[three months later]

"So that's how it's going to be, is it, Oxton?" Morrison said, still feeling strange, still feeling sluggish, still feeling as he had since the beginning of the assault when Ziegler had let fly that flare, that burst of light, and his convoy fell under assault again, for the second time in three months. But he kept dancing, around and away, low on ammo, lower on allies - at least, ones still standing - and he wasn't going to go down. Not if he could help it.

He'd broken away from the main corps, trying for high ground to launch his grenades, but this time, the tactical visor had stayed off, thanks to Ziegler's new toy. "The last Overwatch survivor, finally brought down by Talon?"

"Damn you, Morrison - don't tempt me," Lena Oxton snapped back before thinking, pistols aimed but not firing, still circling her target - but as Tracer in orange and tangerine, no matter how much she wasn't wanting to play that part right then. She gestured to the patch on her shoulder. "We're Overwatch, not Talon, and we're here to take you in for charging and trial. We're not here kill you."

"You? Overwatch? Don't make me laugh. There's no real Overwatch, not anymore. Not since the attack. Not since '70."

"Jack, please! Just stand down!" shouted Mei-Ling, peeking around from behind her ice wall. "You'll have a chance to defend yourself. The ICC will hear your case. You will have your day in court!" And I can't wait to testify against you, she did not add aloud.

Where the hell is Delgado's team?! the former Strike Commander thought, stalling for time, running for distance. He snarled at the scientist. "A show trial in front of that puppet theatre, before I have all the evidence of what's really been going on? I don't think so." He fired another few rounds at Oxton, trying to conserve his remaining ammo. "Of all the people - of all the people, Mei - you? Working with Talon, like the rest? I thought you were better than that."

What the bloody hell does he know?! thought Venom, dismayed. He must be bluffing. Got to be. "What is it with you and Ana, anyway? Is everything Talon to you, now?" She glanced around, the briefest of looks. C'mon, Gabe, I can't do this forever. Where are you? Rally the rest of the troops, already!

-----

Dammit, thought Reyes, down the bottom of a very long hill, crouching along the edge of a gully in the face of heavy Los Muertos flak. "Tracer, Gabriel - we're under pretty heavy fire here, you still have eyes on the target?"

"Roger that," came her subvocalised reply over comms. "But it's me and Mei against him and he's not being talked down. How long you gonna be?"

"It's a proper strike force on their side. We're wearing 'em out, and we'll win this, but it's gonna take a few minutes. Keep him entertained 'til we can bring the party to you?"

"We'll do our best, but he's getting away from us."

"From you? "

"I'm holdin' back, luv. Playin' my part."

"Right." He rolled between boulders, firing suppression rounds, getting closer to the front line as D.va - who had finally responded to the recall a week before - charged in on their the right flank with a round of minirockets. "We'll get there as soon as we can."

-----

"It's all Talon! It always was - that was the whole damn point, after the Omnic Crisis!" the one-time Strike Commander retorted, dancing away again, with good speed. It was mostly him and Oxton, now, Mei falling behind, despite doing her best to keep up. "They subverted the UN, just like they subverted you."

Wow, he's just... out on his own somewhere, isn't he? thought the teleporter. "Jack, this is barmy - what are you even on about?"

"Like you don't know." He threw a volley of gunfire at the teleporter, hitting her arm, and she let out a little "yipe!" before rewinding the damage. "Like that," he said. And like they did to me, he thought. But I'll turn it back against them. I'm the one who can. He backed away, again, further and further from the main fighting, and felt a little better, a little faster, a little less stuck.

"This," she said, teleporting behind him and clocking him hard on the back of his head with the butt of her pistol, wanting to do so much more, but being so very, very good, and hating it so very, very much, "is your fault. Or the Slipstream's. Or both." She teleported away as he turned and fired, calling, "And being stuck there for five years? Definitely on you." She punctuated the 'definitely' with four rounds of fire, two on either side of his head, bullets whizzing just past his ears.

Mei-Ling ran as fast as she could, and as hard as she could, throwing up walls to slow him down, catching up just a bit. "Jack, you must stand down! You can outrun me, but not her, and the rest of the team will be here in very soon. You have no chance!"

"I always have a chance," he growled. "I survived your entire assault force - this? This is nothing." I just need to get a little further back, he thought. Almost there. I can feel it.

And then, suddenly, he was there. His tactical visor reappeared, materialising, as if formed from nothing. Tracer saw, and jinked to the side, shouting, "MEI! GET DOWN!" and she threw her stinger, sticking it to his left arm, all but reflexively...

...and the soldier's whole body turned to mist, not as, but just before the bomb exploded. She teleported away, last one...

...and the mist followed, and she ran, ran like she'd never run, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, seven seconds, just give me seven...

...which was when the the solder's grenade hit her back, hard, followed by the solder's last clip of assault rifle rounds, and she fell, limp, onto the ground, and did not get up.

"LENA!" shrieked Mei, and she charged, throwing spears of ice at the Strike Commander, who sneered, but retreated, choosing the better part of valour, being out, finally, of both grenades and ammo, at least for now. "MERCY!" she shouted into comms, "GET HERE RIGHT NOW, TRACER DOWN AND NOT GETTING BACK UP!"

"We're en route," said the combat medic over comms, "they're retreating and we are on our way!"

Dr. Zhou looked with growing horror at Tracer, who seemed to be struggling to reach something, and not bleeding out, at least, not quickly, and she didn't know how that was possible with a hole that big in her back, How are you alive?! How are you moving?! she thought, but she fired, and fired, and fired, after the Strike Commander, missing, putting up a wall at the end, as he ran out of sight. "MERCY!" she called again. "SHE IS DYING!"

Lena struggled, trying not to black out and succeeding, reserves draining but there is time, there is more than enough time, reaching for one of the hidden venom mines in her pouch but her shoulder wasn't quite working, looking at Mei, mouthing something Mei could not understand. "No! Don't try to move, Angela is on the way!" the researcher said, grabbing Lena's arm, and Lena fought her, getting stronger, not weaker, no, Mei, no, let me, let me get... but she could not draw air, so she could not speak, and then...

"Helden sterben nicht!" shouted the doctor, arriving, as the look in Tracer's eyes screamed No! as loudly as she could make it scream, before she was taken by fear, terrified of what could...

...it was cool. So cool. Unexpectedly so, but not cold, not painful, not like tearing and shifting flesh, nothing like pain at all. She tingled, all over, and somehow, she found herself still aware though it, still awake, still thinking, floating, weightless, glowing, and then suddenly, it was over, and she was standing, and whole. She grabbed at her chest in panic, where some of the rounds had exited, and teleported, successfully, and rewound, and teleported again, and everything - everything - just worked.

She looked around through golden eyes, seeing the world in sniper-sight, and that's when she knew, and again, became cold.

"...you perfected it?!" said Mei, and Angela nodded, briefly. "Yes. A couple of years ago. But... Lena, please!" she shouted, "Do not teleport any more! I need to get you back to the ship at once, for an examination! Please!"

The assassin froze, stopping in place, perfectly still, and tested her web, tested her systems, and found everything right back where it should be - for Mockingbird, anyway.

She hit a set of buttons on her grapple, flipping her armour back to Tracer tangerine and white, but left her eyes gold as she said - with very little inflection in her voice at all - "Yeh. Clearly. And, Mei, luv... you witnessed all this... you need to tell the rest of the team. Fill them in, tell them what he can do now."

She popped the sight off her rifle and separated it back into its component pistols - Tracer wouldn't have that - and re-holstered them both. "Let's go."

-----

"So," said the Talon assassin. "That was... different."

Medical data flashed by on the panel over the ship's examination table, and Dr. Ziegler looked at it, but without enthusiasm, or even her regular focus. She knew it all already - she knew that Lena was in perfect health. In every way. She just prayed the woman didn't know...

"I didn't think you could do your resurrection trick without a deep scan," Venom said, in a pointed but quiet voice. "Much less invoke all... this."

The doctor considered the monitor readouts, intently, but Lena did not let it lie.

"That is what you said, isn't it? That's what I seem t'remember."

Angela closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled, shuddering. Well. This is it, then. She swallowed, hard. "That's right. I can't."

Venom's face set, grimly, into an angry frown. "Yeh. That's what I thought. When?"

"In my office. When you agreed you were still my patient. It was automatic, but that is not a defence - I knew it would happen, and I let it."

Lena nodded. "Antineutrino entanglement scanner, maybe? Ordinary scanners won't work."

Angela blinked her eyes open, surprised, looking towards her patient. "Yes. Still considered experimental. How did you know?"

Lena smirked. "Had a hunch."

"I see."

"So." The assassin propped herself up, carefully, on her elbows. "You lied to me."

"Yes. No. Yes. It was part of the paperwork you signed, back in London, technically, but... yes. But I never looked at the data. Not even once, I swear to you. I have no idea how you work. I did not violate that confidentiality. I swear."

Venom coughed, a mockery of a laugh. "If that's true, luv, then how did...?"

"I wanted to violate it," she broke in, looking down though wet eyes. "So much, I wanted to. But I didn't. I couldn't, I knew how you'd..." - she finally thought about the question - "I... I compiled it all into the Mockingbird revival database, destroyed the original, and prayed I wouldn't have to use the result. Or that you'd agree, before I did."

"Why would you do that?" Oxton looked down, towards the deck. "Dammit, doc, you know what I said I'd have to do."

"I did not touch your tech," the doctor insisted, desperately clinging to that technicality.

"I am my tech," refuted the assassin, "and you know it."

"Please, no, you don't have to do this, I truly do not know," said the doctor, an edge of fear in her voice.

Oxton shook her head, no. "Don't think that's good enough... 'cause it's not."

Angela shuddered, surrendering to the inevitable. "...I know."

"Well, then."

"Well, then." The Swiss woman set her chin, but it was wobbly. "I will quit Overwatch."

"Ah, no, mate, they need you." Lena sat, swinging her legs over the edge of the table. "More than they need me, t' be honest."

"That's a lie, and you know it."

"Is it? I don't think so." Venom rose from the medical bunk. "They've got a tactical planner, now - one who isn't me." She spun her pistols, just trying to feel normal again, and re-holstered them. "Winston can keep the team together just fine. Tracer..." She shook her head. "She's just an act, s'far as I'm concerned." Flipping her armour back to black and violet, she continued, "One I'm not sure I'm comfortable playing anymore."

"Please don't do this."

"Give me a reason not to, doc," she said, finally pushing the gold from her eyes. "I've put a lot of work into this project, I've really wanted it to fly, but it's become pretty clear that it's..."

"Please don't punish all of them because I decided I'd rather see you hating me than lying dead on the ground," whispered the doctor. "They didn't know." Sobbing all at once, the damn breaking, she looked over to the smaller woman, entire face wet. "It's not their fault."

Venom froze in place, hand just short of the Talon retrieval beacon, and Angela desperately kept talking.

"I swear to you, I do not know how you work. No one does. The data is gone - completely - except within my nanosurgeon farm, and even it doesn't understand, it's not intelligent, not really, and the data is too enmeshed with other data to retrieve. Even I couldn't do it. Hate me," she begged the assassin, falling to her knees in front of the smaller woman, "hate me, if you must, I have betrayed your trust to keep you alive, I freely admit that and I will accept your hate - but I could not bear accept death a second time."

Venom felt dismay at the outburst, confused, ...what is going on...? and the doctor stared back down, down, down at the floor. "Just... don't leave. Don't do it. Please. Don't."

Please. Don't. The words rang through Venom's head like a shot not fired, and, unwanted and unexpected, a tear fell from her own eye, as it dawned upon her to ask, "Are you in... lo..."

She did not finish the word. She didn't have to. "...I'll..." she swallowed, shocked, and wiped her face with her hand. It was still cool to the touch, even to her own. "This is really bad. I'll have to tell Amélie what you've done."

"I do not care. I will confess everything."

"I can't tell you what she'll decide to do. I don't honestly know. But whatever decision she makes, I'll accept it."

"I understand."

"For whatever it's worth, doc - I do believe you, when you say you don't know how we work."

"You do?" Angela looked up at Lena, blinking, surprised.

"Yeh. If y'did... you'd know you didn't need to do that."

"...what?"

"We are bloody hard to kill. And... y'did think you were saving my life. With Mei being in the way, stopping me from healing myself... maybe you even did." She bit her lower lip, thoughtfully. "I don't hate you," she said, as she stepped back outside, "...but now I know I can't really trust you, either."

Mercy's gaze dropped back down to the transport's deck. "I'm sorry."

"I want to believe that," Venom said, regret in her voice. "I really do. I think I even might."

"Thank you."

"But... for the record? I want it logged. You are no longer my doctor."

Angela Ziegler just nodded, accepting the fact.

Lena Oxton stepped down past the end of the boarding ramp, spotting the rest of the assault team returning from the ambush, not at all far away now, with prisoners. Mei-Ling waved, the scientist's broad smile sharing her relief, and the assassin bit her lip and turned back to Dr. Ziegler, quickly, without acknowledging it. "Tell everybody the truth about what happened, 'cause I will if y'don't. And probably will even if y'do. But for now..." She pressed the retrieval beacon's activator switch. "I'll see ya... when I see ya."

And with that, she teleported away.

A local MS-13 cell made a very, very big mistake - they stole from a Talon research lab. Lena "Venom" Oxton and Amélie "Widowmaker" Lacroix go to retrieve the stolen goods, leave a message, and decide to bring along a lunatic with explosives just to make the point a little more emphatically. And also because it's fun.

This is the mission mentioned in Chapter 13 of Old Soldiers ("feeding the spiders"), and is canon in the on overcoming the fear of spiders continuity. But all you need to know really is that Lena and Amélie are both with Talon.

All dialogue in «chevron quotes» is translated from the Spanish. [AO3 link]

---

Venom laughed despite herself as the little truck with her bomb on it plowed into the garage and exploded, sending MS-13 enforcers flying for cover - at least two of whom were dead, and three of whom were on fire, which was, of course, absolutely hilarious.

"Steering's overrated!" she quipped in a terrible Australian accent, as she teleported after one straggler - finishing him with a single round of fire - and Amélie took the others before they even landed. That weird little Aussie's enthusiasm, she had to admit - it was contagious.

"Discipline, cherie," she heard in her comms, and snickered. Amélie's voice didn't entirely hide her own amusement, even if she did have a point. These guys may've been stupid enough to steal from Talon, but that didn't mean they couldn't be dangerous.

"Acknowledged," she said, in her best imitation of her spider's voice, before giggling. "No. No. Yes. Right. Discipline. You're right. These guys do have guns. Even if they don't seem t'be so good at using 'em."

Said weird little Aussie's voice joined in the mix. "You two sheilas always this much fun? IiiiiiiiiiiI love it! FIRE IN TH' HOLE!"

"Woah!" Venom had just enough time to jink away as one of Jameson's motorised tire explosives spun into the motor pool and detonated, briefly lifting the building up off its concrete-slab foundation. It stood just long enough for one survivor to come stumbling out the front door, before it fell, landing on said survivor with a flump, crushing him to death immediately.

"It's the little things..." said the explosives expert, and Venom giggled and giggled and giggled.

"Don't do that to the main building," came Widowmaker's voice, stern. "We have stolen material to recover."

"I know, mate - I'm a professional! That's why I did it here!" replied the Aussie, and she heard Venom laugh again.

Widowmaker shook her head from her vantage point in the trees above. Well, we needed to make a statement... "I see no signs of life. Are we all clear?"

"Think so, love," responded Venom, from the ground, snapping back to seriousness. "Nobody left but the bunker."

"Y'know," said the Aussie, "if whatever you're grabbin's not too fragile, I could toss one of those over their HQ, make an air burst. It's real disorientin'. They'll never know what hit 'em!"

That... thought the spider, ...is not a terrible idea.

-----

There they are, thought Venom, finding the last three guards hunkered down behind a metal desk. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, who'll be the last t'go? Oooh, they've got a turret!

"Got 'em," she subvocalised over comms. "End of my hallway. Three and a turret. Junks, back off, we need one of 'em alive."

"But I've got another rip-tire ready!" Jameson protested. "This one's a beaut! "

Venom glanced towards Widowmaker. "It would be hilarious..."

"No," said the senior assassin, flatly. "We can't risk collapsing the building. Jameson, stand down."

The junker made a little frustrated "nnargh!" sound over the comms, and Venom tried not to giggle - she could almost see him rolling his eyes and flumping down along the floor, instantly relaxed. The man could sleep anywhere, honestly.

"Jameson, if you like, you may blow up the building when we leave - but not before. Venom - I have them in my sight," said Widowmaker, as she brought tactical up, both for herself and in Venom's vizor. She snorted. "Too easy. I'll take the turret and disarm its operator. Venom, I'm sure you can handle the other two."

"Done and done," said Venom, and the two women leapt into action, Widowmaker silencing the turret and destroying its operator's right shoulder with a single round, Venom teleporting between the other two fighters and unloading one full clip from each pistol into each of their heads. Blood and viscera splattered everywhere as the last survivor dragged himself into the corner, panicked, trying, desperately, to grab his pistol with his left hand.

«Ah ah ah, none of that,» Venom said, smiling, pistol to his forehead. «You're our lucky winner! Don't be stupid, and you get to live.»

He dropped the pistol. Venom kicked it away, and backed off a bit. No reason to take chances. «Wh... wh... what do you want?» he said.

«Not much, luv - we just want our stuff back. That's all. Well, that, and a message delivered.» She looked back and grinned as Widowmaker walked menacingly down the hall and into view.

«What?» Already pale, he spotted the Talon insignia on Venom's collar, and went even paler.

«...don't you know who you stole from, luv?»

«Oh no.»

«Oh - yes. You stole from us. You seriously didn't know?»

«I swear, we didn't! None of us!»

«Fair enough. So, where's the stash?»

He shut his mouth and shook his head.

«Oh, do not be tiresome,» said the Widowmaker. «Let me guess - 'It's worth my life!'»

«It is! And my family's!»

«You don't think we know how MS-13 works, mate?» Venom fired a single round to the left of his head. «You don't got family close enough to care about, you took care of that - and we know it.»

«This is not a negotiation," Widowmaker said, gold eyes coldly fixed on the last survivor. «You tell us, immediately, and we bind your shoulder and leave you here, alive, to tell your compatriots what not to do in future. Otherwise, we will find it anyway...» - she looked around at the bloody mess everywhere - «...and I think our message is clear enough without you.»

«Bored now,» said Venom, raising her pistol to the man's forehead. «FIVE. FOUR. THREE. TWO.»

«BASEMENT! Hidden door.»

«Pathetic,» scoffed the senior assassin, as Venom smiled and flipped her pistol back away.

«C'mon, then!» The smaller assassin hoisted the man up off the floor, and he sucked in air, trying not to scream from the pain. «Let's get that shoulder stabilised, then we'll go get that door open together.»

«...together?» gasped the man, afraid.

«Aw, it's trapped? That's fine. You can disarm it for us!»

-----

"That," said Jameson, as he stepped down the gangway, "was a corker. You ever need anythin' else blown up, you just give me a call."

Widowmaker nodded politely, and handed Jameson the keycode to a small deposit box in La Barona. "I believe you will find everything to your satisfaction."

"Your reputation precedes you," said the Junker, and he handed Widowmaker a small gold token. "Courtesy of the queen 'erself!"

"An honour," the Talon assassin said, taking it into her hand and bowing, just a little, "Thank you."

Venom watched as the weird little Australian outbacker roared off on his motorbike. "Y'know... he reeks, but... I kinda like him."

"I think he is allergic to water," said her wife, stepping over to wash her hands, and the token she'd been handed, before removing her nose filters. "Certainly to soap. I can barely be in the same room. And not at all, with his partner."

"Hoo, got that right!" exclaimed Venom, as she set the flyer's air system on flush, before hopping over to hug her wife tightly. "Thanks, love. After all that Overwatch mess, and Morrison... this was exactly what I needed."

The elder assassin smiled, dried her hands, turned around, and held her lover tight before leaning back to kiss her gently on the nose. "Happy birthday."

Surprise! Guess what has a Chapter 2. And a Chapter 3, already a complete first draft. I did not know about any of this until the most words I have ever written in a single day (I think) came pouring out of my brain yesterday.

[AO3 link]

---

[Two months later. Watchpoint Gibraltar.]

With a tooth-shatteringly loud screech, the outer wall of the medical bay peeled away and fell towards the ocean, just as Dr. Ziegler's nurse assistants finished prepping the Widowmaker's first treatment.

"Sorry, luv," Tracer shouted, appearing in the void, one pistol aimed straight at the doctor, as the ringing, clanging metal fell, its sounds fading in the distance. "Can't let y'do that. We made a promise. Back off."

"Lena," said Angela, half-deafened, clinging to her composure, thinking, this shouldn't be happening, but backing away carefully towards her staff. "You lost this argument. I know how you feel about what's going on, but it's better than a death sentence. Do not do this."

"Can't not. I keep my promises, you know that." She fired a shot over the doctor's shoulder. "And stop moving towards your staff. Can't have that, either. What's she on?"

"A twilight sleep sedative, voluntary muscle paralysis, and saline I.V., that's all. We wanted her partially responsive and were about to administer the first dose of treatment. Lena, you do not know what you're doing, this is not a..."

"Stow it. I know she didn't consent and I know this ain't right." Tracer glanced at the closer nurse assistant. "Pull her off the drip. Right now." The assistant looked nervously at Dr. Ziegler, and Tracer decided to make it less optional by shooting the saline unit with her other pistol. "I said now, luv," and the nurse moved to work.

"She can't consent," said the combat medic. "She will murder you in your sleep, and that's if you are very, very lucky."

Kestrel swooped in, a wary eye still attentive to the skies outside. "What's the hold up? We don't have time for chats."

"I have this under control, can you get her up off the table?"

Kestrel waved her gravity blade at the nurse assistant - Odion, she thought - who moved away quite rapidly. Stepping forward, she snapped her fingers in front of Widowmaker's half-closed eyes, and saw those eyes track her fingers, just a little - somebody was in there. "Widowmaker, I'm Kestrel, I sure hope you remember me, we're getting you out of here, just like we said we would, back in London." She pulled the blue woman off the scanning bed, and onto her back. "Let's go, while we still can."

"Emily," warned the doctor, as the flying agent carried the Talon assassin towards the light transport hovering outside, "reconsider. You can't come back from this."

The flying agent paused at the gap, and nodded grimly in return, watching as Tracer backed slowly towards her, one pistol still aimed at the doctor, the other at the two assistants. "Neither can you."

Buggery hell, this isn't how I wanted this to go, thought Lena. "Sorry, doc. Just how it has to be, I guess."

The flyer's loading door closed in front of her as she stepped onto the main deck. She could see Angela diving for the alarms before it sealed, and teleported to the pilot's seat as Kestrel got Widowmaker into the crash couch. "CLEAR!" the flying agent shouted, bracing herself for evac - and Tracer lit the engines up bright.

-----

Widowmaker opened her eyes, but not too much, examining the ceiling. Another Overwatch transport, she thought. Not the same one back from Egypt. Smaller. I am no longer at Gibraltar. How long have I been unconscious? Other than a deep legsrthy, she did not feel different - but then, how would she know? She compared her thoughts, and how they felt, to memories of previous thoughts, and how they felt, and they seemed very much the same, very much unlike Amélie's, her only other reference. It would have to do, for now.

She struggled with half-aware half-memories of being in a... medical unit? And being prepped for something. And voices, some unfamiliar, some... not.

"We've lost the last of 'em," she heard Tracer say. Tracer, who had not been in Egypt, who had not been at Gibraltar... or had she been, at the end? "I'm gonna keep us in the soup, but it should be smooth enough 'till we change ships at Iwik."

Change ships? Iwik? Why would they need to...

"I'm going to check on Widowmaker." Another voice, the flying one, Kestrel, who had also been missing when she'd been taken, taken again, this time, by Overwatch, no doubt to be remade yet again, if not just killed, but whose voice she knew...

"Widowmaker, can you hear me?" The assassin heard the voice, but could not see its source - keeping some distance, perhaps. She let herself smirk, internally. Even sedated, she invoked fear. Good. "You're safe, and you're unchanged. We kept our promise. We broke you out before Ziegler could do anything. You're safe."

What?! The assassin's eyes popped open, all the way open, all at once acutely aware of her situation, before her mind snapped back to promises made some weeks ago in London, promises she did not want to believe, but couldn't quite not. Then Kestrel's face appeared over her, and she was talking, saying, "Hi. We've kept our word. Do you remember being captured in Egypt? We got you out of the Watchpoint. You're safe. Well, as safe as any of us are, now - we're all in real trouble, but since when's that new?"

The words confused her, memory of promises or not. Is it a... no, it makes no sense, this cannot be a trap, they already have me, why would they... She did her best to move, but her arms, so heavy, why...

"Oh," Kestrel breathed, "you're definitely awake now, aren't you? Probably a little panicky, too. I'm sorry, it's the muscle relaxant. They had you pretty well sedated before we reached you, but that's all, as far as we know - they were still prepping the first course of reconditioning meds when I ripped the medbay's walls open."

Widowmaker's eyes locked on Kestrel's, and she shivered, an involuntary action, and the flying agent saw it, and reached to touch, to comfort - but thought better of it. "I... wish I knew whether you found touch comforting."

I wish I did too, thought the spider, a little dismayed by her own reactions as they span round and round in her head. You... kept... your... you... kept your... you kept your... you...

"We've just got away from pursuit craft, and we're heading towards a little nature reserve in Mauritania, where we'll be swapping ships."

"...ah..." Widowmaker managed, and she remained locked on Kestrel, Kestrel, who she barely knew, Kestrel, who'd kept her word, Kestrel, who had... saved... her...

"You're tearing up a bit, can you blink for... oh, good, there y'go. Can you follow my fingers with your eyes?" Widowmaker looked at the Kestrel's fingertips and watched them trace a rectangle, slowly, around her field of vision. They were strong hands, solid, a little square, chunky, much like the rest of the hawk. Strong, and unexpectedly beautiful. Well, I suppose I know who is more butch in their arrangement, she thought, and a "heh" popped out, to as much her surprise as Kestrel's.

"She just laugh?" she heard Tracer say from outside her field of vision. "Hey, luv, you just laugh a little?"

"I think she did, yeah."

"Well, tell her after this, we're headed towards... oh, bugger..."

"What?"

"It's official. Bulletin just went out. We're listed."

"Surprised it took this long. Can they shut down the transport?"

"Nah, I changed the codes and blew the interlock, we'll be fine."

Widowmaker grimaced. Intentionally. And it worked. She tried moving her mouth, and managed, focus back on Kestrel's face, "...liffsted?"

Kestrel sighed, and sat, next to Widow's bunk, leaning close. "Word's gone out. Our personal IFF codes have been invalidated. Overwatch may be illegal, but we had a few privileges within it to revoke... we're now 'foe', not 'friend'."

"Ah." said the blue assassin. Slowly, carefully, she looked into Kestrel's eyes, and whispered, "Je... regrette."

"Don't," replied the hawk. "If Overwatch is gonna start doing things like this, I can't be a part of it anymore anyway."

"And just so y'know," called Tracer, "Talon put a termination order out on your head once Overwatch got y'to Gibraltar. No goin' back there, either."

"...how?"

"Friend of yours let us know. We'll be seein' her in a bit."

"...big mouth...?"

Tracer laughed. "Yeah, she said you called her that."

The spider tested her arms. A little movement at the shoulder, not much yet. But fingers - yes, those, those were free. She tapped at the bed, experimentally, and saw Kestrel smile when she noticed, bright like cloudbreak. "It is, then..." managed the spider, "...us, against the world?" She tried her wrists. Yes. Wrists. More quickly, now. Almost to the elbow.

Us, Kestrel thought. Already? "Sounds like."

A louder heh, and the spider found she could move her head. "Then... a challenge. Good." She gave Kestrel a fierce look; it excited the flying agent in ways she did not expect, as did the spider unexpectedly - if weakly - taking her hand in her own. "We will destroy them both, cherie," the assassin said, with utter conviction. "We cannot lose."

-----

"As far as she knew," said the Swiss doctor, some hours later, "it was just sedation." Power had not yet been restored to the medbay, but the wall had, at least, been braced and covered, and structural stability insured. She sat at a small table in medbay's small consultation room.

"So you told her nothing about the enhanced receptivity effects?" asked the hirsute scientist sitting opposite and to her right, snacking on his favourite peanut butter, with oatmeal cookies and lactose-free milk. Hoisting girders about - that was heavy labour. He deserved a treat.

"Of course not," said the doctor, sipping her coffee. "But I didn't lie, we hadn't undone anything Talon did - and it really was a sedative, just one that leaves patients a little more..." she waved one hand back and forth, "...open to ideas, while under its influence. It would've helped with our treatments of her, helped her return to who she really was."

"Nicely played," said Jack Morrison, nursing a judicious amount of Tennessee bourbon. "Hope this doesn't come back to bite us on the ass any more than it already has."

Dr. Ziegler smiled warmly at her old friend, sitting opposite and to her left. "I'd suspected Lena might do something she'd come to regret. I'd hoped she wouldn't, or if she did, I'd hoped I could talk her down. But if push came to shove... she might as well have that thin chance." She shuddered. "I think she has made a grave mistake. I do not think that... construct... is a person or can be reformed, and I wasn't lying about being killed in her sleep, either."

"You did what you could," said the soldier. He put down his glass and rubbed at his eyes. "She's always been impulsive, but this is another level. If they come at us... we'll have to assume the worst. They might as well be Talon." He put the drink down, and rubbed his eyes.

"That will not be difficult," smirked Angela. "I am quite angry, both about being held at gunpoint, and at losing my best chance to recover Amélie. And Kestrel," the doctor snorted, "she made a strongly negative impression on Gina and Odion. Gossip will insure everyone knows."

"I know their hearts are in the right place," Winston insisted. "Particularly Lena's. I think they're both being extremely foolish - but do not doubt their hearts."

"Just their judgements. And maybe their sanity," said the soldier.

The three sat quietly, for some moments, letting what happened today finally settle in as the sun went down. Morrison, thinking maybe they should've just handed the Widowmaker over to legal authorities; Winston, wishing he'd found a middle way, something to keep everyone happy, while knowing no such path existed; and Ziegler, angry, but still afraid for the two women who had, to her mind, made such a terrible mistake.

"To absent friends," Winston lifted his glass of water. "May they not become present enemies."

"I'll drink to that," said Morrison, raising the last of his bourbon.

Angela lifted her coffee cup, touching it against her friends' drinks. "To absent friends," she echoed. May they not be dead come morning.

[AO3 link]

---

"I'm pretty sure I know what we're gonna see on this video," Venom said, back in her Tracer garb, but still more than a bit blue at the edges and entirely gold in the eyes. "'Cause I'm pretty sure I know what I saw." She gave Angela Ziegler a pointed look. "But... I might be wrong."

Most of the current members of Overwatch Lunar Embassy sat around a table in the ambassador's workshop - even Fareeha, though her thoughts clearly chased rabbits elsewhere. Lena glanced over with more than a little sympathy - she hardly even remembered her mother, and couldn't even imagine what it would be like to have one return from the grave.

"If everyone's ready, I'm going to start with Ana Amari's recording," Winston said, to general assent. "I haven't looked it yet - Athena's just finished deep-scanning the media for anything... inappropriate... to our systems."

-----

Jack Morrison looked at the drive containing the video. He didn't really want to play it again - it scared him. He had some ideas about why, but he didn't like them. Being a super-soldier was one thing. Being... whatever this implied... was another entirely.

He sat quietly in his temporary quarters on the small Los Muertos compound just south of the New Mexico border. He could hear Delgado outside, running her fighters through the training regimes he'd taught her, with that new man, Arturo, acting as her second. Jack smiled to himself, hearing the noise. If we're not careful, I'm going to end up with a pretty good strike team here. Already got one that's not half bad, he thought.

The former - and, arguably, again - Strike Commander looked at the drive a third time, thought, the hell with it, and linked it to his padd. A notice came up, saying the file system was damaged, and he let it repair itself, which took only a couple of minutes, and produced a slightly larger video file.

-----

Winston hit play. The large wall display showed a view through a sniper rifle - a conventional firearm, not Talon make - and Venom chuckled a little to herself. Still using the old-style scopes, grams? Good to know. Through it, from above and from two alleys situated a town that looked hot and had signs in Spanish, a group of Los Muertos fighters spilled out, led on the far side by one all too familiar white-haired super-soldier, on the near side by a woman clearly his lieutenant mirroring his actions, and through upper windows by a set of three sharpshooters. Military tactics against cheap street thugs means a battle that would end quickly, until blam, blam, blam, and all three sharpshooters were down, and there was chaos.

Morrison dodged into view, and the sniper fired, again, quickly - Venom could see Jack all but centred in her sight - and again, that blur, and then, Morrison is fine, and dodging away, and one of the fighters with him is dead on the ground.

"What th'..." said Reyes, as Mercy blinked, and looked confused. Mei looked at the screen, and back to the doctor, similarly confused. "What just...?"

-----

Morrison saw himself spill out of the passenger side of the lead vehicle, face bloodied, just as he remembered. He stopped the video, and zoomed in as far as the footage would allow - the resolution wasn't bad, but the lens wasn't great, and the image could've been shaper. Then, the blurriness got much worse, before returning to sharper focus, and his tactical visor was intact.

What the hell, he thought.

He stopped the replay, and backed up the video, and ran it again, in slow motion, frame at a time, zoomed in as before, tracking his own movement manually.

-----

"Winston, stop the replay?"

The scientist nodded, and motion stopped.

"...re-run that last shot at Morrison, slowly."

The sniper's scope tracked the soldier, a second fighter next to him, close by, but not unduly close. The shot rang out, just behind the former strike commander's motion, but still clearly a headshot. Then the blur.

-----

His visor had definitely been wrecked. Whoever took the shot had hit it perfectly, sheering right across his eyes, ripping most of it off his face without touching his skin. Hell of a shot, he thought, complimenting whoever - or, knowing Talon, whatever - had taken it. Then the blur.

He stopped the video, and studied the frame carefully. The compression wasn't too bad, but the resolution could've been better. He zoomed out, and saw the side of the truck in as sharp a focus as it had been a few frames before - just the upper part of his face became an indistinct mass.

-----

"Stop," said Venom. The video froze in place, blur still covering most of the field. She walked up to the screen. "See these?" She pointed at the sniper scope ticks around the frame, still in perfect focus. "And this?" She pointed at a perfectly-focused truck lamppost base, in the upper left corner. "This isn't recorder artefact."

Winston nodded. "I agree. Whatever this is, it's a real effect."

"Sorry luv, but the news gets worse. I saw exactly this happen," Venom said, "though my sight. I didn't talk about it yet, 'cause I figured maybe I blinked" - though she knew damn well that was impossible - "or maybe someone ran between me and Jack right as I took the third shot. But I know I had him dead in my sights, and when I fired, somebody else was dead on the ground."

"You took a kill shot?" asked Reyes.

"Third time, in that mess? Bloody right I did."

Mei looked unhappy and Gabriel frowned, but found couldn't really argue. "...fair enough."

Venom nodded. "Step through, frame at a time?"

-----

Several more frames of blur, and then, one where it seemed to thin, and then form a line along the horizontal centre of the visor, and there the visor was, again, intact, and Morrison saw himself reaching up and activating it, without a second thought, just as he remembered, during the battle.

He flipped through the last set of frames. Nothing more than what he'd already seen - a broken visor, a blur, and an intact visor, in that order. It didn't make any sense. Nothing in the Soldier Enhancement Programme could do anything like that.

Unless.

Unless it wasn't the SEP.

-----

Several more frames of blur, and then, one frame where the blur, the fog, seemed to coalesce on the right side, and then the soldier's head was to the right, apparently unharmed, and the fighter whose head had been all but out of frame was dead, on the ground, a large section cut out, almost scooped, mostly missing, and Mei made a small choking sound as the view through the scope swept from the dead fighter's body, back to Morrison's intact and dodging head, and back to the woman, and back to Morrison, before the shooter took another shot just too late, into a wall, as Morrison dove down an alley and behind a skip.

Winston blanched, and spread the key frames across the display. Gabriel looked more than a little ill, himself. "I have seen some fucked up things in my life, but that..."

Venom looked over to Dr. Ziegler, her anger controlled, but not entirely concealed. Angela said nothing, staring intently at the images. "Doc? You gonna say somethin'?"

-----

Morrison thought back to the failed defence of Overwatch Geneva, when everything came apart, falling into Angela Ziegler's lab, badly hurt, bones broken, stumbling around in the dark, the only light the emergency exit signs and his biotic field, as he grasped around, looking for the aid kits he knew had to be down here somewhere.

He remembered finding one, no, two, and applying them both, and passing out as another blast hit the base.

And then he remembered nothing until he awoke, having somehow made his way outside, having scavenged a UN uniform from one of the Talon soldiers, and feeling more than a little out of joint, like he didn't fit back together quite right, like everything was just a little off, or a little more than a little off, and he remembered putting it out of his mind and concentrating on getting away, getting as far away as possible, before Talon's UN puppets could get ahold of him, and make him pay for his defiance.

What were you working on down there, Angela? he thought to himself.

-----

"I... this cannot be happening," the doctor said.

"Pretty sure we just saw it," replied Venom.

"What are you talking about?" asked Winston.

"Angela?" the assassin prompted.

The medic shook her head. "I know what you are thinking," she said to Venom. "But you do not understand. My experimental nanosurgeons were not capable of doing what we just saw. Not even the most advanced ones."

Mei jumped in, supporting the doctor. "It's true! I knew that generation, this was not in their operating parameters."

-----

Jack pulled out his knife, pulled up his sleeve, and cut a long gash in his arm - nothing too deep, just enough to test his enhanced healing. The skin knit itself back together, normally, like it had ever since the treatments all those years ago back in California.

He cleaned his knife, put it away, and pulled out a pistol to replace it. He stared at the medium-caliber firearm, not sure he was ready to do what he needed to do, then chided himself for not being enough of a soldier. Enough of a man. It worked.

"Delgado!" he shouted.

"Yeah, Spooky?" she replied from outside.

"Pistol's acting up. Gonna fire a couple of test rounds in here, clear it. Don't freak out."

"Sure you don't want to go to the range for that?"

"It's fine, I've got a fire box."

"Oh, okay. Thanks for the warning."

"No problem."

-----

Venom pressed the point. "You're sayin' that's not some kind of experimental nanosurgeon swarm? 'Cause it looks to me like Ana made that headshot, and then somethin' stole some parts from whoever was nearby to fix it."

Dr. Ziegler rubbed her temples. "I agree that is what it looks like. But it cannot be what I made. If nothing else - I am careful! None of my experimental versions will, or even can, remain active for so long. The last time he could've had access was when the UN moved against the Geneva watchpoint, and nothing from that generation could survive."

"The evidence," said Winston, "indicates otherwise."

"It can't be!" She slammed her palms atop the table. "None of the experimental models from that era could!"

Venom narrowed her eyes at the doctor. "None of 'em? You sure about that, doc?"

Dr. Zhou leaned over to Dr. Ziegler. "I don't think you should rule it out, I could help you go over the old records, over everything that was in there when the fighting happened..."

Angela looked over to Mei-Ling gratefully. "I really don't think it's necess..." and she blinked at a thought, and looked back to Venom. Is... that what you think? Venom's face caught the doctor's surprise, as she realised that the researcher hadn't actually put it together herself yet, and the Talon assassin just nodded, and the doctor bit her lip. "...I... it has been some years, and that was a tremendously hectic - even chaotic - time. It... we should investigate. I would very much appreciate your help in that, Mei."

"Sure, Dr. Ziegler," confirmed the eco-biologist.

"Thank you," Venom replied, nodding. About time.

"God damn," said Reyes, "Could it be more than just him? Could others be... infected?"

"Absolutely not," said Angela. "My nanosurgeons would've impressed themselves with the initial contact DNA, it would be impossible for them to spread successfully. All" - she stressed, pointedly - "of my technologies rely on that. All of them."

-----

Morrison pulled up a trouser leg, pulled off his left boot and sock, and aimed the pistol at the outer edge of his foot. It'd hurt, but it wouldn't kill anybody - particularly not him. But he hesitated.

Do it, you coward, he thought to himself. God damn it, just do it.

And he fired.

The pain was brilliant and sharp, more than he expected, but muted itself quickly. He felt suddenly almost like he was in a dream, half asleep yet fully awake, as he watched his foot splatter, then turn into a greyish and pink mist, and reform, in front of his eyes.

-----

"Meanwhile," said the Talon assassin in Tracer orange and Overwatch white, "I don't think there's any safe way to bring him in alive now. I think our friends should get the next shot."

"No!" interjected Mei, with unexpected force. "That's not what we agreed!"

Tracer, or Venom, looked over to the Chinese scientist. "We agreed Overwatch gets first shot, then..."

"No!" she insisted, even more forcefully. "I will not go along with that!" She looked straight into the assassin's gold eyes. "You are not the only one he abandoned to her death. He abandoned my entire team and I want him tried for that. I want it exposed! I want my friends to be..." she choked a little, and suddenly she was crying, "I want my friends to be remembered! I want justice for them! In court, with it all exposed for the whole world to see him for the monster he is!"

Lena blinked, and blinked again, shocked by the intensity of the normally cheerful woman's outburst, and leaned forward, "Oh wow, Mei, I'm sorry, I know what..."

"No, you don't know!" The small woman shouted. "You know what it's like to disappear for years and wake up in the future but you do not know what it is like to wake up and find all of your friends dead because he couldn't be bothered to send a rescue ship! He knew we were in cryogenic suspension and still alive. At least with you, he thought you were probably dead, but with us, he knew we were alive, and just decided to let us die!"

She continued in a small, quiet voice, "And most of us did. Slowly. In the cold. As the power ran out."

Nobody knew what to say. Gabriel and Winston knew it wasn't that simple, but knew better than to open their mouths. Angela just leaned over to the smaller woman and offered her hand, and Fareeha just sat quietly next to her wife, comforting her in turn. And then Venom found her voice, at last. "I'm... I'm sorry, Mei. You're right."

Lena "Tracer" Oxton took a long, slow, deep breath, and let it out. "I withdraw my motion. Our friends will remain on stand down. Overwatch will try again."

-----

God damn you, Ziegler, the stroke commander thought, staring at his perfectly intact left foot, which moments ago he'd shot through for a second time. He shook with unreasoning fury. What the hell did you do to me?

Widowmaker brought herself in from the cold, one day, exchanging a list of Talon agents for sanctuary, and at first couldn't or wouldn't say why. Her first breakthrough in explaining herself came in a talk with Lena Oxton. Now, a few days later, she is back for her daily check-in with Dr. Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, who seems to understand nothing, and she has run out of patience.

This is the fifth in a series of stories set in the It is Not Easy to Explain, She Said continuity, a timeline largely compliant with known canon as of July 2017, which is when I wrote and posted the first story. It is largely canon-compliant with what we knew pre-Doomfist/Masquerade, and is not part of the on overcoming the fear of spiders AU.

[This story is set in time just after the first story in this series, "It is not easy to explain, said the Widowmaker."]

[AO3 link]

---

Angela showed her patient a photograph - a candid shot, taken backstage at the ballet in Paris, the two of them with her ballet friends, everyone tired, but happy, after their season premiere in 2069.

"Do you remember that day, Amélie?"

The Widowmaker glared pointedly at Dr. Ziegler. "I am not Amélie."

The doctor nodded her head, and made a show of contrition. "Widowmaker."

The assassin kept her frown, recognising being humoured for what it was, but carried on. "I... it is not easy to explain."

"Why don't you give it your best try?"

"I have tried. Repeatedly. You do not listen."

"I have listened to every word you have said, I swear to you." She pointed at her copious notes. "And studied them deeply."

"Then you do not bother to hear," she waved dismissively at those same notes, "and I am tired of pretending you do."

Angela sighed. Lena had told her, in surprisingly emphatic terms, about their conversation in the rec room, that Widowmaker was not Amélie and she should get used to that. But... she couldn't not try to reach through to the woman she'd known. Amélie had to be in there, somewhere, she was sure of it. "But you remember so very many things from when you were her."

Widowmaker did not snarl, not at all, but instead went very, very cold. She was good at cold. "I was never her."

"You were, until Talon kidnapped you."

"I did not yet exist," Widowmaker said, impatiently. She had grown tired of this, and she knew it - even someone built for patience ran out of it eventually. Worse, she had finally been understood by someone, and the thought of it made her slow breaths almost catch in her chest because finally, finally, someone knew, someone understood, and she knew she was finished with entertaining those who simply would not see.

"But so much of what you are is your memories. Surely, you..."

"Yes," she said, crossly, "I have access to those memories. But I do not remember them. They are not my memories. They are just in my head, and I hate them."

Dr. Ziegler pressed on. "I know that Talon programmed you to revile your old life. But it is still yours. I think if we could together examine those..."

"No!" the Widowmaker shouted, now done, done walking on eggshells for these people, done being the most polite her she knew how. "Idiot!" she shouted, and stood, grabbing the smaller woman by the collar. "You cannot understand what it is to have someone else's memories in your head. I am the one who hates them. Talon did not make me hate them, they wanted me to have those memories. It was necessary for my missions. But they are not me and they are not mine, and I wish they had taken them all."

Angela gasped, and, for the first time in any of these sessions, felt genuinely frightened, and Widowmaker smiled a little, pleased at her reaction. "Good," she said, putting the medic back down. "Perhaps a little fear will break through your memories."

The Swiss woman panted, eyes still wide. "...but Amé... we..." and she stopped herself, then thought, No, now, if there is ever a chance, it is now, she'd never seen Amé, Widowmaker, so emotional, so ... alive. "Do you remember what we were..."

"I know," said the assassin, with just a little calculated unkindness in her voice. She calmed herself, partly using her own internal controls, partly using the meditative thoughts Tracer had shown her. She permitted herself to sigh, as much for effect as anything else. "I know how you felt, and I know how... she felt for you. Talon planned to use that - and me - against you again, someday."

"...you know?" said Angela, eyes wide, as close to praying as she'd ever come. Do I see you, Amélie? Please come home, please...

Widowmaker leaned forward, close, taking Angela's chin in her left hand. "I know all of it," she said, quietly. "Your first kiss, in the mountains, the scent of late snow and new pine and spring flowers. Your first time making love together, in the south of France, in the autumn heat, the tastes of strawberry preserves and bagette and cheese and wine, the intoxicating feeling of knowing you were a little too close to the next hut, knowing they might hear you, and not caring, maybe, even, hoping they would, so you could stop pretending, so everyone would know..."

Mercy gasped, and reached out to the assassin, to hold her, to touch her again after so long, "Amélie..."

Those golden eyes locked onto hers, and the spider, with no trace of warmth, and maybe even an edge of cruelty, quietly continued, "But I do not care." She dropped her hand away from Angela's chin. "She felt for you. It may have been infatuation. It may even have been love. But I do not love you."

The blue assassin folded her arms as she sat back down onto the examination table, and she looked to the side, anger and resentment clear in face and tone.

"And I hate knowing that she did."

Angela's heart, so close to hope, shattered, and she sobbed, suddenly, a wet sound filled with pain. Staggered, she fell, hard, into the examination room's chair, crying, delicately, but shaking, hoping for comfort as none came.

The spider sat quietly on the examination table, waiting, apparently patiently, apparently calmly, for the Swiss woman to compose herself. She hated diving into the dead woman's memories, and she, too, needed to collect herself, even if she hid it better than even the notoriously professional Angela Ziegler. After a few minutes, she spoke again, a cool and patient question; "Are we done for the day yet, doctor?"

Bleary-eyed from tears, Dr. Ziegler looked up, and, for the first time, saw the Talon defector, the legendary assassin named Widowmaker, the strange woman who had come in from the cold, sitting there calm and undisturbed, and knew, for the first time, in her heart, that her lover was indeed gone. Closing her eyes, she shuddered, gritting her teeth, thinking, Control yourself, doctor, she has been trying to tell you, and it is not her fault you would not listen. She took a hard, deep breath, and reopened her eyes, but could not raise them, gazing instead at the floor. "Yes, Widowmaker. I will see you again tomorrow at the usual time," she managed, her voice sounding high and distant to her, but steady.

"Thank you." The Widowmaker slipped off the examination table, took off the gown, put back on her uniform, and stepped to the door to leave.

As she touched the exit pad, she paused, just for a moment.

"If it is worth anything," the assassin said, not turning, but tilting her head just a little to the side as the door opened, "...I am honestly sorry for your loss."

"Just go," whispered the doctor, "while I have this much composure. Please."

The door closed behind the blue woman as she stepped into the hall. As it shut, she could hear Lena stepping up to the Widowmaker, hope in her voice, asking her how it went, and Angela cried again, for herself, for her lost Amélie, for what they'd had and never taken, and she cancelled her afternoon teleconference, leaving an apologetic note about nothing but apologies. Then she keyed Fareeha's comm, and her other love answered almost at once, and saw her face, and understood, and came over immediately, and held her in her arms while she cried and cried and cried.

"It is never easy to lose family," the rocketeer said, after a while, gently rocking her partner, knowing that loss all too well. "Even after so many years."

Angela buried her face against Fareeha's chest, sniffing, but not as much as before. "I mourned her when she was first lost, and yet, here I am, a complete mess. I am a fool."

Fareeha chuckled. No one really thought of her or Angela as being very emotional people, really, and no one else - if either of them could help it - would ever see either one of them like this. It was something they shared together, it was their bond. "Yes," she answered quietly, "you are. We are both secretly fools, together."

Angela cried a little more, but laughed a little, as well. "I think... I think I am feeling a little better."

The Egyptian woman petted her lover's head. "Are you sure?"

The doctor nodded, and turned to lean back against her flying angel. "I think so. I think... I've finally let go." She was rewarded with a kiss on the top of her head, and almost chuckled, holding her love's arms against her, tightly. "Just ... don't make me let you go."

"Never," said the flying agent.

The combat medic looked at the clock. "There is still time to eat, and I cancelled my entire afternoon... why don't we go in to town, for lunch?"

Fareeha smiled, and kissed her girlfriend's head again. "Why, Doctor Ziegler, are you asking me on a date?"

"I am," she sniffed.

"Well, Doctor," said the rocketeer, hugging her girlfriend tightly, "It would be my pleasure. Shall we?"

"Yes," Angela said, dabbing away her tears, ready to stand up again, ready to be somewhere, anywhere else. She took a deep breath, and put on a smile she at least partly felt. "Let us go."

Sorry this one took so long. I'm not good at large action sequences, and this chapter was difficult to write, mostly because of that. I was trying to keep it gamelike, in that it would be evocative of a failed charge onto take a point with a payload on it in game, as opposed to a realistic infantry scenario. I hope it works.

If nothing else, it's way longer than most of my chapters, so at least nobody's being short changed. ^_^

[AO3 link]

---

The opportunity came sooner than expected. An arms shipment, escorted by Los Muertos, task force almost certainly to be led by Jack Morrison - or, as it seems they called him, the white ghost.

Jesse McCree had been the one to catch the rumour, talking with some of his old Deadlock Gang contacts, who, turns out, would be happy if a rival gang did not get to run goods through their territory. And so, they passed the news to him, and he passed it to Amélie, who passed it to Venom, who gave it to Overwatch, and Gabriel Reyes, who built a plan.

Mockingbird lay atop the crest of the hill, silent, even her breath inaudible, even to herself, even she wasn't entirely sure she was bothering to breathe right then, as the small three-vehicle convoy stirred itself, beginning its early-morning trundle out of the two-building ghost town that had once called itself Cloverdale. There had been more here, once, before the climate warmed, but really, it had ended before then, a former bit of a farming town, a little store, a dance pavilion, enough water - just - for a bit of crop and cattle raising, but now, even that last was gone, which is, of course, why they were all where they were.

The sniper had been in her nest since two days before, had watched the convoy trundle its way across the desert and to a stop, loading out into the little stone ruin, and calling it a night. She had not slept; she did not need to, for this watch. Once everyone had tucked themselves in so nicely, so quietly, she'd then confirmed via radio to Gabriel that Jack Morrison was, indeed, in the front truck, and that they were not, in fact, transporting refugees or undocumented workers - there were no innocents to get in the way. Just a simple cargo delivery - maybe the weapons, maybe a side delivery before the main delivery, no way even to know.

Not that it mattered, really.

She watched as the convoy slowly rode its way west, towards her and past burned out soil, past former farm gates, now collapsing along the road, the paint bleached in the sun. She took in a breath, just enough to speak. "They're on their way."

Gabriel's voice in her ear. "Do you have the target?"

Lena allowed herself the smallest of smirks. Less than a kilometre. No breeze, at all. Crystal clear skies. Do I have the target. Honestly, Gabe. But she kept it to herself. "Target confirmed and moving into go/no go. Do I have go?"

Reyes ran through the numbers one more time in his head. Everyone in position for the ambush. A lot more fighters on the Los Muertos side - more than they expected, and it bothered him - but only one hard target. The gang side wouldn't be trying for a capture - they'd be shooting for kills, without hesitation - but Overwatch had surprise on their side.

"Nearing optimal range, Gabe. Go or no go?"

Who knows when we'll get intel even this good again, he decided. "Action confirmed. All team, on my mark - go."

Venom - no, Mockingbird - smiled the spider's smile, and pulled the trigger. Morrison's head jerked to the side as the tactical visor went flying out across the desert in pieces, and he swore, loudly, in Spanish, blinded by his own blood, but not really hurt, despite the proximity of the bullet. The transport vehicle swerved, blocking the road forward, but did not fly out of control, and seconds later he was shouting orders to his team as the Overwatch group moved in from the northeast, from the dried-up spring.

"Visor down," the sniper confirmed, as Mei threw up a wall behind the convoy, Gabriel lay down fire blowing out the front vehicle's tires, and the unlabelled Overwatch carrier blared its orders to drop weapons and be commandeered. Pharah charged into the air, letting loose with a series of rockets aimed at vehicle engines, as Mockingbird readied for a spray of long-range discouragement fire from her position, to keep the grunts under cover. She grinned as she watched the Los Muertos gangsters circle their vehicles and swarm for weapons, and then her grin froze as Jack darted away from her sight, without a visor, then reappeared on the other side of the transport vehicle, with one.

What th'...?! She looked back towards the wreckage of the visor. Yes, there, pieces, still on the ground. She called into comms, "Gabe, he has a second visor somehow, watch it!" just as Jack triggered the device, visual overlay screen appearing almost instantly, knocking Pharah out of the air just as she'd disabled the third vehicle. Mockingbird adjusted her sights and took a second shot, surely hitting him dead on, but somehow apparently not as he just kept shooting through the visor, after briefly jerking to the left.

She waited for a third shot, and Jack's head popped up again, again through the front transport, behind two windows. Mockingbird reacted instantly, and fired. Her vision seemed to blur, and suddenly, it was a Los Muertos grunt splayed out across the sand, her head smashed, and Jack Morrison was still firing.

Nobody's that lucky, she thought, coolly. Something's going on.

Los Muertos got a shield generator running as Mei threw up another wall while taking bullets to the shoulder and chest, saving Gabriel, who had also been hit and hurt by the barrage of bullets. Pharah limped back into the air, got off a single rocket knocking Morrison down, and went down again herself almost immediately, Mercy flying to her wife's side. Gabriel, Mockingbird, and - a moment later - Mercy's fire kept most of the rest of the Los Muertos fighters ducking for cover, as Winston leapt down, shield in place over the wounded Mei, Tesla cannon keeping braver Los Muertos back, as Athena flew in as pickup for the injured.

"Gabriel, Tracer here," Mockingbird shouted into comms, trying to force some emotion back into her voice. "Mockingbird's hit this guy in the head three times and he just shakes it off, something is very wrong. We need to..."

And then Jack fell to the ground, unconscious, and an older woman's voice came over the Overwatch comms, saying, "He's down, but it won't last more than 30 seconds. Get your wounded out while you can, and regroup at my position. Tracking beacon enabled."

-----

"A second visor?!" Gabriel - limping, but mobile - looked incredulously at Mockingbird as the small Overwatch strike force mended its wounds at the beacon site deep in the hills to the north. "He can't have a second visor. It's unique to each soldier. It was wired into his brain."

"Don't care," insisted the woman in black and green. "I shot the first one off, just like we planned it. It was on the ground, in pieces." She folded her arms. "My sight takes pictures, I can show you."

"But a second visor - that's not possible," Gabriel insisted.

"I know I hit him. I know I did. Three times. There's something we've missed, Gabe. This should've been easy and it was a disaster."

"You look very familiar," said the older woman with the beacon, looking with narrowed eyes at the younger sniper.

Mockingbird blinked, and looked over to the older woman, finally realising who she was seeing. "...no question of it on my side," she said, recovering. "The legendary Ana Amari, in the flesh. You're supposed to be dead. What the hell, mate? And how'd you get on our comms?"

Gabriel glanced away from Mockingbird and brushed dust off his hands, looking resolutely unsurprised. "Ana, this is our sniper specialist, callsign Mockingbird. Mockingbird, this is Ana Amari, apparently not dead."

Ana snorted at her former Blackwatch friend, and gestured over to Mockingbird. "You think that can replace me?"

"You have been dead since 2069," said Winston, stepping in between the new and the old, "as far as we knew." He gave Reyes a look, a look that said they would be talking about Reyes's lack of surprise in the very near future. "She's an independent contractor willing to work with us, and we're happy to have her service."

"I know that kit," said the Egyptian, with a sideways glance back to the younger woman. "And I know that blue tinge. Working with Talon, are we, now? Maybe Jack's not so crazy as I thought."

"Not with Talon, luv," Mockingbird lied. "But I always buy from the best. No second chances in this game. 'Cept for you, apparently. And Jack." She looked around at Angela and Gabriel and Ana, and frowned. "And apparently all you old lot."

Amari glanced disdainfully at the young assassin, then returned to ignoring her, looking back to Gabriel. "And where's the so-called Hero of Old London supposed to be, then?"

Mockingbird glared, anger a flash across her face. No, she told herself. Lena's not here. Ana's trying to provoke you. Realising that, she found she didn't even need to bring up the web further to keep control. It's a game. She knows, she just wants us to admit it. Spill the beans, grams? Not likely.

"We all thought it was for the best if she stayed out of any direct action involving the man who left her to die in the Slipstream." He looked directly into the sniper's eyes. "Knowing you're here, I'd say that was the right call."

"Afraid she'd lose her cool, get hurt?" She made a little unimpressed sound, a kind of pffft. "And yet here you hand whatever they've made of her" - she waved at Mockingbird, without looking - "a sniper rifle. You're fools."

Lena almost spoke up, then almost laughed, but kept her expression flat. Nice try, she thought. "So I shouldn't ask for your autograph, then?"

Winston shook his head at Mockingbird's verbal jabs, and Gabriel crossed his arms, with a frown. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Ana. More importantly - where the hell have you been all these years?"

"Really? You're going to keep up this laughable facade?"

"Whatever. You gonna tell us where you've been all this time?"

Amari glared. "No. But I will give you this." She pulled a small memory card out of a coat pocket. "It's video and notes from a... previous attempt to solve the Jack Morrison problem. If you're going to try to kill him, I need you not to make things worse."

"We aren't trying to kill him," Winston said, taking the card. "We're trying to bring him to justice."

Amari spat at the ground. "There's no justice for what he did, or for what he's become. I thought you understood that."

Well, thought Mockingbird, there's one place we agree. She found she didn't like the agreement. "That's what I thought, too. Maybe I ought t'reconsider the point."

"Does it always make this much noise? Maybe it should be reprogrammed again."

"ENOUGH OF THIS." Mercy glided down from the flat spot on the hillside above, where she had been tending to Mei and Pharah, watching since Ana showed herself, stunned to see her mother-in-law, of all people, reappear from the dead - not her way, but alive and well the entire time.

"Angela, why are you mixed up in this idiocy? I thought you'd know better."

The field medic marched over to the old military officer, and slapped her across the face, hard, staggering her back. "You dare show your face? You dare act like this to my friends, after what you have put us through?!"

"Woah!" interjected Mockingbird, jumping forward to restrain the doctor. "Angela, no! It's fine, she's just horrible!"

"No," she said, looking back, and shaking her arms free, "it is not fine!" She turned back to the old soldier, and pointed to Pharah, unconscious, but recovering. "She mourned you. You ignored her as a child and she loved you anyway and then you died and she put it behind her and now you are here and alive and she is here and wounded and you have not even acknowledged her existence?!"

"I've done what has been necessary, and I've stayed out of the way of the medic while she works. Fareeha will understand that."

"Will she? I hope not! But I will make sure she knows. I will make sure she knows everything. Including how horribly you have just abused our Mockingbird. 'It?! '" She shook herself, as though fluffing feathers she did not have, except in her wings. "You call her an it?! She is a person, not a tool, and you have become a monster."

Quietly surprised, Lena's heart tore, just a little, at the medic's furious defence. "Doc, really, it's fine, she's just digging..."

"I know what she's doing," Mercy said, not looking at Lena. "And I don't care why." She turned to the openly astonished Reyes and Winston. "We should get the wounded out of American territory as soon as possible. They will not be happy with our actions today."

"I agree," said Reyes, taking the opportunity. "Ana, we can pick this up later. Do any of your old dropboxes work?"

"No. Do yours?"

"Boxburg does."

"I'll leave a contact point there, then."

"Thanks. And... thanks for helping out."

"You're welcome. Maybe next time we can work together, make sure the grown-ups are in charge."

Mockingbird's face showed absolutely no sign of emotion, and her hands did not tighten visibly on her rifle.

"We'll talk later," said the former Blackwatch head. "Team - back to the ship. Mockingbird, give Mercy some help with Mei; Winston, I wouldn't mind a little help myself. Let's roll out."

The Lunar gorilla offered his friend an arm, as Mockingbird turned towards the Chinese scientist with a curt "acknowledged." Behind Venom's mask, beneath the web, the assassin roiled viciously, but no hint of that storm made it outside.

Maybe I've got more than one problem to solve, she thought, as she guided the semi-sedated Mei up off the ground. Maybe I've got two or three.