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“Angela?”
“Hmmm?”
“You say you’re opposed to death and senseless violence. But what about sensible violence?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“If someone walked into the lab right now, holding a gun, what would you do?”
“Wonder how external security had broken down so badly.”
“I’m serious.”
“As am I. If someone with a gun can make it through four levels of Overwatch security into this lab, then there’s likely not much I can do to stop them at that point, is there?”
“You wouldn’t even try to combat them?”
“Must violence always be the solution? I would try to talk to them.”
“They are in a secure facility full of high-end equipment with a gun Angela, they’re not here to talk. Why is compassion the proper response to violence? Why not strength? They’re here to shoot you.”
“Good thing we’re working on a cure for that then!” She grins.
"God you’re insufferable, you know that?”
Moira has set all her work aside, and sits watching Angela line up prospective armor materials by weight. She’s making notes; Moira knows from the way her eyes scrunch when she’s concentrating. Moira sees it in her sleep. Among other things.
Angela doesn’t notice Moira’s attention.
“On the battlefield, if you go, they will shoot at you.”
“I’m a doctor. A medic.”
“An obstacle to their goal of killing enemy soldiers.”
“There are protocols and treaties in place.”
Angela still hasn’t looked up.
“Damn it Angela how can you be this naive?! Not everyone is innocent! There’s no great purity at the heart of man! Everyone has the potential to kill. You have to understand that so you can protect yourself against it!”
Angela’s eyes snap up, shocked into stillness. Her face mirrors what must register on Moira’s, though it’s unfamiliar there. Concern. With a touch of fear.
“Moira I—“
“You’re too valuable. Don’t throw that away. There will always be people who need help. There are plenty of medics. There’s only one of you.” Moira forces the words out. She’s never been this forward. She’s never before had reason to be.
“But we have to do something.”
“What do you think we’re doing here?” Moira spreads her arms wide. “Why waste time on a combat suit when we haven’t even figured out a stable regeneration solution?”
Angela steps away from the armor, setting down her notes.
“Well, I suppose I’ll stay a little longer.” She puts one hand on her hip, and smiles in Moira’s favorite way. Winks. “You shouldn’t work alone anyway you know, you’d get into trouble. You lack perspective.”
“Angela, do you think God will be angry with what we’re trying to do?”
“What? I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t, but I respect him.”
“Ouch! Scheisse!”
From her chair in the corner of the lab Moira lolls her head towards the sound, spurious concern.
“Something wrong?”
“No, I’m fine!”
“Of course. Far be it from me to tell you how to assemble our new equipment.” Angela continues attempting to lift the module on her own.
Moira watches her struggle to gain leverage. She can’t. Moira steps lightly over to the table, where the discarded instructions lay. She makes a show of studying them.
“Hmmmm, the assembly sheet specifies this is a two-person job.”
“Hmph. That’s just to cover their asses legally.”
Moira flips through the pages while Angela continues to struggle. She tries to lift the module again, raises it up several inches, then staggers under the weight and bends awkwardly to control the fall as it slides sideways.
“Ahhhhhh!” Her index finger is caught under the edge between metal and floor.
“As ucht Dé!*” Moira’s tone has changed—true concern now—she rushes to Angela’s side and lifts the module enough for her to remove her injured finger.
“Are you alright?”
Angela examines her finger, sees a small trickle of blood, and sticks it in her mouth.
Moira scoffs. “State-of-art medical care, that.”
Angela grins.
“You know Angela, you don’t have to do everything yourself.”
The grin fades. “I always have.”
“Well, not anymore. It’s not my preference to see to this type of thing personally but,” she folds to the first page of the instructions and picks up one side of the module, “let’s see this done.”
*For God’s sake
Moira stretches above her for the tool Angela can’t reach.
“Here.” Angela turns around to take it. Moira hasn’t stepped away.
Angela is suddenly aware of how hot the lab is. And how stuffy her lab coat’s fabric is. She can feel Moira’s breath moving the fine hairs that fly loose from her ponytail. She’s never noticed how beautiful Moira’s eyes are, the flecks of yellow scattered in the blue and red.
Moira doesn’t treat Angela like the rest of Overwatch. They praise her, and smile at her like she’s a goddess. Moira smiles at her like she’s a human being. Someone worthy of earning her respect. Angela took pride in earning it, and now Moira smiles at her differently. Angela smiles too.
“Thank you.”
“Moira, why didn't you complain when they questioned your findings at today’s meeting?"
“It’s none of my concern. The results are correct. If they can’t see that that’s their problem. A small loss.”
“Don’t brush it off! You need to fight for your work! You’re too good to let them walk all over you.”
“Truth is rarely simple but always pure. Those who deny it will be lost to history. I don’t need to concern myself with them.”
“Truth is not always universal. Politics also writes history. It doesn’t help to make enemies.”
“We can’t all be universally loved.” Moira glances sideways at Angela.
“Is that really what you think of me? It’s not true. Not by a long shot.”
“It’s certainly what they think.”
“…And you?”
Moira sighs. “You’re brilliant Angela. You don’t need me to tell you that.”
“What if I do?”
Angela was surprised when Moira walked in that afternoon holding two boxes of takeout.
“Here,” she said brusquely, handing Angela one of the boxes and dumping a pile of napkins and plastic silverware on the center table. “Since this next round of experimentation requires constant monitoring we won’t have time to leave the lab tonight.”
“Um, thank you.” Angela cracks open the container. “It smells delicious. That’s really thoughtful of you Moira, thank you.” She sets the box back down on a side counter. “Let me go get my notebook and we can start.”
She walks the short distance to her office and returns, only to find she’d set her takeout box next to a rabbit cage, and its occupant had already chewed through the exterior and was well at work on the contents.
“Hey! That’s mine!” Angela rushes to save her dinner as Moira looks up from her preparations.
Moira laughs. It’s open and pure, devoid of any malice, and stops Angela mid-step. It’s a completely different Moira. No, that’s not right. It’s the rest of Moira. The side she doesn’t show at staff meetings or to the recruits or to the research assistants. It cuts through Angela like a warm beam of light, and she wants to do everything she can to hear it again.
Angela had just spilled coffee on her sleeve when he entered the break room. Commander Morrison always managed to catch her at the worst moments. “How’s the project coming along Angela?”
“Fine, Commander. We have all the resources we need, thank you. It’ll only be a matter of time before we succeed. I will have finished calibrating our new sensor by this afternoon.”
He tuts. “I’m surprised you can get any work done next to that mad geneticist. I know she looked good on paper but I can’t believe Ana hired her. She’s not giving you any trouble is she?”
Angela glances up from scrubbing her shirt. He’s a bit off, she wonders if he’s had another fight with Reyes. If so then there’s no use trying to reason with him, he’ll have walls up.
“No Sir, Dr. O’Deorain isn’t any trouble at all.” Not the bad kind at least, she thinks, remembering how Moira had convinced her to skip an all-hands briefing yesterday so they could finish assembling the new equipment. Angela had fretted about their absence being noticed but Moira had brushed it off, and played some of her favorite music. Loud because the hallways would be deserted, and Angela had even danced. A little. Not any trouble at all.
~
Moira stands motionless outside the break room, struck dumb. Angela hadn’t said anything, had just let Morrison speak about her like that. She had taken Angela for an ally, if not a friend. Another error, another miscalculation.
Moira doesn’t mind errors. An error is the manifestation of the excluded world, something she doesn’t yet know, a flaw in her approach. Errors are infinite sources of information. When there are no longer errors there is nothing left to learn.
The thing that announces itself as an error is order and chaos at the same time, and she the force that masters it.
Did I make an error because I’m wrong, or because my theory isn’t complete? She thrills at finding out. Those who don’t adapt die.
Angela is a constant source of errors. And Moira can’t feel the same way about those as she feels about the ones in her experiments. When she misses a digit in calculation the experimental results let her know; she corrects the mistake and feels a sense of accomplishment. When she misreads a signal from Angela her insides curl and she agonizes over it for days.
This is outside all her previous knowledge. She’s unprepared, and holding herself together by a thread. Angela re-enters the lab balancing the latest tray of biological samples.
“Moira what will your edits do?”
“I don’t know. If I knew, I would not need to test them.”
“Moira we can’t ignore the refugee crisis, that’s just…evil!”
She chuckles. “Angela I thought you better than that. Evil is a concept for fairy tales and simple minds. What is right and wrong is merely a matter of perspective. First a goal must be defined, from which actions may be sorted into categories of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. Nature has no such ludicrous practices. There is only survival. To continue forward means success. You and I, our existence here is proof that our ancestors succeeded. Some undoubtedly killed, and others likely saved, and in the tangled braid of time it’s impossible to know which led to our current outcome. But they survived. And so will we. Morality shifts like the tides. Biology persists. “
Angela thinks, while Moira thinks she’s won. But then Angela speaks.
“Survival is the starting point. But what after? You’ve named the means for existence, but that’s not living. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life merely existing, do you Moira? Once humans have our basic needs met, we need to thrive. To build, to grow, to… love. There is no meaning in simply existing. And for someone to take away those things, or the potential for those things, that is evil.”
“There is no victim who is not an oppressor in another frame, if oppression is measured by privilege.”
“You can't be serious. Look at the refugees! They have no home, some no more family, no political standing, and many are starving.”
“Yet they crossed the border to make it here. Most are of sound body and mind, albeit temporarily hungry. Stand them next to a paraplegic and then tell me who is better off.”
“Moira, I can’t believe you’d diminish the importance of this crisis!”
“That’s not-“ Moira rubs her temples, opens her hands in a gesture of conciliation, “that’s not it at all! I’m not explaining myself well. I’m trying to say that if we let ourselves, and more importantly our resources, be tossed about by the whim of the day then we end up running in circles and accomplishing nothing in the grand scheme of things. If we step back, and view the situation in context historically, we can send resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.”
“Most of these people don’t have time for ‘historically’! They need help now! Would you deny them that?”
“No I-,” Moira recognizes she is dangerously close to putting Angela off again, but doesn’t know how to fix the situation. She’d told the truth.
“Then come with me tonight. We could always use more help.”
“Alright, Angela. Yes.”
Moira knew others considered her callous, morally bankrupt, reckless, unethical. But they assumed her to be like them, uncertain and floundering. She understood the dangers and the risks, and she willingly took them on. She was not above judgement, but she rarely met a worthy judge. Mankind was capable of greatness, but man was flawed. If what she was doing was incorrect, nature would let her know. Unconditionally. Nature would be her judge.
Even so… at times she hoped for someone to stay her hand, or simply to hold it.
Her fear was to be thrown in the same category as the men who killed for killing’s sake, who thought the world evil and created solely for man’s torment. They were weak-minded abominations.
They’ve been arguing lately. Angela isn’t sure how these conversations turned sour, they used to be friendly philosophical debates. They’re not anymore.
“God Angela, your fucking savior complex is going to be the death of you.”
“Excuse me?!”
“You heard me. You pay so much attention to others so you don’t ever have to look at yourself.”
“That’s absurd! I care about people. Whereas you hide in here, safe, behind ideas. Even when they’re turned to creations they’re still just things. What about action? Service to others? It’s all an abstraction without action. You selfishly hide in here chasing ‘truth’ when you could be out there helping humanity!”
“I am helping others. On a grand scale. The only difference between you and me, Angela, is that I’ve acknowledged the darkness within me. You deny its existence in yourself. A small evil becomes a big one through repression. I confront the darkness, and know it for what it is, while you insist on standing only in the light. Turn around and look, you have a shadow.”
“Moira, you are losing touch. You really should take better care or you’ll end up a bitter, lonely woman."
“Fuck off.”
Angela fights down tears of rage, and slams the door on her way out. The next day she finds Moira collapsed on the floor of their lab, blood mingled with oozing purple IV tubes.
Angela smiles at Morrison, gives him the response she knows he wants. She will carry on. It’s been three weeks after all.
The lab is empty when she gets back to it. Her assistants have gone home and the night staff work in a separate area. This area is secured for her Valkyrie suit prototype, classified. She closes the door, and locks slide in to place. She doesn’t turn on the lights. She sees the silhouette of her suit on its stand in the darkness, a shadow. She sees the empty bench to its left, which was cleared of Moira’s work by the investigation team and has remained clear because Angela can’t bring herself to put anything on it. Because when Moira comes back she’ll want to get to work right away.
Moira isn’t coming back.
Angela screams. A strangled, wild sound that builds, and builds, until it’s bouncing off the walls and suffocating her, so she screams louder to fight it off; she screams until the vibrations off the walls are inside her too, and her throat burns, and she’s dizzy. Then she sinks to the cold tile floor, and pulls her knees to her chest. She cries. She cries until she’s numb, then staggers to her feet and walks out, making sure to re-lock the door behind her so that no one can enter before she comes in for work tomorrow morning.