The Doc wasn't much to look at anymore, not when she was toiling in the mud and helping out the deeply oppressed and weak. He personally wouldn't waste his time on them, but Angela had always had as soft spot for world peace and helping the lesser than most. It must have been the vow to heal and all that nonsense. She would be better served applying herself as Moira did, forcing the species to evolve rather than wallow in its weakness. He mused she would be out of work if all the scabs of the place were wiped out.
It hadn't actually been easy to find her, surprisingly. He had worked to locate her, but she was constantly on the move as far as he could tell, moving from one poverty and war stricken village to the next. That made it difficult to get a solid bead on her location and Talon wasn't about to invest much time in a doctor, even one of Angela's caliber. She was off to the side and not a threat, so she was not worth their time.
Ironically, she was one of the few former Overwatch agents that he hadn't put on his list. She might have been Overwatch, but she was not worth the bullet in his mind. Let her get some foreign disease and waste away. That would be far more suitable. He thought she would like going out that way too, so it worked for them both he supposed.
Reaper finally tracked her and headed to her location, not to actually visit with her - he couldn't be certain she knew who he was - but because she had a medical solution to a problem that Moira had yet to fix. Something so simple as a developed vaccine for disease ridden warzones wasn't something he normally would consider, but considering his rot was constant, maybe this would stabilize the inconvenience of trying to at least fake sleep and then melting into whatever air circulating system was both annoying and earned him a reputation that had him killing a few Talon agents.
So he invaded her medical tent in the dead of night, waiting until the light was off and passing guards were on alert for any insurgence push than black mist slipping under the tent borders. He formed up and picked his way carefully and quietly around the place, familiarizing himself with it before he began to search for the small fridge that would have to keep the vaccine. Waxy light illuminated both the tent momentarily and his goal.
Of course, she didn't just carry one vaccine, not in a disease ridden dust bowl like this. He picked up a vial from each flat and peered at the label until he found the one that seemed like the worst of the worst, the one that hopefully would either have an effect or could be modified to do so.
Angela might push herself to the brink of exhaustion, but she rarely slept well. Always on edge, waiting for the next conflict, the next person she had to save. Genji wrote her letters, occasionally, and that was enough for small moments of peace that she allowed herself so very rarely. But not from Jack, or the others. The people that she worked with sometimes said she pushed herself too hard, worked every disaster like she was trying to save the world. They weren't wrong, but there were nuances there that most people missed.
How hard she'd thrown herself into her work after Overwatch had collapsed, after the supposed death of Jack and Gabriel. Greatly exaggerated as they might be, it still hurt, to see them both this way. Felt like a failure, a sickness that she hadn't addressed even when she'd seen it, something she hadn't been able to heal.
It's the light that wakes her. The milky cast of it, and the tall, broad form of the shadow cast in relief against the light from the fridge where she kept her vaccines. She sits up on her cot, and he's right about her- stretched thin and worn at the edges, spending most of the last several years knee-deep in the worst suffering that the world had to offer. She'd always cared, but it had become all she knew these days.
She looks up at him, that kneejerk tension draining from her, the warnings fading into quiet. She keeps her gun by her pillow these days, less from desire, and more that this close to insurgent activity, sometimes she has to protect her patients. She's not wearing her Valkyrie suit, just light fabric. "...Gabriel?" She knows who he is, something that hits her like a chill. Not just the mask and the name that the headlines put to the terrorist that he's become.
Angela had always been sharp, and while this is her first time seeing him up close like this, she'd connected the pieces before. The timing, the skills, the weapons he used- the fact that declaring them both dead had been easier. Things that could be coincidence, but weren't.
He pocketed the one vial and set the others back, grabbing a few more of the one that he had come specifically for. The UN had apparently granted her use of them, but she wasn't a pharmaceutical company who mass produced either. She had her means, and he suspected it was small time places to support the local economy. She was ever thoughtful like that.
He rose from his crouch now that he had what he came for, but her voice brought his head around slowly. Of course she would sleep in the medical tent, not in one of the others nearby. He eased a hand out, claws tapping on the metal to remind her that it was better not to question such matters even as he shut the fridge and cast them back into the darkness.
Anyone else, he would have killed them. There was value to her work and no point depriving the world of it. Besides, he might someday need her services. Who knew.
"Go back to sleep," he ordered her in his gruff hissing voice, the timber so much rougher and meaner than when he had walked around with the name Gabriel.
She watches him as he moves, and there's something undeniably intimidating about him. Reaper. Death. The mask and the way the shadows almost seem to wrap around him make that a title with more truth to it than not. But she doesn't falter, or pull away, and her brow is creased more with concern than any whispers of fear, even as those claws tapped against the metal. Closing the door, cutting off the light and plunging them into the shadows.
The rest of the small medical camp is dark, quiet. Gabriel's voice is a hiss, unnatural, rough and his tone almost cruel. He doesn't even really sound like the man she knew before, but she still faces him, her blue eyes even, messy blonde hair framing her face. She doesn't lay back down, of course. She's soft in many ways, always cares- but there's steel there too, or else she wouldn't throw herself onto the front lines of disasters time and again.
"What happened to you?" She asks, voice tinged with concern. "If you're going to steal from me, at least say hello." The question is in her eyes- what does he needs them for?- but she doesn't sound particularly angry about it. He wasn't taking all of them, and she had the means to produce more, so it wasn't putting lives in danger. They were vaccines, and she'd be the last person to deny someone access if they needed it.
"You could have just asked." She says softly, a tilt of her head as she looks up at him. Still stubborn, in her own way, never as aggressively as they'd been, but there were things she didn't give up on.
It wasn't like either of them could see in the dark. That wasn't a power that Moira's experimentation had granted him, which means that he stayed right where he was as his eyes adjusted quickly to the dark. Of course, having to stay that extra half minute left her plenty of opportunity to pelt unnecessary questions at him. Of course, she would. Angela never knew when to leave off after all.
"You tell me, Doc," he growled at her, but it was a rhetorical question. He wasn't looking for any kind of answer because he had come to the conclusion of what had happened to him. "If you wanted a hello, you should associate with better people and not thieves."
He could have asked, but where was the fun in that? Also, it meant letting her know that something was wrong and he kept himself at a distance from all of this potential conversations. Moira checked in and that was good enough usually.
"Go back to bed before you live to regret it." Or die regretting it.
In the dark, Gabriel seemed to almost melt into it, like he was part of it. Like this was who he was now; dark and shadow. She didn't want to believe it, that ll of who he was before was gone, who she'd thought he was-- but that's not entirely true. She'd seen it before the explosion, before everything came apart. She just hadn't done anything about it.
The fall of Overwatch had been terrible, but how many of them were really blameless?
"You'd have to let me try," she answers softly. She knows it's rhetorical, that it's not really an offer, but she can't resist the opening to let him know that it exists, anyway. But she does give him a bit of a look when he says that she should associate with better people, but she doesn't take the opening. She doesn't say something about how he used to be or anything sharp. She knows the moment is fraught, and the sentiment doesn't feel like truth.
Her face shifts with a wry sort of smile when he tells her to go back to bed. She wouldn't throw herself into the front lines in places like this if there wasn't a certain sort of recklessness to her, if caring didn't often override self-preservation. She'd built herself a suit specifically to allow her to get there faster, to be where she was needed, no matter the risk, and hadn't even considered the ability to protect herself originally.
She gets to her feet, sliding out from under the blanket, in pajamas, a definite contrast to his leather and body armor, but she doesn't seem to shirk from it. She moves slowly, takes a breath as she looks up at him. "It wouldn't be the first thing." Her voice is even, and she had no illusions about him not being dangerous, but there's something here she can't step away from. "I can spare it, and you should know I wouldn't stop anyone who needs the medicine. But I wonder why you do."
While he grudgingly respected her knowledge and skill when it came to medicine, she was hindered by the boundaries of her own personal ethics. Moira never had been, and like him, she was willing to do whatever was necessary in order to achieve the necessary results. Angela trying to save him was not in the cards; he always thought she would simply take Morrison's side anyway.
"You help enough people here. I take care of myself."
He understood that his order of her was meaningless. She would do whatever she wanted; this was her territory and he was simply allowing himself opportunity to see himself out of it. Maybe she could pretend she hadn't seen him after all and that would be that.
That she instead stood and picked her way in the darkness towards him shouldn't be surprising. "I know you won't." She would deny no one any medical help. "Let's just say I need a little pick-me-up, shall we?" Not that anyone would consider a vaccine a treatment of anything but the disease in which it was intended.
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For Mercy
It hadn't actually been easy to find her, surprisingly. He had worked to locate her, but she was constantly on the move as far as he could tell, moving from one poverty and war stricken village to the next. That made it difficult to get a solid bead on her location and Talon wasn't about to invest much time in a doctor, even one of Angela's caliber. She was off to the side and not a threat, so she was not worth their time.
Ironically, she was one of the few former Overwatch agents that he hadn't put on his list. She might have been Overwatch, but she was not worth the bullet in his mind. Let her get some foreign disease and waste away. That would be far more suitable. He thought she would like going out that way too, so it worked for them both he supposed.
Reaper finally tracked her and headed to her location, not to actually visit with her - he couldn't be certain she knew who he was - but because she had a medical solution to a problem that Moira had yet to fix. Something so simple as a developed vaccine for disease ridden warzones wasn't something he normally would consider, but considering his rot was constant, maybe this would stabilize the inconvenience of trying to at least fake sleep and then melting into whatever air circulating system was both annoying and earned him a reputation that had him killing a few Talon agents.
So he invaded her medical tent in the dead of night, waiting until the light was off and passing guards were on alert for any insurgence push than black mist slipping under the tent borders. He formed up and picked his way carefully and quietly around the place, familiarizing himself with it before he began to search for the small fridge that would have to keep the vaccine. Waxy light illuminated both the tent momentarily and his goal.
Of course, she didn't just carry one vaccine, not in a disease ridden dust bowl like this. He picked up a vial from each flat and peered at the label until he found the one that seemed like the worst of the worst, the one that hopefully would either have an effect or could be modified to do so.
no subject
How hard she'd thrown herself into her work after Overwatch had collapsed, after the supposed death of Jack and Gabriel. Greatly exaggerated as they might be, it still hurt, to see them both this way. Felt like a failure, a sickness that she hadn't addressed even when she'd seen it, something she hadn't been able to heal.
It's the light that wakes her. The milky cast of it, and the tall, broad form of the shadow cast in relief against the light from the fridge where she kept her vaccines. She sits up on her cot, and he's right about her- stretched thin and worn at the edges, spending most of the last several years knee-deep in the worst suffering that the world had to offer. She'd always cared, but it had become all she knew these days.
She looks up at him, that kneejerk tension draining from her, the warnings fading into quiet. She keeps her gun by her pillow these days, less from desire, and more that this close to insurgent activity, sometimes she has to protect her patients. She's not wearing her Valkyrie suit, just light fabric. "...Gabriel?" She knows who he is, something that hits her like a chill. Not just the mask and the name that the headlines put to the terrorist that he's become.
Angela had always been sharp, and while this is her first time seeing him up close like this, she'd connected the pieces before. The timing, the skills, the weapons he used- the fact that declaring them both dead had been easier. Things that could be coincidence, but weren't.
no subject
He rose from his crouch now that he had what he came for, but her voice brought his head around slowly. Of course she would sleep in the medical tent, not in one of the others nearby. He eased a hand out, claws tapping on the metal to remind her that it was better not to question such matters even as he shut the fridge and cast them back into the darkness.
Anyone else, he would have killed them. There was value to her work and no point depriving the world of it. Besides, he might someday need her services. Who knew.
"Go back to sleep," he ordered her in his gruff hissing voice, the timber so much rougher and meaner than when he had walked around with the name Gabriel.
no subject
The rest of the small medical camp is dark, quiet. Gabriel's voice is a hiss, unnatural, rough and his tone almost cruel. He doesn't even really sound like the man she knew before, but she still faces him, her blue eyes even, messy blonde hair framing her face. She doesn't lay back down, of course. She's soft in many ways, always cares- but there's steel there too, or else she wouldn't throw herself onto the front lines of disasters time and again.
"What happened to you?" She asks, voice tinged with concern. "If you're going to steal from me, at least say hello." The question is in her eyes- what does he needs them for?- but she doesn't sound particularly angry about it. He wasn't taking all of them, and she had the means to produce more, so it wasn't putting lives in danger. They were vaccines, and she'd be the last person to deny someone access if they needed it.
"You could have just asked." She says softly, a tilt of her head as she looks up at him. Still stubborn, in her own way, never as aggressively as they'd been, but there were things she didn't give up on.
no subject
"You tell me, Doc," he growled at her, but it was a rhetorical question. He wasn't looking for any kind of answer because he had come to the conclusion of what had happened to him. "If you wanted a hello, you should associate with better people and not thieves."
He could have asked, but where was the fun in that? Also, it meant letting her know that something was wrong and he kept himself at a distance from all of this potential conversations. Moira checked in and that was good enough usually.
"Go back to bed before you live to regret it." Or die regretting it.
no subject
The fall of Overwatch had been terrible, but how many of them were really blameless?
"You'd have to let me try," she answers softly. She knows it's rhetorical, that it's not really an offer, but she can't resist the opening to let him know that it exists, anyway. But she does give him a bit of a look when he says that she should associate with better people, but she doesn't take the opening. She doesn't say something about how he used to be or anything sharp. She knows the moment is fraught, and the sentiment doesn't feel like truth.
Her face shifts with a wry sort of smile when he tells her to go back to bed. She wouldn't throw herself into the front lines in places like this if there wasn't a certain sort of recklessness to her, if caring didn't often override self-preservation. She'd built herself a suit specifically to allow her to get there faster, to be where she was needed, no matter the risk, and hadn't even considered the ability to protect herself originally.
She gets to her feet, sliding out from under the blanket, in pajamas, a definite contrast to his leather and body armor, but she doesn't seem to shirk from it. She moves slowly, takes a breath as she looks up at him. "It wouldn't be the first thing." Her voice is even, and she had no illusions about him not being dangerous, but there's something here she can't step away from. "I can spare it, and you should know I wouldn't stop anyone who needs the medicine. But I wonder why you do."
no subject
"You help enough people here. I take care of myself."
He understood that his order of her was meaningless. She would do whatever she wanted; this was her territory and he was simply allowing himself opportunity to see himself out of it. Maybe she could pretend she hadn't seen him after all and that would be that.
That she instead stood and picked her way in the darkness towards him shouldn't be surprising. "I know you won't." She would deny no one any medical help. "Let's just say I need a little pick-me-up, shall we?" Not that anyone would consider a vaccine a treatment of anything but the disease in which it was intended.