Chapter Text
As Carr got accustomed to the new situation, she quickly understood why Sombra decided to bring her here - Poland was probably one of the last places in Europe they would try to find her in. It felt like no one really cared about this place to consider it a proper target or somewhere you could really restart your life in. It was just a regular country damaged by the Second Omnic Crisis, a little struggling with smaller wars happening around, but because of that, at least she had something to do. And she didn’t have to worry about being uncovered too quickly.
She spent the first week of her job on heavy tests and learning about her disease under the eye of the head physician that interviewed her. After some consideration and long, exhausting talk about her state, he eventually gave her permission to work and appointed her a title of combat medic. She was familiar with this role as this is what she was trained to do back in Talon. She was glad she will be able to use her abilities for good, finally.
The last time she saw Sombra she told her that her health wasn’t stable enough for her to get to know the truth earlier. It only now occurred to her that it literally means it took three years for her to get her life back. She had to be monitored, take various meds (she still has not discovered what most of them were for), get blood tests regularly, for three whole, long years. Considering what she knows now, it’s probably not much, but it still amused her. She kind of wondered how different this whole thing would play out if Moira straight away told her that she was dying and it was the only chance to save her.
The second week of her new job flew by as she was getting used to a new pace, meeting her new teammates, learning how they work and how she should get accustomed to it. She was underqualified, she perfectly knew that, but didn't expect how much work she still had to do. Everyday was a struggle and she was going back to her place exhausted. Sometimes there was no time to go back, so she slept on a couch in the on-call room. She didn't mind, though, as it was a good opportunity to test her health and limits further. And the whole on-call room situations reminded her about her previous ‘home’. She quickly realised that probably every on-call room around the world looked exactly the same, like her little room in the medical wing of the Talon headquarters in Venice. They were like anchors to her anxious mind, giving her a sense of familiarity.
Her life turned upside down and now she had no one but herself to rely on. It felt weird - not that she had anyone in Talon besides Sombra and Pepe, really. She always thought she would be the first one to leave, that she would write a short letter to Pepe telling him not to worry about her, but he was faster. It has been a few months since they left her best friend in Australia to die, and she still felt the same pain when she recalled that memory. Sombra was busy with her own tasks and life, so they didn’t spend this much time together. It was just her, against Moira, against Talon, against her own organism that sabotaged her every day.
One of the things she needed to quickly learn is how to take care of her body and most importantly, her gear. She never got any answers from Moira, and after reading her medical files she was already completely sure that they wiped out her memories only for the sole reason of her becoming obedient. When Sombra handed the files to her, with her real name on them, she felt scared. The folder was thick like a proper fantasy book trilogy, and inside she found her diagnosis, all treatment plans, visits in the hospital, ever since she was a toddler. A little bit further she also found documents Sombra included on her own - blueprints of her left arm with the gear already placed in, draft of Moira’s scientific research, future plans that she won’t achieve anymore, Pepe's blueprints of her robotic eye and also a death certificate .
The last paper made Carr shiver. They somehow swung her death and brought her from Canada to Italy so Moira could lay her hands on her. It was bittersweet to think about; technically, Moira saved her life. She was- is terminally ill and they didn't give her much more time back then. Practically, she made her life worse by making a literal prisoner and test subject of her. She was fighting her own thoughts, really not sure what she should feel at the moment. Yes, she saved her life. She made use of her sick organism, but Carr recovered enough for her to get her quality of life back. Gave her extra years to live. But on the other hand, she forced that on her. Wiped out her memories. Made her work for a terrorist organisation under a threat of getting killed. She didn't enjoy all those procedures, examinations, surgeries, at all. So many times she wished she’d never wake up from another surgery or come back from a mission to escape all of this, forever. So many times she cried, screamed, tried to disobey, so they could leave her alone at least for a while. But now, knowing the whole truth, even though Moira did it only for the sake of her own research, she couldn't hate her completely. After all, she’s still alive.
But I might not be alive once they find me.
Carr sighed and looked back at the first page of her medical files, one with her personal information. Charlotte Reid. Born January 12th, 2053. Ontario, Canada. So Canadian, eh? That would explain why she knew French so well. It always surprised her how she understood everything that Widowmaker said and both Sombra and Pepe were genuinely fascinated by that. With a bit of practise, she also refreshed her knowledge so she could speak French easily. Not that she really needed it for anything, it was just another filler to kill the time.
Carr absolutely loved her new-old name. Charlotte - it sounded so haughty, so important and unusual, and it worked well with the nickname they have given her in Talon. She didn’t mind being called Carr, or Charlotte, or even Charlie, anything worked. She was just glad she could finally be addressed properly.
After a thorough reading, trying to remember her personal info, she also noticed two numbers written at the bottom of the page, along with a short note.
Contact information - Melanie and Robert Reid.
Her parents.
God, they probably were devastated to know that their daughter is gone. Or maybe not? She saw a note in the files saying that they stopped any kinds of treatments because nothing worked anymore. She was put on high doses of painkillers to ease her suffering and that’s all. How much time did she have left back then? Probably a month, maybe two if she was lucky. They probably expected her death. Maybe they don't grieve anymore, it has been a few years, after all. What the funeral must have looked like? Did they even let them say goodbyes to her?
And does she have a sibling somewhere out there, with the same sickness, or completely healthy? She couldn't find this information in the folder. There were no photos, except one on the first page to verify her identity and a few other ones next to some treatment papers. She saw more scans of her insides than she saw her face throughout the whole thing. She could easily spot the changes the sickness put on her. She will have to eventually repeat those scans and see how much has changed since Moira saved her life.
God, it felt so wrong to say that, but it was the truth she had to accept.
Carr checked the hour on her phone. Considering the time zones between Canada and Poland, it was still a decent hour to call them, they probably just got back from work. She opened the contacts page and typed in one of the numbers provided. Her hands were shaking from stress. Should she? She slowly pressed the icon with a green handset, losing her breath as she did it. She heard the signal, waiting for a response.
Beep, beep, beep.
'Hello?'
It was her dad. He had a deep, calm voice, she even recognised in the tone that he might be confused as to why a random, foreign number is calling him. She didn't say a word at first and wanted to hang up, but then she reflected and gathered the courage to speak.
'H-hello mr Reid, this is Melanie's old friend, is she home?' she asked, trying to imitate a bit of British accent so they don't recognize her voice.
'Oh, Melanie is still at work. Is there something I should pass on to her? Who am I talking to?' replied Robert. She swiped the room to search for any answers, but nothing miraculously appeared on the walls, just as she expected.
'Ah, no, no, if she's not home I'm going to contact her directly. I'm sorry to bother you mr Reid, have a nice day!'
Before he could reply, she quickly hung up. Her heart was pounding and her breath was fast and shallow. She suddenly felt dizzy.
They are alive. They are both alive.
A few tears ran down her face.
She didn't even know them. She didn't remember anything from her past, but yet, knowing they're alive and well, she felt relieved. It was the most important thing right now. She wanted to know that people, once very close to her, were safe. That Talon didn’t kill anyone in the process.
Carr made sure to text Sombra every once in a while via an encrypted messenger she installed on her phone, just to check up on her. She felt obliged to do so, after all Sombra did to her. She definitely was well, too, still under Talon's supervision. Carr just hoped that she wouldn’t have too much work because of her disappearance; both trying to find and hide her at the same time must have been a tough task. Baptiste was- somewhere out there, for sure. Though, they had no contact with one another. She enjoyed training with him, so she hoped they would be able to meet one day again. There was no information about Pepe, and Sombra told her a few times that he's probably dead, so she should prepare that they will never meet again. Nobody survives a fall like that, not even somebody as tough as Pepe; even with an exoskeleton and armor suit he had , she told her bitterly, probably trying to convince herself as well. But even though he fell down off the cliff, even though it must have cost him life, or at least a good portion of his health, with no proper evidence that he’s dead, without signs for one or the other, she still had hope. She had hope that one day they would see each other again and she would scream at him for risking his life like that. She always scolded him for not taking care of himself, well, together with Sombra. Carr treated him like her brother, like an only family member she had that she chose herself, because there was no one around who would give her this much attention and patience, and a true, honest will to spend time with her.
She didn’t know how Moira was doing. She didn’t want to know how she was doing. She just hoped that her disappearance made her extremely angry. That’s all.
She spent the rest of the night studying Moira's research yet again, to memorise the most important parts about her gear, understand it better, and to be able to use this information to her advantage. She barely understood half of it, but was motivated to learn. It was, in fact, crucial for her to learn about her illness as much as possible to be able to take care of herself properly and don’t be a burden to the whole team.
From what was clear to her, and what she could explain easily, the mechanism in her arm was meant to gather all the ill cells that were attacking her body and create some sort of healing solution. This suppressed the damage done to her organs, kept her at healthy levels and allowed her to heal other people with it. Though, it was tricky; she had to keep an eye on cell levels in her arm, because both excess and lack of them was harmful. She had to either give her arm a break if the amount was too low or release some of them daily if it was too high for her to stay healthy. That made a lot of sense, considering that she felt bad in both scenarios - not doing her daily maintenance left her with more pain, and overworking herself during missions resulted in her feeling weak, dizzy and having frequent nosebleeds.
That also somehow explained why she almost died after one mission; she got shot in her left hand, which made her whole mechanism malfunction and in the process she wasn’t able to store anything there. Her ill cells flew back to her system and resulted in some organ failures she barely survived. Moira put her back together and she spent a week in a coma. Luckily for her, what was damaged was slowly healing by the same treacherous cells, they just had to keep them under control. The recovery process was obnoxiously long and she left the hospital bed after a month, but had to take care of herself more than usual for another month or two. It was wild, to put it mildly. Made her develop yet another trauma to add to the collection. She felt so weak and so helpless, just like when she woke up in Talon for the first time. As if everything she worked so hard on for the past few years was just… Gone. Like that. She had to rely on oxygen and a feeding tube for a while, and Moira eventually installed something that blocked the cells from going back to the organism in case of malfunction. And it works, it definitely works, now she can easily tell if she’s too high by the pain in her arm.
Carr sat down on the floor next to the coffee table and took a pen and notepad to write down her current objectives they managed to talk out with the doctor.
Plan for now is to keep her organism stable, obviously. Hopefully strengthen it more with exercises, help her with maintenance and learn the healthy limits her body allows. She already had experience from the past missions, but this time she really needs to put her health into consideration. The healthy levels she was allowed to store were not that high, they had to be depleted daily. It was a nuisance, but a necessary nuisance.
‘I could ask Pepe to make me a hand prosthetic at this point,’ she whispered to herself.
Studying and reviewing her files took her way longer than she expected. She fell asleep completely exhausted and surrounded by papers.