>>5926

And because I'm feeling nice today and I actually quite like Tracer

Epilogue

Mercy pushed open another door, quickly securing the room with her blaster. Empty. Keep moving, next room. Nothing. She kept hurrying down the corridor, checking every room only to find them all empty.

She had to find Tracer. Winston and Reinhardt were in the center of the complex raising a massive racket to draw as many enemies as possible, while Mercy and Genji were to quickly locate and rescue Tracer – unsuccessfully so far.

Another room. Empty. Another-

“Mein Gott! Lena!” Tracer was there, naked except for her chronal accelerator, and hanging from a noose around her neck, kicking and gasping. In dashing forward Mercy emptied her sidearm onto the hook anchoring the rope, then caught Tracer in her arms. “I'm here, I'm here. Alles wird gut.” Mercy comforted Tracer, lapsing into her native language “You'll be alright.” Das war knapp. Just minutes later, and...

Mercy activated her diagnostics tool when suddenly Tracer flickered blue and vanished, reappearing in the air where she'd just been hanging, but without the rope to hold her immediately dropped down and Mercy just barely managed to catch Tracer before she hit the ground. Was war das... “What just happened?”

“Re..mote...” Tracer stammered between coughs, weakly pointing towards a small black object lying on the ground. Had Tracer's accelerator been compromised? Mercy picked up the device, but she couldn't make heads or tails of the unlabeled buttons, so after a moment of thought just dropped it to the floor and crushed it with her heel.

As she held Tracer, softly speaking to her as her coughing subsided, Mercy wondered what had been the point of forcing Tracer to rewind like this, possibly over and over again, and after a few moments realization hit her. She hadn't been just in time, because Tracer had been on the verge of death for who knew how long, possibly hours. “Was zum Teufel!?

Tracer flinched at the sudden outburst and Mercy pulled her into a comforting hug, even through her suit becoming painfully aware not only of the younger woman's nakedness, but also of her shivering. “Poor girl.” Wie kann jemand nur so etwas tun?

Of course her Valkyrie suit was extremely helpful for both combat and healing, but it also meant Mercy didn't have a jacket or coat with her she could have given Tracer, so after thinking for a moment, she pulled out a compressed thermal blanket from a pocket and unfolded it to drape it over Tracer's shoulders, at least somewhat covering her nudity.

Mercy's diagnostic scan confirmed her suspicions that thanks to Tracer's rewinding, there wasn't much physical damage, though she would of course run a full check later to be sure, but she couldn't tell about the mental effects this sort of torture might have caused. The smaller woman was a wreck, her face smudged with tears, her hair a mess, and she was half clinging to Mercy. But they would have to deal with this later, right now they had to get away first.

“Los, komm. Winston is here, Lena, let's get you out of here.” With a weak nod Tracer followed Mercy as she activated her comm. “Winston, it's Angela. I found Tracer. She's... alive. ...No, don't worry, she's not hurt.” Physically. “...It's just- look, I'll explain later, we need to leave right now. ...Verstanden. On our way.”

“Come on, Lena.” Mercy took Tracer's hand, speeding up her step and noticing just how much of a toll her ordeal had taken on Tracer; normally the young woman would have made a quip and then ran ahead, forcing Mercy to keep up, but now the poor girl was rather jumpy and almost cowering behind Mercy as she made her way back to the entrance of the hideout.

Mercy shuddered at the mere thought of what the usually so cheerful woman must have suffered through. Wie barbarisch. This seemed like the perfect recipe to give someone PTSD, she just hoped Tracer would recover eventually, and despite herself, Mercy found herself really wishing someone would blow this place – and this whole organization, for that matter – up into rubble. Maybe she would try to locate this 'Junkrat' that had recently been on the news and make him a very lucrative offer for his services. But that would come a lot later, first things first. “Let's get the hell out of this verdammtem place.”