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Baby birds were much smaller than Widowmaker had ever considered. Not that she'd ever given them much consideration before.
Still, with the little white-and-gray bird peeping loudly as it struggled on her windowsill, all fluff and ragged baby feathers, Widowmaker found herself noting that she would not have ever realized they were so small. She opened the window, half intending to shoo the little mite off, but it merely stilled, watching her with tiny beady eyes and trembling silently. Its left wing stuck out at a strange angle. Golden eyes watched the little creature in silence, impassive and calculating.
It seemed even smaller when she picked it up. She'd always had slender, delicate hands herself—artist hands—but the baby bird didn't even take up her whole palm. Its heartbeat felt far too large for its tiny, fragile body, pounding with startling strength and speed against her cold skin. Widowmaker felt that she could close her hand and hold the entirety of the trembling creature in the cage of her fingers, that she could feel the whole of its heart beating in her closed fist.
Reaper looked bemused when Widowmaker wandered into his quarters. It was rare that Widowmaker left her own room, and rarer still that she sought out any company besides that of her own rifle. His brows rose on dark, long-burned skin when she wordlessly held out her cupped hands, revealing the tiny bird.
So the Reaper bent at the knees to squint at the bird, making a disapproving noise in the back of his shredded throat when he lifted the crooked wing with a single finger and watched it droop again.
"Broken wing," he diagnosed in a grunt. "Might as well put it out of its misery now."
Widowmaker blinked slowly and nodded in understanding. She left as silently as she came, running a thumb absentmindedly over its back as she walked.
She took her seat at the window again when she slipped back into her quarters, cool golden eyes watching the bird in silence. It watched her with equal trepidation, cocking its head this way and that as it sized her up.
Widowmaker's free hand came up—stroked gently at the scraggly new feathers on its chest with a finger—slid her thumb and forefinger around the bird's tiny neck. It would be quick, especially with the bird so small. Like snapping a twig. Painless. Perhaps better for it.
Those black, beady eyes stared at her. Impassive golden eyes stared back. Blinked once.
Her grip released on its neck, and she reached for the bandage roll in the nearby drawer.
It was odd, Widowmaker recognized a few days later, as she browsed a particularly dull novel on her holopad. Satisfaction was one of the few emotions she could still feel and recognize for what it was. She was accustomed to the subtle warmth of accomplishment, the faint strains of pride, that accompanied the feeling. The recoil of her rifle after a shot. The sharp inhale after a clean kill. The give of flesh the night she'd slit her husband's throat. That was satisfying.
But so was, she supposed, glancing in the towel-lined box by her window, to see the baby blue jay asleep in the sun, alive and well, wing carefully wrapped in bandage.
Widowmaker wondered if it were odd that the thought of having killed the baby bird brought no shadow of satisfaction to her gut. None whatsoever. As though there was no need for it.
Widowmaker wondered if it were odder still that the sight of Mercy broken and bloody at her feet brought a similar... lack of satisfaction. None at all. None at all.
The fight between Talon and the ragtag strike team of Overwatch agents had turned the abandoned city into a warzone, and for the first time in years, Talon had beaten the agents soundly, sending them into a hasty retreat to lick their wounds. It'd seemed that they'd all safely escaped.
All but one.
Doctor Angela Ziegler had never struck Widowmaker as small or fragile, but seeing her curled into herself on the ground, covered in blood and dust, eyes glazed and half-closed... She seemed far moreso than the blue jay ever had. Widowmaker noted, golden eyes pinned on the medic, that the usual signs of cybernetic power were gone: the hardlight feathering of her shattered wings had died, the gilded shimmer of the Valkyrie's nanobiotics repairing the medic's wounds was absent... Perhaps Sombra's EMP was more powerful than Mercy had considered.
Those soft blue eyes cleared and opened fully at the sound of Widowmaker's visor deactivating, the sound of her boots slowly approaching. Her whole body shuddered, something like a whimper escaping her throat.
A trembling hand reached for the blaster that'd fallen nearby. Widowmaker kicked it away. Watched that fair, slender hand twitch and curl into a loose fist in the dirt.
This was pitiful.
Mercy choked down what sounded like a sob when Widowmaker slid the steel toe of her boot under her stomach to flip her on her back. Her wounds looked even worse in the light. A deep gouge just under her headgear bled profusely, flowing freely over her right eye and down her cheek. Splintered and shattered electronics sparking feebly from a crushed wing.
An ugly splatter of buckshot torn through her gut, barely covered by the way her arms curled protectively over the shredded flesh.
Her one open eye watched Widowmaker defiantly despite the agony she must've been in. Despite that she couldn't move for the pain and weakness. Despite that a single shot further would've ended her life in an instant.
Widowmaker wondered if it wouldn't have been more humane to put the fragile, broken thing out of her misery.
Mercy shuddered at the touch of Widowmaker's cold, cyanotic hand at her neck—the way the slender fingers wrapped around the column of her throat, holding Mercy's breath in her palm. Widowmaker watched her face for a response. She found nothing. No fear, no panic, no anger. Perhaps only a silent resignation. Widowmaker wondered if Mercy truly understood what was happening.
A bullet would've been surer, Widowmaker thought, dragging her thumb along that pale, pulseless flesh. But far more painful. And heaping further agony onto the broken little bird before her set a sour taste on her tongue. Needless. She could be gentle if the situation allowed. It would be merciful. Like falling asleep. Maybe it was better like that.
Her palm pressed in against the carotid artery, and she began to squeeze.
Mercy's breath struggled. She tried to suck in a breath, bloodied fingers clutching weakly at a cyanotic wrist.
" Amélie— "
Widowmaker released her grip and stood with a soft curse, a deep frown tugging at her lips even as Mercy slipped below the waters of consciousness.
There was no satisfaction in this. None. None.
The caduceus staff was several yards away, dusty and bloody, but still functional. The technology was well out of Widowmaker's capacity to understand, but the operation of it was not.
She lifted the unconscious medic carefully with one arm, bracing Mercy's head against her shoulder, just under her chin. The motion was not, to her knowledge, one Widowmaker had ever performed before, but it seemed somehow natural to do in the moment.
A sickly blue hand grasped the staff again and twisted the grip, and the medic's wounds lit up in gold.
The heat of the gun barrel after use. The subtle whirr-click of her visor activating for the perfect kill. The arc of blood from a killing shot. That was satisfying.
And somehow, none compared to the sight of a baby blue jay resting comfortably with a wrapped wing—
Or the look of bewildered gratitude on the healed medic's soft, fair face as Widowmaker wordlessly picked her rifle back up and grappled away.