This is just a little character embellishment that I had floating around in my google docs that i wanted to flesh out. It's angsty, it's a bit drabbly, but if you're into At the Seams...

Notes: I don't know how I feel about revealing this much abut At the Seams since at this point, i haven't written/posted this far into the plot. But then again, don't know how many of you who will read this follow At the Seams. In any case, this was really fun to write, it's like try-hard poetic word vomit with a unhealthy heaping of sad.

How would she protect…

Every night this unwelcomed visitor greeted her with open arms but no warm embrace. It showered her with the gift of cold sweat and a throbbing in her arms as if twisted; burning as if dipped in the fury that always follows her involuntary birth into consciousness. A constant reminder of a failure; half of her made of the same machines her mother died fighting to protect the world from.

How did she let herself become such a monstrosity.

But her mother was not dead, three months of grieving and then a letter. The single, tear stained letter that brought upon her a storm of relief and anger, joy and betrayal. She was a coward, both of them were.

And later in life, when she jerked up with the sheets pooling at her waist, she felt so small still hoping for her aunt, her mother, for anyone to come in and comfort her through her nightmares. She learned that this was better, a warm hand that cupped the side of her face and the woman she had grown to love and care for so much. The touch blanketed her restless mind in calmness her as if chasing the fears away, a dense fog to soften the harsh, blinding light of her worries. She was well armed when the hand is in on her, it gave her a reason to keep fighting.

It's always enough to coax her back down from the edge and surrender into the arms of a woman that she now only faintly remembers. An angel that had stolen her heart when she had no pulse of her own. An anchor, a rock, someone to trust and hold onto.

It…

The day she lost her legs…

All their training, learning how to rise together, fly together, to the point at times she swore their hearts shared the same beat. Closer and closer, two souls flowing into a single body pulled together by the same gravity they fought against. In the sunlight they kept each other afloat, in the moonlight the drowned each other in soft promises and gentle kisses.

High in the sky, a losing fight, a desperate last stand.

Fareeha told Angela to drop altitude, and she does because she trusted her.

A distraction, her sacrifice to-

When Fareeha looked down as she plummeted, she felt the rockets in her hips implode against her flesh, their explosions trapped by the suit meant to keep damage out. It did not matter that she could see her own blood flying past her face.

To see blue eyes wide, a mouth she had kissed a hundred times screaming out her name.

'Fareeha!'

She could feel the searing pain of her lower body, how the blood seeped out of every crack in the metal. All for something, right? How the voice over her comm was saying that the path was clear, that she had done well. Death awaited her, she wouldn't survive a fall from this high. Angela's wings were barely strong enough to shoulder her own weight. Fareeha prayed for Angela to close her eyes and not watch.

But somehow, she lived.

The world didn't matter when she was cradled in the arms of her angel whose tears splattered against her cracked visor. How much did she want to reach up and feel her face for once with real fingers and not ones made of aluminum. Ones that were useless and limp at her sides.

How she wished she could say all the things she felt and how she was terrified she would never be able to.

'Stay with me, Fareeha, please, I can't lose you.'

She could say the same thing to Angela through the inviting darkness that edged into her vision. But all she could offer was a smile as she watched her love kiss her hands that she wished her could feel.

How much she wishes, wishes for all of this to be different.

And as the medics pulled her away and her friends held her habibti back, Fareeha kept smiling, hoping that it would ease away the hurt painted on the others face.

"Don't worry about me,"

Angela cried even harder.

"Don't worry about me."

That time when she woke up, she knew what to expect.

White blankets tried to hide the fact that her legs ended too soon. One inches away from her hip, the other right above the knee.

She had felt so alone when she lost her arms. Military folk were not always the best at comforting loss and the one person she did want to talk to was barred from contact. The walls listened to her incessant mutterings and cries. She wanted to die, 'a waste' she called herself. It took time for her to truly believe otherwise. No, she indebted to anyone to stay alive, just herself. She owed it to no one but herself to continue living.

That was then.

But this time.

There was a weight on her stomach, a head of mistreated hair; unkempt and greasy. Snoring that indicated restless sleep and too much stress. Fareeha didn't struggle this time, didn't care that her hands could barely feel the warmth of Angela's neck.

Because now, when there is silence and darkness and she tries hard, she can see it.

Fareeha can imagine another life for them where they are both comfortable. Where awaking in each other's arms is the norm and Angela teasing her for putting too much pepper into the stew. Where they have a home, it doesn't matter a flat, house, or even the bed of a truck. A home that they can return to and expect to find boundless love and affection. A place and a life to call their own.

And this time, when she gazed at how peaceful the doctor's face was, she cried not for loss but for the joyous reminder that they are both alive; here and together. Still and forever if Angela will have any say in it.

But Fareeha feared that one day, she would have to bite back her tongue and keep from calling for help. She will not be the cause of the world losing such a perfect woman who would rush through a firefight for an inkling of hope. No, one day Fareeha will fall when Angela is not around, and she will remain quiet and solemn to pass on without putting her love in danger.

Perhaps she can't protect the innocent, but may the universe permit her to protect the woman she loves.

Fear drums through Pharah's chest. This is it, the final Talon outpost they have cornered the last members of the treacherous band. It's a kick to the gut to see the old Gibraltar Watchpoint re-purposed for such a thing. The road that has led her and her squad here has been a hard one.

One of death

Of abandonment

Of betrayal of those she once held to be heroes.

She grits her teeth, tears pricking hot at the corner of her eye, the one not of metal. And she looks at the broken building, thinking that somewhere in there is the brilliant woman that had once saved her.

The months of darkness, blades dull, jagged, razor sharp; all parting her skin with the same blinding agony. More than the tools that damaged her body was the despair that ate away her sanity, every word they spoke were chisels that carved away at her mind. 'Alone', 'forgotten', 'worthless' tearing apart until she believed she was nothing, deserved nothing for everyone in her life always left.

During times of silence in the musty cellar, when she was too weak to hold onto the reins of her mind, she would fantasize her mother kicking down the door to her rescue. A face with a smile and gentle words; fantasy only because she knew that her mother would never smile at her while she was still a soldier. Just worry, her mother always looked at her with eyes full of it.

Pharah took an oath to protect the innocent, one that she whispers to herself every morning in the mirror when the light catches on metal and snares her mind in a web of self-doubt. That she will suffer the horrors of human nature to shield those who did not know her pain.

So they will never need to know her pain.

She remembers how Lena's voice sounded so distant in her mind, murmurs somehow cutting through the dried blood clotted in her ears. Despite the raw flesh of her gums and the bitter rag stuffed in her mouth, she cried out. A selfish plea for salvation, a desperate warning to not come any closer.

But no, a girl that she faintly remembered from her few visits to the Swiss base. Joy to hide the hurt beneath bright eyes and brighter smiles.

There was no pain when the bullets tore through her lifeless hands, the fingers having lost feeling from weeks from being strung up over her head. How the doctors had to hold her down as she thrashed the moment her eyes opened.

Her arms, why couldn't she move her arms?

One at the shoulder, the other mid bicep.

And the heavy questions with tears that refused to end for a week.

But the world has changed. Her mother is alive and well fighting once again in the ranks of Overwatch. Man and machine have made their peace. If it were not for the metal encasing her body right now, it would be the walls of a coffin and the soil of the Earth. So many lives have been saved because of their work, because of her work.

Talon sought to tear it all apart.

She wouldn't let it happen, not when she sacrificed so much for Overwatch; when all of them have suffered so much. Like a flash before her eyes, a glitch in her system, the memories keep coming back.

Where once she was dying in Angela's arms; Angela was now fighting for her life in a hospital bed. And Talon is going to answer for putting her there.

All is reduced to rubble; the building, their bodies, their hearts and minds. So much death, it makes her wonder what Angela would think if she could see the carnage they just inflicted on their once close friends.

Surrender would have been accepted, mercy would have been granted.

They would never surrender, the agents that she knew never had it in them.

Behind Fareeha is all the pain of the world and before her, soaring over the roiling, endless ocean, a woman with joy in her eyes to hide the hurt she carries so deep that had saved her once, has tried to save her again. One that Fareeha could not begin to understand for the woman had seen the end of the world and decided to keep living.

Lena "Tracer" Oxton, the woman who has torn, tears, will tear the world apart…