Her lips part to ask if they aren't going inside, but it seems like he wants to help her; support her however he can, and the thought of being stared at right now in the cafe doesn't really appeal. So she keeps walking, her hand coming up to cover his where it rests against her.
"I don't like to remember it. But I can't help it sometimes." When she'd been infected on the asteroid and it gave her that overwhelming sense of being alone, she had thought of Antarctica. That place was different that her treks to the Himalayas or Alaska. She had chosen to work alone in those locations.
"When I worked for Overwatch, they sent a team of us to Ecopoint: Antarctica," she begins. Her voice is far from steady, but she'll get it out into the air between them. "Six of us. We were studying the climate there. But this really bad polar storm came in, and damaged our comm tower. It passed, we survived and got back to work. We were just out of contact with the outside world. We figured it was fine, because Overwatch would send supplies, or agents to retrieve us." She sniffles and tries to steady herself for the next bit. "But they didn't show up and we were running out of supplies. So we cryogenically froze ourselves to await rescue. It's a standard procedure. Two of the team were actually cyronics specialists. We went into cryo sleep... and then I woke up." Mei's told him once before that she'd been asleep for nearly nine years, but not the reason why. "There was barely any generator power left, but the computers were still running and I saw how long I'd been asleep. And I couldn't understand why. Then I looked at my team in their tubes. They-- they were all dead. Their tubes malfunctioned. It might have been the generator... I don't know. It would mean the tubes lost power one by one until mine was the only one left. I was alone. And Overwatch hadn't come. They'd been disbanded, and everyone forgot about us."
Tears spill from her eyes, but are stopped short at the lower frames of her glasses. She hates thinking about it; she hates remembering. And then she feels so guilty for not wanting to remember because her team deserves to be remembered. Her survivor's guilt is strong, made even worse by the fact that the generator didn't share power between tubes. It shut them down to provide power for a few, and then for just her. In a way, it's like she stole their lives from them to keep her own going.
She takes off her glasses to wipe at her face with the back of her gloved hand, mumbling out several sorrys in a row.
no subject
"I don't like to remember it. But I can't help it sometimes." When she'd been infected on the asteroid and it gave her that overwhelming sense of being alone, she had thought of Antarctica. That place was different that her treks to the Himalayas or Alaska. She had chosen to work alone in those locations.
"When I worked for Overwatch, they sent a team of us to Ecopoint: Antarctica," she begins. Her voice is far from steady, but she'll get it out into the air between them. "Six of us. We were studying the climate there. But this really bad polar storm came in, and damaged our comm tower. It passed, we survived and got back to work. We were just out of contact with the outside world. We figured it was fine, because Overwatch would send supplies, or agents to retrieve us." She sniffles and tries to steady herself for the next bit. "But they didn't show up and we were running out of supplies. So we cryogenically froze ourselves to await rescue. It's a standard procedure. Two of the team were actually cyronics specialists. We went into cryo sleep... and then I woke up." Mei's told him once before that she'd been asleep for nearly nine years, but not the reason why. "There was barely any generator power left, but the computers were still running and I saw how long I'd been asleep. And I couldn't understand why. Then I looked at my team in their tubes. They-- they were all dead. Their tubes malfunctioned. It might have been the generator... I don't know. It would mean the tubes lost power one by one until mine was the only one left. I was alone. And Overwatch hadn't come. They'd been disbanded, and everyone forgot about us."
Tears spill from her eyes, but are stopped short at the lower frames of her glasses. She hates thinking about it; she hates remembering. And then she feels so guilty for not wanting to remember because her team deserves to be remembered. Her survivor's guilt is strong, made even worse by the fact that the generator didn't share power between tubes. It shut them down to provide power for a few, and then for just her. In a way, it's like she stole their lives from them to keep her own going.
She takes off her glasses to wipe at her face with the back of her gloved hand, mumbling out several sorrys in a row.