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Widowmaker wakes up at the peak of Mont Blanc on the crest of winter.
There’s something about the aching bite of the cold, the burning of her lungs. She sits up, body covered in snow, and looks around. From here, she can see valleys upon valleys, the sun low over the horizon.
Somebody tried to kill me, then, she thinks. Failed.
The thought’s a little disappointing.
She gathers herself and sets out of the trek down the mountain.
*
When Widow - or rather, Amélie, because it’s another woman’s past, really, isn’t it - was a child, her mother tried to kill her.
She was a sick, drug-addled woman, who hadn’t lived a sober day since Amélie’s father had died when Amélie was four.
Amélie wakes up one night, short of breath, voice breaking on a scream.
Then a neighbour is there, and her mother is gone, and Amélie never sees her again.
*
On October 15th, Widow steps foot in Overwatch’s new base in Spain.
The weather is warmer here, but not by much. She’s still wearing her leather gloves and trench coat. Gerard would have made some dig about her dressing like the grim reaper. Amélie would have pretended to laugh.
The archer tries to kill her.
She tries not to laugh.
“What are you doing here?” he demands, arrow aimed at her forehead.
“I’m here to kill you,” Widow says, sarcastic.
“Amélie?” asks a small, angry voice, and Widow’s eyes close.
Of course she’s here.
“Don’t kill her, Hanzo, please,” says Angela Zieger, and maybe the emotion Widow had construed as anger was actually concern. “Sorry - Widowmaker. Are you well?”
Widow looks at her. Her eyesight is blurring. Her hands begin to shake. Nausea rises in the back of her throat.
“I am,” she says, “perfectly fine.” She promptly proceeds to pass out.
*
The system missed Amélie. She was terrified of being ‘given’ to a new family when her mother was taken away. She ran. She built a new life for herself. She tried to forget the past.
She never succeeded, though.
Really, sometimes Widow thinks there’s not that much difference between them at all.
*
Widow is in and out of consciousness a lot. Her fever burns. At random times of the night, she wakes up, screaming, hallucinating.
Struggling, she hears, and extreme conditions, and her body is fighting itself.
Sometimes she prays to live, other she prays to die, and others she curses praying to a god who’s never cut her a fucking break anyway.
On the fifth day at Overwatch’s headquarters, her fever breaks.
She wakes in the middle of the night, and Mercy is there, nursing a hot cup of tea. Widow swallows. Her mouth is so dry. She tries to speak and coughs. Mercy’s eyes widen and she rushes to get Widow a glass of water.
“How are you feeling?” Mercy asks.
“Like I should’ve died,” Widow says. “Like I’m a little bit dead.”
“Well, you are a little dead, anyway, aren’t you,” Mercy jokes, and Widow can’t help the smile that comes to her lips. “Anyway,” Mercy adds, “you probably shouldn’t have survived what you went through anyway, so. Obviously somebody’s looking out for you.”
Widow thinks about this. “You didn’t have to help me.”
“You clearly came here for a reason.”
“I was delusional and hallucinating.”
“That does not negate my point, Widowmaker.”
Widow smiles, and then the smile breaks, a little bit. She says, seriously, “You should have let me die.”
“No.” Mercy’s voice is firm.
“You should have just let me die,” Widow says, and her voice cracks, and her body shakes, and she begins, to her own complete horror, to cry.
*
Gerard saves her, really, so really it makes sense that she’s the one who kills him.
The universe is bitter and cruel. It doesn’t cut you a break. Amélie knows this more than anyone.
*
On October 21, Widow leaves.
It’s early morning, when everybody’s asleep. Not that any of them have come to see her, anyway. Why would they? She’s their enemy. A murderer.
Well, she thinks everybody’s asleep.
As she’s leaving, she looks back at the building and a headphone-clad head of hair pokes their head through one of the windows and very pointedly watches her leave.
She keeps her hand by her sides and slowly walks away.
“She told us not to come, you know,” murmurs the young man. He’s not shouting, really, or raising his voice at all, but Widow hears him loud and clear. “We wanted to visit. But she told us to stay away, for your sake. That it might scare you away.”
Widow says nothing.
“But I see you’re scared anyway,” he says, and shuts the window.
Widow leaves quickly after that, but she can’t keep the words out of her head. I see you’re scared anyway. I see you’re scared anyway.
She’s not fucking scared of anything, she’s Widowmaker - people fear her. She’s not scared.
No matter how many times she tells herself, it doesn’t seem to take.
*
Widow goes back to Château Guillard. She doesn’t think about Overwatch. She doesn’t think about the boy in the window. She doesn’t think about Angela fucking Ziegler.
She hasn’t cleaned the place since she moved in. She takes the time to do it, changing the dusty sheets on the bed, buying food for the house, dusting down the sides.
She doesn’t hear from Talon. She thinks she probably knows why.
On October 31st, she goes out to find dinner in the small French village nearby the château. There are lots and lots of small children dressed in strange, over-the-topic outfits, and they keep yelling “boo” at her and begging her for candy.
Widow has never seen such displays.
She recalls that tomorrow is La Touissant - perhaps this is some bizarre commemoration?
One of them looks at her outfit and observes, “Are you trying to be Widowmaker? I’m a better Widowmaker than you.” She’s painted her skin bright blue.
Widow stutters out an “um - goodbye”, her French harsh from all the time she’s spent around those damned Americans and Europeans, and flees quickly without her dinner.
She sits in her lonely, cold bed in the château, stomach rumbling, and wants to die, just a little bit.
Around late evening, there’s a knock on her door.
She thinks she’s going crazy at first. And then it happens again. And again.
“Widow, I swear to God, I’ll kick this door down if you don’t answer it right now.”
What is she doing here?
And why?
She says, “Come in.”
“I cannot, Widowmaker, your damned door is locked!”
Widow rolls her eyes and drags herself out of bed. She undoes the layers of deadlocks and finally, finally, opens the door onto Mercy’s pale face.
She’s shivering, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her hands clutching two bags of what appears to be - food?
“I was worried you weren’t eating,” Mercy snaps. “So I brought you some.” She pushes past Widow. “Mexican food. If you do not like it, I do not care.” She looks around. “Where’s your kitchen?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You - don’t have one? How do you eat? How do you live?”
“I buy food already cooked,” says Widow, “or I just don’t eat. I don’t need to, really.” She waves an arm vaguely. “A little bit dead, remember? How did you find this place?”
“You showed me it once,” Mercy says, searching through the cabinets for plates. She finds a couple, expensive-looking and incredibly delicate, and places them on the side. “Well, not you, I suppose. Amélie. I know you don’t like being called Amélie.”
“How do you know that?”
“You swore at me for it once before you knocked me unconscious.”
“Sounds plausible.”
Mercy actually laughs. As if Widow doesn’t suddenly feel profoundly, sickeningly guilty, as if it’s all just a joke. She says, “Well, are you eating, then?”
Widow’s stomach grumbles again. She winces. “Well, I suppose I must now.”
Mercy looks way too pleased with this. She thinks the doctor might think of her as a project, of sorts.
She should hate her for it. But she maybe likes it. Just a little.
*
Gerard had always been too good for her. Too pure. He wanted the best in everyone and everything. Sometimes, Amélie had hated him for it.
Angela, though - Angela had been something else. Dry, and sharp, and viciously caring.
But Amélie had Gerard.
*
The food is nice, and warm, and the company is even nicer. They don’t exactly talk much, but Widow likes it that way. Mercy looks exhausted, bags under her eyes, eyelids dropping.
She falls asleep in her chair. Widow can’t bring herself to tell her to leave. She carries her to the bed and tucks her in, places a glass of water on the bedside table. Then she lays down on the cold stone floor beside the bed, turns to face the wall, and closes her eyes.
There’s a feeling inside her - she can’t quite name it. Feelings aren’t something she’s particularly used to. She feels satisfaction, and anger, and occasionally guilt. But never this. Never this.
Yet somehow, the feeling is familiar.
She thinks of the day Mercy joined Overwatch, almost fresh out of college. She had been a different person then - more raw, more easy to ignite. Amélie had delighted in arguing with her, just to see Mercy blush. Then Mercy had become gentler but harder, somehow, harder to read, more jaded with the world.
Widow remembers the first time Mercy had killed somebody. They were going to detonate a bomb that would have killed all her friends. It was the right thing to do, and trust Widow, she’s done a lot of wrong things.
But Mercy had never been the same after that. Her eyes were haunted, her hands were tight-fisted, and she slowly, but surely, began to hate.
*
When Widow wakes in the morning, it’s to a sore back and a dead arm.
She shakes out her arm, wincing. Mercy is awake, sleepy-eyed and looking down at Widow on the floor.
“You slept on the floor,” she says. “On the freezing cold stone floor. Do you really hate me that much?”
“It was only polite.”
“Widow.”
“It’s okay,” Widow says. “I don’t mind.” And she doesn’t. In a way, the hardness and coldness of the château’s floor is a kind of penitenence. Mercy wouldn’t understand that so much. She doesn’t know what it’s like to hate yourself so much you want to see yourself hurt.
“If you joined Overwatch,” says Mercy, “you could have your own room. With people. And carpet. And heating. And a kitchen.”
Widow says, “Overwatch is for good people.”
“I joined it, didn’t it?” Mercy raises an eyebrow. “Am I good?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you dare fucking lie to me, Widowmaker,” Mercy says. “The people I’ve killed with my own bare hands, the people I’ve let die in my work, the things I’ve done for the good of Overwatch. I’m as dirty and bad as you.”
Widow doesn’t know what to say to that. She stands, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Because no, she doesn’t own clothes for sleeping. Yes. She gets it.
“Want to go buy some coffee?” she blurts out, and Mercy looks pleasantly surprised.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I would quite like that.”
Widow doesn’t think about her Talon phone, quiet on the side. She doesn’t think about how they’re going to come for her eventually. She doesn’t think.
*
Before the incident, before the screaming and the crying, Amélie had had a father, and he had been the best part of her life.
He cared about her so much; he’d go to the ends of the earth for her. He died when she was young, and she still remembers the last words she’d said to him had just been ‘bye’ in his reply to his ‘I love you’, and the look of the policewoman who came to their door, and the way her mother had just screamed.
It had sent her absolutely insane. And Amélie had had to look after herself after that day.
*
It’s quiet and peaceful and domestic, and Widow doesn’t really know what to think about it all.
Mercy’s there, warm and comforting. Widow buys a kettle. And then a microwave. Food slowly begins to appear in her fridge. Flowers appear on the mantle.
Mercy stays.
One night a week after Mercy started staying, the temperature drops severely. Widow shivers so much on the floor with her singular blanket that she can’t sleep, teeth chattering. Mercy eventually forcibly yanks her up into the bed and tucks her in.
She needs to concentrate on anything other than the feeling of Mercy’s warm body against hers, but fuck it, she can’t.
“Sleep now,” says Mercy, and she pulls Widow into the circle of her arms. Widow lets herself be held.
*
Mercy has to go. She has work to do. People to save.
Widow stands on her cold, empty balcony, and swallows against the feeling in her throat.
She’s fine without Mercy. She’s Widowmaker - she has no real feeling, no human emotion. She doesn’t feel worry or loneliness.
She crawls back into the bed, which still smells like Mercy, and she thinks of the woman’s last words to her: “Be safe.”
She grits her teeth against the sadness and closes her eyes.
*
And then sheer, blinding agony.
*
Before Talon kidnapped her, Amélie had been thinking about divorce with Gerard.
She had loved him, once, so, so much. And by the time of his death, she still loved him, but not in the same way. Not in the way that makes you happy anymore.
The only person she’d told was Angela, and that wasn’t exactly her choice.
Mercy had found her sobbing one day, clutching her wedding ring in her hand. They’d had a bad fight. Gerard had called her a coldhearted bitch and Amélie had said she hated him. And then Gerard had hit her, straight, sharp, leaving a blossoming bruise on her cheek.
For a moment, Gerard was Amélie's mother, towering over her, beating her to make himself feel better.
Amélie didn’t have to say anything. Mercy already knew.
“You shouldn’t be with somebody who doesn’t make you happy,” Mercy had said, and Amélie hadn’t been able to look away from her lips, shiny and pink in the moonlight.
“What if nobody ever makes me happy?”
Mercy’s mouth quirks. “Maybe you should stop looking for happiness in other people, Amélie.”
*
Through the voices yelling, the bullet hole in her side, and the hands reaching for her, Widow manages to dial the only number she wants to call.
As they drag her away, she hears Mercy’s voice through the phone on the floor calling out “Hello? Widow?”
*
When she wakes up again, she’s in a bright white room.
There’s nothing in here. No people. No furniture. She’s dressed in the same old clothes. She looks down at her hands; they’re covered in blood.
“Hello?” She presses her hands against the frosted glass window. “Hello? Is anybody there?”
They’ve got me, she thinks. This it. They’re finally going to make an example of me.
She suddenly feels exhausted and drops to her knees. She hears faint arguing, and then the door opens to reveal the boy with the headphones, followed by none other than Ana Amari, an eyepatch over one eye.
“Hello, Amélie,” Ana says, and she looks almost amused. “It’s been a while.”
Widow swallows. “Why am I here?”
“Talon nearly killed you,” says Ana, matter-of-fact. “They seemed to plan on torturing you for Overwatch secrets and dumping your body. Thanks to your call, we managed to get our agents in the area to come to your help.”
“Why would you help me?”
“Mercy seems to think you’re important,” says Ana. "Isn't that right, Lucio?"
Lucio laughs. “If Mercy thinks you’re important, you probably are.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s sleeping.” Ana leans into the doorway. “She was up all night trying to keep your ass alive. I would question her interest in a murderer but...I’m hardly perfect myself.” She shrugs.
“I want to see her.”
Ana looks at Lucio, who smiles, and then to somebody behind her, who grumbles. After a brief deliberation, Ana steps out of the way, ushering Widow through. “Come on, then.”
On the walk up the dark, gloomy stairs, Widow gets the feeling they were pretty far underground. “Why did you put me in that - room?”
Ana hesitates. “One of the agents who came to help you was Mercy. Talon tried to take her as a hostage. You - reacted badly. When Genji found you, the room was full of dead Talon agents and you wouldn’t listen to any sense. You wouldn’t let anybody go near Mercy. You seemed manic. We had to sedate you to get you here.”
“Like a wild beast,” says the woman behind them, the one Ana and Lucio had been arguing with, and Ana snorts.
“Shut up, Zarya,” she says, at the same time Lucio says, “Don’t be grumpy.”
Obviously not everybody is Widow’s biggest fan. But it’s more than she expected. It’s - a chance.
*
Mercy doesn’t look peaceful, even when she’s sleeping. She tosses and turns and keeps mumbling unintelligible phrases. Zarya doesn’t trust her and guards the doorway as if she’s ready for anything.
Widow sits on the edge of the bed. “Why’d you have to near kill yourself to save me, ma chérie d’amour?”
Mercy’s eyes flicker open and she murmurs, “Am I your love?”
Widow freezes, and Mercy glances away. She says, voice thick with tiredness, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You are,” Widow blurts out.
“I - am?”
“You are my love. I would - like you to be. I love -” She swallows. “I love you. I always have.”
Mercy’s eyes are so wide they look like they might fall out of her head. Widow barrels ahead, “You saved my life twice now even though I’ve been your active enemy. Who even does that?”
“I know,” Mercy says quietly. “About Talon. Or - well, I suspected. After you came to us nearly dead, I suspected it was Talon that had tried to kill you. And that that was why you came here.”
“I came here because you’re the only person left I trust.”
Mercy drags her down and kisses her. Widow is so surprised her lips barely move. She hears Zarya choke behind her in shock.
“I’m sorry -” Mercy begins, when Widow doesn’t respond, and then Widow kisses her back.
*
When Widow was rescued by Overwatch the first time, Talon had given her two sleeper missions: one, to kill her husband, and the other, to kill Angela Ziegler.
She kills Gerard that night, while he sleeps, unsuspecting. And in her head all she hears is killmercykillmercykillmercy and she climbs out of bed and stares down at her dead husband and killmercykillmercy. In the very, very depths of her mind, the real Amélie Lacroix screams.
She finds Mercy’s room, opens the door, and watches her sleep. Even then, she had been a restless sleeper. Widow, even more cold and emotionless than she is now, had looked at Mercy’s rising chest and her mind had screamed killmercykillmercy and she had ran.
Talon had punished her for leaving the woman alive relentlessly, torturing her for months on end. Widow remembers, once, when she was still Amélie, Winston had told her that the only thing that could break brainwashing was a love for something so strong it overpowered your instinct to survive.
Nobody will ever know the truth, and Widow thinks she prefers it that way.
*
Two weeks later, Winston looks down at her, passes her the key that will open her new room, and says “Welcome to Overwatch, Widowmaker.”
Widow thinks about the château, cold and empty, the only place she’s known for so long, her home, and accepts the key with a smile.