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They are in London.
Fareeha is slumped against a wall, blood pooling below her, her eyes half closed. It stinks, the irony tang adding to the sickly sweet reek of rubbish which accompanies her in the narrow alley. She can taste it too, lingering at the back of her tongue; a final bitter goodbye. Her radio is buzzing, Tracer’s voice strained but bright, nattering incomprehensibly in English too fast for her numb mind to follow.
She just wants to sleep.
Her armour is heavy around her, and ticking as it cools. Her fuel is empty, and her legs are too heavy to make an escape, even if she had anything left to her. Her rocket launcher is sprawled at her side, round half empty, its end still red hot from her last shot before a snipe shot took her out. She’d been bearing down on the mercenaries, guilty of robbing the Bank of England, her whole body vibrating with the justice she was about to mete out on them all.
But she’d taken a shot, her control vanished, and she went careering into a nearby wall, smashing through the fragile brick and tumbling between two buildings to hit the ground with a gut churning crash.
She is going to die here. Stuck in this twilight, the voices of her team distant and echoing, as though they are at the end of a long tunnel. Instead she angles her head skywards, her cracked visor allowing her an uninterrupted view of the stars. The bright lights are familiar, even in this strange place, so very far from home. Unbidden, the taste of a memory comes to her - tiger balm scent, a warm, muscled body curled up around her, cybernetic limbs whirring as a thin hand points out Aquila, the eagle her mother loved so well.
Her eyes lazily scan the scattered lights, searching, searching for something. Maybe hope, maybe life.
Blood is hard against her tongue as she coughs, the warmth of it leaking out the side of her mouth. She tries to swallow it back down. Keep blood inside you. That’s how you stay alive. I will protect the innocent. My team needs me. I will protect the innocent. Justice shall rain from above.
The others find her lifeless, almost breathless. Her blood stains the ground, her chest fluttering weakly beneath her armour with every tiny inhale. Her dark eyes remain fixed on the sky, waiting to fly one last time, to see her mother’s face, God willing. But it isn’t her mother’s face she sees, swimming out of the darkness.
Instead it is Mercy’s gentle eyes, wide with worry, that fill her mind with things she forgot to say.
...
When she wakes again, she is lying in a small bed, white sheets and white walls blinding after the dimness of unconsciousness.
“You’re awake.” The voice is soft, coming from just outside her vision. Fareeha starts to sit up, only to meet scalding pain radiating from her tight stomach. Her quiet gasp summons cool fingers, which press her back into the bed. She submits, Angela’s gentle gaze sharp with concern.
“Where… where am I?” Her voice cracks with disuse.
Angela reaches behind her, procuring a plastic cup of water from somewhere - Fareeha isn’t sure where.
“Back at base. We managed to get you out of there. If it wasn’t for Winston…” Angela trails off, then hands Fareeha the water. She gulps it down gratefully, wondering when water ever tasted so sweet.
Throat soothed, she speaks again, her voice harsher than she meant it to be, “The mission?”
Angela smiles gently. “We caught them. You don’t have to worry.”
Assured, Fareeha gives her surroundings an automatic sweep, examining the sterilised counters and narrow beds which made up Angela’s medbay. It was familiar, in its unfamiliarity. She had never been inside Angela’s medical bay in London, but it is almost identical to the others, in other parts of the world. It is almost too tidy and clean; unused and unloved in the detached way of hospitals, places where too much hope and too much pain are bred in equal amounts.
Angela carefully places a pair of thin glasses over her nose, looking down at the plasma pad in her hand, thin, long fingers scrolling through streams of information, no doubt about Fareeha herself.
She is beautiful, in the low light cast off the pad and the lights overhead. Fareeha is glad of the opportunity to study the way Angela’s features sit together - she has a strong nose, which fits the rest of her face, angled and fragile, but hard and harsh as the swiss alps Fareeha had seen on a tour there. Her eyes, framed behind thin, black glasses, are deep and blue as the sky she so often launches herself into - two windows into a sea Fareeha could drown herself in.
The silence between them is pressing. Fareeha stops ogling and drinks more of her water, ignoring the dull ache in her stomach as Angela sighs.
“When was your last check up?”
Resting her head against the cool pillow, she searches back, trying to remember. Angela mutters something in german, shaking her head delicately. Fareeha is struck by how similar she is to some sort of bird, like a heron or an egret; thin, lithe and beautiful.
“I’m going to keep you in this evening and tomorrow.” Angela decides, setting her pad aside with professional finality which dams Fareeha’s protests at once. Angela peers over her glasses, a thin blonde eyebrow rising, “Is that all right with you?”
“It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.” Fareeha replies.
“No. You don’t.” They study each other for a moment, then Angela smiles and places one cool hand on Fareeha’s rough, large one. Fareeha feels her heart leap in her chest up to her throat, and she can’t help but match Angela’s smile with one of her own, even if it is small and a little strained. “It was hard to see you so broken.”
Fareeha feels herself frown slightly in question. Angela blinks, her mouth opening slightly as though she hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud. She clears her throat, piercing blue eyes darting away to seek refuge elsewhere.
“You fixed me.” Fareeha turns her hand, taking Angela’s in her own, emboldened suddenly. “Thank you, for saving me.”
“It’s my job.”
“One you do very well. Someone has to tidy up after the rest of us.”
Angela peers at her searchingly, then a tiny smile graces her pretty face. Fareeha tilts her head to the side slightly, offering a slight grin in return.
“Your mother used to say that.”
Fareeha feels her grin vanish, and she preoccupies herself with examining the white sheets of her bed. A single thread has pulled itself free of the stitching, and she resists the urge to pull at it, to tear it off and roll it up. Angela’s hand is still cool in hers, the fingers tightening their grip until they are laced with hers - perhaps she misinterpreted Fareeha’s awkwardness for grief.
Fareeha clears her throat, and speaks to the bed. “You knew her better than I did.”
“She was a brave woman.” Angela says softly. “She would have been proud of you.” Fareeha’s stomach turns to jelly, even as her heart soars at the soft caress of lips against her temple, and before she can speak, Angela is walking away, slipping out of the medbay. Her skin tingles where Angela touched her, her heart jack-hammering against her ribs. She rests her head back against the pillow again, muttering a soft curse in Arabic, gazing sightlessly up at the ceiling.
There is no denying it.
She is in love with Angela Ziegler.