The first thing that hit Hana Song as she stepped off the drop ship was the cold. She'd been getting used to the warm climate of Gibraltar, even the missions she'd been on in the last few months were in the more tropical regions of the world. Russia, though, was deep into winter.
She shivered, arms wrapping instinctively around herself as the wind cut through the thin layer of her jump suit, stinging her skin and drawing a grimace. She was about to step backward into the drop ship again when the second thing hit her. The snow.
Memories flared unbidden. She remembered South Korea in snowdrifts, hazy despite the display feed inside her mech. The smell of burning, acrid, sickening, bright fires flickering in the frozen winds. She remembered the way the very ground had shook, trembled in the wake of a behemoth. How broken machinery littered the earth – some fallen from the enemy, some the pitiful skeletons of her own unit. She remembered the snow. Red, blooming across its surface.
Taking a steady breath Hana shook the image away. Here was not then. The ruined village they had landed beside was unfamiliar, long abandoned, windows empty and dark. Yet people had lived here once. Families, children, innocent people just like those from her own country. She wondered if any had survived.
"Something the matter?" Zarya asked, coming to stand beside her. The muscular Russian looked perfectly comfortable despite the cold.
Hana meant to smile, to make some offhand comment, something self-assured and teasing, but it got caught in her throat. She hesitated. This was Zarya's homeland. She probably had her own memories, her own history. The struggles of Russia were something she held close to her heart. Making light of it felt wrong. "The destruction caused by the Omnics here... it reminds me of home."
Zarya met her eyes, a quiet understanding there. "Then you, too, know why they cannot be trusted."
Hana said nothing. Somehow her gaze still seemed to want to linger on the remnants of that village, trying to picture what it might once have been.
((It's short I know, but I really just wanted something about that voiceline. Honestly, I'd like to write more of her sometime, I feel like she's overlooked a lot.))