Chapter Text
As a child, Angela always imagined a covert ops division would have some dismal underground setup, or perhaps a more medieval structure, somehow obviously foreboding at its face. Blackwatch Base 2, codename Ruby, looks nothing like any of that. She wouldn't have expected trees, or blue skies, or an ordinary front door, and she certainly wouldn't have expected a doorbell that chimes a cheerful melody.
The harried young woman in a lab coat who answers the door is far more familiar to her sensibilities. "Mercy?" she asks, in a voice that wavers. Her giant spectacles magnify large, dark eyes to comical proportions.
Angela nods, but before she can say anything else, the wide-eyed young woman pulls her quickly inside.
"We weren't sure when to expect you," she says.
"I hope I haven't put you out," says Angela.
"No, not me, it's just..." The young woman stops and turns her too-wide gaze upon Angela, "...the Doctor is very particular."
Angela quirks a brow. "Dr. O'Deorain, you mean?" She hasn't heard much about her temporary coworker, but all that she has heard has borne the hint of a joke to which Angela is missing the punchline.
But the wide-eyed young woman flushes, actually turns red around the ears, and her lips curl into a smile. "Yes," she says, rapturously. "She likes things a certain way, you see, and I pride myself on maintaining her rigourous standards."
Angela struggles to maintain a neutral expression. Inside she feels nearly overcome by the sort of laughter that arises from discomfort, or secondhand embarrassment. "I see," she says, not without a hint of the amusement she feels.
"Wendy!" a voice over Angela's shoulder catches her off her guard. She knows without thinking that she will not turn to see the infamous Doctor, for the voice is just as unsteady as that of the young woman who brought her in. "Don't you have other things to be doing?"
"The doorbell rang and you were nowhere in sight!" says Wendy. "What was I supposed to—"
The newcomer, whose golden blonde hair cascades from her neat ponytail in beautiful curls, grasps Wendy by the arm and whispers, "We agreed it was my job to greet our new guest."
"Fine," Wendy throws her hands skyward, and exits the room without so much as a goodbye.
"Anyway!" the newcomer turns back to Angela with affected brightness. "I'll show you to your room now."
"And you are?" Angela prods, while her new guide is already halfway to the stairs.
"Oh!" she stops and extends her hand. "Phoebe. A pleasure, Doctor...I mean, Mercy."
"If you know my name," says Angela, "and I know yours, then we don't have to use code names, do we?"
"Well, I—" Phoebe falters in the middle of withdrawing her hand, and her gaze falls to the side in a meaningless direction. "It all depends on what the Doctor wants, of course," she says.
Angela follows Phoebe's gaze skeptically. "And what of what this doctor wants?" she wonders, gesturing to herself.
Suddenly Phoebe's smile takes on a particular, knowing quality. "Dr. O'Deorain is very particular," she says.
"So I've been told," Angela counters flatly.
Phoebe eyes her up and down, in a manner Angela would have considered insubordination on her own turf. "People who don't meet the Doctor's standards? Usually don't last very long."
Angela inhales slowly. "I'll bear that in mind," she says, with a thin approximation of a smile.
Her room is so much homier than the quarters she had at Overwatch Base 1. Sunlight filters through the leafy trees outside her window, and though her curtains are heavy and dark enough to blot out the light, they are not unpleasant to behold. She sets down her suitcase and removes her coat while Phoebe tells her about the layout of each floor. Angela will have her own bathroom, while Phoebe and Wendy share the one down the hall by their rooms.
She's relieved not to have to hear any more uncomfortable fawning over her coworker-to-be, but she'd be lying if she said these two impassioned accounts hadn't rendered her frightfully curious as to the true nature of the infamous Dr. O'Deorain. The way her superiors talked back at Base 1, she was expecting someone rude and standoffish, or possibly the eccentric, volatile type. Then again, she supposed sometimes the young and naive could be drawn to that sort of thing without knowing their affections could only lead to heartache.
When they return downstairs, Wendy is waiting for them with arms folded and frizzy brown hair significantly tamed from her first appearance. "Took you long enough," she says by way of greeting. "She's due for a break soon."
"I'm sorry you wasted all that time preparing to scold me for being late when I'm not," Phoebe replies crisply.
"She needs to be told before we go in—"
"Don't tell me, tell her!" Phoebe fires back as she turns to exit.
Angela watches her go, and wonders how she can feel so tired after she's just arrived.
"As I was saying," Wendy continued, "Dr. O'Deorain has asked to be notified of mealtimes and regular breaks, but only once. If she says she's in the middle of something, we're not to disturb her again. She doesn't like any excessive noise in the house, but she also doesn't like to be caught by surprise. If you're coming downstairs," Wendy says as she takes to the stairs leading down, "make sure you aren't being intentionally light-footed, and do knock at least twice on the door if she doesn't answer. If she—"
Angela reaches past Wendy and knocks.
"Come in."
Utterly different from the two voices she has encountered so far. Low, sharp, certain. Angela isn't afraid of some egotistical madwoman, yet her heartbeat still surges in response to that voice.
Wendy opens the heavy door to reveal a proper lab, very nearly a welcome sight after the strangeness of arriving here. A thin, lanky woman with cropped red hair stands hunched over a work table, writing furiously with her left hand. Her right hand, splayed upon the table to hold her balance, looks as though it has been badly injured.
"Doctor, I'm sorry to bother you, but Mercy has just arrived. If you don't have time, we can—"
"Leave us." Dr. O'Deorain does not look up from her work.
'We can....what?" Wendy stammers. "But I wanted to—"
Dr. O'Deorain stops then, and looks up sharply. Her eyes are striking, and mismatched in colour. "Wendy," she says. "You know I don't like to repeat myself."
Angela affords Wendy a sidelong glance. Her head is bowed, and her ears are flushed again. "Yes. I'm sorry, Doctor."
Dr. O'Deorain leans forward over her work table, and the smirk that crosses her features is positively sadistic. "Then why are you still here?" she wonders richly.
Wendy disappears behind the lab's heavy door without another word, and Angela is left alone with a monster. "You do keep your assistants under your thumb, don't you?" she wonders drily.
Dr. O'Deorain's mischievous smirk does not fade. "My assistants would be useless to me if they were not well-apprised of my needs."
Angela quirks a brow in response. "One wonders why they seem to harbour such a fondness for you."
Dr. O'Deorain straightens her posture at last, revealing that she is even more uncommonly tall than she appeared at first glance. "Well," she inclines her head thoughtfully, as though she is studying Angela, "it may surprise you to know, Dr. Ziegler, that some people derive considerable pleasure from being bossed around."
Angela folds her arms and curls her lip. "And I take it you are only too happy to oblige," she sneers.
Dr. O'Deorain strolls around the side of her work table with her hands folded behind her back, and stops near enough that Angela has to crane her neck to meet Dr. O'Deorain's eyes.
Dr. O'Deorain has not stopped smiling. "Is that something that interests you, Dr. Ziegler?" she asks, so low and sweet that it sends a flurry of unfocused energy coursing through Angela's veins even as the context of the question turns her stomach.
"No," Angela replies, flat and forceful.
Dr. O'Deorain considers her a moment with a kind of muted fascination. "Well then," she says quietly, affording Angela a quick once-over far subtler and smoother than that of her assistant, "I suppose that matter is none of your concern, now, is it?"
She is sleeping with both of them. She actually is sleeping with both of them, the absolute monster! And they are young, so they don't see the games she plays with them, sparing more attention for one for awhile and then switching to the other, spending equal time with both and then withdrawing completely for days at a time, complimenting one on what the other considers her specialty, the whole thing is sick. It's disgusting.
Angela doesn't know how they tolerate it. Wendy spends her free time writing a paper on Dr. O'Deorain's controversial cellular regeneration technology, while Phoebe has a harp in her room that she plays beautifully when she thinks no one can hear her. Wendy hums the theme songs to old television shows while she cleans the house, and when Angela mentions to Phoebe that she was going to write a letter, but ran out of stamps, a page emblazoned with colourful birds sits upon her desk by the time she has finished her work for the day.
They are brilliant, and there is much to like about each of them, and oughtn't a woman like Dr. O'Deorain to know how it feels to be played, looked down upon and treated like a toy, when she knows she has so much more to offer?
Angela thinks of asking the good Doctor just that at least once per day, often first thing in the morning when she arrives in the lab to find Dr. O'Deorain already hunched over her desk, lost to the concerns of the outside world. She wakes up certain she can hear muted weeping from the room down the hall, and she thinks she will march right in there, slam her hands down on the work table in front of Dr. O'Deorain's face, and say, what do you think you're playing at?
But without looking up, Dr. O'Deorain says, in a voice rendered almost gentle with exhaustion. "Good, you're here. I've left you the data from the tests I ran earlier. I'd like your opinion before we set up another simulation."
And Angela begins to wonder whether Dr. O'Deorain is playing a game at all, or whether she is merely so enamoured of her work that she does not notice, does not even understand the everyday machinations of the human heart.
"You know," Angela dares, much more gently than she had intended, once silence has reigned between them for some time, "I heard Phoebe crying this morning."
"I didn't think you the type for idle gossip, Dr. Ziegler," Dr. O'Deorain replies evenly.
Angela's grip tightens upon her pencil. "I also heard what the two of you got up to last night."
The rhythmic scratching of Moira's writing ceases, and the silence is immediately overwhelming. "She wasn't loud," says Dr. O'Deorain, a strange mixture of irritation and curiosity. "One wonders whether someone wasn't trying to hear."
Angela slams down her pencil, unnervingly loud in the small space. "I cannot help but notice," she says through her teeth, "the effect you seem to have upon our young colleagues." She turns to face Dr. O'Deorain, who is still hunched over her desk, unmoving. "I wonder if you notice," she continues, "or if you just don't care?"
Dr. O'Deorain straightens her posture slowly. "I'm not much of a crier, Dr. Ziegler," she says as she turns to peer down her nose at Angela, "but I am given to understand that one might shed a tear for any number of reasons wholly unrelated to myself. While I do not wish Phoebe any strife, her personal life is none of my business."
"None of your business!" Angela cries. "Those two are constantly at each other's throats about how best to appease the fickle fancies of the great Doctor O'Deorain, how each of them is the only one that truly understands you, how you are clearly in love with one and the other ought to just give up and leave!" She points an accusing finger. "That is your fault!"
Dr. O'Deorain closes the minimal distance between them, looms over Angela and narrows her eyes, but the look is not malicious, and her tone is light. "I think perhaps you are projecting, Dr. Ziegler. But rest assured, I'd only have eyes for you, if you'd allow it."
"You—!" Angela closes her eyes and inhales deeply. She will not rise to the bait. "Let's just...get back to work," she sighs.
"Oh, Dr. Ziegler, you know my heart so well."
Angela struggles to contain a great cry of frustration into another heavy sigh. She picks up her pencil and resumes making notes on the data Dr. O'Deorain collected. She is brilliant, and the work is fascinating, and Angela finds her mind easily preoccupied. Still, once her heart has stopped racing and her shoulders have relaxed, she amends, quietly, "I honestly wonder if you know what you're doing."
"My effect upon you remains an enticing mystery, Dr. Ziegler," Dr. O'Deorain replies airily.
Angela squeezes her eyes closed and sighs once more.