Chapter Text
One year later.
Angela opens the door to her Paris apartment and dumps her luggage in the doorway. She’s exhausted—she’d had so much to tell her parents, and the trip had been draining even if it was good. It was, perhaps, her most fruitful yet. The wound of that kind of loss never vanishes, but for the first time it feels almost manageable, like a scar that has mostly healed over.
She’s stitched up so many of her old wounds this past year, though not alone. She’s had a second pair of hands helping her, healthier now, though with the slightest remaining tinge of periwinkle. And she, in turn, has helped Amélie stitch up wounds of her own.
It hasn’t been easy, but neither of them had ever been easy. Still, it’s healing, and that’s what matters.
Angela still doesn’t know why it wasn’t until that final moment that she could admit to herself how much she loved Amélie. Amélie still won’t say for certain why she so stubbornly hid the object of her affection. But Angela supposes they’ve both made mistakes, and mercifully learned from them.
In the past year they’ve learned to love and care for themselves. They’ve learned to better communicate, and to reflect. Their learning has not been faultless, but they have each other’s love to nestle into when loving themselves becomes too hard. And they both see it —they’re getting better.
Angela’s tired spirits lift at the thought of seeing Amélie, and she calls ‘I’m home!” into the quiet apartment.
“Hi home,” a voice calls from the kitchen.
Angela groans dramatically.
Olivia Colomar, infamous hacker and wanted criminal, walks into the hall with a duffle bag over her shoulder. “Don’t be like that.”
Angela smirks. “Always so good to see you, Olivia.”
The other woman squirms at the use of her name—still unused to hearing it from someone she considers a friend. She, too, is healing. “Yeah, yeah,” Olivia replies and looks at her feet. “Whatever. How was uh… the thing?”
Angela sighs. “It was good… Better, I think. I don’t know, I’m tired but… It was good.”
Olivia glances back up at her and smiles slightly. “I’m glad. Um. Y’know, my offer stands.”
Angela smiles softly. “Thank you, Olivia. Really. I think next year I might try and bring Amélie… And then I’ll see about going with friends.”
The other woman shrugs lightly, as if it were nothing, but Angela knows how much it means for Olivia to offer that—company for the trip to the graveyard. The infamous Sombra doesn’t show such intimacy lightly.
“How was Amélie while I was gone?” Angela asks.
“Good, only a couple coughing fits. Missed you though.”
That makes Angela’s heart flutter. “Is she on the roof?”
“Mmhmm. She’s up there with Guinevere. Anyway! I should get going, I’ve gotta—”
“Please, don’t even tell me. The less I know, the better.”
Olivia gives her a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, probably.”
“When you’re in town next… stop by for tea. We should catch up.”
Olivia’s grin narrows into a genuine smile. “Yeah… I’d like that.” She brushes by Angela and steps out into the hall. “Adios, doctora.” She gives Angela a parody of the Tracer salute before making for the elevators.
A few minutes later, Angela is pushing open the door to the rooftop, squinting as she catches the setting sun in her eyes. She tugs her jacket close as she makes her way out into the rooftop garden she and Amélie have been cultivating for the past couple months—one of the advantages of a top floor apartment.
A Siberian cat with a stub tail pads out from a cluster of tulips and rubs against Angela’s leg.
“Guin, my love, I’ve missed you!” She leans down to give Guinevere a scratch beneath the chin.
“Typical. You haven’t seen me in days, and the cat gets attention first,” a delightfully familiar voice calls out. Amélie closes a volume of Henry James’ short stories and places it on the small table beside her deck chair with a huff.
Angela paces over to her slowly, an impish grin crossing her face. “What can I say? I missed my pussy.”
Amélie lowers her sunglasses with one finger and gives her lover a sour look over their rim—but the slightest curvature at the corner of her mouth belays her amusement.
“What are you reading?” Angela asks as she reaches Amélie’s side, leaning against the table flirtatiously and walking her fingers across the cover of the book.
“Daisy Miller,” Amélie replies coolly. “I finished The Aspern Papers earlier.”
“At least you're past your medieval phase.”
Amélie chuckles. “I was thinking of rereading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“I do dare.”
“You musn’t.”
“Perhaps you must find some way to distract me, then,” Amélie says, her smirk blossoming fully.
Angela giggles, and looks out over their garden. “How are our babies?”
“It’s getting cold,” Amélie says. “They’re starting to die off.”
“The perennials will come back next year.”
“They will.”
“And more importantly... how’s my baby?” Angela looks back at Amélie, hand straying upwards, fingertips brushing her lover’s hair.
“You’re worse than Lena and Emily,” Amélie replies with a pout.
“That bad?” Angela asks.
“I’ve been lonely.” She grabs Angela’s wrist and tugs her forward, pulling Angela into her lap. “You’ll need to make it up to me.” Cool fingers brush through Angela’s hair and pluck out one strand.
“Ow!”
“More grey… You’ve stopped dyeing it,” Amélie muses as she twists the follicle between her fingers.
“I guess it’s time to accept my age, no?” Angela says, turning her head aside bashfully.
Amélie’s fingers gently brush against Angela’s chin and turn it towards her. Gazing into her lover’s eyes, Amélie murmurs, “You’re beautiful.”
Angela turns pink. Amélie chuckles throatily, her laughter turning into a cough.
“It’s, um! It is cold out here,” Angela stammers. “Come inside, love. You know you shouldn’t be out too long in this weather, not with your lungs as they are.”
“Wait,” Amélie whispers as the coughing abates. She slips a hand behind Angela’s neck while the other cups Angela’s cheek, and she pulls Angela in to a kiss.
It still surprises Angela, how electric it feels, how it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Even after a year of kisses, each time her lips press against Amélie’s it’s like fire—like nothing else she’s ever known. She lets out a little moan and a giggle as she pulls away. “And how’s my baby now?”
“Better,” Amélie replies with a smile that is completely devoid of guile. “Better.”
Angela stands and offers Amélie her hand. “Good. Let’s go warm up by the fire, and we’ll see how ‘better’ we can get.”
Amélie chuckles again, and again breaks into a fit of coughing. It pains Angela that the hanahaki left such a mark on Amélie’s health, but Angela knows it’s a price Amélie would pay again for the love they share. It can be painful to love, whether yourself or another, and painful to speak an honest heart, but that is where the most fragrant blossoms grow.
They both were so lost in their grief and trauma that they’d almost drowned. Love, however, had given them a second chance—not simply to care for each other, but perhaps to care for themselves.
Amélie takes her hand and rises, slipping her book under her arm. The pair go back inside, Guinevere trailing behind them. Later that evening, they’re curled up under blankets by their electric hearth, cuddling lazily in its warmth. After her trip, Angela is exhausted, and nearly dozes off, her head resting in Amélie’s lap.
Her bleary eyes flutter open, and she sees Amélie staring down at her thoughtfully.
“What?” she asks with a sleepy laugh.
“...Je t’aime, mon amoure,” Amélie murmurs.
Angela smiles and caresses her lover’s neck. Her fingers register the steady beat of Amélie’s rose blossom heart, and Angela thinks to herself that there’s not a single thing in this world more precious.
Someday she’ll have to let it go, but for now it’s hers—warm, secure and safe. And her heart, in turn, is safe with Amélie. Two hearts, entwined like roses wrapped around a trellis, growing in tandem. And Angela couldn’t be happier.
“I know, mayn neshume,” Angela whispers back. “I love you, too.”