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The day comes when Widow realizes that she no longer has to try to enjoy the same things she did before her reprogramming. Between missions, there are so many hours to fill, and the chateau is full of cold, open rooms decorated by the family of a woman who might not exist any more.
She stops dancing. She stops painting. She puts away the Vogue and Journal du Luxe. She cannot change her combat training, as that is part of her job, but she can request instructors in new styles, new challenges. She uses the murmurs of Overwatch returning as her excuse.
She doesn’t know why she needs the excuse. Most of her colleagues are so arrogant or self-obsessed that they see only what they want to anyway. Those who are not — Akande, Gabriel — do not remark upon the changes.
Sombra notices, but she simply watches, as if Widow is one of the many mysteries she likes to solve. It is flattering in its way.
Widow considers her options. She has a great deal of wealth, and she was raised in a certain stratum of society.
The hobbies that occur to her first are those her mother would approve of. She attempts to learn the violin and then the piano, but she does not have the patience to listen to the screeches and plunks that accompany her failed efforts.
She takes up embroidery. Her hands are deft enough and it keeps them occupied, but her mind wanders too often. She begins new things without ever finishing the last, accumulating a small mountain of projects that will never be complete.
She takes an interest in the nearby vineyard. This, at least, gives her mind something to do, and the end result of her patronage is a better stocked wine cellar. She has no desire to commit to it as a business venture, however, so it doesn’t fill the days.
Still, Sombra enjoys it when Widow takes her on a tour.
She knows how to ski and she learns to scuba dive, but neither of these are things she can do regularly.
She busies herself in the chateau’s garden, but much like the vineyard, this is something she enjoys much more when she can pay someone to achieve the results she wants. She is uninterested in the process.
When the new roses begin to bloom, she does gain a new habit: she brings Sombra outside for coffee. Sombra is beautiful in Widow’s shirt and surrounded by the blooms, her hair still mussed from sleep and Widow’s roaming fingers.
She tries cooking and baking several times, even going so far as to order private, in-home lessons. Despite that it should be easy — it is simply following instructions and learning a set of mechanical skills — she never gets a feel for it. She is proud of her macarons, though.
Collecting antiques grows boring quickly. Her efforts at poetry test the limits of her alleged lack of shame.
Collecting cars and motorcycles scratches an itch. Working on them scratches another. Racing them is the closest to an adrenaline rush that she knows how to get.
These things fill the empty time, but she can’t do it every day. There are only so many ways to tinker, only so many races to find.
She tries her hand at photography. There is something pleasant about reducing everything to shapes and light, but it is less satisfying than painting was. She pins photos of Sombra to the board above her desk, and she puts the camera away until Sombra suggests a boudoir photo shoot.
Sombra has only observed this whole time, but the morning after Widow rejects photography, between sips of her coffee in the garden she asks, “Why do you need anything new, anyway?”
“The old things were for the old me.”
“Hm. So you need new hobbies?”
“Yes. For the woman I am now.”
“Is she really so different?” Sombra asks.
“Does that matter to you?”
“Only if it matters to you.” Sombra shrugs. Then she sets her coffee cup down, and she leans across the table. “I don’t care who you were before Talon or before anything else. I like who you are right now.”
Widow is filled with a warmth she somehow forgot. “You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t have a point to make,” she observes.
Sombra smirks at that, and she nudges Widow’s ankle with her cold toes beneath the table. “Caught me. Why does it mean you have to give up the old things?”
“Because those are the things I liked before. Maybe they are only old habits. Maybe I don’t really enjoy them.”
“Don’t you?”
Widow doesn’t have an immediate answer.
It’s true that she hates playing music, but that she still feels it inside her, seeking a way out. It’s true that embroidery and photography were never enough, that they made her miss painting.
But it’s also true that she loves the vineyard and the new garden and racing.
She thinks about Sombra’s questions. Is she really so different? Has she really changed so much that her old self is unrecognizable to her? Or has she only unlocked new potentials she never would have considered before?
She doesn’t know the answers, but she does pull her ballet slippers out of the back of the closet and clears out the parlor to leave the floors bare. She installs a mirror and a bar. She retrieves her painting supplies, and she turns the room with the best sunlight into a workroom.
She adds the fashion magazines back to their mid-morning coffee ritual.
She still tours the vineyard and enjoys their new garden and works on her cars, but she also fills time with the things she used to love and, it turns out, still does.
Sombra is happy to share in all these things.
Widow may not have use for the kitchen, but Sombra does. Widow devotes her energy here into finding out what Sombra’s ideal kitchen is and remodeling to those specifications.
There is another room that houses all Sombra’s servers and gadgets and the things Widow doesn’t understand.
She even goes so far as to buy a mini fridge, of all atrocious things, so that Sombra doesn’t have to leave her cave until she’s ready.
They fill their spare time with things they’ve always loved, and new things they discover together now.
Widow can incorporate the pieces she loved with the things she loves now. The past doesn’t have to be discarded; she can choose which parts to keep, which parts still serve her well. But as Sombra says, now is what’s important. Today Widow loves her, and she will tomorrow too.