When Mei stirred the next morning, she awoke to find that her throat was sore and her were eyelashes clinging together as a result of her previous weeping fit. Her torso felt as though it were made of solid lead as she lifted it up and out from under the covers, heavy and useless. She had fallen asleep crying and had neglected to take her glasses off, the thick frames now sat slightly crooked on her nose. Taking them off to adjust them back into proper place, she could see, even with her blurry vision, the many lash streaks and tear spots that mottled the lenses.
"Pathetic.", She sighs to herself as she cleans them away with her shirt.
Wiggling the now-clean frames up her nose with a push and a few scrunches of her face, she glances to read the numbers on her clock.
4:48 AM. Gosh, that was early.
"Well…," she murmurs, running a hand through her hair, "Mission brief is at noon. I suppose I could go back to sleep for a little while."
Upon touching her hair, her fingers were met with tangles, most likely from a fitful sleep. Plucking up a brush and hair tie from her nightstand, she set to work on brushing away the slightly painful knots in her thick dark hair. Once it laid flat against her back again, she tied the locks into a ponytail to ensure that they wouldn't mat up again as she slept. She recalled her mother's chiding words, that it was bad for her hair to sleep with it bound, but Mei had never been particularly worried about little things like that.
She smiled wistfully, heart tugging in her breast.
Mother.
She laid back down, rolling herself up into a cocoon of blankets, and closed her eyes once more. It had been too late, however, and sleep's hazy fog had begun to clear from her mind, leaving her alone with just her thoughts. Images of the prior evening slithered back into her mind like black unwelcome slugs, making her draw into herself like a child.
Mei had let herself come completely undone in front of Junkrat. She scoffed at herself bitterly. 'So much for promising them you'd be brave', she thought. She pulls her hands out from beneath the covers, picking numbly at her bright blue nail polish. Blue had always been her favorite color.
Returning to Overwatch had been a good distraction for Mei, and one that was desperately needed at that. Since she had woken up from cryostasis to find a world that had both crumbled and moved on without her, she had become a true workaholic. Mei's mind always needed something to observe and her fingers were always jotting down field notes or tinkering with some sort of upgrade for Snowball. Meeting up with friends, old and new, had been a delight for Mei. Seeing Angela Ziegler again had been like witnessing a miracle.
But when she was alone, she had to do all she could to press the memories of her family and colleagues out of her mind.
She vividly remembered awaking in the wreckage, air filling her lungs in a rush so quickly it made her eyes ache.
The migraine had come first, then the panic. She recalled stumbling around aimlessly before realizing where she was, where she had been. Her vision had cleared to find her friends and colleagues all marbleized in permafrost, flesh relics of the lives that once had been.
She wandered wide-eyed through the room, feeling like a patron at some sort of terrible art museum.
Her companions lay sleeping within the glassy cases, their eyes gently shut and lips calm and still. She remembered desperately punching at the controls of each case, trying every code she could imagine to get them to open before she had realized that they had all powered down long ago, and the slumber her friends lay in was no longer temporary.
She had screamed and wailed, logic leaving her as she frantically pounded her still-tingling fists against the plexiglass doors as though if she made enough of a fuss, their eyes would open and they would step out of the chambers of their own accord.
Memories crashed around her like glass. The moments she had spent reading and studying late at night with her peers, discussing solutions with them, feeling as though her hopes were justified and just knowing that she could save the future, had disappeared like the snowflakes on her warming skin.
But what had shattered her was the news of her family's deaths in the bloodbath of the Omnic Crisis.
"WHY!?", she had screamed, "IT HASN'T EVEN BEEN THAT LONG! THEY ALL SHOULD STILL BE ALIVE! THIS ISN'T FAIR!"
Her voice broke, a terrible sound.
"I WAS SUPPOSED TO COME BACK HOME!"
"I PROMISED!"
Mei rolled around, thrashing herself back into sensibility. 'No, no. No no no,' she thought, scrubbing hot tears away. She couldn't let herself get dragged back into an episode like this again. She had to rest, she wouldn't be a burden. She would carry on the hopes of her dear ones until the day she died.
She would fight for the world she had loved when she fell asleep and the world she still stubbornly loved even when she awoke.
Cracking her eyes open, she checks the clock to see how much time she has left to sleep.
8:37 AM.
Dammit.