Chapter Text
This is a story about guilt. Sometimes, one knows that they have done wrong, and knows, too, that they must do something to ameliorate the situation, feels the weight of their mistakes, the knowledge of their impact pressing down on them, and is compelled to make amends. Fareeha is not the type who feels guilt often, is more the type to fix what she can and to move on from there. rather than to dwell over long on the things she can no longer change. Mistakes in her line of work are often fatal, and if she allowed it she knows she could let her guilt swallow her—but what would be gained from that? It would not bring back the dead, would only make her less productive, less able to continue their work to make certain that the deaths of her comrades were not in vain.
So she does not let herself dwell on guilt. She feels it, she learns from it, she fixes what she can, and she moves forward. It is not a perfect solution, and sometimes, in the hours between midnight and the dawning of a new day, her guilt does catch up to her, leaves her sleepless. Most of the time, however, she can handle it in a way that is healthy, that neither denies her feelings nor leaves her trapped in them. Guilt moves her forwards, compels her to do better, to be better, and then is released.
(It does pop back up, now and again, but she does much better than most, she knows, at coping with this. She is not perfect, of that she is well aware, has made mistakes which haunt her, but would rather use that feeling to honor those that were lost than to waste her energy dwelling on hypotheticals. If there is anything she could have done better, she will do it next time. The past is just that—passed—and it does nothing to try and live in it.)
Her mother has always been the sort to dwell, however, to an unhealthy degree. This is not something Fareeha was ever very aware of, as a child, but it is glaringly obvious now, with the perspective granted her by hindsight and adulthood, as well as by the fact that she no longer lionizes Ana, is intimately familiar with her shortcomings. Regret, the cousin to guilt, has always followed her mother, chased her away from Overwatch and was nipping at her heels the whole way back.
Now, she voices those regrets, gives word to the pain she has felt over her role in their falling out and the way she hurt Fareeha in a misguided attempt to protect her, and it is impossible for Fareeha not to see.
Too visible, too, is the way the guilt is killing her mother, the way it stripped her away from her all that she was, in the old Overwatch, put her in a hole she is still clawing her way back out of now. Guilt took Ana away from herself, and away from Fareeha, in turn, and now it haunts her still, colors their every interaction.
A small, unkind part of Fareeha thinks that her mother has much to feel guilty for, but it is obvious how much her mother is hurting, and therefore difficult to maintain that sentiment when faced with the reality of how it is her mother is coping. In truth, she does not want her mother to suffer.
(It is not quite that simple, of course. On her less charitable days, Fareeha thinks that even her mother’s guilt is self-serving. Ana’s self-flagellation falls on the right side of performative, but still—it would be better, surely, to do something about how it is she is feeling, and to release the guilt in that way, rather than to wear it so openly. What does that achieve? But, of course, her mother is trying to make amends, in her own way, and her grief over the pain her actions caused is genuine.)
So when the day comes that Ana invites her to dinner, Fareeha accepts. Knowing her mother as she does, she assumes that the dinner will be one that was pre-made, and that the invitation to dinner, specifically, is so that her mother can get her in one place for long enough to attempt to initiate a conversation, knowing that she will not leave midway through her meal.
She is surprised, therefore, to find the smell of fattah greets her at her mother’s doorway. At first, she thinks she is perhaps mistaken, but no, when her mother opens the door for her, there is the lamb browning on the stovetop. Even more strange, her mother shoos her away when she offers to help. Once, her mother would have been grateful for the excuse to surrender the kitchen.
Instead, Fareeha is left waiting not quite patiently as her mother assembles the fattah, layering pita, rice, lamb, and sauce. The work would be more quickly done by two, but as fragile as things are, now, between she and her mother, she does not think it would be wise to point that out. Instead, she stands by, lets her mother attempt to make something presentable of the disparate parts.
On the whole, Fareeha does not like to think of herself as a judgmental person, but her mother has a way of bringing out the worst in her, and so she cannot help but look at the finished product with a critical eye. It is not as if she is much better of a cook, herself—she knows well enough that she is serviceable, at best, that she can follow a recipe and produce something that is fine, but nothing so good that anyone will ever ask her for a recipe—but it is easier to look at Ana’s cooking, and to complain about that, than it is to look at her other shortcomings, the ones that led them to this dinner.
Still, she says thank you, and she sits down to eat. There is much too much food for two people; whether that is the result of Ana having learned to cook in her own, much larger family, or from the fact that she did not reduce a recipe, Fareeha is not certain, but much of the small table is crowded by the dish, with little space remaining for the side salads, or even for their own plates. The table of her childhood was larger, meant to fit not just the two of them but Jack, Gabriel, and all the others who might want to join for dinner. It was still, most often, just the two of them, but Ana needed space to entertain, then, in a way that she does not now.
It makes Fareeha sad, the shrinking of her mother’s life, but what can she do about it?
(Everything is smaller, in this iteration of Overwatch.)
Different, too, is that her mother now prays before the meal. This is not wholly new—they always did so when visiting her mother’s family—but was something they rarely bothered with, when it was just the two of them. Fareeha is, at least, somewhat used to it by now, as Angela does so, but Fareeha has always gotten the sense that Angela’s prayers are more born out of habit than anything; her mother’s she knows, are not. Although Fareeha does not think that a bad thing, it is certainly not the sort of change she expected, when she imagined what it would be, to have one more chance at a dinner with her mother.
Of course, when she imagined that, she thought her mother was dead, and was not picturing Ana even as she was then, but rather imagined the best parts of what she believed her mother to be, in her teen years, the Ana she was shown, not the Ana that actually existed, when no one was watching.
Looking back with the benefit of all that she now knows, she can see the cracks in that façade, can tell that her mother was never so happy or so confident as she made herself seem, when she spoke to Fareeha at the end of a long day. A comment here, a long pause there—if she had been looking for it, then perhaps she could have seen it, and she would like to believe that given more time, had she and her mother remained on speaking terms, she might have noticed something as she matured, might have been able to help before things reached the point that they did, but she cannot know, for certain, if anything would have been different. After all, her mother has never wanted her help, has never even wanted for Fareeha to know too much about her inner workings.
So what else could she have imagined, but what her mother chose to show her? Not an adult conversation, certainly, not one in which her mother took responsibility, because that would mean acknowledging vulnerability. Not this, either, in which her mother had time to cook—made time to do so. Not these small, unfamiliar quarters, in a space wholly her mother’s, none of the trappings of her own life present, the rich colors her mother prefers made all the darker by the lack of window.
What she pictured when she yearned for one last chance to speak with her mother was, in truth, a scene from her teenage years: the two of them sharing a too-late dinner over takeout containers she had picked up on the way home from practice. It would be reheated, because her mother called for them to be ready when she hoped to be leaving work, and was drawn into something else for an hour, two. Fareeha would wait to eat until they were ready, anyway, because she wanted to spend that time with her mother, was not pulled away by any one of a thousand teenage distractions that night. It would be a late spring evening, and the window in their dining room would be open, the curtains at her mother’s back fluttering occasionally in a gentle breeze. They would not have spoken about it, about Fareeha enlisting or her mother dying, would not have mentioned anything approaching Overwatch, would have kept the conversation light as they chatted about Fareeha’s day at school, or their plans to finally, finally go on a vacation, just the two of them—no stressful visits to extended family or cutting things short due to a threat to world peace. Sometimes, Fareeha would have struggled to find the right word, because her mother wanted dinner conversation to be in Arabic only, and Fareeha never felt as comfortable in it as Ana did, back then, but her mother would be patient and wait for her to figure it out.
These days, she is far more confident in her ability to speak her mother’s tongue, having lived in Egypt for several years. There will be no hesitation, now quiet encouragement from her mother. She knows well how to say what it is she wants—she just does not know what she wants to say. Those imaginary conversations have no place in this reality.
Her dream dinner was an idealized one, pieced together from many fond memories; the reality was never quite so neat, so perfect, but it was close enough to her reality that it felt like maybe, just maybe, had she more time, it would have happened.
This is far from that perfect evening, in so many ways, is not what she pictured, late at night when she was alone with her thoughts and could admit to herself that for all that she was angry, she missed her mother, too. It has not, either, been the reconciliation she felt she was owed, when first she learned her mother was alive. Ana has apologized, and more than once, but still, they do not feel reconciled. Fareeha fears that true forgiveness may be beyond her for some time.
Yet her mother is trying. Fareeha knows she is. This dinner is clearly meant to be an olive branch, and Fareeha was invited, rather than expected to come, or ambushed with whatever conversation is coming. If she had wanted to, she could well have turned her mother down—and she thinks that this version of her mother would have accepted that.
Sometimes, Fareeha wishes her mother would not try so hard; it would be easier, she thinks, if they could fight again. At least that she remembers how to do. As it is, when she is angry, Ana just accepts it, accepts that she deserves Fareeha’s ire, and that feels hollow, or worse. Uncertainty does not suit her mother, it never has.
But it is hard, she knows, to be certain, when things between them are so fraught. When Ana tries to make small talk, Fareeha more often than not shoots her down.
“How was Malta?” asks her mother as she puts food on Fareeha’s plate.
“I’d prefer we didn’t talk about work,” says she, and even to her own ears, it sounds clipped.
“I’m sorry.”
Ana finishes serving Fareeha and begins serving herself, and does not seem to find a new topic of conversation in the meantime. “The weather was lovely,” Fareeha offers up, “And there was the most beautiful beach near where we landed. You would love it.”
She takes a bite, then, of the fattah, has to struggle not to react. It is far too tangy to be pleasant—too much vinegar in the white sauce. Her mother gives her something else to react to:
“I haven’t been to the beach in years. It’s much too exposed.”
Fareeha does not know why that surprises her—it is not like life after her not-death was a vacation for her mother, given all she went through, but still, it hurts to think that the last few years her mother has thought of everywhere she has gone only in terms of sightlines and cover. She wants to address it, but knows that there is nothing she can say that can change the situation, and is afraid besides that her mother will not want anything that might feel like pity.
“It’s been a while for me, too,” she says instead, because this is safe, “And I’ve been here in Gibraltar for… just about two years now!” It is a little forced, even to her own ear, the casualness of the statement.
Ana clicks her tongue, “What have you been doing?”
“This and that,” says she. “I’ve actually gotten into climbing.”
“Rock climbing?” Her mother sounds genuinely surprised.
It is far from the dinner she dreamed of, but it is a start, at least.
In time, if they force themselves to pretend for long enough, they might find their stride again, will relearn how to speak to one another with kindness. Maybe, though, it will be like her mother’s cooking—made no better by repetition.