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Hana Song never gives up. Never. She’s never looked up a walkthrough, never searched for a strategy guide, never thrown her controller away and left to get some snacks and calm her temper after that OP-as-fuck boss manages to one hit kill her again. No, she just keeps going, on and on and on. Through the night if she has to. When she was younger she’d skipped school once or twice as was necessary. Throws herself at the challenge again and again until she either falls asleep at the controls or conquers it. She’s a prideful girl, too stubborn to let something as minor as a computer generated monster that constantly sends her back to the last save point or a borderline sadistic puzzle get her down, won’t let it beat her.
That’s what makes her a great mech pilot, and an even better public face for MEKA. Just fight the omnic, again and again. Keep on going until it’s destroyed eventually. Defeating it isn’t good enough, that’s not how you get the good ending. Relish in the challenge, in its changing tactics. Really, it’s just like one of those borderline unbeatable boss battles, and if Hana has learned anything from video games it’s that finally obliterating that pain in the ass is the most satisfying feeling of all.
The problem is that she’s a tenacious gamer, a determined gung-ho girl, and she’s learned perhaps a few too many life lessons from video games. And even though she’s not stupid and she knows that video games and life are separate and that this Omnic could easily kill her and her entire MEKA squad – it already has, it took Min-Seo last year and both Ye-Jun and Hyun-Woo, who’d been best friends, who’d always had each other’s backs, before that – it’s still much easier to just treat the whole affair like it’s a game, just imagine she’s playing on Hard Mode and keep on going and pretend that none of it is actually real beyond the window of her mech. Stream it, drop a few jokes. It keeps her calm, and she’s learned by now that keeping calm is the best way to win.
The problem is that Hana Song is used to playing with save points. She’s used to having multiple attempts and nothing to lose except her pride.
“Oops! Look at him fly! Git gud, scrub!”
Her eyes flick to the corner of the screen as the comments speed past. SAVAGE writes one viewer. I LOVE YOU D.VA says another for the tenth time that stream. One person asks if he’s okay – after all, Jun-Seo literally just got sent ricocheting across the battlefield, his mech rolling and tumbling as he desperately attempts to stabilise it. Hana doesn’t fret about it – sure, his mech looks slightly battered, but he’s got a helmet on and his seatbelt on. They tried to make her wear a helmet, but she refused. Cramps her aesthetic, makes it feel a bit too dangerous and real.
“Hana,” comes Ji-Min’s voice. “Can you please not say your stream comments over the comms, please?”
Hana considers shooting a comment back, but she just disconnects from the team communication frequency to appease her. Ji-Min’s just jealous of her, anyway, because Hana’s the cute celebrity of the team. Constantly accuses her of not understanding that they’re a team, they have to work as a team. Also apparently has beef with the whole concept of her streaming their battles and treating it like a video game. “They recruited gamers, what did they expect?” Hana had shot back once. Ji-Min had just sighed.
“Jeez,” she says, with an exaggerated sigh, mimicking the memory. “What a griefer!” Never mind that’s not really the applicable phrase – her audience likes it when she uses slang like that.
It’s petty, but she gets a warm feeling of satisfaction from seeing all the comments in support of her scrolling up the side, piling up so fast she hardly has time to read each one. Somebody asks her to marry them, she thinks, though it’s gone so quickly that she can’t be sure. She doesn’t blame them, it’s actually quite a common occurrence.
She’s forced to look away as the omnic attempts the same swipe on her with one colossal leg. Hana just activates her boosters to fly up and out of the way. It was only really intended as a dodge, nothing more, but the telltale clunk and the impact as she lands tells her that she’s actually on the monster. She feels the corner of her mouth quirk up in a lopsided smirk.
“Oh wow, look who’s on the omnic now! D.Va taking the lead of these noobs, that’s who!”
The briefing that the MEKA squad received earlier had outlined their target. Apparently, they had an approximate location for the command centre, and they were to shoot at the armoured exterior until they penetrated it. The technique they were told to use was to fly up and shoot; unfortunately, the omnic had taken to sweeping them out of the sky. She’s pretty sure they’re all discussing a new tactic now (ironically, on the very communication frequency she just disconnected from) but that’s not how she rolls. The team only ever holds her back, and they always call her plans too risky, and they always get angry when she pulls it off. That’s why she’s number one. That’s why she’s the best at what she does. Unpredictable may as well be her middle name.
She almost falls off when the omnic shakes the limb in question in attempt to rid itself of her, so she flies up further and nestles herself in an alcove. Risky, it could crush her, but she just takes the opportunity to wipe the snow off her window before carrying on. The snow annoys her – she really, really hates anything obstructing her view. She doesn’t like people who blame the difficulty of the game for them losing, but poor cameras are just unfair, as is poor visibility, as is the fact that weather conditions are much more of a pain in the real world than they are in video games. Hana doesn’t feel the cold inside her mech (before they were properly insulated, they once fought in the snow and her fingers felt so numb she could hardly use the controls), but she still wishes that, just once, they could fight somewhere sunny. Maybe she’d be able to sunbathe after their work was done that way. Hana would make a comment like that to her stream, but she really doesn’t want to see the numerous swimsuit comments that would appear as a result.
Hana carries on with this tactic, flying from section to section, up the mech, only landing for long enough to let her boosters recharge. She’s pretty sure the team radio must be alive with disdain, but she doesn’t care. No risk, no reward. They can watch and learn from a master. She keeps on talking to the streamers, explaining her technique, busting out a joke or two, making sure to wink at the camera whenever she cuts it particularly close just to reassure them that she’s totally in control.
(Someone just comments with Y and she bursts out laughing.)
The problem starts when the omnic starts to understand what she’s doing, and her next flight is met with a hail of bullets. That’s fine, her Defence Matrix protects her from the front. Except the omnic realises this and starts shooting her mech from behind, and she’s not even sure where the bullets are coming from but she hears the impact and sees the damage warning flash up on the corner of her screen. SHIELDS DAMAGED. DISENGAGE FROM COMBAT.
Hana knows that she could disengage by using her boosters to fly back to the ground and join the rest of her squad. But that would reverse all the progress she’s just made. She chews the inside of her cheek in irritation as she deliberates. She can’t turn to block the rear bullets with her Defence Matrix, because that would interrupt her flight path. And she can’t try to just stay in a blind spot because she hardly even knows where the bullets are coming from and doesn’t have the time to work it out.
She always hated maths at school. Loathed it. But Hana’s quite good at working out how much damage she can sustain, even if it’s only an approximation, and even though her mech doesn’t have HP in the traditional sense and there’s no numbers onscreen or DPS indicators or anything, she figures that she can make it to the predicted control centre if she just pushes on. It’s risky, but hey, she’s a nineteen-year-old pro gamer fighting an omnic the size of a small town that has, coincidentally, destroyed more than its fair share of similar sized towns. There’s very little about the situation that isn’t risky.
D.Va, are you okay? Comes one worried comment from the corner of her screen. It’s gone pretty soon, but its tone of concern strikes deep. A lot of her friends from school watch her streams, she remembers. Her father does occasionally too.
But you don’t win a game by panicking, so she grins and gives a thumbs up. “Watch this omnic get pwned, guys. D.Va FTW!”
Sometimes even she cringes when watching replays of her streams – but hey, it’s all part of the aesthetic, and the familiar slang brings back memories of when she didn’t use it in potentially dangerous situations. It keeps her heart rate steady most of the time, except now it’s not doing too good a job. She grips the controls tighter. Hana Song never gives up. She always wins in the end.
She carries on her ascent, but takes to shooting at joints while she’s recharging her boosters. It’s pretty ineffective, but occasionally she causes some damage, and that upsets the omnic’s balance – which, luckily for her, upsets its aim. She’s still taking more than her fair share of bullets, as the flashing signs on the screen warn her, but it’s mitigated enough for her to carry on. By her approximations, she’s almost there now anyway. Not far to go. She chances a glance down and the rest of the team look distant, small, tiny even; she’s glad she can’t make out their faces.
However, when she finally lands on the approximate location of the command centre, Hana receives a reminder of exactly why this omnic is so dangerous – they don’t quite understand it. They don’t know all the tricks up its sleeve. So when she sees a shadow, and looks up and sees something about to crush her, and her mind races with the possibilities of exactly which appendage it could be, and her heartrate quickens, she lets something slip that she would never, never say in a stream otherwise:
“Shit.”
It’s panicked, it’s not cute and it’s not D.Va, it’s Hana and she’s just realised that she’s about to die if she doesn't do something quickly. The comments section starts to flood, but she has less important matters on her mind right now. The comments scrolling across screen only panic her further, only make it more difficult to focus on a solution.
She’s a quick thinker, however (it’s that reflex that got her into a mech in the first place), so two possible outcomes make themselves clear in her mind. Outcome one, she uses her boosters to fly off and back to the ground. It’s a long way down, and it would definitely damage her mech – the boosters aren’t rockets, they’re not meant to travel such distances, the landing would be a pain. It would probably put her out of action for the rest of the battle, and she would have achieved nothing.
Outcome two, she gets crushed to death.
The problem is that Hana’s a tenacious girl, a determined gamer, and she never gives up. She always has to win. So she decides to take outcome three, the one they’ve explicitly been told to never use except as an absolute last resort.
The smile she gives to her streamers is shaky, panicked. If adrenaline weren’t roaring through her system, she’s pretty sure there’d be tears in her eyes.
A few buttons pressed. A sign pops up on screen. Initiate Self Destruct Sequence? Y/N. There’s a bunch of warnings underneath it, but she really doesn’t have the time to read them, and she's pretty sure that it's nothing she hasn't already accepted as a result. She’s already cutting it close, already sees the shadow growing and knows that if she doesn't act soon it's lights out, so she chances one last word for the viewers.
“Thanks for the love, guys. D.Va out!”
And then she presses the button.
One second she’s in the mech, the next she’s been flung out of it. She feels the cold now. The wind, the snow, her high speeds. It feels like icy knives are slicing her to ribbons, and she’s raw, she’s vulnerable, she’s exposed. Hana doesn’t even want to look down, can’t look down, because she already knows that the fall will kill her, there’s no need, and she swears it feels like she left half her internal organs behind. She hears the sound of the mech blowing up, hardly audible over the roaring of the winds and the five-hundred-mile-per-second drumming of her heart, but her hair’s obstructing her face and she can only see some debris that flies past her. At the very least she would have damaged the armour plating. Maybe the rest of the squad can do something with that.
She can’t breathe. She thinks she might be in tears, but she’s not sure. She closes her eyes.
This isn’t a game, and she’s only got one life, but one of her golden rules of gaming still stands as she plummets down to her death:
Hana Song always wins.
She wasn’t expecting to ever open her eyes again, but she does. And it’s warm, too warm, so warm it feels unpleasant and smothering, which tells her this isn’t on the battlefield. There’s the horrible smell of antiseptic at the back of her throat, sharp and permeating, that seems to infiltrate every breath, and it makes her want to throw up. She can’t feel any pain, however. She can hardly feel anything, and when she tries to stretch her limbs to check that they're still intact it's as if she's become an entirely different entity to her body, which makes her briefly wonder if she actually is dead. But the smell of antiseptic, however repugnant, anchors her to reality. She’s still in reality, which means that she’s still alive.
Opening her eyes is difficult, and she squints in the light. Bright light, fluorescent light in a room that’s clean and white. A hospital, she realises. She’s in hospital.
And she’s alive. She supposes she should be more happy, but her brain is still trying to catch up and process the information. This doesn’t feel right, and that sense of there being something undeniably wrong about the situation lodges itself in her ribcage and makes each breath a pained one. Hana never feels guilt, really. She gained a reputation as a gamer for showing no mercy to her opponents, employing every trick in the book in the most savage way possible. But this is different. It almost feels like she’s cheated – because Min-Seo and Ye-Jun and Hyon-Woo all played it safe and died, and she practically sacrificed herself in a blaze of glory and is still alive. She’s alive. She has to keep repeating that thought.
There are people surrounding her before she’s even aware of it, but the fog of her mind manages to clear enough for her to make out their faces, understand what they’re saying. She must have been out for ages, but even having so many people in the same room as her is instantly exhausting. A nurse props her up against some cushions (which really does not diminish the feeling of helplessness), and that gives her a better view. Her father’s there, sat by her side, and behind his glasses there are dark crescents under his eyes. He hasn’t said anything, and she doesn't suppose that he will. Jun Song has always been a quiet man, a man who fades into the background. Even before she moved out, they barely saw each other, with him working at the office all day and her cooped up gaming all night, and she has the sardonic thought that he's probably already stressed about the leave he's taken from work. Commander Myeong, head of MEKA, is there too, tight collar and uniform appearing to constrict him. Two doctors, and two nurses.
There’s someone else, stood slightly behind the rest of the group, who stands out distinctly, so much so that the moment Hana lays eyes on her she can't tear them away again. A woman with golden hair, tied into a messy ponytail. She looks like a doctor, with her white coat, and when she catches Hana looking at her she smiles warmly, a smile that surprisingly enough doesn’t look forced like everyone else's in the room seems to be. Hana doesn’t recognise her, and she looks completely out of place among the rest. It's simultaneously intriguing and concerning.
“How are you feeling, Hana?” One of the doctors asks. She flicks her gaze towards him. When she speaks, her voice sounds horrendous, like she’s chain smoked ten packs a day, but she manages to respond with some trace of mirth in her tone, and despite herself her mouth twists into a pained smile.
“Like shit, thanks.” What do they expect her to say? This isn't a stream, she's not about to embellish the details to please anyone. But she veils it in humor anyway, because it's much easier to joke about nearly dying than to stop and actually confront your own narrow escape.
She looks towards Myeong. He’s a man in two minds about her, and she knows it – on the one hand, she was a great propaganda figure, face of the squad and an invaluable skill and source of public support. On the other hand, he’d always shared the same sentiments as the rest of the team. Stick to plans, stick with the squad, don’t go rogue and do your own thing. He’ll have a field day lecturing her later, if they ever even consider putting her in a mech again (this gives her the chilling thought that she might not be able to ever get in a mech again). She doesn’t address that now, however, because there’s more important matters at hand to discuss. “Did I destroy it?”
“You defeated it, yes.”
No. No. No.
Then her face falls and she leans her head back on the pillow, turning her face to the side and burying her nose in her thick dark locks. Her hair is greasy and disgusting, from how long spent in that bed, and it’s like all the energy she gained upon waking up has been punched out of her and she's winded of any capacity to put on a brave face, to appear even slightly positive. Myeong’s a careful man, always careful with his orders, with his battle tactics, with his choice of words. She gets the subtext instantly.
“So it retreated. It’s going to come back again.”
Myeong clears his throat. “Affirmative.”
“But I don’t understand.” Her voice cracks slightly with the strain of emotion. She hates this. Hana’s never felt such a lack of control over herself – she’s always been cheerful, energetic, sometimes cruel but never weak – anything but the sappy emotional mess she feels like right now. And there's so many people in the room. If she's going to have an emotional breakdown, she wants to do it on her own, not with adults clustered around to offer cold comfort and empty sympathies and perfunctory forced smiles. But here she is. “It self-destructed at the command core.”
Her commander speaks automatically. “Where we approximated the command core to be was in fact the location of one of its major fuel containers. The self-destruct damaged it significantly, and the omnic was forced to reteat.” She wonders how many times he’s had to say that explanation.
“But it wasn’t destroyed.” Hana hisses, and her hands twitch as if about to ball into fists. She’s angry now, and if she hadn’t just avoided death she’d be raging. Now she just seethes. Her father murmurs a quiet ‘darling’ next to her and reaches out a hand, but she snaps around to glare at him and the hand retreats.
She always won. That had been her comfort, that even if it killed her, she’d done something that nobody else could, she'd won the day, she was undisputed number one. And even though she knows that Myeong and his colleagues are effectively fumbling in the dark, she can’t stop resentment from bubbling up in her chest. She’d failed because his intel was wrong, and she knows it’s not his fault, deep down. It’s nobody’s fault. Yet Hana is livid, and it’s made even worse by the fact that she doesn’t have the energy to vent it. Instead it kicks around inside her chest like a caged animal, howling and throwing itself at her ribcage in its desperation to be released, and its existence pains her.
The golden haired woman speaks, having been watching the conversation with keen eye. Her Korean is fluent, so much so that it's surprising to hear it coming out of her mouth, but there’s some kind of accent that Hana can’t quite place. Something European, she thinks, which raises more questions than it answers. She never did pay much attention in school, so guessing the continent is the best that she can do. Her voice is strange, just like she is, completely out of place – but there’s something undeniably soothing in her tone. Motherly, even.
“You were very brave, Hana. Commander Myeong here told me that the omnic will probably take a few years to recover. You got closer to defeating it than anyone else.”
It doesn’t matter is what Hana wants to say. Close isn’t good enough. It never has been. If you get close to saving a life, that person's still dead, and there's no reset button or second attempt. But she really, really doesn’t want a moral lecture right now, so she cuts the crap and goes right to the important question, the one that's been plaguing her since she first opened her eyes again.
“How am I still alive?” She demands sharply, perhaps excessively so, but her temper's down to the wire and manners are the least of her concerns for the time being, if they had ever even been otherwise in the first place. The woman doesn’t falter, just carries on in the same tone, and something about her refusal to be affected makes Hana feel even worse, like she’s a child having a tantrum for attention who's not being dignified with what she craves. It's not what she feels, that's not what it is but the woman's blithe continuation holds the same level of frustration, makes Hana feel embarassed.
“Were it not for the snow, the fall would have killed you outright. It almost did, but one of your comrades brought you straight back for medical attention. Ji-Min, I think her name was?”
One of the other doctors spoke up then. His voice annoyed her even moreso than the blonde woman's. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t gently melodic, and she found herself scowling at the interruption, wanting him to just shut up already. “We were lucky that Doctor Ziegler agreed to fly over to help. It’s thanks to her that you’re alive.”
The golden haired woman chuckles. “I’ve brought people back from worse. At least all of her limbs were still attached to her, even if they were-” She trails off when she catches Hana's eye and appears to abandon that conversation strand.
Ziegler. The name sounds familiar, and she knows she’s at least heard it in passing before, but she can’t make the connection and at the time being it seems like far too momentous a task to even attempt. It’s at that point that she closes her eyes and ignores them until they leave, pointedly not answering a single question tossed her way, because Hana feels tired and angry and disappointed all at once and she really doesn’t have the patience to deal with anyone. She knows it’s ungracious, but she honestly doesn’t care.
She decides she doesn’t like sleeping, because her dreams are all filled with snow and falling, falling, falling, and when she looks ahead it’s still there, this monstrosity, and no matter how far she falls it always feels the same distance away.
When she wakes again, she’s not alone, and Hana instantly starts sulking again. She doesn’t think she ever stopped sulking, really. It’s childish and bratty but as far as she’s concerned she has the right to sulk right now, so sulk she will.
The person has their back to her, but Hana can tell just from the golden crown of hair, that seems to shine in the too-bright light, that it’s Doctor Ziegler. She stands in front of a table laden with flowers and cards. From her fans, she supposes. She imagines word of her near-death experience must have gotten around fast. Once upon a time, she'd squeal to think that she of all people had fans from across the globe. Now looking at the pile of gifts gives her a headache. The internet must be alive with her name, now, trending on every social media website. Thousands had literally watched her apparently die mid-stream.
“Those are mine.” She says, perhaps a little too petulant. Doctor Ziegler turns around. She’s holding a stuffed rabbit, a large pink one embroidered with green eyes and a mischievous grin, just like D.Va's logo. There's an official merchandised version, but this one is different, handmade. Upon seeing her the doctor smiles again, gentle as if Hana hadn’t just snapped at her.
“You must have a lot of fans.”
“Yeah, I do.” She doesn’t know why she’s being so defensive, but she feels as though if she isn’t this doctor will find a way to placate her, and she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to feel weak, she wants to be angry, to cling on to this indignation because at least it gives her a spine. Without it she just feels like a failure and a mess. Without it she feels like sobbing, like blubbering, and now she only feels like crying.
Doctor Ziegler walks up to her, pulls up a chair and sits herself down, still holding the rabbit. Hana makes sure to fix her with a glare, arms folded, jaw squared in annoyance. The tension hurts more than a little and she idly wonders how many painkillers were in her system during their last meeting, but she ignores it.
“Hana, do you believe in heroes?”
Well, that's a curveball.
Hana’s eyes widen, and she finds herself briefly speechless. She was expecting pleasantries, had armored herself against those but not this. Doctor Ziegler doesn’t say anything for a while, tracing patterns on the surface of the toy with one immaculate nail. Does she believe in heroes? She’s played as more than enough of them – survivor heroes, chosen one heroes, morally questionable anti-heroes. Heroes with guns, heroes with swords, heroes with magic. All computer generated heroes, mind. But the real world?
She’d wanted to be a hero. Always had, from the first moment she picked up a video game and became the centre of a fictional universe for its duration, been given a sense of purpose and worth and a challenge. And she’d tried to do it in the real world, but she failed.
“No.”
The doctor smiles sadly, as if she’d been expecting that answer. “Not many people do nowadays. I’m afraid Overwatch’s fall had that effect.”
Hana stares at her. She still can’t place the accent – definitely European, though, less smooth than French. German, maybe? She wonders how old this woman is; the doctor looks remarkably young, probably mid to late twenties, but she speaks with the kind of nostalgia that suggests more years of experience, a greater history of disillusionment and suffering.
“Where are you from?” She asks bluntly. Hana has enough to think about without trying to work out what country her doctor's from.
The doctor looks up at that. Her eyes are the colour of clear blue topaz, Hana notices. They gleam with life. “What country, or what organisation?”
She’d only been thinking of the first, but it never hurts to kill two birds with one stone. “Both.”
The golden haired woman begins absentmindedly toying with the rabbit’s ears, but her gaze is still on Hana. “I’m from Switzerland, and I’m here on behalf of Overwatch.”
The teenager’s breath catches in her throat. She’s heard of Overwatch. It’s impossible to escape the name of the organisation that saved humanity from the brink of destruction. And through memories of school lessons she never quite listened to and news forecasts she only half paid attention to, she finally recognises the name. Angela Ziegler. Known more widely as Mercy. Hana was born when the group was in its heyday, which means that her best memories of it are of an organisation in disrepute – scandal after scandal in the news, tearing it apart, protests and rallies. She remembers seeing this woman on TV once.
“Overwatch was disbanded.” She replies, although the edge is now gone from her voice, replaced with disbelief.
Angela hums at that. “Until recently, yes. It’s a tricky legal situation, to say the least, and I’m still not entirely convinced that the recall was the best of ideas, but it is what it is.”
Hana makes sure to keep her expression guarded, but she’s less hostile now. Somehow, despite all of her defensiveness, her curiosity overrides aggression. “Then why are you here?”
“News of D.Va nearly dying was a big thing worldwide, you know.” The doctor says, looking up and smiling at her again, and this time Hana can swear that it radiates warmth like the sun, tickling her cheeks. “You’re a very popular girl. Winston sent me here to see what I could do. You were in quite the critical condition, and I’m not a miracle worker, but it turns out you’re a fighter. A few close scrapes but you managed to pull through.”
“You pulled me through.”
Angela shakes her head. “Oh no, it was you. The fact that you even survived the fall says it all.”
“But why did – uh, Winston,” (who was that? The name sounds alien, but she carries on nonetheless.) “send you? It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Ah, but it is.” She replies before scooting the chair forward so that she’s even closer. Hana forgets to glare at her, to try and dissuade her from closing the gap between them. “Overwatch was based on a belief in heroes. It was flawed, and it pushed in the wrong directions, but that was at its core. Now, you say you don’t believe in heroes?”
Hana feels her throat constrict, like she wants to take her words back now, but she’s too stubborn to back down. “I don’t.”
“You see,” Angela places the plush rabbit onto the teenager's lap. It smirks deviously up at her, and despite herself she smiles back at it, running a finger along its softness. “I – we think you are. At Overwatch. And by the looks of things your fans agree. And I’m here because, when you’re up and ready again, we’d like you to be a part of the reformed Overwatch.”
That sours everything. Hana looks up, a frown on her face and she unconsciously wraps her arms around the rabbit. A childish gesture, but the softness beneath her palms is comforting, and that slightly soothes the horrendous feeling inside of her. There’s something about the word that jars, and she feels guilt wedge in her chest, merging with confusion and regret and a cocktail of other negative emotions. And the proposition winds her instantly through its objective absurdity. It's like something she might have doodled about in her notebook during class as a child, and the idea that it's actually happening, really happening in the real world, that a nineteen year old gamer is being asked to join an international task force, would in any other circumstance lift her. Now it only seems laughably ridiculous, in a most torturous way. “But I failed.”
The doctor lays a hand on her arm, and something about the action strikes a chord in some almost untouched area of her being. It’s not professional, it’s personal, and Hana feels some foreign emotion well up in the corner of her eyes and form a thick lump in her throat, and she's not sure if that's a bad feeling. Angela's smile, her tone, are all thick with one thing – belief. It’s strange. Hana’s been popular because she’s quick witted, she’s cute as hell, she’s a merciless competitor, but there’s something else here. An appreciation that goes beyond what she’s used to and into the realm of what feels infinitely greater, a realm that even when she stepped inside of a mech to defend her homeland seemed unattainable.
“Hana,” Angela starts. “You haven’t failed completely. Overwatch failed, but it’s come back to set that right. You only fail when you walk away and decide you have.”
Her eyes widen. Her heart stops. Bells start ringing faintly in the back of her mind. There's something that echoes but she can't place her finger on it.
And suddenly, she realises she’s right, and it's so ridiculously accurate that it's almost a joke. It all goes back to that one golden rule, the one that kept her going through those all-nighters when a boss battle seemed too hard and was the same rule that made her throw herself at that omnic time and time again. She’s ashamed that she’d forgotten it, this core motto that’s been at the heart of all she’s achieved.
Hana Song never gives up. D.Va never gives up. She doesn't give up.
She cracks into a smile, a grin, a beam that lightens the burden in her chest. It's not anything that she could hide or restrain even if she wanted to, and it feels so, so good to finally be able to smile again. Liberating. And it's not a smile for anyone else, she's not looking into the camera, it's something that makes her feel like she's floating and it's ridiculous how quickly her mood turns around - but really, what else is she supposed to do? And that seems to say it all, because the doctor’s look is one of joy and relief.
“Thank you, Doctor Ziegler.”
“Is that a yes?” Hana opens her mouth, but the doctor continues, her beaming replaced by formality. “We’ve already negotiated it with your superiors. They’re happy for you to go in exchange for Overwatch contributing to their research. We have quite the know-how about omnics, as you can imagine. But it’s only if you want to. You can have time to think it through, of-“
“Hell yes.” Is her reply, and it comes from the old Hana, it comes from D.Va. But the old D.Va was a gamer. Old D.Va was not a hero. This is a Hana who is going to be one whether the world likes it or not, she resolves right there and then. And she's a determined girl. Stubborn, sometimes, and definitely excessively obstinate. But resilient nonetheless. She always wins in the end.
The doctor rises and goes to leave the room. “Then get some sleep – you’ve still got some healing to do. I’ll make the necessary arrangements and come back with the paperwork.”
“Thank you, Doctor Ziegler.” She says it again because she means it. Wholeheartedly, she realises.
The woman pauses at the door before turning around, and her smile is like sunshine after a storm. “That’s Mercy to you.”
Hana dreams of falling, falling, falling. Panic explodes in her chest and she flounders helplessly. Falling, falling. The wind whistles past her, howling.
And then she slows, and she’s still not on the ground but she’s not scared now.
There’s an angel by her side.