Chapter Text
In the moment, change is difficult to measure. An old stone step wears down, the colors on a photograph fade, age spots appear on the back of familiar hands—it is visible, all of it, but it happens so slowly that one hardly notices, save for in hindsight.
But when one does notice, how abrupt it all seems. How did I get here? Ana has often found herself wondering, and sometimes it has been a good thing—her wedding, Fareeha’s birth, the first day she felt at peace post-Crisis—but of late it is painful, more often than not. When did Overwatch become so hated? When did the guilt of her work catch up on her? When did everyone she knows slip away?
Jack. Her best friend, once, he now feels a stranger to her. No longer does she know just what he will do, how far he will go in the pursuit of what he believes to be right. There was a time when she would have backed him on anything, and while in public facing decisions that remains true… privately, she has her doubts. Does he know it? She cannot be certain. If he does, he does not let it show. Perhaps she has become a mystery to him, too.
Sam. She loved him once, on her bad days thinks she loves him still. Even after they divorced, they spoke often; usually, it was under the guise of checking up on Fareeha, but she always knew that he was checking up on her, too, just as she would still like to do to him. But lately, those talks have tapered off. He is finally seeing someone again, and she has been ever more abrasive, tense as she is with the situation at Overwatch, tired as she is of everyone wanting things from her. Maybe their last tense exchange pushed him away for good. Maybe he really was only ever calling her to talk about Fareeha, and the discussions of her life were more incidental. Either way, with their daughter now well grown and out of Ana’s life, they have little enough reason to speak to each other.
Fareeha. This has been the hardest change to stomach. She loves her daughter, she does. Everything she has done, all the people she has killed, all the nights she has spent up at all hours arguing about what direction to take Overwatch in, when and where to intervene, all the moments of peace and of happiness she gave up, it was for her daughter, and the guilt that haunts her now with every shot is about Fareeha too. Always she thinks They have a mother, too, and it is made only worse by the knowledge that Fareeha—her Fareeha, her daughter—is now a soldier. Somewhere out there another mother may be behind the scope of a rifle, thinking the same. It kills her to even consider, jolts her heart and steals her breath. It is unthinkable, something happening to her daughter, and the fear of losing her is paralyzing, but already, Ana has lost her.
This was less gradual a change, perhaps. The drifting was, the two of them going from Fareeha, the thirteen-year-old who still liked to sleep in her mother’s bed when she was sick to adults arguing over whether or not Fareeha had a right to make her own decisions, but the loss? That was sudden, and all Ana’s doing. She thought it was an empty threat, telling Fareeha that if she walked out the door she should not come back until she was ready to apologize; she did not think, then, that there was any risk that Fareeha would not return, could not imagine this future where five years have gone without a word between them.
Still, she finds herself unable, unwilling to apologize. What Fareeha is doing, it is dangerous, it is wrong. After all Ana sacrificed to keep her safe, how can she just throw that away? And how can she see Ana and think that she wants this for herself? How can she ignore the pain it has caused, the suffering, the ways Ana has lost herself and half her life to war, to a promise to protect Fareeha?
Easily, because Ana has never allowed her to see it. Has never allowed anyone to see it.
Sam did, once—just a glimpse, that one week she was back immediately after the Crisis concluded—and it changed the nature of their relationship forever. Once they were equals, and now, she knows, he pities her, thinks she is some fragile thing that needs looking after, thinks he can help her, as if he could possibly understand what it is she has been through. He has no idea.
And Jack? Jack might know, but she herself knows that it is just another thing he cannot put on his plate, right now, would be one burden too much for him to carry, worrying about her. They have enough problems without her cracking, enough fires to put out. He needs to be able to rely on her completely, because there is no one else with him in the eye of this hurricane. Adawe has retired, the UN is increasingly displeased with them, and Gabriel has forsaken them both, too tied up in his Blackwatch machinations to spare a thought to anyone else.
Perhaps that is for the best. She needs everyone under her command to have full faith in her, to know that when she is in the field, they are safe. Without that, they cannot be trusted not to hesitate, and that will get them killed. So no one in Overwatch can know.
No one, save Mina.
Ana tells herself that it is not the same, Mina knowing, because Mina is not in the field, because Mina’s work is so far removed from her own that Mina will never need to follow her orders, because Mina is so geographically distant from her now, away working on the Echo Project, that they now see each other but one weekend a month—two, if they are lucky and Ana swings through Oslo on her way to some other destination. She can think of a thousand excuses why it should not matter that Mina knows, that Mina can read her as well as she can. She can think of a million reasons why they should not be close.
But they are. Somewhere along the way, she grew fond of Mina, and not just the sort of fondness, of warmth that one expects from a friend, an ally, a confidant; she felt, feels, a true affection for Mina. It is not love, because Ana does not think she is capable of such, not anymore, but it is as close as she can come.
(Love asks of someone more than Ana can give, these days. It asks for a selflessness, and all Ana is managing is survival. It asks, too, an openness to being loved which Ana cannot imagine ever possessing again, for what is there in her that remains worth loving?)
Even that not-love, however, is slipping away.
She feels it now when Mina lies beside her. No matter how close they are physically, the distance lingers, widens the space between atoms.
Mina must feel it too. “You’re so far away from me,” she tells Ana on one of their rare evenings together, voice an intrusion into the air between them. “Where did you go?”
(Nowhere, Ana thinks, and everywhere all at once.)
“I’m here,” she promises, presses her hand down a little where it lies on Mina’s chest and feels the heartbeat below warm skin. “I am.” It sounds like a platitude, and maybe it is, but Ana wants it to be true, still wants to be the women they were five years ago, or even two, when Mina felt close even when she was far away. She wants to be able to be present in her own life again, and not to feel like she is just a witness to her own unraveling.
“You aren’t.”
She never has been able to lie to Mina, even when she is lying to herself. Still, she can try, “I am.”
And it is not fully a lie, she thinks. She is as present here as she is anywhere else, these days. Outside of the field, when her focus narrows to the end of her scope, her mind is ever elsewhere, pulled towards the daughter she knows she is no longer able to protect, towards the families both of the people she failed to protect and of the people she did not fail to kill, towards all the thousand things spinning out of Overwatch’s control. She is here as much as she can be, when she is forced to sit with herself.
“I’m not accusing you—” Mina stops, steadies herself. This kind of response used to be unlike her; there was a time when Ana thought she was truly unflappable, watching her keep her cool against all of the accusations leveled her during the Crisis. Ana has always been more under her skin than anyone else, but if anything it was to draw a laugh, a smile, not this preemptive defensiveness. Where did they go wrong, that Mina thinks Ana will misinterpret her statement as an attack? “It’s okay,” Mina continues. “I’m not here either, I think.”
“I know.” She used to be, though. This used to be the only place where they could sit with themselves and just be, free from the expectations placed on them by their world and by themselves. They used to be good at comfortable silence, and Ana looked forward to Mina being here, in her space, looked forward to being able to be alone together.
Now, Mina’s presence, her voice, feels like an encroachment. It should not be. Ana invited her here, welcomed her in, spent the better part of the week looking forward to Mina being here, insofar as Ana looks forward to anything, anymore. She was welcome, should be welcome and fifteen minutes ago, she was, but now… Ana resents her speaking.
Or, not the speaking itself, only what she is speaking of, the uncomfortable truth of the change Ana has noticed within herself, of late, the distance she feels from everything and everyone. She is not sure when it happened, even if she thinks she knows how, and she is not certain, either, how to undo it, to back to the woman who once she was—or if she even wants to.
(She should want to, should want to be that other, better, before-Ana. But that Ana led her here, made all the myriad justifications and minimizations that brought her to a point where she looks back on her life and measures it not in lives saved, but taken. If her happiness led her to those choices, then perhaps she does not deserve to be happy after all. Perhaps this distance is for the best. So she justifies to herself her decisions, even if some part of her knows the truth; she is afraid to try to be happy again, afraid of what it would mean if she failed. At least this way misery can be her choice.)
But Mina does not know any of this. Or, more accurately, Ana has not told her. Mina has ever been able to sense the truth. Once, Ana liked that about her.
Perhaps she does still, because when Mina asks her, “So where do you go?” Ana considers answering honestly. Some part of her still wants to be seen, no matter how ugly she fears she is beneath the front she puts up.
She rolls off of Mina, pulls the sheet up over herself as she sits. At least some part of her need not be exposed.
No matter how much they may have drifted, Mina still knows Ana too well to not see through a lie. Still, it feels impossible to tell the truth, the whole of it, that she finds herself thinking more and more about the chasm that has opened between them. How can she explain that it is more painful when Mina is near her, that she never feels further away than when Ana can feel the warmth of her skin? How could she say as much without hurting Mina? How, when she cannot explain it in a way that does not hurt herself?
Selfishly, she chooses not to speak of it. That this might increase their distance, she knows, but what else is there to do? Honesty is unbearable.
(Once, Ana dared hope she might be able to love Mina. She knew that she could not then, but thought that maybe in time she might become again someone able to love and to be vulnerable enough to be loved in return. It was in vain; she is further from love now than she was then, no matter what fondness remains.)
Still she cannot lie to Mina. Cannot in the sense that it is impossible, and in the sense that on some level she does not want to. To tell the entirety of the truth, the distance she feels from everyone these days, the way her paradoxical proximity to Mina has brought this to the fore, would be too much, but she can say something, can touch on one part of the greater problem. The telling will still hurt her, because if she says it, she must acknowledge that it is real, but Mina has been a balm to many an ache. Despite herself, Ana hopes that she will be so again.
“It’s Fareeha,” says she. “I think—I’ve really lost her.” Even if Fareeha comes back, now, even if they are able to apologize to one another, Ana does not know that she can give of herself what she needs to in order to be there for her daughter—and she would give everything.
There is just nothing left of her to give.
Mina misunderstands, eyes widening in horror. “Is she—”
“No,” Ana is quick to cut her off before the words can even be spoken. To even think that it might happen—she feels a chill. “She’s fine, from what I’ve heard.” It hurts to say that, from what I’ve heard. Her daughter should not be secondhand. “But she applied to be here and I…”
Mina settles again, moves to sit against the headboard beside Ana. “You couldn’t let her.” Her voice is soft in a way that aches. She feels sympathy, or compassion maybe, and Ana knows she does not deserve as much. She is not the injured party here.
“No.”
“But you don’t regret it.” A statement, not a question, Mina knows her like she knows herself—maybe better, these days, and it burns.
There is no judgment in Mina’s voice, but Ana cannot help but judge herself through Mina’s eyes. She should regret it, she thinks, should wish that things had not happened as they did, should say that it was wrong of her to block Fareeha’s recruitment. She hurt Fareeha, and that much she does regret, but her actions?
Those she feels were justified.
“I was going to lose her either way.” Better, she thinks, like this than to a bullet. Fareeha may hate her for this, but she would rather her daughter were alive to do so. What pain she caused was necessary to save Fareeha’s life.
(She needs this to be true.)
A nod from Mina, her expression more pensive now, “I understand.”
“You couldn’t,” Ana says it more sharply than she intends. It is true that Ana has rarely spoken about the rift between herself and Fareeha, finding the subject too painful to touch on beside the occasional update when there is one, but surely Mina must know that there is no understanding a loss like this. Her daughter, alive, is as distant from Ana as if she were dead, as impossible to speak to or make new memories with. Ana has had to mourn her daughter in the hope that she might live.
The grief is unbearable, and hers alone.
“No, not quite but—Aurora. I lost her.” Aurora. It is a name Ana has not heard in years, not from Mina’s lips. When others speak of her and her sacrifice it is done with such reverence that Ana finds it almost jarring to hear her name spoken with such sadness.
In any other circumstance, Mina’s tone alone would provoke sympathy from Ana, would have her moving to provide whatever comfort Mina would allow, but this comparison—it is wrong. Mina may have created Aurora, but she was never her mother, does not know what it is to raise a child, to have dreams for her and to have to let them fall away as her child grows into someone she could never have anticipated. She does not know the combination of pride and pain Ana feels when she thinks of her daughter, cannot imagine what it was to watch her come into her own and to realize that her greatest strengths, all the things Ana wished for her, were going to put her life in danger.
Aurora’s sentience was an accident. Mina wanted to build a better AI, but the actual degree to which Aurora lived—and privately, Ana will concede this much, Aurora lived, rather than merely existing—was not something anyone on her development team anticipated, by Mina’s own acknowledgment. When she came to consciousness, she was already mostly herself, and Mina may have had hopes for her, but they were based on the being Aurora already was; there was none of the anticipation, the fear, the love, the thousand little things which Ana considers the process of mothering. If anything Mina was a mentor, a teacher, a guide, not a mother.
“She wasn’t your daughter.”
“Not exactly.” Ana is glad that Mina does not fight her on that much, at least. “But I lost her, and I—it was that or the God Programs. It was better, the way she went.”
(On this, they can agree. It is far, far better to die free than to be subsumed. Sometimes Ana wishes she had lost her life instead of herself.)
But: “Fareeha had a choice.” All that they sacrificed, Ana, Aurora, and Mina, too, it was so that children like Fareeha would not have to grow into soldiers, that that they could know peace and live life free of the pain that the people before them were forced to endure; Fareeha’s decision to enlist renders that pain pointless.
Mina moves just enough that one of her hands brushes against the back of the hand Ana has left on top of the blanket. “You didn’t,” says she.
Ana bristles at the gentleness. It hurts to be treated with kindness she feels she does not deserve, and it hurts to acknowledge that her pain exists at all; if she could only pretend it were not real then maybe, maybe, she could stop feeling it, if only for a moment.
“No,” she concedes, but nothing more.
Silence settles over them for a minute, and Ana is left to sit with that. There was a time she welcomed this kind of stillness, when she could be alone with her thoughts and not feel the weight of everything collapsing in on her. That time is long gone.
She does not want to speak first, however, does not know what she could say. Anything more on the subject would be saying too much, but to pivot now would only invite more questions.
(Once, talking to Mina was easy.)
“I’m trying, you know,” Mina tells her. “To stop it. To fix things.”
“I know.” Ana might not agree with Mina’s methods, might think that they cannot build their way out of humanity’s problems, not when an endless pursuit of progress is what brought them to this point in the first place, but she can never deny that Mina is trying. If Mina feels guilt for her role in the Crisis, thinks herself responsible, she has never said it, but Ana knows what it is to seek atonement, can tell that this is what Mina is doing. If she does not feel culpable for what happened in the Crisis itself, she at least carries the guilt of Aurora’s death.
“And Echo—it’s going to hurt her.”
“She can’t feel.” She is designed not to, in fact, is built to die and die again, so that others who have but the one life might be spared it. Mina’s very own sacrificial lamb.
(Maybe those detractors who have accused Mina of a God complex are not so far off.)
“Not physically.”
“She… feels things?” She is not supposed to. Feeling is for Omnics, for true artificial intelligence, and Echo is supposed to be but a mimicry. But if Mina means what Ana thinks she does…
Mina shakes her head. “Not exactly. But I’m teaching her—empathy? Or something like it.”
“Empathy,” Ana repeats. “Mina…”
“I know.” Mina’s tone is placating. “I know. It’s not quite that; it’s more that she knows how to respond to—how I would respond to things. But mimicry feels so…” Mina makes a gesture, her free hand grasping at nothing. “She’s more than that.”
“You’re thinking of her like a person.” The observation is not a neutral one; Mina is treading dangerous ground. Still, Ana stops short of reproach.
“It’s hard not to.” Mina’s tone is not defensive, she says everything as if it were a fact. Often, Ana has appreciated that detachment, but here it feels a dangerous abstraction. “She’s a reflection of me. My voice, my face, my thoughts. Aren’t I a person?”
“Obviously.”
(But Ana—there are days when Ana is not. So maybe it is not so simple.)
“And she’s me.” Again, Mina’s tone is that of someone repeating a fact, rather than arguing a point.
Ana’s tone is not quite so detached. There is an edge when she says, “She isn’t you.”
“She’s a part of me.” Maybe Mina believes this, but she does not know what it is to look in the face someone who is truly a part of you, not how Ana does. Whatever Echo is is less than that.
“A piece of you, maybe.”
“A piece.” Unlike Ana, who will fight to the end, Mina has always been good at conceding just enough. “And she’ll grow past me someday, but for now, I’m all she knows.”
“You and Cassidy.” As reluctantly fond of him as Ana has become, she hopes that Echo takes her cues only from Mina. And maybe Ana can take a cue of her own, follow Mina’s de-escalation. “Who knows what bad habits he’s passed on to her.”
As out of alignment as Ana worries they have become these days, Ana can still draw a laugh from Mina. “She hasn’t taken up smoking yet.”
“She may.” Fareeha has, if Sam is to be believed. Abruptly, any humor there was in the situation is gone.
Mina, however, does not pick up on what Ana is thinking. “I hope she’s not quite that human.”
“You have dreams for her?” She should not.
“How could I not? I look at her and I see all this potential, all that she can be.” There is a wonder in her tone, achingly familiar. “I’ll know her limitations someday, but for now—she could become anything.”
(It was like that with Fareeha, but Ana cannot say that. Echo is not a child, is not a daughter, will never be anything but what Mina has made her to be. There will never come a time when Mina has to watch Echo make decisions that she knows will hurt her, never come a time when she has to let her go. That loss is Ana’s alone.)
Ana cautions, “Be careful.”
“Careful?” The breathlessness has left Mina.
This time, Ana will not back down. It is dangerous, for Mina to see Echo this way, dangerous for the project and for Mina, who will only be hurt when the time comes to use her. “You know what you’re building Echo for.” Ana does not say she aloud. Although Mina has made it hard for Ana to think of Echo as an it, Ana should never have indulged Mina in this humanization.
For the first time, Mina’s voice is cold. “Yes. I know her purpose.”
“Do you?” Ana’s voice is clipped. If Mina were really a mother, it would be too terrible to even contemplate, this thing she is building Echo for—and that is why Ana needs to cut this off now. If Mina gets too attached, decides that she cannot allow Echo to be used as intended and stops work before deployment is possible, then the whole project will have been for naught.
(Or, worse, the Echo Project will still come to fruition, and Ana will be the one left to enforce Mina’s contract with Overwatch, will be the one to give the order to have Echo taken from Mina and put to use in the field.)
Mina’s voice is tight, but she looks Ana directly in the eye, says, “No one will let me forget.”
A part of Ana wants to soothe Mina, the way Mina did her, but she knows that to let this attachment continue to grow would be to do them all a disservice. “That’s good.”
There is a challenge in the way Mina tilts her chin. “Is it?”
“You wouldn’t want to get too close. She won’t be yours forever.” She again. It just slips out.
“Who are we talking about now?” This is the Mina the rest of the world sees when they call her morals into question, the one who turns their accusations back on them, observations all too pointed. This is not Ana’s Mina, is a stranger in her bed whose words are meant to wound.
And they do. They hit Ana like a blow, steal the air from her lungs and knock her off kilter. Always, lately, Ana is braced for an attack, everywhere she sees danger, and from everyone an accusation. In every time, and every place, she has been ready to defend herself in any way a situation calls for—except here. Except now. Except with her.
Mina, it seems, was equally as unprepared for her words, backpedals immediately. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“No.” Ana does not let her finish the apology, swats off the hand that Mina placed on her shoulder, conciliatory. “You meant it.”
There is tension in the silence that follows, before Mina takes a deep breath. “It’s true.” At least she still respects Ana enough to make that admission.
(Ana may have been blindsided by the accusation, but this response she could foresee. Mina might have wanted to back out of the argument, might have regretted saying things so harshly, but she always, always means what she says.)
“It isn’t.” Echo is not Fareeha; Echo is a thing. And Fareeha was not born to suffer.
“You wanted to control her but Ana—you can’t. None of us can.” There is pain there, Ana knows, but she finds in this moment that she does not care. Let Mina hurt, if she chooses.
“You aren’t a mother,” and Ana knows this is unfair, because Mina wanted to be one, once, tried. But Mina was not fair to her, either, and all Ana knows is how to fight back. “You don’t understand.”
Seeing the hurt flash across Mina’s face ought to feel good, or at least gratifying, ought to feel like a point won. That is what Ana is trained to do, to go for the kill, but of late many of her victories have felt hollow.
And it is Mina who gets the coup de grâce. “I guess not. Because I could never reject her.” Not like you did.
(What hurts worst is that it is demonstrably true. Even in the Crisis, Mina stood by the Omnics, defended them when all good sense would have demanded otherwise, even when it could have meant her death; Ana could not even support Fareeha’s decision to enlist. If Mina were a mother, she would be a better one.)
“Leave.” Ana tells her. “Now.” Her voice is tight, controlled, but she knows that if she says anything more—
But Mina leaves. For a moment, Ana thinks she might not, but Mina visibly chokes back whatever she thought to say, shakes her head, eyes closed and fists tight, and stands to dress without saying another word. Quick as she is, her movements are not as smooth as usual, made jerky by anger and the tension in her body. Ana does not have to see her face to know her expression, the way she will be biting her lip, the wrinkle that appears on her brow.
The very intimacy with which they know one another’s pain was necessary to deal it. An opposing soldier could kill Ana, but they could never do this to her, could never strike at her soul itself. It hurts more than anything.
(And Ana did it to Fareeha. In an attempt to protect her daughter, she wounded her more deeply than any enemy combatant ever could. But she was right. She was right, and like Mina she will not apologize for that. Like Ana herself, Fareeha knew Ana meant her words.)
Yet for a moment, when Mina crosses the threshold, Ana thinks to stop her, to bid her Wait. There is no sense in it; Ana is angry, still, too much so to want to look at Mina, but she has the impulse, nonetheless.
It is not about Mina, she knows, is about the last time she ordered someone leave, the regret that has followed her since then, but if Ana could not mend her relationship with Fareeha, she certainly cannot do so with Mina. For the past few years, a gulf has been growing between them, and Ana cannot bridge it under the best of circumstances; she has no reason to believe she could manage to reach an understanding with Mina if she does not feel that she can reach her.
And she does not want to, she does not. Mina hurt her, not the other way around. Mina was cruel, was wrong, and it should not fall to Ana to patch that up. She should be able to have her anger, at least for now, should be allowed to let it burn through her.
But the bed is empty, and cold. Even where Mina lay, Ana can find no warmth.