#The third one is The Promised Land and will theoretically be done someday ahah

[docholligay]

In The Desert

My second of three eventual Passover fics, finally done, if literally nothing else. 4,500ish words, and I hope you enjoy it at least somewhat! 

Moses never saw the Promised Land. He guided others to it, but he died before he ever set foot in that promised space, before he ever was allowed to know the feeling of safety and peace and home. To reach the goal he had longed for. 

Mercy tried not to think too much on this, and told herself often that the Promised Land was only a place, and maybe it was Moses’ short-sightedness that did not allow him to see that the Promised Land was had while he wandered, in the arms of his wife, in the giggles of Jewish children knowing what it was to grow up free, in knowing that he had guided his people to something far more frightening but far greater. To inspire them to live a life of uncertainty, with great risk, but great reward. The Promised Land was where you found it, Mercy would say, often. 

Sometimes she even believed it. This year was harder. 

Was he ever resentful, she wondered, absent-mindedly setting the low table, for the punishment? That for one moment, he reacted in anger and bitterness instead of in patience and grace, that he lashed out, and so was barred from the doors of promise forever? Mercy thought on these things, and her own trespass against God, wondering which had kept her wandering all these years, without the promise she had so hoped for. 

Sitting in Canada with her small second Overwatch, the way forward had seemed so simple. She had escaped the bondage of loneliness, and now there was only to keep going, to increase that family around her, to grow in love, even to hope for that thing she had imagined might be lost to her for so long, something she hadn’t dared hope for. She loved her Overwatch family. She loved her wife. She loved for a child. Now she could see it all growing further away, a golden land that she, like Moses, would only ever see others enter. 

Tears filled her eyes as she considered it, blurring the fork she set down on the table. The day was rainy and cold, even for the general London April, and it went all the way through her, darkening and covering any warm space she may have been able to find within herself. 

It was a year of failures. The same ones, over and over again, of bodies as quarrelsome and betraying as the Israelites, of ground being lost and joy being further and further away. This was meant to be a day of celebration, of freedom, but it all felt so empty, the freedom of a stray dog without home or comfort. 

There was a knock at the door, and Mercy stood up straight, adjusting her sweater and tucking her hair behind her ears. There was no reason to ruin the day for everyone else, even if she could not find the joy for herself. When one is happy, it is easier to serve God and your community, she had read, from some rabbi, somewhere, and she did not deny that this was true. 

Why then, had God denied her so much? 

“Ang!” There was a bright, high peal through the entryway as Tracer sat on the small chair next to the door, taking off her shoes slowly, “Sorry, took us a bit--” 

“We’re on time, Lena.” Emily smiled as she hung up her jacket. 

“Oh. Right then, me planning is as bang on as ever,” She laughed merrily, “Entirely didn’t assume I’d missed the mark, exacting as I am.” 

“You’re early.” Mercy touched at the edge of the couch. 

“Someone tell Fareeha, she’ll want to note this in the official Overwatch ‘istory.” 

Emily took her shoes from her and set them in the rack. “She’ll only be telling you you’ve no excuse hereafter.” 

Tracer shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Bloody fucked every which way, I am.” 

Yes, Mercy’s mind answered, you are. 

 It’s clearly degenerative and aggressive, whatever got set off. The seizures will get harder to treat, and the tremor, not to mention we have about a whack-a-mole’s guess at what it’ll start going after next. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think it’ll affect her cognition, luckily. Or unluckily, I guess...

She heard Pradeep’s voice echoing in her mind, and did her best to shake it off. She hadn’t given up yet. Things weren’t so bad that they could give up yet. There was still a chance, however small, wasn’t there? Even if they could just arrest it, just stop it where it was--her eyes flickered to the brightly colored cane Tracer’s hand reached for, more commonly carried than not now--she could live out the rest of her life in relative happiness. She could see it, in her mind’s eye. That golden strip of promise just beyond the horizon. 

But she hadn’t been able to touch it, no matter how many specialists she bullied into consulting with her. No matter how many papers she read. No matter how long she walked and how fervently she prayed. 

“Ang?” she looked up, and realized that Tracer was now standing in front of her, a puzzled look on her face. “You alright, love?” 

Mercy shook her head. “Of course, only I am lost in my mind. Tired, I think.” 

Tracer looked at her for a moment in that sharp way she had, eyes flitting like a hummingbird across Mercy’s face, but she was saved by a knock at the door, and the further entrance of Dva and Winston, chatting amiably as Winston carefully sidled into the apartment, McCree a short but meaningful distance behind them. 

There they were, an assembled party, still crossing the long desert, signs of promise beginning to pop up around them. Since the battle for London, the world had taken a different view of them, an altogether kinder one. Pharah had her office building, constructed where she had always hoped. McCree had gotten a pardon from Interpol itself. Tracer had been offered damehood, which she had rather aggressively rejected, and the Victoria Cross, which she had aggressively accepted. All of them where heroes worldwide, their work seen for the long journey it had been, and honored. Mercy should have every reason to be pleased. 

Professionally, her life had never been better, or the way more clear. 

“Angela,” her wife’s voice pulled her out of the thought, “the family, I think, is assembled.” 

She said it with a half-smile as she looked over to the strange assembly that filled the room. Mercy nodded, and watched as Pharah walked over to the table she had built with her own hands, in the center of the living room. There was a bubbling sort of excitement among all of them, and why wouldn’t there be? It was the first Passover in Pharah and Mercy’s new apartment, the one built on the bones of the old. Life had been destroyed and life had been rebuilt into something more suited for them, something better. Renewal. Hope. Mercy could see it all, and reminded herself of it, as Pharah playfully bickered with Tracer before grabbing her by the armpits and thumping her to the floor, back up against the couch. The rest of them settled in their own spots, on the floor, looking over to Mercy from time to time. 

A perfect Seder, with the people she loved, and yet her eyes wandered to the corner next to her seat, the one she hadn’t even realized she had left clear. There should have been something, someone, there this year. She had prayed for it, she had pleaded for it, she had given and fasted and hoped for it. And yet the corner stood empty. The promise was for other people. 

”It’s not surprising given your advanced maternal age,” she said it gently, but Mercy still winced, “and...some of what you’ve been through.” 

Mercy was not now, and had never been, ignorant of certain medical realities. Her entire life since she was a child, had been the understanding of such things, and the painful knowledge that very often what we wish was true directly contradicted what was on the chart. The doctor kept talking, and Pharah squeezed her hand. 

Pharah. She’d offered to be the one to carry a child, despite it not being her immediate inclination. Mercy had never been able to find the words to tell her that she needed to be the one to do it. That she had lost her entire family all those years ago, and needed to be related to one other person on this earth, and to know that. Even she didn’t understand it completely, only knew that it had driven her onward. Only knew it kept her coming back to this office to be told that the best they could do was keep going. 

The best she could do was ignore the chart. 

She should have filled that corner with something other than her own empty hopes. She blinked back the bitter saltwater of her own affliction, and began to walk toward the table. 

“Pesach is a story of the impossible,” she sat herself down next to Pharah, but just kept staring at the Seder plate in the middle of the table, “We were slaves. We could not be bringing forth our own freedom. Only God could do that, and there was no reason to believe he would be doing it at all. We had been in bondage for so long. There was no reason to believe God would be giving us the Torah. There was no reason...to believe that we would be here. No reason there should be any Jews left at all.” 

Mercy wished one of them would stop her, that one of them would recognize the ramble for what it was was. Mercy barely understood it herself, and anger touched the edge of her mind as she considered all the things God had done but also all the things that he had chosen not to do. He had chosen to allow the Holocaust, and where had their deliverer been? He had allowed the Jews to be blamed and pilloried for the failings of AI technology, in both the fringes and, more quietly, in the larger community. He had allowed them to be shot while they worshipped, or bought groceries, or simply lived their lives. He had allowed Mercy to hear every suspicion and cruelty of the others in the labs and offices, who could not imagine the blonde, blue-eyed woman next to them could possibly take offense. And then, he had allowed Mercy’s house to be bombed, twice in her life, he had allowed her wife to be tortured, he had allowed Tracer to suffer, and he had allowed Mercy to remain childless.

“Why.” 

The fifth question, left out of the Haggadah. 

She looked around the table at them. 

“Why did he save us? And then, sometimes, why did he not? I--” she shook her head, “am never understanding the reasons. Why. I am only always asking. Why.” 

It was a why to God, for certain, for all the things she thought but good not bring herself to say, but a why to herself as well. Why had she stayed? Why did she pray every morning, why did she say Shema before she laid down at night? Mercy would have been the first to say that it wasn’t about God, but also she could not have answered what it was about at all. What did she find in her prayers and her study, knowing so keenly that God would not hear her, had not heard her cry for years? 

Perhaps that was what drew the Jewish people together--knowing God will not listen, and saying the prayer anyhow. Knowing that to be a Jew was to live in danger, and to wander, but refusing to be anything else. To never stop asking, no matter how silent God became. 

Even David, knowing God would punish him with the death of his child, had kept pleading, and fasting, and praying, to the very end. There had always been the chance God would turn back. 

“We’re outmanned, outgunned, and those things can keep coming--” 

“Didn’t say we was going to win did I?” Tracer’s eyes narrowed and her voice raised, pulling the attention of the room back to her. “Said we was going to fight.” 

She looked out over the tightly assembled group packed into the room. 

“Some of us will die today. Likely a good number of us. ‘E’s right you know. There’s no reason to believe we can take the advantage over them. Every reason to believe that London is going to be nothing but a pile of rubble and fires at the fag end of it all. But I,” She thrust her finger into her chest, “am not going to give over this city bloody quietly. It’s a part of me, innit? And we’re a part of it. Can’t untie the Oxtons and England, and I don’t mean the bloody Crown, and I don’t mean the bloody government, I mean England.” 

Tracer paced across the top of the bar. “I am fighting for England, and for London, and what that is, is every kid running out the schoolyard, every pissed stumble ‘ome, every day of our lives, THAT is London. And England. We are London. We are England. Not anything or anyone official. Not Parliament. Not the fucking royals. You and me, and your dad, and mum, and this grotty little pub, and me footie team, and the greengrocer down the way, and Alfie’s flower stall, THAT is England, and I won’t let anyone, or anything, take this place I love, while I still draw a breath in this world. I won’t ever surrender. East End gets flattened, East End gets the worst of it, but we don’t roll over and give it up. We never ‘ave.”

She stopped for a moment, then nodded. “And I won’t start now. I can’t win, maybe. But I guarantee you, I can give them the worst day of their lives, and even if they stomp over these streets, they’ll remember my name. That’s what we’re fighting for. Not because we can win. Because we fight for what we are. 

Mercy gave a weak chuckle and shook her head. “We are telling this story not to answer these questions, but to keep asking them. We are telling it, to give our own answers. God--” her voice caught, barely believing herself in that moment, “--God is revealing himself, in us, all the time. We, we are God’s hands, and God’s eyes, and...his words, when we remember. When we can be seeing the midrash in our lives.”

She took a deep breath. 

“Tonight we remember that we are free. Tonight we remember the things that make us slaves.” 

____

The smell of brisket filled the air. Pharah’s timing had become more and more impeccable over the years, throwing herself into the celebration of Passover, a love letter to her wife written with the greatest tenderness in pan sauce and flourless chocolate cake. Mercy had always, truthfully, questioned the wisdom of the most serious of plagues being recounted as they were on the edge of the feast. But perhaps that was the point of it. Perhaps it was about being kept waiting for your desires, your hopes. Perhaps it was about wondering if it would ever come. 

“Aaron said to Pharoah, the worst would be coming. That God would take the firstborn of the Egyptians, but that the Hebrews would be spared, if they were marking their doors with the blood of a lamb…” 

Sacrifice. Something always had to be sacrificed. A lamb. A child. A friend. Perhaps this had been her downfall, that she was unwilling to sacrifice anyone. She would never be Abraham, committing her dearest loves into harm. She wanted to save them all, and she had been punished for this disobedience, all those years ago when Overwatch fell. They had made something ugly of her love. Maybe God had seen her, and decided what the sacrifice would be for her. 

Maybe God would take the firstborn, however Mercy felt about it.

It would be easy to blame God for that empty corner of her living room and her heart, for it was all within his power to give. But the things that happen to us are rarely laid at God’s feet alone, and Mercy imagined her own moments of frustration, of foolishness, and wondered, which one was it that had brought her to this moment? If she had wanted to have a child, why then had she spent so long pursuing her work, running through war zones and long nights in laboratories? She should have known there are some things which still have a time limit. She should have known there was no guarantee. 

But if God had not wished it, why had he sent her Pharah? It was already to already believe her chance lost, but to show her that sliver of what might be, that green and verdant edge at the horizon of the desert, that was crueler still. 

She understood why some of the Hebrews had returned to slavery. It was easier to never know what you were losing. What could be lost. 

Tracer twisted against her back uncomfortably for a moment, but focused herself and shook her head. “I don’t understand why the first-born ‘ad to die, God being mostly angry at Pharoah.” 

“It was no longer a warning.” Pharah took a sip of wine. “There had been nine warnings. It was a punishment.” 

“‘Ardly seems fair to punish the lot of them for a bit of governmental wankery. Some ordinary Egyptian’s not keeping the ‘ebrews enslaved.” 

“But I doubt they protested the murder of the Hebrew sons. It is a kind of blood for blood. That they had so many chances to avoid that is a mercy in itself, God would have been right to kill their children first off. Justice. ” 

“No, isn’t justice. Revenge. Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Fareeha. Think you’d be defending your countrymen a bit more.” 

Pharah smiled and leaned toward Tracer. “Some of us are not compelled to excuse our country’s imperialism, and violence.” 

Tracer leaned back against the couch. “Alright, fair cop and well ‘it, but I am still right about the firstborn, Fareeha.” 

Her own Hilell and Shammai, ever arguing, ever debating, ever loving each other. She had watched that grow and bloom, too, over the work of years, step by step as they wandered together through an uncertain land. She had doubted, when she first fell in love with Pharah, that anything other than the glue that was Mercy would keep them together, but that had been arrogance. Tracer was more loveable than she seemed at first blush, and Pharah more loving than most would have imagined, and the two of them had grown together, though never in quite the same direction. 

Tracer was right, of course, that there was something unjust in taking something so precious, for a casual sin. Pharah was right, of course, that the sins of the community must be borne by the community, too, and that there had been so many chances to turn back. Did God ever owe them an apology, for such rashness? Or worse, for such calculation? It was one thing to act in anger, it was another to take something so precious so calmly. 

Perhaps the worst of it was that he was not angry at Mercy at all. Perhaps it was only that simple, calculated punishment that led her to this day, to the taste of saltwater and horseradish even more bitter on her lips than she had believed possible. It purged her mouth of the sweetness of the wine and the richness of the meat, leaving only that acrid dryness in its wake. 

Perhaps the worst of it was how angry Mercy was with him. 

The plagues passed. Freedom was had, for some, but even as the meal passed in front of her, Mercy kept thinking only of her own bondage, of the unanswered cry to God. She saw it in the empty corner beside her, the shake at Tracer’s hand as she drew the wine to her lips, in the way Pharah had carefully assigned the seating and set the table, in the way Winston avoided her gaze as they spoke of Yocheved’s baby, in the way Dva spoke to her so gently. The way Emily looked at her and Tracer both. 

In this victory of a meal, Mercy tasted only the failures of this past year. Miriam’s Well kept them alive in the desert, but Mercy began to wonder if it hadn’t been the bitter alkaline of survival, and not the sweet cool of living. 

The blessing over the wine buzzed from her lips without a thought, and the door opened. Next to her, sitting at that empty corner, was Elijah’s cup. The cup filled with the hope and promise that some year, everything she had been waiting for would come through that door. The cup was an outstretched hand to God in the darkness, whispering about trust. Every year, she had held out that hand. She held it out after her parents were killed. Held it out after Overwatch fell. Held it out as she was in exile from the medical community. She kept looking ahead in the dark, trusting what she could not see. 

She believed. 

To believe in Elijah. To believe that hope could always walk right through the door, that it could sit at your table and drink your glass of wine. To believe that there was a chance to see the dream fulfilled, to touch your feet on that Promised Land. 

Next year, in Jerusalem. 

It was too much to ask. It was too deep a failure, this year, marked by all of her insufficiencies, unable to have a child, unable to save Tracer, throwing herself at these same things again and again, the outcome never changing. She’d gotten no closer to getting pregnant. Tracer’s health continued to deteriorate. 

Not even taking the moment to excuse herself, Mercy got up from the table and ran into the small, tight powder room, the one Pharah had barely managed to niggle into the plans. She pulled herself into the bright white of that room, and she cried, and she cursed, in every language she knew, that God had kept everything from her, that God was punishing her for nothing, that God had judged her for her failings and ignored his own. She was angry. She kept that anger close to her like a flame, even as the immense darkness of her own sorrow crept in. She forgot there even was a Seder, in the other room, saw only the burning, everlasting bush that was her that was God that was the anger and love of all her people, all those years. 

There was a knock at the door, and Mercy wiped at her eyes. Pharah had been so tender and good, through all of this, and the last thing she needed was--

“It’s Emily.” 

Mercy had not expected that, and for a moment, it disarmed her so thoroughly that she opened the door. 

There was nothing exchanged, for a moment. Emily would say that she was no great mind, and no great judge, and no great hero, comparing herself unfavorably to the company Tracer generally kept. She would say this never seeing her own gift for knowing the kindest thing to say, for looking at the faces of people as she did her class of children and opening her own heart to them. 

“It’s just this year, Angela.” Emily nodded. “I know.” 

It was not a question, nor a complaint, nothing but an acknowledgment of the thing that had been Mercy’s own plague, sent by God, or, at the very least, not evaded by him. Mercy nodded, tears still streaming down her face. 

“Do you know Moses died, never seeing the Promised land? He was going through...and a mistake, meant God would never let him see it. He was kept from the promise of God.”

“Promised Land. I suppose it would be easy for a place you never see to be perfect.” Emily leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t know much about the Torah, of course, but I remember the story hardly ending with happily ever after.” 

Mercy shook her head. “They were….argumentative, and lost faith, and difficult.” she sniffled. “But they were not in the desert.” 

“It’s hard, to be Moses, isn’t it Angela? You go among people who don’t understand you, you try to lead them in whatever way you can, and for all that, you feel you will never find home. God barely listens to you, but you stay all the same. I think you’re brave for it.” 

“I’m not--” 

“Aye, you are. The moral compass for as long as I’ve known them, and for longer than that, I know. Lena and Fareeha would say so, as well.” Emily sighed. “This year has been forty for all of us, but for you I know most of all. But,” Emily looked back over her shoulder and stared at Tracer, “It’ll end, won’t it? Even Moses stopped walking.” She turned back around and wiped the tears from her eyes. “The Promised Land is just another beginning. But I don’t know the Torah very well.” 

Mercy looked up at her. “You are knowing it well enough.” 

“I’m sorry, about the baby. Cried over that myself, me and Lena never being able.” She sighed. “I just keep walking. What else can we do?” 

“I’m sorry I,” Mercy closed her eyes, “I am failing you both.”

Emily put her arm around Mercy’s shoulder. “No. You could never. You’re taking us on the journey.” 

“I should go back, to the table. I am being--” 

“We’ll keep going, aye. Eventually, we’ll find the end of it, whatever that is.” 

Hand in hand with Emily, Mercy walked back to the table. She was no clearer or calmer on the subject of God, of what he was denying her, of what he was denying all of them. But she saw the faces of her fellow travellers more clearly. It was not only Moses who made the journey. It was not only Moses who felt lost along the way, and it was not only Moses who died reaching for that unattainable goal, who strived and hoped against everything. 

They were together. She did not find the Promised Land, but she found their hands in hers. 

She poured the final cup of wine. All things come to an end. Even the desert.