Fareeha was convinced that she had both the best and worst of timing, and there was no such thing as anything in between.
When she woke up alone in a hospital bed, she remembered the way her armoured van was blown off the side of a dirt road by a mine, and the way she strained against the walls and fellow soldiers in the trunk, where nobody had been strapped in. She supposed they had rolled down the hill, but it wasn't something she could recall in detail as she had already been knocked out cold by then.
The soldier's limbs felt heavy, and she wondered how long she had been sleeping. She let her eyes swivel in their sockets to take in her surroundings, and saw a dead flower in an empty glass on the nightstand next to her. Next to it was a pile of letters that somebody had dropped off. She opened all of them at once without seeing who they were from and lined them up in chronological order.
At the moment, she couldn't remember the exact date that explosion took place, but at the very least she remembered the year and season. She was surprised to see that the newest piece of mail she got indicated that it had been almost six months since then, and indeed, the dates of the letters covered the whole timespan.
Fareeha's mind was still fuzzy, and her vision just a tad bleary, but she could piece together that she must have been in a coma. She thought it was incredibly embarrassing. Her body had managed to survive being shot through with multiple rounds of bullets, but she probably almost died from a bump to the head. She wondered how the human body could simultaneously be the most robust and delicate thing. She dreaded having to face her squad who would probably tease her for the rest of their service together. It didn't occur to her in the slightest that any of them might have died.
She thumbed through the mail in her hands, making a game out of guessing how many of them were bills. People had been saying for decades that mail was dying. But there wasn't a more reliable way of getting a message to a soldier camping out in a remote location with no electricity.
She singled out two postcards and inspected them first. They were both from Reinhardt Wilhelm, a man who worked alongside her mother. Reinhardt was the only person from her mother's Overwatch unit that she still got mail from, apart from her mother of course. As Fareeha blinked rapidly, trying to get her vision to focus on the writing and picture, she remembered her promise with Angela Ziegler, an older girl she had admired for years. Well, admired was putting it lightly. Fareeha had been obsessed with Angela for a good part of her pubescent years.
As Fareeha promised, she wrote to Angela every day. But teenagers are fickle, and every day dwindled to every week, and every week became every month. It was largely due to the fact that Angela rarely responded. When she did, she sent postcards every time the team moved to a new place, with brief messages on the back acknowledging Fareeha's letters. It made the teenage Fareeha feel ridiculous writing to someone that didn't give any substance in return. It was like writing to a diary.
She knew Angela was always busy. The doctor didn't even have time to care for herself. But the teenager was selfish and stubborn, and slowly, over the years she began to forget how Angela made her feel. In the back of her head she acknowledged that she had crushed hard for several years, but the memory was like trying to remember a particularly bad cold. Every time she had a cold, she would remember thinking that she was dying, but after she recovered she couldn't actually recall the pain. She could try imagining what it was like, but she couldn't experience any kind of suffering that would warrant the feeling of dying. And that's all Angela had become to her. A bad cold.
Thinking about Angela made Fareeha think about her current partner, and a smile tugged on the corners of her lips. They had only been together for a little over a year before Fareeha entered a coma, but Fareeha was certain that she was in love. Her heart fluttered in her chest, as she imagined their reunion, and how relieved she would be to see her after being hospitalized for so long. Her girlfriend was also her roommate though and Fareeha figured she was the one who brought some of the letters to her. She wondered why she didn't save them at their apartment for her return.
Before she could give it much thought, Fareeha was interrupted by a nurse who was just walking into the room, and gasped at the sight of the solider sitting up right. He quickly told Fareeha what she already figured and the date, changed her IV quickly, and left to find a doctor and contact her commanding officer.
As Fareeha waited, she looked at the most recent letter, which was dated a month ago. Well, it was less of a letter and more of a note. Apart from the date, there was a single line of text, scrawled quickly in Arabic.
"I am not dead."
Fareeha frowned. It was a strange sentence to say the least. It had no signature, but Fareeha instantly recognized her own mother's handwriting. Ana had written to her many times. She had done it sparingly but consistently until Fareeha had received more letters from her than she had sent to Angela. Fareeha read them, but didn't reply. They still hadn't repaired what was broken during their falling out when Fareeha was sixteen, but it wasn't due to Ana's lack of trying. And again, the teenage Fareeha was selfish and stubborn.
The adult Fareeha was less so. She was finally considering writing back to her mother, teasing her for being a drama queen for sending such a strange note, when her commanding officer walked into the hospital room. He had been quick to get there. When he started speaking, it was only then that Fareeha understood why her mother wrote what she did. He told her that the famous Captain Amari was missing in action and presumed to be dead. Fareeha asked how long ago it was. Two months. Ana must have written to Fareeha at the first opportunity she had. As her commanding officer talked, Fareeha looked for the envelope her mother's letter came in. It did not have a return address.
Fareeha was honourably discharged, but was invited to return to the army whenever she was ready. Fareeha said she needed time to think before she could make any promises about coming back. Her commanding officer didn't tell her what had happened to her squad. She didn't ask.
Her commanding officer was chased out by a doctor, who came to inspect Fareeha's condition. She was young, had kind eyes, and a gentle touch, but her smile was nothing like Angela Ziegler's.
After several tests, it was determined that Fareeha did not suffer any permanent brain damage, and after she was fit to walk again, she could be released right away.
Fareeha's rehabilitation was painful. The soreness in her muscles was nothing like the burn after a hard workout. Her muscles had atrophied, but rather than getting frustrated at being forced to learn how to walk again, Fareeha welcomed the challenge. It was a good distraction from the loneliness Fareeha felt when she called her girlfriend every day, without getting an answer. She remembered her girlfriend saying something about getting a new phone before Fareeha had left for her mission. Her number might have changed too, or maybe Fareeha's number was being displayed as unknown. Whatever the case, Fareeha couldn't wait to see her lover's face again.
As she recovered, Fareeha thought about her mother's letter frequently. She was glad she read it before she was told Ana was dead. She wasn't particularly worried about her mother's physical condition – that woman was tough as nails. But she did wish she had a way of contacting her mother without giving her teammates hope that she was still alive. She figured Ana had a good reason to fake her death, and wanted to respect that.
When Fareeha was released from the hospital, she felt confident even though her build was nowhere near as impressive as it used to be. It was no matter. More than final results, Fareeha loved recording improvement.
She had called her uncle to pick her up, and they chatted cheerfully in the car, and Fareeha told him her plan for a romantic evening with her girlfriend. His grin was mischievous and he enjoyed teasing Fareeha for being so cheesy, and about marriage until she was a stuttering mess. He paid for the chocolate, flowers, candles, and ingredients Fareeha needed to make one of her specialty dishes. Fareeha prided herself on being an excellent cook. She used to practice while she was living in the Overwatch headquarters when she had nothing better to do.
When they got to her flat, her uncle wished his niece the best of luck, and winked before driving away. Fareeha couldn't stop smiling, her heart thundering loudly in her ribcage. The sun had just set, and she could see lights on in one of the bedrooms. Fareeha imagined the feeling of holding her girlfriend and whispering sweet nothings in her ear as her girlfriend cried from both surprise and happiness of seeing Fareeha after so long. Fareeha would kiss her gently and draw away teasingly, hinting at more to come after a delicious dinner. Then, after reaffirming their love for each other, they would lie in bed for the rest of the night, Fareeha cradling her girlfriend in her arms and feeding her chocolate until they drifted off to sleep.
Fareeha's face was hot as she unlocked the front door and closed it gently behind her. She put down the groceries on the kitchen table. The apartment looked the same as ever. She tiptoed up the stairs of the narrow, two-storey apartment, clutching the bouquet of flowers behind her back, the goofy grin still plastered across her face.
There was rather loud music coming from her girlfriend's room, making Fareeha's climb up the squeaky stairs more forgiving. When she reached the top of the stairs, her heart stopped beating altogether.
Through the open door at the end of the hall, her sharp eyes could see the familiar, unmistakable form of her girlfriend's naked back as she bounced up and down on top of another person. Fareeha's flowers were on the floor. She ran from the apartment as far as her legs would take her. Her girlfriend hadn't even known she was there.
A/N: I'M SORRY INTERNET, I DIDN'T KNOW I WAS CAPABLE OF WRITING SO MUCH ANGST. PLEASE DON'T HURT ME. Also, poor Fareeha, I'm just going to keep bullying her.