thisavrou_log | closed

closed

Who: Fareeha and Reinhardt
When: After this
Where: Reinhardt's apartment
What: Dealing with fallout
Warnings: OD for Overwatch Drama

What had started out as a lovely day, and a lovely visit with her mother, and taken a turn for the absolute worse. Fareeha felt blindsided by the revelation that Jack was not only here and alive, but that he had been for just about as long as she was. That every time she'd talked to him, thinking he was some masked vigilante, he'd pushed her away and criticized the ideals she stood for - the very ones he himself hat inspired in her.

To add insult to injury, her mother had known the entire time and hadn't breathed a word. Then, when the truth did out, had the audacity to throw Fareeha's career as soldier in her face. Something she had done herself, had hoped so much her mother would be proud of in her naive youth, and now felt utterly gutted by.

She was being torn in two; how the people she cared for the most could do something so underhanded, how they could possibly think it was in her best interests when everything pointed to the opposite. She could have used their backup, their wisdom, and their guidance.

She'd left in a hurry, excusing herself as civilly as she could but there was no hiding the anger and hurt. She hadn't tarried long at home, either; Shiro was gone and there was some disaster or another going on that she knew she wasn't in a mindset to deal with.

Fortunately, there was one place she could go that she knew she'd be welcomed, that she felt comfortable being vulnerable and open because this was not something she could bear to carry by herself, and there were fewer and fewer people that she felt she could trust.

Reinhardt, an old family friend, a childhood idol, had so far always been there for her in this strange world - whether or not she had realized she needed it at the time. He'd been kind enough to give her a key to his apartment, and when she arrived and she found him gone, she let herself in, made some tea, and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep on the couch while waiting for him to return.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It had been very, very tempting to throw himself into a fight. In order to cope. In order to do something that wasn't seeking out the man in question, and knocking him into the atmosphere with a single swing. Angela had asked him not to -- said it would only give Jack what he wanted.

That was, in all honesty, the only thing staying his hand.

He's still wearing the armor when he returns. He hadn't been to the hellish world -- but one of the trees in the farming district had been felled. Cut into pieces the size of his forearms. Left piled neatly by the side of a road for anyone who needed them.

Because as much as he needed to take out his anger, far be it from Reinhardt not to use that angry energy productively. Besides, it was hard to chop wood with a hammer... and thus he had to focus more. Take his mind off things.

When he steps inside, he's not expecting there to be someone else already there. And while he tries to be quiet, someone wearing Crusader Armor isn't exactly stealthy.

It doesn't help that she's not sleeping very deeply at all, either; she hadn't intended on falling asleep in the first place. She rouses as she hears him, sitting and rubbing her face, raking fingers through her hair, because even though emotionally she feels like she's been hit by a tank she's still too proud not to make an effort to look composed.

Her face says it all, though. She hasn't cried - not yet - but the tension is clear, her eyes carrying something of a haunted nature when she looks up at him. Despite everything, she tries to offer him a smile in greeting., but it's small and fleeting.

Does he know? She wasn't sure, and her trust in people in general has taken a major hit. Reinhardt had been there for her so many times in this world; times when Jack pushed her away, times when she was at odds with her mother. There were some people and good friends, but of anyone Rein was the most solid, the port she'd go to weather storms.

Which would explain her presence here in these circumstances.

"Hope I'm not imposing ..."

"Not at all."

He does stomp in to start shrugging out of his armor, before he says anything more. Something's wrong. He can see that easily. And... part of him can guess what it might be. The same thing that's driven him out and away for so long.

Once he's carefully and neatly piled his armor in its appropriate place in the room, he's moving to the refrigerator. Pulling out a bottle for her, and whatever passes for a sports-type drink in this world. Offering up the bottle, a hard cider, he plunks down in a chair across from her.

"You want to talk?"

She uses the time he's dismantling his armor to sit up, rub her face, and take a couple sips of her now cold tea in an attempt to wake up and sober her from this emotional hangover. She takes the cider with a little appreciative smile - she's not much of a drinker, really, but if anything called for a hard cider, this was it.

She twists the cap off and rolls it between her fingers for a moment. She did want to talk - she knew it would help - but without knowing Reinhardt's current place in all this she wasn't sure how to start. If he didn't know, it'd come as a shock, and she'd have to be careful in her delivery. If he did know ... well, would it make him any different than her mother and Jack, and how could she manage that heartbreak on top of everything else.

Eventually, she pulls in a breath. "I learned possibly the best news, and the worst news, all at once, and it feels like I'm being torn apart inside." She looks at him, her stoic mask breaking somewhat to hear herself voice the inner turmoil. "I wonder --" She stops and looks at her hands, holding onto the bottle, steeling herself. She takes another deep breath, "-- I wonder if you know, about Jack."

"Angela told me."

He says it with heavy finality. Like that's all there is to be said in answer. At all. And really, maybe that really is it. He doesn't know what else there is to say on how he found out. On the discussion that followed.

He's still too hurt. In a lot of respects.

"I feel the same as you." He says it as quietly as Reinhardt ever says anything. Slow and heavy. Like a weight on his own chest. "He lied to us. To all of us."

"My mother knew." It's hardly louder than a whisper. Fareeha looks down at the bottle in her hands, breathes for a few moments, and then takes a drink. "I was such a fool to trust her."

Six years thinking her mother had died, and several months to repair that relationship here, all shattered with one man's selvish endeavors. "He said -- he said it was for our own good." She looked at Reinhardt, her expression now harsh and incredulous. "I can't see how anything good has come from it - and I find it hard to believe this," small motion to the two of them, "was worth it."

She leans forward, elbows on knees, twisting the bottle in her hands before taking another drink. "What could be so important they'd risk loosing us like this."

"Ana..."

He shakes his head. Passing a hand down his face. There's a world of hurt in that name -- because he'd never gotten the truth from her, either. Why she'd vanished. Why she'd left them all. Left Fareeha.

His big shoulders bow. "I don't believe him," he says, and there's an undercurrent of anger in the words too. Something big and slow and heavy. "He should have trusted us. He should not..."

And Reinhardt trails off. He feels like he should have a drink, too, to lessen the sting of this. But the hydration comes first.

"He assumed we would become targets. As if we were incapable of looking after ourselves."

"-- but we already were targets; I was a target." It's the first real emotional outburst she's had since this thing went down, and there's something frightening and cathartic about it. It cracks the edges off her pride, widens the gap through which she allows her feelings to be known. "It already didn't make any difference whether we knew or not; Gabriel already knew. He didn't care. Jack deprived us of backup." And maybe Reinhardt didn't need it, but Fareeha's two experiences with Reaper had proved she did.

"-- and you ... maybe they have an excuse with me; I'll always be that gangly little girl to them. I'll never be strong enough, or big enough or adult enough. But you ... " She takes and angry drink from her cider and drags her arm across her lips after. "There is absolutely no reason why they should not have let you know."

Edited 2017-03-06 06:58 (UTC)

It's a reaction, it's a visceral, emotional one, and Reinhardt can't judge her for it. Won't judge her for it. Or interrupt her. He'd already had his own. And now he just feels wrung out. Pulled apart at the edges.

But it's the last part that rouses him to speak.

"You are always enough, Fareeha."

There's steel in the words. Yes, she will always be younger than he is, and part of him will always seek to protect her. But that does not make her any less valuable. Not to him.

"You have always been enough," he says, with that same steady force in his voice. "You are an adult. You are a soldier. You decide for yourself." A shake of his head. "Jack had no right to take that choice from you, either."

It's disarming - it's always disarming when the steel comes out with Reinhardt, and it's not something she's used to experiencing. It cuts her in a strange way, that he's made her feel so much more capable and worthy, and he's been so much more reliable than Jack. It was a stark contrast, and while it highlights the betrayal she feels from Jack, she's suddenly exceedingly grateful to have Reinhardt in her life.

Not that she ever took him for granted; she was here in the first place because she had very few people she trusted with this level of vulnerability. But, knowing it's true and seeing it first hand are two entirely different things. Jack, whoever this new iteration of Jack was, had constantly made her feel at odds with her own beliefs, that they weren't enough, or were foolish.

She spends a long moment looking down at the bottle in her hands, letting his words sink in. She hadn't realized it, but it's exactly what she needed to hear - from someone she held in great esteem. She looks up at him and speaks in a soft tone, but it's steady, and honest.

"Thank you, Rein. Thank you -- for everything."

They're both feeling betrayed, here. By the people they thought they could count on, most. Jack, Ana... His mind feels like it's spinning with no place to rest. How could Ana have kept this? From him? From Fareeha?

But Ana, Reinhardt finds, is easier to forgive. From his own perspective. After all, if Jack swore her to some sort of secrecy, he could hardly fault her for keeping her word. Fareeha's situation, her relationship to her mother, is wildly different than his own. He also cannot fault her for her feelings on the matter.

It's a conversation he needs to have with Ana herself. As much as it pains him.

"But of course, my friend." He meets her gaze, and though there's only one eye to look back at her, it's steady. He knows he doesn't need to say he means it. She'd know on her own.

"You are one of the strongest people I have known. And that is something to be proud of."

She smiles back at him, and there's a good deal of warmth in it despite how emotional drained she is. Reinhardt, she can trust, and right now that's worth all the medals in the world.

She glances down at her bottle again as she starts to feel herself getting a little verklempt. "I am proud. I've worked very hard to get where I am. I like to think I did it for myself ... I did, but ... Did you know, Jack tried to turn me on myself? Every time I talked to him here, he challenged my views; some of the very same things I had picked up from him. [She shakes her head and slumps back in her seat taking a drink.] He's become something else.

"Any man who tells us we continue to fight for ego is not the man I knew. Not the man I followed."

He shakes his head. And there is bitterness in every word. Every motion. He doesn't want to assume the worst. But he can't help it. He can't help but think something really has changed Jack.

Made him into something else. Like what had, apparently, happened to Reyes, if all the accounts he'd heard so far were true.

"Something has happened. I am... angry with him. For lying for so long. But something has changed him. And we do not know what."

Fareeha is angry he lied, that he lead her on for so long, that he dragged her mother in as well, but she's also sad. Sad to see someone so different and broken then the strong, caring man she'd known. Time wasn't really good to any of them, really, in their interconnections.

"He's... I mean, Rey-Reaper, whatever happened, he had something to do with it, didn't he?" There's a certainty she doesn't want to add, she's afraid to add, because that's admitting their family fell apart from the inside.

"He seems to think it was not just Reyes."

Part of him doesn't want to acknowledge the traitor's new name. To give him some kind of power in it. "Reaper" invokes all kinds of imagery. And Reinhardt does not want to give into that.

"But what do I know. All of the friends I buried were lying. Maybe I am wrong about this, too."

Fareeha shifts and leans over so she can pat her arm.

"At least we've got each other." It's important to her that he knows he has her trust, and she hopes she has his.

"Yes."

Instead of his arm, he shifts, catching her hand in his own. Fiercely so.

"And I will not change that."

Fareeha smiles at him, squeezing his hand back. They had to hold onto what they could, in a moment like this, when everything else felt like it was getting swept away.

"Neither will I."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

closed

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject