Chapter Text
For someone who took great pride in remaining unseen, Widowmaker got surprisingly irked at not being stared at. It wasn’t getting ambushed, shot, captured and forcefully hospitalized which annoyed her the most, it wasn’t even how exposed she was, chest bare on her open hospital gown. No, what ticked her off the most was how her attending doctor, none less than the great Angela Ziegler herself, blatantly refused to look.
She felt those warm, warm hands rub circles on the skin of her nape, then under the jawbone and chin, moving to the neck and then collarbones, searching for whatever doctors searched for – and all the while, the blonde’s eyes were closed, her expression serious and absolutely impassive. Widowmaker briefly considered her odds of strangling the woman and making a run for it right then and there, but decided against it because she was just so insulted.
“Lie down for me, bitte,” the doctor requested, and if she noticed the sniper’s affronted expression, she didn’t show.
Widowmaker did as she was told, and when the cool stethoscope was pressed against her neck and then over her chest, right under her breast, she peeked up to see Ziegler’s eyes staring fixedly at a spot on the wall, brows furrowed in concentration.
Maybe she’s just straight, the French thought, but she knew for a fact that wasn’t true because Sombra, always Sombra, had made a point of digging up every Overwatch member’s embarrassing teenage pictures and Ziegler was absolutely not straight in those.
Pansexual, more like, she thought bitterly as the doctor moved to the side to listen to her abdomen. The blonde paused and bit her bottom lip, deep in thought, then placed the stethoscope back around her neck and pressed her open palm lightly over Widow’s bare skin. She did so methodically, starting from the hip and moving up until she’d left warm handprints over the patient’s entire belly.
And still she wouldn’t look.
Maybe she just isn’t into blue.
Widowmaker had no doubts she was an attractive woman, and she got gradually more and more offended.
“Breathe in,” the blonde said, pushing her hands deep into the sniper’s abdomen when she did so. They repeated that process four or five more times, and then she was told to put her pajama-uniform thing back on and the doctor actually gave her back to the French whilst she changed. Angela did not take a single peek – Widowmaker watched closely for it.
She had to admit her femme persona was completely bewildered at the doctor’s stunning professionalism.
“That’s it for today,” the blonde chirped, taking notes at a sheet of paper. “Thank you once again for the collaboration –”
“How do I look?” Widowmaker snapped.
Angela seemed surprised at her interest, tilting her head. “Mmh, to be fair, I cannot know, not yet.” She pocketed her pen and looked the French in the eyes. “It’s your first physical examination, so I have nothing to compare this data to. Even in people without your…body peculiarities, it’s not proper to make conclusions without a good notion of one’s individual values.” She paused, thoughtful, and pressed her lips in a thin line. “Unless you have any symptoms you’d like me to investigate? Anything hurting, or –”
“There’s nothing,” she interrupted. Just a bruised ego.
The doctor blinked. “Well then… I’ll be on my way. If you need anything – ”
“I know, I know!” She hissed, all but kicking the woman out.
The doctor came every three days to take more measures; beyond that, Widowmaker was left alone. Though she had no contact with the outer world, they still left her books as a means of entertainment. Her captivity gave her plenty of time to think, and so think she did. She wondered at first when and how Talon would come for her, because surely they would. They were not kind to failures, and she wondered whether they’d choose to have her back or have her dead.
When after a month they did not strike, she thought surely something must have happened. After two months, she was absolutely sure Gabriel and Sombra were either captured or no longer alive. After three months, she leaned heavily towards the second option. She expected something from that knowledge – perhaps anger, perhaps grief – and was disappointed but not surprised when there was nothing but the same gnawing emptiness.
She wanted to ask the doctor about them but didn’t quite have the heart to. After four months, she decided it didn’t matter. After five, she changed her mind and came to the conclusion that since she was stuck there, she might as well start making questions.
“What are you even looking for?” she muttered while Ziegler’s fingers searched her scalp and neck.
“Swollen lymph nodes,” the blonde replied, eyes closed, hands moving in what had become a familiar pattern. “Those are…mmh, signs of infection.”
“Right,” Widowmaker replied, lying down on her back without having to be asked. “So, whatever happened to Reaper and Sombra?”
“They’re not coming, if that’s what worries you,” Angela murmured, placing the stethoscope on her chest.
“So, dead?” she queried casually, and the doctor winced, yanking the cool metal tool back on reflex.
“Scheiße!” Ziegler hissed, then exhaled slowly. “Pardon me. If you talk while I have the stethoscope on you, it comes off sehr laut.” She cleared her throat. “Mmm no, not dead, not as far as I know.”
Out of politeness, Amélie waited for the other to finish listening to her heart sounds before trying to sate her curiosity. “You seem quite sure Talon won’t show up, though.”
There was one long moment of silence in which Angela bore those blue eyes deep into Widowmaker’s amber ones, and then the blonde broke eye contact and bit her bottom lip.
“You’ve been…discharged.”
The idea was so bizarre, the sniper couldn’t hold back the laughter. “Oh ma chérie, there’s no such thing as that – unless you mean death…maybe.”
“We’ve come to… an agreement. Sombra wiped you from their records,” the blonde stated, her tone flat. “Permanently, she guaranteed. Not a trace of you left. How she did so is far beyond me.”
Widowmaker sat up immediately. “What?!”
“It took a lot of…negotiating. A lot of convincing. She was rather skeptical at first, but we have…surprisingly a lot of common ground.” Angela rubbed her own arms, absently hugging herself. “We both know what it’s like to work for organizations we don’t entirely approve of, in order to reach a bigger goal. And we are both…flexible with rules.”
The French was honestly too befuddled to elaborate on her thoughts.
“What – how – why?”
The doctor looked away. “We had you. She knew Talon would either have you executed or horribly penalized. We worked together in this. I threw my weight around so that Overwatch wouldn’t have your head either, and Sombra cares for you enough to recognize you’d be better in my care.”
“Why?” she repeated, still stunned.
Angela shrugged. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because your life is worth it, and if there’s anyone in the world qualified to tackle the challenge of making it better, it’s me.”
What a fucking self-esteem.
“It’s so preposterous to assume I want your aid – you didn’t even bother to ask – and I am doing just fine, thank you – ” she hissed, then paused, bewildered. “Where do you even know Sombra from anyway?”
The blonde muttered something inaudible. Widowmaker motioned for her to repeat it.
“League of Legends,” Angela mumbled. “We play League of Legends together sometimes.”
‘Angry’ didn’t quite cover what Widowmaker had been feeling. On the back of her mind the reasonable part of her recognized that out of her options, she had indeed been granted the best possible outcome. Still, it infuriated her that Sombra and the doctor had downright schemed behind her back and decided her fate without consulting her.
To top it all off, Ziegler was impossible to take anger out on. She tried being cold, she tried being rude, she even tried being uncooperative; to all that, the medic would respond with never-ending patience. It was rather unsatisfying to rage at someone who refused to rage back. She desperately wanted to punch that gentle and fucking adorable face, and what stopped her wasn’t fear of retaliation but rather the certainty that Angela’s first concern would be over the integrity of the knuckles that hit her.
“This is the vagus nerve,” the blonde said one day after one of her routine visits, pointing to a hologram hovering over the table. “And here is where it reaches the heart,” she continued, zooming into the picture.
Widowmaker didn’t answer, watching the image with cool indifference. After a moment of silence, Angela resumed speaking.
“What the vagus does is slow the heartbeat down, and here, it seems, is where Talon acted on your physiology. Hyper stimulating it drastically dropped your heart rate, giving you the cyanotic aspect,” the doctor flicked her wrist and more images came up, this time blood test results. “Of course, your body took measures to adapt to the constant oxygen low. Your levels of 2,3-DPG are drastically high, your cells are under constant stress and how they made your enzymes remain stable in a temperature so under their ideal is beyond me.”
She tilted her head, now genuinely interested. Talon had always kept her in the dark about what they did to her, and she figured the more she knew about her own body, the better.
“Some organs suffer more from it, mainly those which require lots of irrigation. The kidneys, the intestines. The brain too, but that circulation was preserved.” The blonde paused. “If we cut the vagus – a vagotomy, we call it – your heart will resume sinoatrial rate – that’s about sixty to seventy beats per minute, as opposed to your average twenty. The removal would be temporary – after a period of adaptation, we would then regrow the nerve from its roots, so that normal responsivity can be achieved.”
It took the sniper a moment to understand what the other was proposing. “Sounds complex. And terribly risky.”
Angela sighed. “It is. Still, with your authorization, I would like to attempt the procedure.”
Widowmaker arched a single eyebrow at the other. “Well, isn’t this a surprise. Gabriel would be overjoyed to know that you now actually ask for permission before experimenting on people.”
She knew she had hit a nerve when the doctor visibly flinched. She licked her lips in satisfaction, grinning at this newfound knowledge of a weakness.
“I’ve made…mistakes,” Ziegler exhaled. “Mistakes I wouldn’t like to repeat. I won’t do anything you refuse.” She bit her bottom lip. “Though I do believe you would greatly benefit from the surgery.”
“Not as much as you would, I bet,” she replied venomously. “Will you write an article on it later? How much status has my capture earned you among the, what do you call yourselves,” she tapped a finger to her chin absently, “Scientific community?”
The blonde grit her teeth. “I haven’t. Written anything about you. I haven’t –” she cut herself short, sighing, then fished something from her pocket – a pen needle. Rolling it between her thumb and forefingers, she stared at the object for a couple seconds, then placed it down the table.
Widowmaker’s eyes flicked over the label.
D10W - 10% dextrose-water solution.
Her afternoon meal. Without turning to face the doctor, she grabbed the injection and pressed it against the back of her hand, pushing the release button. There was no pain when the needle pricked her skin, though she did feel a vague burning as the solution flowed into her veins. When she looked back at Angela, the woman was hugging herself, palms rubbing absently over her own forearms.
“You could eat again,” the blonde whispered. “Actual food, instead of just… glucose shots to the vein. You could drink again – more than controlled amounts of water. You could have – a tea. Hot chocolate. Beer. So many things.” She picked up the discarded needle and slid it back into the pocket of her lab coat.
Eat.
The thought seemed so alien she had trouble wrapping her mind around it. When was it she last ate? She couldn’t remember. Surely not on this life, and she could recall very little from back when she was just Amélie. She couldn’t even remember what taste felt like, save for the occasional tang of her own blood.
She didn’t want to give Angela the satisfaction of a ‘yes’, but then again, Widowmaker was never one to deny herself any pleasures either, and she saw people delighted about eating all the time. There had to be something to it, she decided.
“Think about it,” the doctor said after it became clear she would get no answers.
And think about it she did.