Work Text:
Eighteen year old Angela Ziegler did not like her boss.
She stood by Captain Ana Amari’s door, took a deep breath and knocked.
Saying that she didn’t like Ana wasn’t precisely right. Mostly, she just wasn’t used to the idea of having a boss. She had risen really quickly through the ranks back in Zurich, so much that even before she was head of surgery, she already had her own team, and before that, well, no one actually tried to order her around, because it was always very clear she knew what she was doing.
So having an authority figure was something quite new to her, yet another bit of the Overwatch experience she had to get used to. But goddamn, it was difficult.
Ana opened the door and motioned for her to come in. “Ziegler, good afternoon. I hope you have the papers I’ve requested?”
She did, even though she didn’t see the point. She could take care of her own budget, thank you very much, and she absolutely didn’t see the need to show Ana what she used the money sent to her department for, but fine.
Fine.
She handed over the papers without a word. It wasn’t very mature, but she refused to call the other ma’am.
“Mmhm. Excellent.” Ana flipped through the papers. “We’ll have you relocated next week, by the way.”
Wait, what?
“Relocated…?”
Ana put the documents down on the table and turned to face her. “I’ll be moving to Watchpoint Gibraltar and so will my team, you included. We’ve decided your services will be put to better use there.”
“And I suppose I don’t have a say in that?” she snapped. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t raised herself to be a pushover.
Amari’s eyes narrowed, and she paced around the room. “You don’t. You’re very bright, doctor Ziegler, but it seems respect isn’t something you’ve quite figured out yet.” She paused, locked eyes with the other. “You’ll learn it here, I believe.”
Fuck you.
She gritted her teeth. “Careful,” she hissed. “You might end up on my surgery bed someday.”
Ana halted. “Was that a threat I heard?”
“A statement,” she tilted her chin up.
“And I’m sure the ones who taught you would be very proud to hear it you say it,” the Captain scolded. “Here’s another statement – you’re being relocated. Pack up. Be done by Thursday morning.”
Their eyes met again. Angela did not drop her gaze, and neither did the soldier.
“Dismissed.”
Angela Ziegler never did like her boss very much, but she came to terms with it eventually. At eighteen, they butted heads at least three times a week. At twenty-five, the doctor had grown more mature and lost a lot of her impulsive, fiery edge. It meant Ana and her only went for one another’s throat once or twice a month, which she saw as perfectly acceptable.
Until the Shimada incident, that was.
It began – and ended – in Hanamura, after a clash between the sons of a notable gang lord. The elder had gravely wounded the younger brother, and as it often happened with cases that severe, Genji ended up on her surgery table. Unfortunately, even for her, he was beyond saving. Genji Shimada was by all means a lost case, and the best she could do for him, the most humane thing, was to ease his passing.
Of course Ana Amari begged to differ.
“Absolutely fucking not,” she hissed outside the operating room.
“It wasn’t a question, Ziegler,” the captain crossed her arms. “Genji Shimada is a valuable asset and the AI was clear when it said he can be saved.”
Shove the AI up your goddamn –
“Well maybe the AI should do the procedure, then,” she snapped back. “I did not get a medical degree to commit – atrocities. You want a half-man, half-machine aberration, you get someone else to do it. I refuse.”
She yanked out her rubber gloves and hastily threw them in the trash bin.
“Perhaps I will,” Ana growled. “And you’ll find no one is irreplaceable, not even you.”
“Be my guest.”
She didn’t wait to be dismissed.
She was halfway home when her phone rung and her team told her Ana had them begin the surgery without her. The attending doctor had only recently graduated and though Genji had been stabilized, the attachment of mechanical limbs and body implants was yet to be done, and the man who had begun the surgery did not feel confident to finish it.
She went back, because how could she not? She went back for her team, she went back for her patient, and she finished it. It took her seven hours, nine blood bags and over eighteen assistants until she tightened the last screw and removed the mask from her face. Angela had never been religious, but when she looked at what she had done, she closed her eyes in prayer.
May God forgive me.
She still had his blood on her white coat when she signed her resignation letter only a few hours later.
It was safe to say Angela Ziegler despised her former boss, but the other’s death still shook her. She was in Vietnam when the news reached her, and that night, she lit a candle for Ana Amari’s soul. Differences aside, Amari had principles which she stood for with a fierceness Angela admired.
Only six months later, leaked documents about Blackwatch occasioned Overwatch’s fall, and thinking back to her former supervisor, the blonde couldn’t help but feel perhaps it was better that way. She thought it a good thing that Ana hadn’t lived to see the corruption of the organization she dedicated herself to.
It would be more than a decade before she thought of Ana again.
Angela Ziegler did not hold good memories of her former boss, but at age thirty-seven and looking at the woman’s daughter, she couldn’t help but think maybe they could have gotten along. Fareeha carried much of Ana – the values, the confidence, the leadership and charisma, even the tattoo under the eye.
She couldn’t for the life of it had predicted that Captain Amari the second would be a lovable dork who liked to tell silly jokes and hid the sweetest of smiles. She couldn’t have guessed then that she and Fareeha would soar the skies together, or that the other would ask her out during a concussion-induced delirium only to forget about it and then ask her out again months later.
She couldn’t have known she would say yes, and how much joy that would bring her, even though it came with a lot of worries and white hairs.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Fareeha asked, and Angela realized she had been staring.
She curled her lips in a half-smirk, nestled her head on the other’s shoulder and pulled the bed covers closer. “Do you even have a penny to give? I keep paying for your lunch.”
The Egyptian smiled, sheepish. “Take you out for dinner to compensate?”
“Mmhm. Absolutely.” The blonde sighed. “I was just thinking about your mom.”
Pharah’s face immediately went serious, and Angela regretted bringing it up. “What about her?”
“We didn’t get along.”
She felt Fareeha’s nose rub against her scalp, and for a moment they laid in comfortable silence.
“I remember,” her girlfriend said abruptly.
Angela rolled to the side to face her. “You do?”
“You weren’t exactly quiet,” the soldier pointed out. “I always knew when it was you Ma had seen that day, because she got home pissed.”
The doctor chuckled. “It was my fault, mostly. I was young, insubordinate and arrogant and it was your mother’s job to try and tame me. I wouldn’t have liked to be on her shoes.”
“You don’t do so badly with Hana,” the woman brushed a finger against her cheek. “She even calls you mom.”
“She calls you mom, too, and she called Jesse uncle.”
“And Jack ‘that asshole’,” Fareeha reminded.
Angela’s grin widened. “He’s strict, like your mom was to me. Guess I can relate with the kid. I’m still insubordinate and arrogant.”
“And wild,” Pharah added, leaning in to press her lips against Angela’s.
“And wild,” she agreed, then extended her neck and gave the other’s throat a light bite. “Rawr.”
Angela Ziegler was never fan of her former boss, though she did believe that if the other was still alive, her more mature self could have made their relationship less straining, perhaps even friendly.
As it turned out, she was so very wrong, and because karma was a bitch, the universe would soon make a point to rub it in.
She was happy when Ana Amari returned – truly, honestly happy. Happy, because the woman she loved had just gained her mother back, and Overwatch had regained one of their most distinguished members, and the world was all the better for it. She was ready to put their past of conflict behind her and give that relationship a fresh new start, not as boss and subordinate but as someone who had every intention of joining the Amari family.
Even though Ana had perverted her technology into weapons.
Even though the suffering Ana’s little stunt had caused her daughter indescribable suffering.
Even though.
But then something just had to screw it up, and of all things in the planet, it was freaking Sombra. Sombra, her Mexican frenemy who had been feeding her a steady trickle of information on Amelie Lacroix’s health, had contacted her with certain urgency to say she needed Widowmaker out as soon as possible because after a couple incidents with an Overwatch agent, Talon was considering her ‘retirement’.
Sombra, who needed the answer for a simple question: “With the data I’ve been giving you, can you keep her alive?”
Angela could, and so she did.
Ana Amari was less than happy.
“Absolutely fucking not,” the doctor hissed, making all the heads at the meeting table turn to her. Those who hadn’t known her before showed surprise at the intensity of her reaction. Those who did know her were aware that there was one thing she was very passionate about, and that thing was the value of life. “Amélie is a victim on this. We are not savages. I will not see her executed.”
“She will be held accountable for her actions and pay the price for what she did,” Ana snapped back.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” she snarled. “How the fuck do you want to hold someone accountable for something they did under torture and threat of death? That woman has been living on parenteral glucose shots for over a decade. She has psychological wounds so deep I’m not sure she’ll ever get a restful night of sleep. There is no price to be paid, Amari. She has paid it more than anyone.”
“She has paid more than anyone?!” the sniper stood, slamming her palms on the table. “That… monster is the reason I haven’t seen my own daughter grow!”
Angela got up as well, seeing red. “Don’t you dare blaming that woman for your own cowardice!”
And there it was. She knew right then that she had crossed a line from which she couldn’t back down. The room fell absolutely silent for a moment, and tension could be cut through with a knife.
Am already in hell, might as well sit on the devil’s lap.
“Amelie Lacroix is my patient and I’m treating her. Whether I do this at Overwatch or somewhere else is up to you.”
She left, because she was in no condition to carry on with the meeting and she knew Zenyatta would defend her point. She laid down in her bed and stared at the roof for what felt like hours, thinking about a thousand ways that conversation could have gone better. It was unusual of her to lose her cool like that, though she did mean every word.
It’s Ana, she thought bitterly. Gets me off my axis every time.
She thought about getting therapy, and then she remembered she was the only medical professional in about a billion mile radius, and she couldn’t therapize herself. The idea of it made her laugh humorlessly.
“I heard you and Ma had an argument,” she heard Fareeha speak from the door. She closed her eyes and didn’t move. “To be honest, I was expecting it to happen much sooner.”
She felt the mattress move next to her, felt warm skin touch her arms. She opened her eyes and her gaze met the soldier’s.
“I tried really hard to be an adult about it,” Angela sighed. “I think she did, too, but some things just can’t be helped. I knew Ame from before…what they did to her. I owe her that much to try, and I would stand for her even if I didn’t.”
“Can you really make her better?”
I don’t know.
And there it was, in Fareeha’s expression, that mixture of awe, admiration and hope that Angela knew so well, that unique veneration that came only with power over life. It had always been her burden to carry.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t a lie. She would make it so.
Angela wanted to cry.
“You should go…to your mom,” the doctor continued. “I know you’re still upset, but she needs you a lot right now.”
“You need me, too,” the Egyptian pointed out.
“But I’ve had you all for myself for months, and she only just got back,” she brushed her thumb against Fareeha’s cheek. “It doesn’t seem very fair, does it?”
There was no answer. The blonde stared at the roof.
“She always tried to be a mother to me,” she spoke up eventually. “To everyone, really. Her team used to call her ‘mama bear’. She tried to be a mother, Ree, but I raised myself, and that is something I can never accept.” She turned her head to the other. “But she is your mom, and family is important, and she loves you beyond words.”
“Okay,” Fareeha answered after a while, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “But promise me you’ll be fine. No working. Go play some of those silly games you like.”
The doctor cracked a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Angela watched her go with her chest tight, and it took her all her willpower to not take her words back and call Fareeha over again.
When she was alone, she wept.
Angela Ziegler could never had imagined her pain in the ass boss would eventually become her pain in the ass mother-in-law, but destiny was a funny thing and destiny would have it that way. She did end up treating Lacroix, and she felt Ana would never let her off for that, but she also pushed Fareeha towards forgiveness, for which the mother was grateful.
And though she could never shake off the feeling Ana would have preferred anyone else for her daughter, they worked their differences out, for the good of Fareeha. The older Amari would sew her ugly itchy sweaters which she was forced to wear for Christmas, and Angela would always resist the urge to gift the woman a colonoscopy in return. Or a barium enema.
The barium enema was very tempting.
She never got around to calling the other ‘mom’, and Ana never got around to calling her ‘daughter.’
And that was just as well.