#Fareeha lookin like a whole ass meal in this skin

[six-fudgey]

I know I’m a little late to the casual Pharah game, but I would like to make a contribution 🙏🏽

[secondreckoning]

Chapters: 4/7 Fandom: Overwatch (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler Characters: Fareeha "Pharah" Amari, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Slow Burn, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Sex, Blood and Injury Summary: In a world where people share dreams with their soul-mates, Angela, a weary trauma surgeon, walks her dreams alone. Nearing forty, she believes she’s simply not one meant for a soul-mate until vivid visions of Egypt begin to brighten her nights.

Angela works.

(Seventy-two hours on. Case after case. Patient after patient. Trauma after trauma.)

Angela knits.

(A scarf. Three dishcloths. Another scarf. Come winter, her friends will be warm.)

Angela journals.

(Occasionally. In bullet points. What is there to say?)

Angela joins Emily and Lena for drinks.

(And knits.)

Emily lifts a shot glass in the air, held daintily between her thumb and middle finger. “To one last work shift before vacation!”

“To unfettered access to my girlfriend!” Lena chimes in.

Both turn expectant faces to Angela. Breathing out in a sigh, Angela lowers her needles to the table and reaches for her coffee mug. What’s worth toasting to? “To Ridgerock.”

To third-wheeling on a lovers vacation.

To two weeks of much too much free time.

And to fourteen days of a lonely hotel room and a town full of women for one-night stands.

Glasses clink. Both Emily and Lena whoop and holler before tipping their drinks back. Angela says nothing and pours black coffee down her throat. She sets the mug down, empty, and picks up her needles again.

Emily stands and gathers empty shot glasses. “Hey, Dr. Eeyore, M.D., you want something more potent this time?” She nods at the mug.

“Like an espresso shot?”

“Like whiskey.”

Her grip tightens on the needles. “Another black coffee is fine.”

Emily hooks a free finger through the mug’s handle. “And another coffee for the teetotaller it is,” she murmurs, and heads to the bar.

Angela finishes one row of stitches and begins the next. She focuses on her hands, on the slender instruments and the soft yarn. Not on the incessant rhythm Lena’s tapping out on the table. “What?” she says finally.

“Nothin’!” Lena raises her fingers in a show of innocence. “It’s just—” She pauses.

Angela shoots a certain look at her. She intends to level her gaze into the mildest of glares, but somewhere between her shadowed eyes and pale skin, it’s potency multiples tenfold.

Lena cringes visibly. “Just—I’m not sure another cup of coffee’s the best idea, yeah?” She nods at Angela’s hands. “Scarf’s lookin’ awfully holey.”

“Excuse you,” Angela sniffs. “It’s an avant-garde pattern.”

Lena frowns down at her work. “You sure you don’t want to give those hands a break? Have a glass of... warm milk?” she suggests. “Have literally anything if it gets that wool off your shoulders and rests your poor hands. They’re so—” She lifts her own hands and gives a palsied demonstration.

“For the record, this is Portuguese knitting,” Angela nods at the length of yarn pinned to her right shoulder, then the left. “My hands do not need a break. This method utilizes smaller movements and therefore puts less strain on my hands.” She adjusts the tension in her lines and knits a single, pointed stitch. “Moreover, designated drivers receive free refills of their choice of beverage. My coffee saves lives and money.”

Emily chooses this moment to return. She clanks Angela’s cup of coffee in front of her. In the cup, it sloshes dangerously from side to side.“And what the hell do you need to save money for?” She takes her seat. “Your yarn can’t make THAT much of a dent in your paycheck.”

Angela presses her lips together, but says nothing. Emily lifts her own glass to her mouth and sips before she continues.

“And I know Angela Ziegler, a renowned prodigy, literal child genius, received seven hundred different grants to help cover her schooling costs—whether she needed them or not.”

“I didn’t ask for that attention.” Her grips her needles, hard, and pain throbs in her knuckles. “I only wanted...”

She only wanted to keep her head down and work harder. Save more car crash victims. More civilians.

She did not ask for the label of Angela Ziegler, Precocious Little Orphan Girl, courtesy of a couple stupid papers on nanotech and biotics. Stupid, ambitious papers from a stupid, ambitious girl.

She shakes the thoughts away. “It doesn’t matter.”

Angela sips her coffee and bends over her knitwork. When she looks up again, Emily and Lena are pulling out of what Angela suspects is a meaningful look. The expression on Emily’s face softens.

“Everything okay, Ange?” she asks. “Do you need, uh, a hug? Do you want to head home soon? It’s getting late.”

It’s not getting late, not really. But it’s either nice of Emily to offer or it’s self-serving attempt to rid the night of cranky, awful Angela, and her brain’s too wrung out on work and caffeine and pain to figure out the difference.

“I’m fine,” Angela insists. “I’m fine. My yarn’s all the hug I need.” She gives the pin over her right shoulder a pat.

Another glance exchanged between the two. Angela does her best to knit and ignore them.

“The thing is...” Emily trails off.

“Hm?”

Emily stirs her drink, sips, and stirs again. She glances away from Angela’s eyes. “The thing is you’ve been all over the board lately,” she admits. “For the past few days you’ve been dead on your feet at work, then before that you were bouncing around asking all sorts of questions about soul-mates, and—”

“I do not have a soul-mate.” Angela slams her needles onto the table. Damn it all. Her stomach’s bottoming out, and she’s aware—painfully aware—of how she fights her fatigued hands with every stitch. “And I will never have a soul-mate,” Angela’s voice comes out steel-edged. “And it’s really—it’s really for the best.” She swallows down the rising lump. “Thank you very much.”

Emily sips her drink and refuses to look her in the eye.

What is it about this soul-mate situation they refuse to understand?

It’s for the best, it really is. There is a reason people like her don't have soul-mates. Dreams go both ways, and all Angela can offer is blood and pain.

***

At home, Angela walks right into her living room, all grey shadows layered on grey shadows without light, and abandons her scarf on the table.

The night at the bar clings to her skin. All her sniped words and her own cloud of misery coat her skin, and there is no washing it off. In her bedroom, as she strips down to her shirt, she hesitates as her hands cross over her body, fingertips bent in the urge to scratch the night off her skin.

Her body’s a mess. hell, the whole of her is a mess. Electric jitters pulse in her muscles

and her hands will not stop shaking

and every line in her body aches from forcing it to stand over operating tables and work through surgery after surgery

and she’s tired. Good God, is Angela tired. It’s a small, stupid thing to complain about. Oh, you’re tired? People are dying Angela. But the tired is deep in her bones, and press its thumbs into her eyes and short-circuiting her mind as she runs through improved versions of tonight, better scenarios where she says the right things, even if she never finds the right things to say.

She drops herself onto her bed and lies on top of the covers. They’re right. It’s a ringing slap to the face. About all of it, but mostly, about her scarf.

Angela’s gone and ruined her scarf and for what? To keep her hands busy? Was it worth a ruined scarf and sore, aching hands?

Angela lifts one hand, and massages her thumb against a sore spot on the other. What’s the point? She lets her hands drop to her sides. Massaging one worsens the pain in the other. Angela rolls over and gathers her pillow beneath her head. A good, hot soak never hurt. Or, likely more helpful a cold compress.

But what’s she supposed to apply? Her fridge and freezer sit near empty. Her last attempt to cook something beyond a basic meal ended up an overzealous Food Network-inspired mess of conflicting spices and ingredients.

And she doesn’t own any frozen peas.

Angela's throat tightens at the thought. Who doesn’t own frozen vegetables? Whose life is so divorced from her own home she doesn’t own frozen fucking peas?

Happy people own frozen peas. Happy people cook for their family and friends. Angela is without a family. Her closest friend is a pity friendship out of mutual attraction to women with a resident some ten years or so younger than her.

Okay, Angela tells herself firmly. You’re going to a stupid place. Don’t go to the stupid place.

She rolls over, every inch of her body gritty and unreal and wrung-out, and lays there, waiting for whatever comes next.

***

Emily and Lena are forgiving when Angela calls them back in the morning, full of apologies. Her soul-mate problems are her own, not something to inflict on her friends through her own brokenness.

Pacing the stretch of floor from outside her bedroom, through to the living room and kitchen, Angela cradles her phone to her ear. “I feel much better this morning—”

“Now that you’ve slept?” Emily chimes in. She’s taken the phone for herself. “Please say you’ve slept.”

“Some.” Less sleep, less time for dreams. Less opportunity to hurt her... dream friend. Whatever they are to each other.

“Some?”

“Some.”

“I hate to bring it up again, Ange,” Emily’s voice drops, “but you’ve looked rough lately. You were like a whole ass new woman for a hot minute there. Bright and shiny. I’d even go so far as to call you bubbly.”

She pauses: it’s an opening, an opportunity for Angela to fill the space with whatever she pleases. Her foolish hopes and sunshine-filled dreams, the nights spent hand-in-hand with someone—well, someone special.

Angela says nothing.

Emily continues. “And again, now this: dragging yourself around the hospital, barely scraping together a bedside manner for your patients—no, that creepy smile you scrounge up does not count—snapping at your friends when they offer to help,” she says. “Not to mention consuming black coffee and energy shots like they're your lifeblood.

“But black coffee is my lifeblood.”

There’s a groan on the other line. “Come on, Angela,” Emily pleads. “What’s going on? Did something happen? Did something bring up some of those shitty dreams again?”

“No. Well—” Angela cuts herself off. She’s on the cusp of truth, and oh, how easy to cross that line. It’s eleven in the morning and her aching tiredness skews everything toward unreal: the sun comes in too bright without curtains in her kitchen and a deep-seated throb started pounding away at the base of her skull the second her alarm yanked her out of sleep. How easy, to share all these hurts with Emily, to dig back and back and back until she arrives at the core of it all.

But also: how easy it is not to share.

“Well?”

Angela turns and traces her steps back along her little route, feet pointed to her bedroom. “Well...” she begins, and suddenly, stupidly, she misses the old, corded phones. Something about lying is easier when she’s got a cord to wrap a finger around. “I know you’re all tired of hearing about it, but the soul-mate situation bothers me more than usual lately. I suppose.”

“Yeah?”

“I suppose.”

“You know, Ange,” Emily says, “it’s not something to feel shame for. Or anything. You know?”

“I know.”

Emily speaks slowly, “Okay. You say you know. But do you know it? As in: do you know it know it?”

“Intellectual understanding and emotional connection to the idea are different things,” Angela replies. Some of last night’s snappishness winds its way in. “I know one and I am trying to know the other.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Emily says. “But you haven’t explained your newfound need for ‘feine.”

“Oh. Well, it’s stupid.”

“C’mon, Ange. Share the stupid.”

“Well, it’s...” Angela stops in her bedroom and squeezes her eyes shut. “As I said, it’s stupid. It’s...” She braces herself, and the words come out in something of a rush. “The thing is, the less I sleep, the less opportunity there is for a soul-mate dream. And the less opportunity there is for a soul-mate dream, the less opportunity for a soul-mate dream to to... bother me.”

On the other end of the line, Emily falls silent.

“Emily?”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ, that is stupid, Angela.”

 ***

Lying to Emily is a mistake.

Angela steps into the hospital cafeteria, lunch clutched to her chest. Courtesy of her own pantry, not selected from a line-up of other drooping salads and uninspired sandwiches cut and stacked in triangles for visual appeal.

Cafeteria food is a universal disappointment: rarely is there a way to mass-prepare food for both cost and taste. But somewhere along the line, an architect or wealthy benefactor or some other person of note involved in the planning phase, realized that the room itself need not bring down spirits as well: full length windows line one length of the cafeteria, blinds pulled high and sun spilling in. Mild chatter fills the room. Doctors and nurses eat with other doctors and nurses, patients and visitors eat with their families. Emily sits in view, her table set where the line of windows end, just out of the sunlight. She catches Angela’s eye and nods.

“Don’t make me confiscate your thermos today, Dr. Ziegler,” her self-appointed Coffee Cop announces as Angela’s lunch hits the table.

Angela slides down into a chair. “It’s orange juice.”

Emily grabs it anyway. She unscrews the lid, rolls her wrist as if breathing a glass of wine and bends her head over it to sniff. And sniff. “Looks clean.”

“Of course it’s clean,” she says. “Now give it back.”

“Is that all you’re having? Orange juice and a yogurt?” The rest of her lunch cannot escape Emily’s appraising eyes. “Please tell me it’s not coffee-flavoured.”

Angela inhales a long-suffering breath. “It’s not. It’s vanilla.” She turns the label out. “I’d like a moment to clarify: coffee flavour does not necessitate caffeine content. And vice versa.”

“Good.”

“And for lunch, I also have a peanut butter sandwich on sprouted whole grain bread and hard-boiled eggs with a side hot sauce,” she lines up each item for Emily’s consideration. “Do they meet your standards, Mother?”

Emily squints at the sandwich. “It’s a little primary school, but yes, I suppose it does,” she says. “After lunch, barring any particular emergency, I want you to try and get some sleep.”

“Again?” Angela protests. She pries the lid off the Pyrex container holding the egg. “I doubt I’ll sleep.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. But you’re going to try.”

In Emily’s books, try means forfeiting her phone and pager to lay on her side and stare at the wall, her arm bent under her head in an uncomfortable angle. Hunting down her most stressing thoughts and setting them on repeat, her chest clutching with each rendition. Counting down the minutes until she finds enough passes for her to wiggle out and deliver unto Emily the devastating news: Angela is awake, and not sleeping anytime soon.

And, if possible, she would like to return to her job now, thank you very much.

Angela breaks the egg in half with her fork. “I cannot wait until tomorrow,” she dips it in the accompanying hot sauce, “when you’ll spend all your time naked with Lena, or staring at stupid art, and you’ll have no time to play Nap Nanny.” She pops the egg in her mouth and promptly gags.

Heat lighting up her face, Angela cracks the foil seal on her yogurt and shovels in one spoonful and then another, until the burn down her throat subsides. Mostly.

In her chair, Emily leans back, and with narrowed eyes, watches Angela gag, recover and dip the second half of the egg in hot sauce, only to lift her fork up hesitantly. Emily slides her phone from her pocket and alternates her critical gaze between her screen and Angela’s face.

The tang of the hot sauce reaches Angela’s nose, promising another dose of heat, and her stomach squeezes in an unpleasant fashion.

“Stop.” Emily’s phone hits the table. “Doctor Ziegler, I demand you set your fork down right now. You sneaky, conniving—"

In the moment, Angela is not capable of a quick enough thought or reaction, and her stomach’s roiling at the prospect of another dose of hot sauce. So instead of smugly shoving it in her mouth and repeating her gag-and-yogurt-recovery act, she sits, dumbfounded, as Emily reaches across the table and lifts the utensil from her fingers.

“Hey,” Angela bleats a mild protest.

Emily’s sorting through her lunch now, confiscating every item but Angela’s half-eaten yogurt. “Caffeinated hot sauce! Caffeinated hot sauce! Caffeinated peanut butter!” she’s crowing, gathering parts of Angela’s lunch into a haphazard pile before her. “What’s wrong with you, Angela? What’s wrong with you?” A nearby family stares. “I bet you snuck an energy shot into your juice as well.” She snatches up the thermos. “What’s wrong with you?”

There really is only orange juice in the orange juice, but Angela’s beyond redemption now. “Perky Jerky no longer has caffeine in it,” she offers, and heaps in a mouthful of yogurt.

Emily shoves her cafeteria wrap across the table and slumps back in her chair: it’s a whole wheat tortilla rolled around “grilled” chicken bits and limp lettuce. “Eat that instead,” she offers. “I’ll grab something else on the way out.”

“I’m fine, Em.” Angela possesses enough dignity to drop her voice into an appropriately chastised tone. “I can’t take your lunch.”

“Eat it,” Emily commands. “Now. And you’re napping after. No bailing out after half an hour. I’m taking your pager and your phone and you’re going to lie there until the tired part of head triumphs over the stupid part.”

Angela accepts the wrap, pulling it closer, and offers a weak smile, “Is there a point? There’s only six hours left in our shift. I can nap on vacation, after all.”

“Nope.” Emily takes a sip from the thermos. “You’ll sleep now, before someone trips over those bags under your eyes.”

***

Angela’s mind cringes away from the idea of sleep. She’s so close to the proverbial finish line now, so close to the end of her final shift before vacation. Between the drop in stressors from her work and the wealth of relaxation ahead of her, she figures a time may come, soon, when it is safe for her to sleep again.

Emily intends for her to sleep now, divesting Angela of her pager and phone, walking her to the on-call room and warning her to think happy thoughts: all but tucking her into sleep and kissing her forehead, something Angela remarks.

Angela, of course, intends to lay awake and stare at the wall and think the worst thoughts possible: to use the force of her will for all intents and purposes, to defy both Emily and sleep.

But her achy, gritty eyes drift shut and her mind—the filthy traitor, never on her side—recalls the body in its possession has fallen asleep much, much worse places than a dark, quiet, climate-controlled hospital room, and so Angela falls asleep hard and fast and unexpected.

 ***

Angela’s dreaming.

Not of her mother and father, their bodies car-mangled and ruined or of the endless crash of the accident resonating in her soul or of her soul-mate bloody and rent down the middle, but of a hazy sunset and a gleaming tower of a building.

And of her soul-mate, of course. Whole, unbloodied, waiting. She sits on a short slope of steps leading up to the building’s entrance.

Angela has shied away from her soul-mate before, and a dulled instinct beats inside of her like a second heart, warning to do so now. Warning Angela to

run

run

run

before she hurts again.

If she found herself in any other place in the dream, she might give the instinct it’s head, as one does a horse, and let it carry her far, far away, where Angela was merely a fool in a foreign dream-city, and not a cursed soul-mate.

But Angela is some ten, fifteen feet from her soul-mate, and staring her in the face.

Angela stands, rooted to the pavement.

And her soul-mate sits, flight jacket hooked on her thumb and slung over her shoulder.

In the sky above, the sun droops, fat and lazy, sliding further and further down the horizon. It’s not the pinky-purple-golds Angela sees over her parking lot view, but orange, brilliant orange, and its light is everywhere, filling up every space and surface: across the skies, painting the sidewalks and glinting off the towering building behind her soul-mate.

Her soul-mate, who’s shirt is so plainly and boldly blue, as if the blue itself is a statement, a counterpoint to the setting sun.

She tilts her chin up at Angela, and the corner of her mouth crooks up into a smile, as if to say something, possibly How about that? or So you’re back, huh?

Angela’s throat tightens, and she crosses her arms over herself.

On her free hand, her soul-mate’s fingers twitch—in memory of how Angela’s miserable mind maimed her, tore her open?—and the hand comes up, palm open and out to Angela and it’s an—

—invitation—

—reassurance—

—appeal—

—to her.

For her.

Angela steps across the sidewalk, gilt in dying sun, and closes the distance between them. She tightens her arms over herself, gripping her own elbows and stares down: down at her soul-mates knee, down at her ever-open hands.

How many nights did she spend holding that very hand?

How many nights connected, intertwined, guided by that that warm palm?

Tonight, Angela keeps her hands to herself. She is unworthy of this palm, of this warmth of this soul-mate before her, when her own useless, trembling hands fail so often, offer so little. Something builds in her chest and in her throat. She presses her crossed arms into her ribcage, girding herself. Protecting her wonderfulkindwarmgoodperfect soul-mate.

In her vision, her soul-mate’s hand lifts

up

slow

steady

toward Angela.

Angela shuts her eyes before the moment of contact, drenches her world in darkness, and then there it is—soft fingers resting just above her elbow. One touch, one brush of fingers, and is if she were a puppet and someone took a blade to all her taught strings, the lines of tension

drop

out of Angela. All the fences she’s spent the past weeks building and crossing over with bright strips of caution tape—fragile broke danger do not touch—are crumbling

crumbling

crumbling

gone

and she collapses onto her soul-mate.

Strong arms gather her in close and Angela finds her face buried in her soul-mate’s neck, her hands clenching fistfuls of fabric as if it’s enough to haul her soul-mate out of the dreamscape and into the waking world. A hard sob bursts in her throat. Steady hands cross over her back. Angela’s crying now, and she’s not crying in a soft, delicate way, but with a sort of shaking, internal violence. Sobs swell in her throat and wrack the length of her body and pound in her head as she empties her sorrows into her soul-mate's arms.

It subsides, eventually, as all storms do. Angela’s sitting with her forehead resting against her soul-mates collarbone, one of the woman’s sure and steady hands between Angela’s shoulder blades and the other stroking the back of her neck.

With a final sniffle, she eases back and meets her soul-mate’s eyes: they’re swollen, and her brows knit together. Angela gives her a watery smile. A warm breeze caresses them and for a split second, Angela feels like she’ll blow away: the weight on her chest is gone now and she’s light as a sunbeam, light as air itself. She leans her forehead against her soul-mate's cheek and laughs—it’s so easy now, so natural—before unclenching her fists and finding her soul-mate's eyes with a much more steady gaze. They have business to attend to, after all. If her soul-mate has conjured this dream-place for them, then Angela’s hunch says there’s something here her soul-mate longs to share.

Beneath it all she thinks, I am utterly damned.

I want this.

Her soul-mate lifts an arm off Angela’s back and gestures behind her, to the building. Angela nods, and they get to the business of untangling themselves and standing.

It’s night now, the sun’s ubiquitous glow replaced by a darkening sky. In the blue haze of encroaching shadows, the building behind her soul-mate is a beacon of light—and the opposite of every place Angela’s visited to date. If the other places shared with Angela were historic places without price, dedicated to the very life they’ve lived, then this building is the opposite. It’s a monument—almost literally—to shiny newness, to indulgence and pampering, and in the waking world, Angela assumes, to significant price tags.

Behind her soul-mate, the building begins as a squat, square building, glass-fronted to showcase the golden interior. A massive, round tower grows out of it, lined at regular intervals with windows and balconies: some dark squares, some winking with light. Above them, the building’s name is writ in softly glowing letters, their forms smeared meaningless in the dreamscape. Planters of palmy plants—Angela is a surgeon, not a botanist—lounge on either side of the stairs. Spotlights sit at the base of the tower, angled up, painting the building in pink-hued light. More squat buildings sprawl out around them.

In her career, Angela has stayed at a good number of fancy-schmancy hotels for conferences, and a niggling suspicion tells her she’s gaping at one now.

Her soul-mate brushes the back of her against Angela’s. Golden beads catch the light of the glow waiting for them behind the glass. Angela smiles and hooks her arm through her soul-mate’s.

Inside is as glorious as the facade promised. A cavernous lobby awaits them, high and wide and reminding Angela of concert halls. The walls are light earthy red, warm and golden from the light of the chandelier hanging above. The massive chandelier. Angela stares up, mouth hanging open. It’s an upturned umbrella of light, bigger than her bed. Bigger than her room. She gawps up at it the entire way in passing. Furniture of dark wood and creamy seats fill the space, and her soul-mate gentle guides her around a looming corner with intentions for Angela’s knee. She leads Angela around obstacles, past a grand, curling staircase of more dark wood, through a doorway and to an elevator. She presses a button.

Definitely a hotel, and together they’re headed up. Angela runs her teeth over her bottom lip and casts a sideways glance at her soul-mate as they pass polished doors. Inside, as they step back and wait out the ride, Angela leans into her soul-mate, and an arm encircles her shoulders.

Angela sucks in a breath.

She wants—very badly—to squeal.

Coming to a smooth end, the elevator dings and the doors slide open. Beyond them is a hall, and beyond the short journey down the hall is a hotel room.

The suite within is more of the same elegance: handsome dark wood, polished and gleaming, cream upholstery and linens. Sconces set in the walls glow a muted gold and soft hazy shadows lay across the floor. They pass through a sitting room and into a bedroom, complete with a king-sized bed and complimented by a balcony opened to the night air, a gauzy curtain billowing on a gentle breeze.

In Angela’s opinion, this is perhaps a bit forward—is what they’re about to do on this bed the final destination?—but Angela figures she’s proven herself confused and reluctant in the face of anything kind and good. Her soul-mate’s shown her patience and encouragement, and checked for Angela’s consent on every dream walk. So, why not?

Angela slips her hand free and sits on the end of the bed. She gives a bounce and glances up at her soul-mate—

—who’s walking past her, heading for the balcony. She stops on the threshold, lifts an eyebrow at Angela—who’s patting the bedspread beside her now— and nods in the direction of the open night, one hand up and beckoning.

Frowning, Angela rises, and ducks past the curtain onto the balcony.

Warm night air tickles her face and tousles her soul-mate's hair. Sprawled below them is the city, stretching on and on and on until it disappears into the twilight haze. This view is notably less historic: a river bends far to their left and urban structures fill the night. Somewhere on the horizon, on an uncertain boundary, the city stops and the desert begins.

Angela plants a hand on the railing and leans forward, inhaling the view. She’s smiling, and she does not know when she started.

Her soul-mate stands at her left side. Angela entwines their arm and finds her soul-mate's hand again. She tips her head against her shoulder, warm and solid and alive beneath her cheek, and lifts her free hand to point out a building she finds particularly eye-catching.

Smiling her wonderful smile, her soul-mate tips her head down to rest on Angela’s—Angela’s heart skips a beat here, her cheeks arm at the touch—and lifts her free hand to point, guiding Angela’s gaze out to something far in the distance.

Angela leans in a fraction and squints at one of the most telltale shapes in history.

She’s staring at the fucking pyramids.

The pyramids!

Pyramids!

The Great ones? Of Giza?

(Was that river off to their left the Nile? )

Angela’s smile breaks unto a laugh. She grips her soul-mate tighter and points at the pyramids.

(The Pyramids!)

(The fucking pyramids!)

(In Egypt!)

Ever place her soul-mate shared was important, but this one is specific—so, so specific—and here is Angela’s wonderful soul-mate and there is one of the most iconic things in the world, and she’s sharing it with Angela.

Angela laughs again. Pyramids! The pyramids! She’s in Egypt! No—they’re in Egypt Angela bounces up on tiptoes and throws her arms around her soul-mates neck. She’s laughing—pyramids!—and kissing her soul-mate’s cheek and—

***

Angela wakes up.

A voice is speaking to her. A woman’s voice. A woman’s voice Angela commonly finds telling her what to do. It’s calling her name, saying other things. Angela grunts as the words arrange themselves into coherence in her brain.

Angela, it’s time to wake up.

Hey, Angie, c 'mon.

Angela, shift’s over, you can sleep at home.

Angela grunts again and cracks an eye open. The room is dark and Emily’s eyebrows are in view. Angela curses them.

“I was sleeping,” she accuses in a clumsy voice.

Emily dips out of view. “Really?” she says. “Congratulations.” She sounds like she means it.

Groaning all the way, Angela shakes off her sheets and eases her body away from its happy little cocoon of warmth. “Emily,” she says, “I’m going to kill you.”

Emily mock-gasps. “Doctor Ziegler, that violates your Hippocratic oath!” She continues, “And for what? Making you sleep in the first place? Angela, I believe you’re looking for Thank you.”

Angela grumbles in response and fumbles her way done. Emily holds out the confiscated phone and pager as Angela fixes her ponytail. Angela snatches them back and stuffs them in her pockets.

Emily leads the way into the hall. “Question,” she begins, “Will you be joining Lena and I for celebratory, pre-vacation drinks tonight or are you retiring to your sterile cave to hibernate?”

Angela offers another grunt. Egypt and the solid warmth of her soul-mate’s body and and her foggy brain and the recurring thought of interrupted sleep cycle run through her mind. By the time she got home and fell back asleep—

“No point in trying to go back to sleep now,” she all but sighs the words. “I’ll clean up, grab my knitting and meet you kids at...?”

Emily beams. “Your favourite,” she says, “That Irish place.”

***

Angela sits with one leg bent up, updating the colour of her toes. Her fingers sport colour, too. One of the benefits of vacation—she’s officially on vacation now, cue the confetti—no need to maintain pristine, colour-free nails. No need to remove any nail polish the night before work. She’s humming a song she heard on the radio coming home or maybe multiple songs: she keeps beginning one song and finding herself in another come the end.

It does not matter.

What matters most to Angela is the blue she paints on her nails. Egyptian blue, specifically calcium copper silicate, or the closest the drugstore she stopped at offered in Essie’s Mezmerised. She hit Wikipedia for a rundown on Egypt as she loitered in front of her changing room locker, and there it was: calcium copper silicate. The same blue draped on her soul-mate.

At home she expanded her search: buildings. Places she’s seen in person—in a way. Places her soul-mate’s definitely visited.

***

Angela’s brain is a little woozy from the combination of interrupted and lack of sleep, and the cover band in the corner is a touch loud for her sensitive eardrums at the moment, but does not mind they’ve returned to the Actually Decent Irish bar which reminds Angela of her Not Decent At All Irish ex-girlfriend.

It’s also the home of tall, boozy bullfrogs, and Angela sips hers from the comfortable corner Emily and Lena chose. Her first—and last—drink of the evening.

“This is a much improved version of Angela.” Emily outlines a sloppy circle midair in Angela’s direction, leaving no doubt as of who she’s speaking. “But the yarn! The yarn, Ange! Dontcha wanna get up and dance? Have some fun?”

Emily’s on her third bullfrog.

Angela smiles and lifts her work. “I am having fun,” she says. “I’m experimenting with a hat.” A lumpy, amateur hat, but a hat. A hat of the softest yarn in the store. Canada is much, much colder than Egypt. And Angela wants to keep her soul-mate warm.

Because Angela has a soul-mate.

Who is in Egypt.

And who is Angela’s soul-mate.

(Soul-mate!)

Angela’s reliving the sensation of her soul-mate’s arms encircling her as Emily squints between the knitting and Angela’s face. Angela meets Emily’s eyes as she leans forward and sips from her bullfrog straw.

“Oh, my god, Lena,” Emily grips her girlfriend’s shoulder. “She means it. She fucking means it.”

Lena pats her hand. “I can see that, love.”

“She’s not shaking or putting on that unsettling smile or anything,” Emily continues, staring at Angela. “Angela. I cannot believe you’re not fucking lying. Holy fuck. I need to pee.”

She plants both hands on the table and leverages herself to her feet. Lena glances up, but Emily shakes her head. “I’m fine. Fine. Toilet’s right over there.” She points, surprisingly, in the correct direction. “Maybe I’ll find a portal back to reality,” she murmurs as she saunters off.

Angela looks to Lena, who shakes her head. “Nah, she’s fine,” she confirms. “Puttin’ on a bit of show ‘cause she’s in a good mood.” She pauses, “Speaking of...”

“What’s wrong?”

Lena nods at her. “You,” she says. “Or rather what’s not wrong. Em’s right, there’s a bit of whiplash with you, bouncing from a bit sad to a bit cheery, and then onto right miserable. And now you’re all smiles again. Somethin’s up.”

Angela’s needles click in her hands. “It’s--” she hesitates, then ducks her gaze and says, “I think something good’s happened to me. Maybe. If I can prevent myself from ruining it.”

Lena leans in, eyebrows up in conspiration. “Not to name names, but: a soul-mate thing?”

Angela presses her lips together, hard, to hold in a smile struggling to bloom.

“How about I make you a deal: secret for a secret, yeah?” Lena drops her voice. “I’ll even go first.”

Angela releases her smile. “Okay,” she says. “Go.”

Lena looks as though she maybe didn’t expect an agreement. She casts a glance back in the direction of the washrooms, and says, rapid fire, in a single breath, “I maybe have a second soul-mate I’ve only seen her twice I’ve never done approached her please don’t tell Em.”

“What?” The needles still in her hands.

“I’ll tell her eventually!” Lena protests. “I just don’t know what it means.”

Angela stares at her, then clears her throat and says, “It... doesn’t mean anything. It just means there’s the potential for a strong connection there.” She leans in for a long drink as Lena watches her, googly eyed. “A soul-mate doesn’t necessarily equate romance. You’re not cheating on Emily. I mean, there is an element of choice involved. You made a choice with Emily, right? You were attracted to her, you pursued that connection, you decided to leave England, right?”

“Right.”

Angela starts a new row of stitches. “There you have it.” Soul-mate wisdom from a soul-mate newbie. Look at Angela go. “It means you have a strong enough connection to share dreams with. It’s not fate. If you don’t pursue it, whatever connects you might even fade. You might be a second soul-mate to her, as well.”

“Well, thanks, Ange,” Lena rubs a bashful hand on the back of her neck. “And, er, you?” “I...” Angela stares down at her blue fingernails, at the soft blue yarn of the scarf, as if it might talk for her. “I’m... I think I have one. A soul-mate.” There! Her face burns. “She’s... really wonderful.” She’s perfect. “She lives in Egypt. You know. With the pyramids.”

“Is that why you’ve been so down?” Lena prods. “The Egypt thing?”

Angela’s forehead creases. “No?” she says. “Why would it? Egypt’s a beautiful country.”

I saw the pyramids.

Lena shrugs and raises her own glass. “Er, just figured that’s what’s had you so down,” she says. “Realizing she was on the other side of the world and all.”

“Oh,” Angela says, because oh. Her mind races across land and sea. Thousands upon thousands of kilometres lie between her and the woman who held her.

Angela leans in, pushes the straw to one side and downs the rest of her drink as her heart deflates in her chest.