As he settles down across from her, she can't help but quietly notice how at odds they seem. The holographic projectors, at least, have given them some semblance of consistency to aesthetically suggest why of course these two would have ended up together. Their body language tells another story, though; the way he's settled comfortably compared to her military-at-rest sort of vibe. She has little time to dwell on it, though, as the first strains of his thought interrupt her and demand her full attention.
It's a hard thing to watch. In part because of the rough life he's lived, of the losses he's experienced and the hardships he'd been thrust up against. But it was also an outright intrusion; seeing these memories - feeling them, vivid and real so that she can taste the sulfur and feel the warm splash of blood and dirt. Her breath catches on the fumes, her stomach flips with the sight of sprawling viscera.
Fareeha holds her own. She doesn't get sick, or cry out in pity, or otherwise demean or diminish his experiences. She attempts to give Junkrat some respect and space by not looking at him - as much as she wants to, to see that he's alright, to offer some kind of support - she also doesn't want to intrude anymore than she's essentially being forced to. The moments he cries out are the hardest; she's not sure if she's making the best decision in keeping still (fists curling slightly now and again, in anger, in concern), but she can't think anything else would be much better.
That is, until it's over - finally over, and his last, most recent memory is fading into the distance. She opens her eyes and looks down at him. She's learned through her lifetime, through training and experience, to hold her emotions close to the chest, but Junkrat seemed to lay everything out on his sleeve. Seeing him curled up on the ground makes her more aware of how different they are, and how much they - in a way - compliment each other; she has a wry thought that, perhaps together they make a single well-rounded individual.
She kneels fully, reaching down to slip her hand in his and grip it tightly, palm to palm, like one would initiate an arm wrestle. She's not here to fight him, but to ofer up her strength any way she can, even if it's just a momentary connection.
"Hey, Jamison, it'll be alright --"
The final word dies on her lips as her half of the ritual starts up, and her hand tightens involuntarily. She's young - 12? 8? She's in a Gi practicing martial arts moves as a woman with an eye tattoo teaches her stances, punches, kicks. She's a thorough but fair teacher, and Fareeha is a determined and bright pupil. The woman speaks in Arabic, directing her, and through the magitech stones it's understandable to Junkrat. Fareeha dutifully listens. She admires and respects this woman; her mother. There are a few flashes of memories from times she visited Overwatch with her, spending time with Jack, and Torbjorn, and Reinhardt. These halls were like a second home, these people a second family. There's a comfort when she's around them, and it's from them and their actions that she pulls her main inspirations for life.
Then, in a jarring shift, she's slightly older; eating breakfast with her father while the news plays on the television. Her mother, Jack Morrison, and Gabriel Reyes are on the screen; Overwatch has had another success. Fareeha bursts with pride. She finishes her breakfast, washes her dishes, then starts to head back to her room. She pauses, head tilted back towards the kitchen where her father is pouring another cup of coffee and continuing to watch the news. She takes the moment to head instead to a hall closet, opening it up and reaching to the upper shelf to take down her mother's beret. She runs back to her room (where there is a large poster of Reinhardt Wilhelm next to her bed - his lion-like hair blowing in a righteous breeze - and quietly closes the door. Fareeha stands in front of her mirror and puts the hat on, taking a few moments to fuss with it until it's sitting just right - just the way she's seen her mother wear it - and then she salutes her reflection. That'll be her, she thinks; she'll be just like her mother and helping others.
Except it doesn't exactly work out that way; Fareeha's in her teens now, and she's fighting with her mother. As the two of them are similarly bull-headed, stubborn women, their fights are intense. Her mother's aged - hair starting to streak white, wrinkles etched across her face, and a certain weight in her eyes, even as she yells back at her daughter "No, and that's my final answer; do not ask again."
A few years pass. She's standing with a duffel bag by a bus bound for a local army base. Her father stands with her as she tries to call her mother, but the call goes straight to voicemail. Fareeha chooses not to leave a message, instead clicking her phone off and then hugging her father before joining the other recruits and boarding the bus. As it pulls out, she waves at her father until he's no longer in sight, and then settles back against her seat. She's closed off; people try to talk to her, and while she isn't mean, she doesn't exactly encourage the conversation. Once she arrives at boot camp, the whole of her focus goes entirely into her training. She's determined to show her mother she's worthy of being an Overwatch agent one way or another, and if she has to prove it through the army, then she will damn well prove it through the army.
She excels. She's an otherworldly force; between her stubborn nature to never give in to a challenge, the edge afforded her by early combat training, and her ability to creatively assess and and accomplish her objectives, she quickly rises through the ranks. All the same, Fareeha continues to hold herself apart. While other soldiers joke and banter, during leave when they hit the bars and the clubs, Fareeha continues to study field guides, or to work out, or otherwise continue her military training. It's a lonely existance, punctuated by letters and calls with her father and the occasional civil interactions with her mother.
But then the scene changes - it's nothing exceptionally different from the story of her military career, but the familiarity of it is burned into her for eternity and for the first time since her memories started - a sound escapes her. It's not quite a word, whatever it was supposed to be half-choked and strangled before it could become a full thought. So far, everything that's come out has been awkward, but for the most part she owns up to what made her who she is, and she knows she's grown from these early interactions. But this ...
this ... is a moment that gutted her once, and though she knows things now that she didn't back then, it's still one of the few times she's been jarred enough out of her own walls. She's in the barracks. She has a phone call. Her captain leads her to it and though she can't entirely read his face she knows him well enough to know this call is going to change everything.
"This is Lieutenant-Commander Fareeha Amari." "Fareeha, it's Jack." Jack Morrison, who's voice she knew from childhood; who needed no introduction. But, in those three words, she could already sense what might be coming. Her stomach drops, but she doggedly maintains her professionalism. "Jack -- it's been a while." "It has, it ... Fareeha, it's about your mother." She didn't speak. She could feel her throat start to close up, and her head fill with cotton. His next few words felt worlds away, and yet she could still hear them echoing in her ears today. "There was an incident, in our last mission." Another long pause. A small, objective part of her knew this must be hard on him, but she just wanted to know; to have o doubts about what she was going to have to be dealing with. "Please, Jack ... just tell me ..." "I'm sorry, Fareeha. She didn't make it."
Clearance levels meant she never found out anything more. There was a memorial service. There was no funeral, because there was no body recovered. She attended in her military dress, dodging paparazzi to and from, using car service with tinted windows. Overwatch had been on shaky ground for a while and out came the cockroaches to sensationalize the death of one of the founding members, except for Fareeha, that had been her mother.
She quietly pulls her hand from Junkrat's in order to reach up and press against the bridge of her nose. She hasn't ever cried much throughout her life, but she did when she'd thought her mother died, and she's remembering that horror again.
A year later, Overwatch crumbles entirely, and she's forced to watch from the sidelines as the extended family she grew up with - that had so much import on the woman she became - died, or disappeared, or were forced into retirement. She's stopped watching the news, leaving the room anytime an Op-Ed piece started up on the television that her colleagues were watching. It's a painful, dark time in her life where she falls more bitter and angry.
The memories continue, slipping back into her continued military career. She's not any better with people, but she does eventually leave with distinguished service and not long after is offered a position with Helix Securities International. It's an honor to anyone in her position, and for the first time in a long time she's excited again; a change of pace, something different, new missions outside the scope of what the regular army could do.
She begins as a security chief, and is issued her first iteration of a limited-flight jump-jet armor systems. Once she gets herself established and assigned a team, she graduates to a full Raptora systems. It's brilliant blue, the helmet fashioned like a hawk with a gold visor.
In light of fighting new and more dangerous foes, and after what happened with her mother, she finds time to make her way to a tattoo parlor. She talks to the artist, pours over a few reference pictures, and together they settle on a final design. She settles herself into the chair, hands folded over her stomach as the artist finishes setting up his station. He spins his chair to settle his hands over her face, and the machine whirs to life. The pain is cathartic, and by the end of it she has a symbol of protection with her always.
The next set of memories hit like a missile barrage; straight from the battleground as her Helix team sets out to deal with Anubis. They find the wounded engineer, and she's the one that signs his death warrant, choosing to push on instead of take the time to call help. An omnic puts his pistol to his chin and pulls the trigger; it's a teammate - afriend - she can't act fast enough, isn't close enough to stop him, can only scream his name as she watches him sacrifice himself. They're ambushed. Omnics appear from every conceivable corner; the Helix team breaks up, each shooting into a different corner of the sky. She's on the ground again, her Captain lays through a broken brick wall, he doesn't make it. It's up to her to rally the rest of the team together and finish this damned Omnic god program before it could get to the heavy weapons. There's smoke and fire, explosions, gunfire. Anubis controls the omnics around them and itself sits watching as Fareeha has to make that choice - and in doing so finally changes an integral part of herself. Only then is she able to both help her teammate, and finally put down Anubis; offering him the distraction while he hacks into its systems. There's a moment when it all goes dark as she's inundated; overwhelmed and covered in Omnics before they all simultaneously shut down.
For a moment Fareeha thinks this is it; there's a long moment of darkness, of nothingness, but the light fades into view and she's looking at a letter. It's a familiar Arabic script, and she softly mutters to herself, to the magitech rocks, to whoever will listen, to just stop.
It's a letter from her mother, read with that same smokey tone that had opened up Fareeha's memories with martial arts instruction - albeit older with a definite crag to the edges. Fareeha's mother, who'd been presumed dead, who had - for six years - done nothing to contact her, or any other family. Six years Fareeha had carried that grief. The letter, at least, does some of the job of explaining why, but Fareeha's still processing it. She's equal parts grateful and livid, the two extremes mixing and leaving her feeling sick.
Fareeha has resorted to sitting, her feet tucked up under her, one hand around her stomach and the other shielding her face. While she's learned to start opening herself up to people, it's still not an instinctive response. In stark contrast to Junkrat's reactions to his own memories, she's attempting to shove it all back in; erect the walls, don't show weakness. Don't break. Swallow it back. She's forcing herself to breathe slowly and deliberately, trying to get a handle on herself before she faces him again.
no subject
It's a hard thing to watch. In part because of the rough life he's lived, of the losses he's experienced and the hardships he'd been thrust up against. But it was also an outright intrusion; seeing these memories - feeling them, vivid and real so that she can taste the sulfur and feel the warm splash of blood and dirt. Her breath catches on the fumes, her stomach flips with the sight of sprawling viscera.
Fareeha holds her own. She doesn't get sick, or cry out in pity, or otherwise demean or diminish his experiences. She attempts to give Junkrat some respect and space by not looking at him - as much as she wants to, to see that he's alright, to offer some kind of support - she also doesn't want to intrude anymore than she's essentially being forced to. The moments he cries out are the hardest; she's not sure if she's making the best decision in keeping still (fists curling slightly now and again, in anger, in concern), but she can't think anything else would be much better.
That is, until it's over - finally over, and his last, most recent memory is fading into the distance. She opens her eyes and looks down at him. She's learned through her lifetime, through training and experience, to hold her emotions close to the chest, but Junkrat seemed to lay everything out on his sleeve. Seeing him curled up on the ground makes her more aware of how different they are, and how much they - in a way - compliment each other; she has a wry thought that, perhaps together they make a single well-rounded individual.
She kneels fully, reaching down to slip her hand in his and grip it tightly, palm to palm, like one would initiate an arm wrestle. She's not here to fight him, but to ofer up her strength any way she can, even if it's just a momentary connection.
"Hey, Jamison, it'll be alright --"
The final word dies on her lips as her half of the ritual starts up, and her hand tightens involuntarily. She's young - 12? 8? She's in a Gi practicing martial arts moves as a woman with an eye tattoo teaches her stances, punches, kicks. She's a thorough but fair teacher, and Fareeha is a determined and bright pupil. The woman speaks in Arabic, directing her, and through the magitech stones it's understandable to Junkrat. Fareeha dutifully listens. She admires and respects this woman; her mother. There are a few flashes of memories from times she visited Overwatch with her, spending time with Jack, and Torbjorn, and Reinhardt. These halls were like a second home, these people a second family. There's a comfort when she's around them, and it's from them and their actions that she pulls her main inspirations for life.
Then, in a jarring shift, she's slightly older; eating breakfast with her father while the news plays on the television. Her mother, Jack Morrison, and Gabriel Reyes are on the screen; Overwatch has had another success. Fareeha bursts with pride. She finishes her breakfast, washes her dishes, then starts to head back to her room. She pauses, head tilted back towards the kitchen where her father is pouring another cup of coffee and continuing to watch the news. She takes the moment to head instead to a hall closet, opening it up and reaching to the upper shelf to take down her mother's beret. She runs back to her room (where there is a large poster of Reinhardt Wilhelm next to her bed - his lion-like hair blowing in a righteous breeze - and quietly closes the door. Fareeha stands in front of her mirror and puts the hat on, taking a few moments to fuss with it until it's sitting just right - just the way she's seen her mother wear it - and then she salutes her reflection. That'll be her, she thinks; she'll be just like her mother and helping others.
Except it doesn't exactly work out that way; Fareeha's in her teens now, and she's fighting with her mother. As the two of them are similarly bull-headed, stubborn women, their fights are intense. Her mother's aged - hair starting to streak white, wrinkles etched across her face, and a certain weight in her eyes, even as she yells back at her daughter "No, and that's my final answer; do not ask again."
A few years pass. She's standing with a duffel bag by a bus bound for a local army base. Her father stands with her as she tries to call her mother, but the call goes straight to voicemail. Fareeha chooses not to leave a message, instead clicking her phone off and then hugging her father before joining the other recruits and boarding the bus. As it pulls out, she waves at her father until he's no longer in sight, and then settles back against her seat. She's closed off; people try to talk to her, and while she isn't mean, she doesn't exactly encourage the conversation. Once she arrives at boot camp, the whole of her focus goes entirely into her training. She's determined to show her mother she's worthy of being an Overwatch agent one way or another, and if she has to prove it through the army, then she will damn well prove it through the army.
She excels. She's an otherworldly force; between her stubborn nature to never give in to a challenge, the edge afforded her by early combat training, and her ability to creatively assess and and accomplish her objectives, she quickly rises through the ranks. All the same, Fareeha continues to hold herself apart. While other soldiers joke and banter, during leave when they hit the bars and the clubs, Fareeha continues to study field guides, or to work out, or otherwise continue her military training. It's a lonely existance, punctuated by letters and calls with her father and the occasional civil interactions with her mother.
But then the scene changes - it's nothing exceptionally different from the story of her military career, but the familiarity of it is burned into her for eternity and for the first time since her memories started - a sound escapes her. It's not quite a word, whatever it was supposed to be half-choked and strangled before it could become a full thought. So far, everything that's come out has been awkward, but for the most part she owns up to what made her who she is, and she knows she's grown from these early interactions. But this ...
this ... is a moment that gutted her once, and though she knows things now that she didn't back then, it's still one of the few times she's been jarred enough out of her own walls. She's in the barracks. She has a phone call. Her captain leads her to it and though she can't entirely read his face she knows him well enough to know this call is going to change everything.
"This is Lieutenant-Commander Fareeha Amari."
"Fareeha, it's Jack." Jack Morrison, who's voice she knew from childhood; who needed no introduction. But, in those three words, she could already sense what might be coming. Her stomach drops, but she doggedly maintains her professionalism.
"Jack -- it's been a while."
"It has, it ... Fareeha, it's about your mother."
She didn't speak. She could feel her throat start to close up, and her head fill with cotton. His next few words felt worlds away, and yet she could still hear them echoing in her ears today.
"There was an incident, in our last mission."
Another long pause. A small, objective part of her knew this must be hard on him, but she just wanted to know; to have o doubts about what she was going to have to be dealing with. "Please, Jack ... just tell me ..."
"I'm sorry, Fareeha. She didn't make it."
Clearance levels meant she never found out anything more. There was a memorial service. There was no funeral, because there was no body recovered. She attended in her military dress, dodging paparazzi to and from, using car service with tinted windows. Overwatch had been on shaky ground for a while and out came the cockroaches to sensationalize the death of one of the founding members, except for Fareeha, that had been her mother.
She quietly pulls her hand from Junkrat's in order to reach up and press against the bridge of her nose. She hasn't ever cried much throughout her life, but she did when she'd thought her mother died, and she's remembering that horror again.
A year later, Overwatch crumbles entirely, and she's forced to watch from the sidelines as the extended family she grew up with - that had so much import on the woman she became - died, or disappeared, or were forced into retirement. She's stopped watching the news, leaving the room anytime an Op-Ed piece started up on the television that her colleagues were watching. It's a painful, dark time in her life where she falls more bitter and angry.
The memories continue, slipping back into her continued military career. She's not any better with people, but she does eventually leave with distinguished service and not long after is offered a position with Helix Securities International. It's an honor to anyone in her position, and for the first time in a long time she's excited again; a change of pace, something different, new missions outside the scope of what the regular army could do.
She begins as a security chief, and is issued her first iteration of a limited-flight jump-jet armor systems. Once she gets herself established and assigned a team, she graduates to a full Raptora systems. It's brilliant blue, the helmet fashioned like a hawk with a gold visor.
In light of fighting new and more dangerous foes, and after what happened with her mother, she finds time to make her way to a tattoo parlor. She talks to the artist, pours over a few reference pictures, and together they settle on a final design. She settles herself into the chair, hands folded over her stomach as the artist finishes setting up his station. He spins his chair to settle his hands over her face, and the machine whirs to life. The pain is cathartic, and by the end of it she has a symbol of protection with her always.
The next set of memories hit like a missile barrage; straight from the battleground as her Helix team sets out to deal with Anubis. They find the wounded engineer, and she's the one that signs his death warrant, choosing to push on instead of take the time to call help. An omnic puts his pistol to his chin and pulls the trigger; it's a teammate - afriend - she can't act fast enough, isn't close enough to stop him, can only scream his name as she watches him sacrifice himself. They're ambushed. Omnics appear from every conceivable corner; the Helix team breaks up, each shooting into a different corner of the sky. She's on the ground again, her Captain lays through a broken brick wall, he doesn't make it. It's up to her to rally the rest of the team together and finish this damned Omnic god program before it could get to the heavy weapons. There's smoke and fire, explosions, gunfire. Anubis controls the omnics around them and itself sits watching as Fareeha has to make that choice - and in doing so finally changes an integral part of herself. Only then is she able to both help her teammate, and finally put down Anubis; offering him the distraction while he hacks into its systems. There's a moment when it all goes dark as she's inundated; overwhelmed and covered in Omnics before they all simultaneously shut down.
For a moment Fareeha thinks this is it; there's a long moment of darkness, of nothingness, but the light fades into view and she's looking at a letter. It's a familiar Arabic script, and she softly mutters to herself, to the magitech rocks, to whoever will listen, to just stop.
It's a letter from her mother, read with that same smokey tone that had opened up Fareeha's memories with martial arts instruction - albeit older with a definite crag to the edges. Fareeha's mother, who'd been presumed dead, who had - for six years - done nothing to contact her, or any other family. Six years Fareeha had carried that grief. The letter, at least, does some of the job of explaining why, but Fareeha's still processing it. She's equal parts grateful and livid, the two extremes mixing and leaving her feeling sick.
Fareeha has resorted to sitting, her feet tucked up under her, one hand around her stomach and the other shielding her face. While she's learned to start opening herself up to people, it's still not an instinctive response. In stark contrast to Junkrat's reactions to his own memories, she's attempting to shove it all back in; erect the walls, don't show weakness. Don't break. Swallow it back. She's forcing herself to breathe slowly and deliberately, trying to get a handle on herself before she faces him again.