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Will you remember me when I am gone?
Ramattra wondered if it was punishment that he could remember the day that Hana had asked that question with such perfect clarity, that it felt like he must still be living in that moment.
“Will you remember me when I am gone?” Hana wasn’t looking at him, fingers playing with the wires that she had been working on, twisting them into mindless patterns and ruining the work that she had been so focused on. That alone told him that this wasn’t just mindless chatter, because he had seen her focus through the most chaotic situations and conversations.
“That is a long time off,” he replied. As though they hadn’t had numerous conversations about the risks she took in battle, the damage that she returned to him with time after time. As though he wasn’t the same, even now, recovering as she worked to try and reinforce his chassis.
“Maybe.” At least his answer had earned him a small smile, not the wicked little grin that set him fluttering in a way he still couldn’t give a name too, but a soft look that he still wasn’t sure he deserved. “But, you didn’t answer my question.”
“Of course I will remember you,” he replied, realising she wasn’t going to drop the subject. “The whole world will remember you.”
“No,” she shook her head. “The world will remember D.Va. The Mecha pilot. The gamer. The celebrity. Dae-hyun will remember his friend, and the person who wrecked his hoverbike. My teammates will remember the pilot, the person they fought against and my family will remember the Hana they knew as a child…but you are one of the few that see me as just Hana.”
Just Hana…
Ramattra didn’t think he had ever thought of her as ‘just Hana’, this strange human who looked at him and saw not a Ravager, or a terrorist, or a monster and tyrant. She looked at him and saw a person, flawed and imperfect, scarred, and yet still looking ahead to a fought for future.
“I will remember you Hana Song…” He had said instead, not having the words to put those feelings into something coherent, and something flickered across her expression. Something soft and understanding, but sad none the less, as though he had just failed a trial he did not understand.
Hindsight was everything, and nothing all at once. He had believed fully that the time when he would need to confront a world without this woman was a far distant one, that he would either have made a world of his own where she would be safe, or that he would fall long before her.
Fate made fools of them both. The woman who dreamed of a future he couldn’t see, and an Omnic who hadn’t thought that the future could take more from him than the world already had.
If he had known, he would have said yes. He would have listed all the things he would remember about him.
And it would have meant more, and less.
Because the memories that haunted him. The ghost that stood at his side, laughing softly even now as he stood above her memorial and read the pretty words the world had written about the woman they believed they knew; were not the one he had seen back then.
Will you remember me?
He remembered. As though her ghost was right in front of him, dancing through the motions of hundreds of stolen moments.
Gentle hands on his chassis, mapping out damage that she would later seek to fix. Touching him with a gentleness that he had never felt outside the Iris, and more than once he had wondered if she was truly human, or if he had fallen long ago into the Iris itself.
A small smile, that put stars in her eyes as she looked at him as he cautiously wrapped his hand around hers. He was made for destruction, and yet that purpose disappeared beneath her touch and all he wanted to do was hold her close for as long as possible. To bathe in the light of that smile, that he had never seen once in the holovids or in the covert moments of seeing her with others, the smile that was his alone.
Warmth against his side, an elbow clanging against him as she shouted at the screen. Utterly at ease, and entirely focused at the same time. He was fascinated by her like this, this warrior who could throw herself as intensely into a game as the battlefield.
No…he loved her like this.
“You asked me once if I would remember you,” he said to the memorial, trying not to look at the ghost at his side. The apparition of the memories and feelings that he had tried for so long to deny, that he hadn’t understood fully until it was too late. “I didn’t answer you then, unable to conceive of a world without you. Not understanding that the Hana I knew was not what the world saw, even though you told. How could I? I was never worthy of the you, that you gave to me.”
“It’s not about being worthy,” Hana was pouting at him. Not angry, but that fondness tinged with disappointment when he didn’t fully grasp what she was telling him, even after she had explained it more than once. It was a look that had faded with time, as he learned her patterns, her unique way of seeing the world…of seeing him.
“Then why me?”
“Because you’re the one, I chose.” She said it simply, as though she was stating something as obvious as ‘the sky being blue’. “And you chose me.”
“I…”
Another answer he hadn’t been able to give at the time. Not because he hadn’t chosen her, but that sounded too simple, too mundane, too human… for the feeling that he had found his own Iris in her. That this tiny human, had pulled him into her orbit, as though she was the sun and he some lonely star. Now, he wished that he had something, even if it had been a blunt ‘yes’. Poetry was fine, but it meant nothing in hindsight. Had she known the answer? Had she heard the words he hadn’t been able to say? Probably, because Hana had always been able to understand him, even in those fragile, violent early days when he had been injured and voiceless, lashing out against the care she showed in repairing him.
“I should have said it…” He looked to the ghost now, to that fragment of Hana always at his side. He had laughed once when late at night after a power cut, her room lit by a lonely candle, she had regaled him with ghost stories to while away the hours. Ghosts had seen such a human concept. His world was one of life and death, freedom and suppression, black and white. Or at least it had been until Hana. So maybe that was why she lingered now as a ghost, as something he had never believed in, as something he had believed to be too human for him to ever experience, because she had always been different. Always challenging the way he saw himself, the world, and her. “I will always remember you, Hana. My Hana, not the one you showed the world, but the woman who reached out a hand to the enemy and opened her heart to a lost soul.”
The ghost smiled, that beloved smile that reached her eyes. The smile meant for him, and there on the edge of her memorial she stepped up to him, ghostly fingers reaching for him.
I know. Thank you…