Chapter Text
"It's made you angry."
It's something Amélie knows well, but not like this.
There's so many little things about Ashe, that tell her it. Pinched fingers on paler skin. Swallowed demands that persist as weighted exhales. The coil of her hand as it lapses along her brow, pulse drumming its beat in her wrists. Every muscle tensed, like maybe she'll snap; that the nearest thing will take the brunt of her scorn, her fury, and that's her.
She's doing a middling job at keeping it at bay but the observation almost breaks her and Ashe shakes her head in defiance, now somewhat aimless.
That's familiar, even if the rest isn't.
"I don't understand why you're not," Ashe says, forcibly calm but still not looking at her, each word very deliberate and careful. "I mean— I know why."
They're out by the ravine. What's left of the train tracks frayed at their feet. Surrounded by canyon on all sides and the slither of mist covering the impossible, never-ending probable fall into the abyss, where one step is all it would take.
It was the only place she could talk about it. It's taken her months. A lifetime to equally hold herself to the promise she made of her outlaw, that she tell her things, by sharing with her the darkest of hers. And out of every emotion, of the myriad that pass in the moment of the kill, anger is always quick to follow. Why did she do it? Why did she take their life for no good reason, when without her they would have lived?
Because she was told to.
Because when she did she felt something.
Because she wished it.
But Ashe's anger is different. Those lives and her taking didn't perturb her then when it was theoretical, and not when she found out for certain, and they don't weigh much to her now. It's earlier in her story than that – or later, that she's angry about. Perhaps all of it.
"It was my own doing," Amélie says quietly, looking away. The stars are out. They've always been brighter out here, in the middle of nowhere. "I didn't deserve for them to come after me."
The people meant to be her family.
It's one of the reasons she hasn't told her for so long, because she knew she would react like this.
"Blue," Ashe intervenes, still shaking her head; her hand hasn't moved from her brow and the process is still the same as it ever was, potent anger mixing with something else. "No. No."
Amélie sighs. "It was a long time ago," she recounts, evenly. "You don't have to be angry on my behalf, Ashe. I am not. Not even now, that I can be."
Why dwell on it? Surely Ashe can understand her desire to let it go. Ashe never wants to wander hers, but that's the difference. Her pride keeps the flame lit. Inspires every heist, every movement across the chessboard, to show them she's worth something. That they wronged her.
She can't hold it against them. Not really. There were things she did and people who will never forgive her for it – and feeling again means it matters.
That's what she has to live with.
Ashe lowers her hand from her face. Finally showing her the whole expression, and her eyes; red eyes just the same as blood, a woman who's killed, as she has. Discarded, as she was.
It's compelling, and it stirs what Amélie once assumed could only be found in a life.
Not that she doesn't have Ashe's. Ashe who takes her hand in hers, tracing the lines along her palm, and that's what she addresses. "I'm going to be," she says, with the same resolve she offers everything. "Until you want it back. Or you won't. That's fine. But until that day comes, I'm going to be angry for the Amélie who couldn't. Who didn't think…"
Her words ebb, same as her thoughts, and when she looks up she can barely touch her, fingers brushing against her neck so hesitant and tentative until they finally settle into place.
"Who didn't think nobody cared."
She's thinking about herself, Amélie knows. The girl alone. The girl lost. Much as she never wants to think about it.
It's a strange grief to share. The person you never got to be, no matter how proud and at peace with it you are. Ashe'll never, truly exist in that reality she once lived, or understand, but—
She can understand thinking, this is when I needed someone most.
And she knows their ache of absence; of abandonment, when they never come. When they give up on you.
"You don't have to say anything," Ashe whispers, soft as a smothering kiss. Knowing she's thinking and unable to decide. But her outlaw's next words are harsh, and biting. "Maybe I'll be less angry tomorrow. But I won't forget. Or forgive."
There's so many grudges she keeps alive in her heart and this one's just another, but Amélie feels her own heart murmur in her chest, a little faster because she's so—
Because she really means it. About keeping her safe. She wonders. When Reyes had first investigated Deadlock… if he had brought its leader back with him instead… what would Ashe have done, after she was spirited away by Talon? After she killed Gérard? After she went back to the very people who took everything she was? When she continually furthered that same divide, by making herself irredeemable?
Her anger about it now tells her.
She wouldn't have stopped. She would have followed her.
The Calamity would have broken into their empire and burned it all down and maybe that's the closest you can get.
It's not the first time that Amélie's pictured it. But it's the first time she's thought of it like this, for the Amélie that died alone, with no one.
Widowmaker's first kill was never Gérard.
She laces her hand over hers, the one against her face. "Are you blaming yourself?"
Ashe mumbles, because sometimes she's just too good at riddling her out in return. "I know it's ridiculous," she mutters.
"So don't," Amélie says. "We kill what doesn't suit us. You shouldn't spare me now. If you had known me, then... in the end, I would have only left you too…"
She doesn't have to finish. Ashe refuses it, shaking her head more violently. But she's right. Amélie knows she is. Cassidy left his mark, a sting and a bloodied thorn in what should have always have been, what it was all for. She can't say otherwise, but Ashe still tries, blinded by what she feels for her now.
"I never– never would have stopped trying to reach you."
Just as she thought she would do.
As she remembers.
Early. Not dusk but dawn and Ashe with Viper in her hands and Amélie isn't dressed for reunion, here to say goodbye.
She tells her she can ask her.
She tells her she can stay.
That they can still run away.
She remembers. Her argument's gone. Cinders in her hands, because Ashe has proven it to her before. A thousand thousand times, and maybe with her it would have been different. Is different. And Amélie wants, she wants—
"You say these things and I—"
Why?
"I mean them."
Why does she always choose her?
"I could betray you still."
"I know."
"And you care?"
Ashe raises her shoulders as she smiles, the one thing she knows for sure in a life of uncertainties, and Amélie thinks her heart stops.
"I love you."
"You love me."
"I love you," Ashe insists again, equally adamant. Real. "And the thought of you hurting, what you went through— whether you pushed them all away fast or slow— it bothers me."
Ashe's hand is gone, no longer in hers, over the outlaw's own heart now. The palm's not enough. Securing a hand over her heart isn't enough. She still wishes she knew her then, but she has her now, which is just as well. She's so angry, so mad: so madly in love, such a mixed conundrum, the what-ifs and maybes, and Amélie tips her chin so that she'll look at her properly, at what's certain.
If she were in the habit of it she might have tried smiling. She isn't. But her words are still gentle, and true.
She understands now. Why Ashe feels the way she does.
"Do I look like I am hurting now?"
Yet when Ashe kisses her it's so distinct. That she's kissing Amélie. And she's found her. Each angle a reminder of everything, every little thing. Everything she feels about her.
Where she wants to be.
If she were in the habit of crying, she might have.
And yet she still can't.
It's another difficult story to tell, much as she's failed to colour in everything surrounding it until now. Only what was necessary. Only that it was her nightmares. That she was robbed of a future with the man that she loved and she took away the same. That she didn't feel anything. That she had half expected the first time she'd kissed her outside a cabaret in Paris that the spell might be broken.
A silly admission. Foolish sentiment when they'd both been half asleep and drowsy. But it's like Ashe is trying for that now. That if the first, or the hundredth kiss won't do it, then perhaps this one will.
"Where were you all this time, chérie…?"
It slips out before she can stop it, but Ashe smiles against her mouth all the same, answer long prepared, easily recited. "Robbing banks, seducing dames, making myself into something," she says. "Someone who'd be worthy of you."
The last makes her chuckle. It's a part of why she loves her, yes, but it doesn't matter what she has, what she's made herself into.
She thinks. "Something good," she echoes. "Not an angel, then?"
"Never so righteous," Ashe laughs: the furthest example of what she is, smiling because she still understands what she was going for, her bid to break the ice. "More like a sinner."
Yes. It suits them – as does Ashe's lips against hers.
- - - -
She sleeps so soundly Ashe is the first one awake and that never happens.
Sometimes she is, and typically she persuades her to stay. But it's late afternoon when Amélie rouses alone and the gang is either out or occupied, and Ashe is downstairs in her office, frowning at her latest bits of business. Not because it's unattainable for a woman of her calibre, just improbable. That it'll require a lot of additional effort and funds in order to achieve.
"Something came in for you," she says without looking up, holding a folded piece of paper out in her direction.
No one sends her things here of all places – and of course Ashe would check its contents first before she could. Protective. Possessive. Even if that is also a relief.
Amélie skims the paper. Handwritten in a rush, atrocious spelling. But the photograph stapled in the corner is where she focuses, at the group of girls from the theatre in which she had performed her first heist.
"Nice to know they're not in that old theatre anymore," Ashe muses, not even bothering to pretend that she doesn't know the letter's contents word for word, and her chin rests against her knuckles as she gauges her girlfriend's reaction. "Says they're coming back into town for another performance though. You gonna go watch?"
She runs her thumbs against the coarse edges, the gloss of print. "Perhaps," she pauses, weighted. "Should I?"
Ashe shrugs. "It's been long enough," she says. "Attention shifts. Maximillian was the only one who saw you there, right?"
"Yes."
She wants her hands, she knows. More than that as Amélie traverses to Ashe's side of the desk, leaning against it.
"So you can. If you want to."
Rough against smooth. Supportive of whatever choice she makes.
"I'll think on it," she decides, for now. She has time… unlike the day she's slept away, if Ashe's long crossed-off and angrily scribbled over to-do list is any indication. "How were your deals?"
Ashe blows irritated air, dislodging her fringe, and Amélie smiles. Ah, yes. How dare people not do what she wants.
"I don't mind long-term investments," she says, "but sometimes it's just so darn slow. 'Not worth the money' my ass. He'll be back next month. I'll charge him double."
The spider chuckles. "You say that like you don't enjoy it."
"Yeah, I do," Ashe sighs. Such a shame, that they're both enjoyers of watching lesser men squirm. "But what's the point of turnover if you can't then partake in the spoils?"
"I'm spoils now?"
Ashe rolls her eyes, far more expressive than hers: and different, because she's also grinning. "You know what I mean."
She does. The insinuation is difficult to miss, with Ashe's hand on her waist. She's still perched against her desk, and Amélie offers it more of her weight as she leans further back, guiding the hand that's wandered to her hip down towards her thigh, holding it in place.
"What if I wanted to be spoils?"
Ashe is looking right back at her, even if most of her concentration is on her uncovered skin.
"Spoils or spoiled?" she manages.
"Not if I spoil you first."
"Hmm," Ashe wonders. Very much cornered. She leans back and then forward again, every dimple in her smile alight. "Wanna come back to my place, sugar?"
"This is your place," Amélie says. "And your desk."
"Good. Because I can't imagine keeping myself away from you for that long."
Work is done. In the warehouse the boys drift off towards the bar, and in her office Ashe sits her on the desk and kisses her, her greatest acquisition.
Ashe is contemplating hours. Maybe carrying her upstairs and taking her back to bed, and it wouldn't be hard to disrobe her when she's in little more than a nightgown, the cardigan more out of decency and she never bothered to button it, which her outlaw presently appreciates a great deal.
But she's smiling against her mouth and it turns into a little laugh, like she knows something Amélie doesn't, that she's forgotten, and she never forgets.
"If you want to stay here, we can," Ashe exhales, so tempted. She can see it in her eyes. Feel it in her touch, but the choice is genuine, to be made together. "But I do kind of want to go out with you."
Amélie blinks.
Did she truly sleep through the entire day and forget about their date whilst in her rush to see her? The night off with guaranteed no interruptions that they've been planning for at least the last two weeks?
Yes, seemingly.
"Then why don't we?" she says, not admitting to it, just playing the game, but Ashe's eyebrow isn't fooled as she chuckles.
"You forgot."
"I did not."
"You did," she laughs, stepping back to cover her mouth as the snicker gains momentum and her hands speak for her. "What's Sleeping Beauty in French? 'Dormir' or somethin', right?" La Belle au bois dormant, Amélie thinks automatically, but Ashe doesn't give her the opportunity to correct it, not that she wants to indulge her as she instead folds her arms. "Because that's you, sugar. Don't be like that," she says, reaching for wrists, hanging on. "You only just woke up. It happens. And you know, all day long I was stuck in here corralling buyers, I couldn't stop thinking about the beautiful, calculated, dangerous woman asleep so soundly in my bed as I'd left her this morning…"
Her fingers are tiptoeing up her arm. Eventually they might end at her collarbone, and her neck, and up to her mouth, but Amélie halts them at her elbow. She's being very flattering and reassuring, but that's not why.
"I'm not supposed to forget."
She has to remember.
Ashe frowns lightly. Knowing this is less about her sleeping in and more the details. That she could ask her girl the specifics of anything in all their time together and that Amélie would know.
"Is it bad if you do?"
Yes, of course it is.
Her control. So carefully structured, crafted and held. Without it she'd go back to— back to merely Widowmaker. Chasing the euphoria that's the moment between when a shot fires and when a shot lands, where there is nothing else.
But is that because she desires it—
Or because Talon said so?
That for the longest time, her memories were the closest thing she had to being able to feel, the emotionless sorrow hers to drown in – her reminder, her sole understanding of what she had done?
She won't be forgiven. She wouldn't stop until Talon was satisfied, and they never would be. Just give her a name, a target. A woman building omnics in a country meant to despise them. She failed to eliminate her. A monk preaching harmony between humans and omnics. She eliminated him. A man who is your husband.
She eliminated him.
An outlaw who reshaped your understanding of what you are, that she could love you all the same, and that somehow, you could love her back.
She didn't eliminate her.
She hadn't. She couldn't.
They wanted her to forget.
They wanted her to forget it all, so that she would go back, and kill him. Kill more. Bleed less. The perfect predator.
And although she failed, and left broken, she—
It was her only recompense. She would remember.
She would not count. She would not quantify it.
But she would remember.
Yet if she keeps moving forward, with Ashe, then one day—
One day she'll—
Amélie exhales. It isn't shaky, but it's so slow. Slower still than her barely beating heart.
"I don't know."
It's hard.
It's so, so hard.
Before she was alone. But she isn't now. Not with Ashe embracing her, both hands secure against one shoulder where the tendrils of her tattoo ends, forgetting a little more; and slowly Amélie recollects that she ought to do the same, and she can feel Ashe's melancholy smile against her cheek long after she's gone.
"The future's so damn scary when it's not what you thought it'd be. It's not something that any of us can control… and you know how I feel about that." Ashe sighs, softly. "We'd all be scared shitless if we thought about it too much, but that's why you rely on what you can count on. Deadlock. Bob. You and me."
It isn't as spur of the moment of a speech as Ashe likely wants her to believe, Amélie thinks. That she really has been thinking forward on her own.
She wonders what else. What might be there or real, if she says any more. But Ashe sticks her tongue against her teeth and shakes her head, packing it back away.
"I guess what I'm saying is don't think ahead that far, sugar," she amends. "Just start somewhere. With what you want for tonight – because that is yours, 'well as mine. And if you did forget, because you were actually sleeping for once, then I'll just ask you again," she says, finally pulling back and making a show of taking slender fingers in her more calloused, blistered ones, and Ashe raises Amélie's knuckles to her lips, barely touching. The most seductive she can be, what she wants laid bare. "Will you go out on a date with me, Amélie?"
The way she says it almost makes her feel seventeen again. Or at least inspires the same butterflies.
Since when did she have those?
"How am I supposed to say no to that, chérie?"
"You can't," Ashe smiles wider, the edge of red curled along the fingers of her raised hand. "Say yes."
Don't think about the past now. Fill it with the present instead.
It isn't a bad way for both of them to be, and Amélie retrieves her hand so that she can kiss her her reply.
"Sushi."
"Usual place."
"Squid rings."
"As many as you like."
"So thoughtful," Amélie muses, fingertips slender on her neck. It would almost be a shame to stop kissing her, when she's being so sweet. But if they're going out, then she does have to get dressed. "Should I meet you back here in an hour?"
"Make it two," Ashe murmurs. The restaurant's already booked. Re-asking doesn't change that, and neither does speeding their way through the obligated decisions to what they should do as they re-play their parts, but this answer's the unexpected – not that a delay matters. Likely they'll get away with arriving late, with enough money thrown at it. Sometimes it pays. Sometimes Amélie will let Ashe spoil her, as with the next. "I want to kiss you a bit more first."
She breathes. "As do I."
"Then it's a yes?"
Amélie chuckles. "Yes, then," she says, for the certainty Ashe craves; and something further still, low and barely venomous. "Take me out."
Ashe snorts, having to break away from her entirely whilst she gets over it, this little joke of hers that's landed. Her face is a picture. Exactly what Amélie wanted, from saying it.
"You know you shouldn't put it like that, honey."
Amélie shrugs, serene. "Who's to say it wasn't intentional?"
Ashe presses her nails into her palm as she raises one accusatory finger, and then drops her whole hand, like she's really testing her patience. Or she's amazed. "God you're the worst," she says, not at all meaning it – the feeling attached quite the opposite, that she adores her for it – and the familiar smile certainly does as Amélie specifically requested. If looks could take out and devour a heart, and break them, then Ashe would know; but it doesn't last as her outlaw moves and kisses her neck, hand already snaking between the few layers of clothes she's brought with her.
Distantly Amélie wants to say they better make it three hours – she thinks about it, entertains it, that she could keep the suggestion going – but no. No.
This is just fine. This slow memory of fire, lovingly etched into her skin. Ashe is what she wants, and that's all the encouragement that either of them need.
- - - -
It's been precisely sixteen hours since she last took a break. Maybe longer: truthfully she'd stopped acknowledging concepts like linear time a little after ten. But the steady stream of people in need had never really ebbed, and a crisis doesn't care so much for things like human limits and exhaustion.
That was the first thing that Angela had learned in Overwatch, so long ago. Reach your limits… and then keep pushing past them.
It was an ethic that had inspired her work, in everything. The staff. Her suit. Her eventual moniker, the call sign that had seemed appropriate at first: the caring salve of a wished for angel in their hour of need, granting them mercy from pain that they so deserved to have. Who saw those limits that you've reached and said no— no, you've suffered enough.
Not that it has ever had applied to her.
She's made mistakes but that's not what they want to hear. Only that she'll fix it, fix everything.
She's tired. Jaded. Angela is not the same woman who first donned that suit anymore, but it's that woman they want. That she'll provide.
Overwatch might not have needed her all those years they were gone, but the world always has. It's why she's so reluctant to go back. Sure, it's a purpose, and she's never relinquished it, and yet— they were supposed to have safeguards. They were, on the surface, supposed to be different. She knew otherwise. They needed covert operations. They needed people who were willing to go as far as they needed them to go and farther still.
It… says something, that so many of those same people have sided against her ethics now. They had brought their lack of scruples with them but – the bitter truth is that her and Moira are not so different. She'd never admit it aloud and certainly never in earshot of anyone that knew her, but how many morals has Angela Ziegler, Mercy, willingly bent? How far has she left to go? How many times has she taken life into her own hands, and achieved the impossible?
Angela likes to believe she knows life and death pretty well.
It's exactly the worst time to be thinking about it, when the sixteen straight hours are up and the volunteer medics have begged her to take a break and sleep, and there's no longer any distraction from the pending recall as she silently stares up at the cloth canvas that presently serves as her ceiling, with the smallest of frowns.
She knows she'll go back. She's predictable; especially about this. Angela tries not to be, but she is. For as long as she lives, she will not give up. It's where she can do the most good, and to a girl who once had no-one, it's the closest thing she has to family. To belonging somewhere.
What's a family that falls apart and leaves you behind to clean up its messes? Not being in the public eye sounds a delight. Too bad she'll never know it.
They need heroes and she is far from that. She sees that same spark that once inspired her still in Lena, in Brigitte. Particularly Brigitte. The younger woman had followed it after Reinhardt and last she'd spoken with her she was considering becoming a squire in actuality. It's not like Brigitte doesn't know the tragedy of it. That to save someone, you must pick up a weapon yourself.
And the more Angela thinks about it, of herself going back to Overwatch, the less like a choice it feels – only that she should. It's not as pure a motivation as they might believe. She needs that reach, those resources that she's had to scrounge since the disbandment, and perhaps this time around they can make a difference. If anyone can do it and build a lasting foundation for them to stand, Winston can.
It's what she's wanted, deep down, what she needs, what they need, and so—
Why can't she decide?
Bah. She'll spend another day not thinking about it tomorrow, when she might be reasonably more assured that things here at the encampment can be handled without her. But as set in stone as Angela's plans for tomorrow presently are, they don't stay that way.
It's only once the lights are out that she notices the faint purple glow, a quiet flickering of light for the curious nestled between her belongings that definitely wasn't there however many mornings ago she last slept. Perhaps it's nothing and solely her imagination, playing tricks on her. Perhaps it's an untimely prank. But she sighs and sits up again and the source doesn't take long to locate.
The found device stops glowing the moment Angela picks it up. Poised, almost. There's a soft, telltale whir, like it's clearly doing something, and her sleep-deprived brain catches up with her, that perhaps she shouldn't be picking up mystery objects in her bare hands, but it's as she's reaching one handed for her blaster that the screen lights up, with its actual intent—
A message.
Short. Sweet. That she's in danger from Talon itself.
Angela almost laughs. When hasn't she been? She's dealt with their periodic attempts to call on her before.
But somehow this feels altogether different from all those other times.
Whomsoever her unknown protector is, the warning is not all they've left for her. Longitude, latitude: likely the start of a paper trail that will lead her to safety in the interim, until Talon's ongoing interests encourage them elsewhere.
She should stay, flout their reach. They wouldn't dare attack the camp. But that also doesn't seem like a very good idea. She could go straight to Overwatch – a fledgling creature, and easily struck down, silenced just as quick as their reassembly began. She doesn't doubt that Talon know about it by now.
Angela sighs.
As ever, there's really only one choice, and it's already been made for her.