Chapter Text
Night falls swiftly in Colorado; there is no dusk, no protracted twilight, just seventeen minutes of sunset separating piercingly bright sun and near-total darkness. In those seventeen minutes, however, the sky seems to burn, brilliant oranges and pinks the likes of which she has never seen, back home in Switzerland. Everything is brighter, and sharper here.
It was to see this sunset that McCree brought her to the rooftop of Watchpoint: Grand Mesa; the rest of the strike team is not present, out having a celebratory post-mission drink, while she and McCree—not old enough, yet, to drink in America—are left on base. They have nothing better to do than watch the too-vivid sunset and reflect, as teenagers just on the cusp of entering adulthood do, on their past, and how it will extend to their future.
Here, the total clarity of the sunset in contrast with the haze of the final days of youth, is the first time she says it, the first time she gives name to herself, and in doing so, crystallizes her future.
“Angela,” says she, the name jolting out of her before she has time to consider the weight of it, the implications. Apropos of nothing, it is said with the urgency of a confession.
For a moment, there is silence between them. By her side, Jesse is considering, and she imagines he is turning the name over in his mind, taking measure of it before he replies.
As it turns out, he is not.
“Unkle-uh?” he asks, sounding somewhat bewildered.
“Angela,” she corrects, “A-N-G-E-L-A.”
“Oh, Angela.”
“No, An-gel-a,” she says it slower this time, hoping he will catch the pronunciation. It would be unfair of her to expect him to get it right the first time—she still struggles with “Jesse,” always softening her “j”—but she hopes he will hear the difference soon. She had no expectations for this conversation, but somehow this seems too mundane an exchange to follow what seems, in her teenage mind, to have been a great confession, one which ought to have changed things.
“Right,” says McCree, like he does not believe her, “That’s what I said. Angela.”
“It is not,” she argues.
“It is!” he sounds almost indignant, as if it was his name they were mispronouncing. Before she can fight back, he asks, “Why are we even arguing about how to say this damn name anyway?”
For a moment, she wonders how best to say this. Directly would be best, she knows, would minimize the chance of a misunderstanding, would prevent this conversation from being drawn out any longer than it has been already, but she cannot be direct. She has tried to do so, before, has tried to say the words, simple as they are, not only to Jesse, but to Ana, to Jack, to Gabriel. When she tries, she freezes up, is left with her mouth open and no words forthcoming. (Thus far, she has passed such off as having forgotten an English term, has used her supposed ignorance to smooth over the gaps in dialogue where a confession might have gone. Such is unsustainable.) So, she cannot be direct.
Humor. Jesse appreciates humor, if little else, and is quite a bit more clever than he acts. Even if she passes it off as a joke, he will understand her meaning.
“Well,” says she, “You are always complaining about having to say my full title. I thought, ‘If Doctor Ziegler is too hard for him, I will give him something easier.’”
This time, when silence stretches between them, she knows that Jesse really is considering, is mulling over in his mind the implications of her words.
“Angela?” he asks, and this time, it almost sounds right. “That’s your name?” He does not sound disbelieving, or even confused. This is, it seems, just for clarification.
“Yes,” Angela confirms, “That is me.”
“Alright then, Angela,” Jesse says, and Angela feels, suddenly, warmth bloom in her chest, feels for the first time what it is to be truly accepted as she is. It is beautiful, is everything she thought it would be, and more, is like everything is slotting into place, all at once.
McCree promptly ruins the moment.
“Now wait just a minute,” her heart stops when he says it. After all of this, will he yet reject her? “You’re tellin’ me your name’s Angela, and you’re planning to wear a damn angel costume in the field? A bit heavy-handed, don’t you think?”
Oh.
Well that… is unexpected, and, at the same time, utterly typical of Jesse.
“What is it you've told me of glass homes?” Angela asks.
“Glass houses, Angela. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Precisely that,” Angela says. “A man named after Jesse James who dresses as a cowboy ought not criticize a woman named Angela for dressing like an angel. Besides which, it is a Valkyrie Swift Response Suit.”
“You have a fair point,” he admits, “But I didn’t pick Jesse.”
Nothing in the way McCree speaks to her is any different than it was before, Angela seems no different to him than Dr. Ziegler was, and so they bicker, as the last fires of sunset fade, and day gives way to night.
“Angela?” Fareeha asks one night, in the many months after Angela’s confession, “Which came first: the name or the suit?”
“The suit,” she replies, not even looking up from the journal she is reading.
“Do you regret it?” asks Fareeha, “I mean, you made the decision when you were young. I was still living with my mother the first time I heard her call you by your name, if I remember right, so it must’ve been 15, 20 years ago now?”
“Are you asking if I regret naming myself to match the Valkyrie, and the image I was to present to the public, by extension, or if I regret the associations I have with the name, having done so?” she sets down the journal, and turns to face her girlfriend, who is lying next to her on the bed. This is a conversation best had face to face. "In either case, the answer to your question is yes. It was a decision I made at seventeen, of course I’ve regretted it.”
“Ah,” says Fareeha, sounding as if she has some regrets, herself—namely, having asked the question.
Before Fareeha can apologize, Angela continues, “It isn’t as simple as that, though. There are bad memories associated with it, of course, and good memories soured by bad relationships, but that’s not what I regret about having chosen the name." A pause, as she thinks of how best to phrase this, "When I chose it, I didn't think of what my life would be like outside of Overwatch. Work controlled every aspect of my life; I ate what I was told, slept when I was told, went where I was told. Back then, living in an environment like that, as young as I was—I couldn’t imagine a life beyond the one I had at that time, a world where I wouldn't want that association. So yes, I regret that I named myself in such a way that I further tied myself to the organization.”
(When Overwatch fell, and she wanted to move on, to find her place outside of it, for the first time since she was a child, it was made all the harder by having a name which evoked, in the minds of all who saw her, what she was with them. It was not a tether to her past, but an anchor pulling her down, down, down, leaving her to drown beneath the weight of a legacy she no longer wanted. It branded her as an angel, perfect, untouchable, otherworldly, the way she had been asked to present herself before the media, and not the way she was: flawed, hurting, human. Then, her name was a curse.)
“However,” she continues, before Fareeha can get the wrong idea, “I don’t regret the connection entirely. There are good memories tied to the name, too.”
(She and Jesse, back when Blackwatch was only an idea, and not a source of conflict between them, watching the sunset and cracking jokes. Reyes ordering her that she was no longer to bunk with that damned ingrate, McCree, because she belonged in the women’s barracks—the first time her gender was recognized institutionally. Reinhardt, being the first person to call her beautiful, and to mean it, one evening on base.)
"Well that's... good?" Fareeha's voice suggests that, perhaps, she is not certain whether or not the good memories make up for the preceding statements.
“It’s not good or bad, just complicated—and more so with the Recall. It’s difficult, sometimes, to say where who I was ends and who I am begins. I want people to see me, and to see Angela, because that is who I am, is a part of me, but I’m afraid that to too many, Angela is inseparable from Mercy. Does that make sense?”
Fareeha nods, and Angela wonders if she feels the same way about having chosen for herself the callsign Pharah, after her childhood nickname, in honor of a mother she thought dead at the time, but who is, in fact, very much alive. If that is the case, then the final part of her explanation will be easier for it.
“However, all associations with the suit and Overwatch aside, I don’t regret having chosen the name itself.”
Fareeha raises an eyebrow at her.
“I don’t,” says she, repetition a reaffirmation of that which she knows to be true, “Because the Valkyrie isn’t the only reason I picked the name. Partially, I picked it because of my mother.”
“I thought your mother’s name was Anke?”
“It was,” says Angela, feeling surprised, pleasantly, that Fareeha remembers this, “And that’s just it. When my mother named me, she named me after her older brother, who died before she herself was born, because it's customary, naming children after deceased relatives—but she changed the name, slightly, so make it sound more modern, less dated. A connection to our past, without living in it. If you listen, you can hear it. Anke, Angela. Similar enough, yes?”
“Anke,” Fareeha says, slowly, rolling the name around her mouth and seeming to consider. “I can hear it, I suppose, but it’s clearer when you say it.”
“Just so,” Angela agrees, “But that isn’t the point, not really. In naming a child for a relative, there’s a belief that you create a connection, between the souls of the two. In some way, the child is connected to the person for whom they are named, is close to them, although they never have met. It was a way of giving myself a bond with my mother, which her death took from me, a way of feeling close. She knew me in life, of course, but not as me." A pause, and she adds, to detract, a bit, from the heaviness of that statement, "And we believe, too, that the good deeds of the living reflect well upon the person for whom they're named and I wanted—no, I want—to find a way to honor my mother, as best I'm able.”
“That I can understand,” says Fareeha, “Wanting to keep your mother around, just a little longer. When I thought Mum died—there isn't much I wouldn't have done, to keep her memory alive.”
Angela wonders at use of the past tense—she does not believe, for a moment, that Fareeha’s actions are no longer defined by a reaction to her mother’s legacy, a need to uphold it, to exceed it, to defy it, and in doing so, honor it. Angela wonders, but does not question. They have had enough questions, for one night.
Or, near enough. It seems, Fareeha has one more.
“When we have children, will you want to name them that way?”
“No,” says Angela immediately, “I don’t think I will. Already, any child of ours will have to shoulder quite a legacy, you know this. I wouldn't want to burden them with another.”
So focused, is she, on the potential fate of their hypothetical child, that she nearly misses it. When, and not if.
When they have a child.
When, said so easily, as if to Fareeha it is a foregone conclusion, as if she knows that they will last, that nothing will befall them, that in a few years’ time, they will still be together, and will be living in a world stable enough to bring a child into.
When she and Fareeha have a child, Angela thinks to herself, for the first time, she will try to ensure that they name they chose for them does not weigh them down with a legacy too heavy for any soul to carry. When they have a child, they will be allowed to make a name for themself—or choose one—without fear of judgement.
When they have a child, and not if.