Chapter Text
It’s a long way down, thinks Pharah initially.
Followed somewhat belatedly by the revelation that no matter how quick the end comes, or how tightly she shuts her eyes, there’ll be milliseconds - seconds even, precious, hateful seconds - of unhindered, unavoidable pain. And it will likely be worse than the botched amputation of her arm six years ago in a medical tent set up in the middle of the desert. The muddled way her mind screamed and her throat was ripped apart by sand, burned with the alcohol which was meant to dull the sensations but only drew more notice to the torn fleshy tendons it splashed against ... How that had been the second worst day of her entire life...
... and when compared … falling out of the sky, the wind ripping air from her lungs, doesn’t seem particularly awful a way to go; even when those milliseconds, seconds even, come.
It is freedom, coated in the comfort of Raptora: her closest ally, a friend in solidarity. Its beeping left behind two feet above before it’s even had a chance to register in Pharah’s mind.
It is impossible to hear in the sky.
Everything is moving too quickly. Even her comrades' frantic cries in her ear piece are lost somewhere.
In this free fall (flames licking at the metal of her jet system, bullets raining, a hundred other pressing things screaming for her attention) Fareeha closes her eyes.
And can see Angela there, silhouetted like some ethereal guardian by blinding light.
Can see her mother, coated in warm blue, arms wrapped protectively around her rifle in the image of a war-saint.
Can see the faces of every squad mate she failed and all the people she has saved (can repeat their names, has memorized all of them).
When she opens her eyes again the ground is too close, her shoulder is on fire, the gold in her hair is whipping against her cheeks, leaving cuts behind like angry spirits lashing out.
Fareeha thinks: ‘if I were to do it again, the only thing I would change is how high I flew today.’
She imagines this is how Icarus must have felt as the wax melted and fell back to the earth which bore it.
Ana had always warned against the folly of reaching too high, or coasting too low - Fareeha had never learned to breath in the middle ground. It seems almost a shame to go.
Hana Song has known Fareeha Amari for eight months, three days and a handful of hours, minutes, and seconds. She can list the things she knows about the Egyptian woman on one and a half hands, can recite, by memory alone, her schedule, knows that Angela Ziegler loves her without question, and that Fareeha is suspiciously good at Frogger ... and nearly nothing else.
Hana's MEKA can fly a decent distance into the air although it is not made for it and, despite advisement from 76, who is leading the mission, she decides to test the limits of the MEKA's distance.
Because Mercy is praying to gods who aren't real, Pharah's comms have gone offline, and anyone who is decently good at any video game is worth saving.
Because Fareeha Amari offered Hana a hug when she first arrived, said I'm sorry after her first mission, made her tea in the early morning when she couldn't sleep. Because Fareeha is a good person, an ally, and Hana has learned from the best of them that life holds value.
So she catches Pharah. Eighty feet from the ground and is scared to set her down.