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There are many questions, but Angela can’t answer most of them.
She wipes the blood from her mouth, from under her nose, and answers the ones she can. Her hands shake with the action, ears ringing. Something in her has been irreversibly changed.
She’s never been curious about the events that surrounded her resurrection technology. Not because she doesn’t care, but because she already knows what happens. How the nanobots restore what is damaged, stitch skin and muscle, straighten and mend bone, rebuild what cannot be repaired. A thousand tiny electric impulses, a spark to restart the heart.
It’s never occurred to her the pain involved with such a process.
The questions start to wane in the face of her soft smile, and it’s much easier to wave off the team’s lingering concern as the sharp edges of the world began to soften.
Her eyes lock briefly with Fareeha’s, who stands back behind the group, frowning and insistent in the way she looks at Angela, like she has more than a few questions she wants to ask. Angela feels exposed under that unwavering gaze, and can’t help but curl her shoulders and look away. She doesn’t want to answer more questions, especially not from Fareeha.
Because Fareeha had been the last of what she saw before she’d died, and the first upon her resurrection.
--
“I’m sorry,” Fareeha says, when they’re on the carrier home. “It was my fault you…” Grief flashes across her face, terrible and beautiful, and then it’s gone. “I should’ve been quicker.”
Yes, some new awful part of Angela says, you should have. She squashes the thought as soon as it comes, knows that none of this was Fareeha’s fault.
“I will do better,” she goes on, squaring her shoulders, mouth set in a determined line. “I promise it.”
“You can’t promise things like that,” Angela replies, smiling. The edges of her mouth ache at the action. “Don’t worry yourself over it. It was no one’s fault. Such is the risk of the job.”
“I’ll keep you in my sights,” Fareeha insists.
“Please,” Angela pauses, thinking of all the data she needs to sort through, the repairs to her suit, the phantom pain beginning to throb in her chest where the bullet ripped through her, how tired she feels, “don’t.”
--
An evaluation exists that Angela uses after someone undergoes her resurrection technology for the first time. It’s a simple series of questions used to probe the psychological state of the subject, more useful to the patient than her because she designed it with self-introspection in mind, rather than a ruler for her to measure their current mental state.
Currently, it sits untouched in a file on her datapad, because there’s no benefit in her asking herself the questions, and no point in asking someone else to read them off to her. Her experiences, firsthand and subjective, are better dealt with on her own, and recorded for future reference.
And, she can only admit to herself, that she’s come to realize that her evaluation is at best well-meaning and at worst extremely naive.
Because while the small bouts of heart-racing anxiety, the vertigo, the aches and phantom pains were reported commonly (grudgingly), there are other, more unsettling things.
Tremors, shaking her so hard it feels as though an earthquake rippled up from her bones. Panic attacks and cold sweats, the air in her throat becoming an almost physical thing at times, choking her, preventing her from speaking.
Creaks and bangs around the watchpoint made her pause now, darkened rooms and corridors avoided. Ears strain constantly for whispers hidden in the humming machines, the vents. A sense of…dread that follows her no matter who she’s with or where she goes, like something is coming—like she personally is waiting for something.
Nightmares leave her in cold sweats, soaked in terror but unable to remember any of the details. It’s a constant battle between staying awake and taking the chance to rest, even the act of closing her eyes risks seeing the things that haunt after her in the darkness.
Logically, she understands that her ordeals are nothing more than the stress of the nanobots swarming her system, an imprint left on her brain, perhaps even a mixture of chemical and hormonal imbalances caused by the trauma. There are dozens of variables to consider, and yet Angela has no real desire (or the energy) to consider them. She instead spends what time she has not thinking about them, going about her business in the hopes that through action and pattern, her mind will follow.
So far, it isn’t working.
--
Coffee hasn’t worked for her lately, but the habit is hard to break. That’s why she finds herself in the kitchen one late evening, the sunset falling into the room in thin slits, gleaming off the old coffeemaker and the chipped countertops.
She watches the dark liquid drip into the container, thinks she ought to smuggle it back to the medical ward with her, as the fans in the vents above her whisper softly.
A soft hand on her shoulder yanks her back to the present. The coffee pot sits hot and full. She can’t recall what she’s been thinking about. When she turns, Fareeha’s concern-filled expression greets her, and she forgets what she’s thinking about all over again.
“Late night?” Fareeha asks quietly, taking her hand back. She stands beside Angela, too close to be considered polite, too far away to be considered intimate. Her hair is disheveled, moonlight feathering around the odds and edges.
Angela has shared several late conversations with Fareeha in the past, several of which had taken place in that very kitchen and every one of them Angela held close to her heart. However, she can’t help but feel an air of apprehension as she looks up at Fareeha. She replies, “Very late.”
Fareeha hums and takes the coffee pot. She also picks at the empty cup Angela had gotten earlier, the sugar and cream as well. Angela watches her steady hands work quickly, confused because Fareeha doesn’t drink coffee. The confusion is short lived, because a moment later the mug is presented to her, and her stomach flips in a way that has nothing to do with her anxiety.
“Order up,” Fareeha says, smiling charmingly.
Angela takes a sip. It’s hot, it’s sweet, it’s exactly how she likes it. She takes another sip.
Smile waning as she watches, Fareeha shifts, ducking her head a little and asks, “Are you alright?”
“Quite well, thanks.”
Fareeha frowns, asking more carefully, “Are you sure?”
Angela takes another sip. “What is it like?”
“What is what like?”
“When I bring you back. What is it like?”
Fareeha’s lips press into a thin line, and then she shrugs her shoulders a little harder than what would normally be considered nonchalant. “Usually…I don’t really remember.”
“’Usually’?”
“I don’t have the time to mull over the details in most cases, and by the time I do, I’ve forgotten for the most part.” Her eyes linger off to the side, then trail back to Angela’s face. “Why?
“Curiosity’s sake,” Angela replies.
“You already asked me about it, months ago.”
“I did.”
“Why is this different?”
It’s not, she wants to say. Pure scientific inquiry given recent events. But the words give way to a sudden and heavy fear, and as Angela feels her pulse spike, the shadows around Fareeha shutter. Had it always been so dark in there? Had she, in her exhaustion, forgotten to turn on the lights?
How long had she been standing there between first entering the kitchen and when Fareeha had found her?
“Be honest with me,” Fareeha says, and voice seems muted, like she’s drifting away. “Are you alright? Give me a clear answer, I’m—everyone is worried about you.”
Angela strains to listen to the darkness, for the whispers, the dark things that liked to slink around there. The dread is a tangled knot in her chest, threatening to choke her. “I’m fine,” she gets out, settling the half-empty mug on the countertop before her shaking hands end up dropping it. “There’s no need to worry.”
“Yeah?” Fareeha’s jaw clenches. She turns her head away, exhaling harshly. Then she steps around Angela and towards the corridor. Back to her room.
“Please,” Angela says, the panic in her rising. She won’t be able to make it back to her room like this. “The lights.”
Fareeha doesn’t spare her a glance, and for a single, terrifying moment, Angela thinks Fareeha is going to leave her to her fate.
A second later, an audible click.
The light is blinding.
--
They fall like a meteorite.
Fareeha’s engines cough, riddled with bullet holes, and Angela’s wings could only strain, only stretch so far before they began to flicker and fail. It’s not enough to cushion the rapidly approaching impact, and all Angela could do is try, wind screeching in her ears, stomach dropping, Fareeha’s arms coming to curl around her waist—
The impact knocks her senseless, the Valkyrie system shutting down and flickering back on with a red error message across her HUD. She stares blankly, watches diagnostics begin, only comes back to herself as pain begins to web up and down her body, hot and bright as fire.
She takes a few deep breaths, grits her teeth and tastes copper, and then pushes herself up onto her hands and knees. One of her wings lays a few feet away, crumpled and twisted in the rubble. It’s a miracle they survived. Only—Fareeha lays below her, curled on her side, unmoving, smoke rising from her ruined wings.
Angela’s heart lurches, and with a small cry she surges forward and takes hold of Fareeha’s helmet. She yanks it off. Fareeha’s eyes are closed, blood running down her face, bits of broken yellow shards glinting in her hair. She doesn’t react when Angela calls her name, doesn’t have a pulse when Angela checks for one.
Artillery fire thunders around them. Angela takes hold of her staff, routes all emergency power into the resurrection protocol. It’s ready, she’s set, her hand moves towards the activation key on her staff.
Her body goes numb, a coldness pressing into her chest, seizing ahold of her heart. Tingles race from her fingertips and toes, up her spine, prickle the edge of her scalp. She feels like she’s drifting out of her body.
Her lower lip quivers, heat rising to her face. She feels brittle all over, like one wrong move and she’s going to shatter. Fareeha continues to lie there, and Angela is the only one who can help her. Fareeha continues to lie there, her window of being resurrected rapidly closing. Fareeha continues to lie there, while Angela sits frozen, desperately trying to push back against the wall she’s suddenly up against.
Move, she tells herself, eyes watering. Move, damn it, move!
Her hand shakes, heart drumming, tries to croak out Fareeha’s name. Her hand is there, on the button that will save Fareeha’s life. She sees it, knows it as her own, but somehow she can’t make it move—can’t get it to just—
In a rush of air, the world comes back into focus.
Fareeha’s pained gasp soon follows.
--
There comes a point where the nightmares have swallowed everything else up. It comes around the same time Angela clears Fareeha from medical, when the reality of what almost happened sinks into the cracks left by what has happened.
The nightmares are dark, unending things that grab at her the second she lets her guard down. They come quick, drag her into the dreaming realm, leave her with every single detail when she wakes.
She’s no stranger to the terrors that life could, and often did, create. The things that could latch onto a person and remain with them the whole of their life. But now things are different—she is different, in ways she couldn’t see or understand yet. Now when she fell asleep, she didn’t dream of parents she could barely remember, or friends lost to the war, or the first patient she’d ever lost.
Now she dreams of her death. A void so black it has no end or beginning, only an endless middle. The absence of all and nothing. She dreams she has no body with which to struggle, no mouth with which to scream. Only the sensation of cold, of finality, of the rest of eternity spent alone.
Does Fareeha have nightmares this bad? Do the others? Is she to blame for making them worse? Her waking hours are their own type of terrible dream, full of second-guessing herself and hiding away in her lab, thinking back to when agents came to her, bloodshot eyes glaring up at her while she checked boxes on her clipboard, knew they were hiding things but wrote them prescriptions for sleeping pills and sent them on their way anyway. If she could turn back time—if she’d known—
Has her resurrection technology been a mistake? The nanobots? Everything?
No. No, she could fix this. She would figure out…something.
There’s no other choice.
--
She keeps the doors locked. The windows locked too.
Somewhere in the clutter of her lab, between the empty ramen cups and half-empty cold cups of coffee, the monitors spilling blue and yellow and orange light across her face, the stacks of papers, the piles of papers that use to be stacks of papers, the books, the old data logs, the surveillance footage, audio files…lies her answer.
She’s so close she can almost touch it. She’s brought back more impossible things from the realm of imagery. To someone like Doctor Angela Ziegler, the idea of preventing death all together—merely the next stage in preventive care—sounds like a very plausible thing. She just needs more time.
But spots dance in front of her eyes, and her head hurts. She can’t remember the last time she’d slept more than a 30-minute period, always jerking awake because she heard someone or felt something. The air in the medical lab is a sterile cold because it needs to be, but the chill of it is a constant shiver along the back of her exposed neck, a phantom breath raising the fine hairs there.
She knows the effects of sleep deprivation, but she also knows the importance of her work. She’ll sleep well once this whole matter is settled and not a minute before.
Her hands pause on her keyboard when a knock echoes across the lab. She listens, wondering if someone is there or if she is imaging it. The latter is more likely, as only Fareeha bothers to try and check on her nowadays, and Angela had made it very clear what she thought about those “check-ins” the last time she’d been around.
More knocks. Hesitant, polite. Not an emergency. Irritation rises within Angela. There are so many things that still need done.
“Go away,” she shouts. “If it’s not an emergency than it can wait. I’m very busy!”
She jumps when the locking mechanisms of the door clang, and stares in disbelief when the door opens. Light pours in from the hallway, making it impossible to tell who stands in the doorway.
Until they come forward, speaking her name softly. Fareeha steps into the darkness of the lab, the door hissing behind her. Despite her height, she seems smaller in a way, tucking all her usual bravado and confidence away. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t have time to talk. How did you get in here?”
“Athena let me in.”
Fury rises within her. “Athena?”
“Don’t blame her,” Fareeha says. “She’s worried, I’m worried. We all are.”
“Don’t be.” Angela backs away. Something’s different about Fareeha. The last time they’d had this conversation Fareeha had come in with a fire burning through her, and it’d only been so easy to retaliate. There was no fire in her now, no chance for a fight. Just a calm, unending softness that rattles Angela to her core. “I’m fine. I’m working. Leave.”
As she turns to return to work, her elbow catches a stack of instant-meal containers. They clatter to the floor, plastic forks and uneaten shriveled tomato slices scattering across the tile with them.
One of the containers bumps into Fareeha’s boot and comes to a stop. Fareeha stares at it, Angela tries to stare at everything but it. The silence is deafening.
Scraping together her pride with a sharp inhale, Angela returns to her work. She knows the lab is a mess—she’ll clean it up when she’s done. Fareeha has no business coming in here. Trying to…didn’t she understand?
“Angela—”
“Stop,” Angela snaps. “I heard what you have to say, now go.”
“I’m not going unless you’re going with me.”
“Didn’t you try this argument last time as well?”
A pause, and then she whispers, “I’m not here to fight.”
The sadness, the remorse, lands a blow on Angela she wasn’t bracing for, and all at once she is furious, she is shaking, eyes blurring, lips pressed together to stop a scream. How dare she come in here, while Angela’s working. Acting like this—pitying Angela. Like Angela isn’t here working as hard as possible, trying to turn her trauma into something positive, something constructive.
Something builds in her throat. It wants to scream.
Angela snaps the second she feels Fareeha’s hand on her shoulder. Choking on her own grief, she spins, her hand moving before she knows what she’s doing.
Her hand is still raised—stinging—when she comes back to herself. Sweat beading on her forehead. She is panting. She is.
She is crying.
The anger has abandoned her and only the wreck of her emotions remains. Fareeha has yet to say a word, head still turned, her cheek already beginning to swell, to turn a dark, blistering red.
Angela lowers her hand, staring at it as the tears trail silently down her face. It’s pink, accusingly so.
Sobs bubble up from her throat unchallenged, and she slowly sinks to the floor, lost and ashamed and so, so tired. The hand that had slapped Fareeha remains at her side, the other against her mouth, trying desperately to muffle her cries.
Arms, warm and strong, wrap around her, hands pressing her face into Fareeha’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Fareeha whispers into her hair.
--
When she wakes up, she’s achy and tired, nearly pulled back to sleep by the sound of a fan softly clinking on the ceiling above her. For a single blissful moment, she’s content to lay there, snuggled under a dark navy-blue comforter, surrounded by a scent that comforts her, makes her feel safe.
Only instead of slipping back to sleep, she begins to wake up fully, her brain becoming more and more aware, spilling the events of the last few weeks in a series of waves, crashing over Angela until she’s curled up, clutching the blanket and wishing she was anywhere, or anyone, else.
Despite everything she did and went through, the fighting, the fits, the isolation, she has nothing to show for it. She has no solution, no reason to think she won’t have to use her resurrection protocol again.
She feels as though she’s finally come to the end of a very long race, yet she’s no closer or farther from the finish line than when she’d started. She’s just there. With her failures and her choices. Nothing’s changed. Or maybe everything’s changed, just not for the better.
Weariness keeps her from thinking any further, and spending the rest of her life in this bed sounds heavenly. She is owed that at least, right?
‘No!’ is the apparent answer, because as soon as she closes her eyes, the door creaks open, and light floods across her face. With a groan, she opens her eyes, only for the color to drain from her face.
“I’d tell you ‘good morning’ only it’s the evening,” Fareeha says, handing her a glass of water. “Here.”
“Thank you,” Angela mumbles, taking a polite sip and then several gulps when she realizes how thirsty she is. She avoids Fareeha’s eyes, too scared of what she’ll find there, and asks, “Where am I? What happened?”
“You cried and then you passed out,” Fareeha replies. “I brought you back to my room to rest. You’ve slept most of day away.”
“Thank you.” Angela finishes the water, and begins to fiddle with the comforter.
“Do you…want to talk about it?”
“...”
“Do you want me to leave?”
Angela hesitates. “This is your room.”
“You know what I mean.”
She bites her lip. A part of her does want Fareeha to leave. To spare Angela from having this conversation. To spare her confronting the fact that she’d hurt Fareeha, had shown Fareeha a side of her that she never wanted anyone to ever see.
“No,” Angela says, lowering her head. Fareeha deserves whatever truth Angela can give her. “I want to know why you aren’t mad at me. I want to know…why you’re still here.”
Fareeha takes a seat on the edge of the bed, and Angela watches the way her hands grip the comforter, scarred knuckles straining. “I am mad,” Fareeha says eventually, “Or at least I was. Now I’m just thankful you’re alright.”
“I hit you. I-I yelled at you. I hesitated—you nearly died! How can I ever begin to apologize—”
“You can apologize later,” Fareeha says. “After you’ve had a bath and some proper food and rest.”
Angela stares at he. “How do you do it, Fareeha?”
“Do what?”
Angela’s mouth curled, a bout of tears threatening to fall again. “That. Be so strong?”
Fareeha purses her lips, and then turns to Angela with an expression so tender, so honest and raw that the rest of her strength fails her, and the tears began to slide down her cheeks. She reaches down to wipe Angela’s tears away, smiling that slight, charming grin Angela loves so much.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Angela says. “Bringing people back, over and over just to die again. I tried—to fix it, and I couldn’t. I failed.”
“They,” Fareeha pauses, “we’re all soldiers. We understand the risks.”
“What about Mei or Winston? Civilians?”
“I can’t speak for them, but for me, well…I think it’s worth it.”
“How can you say that? Knowing what it’s like, the side-effects, the pain, the—”
Angela stops when Fareeha takes her hands, and begins to kiss along each of her knuckles. They’re soft, quick brushes of her lips against skin, and the touch calms and assures Angela in a way she can’t define.
“You’re the reason I am still here today.” Fareeha squeezes Angela’s fingers. “You give me as many chances as I need to make things right.”
Angela feels the bitterness of her next words before she speaks them. “And what if I don’t think it’s worth it? What if I don’t see the value in,” her voice cracks, “dying again and again and again. What if I could fix that?”
“You’re a smart, impossibly brilliant woman, Angela,” Fareeha says, smoothing her thumbs over Angela’s hands. “You’re also strong and stubborn and endlessly patient when you’ve had your morning coffee, but there are some things you cannot change, some mountains you cannot move.”
“So, I just give up? Throw in the towel?”
“I didn’t say that,” Fareeha says.
“You implied it.”
The corners of Fareeha’s mouth twitch into a smile. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s okay to fear what may come, and it’s okay to try and prepare for it, but at the end of the day things are going to happen that you can’t control, can’t plan for, can’t stop from happening again. And it sucks and it hurts and parts of you might never get over it completely, but that’s life. That’s a part of being human.”
Angela contemplates Fareeha’s words for a moment before taking a unsteady breath. She manages a weak, but genuine smile. “That doesn’t make me any feel better.”
Fareeha smacks her lips. “I’m not done yet. The good part of all this is that you’re not alone. Don’t think for a second that the others weren’t trying to bust into your lab because they were, and are still, worried about you. They know how thickheaded you can be. I just beat them to it.”
“I’ve been under severe mental and emotional stress,” Angela deadpans, but her mood improves at the thought of her friends trying to help her, even if she had been acting like a jerk. She relents, “I owe them apologies too.”
“They’ll understand. Who among us is guiltless when it comes to closing off and trying to deal with our pain on our own? We’ve all been there, just not for the same reasons.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot.”
“I’ve done it a lot, and learned several lessons the hard way.”
They sit for a while, not speaking, soaking in the calm that’s settled, the mending of whatever unspoken thing that exists between them. Angela knows she might not ever stop fearing what a resurrection does her, or others…but this second, the pain of it feels faraway, unreachable.
She feels like herself for the first time in months. She feels…content.
“I’ve never blamed you,” she says suddenly, twisting her hands so that Fareeha’s fingers and her own are entwined, “for what happened that day. Neither of us saw that sniper, and I had drifted too far away from you. It was my own fault.”
Fareeha grins slightly, her eyes glistening. “Don’t try to flip this evening around on me. We aren’t here to talk about my hang-ups.”
“We’ll we’re done talking about me, so—”
“I don’t think so. You’re smelly and soiling my clean bedsheets—”
“Excuse me?”
“—and if you don’t shower, then no takeout for you.”
“So, I’m being held hostage?”
“I hardly think you want to leave.”
Angela sits up and knocks Fareeha on the shoulder. The action leaves her lightheaded and her knuckles throbbing. Fareeha laughs. Angela quickly follows suit.
She’s feeling stronger already.
--