Chapter Text
'You remember the old farm? Yeah. Meet us there.'
She doesn't know where, and it wouldn't matter if she did. Wordlessly Ashe had taken Angela's vague notions to leave and structured them, insisting they at least see the job through to something of a better conclusion than her taking off by herself from the back end of nowhere. She has a reputation, and her pride.
It's still faraway. Sea and sand swayed by desert and dirt instead. They're meeting Bob with another rental, Amélie knows. Straight to a chartered flight with no asked questions and from there, the doctor will figure out the rest; she's only assuming they're still in Gibraltar after all this time that's elapsed without her response, after all. And once Mercy's in a better position to reveal her location, she will.
Ashe plays music the whole drive over – pop or rock, noise Amélie finds somewhat tolerable because she can easily dull it out. She's almost surprised she hasn't chosen ballads. Why she insists on old country whenever she's struck by the desire to serenade her. The worst part is it's not even bad. But much as she dwells on her fondly, she thinks on Angela too, sat in the back of the car with her suitcase and her blaster tucked between layers of her coat. Sensible precaution, their pistols likewise still holstered into place.
A space is only as safe as you make it to be. It's a mistake they won't make ever again, apparent in each respective reverie.
Every conversation quickly ends, and they don't have many. Anticipation building, as she recalls, Amélie staring all the more absently out the window on the endless road. Ashe's playlist has looped at least twice when she pulls off. Barely even dirt. No longer used. Fallen into disrepair, the old farm building shuttered and equally looking worse for wear.
People lived here… and now they don't.
Bob's already waiting alongside the rental when they pull up. There's motions, as always. Ashe staying in her car although her eyes remain fixed on her, following every step; the sunglasses don't hide her priority at all. Pulls her hat down lower as she stews, pistol in her lap. Bob assists Angela with her suitcase, and Amélie remains at her respectable, established distance, arms folded, passing along the documentation to him to offer her, affirming she knows where to next, that she has everything she needs. That she'll make her excuses and platitudes as to who she's seen. Angela not so much dithering as wanting, many times, to interject with something else, but finding none that she likes.
There's nothing left to do but leave, and the silence has to break.
"I guess this is it," the doctor says.
"It is."
"It's been—" Angela scours for a word. Any word her brilliant, defying mind can offer her. "—enlightening."
She doesn't unfold her arms, but there's a small shrug in Amélie's shoulders at her choice. It sounds like her, but… surely there's something more toward. More positive, more negative. Not neutrality born of paid off debts and an understanding that she will continue to try to make.
This isn't how any of these few days were meant to go. She would pay forward a favour, but not just to Sombra, Sombra's friend; not even Angela. To herself. Because now she is capable of it. She expected… something cleaner. A, you've explained, and I'm done with you. Not breakfast or dinner for three. Not hours spent talking nonsense, about nothing. This was a chapter of her past to close, not to keep open.
It's not where she excels. She is Widowmaker. She perfects. She ends.
But somehow the possibility remains.
And that's what she wants the most, isn't it?
Amélie doesn't smile, but her eyes are softer for it. "Goodbye, Angela."
Less finality. Less pain. Not yet quite anything else. Her future is hers to make. A life. It's her greatest defiance of all. And at least this time she's afforded farewells, and much as she's always hated them Angela jointly understands, messing with a strand of sunshine hair – an old tell, and she doesn't leave her guessing.
"Good luck," she offers.
A strange thing, to offer a spider. After it all. But nevertheless, she'll keep it.
"You too."
She buckles in. One last look and she starts to drive off, and Amélie silently steps back in place beside Bob to watch – and the omnic doesn't take too long to disappear, knowing what she needs.
Who.
Seconds later Ashe's fingers link with hers, and the outlaw raises them together to press her lips against her knuckles, briefly, all without either of them really looking or acknowledging it – and now, Amélie can't quite dissuade the smile, the comfort.
Ashe doesn't say anything until Angela's long gone from the road, weathering it with her.
"What did she say to you, in the end?"
She exhales. "Wished me well," Amélie says, slowly, eyes cast down. "And meant it. She told me she won't say anything to them about us."
Ashe nods, filing that information away with what she's already concluded for herself. "Thought so. If I weren't reasonably assured I wouldn't have let her leave so easily," she adds with a nonchalant shrug, as Amélie looks towards her. Aside from wrapping things up neat, as is her way, and bringing her unbroken word to bear, she had rightfully assumed her outlaw's helpfulness was pure eagerness for Angela to be gone.
But if Angela hadn't reached reasoning, what Ashe had wanted to hear, then she would be a threat. Could still be. And she's allowed her to drive away.
"You're not worried?"
She clicks her tongue in place for thought. "Do you trust her, sugar?"
She thinks so. Ashe is impossible to read, and Amélie just nods, instinctive.
What she was waiting for, it seems, as she shrugs again, shakes her head. "Then I'm not worrying about it."
Because Ashe trusts her. Amélie Lacroix.
"You don't have to prove yourself to me."
"Sometimes I do."
Offered so off-handedly although it's really everything. And the spider glances down again, quite without words as she tries and fails to find them – she wants to believe in her too, the way the outlaw always has, in herself – and Ashe just chuckles, lightly.
"If I didn't know better I'd say you were flustered," she muses. That's not it, and her girlfriend knows it, knows better, but as ever she doesn't back down. "But we can argue that later. So how was it, these last few days? You full of regrets?"
She takes a moment to decide, watching the horizon.
"Not as many."
"Dealt with it?"
She shakes her head. "You know it's not that easy, chérie."
Ashe sighs. "I do."
Amélie looks to her, the old, abandoned farm.
"It means something to you."
The next sigh's deeper, and she finally takes off her sunglasses. Eyes so hard and harsh and guarded, carefully structured walls that she's always been safe behind, no hint of vulnerability allowed. "As does anywhere. This place has seen more than its fair share of goodbyes… to Overwatch, usually," she says, quietly. "Figure it might as well keep that legacy."
"Cole?"
Ashe closes her eyes and nods. "Yeah," she says, weakly. "Cole. I thought maybe I should show you something about me, considering all I've seen about you."
Despite that, she makes no move to get any closer to it. Here by the road and the car is the farthest she'll go, hardly a mark on the world anymore, what could have been just another road on just another route. The rest only inside her head, a swirl of feeling and emotion, and Amélie knows what that's like.
Or she's tried to. And failed. A detached memory so easy to get lost in, but not so easy to relive.
Ashe is there now. She only has to ask.
She holds her hand tighter: anchor. "Was it a hideout?"
She nods. "For a couple months when we were first starting out, yeah. Didn't really have the funds yet, y'know? Not then. And we were so – so fucking good at what we were doing, Amélie," she says, glancing toward her, and her eyes are alight, on fire. "Finally it meant something. We meant something. And then one night we're playing cards and drunk and he has to bring up that it might end one day. Doubts and shit. And sure, I harboured some of my own, but I knew smarter. I knew how to watch our backs and I would. You don't leave behind family. And I said to him, if it all goes wrong – no matter how far from here we go – we meet back here first… and we did.
"Didn't matter in the end for us though, did it? But at least I had something – waste as it turned out to be," she sighs. Her anger's so slight, at herself, for the last time she dared to believe in someone and promises. And her expression's wholly different as she resettles it on her, on now. "Not like you."
Her past instead. The Amélie alone, with no one. Who endured and still thought she was. Ashe did say she wouldn't forget. That it – still – hurts. That she still wishes she could have been there for her, impossible as it may be…
It meant a lot to her then. It means a lot to her now.
But she has. She has. These last few days she's revisited so much, and Ashe never shied away. And Amélie's struck, quite suddenly, by just how much she loves her.
She takes her hand from hers so that she can touch her jaw and lift her face towards her, kissing her soundly and complete. The outlaw easily falling into it.
When she finally allows her away Ashe is still breathless.
"Not that I'm complaining, but— what's this for, sugar?"
Oh, so many things. Too many to list.
But mostly?
For finding her.
The past will not erase. This memory's a better one to live in.
She observes her. As temporary as the most resilient desert rose, Amélie's fingers trembling against her cheek.
She asked for this. Her heart is not meant to want. But it does.
"Maybe it was always meant to be you."
"Mm," Ashe responds, like she isn't still clueless. Although she's sure she has a fair idea, the outlaw's fingers studying her chin… tips it ever-so-slightly, like she might kiss her again. Or that she's been reminded of something. "You did this to her, didn't you?"
Yes. She had a feeling she was present for that particular threat. "You were there that long?" Ashe just shrugs, black nail polish gleaming in the sun. "Were you jealous? Are you still?"
She opens her mouth. A little longer to deliberately meet her intense, poison-laced stare.
"A little."
"You have no self preservation, ma chérie," Amélie says, winding her fingers into hers. She has a practiced method to convince her and Ashe laughs against her mouth, predicting what she'll do and say next.
"Well. One more kiss to be sure?"
She hums.
"Two."
"Have I told you 'bout how much I love the way you think?" Ashe wonders in the seconds before she's silenced. If she's gravity she's inevitable, and not all endings are a tragedy. Regardless of time Amélie will enjoy every second, stealing away another, more, realising what it means to miss someone who's right there. "'Kay, we need to—" Ashe tries, laugh so gentle. "This is way more than two, Blue—"
She smiles, very slightly. Perhaps now is as good a time as any.
"Are you still afraid, Ashe?"
She pulls back. For a moment Ashe stares at her blankly, not understanding. And then the realisation hits, and she's mortified: eyebrows scaling her face as she groans and tries to pull away, to find anywhere to hide the fresh streak of red blooming across her face. "You were awake when I said that, weren't you. About being afraid of living without you… fuck, it sounds just as bad now," she grimaces, dragging her fingers through her hairline and leaving herself in further disarray. "Shit. That's so not cool."
Like that'll ever dissuade her. She's still looking elsewhere, waiting for the penny to drop, and Amélie simply smiles. "Isn't it?"
She has to look back now, because of the smile. "Yes! No!" she insists, balking. "Let me guess. 'It makes me more human'." She does a decent mimicry of her, several octaves lower and enunciating as she might, and she's spent way too much time in her company to pull it off so well, she thinks. "This time I'm here to speak from experience. It sucks."
"That's too bad," Amélie sighs whimsically, looking off to the horizon instead. "When I'm proud of you."
Truly. For making room for her in her heart.
She can see the tears in her periphery. Ashe scrubbing at them with her worn hand like they're not there. Knowing that she's loved. That she does deserve it.
"You're pretty good at this," she manages, words thick, not quite composed. "Considering."
Her eyes are still bleary. But she's not hiding, and neither will she. "I was married before," Amélie says quietly, tucking stray hair behind her ear, like he used to do. "All partnerships require communication... romantic or otherwise." And for half a second Ashe just looks at her, as if... not afraid, never afraid, but struck by fear of something, occurring to her over again. Something so well-versed it's almost assuring. Smote or smitten or both. She thinks she hides that expression well, or that Amélie will pretend not to see it, and a moment later it's gone. She doesn't… think it's a bad thing. On the contrary, something thrilling, that on cue makes her feel a little more tactile and warm, and she knows Ashe will tell her someday... even if that reasoning's only instinct.
There's nothing left here but pale ghosts. The air is warm and dry, the time theirs to spend, and without consent the sun sinks solitary and low into the sky. It's a sight that will never happen again, and she can hear her shallow breathing, the soft whir of Bob's circuits as he reads the same book Ashe recently borrowed, perched on the back of the car.
"I did decide one thing," Ashe eventually says, leaning into her shoulder whilst Amélie's arm courts the other. "That I'm gonna be my best for you. That I'll believe it's for good— and wherever we're going, we'll make our way there. Together."
"I see," she considers, falsely melancholy, like there truly is no other way. "I suppose I shall have to help you find it…"
"Might take a while," her outlaw smirks, and Amélie kisses her again, this one very slight.
Not heavensent—
But hers, always.
"Whatever it takes," Amélie says. "I'm with you."