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Hours lying in wait.
A very typical night for her. This mark was crucial for the next stage of Talon’s plans. An extraction team had been sent into the towering executive offices an hour ago, and Widowmaker was assigned to maintain a post on the roof of a ruined office building across the street in case any unwanted obstacles happened to force their way in. Twenty minutes ago, she had clicked her infrared visor down, radioed to ensure the extraction team was scaling the elevator shaft just as they appeared to be through the thick walls, and has not seen or heard anything significant since.
In the dead of night, there are very few distractions, even with the muffled roar of a bustling highway less than a mile south. The occasional clatter of alley cats scrapping. The soft tinkle of shattered glass raining on asphalt and concrete.
Even the beat of her own heart and the puff of her own breath have been recast so her focus is solely upon the shot.
. . . l u b . . . . . d u b b . . .
. . . l u b . . . THUMPd u b b THUMP, THUMP
Widowmaker snatches the knife she keeps tucked in the side of her boot and twists, snapping her arm in the direction of the bootsteps approaching her perch. The knife whizzes through black clouds to bury into the rotting wooden door, tearing whisping trails along with it.
The smoky entity solidifies into Reaper, whose mask tilts to see where the knife landed. Had he not ghosted to allow the weapon through, the blade would have lodged directly between his eyes. A fatal blow to any other. Not as such for Reaper, but it would have still hurt like a bitch and bloody his face for the next fifteen minutes or so afterwards. He steps backwards and wrenches the knife out of the door. “Good shot,” He rumbles.
“It always is,” Widowmaker replies. She returns her gaze to the scope of her rifle. Since she was assigned to watch from a single sight line, her weapon had been slightly modified with an attached tripod. It was light enough that it wouldn’t interfere with the rifle’s balance if she had to run after any wayward flies.
This time, she does not react to Reaper’s approach. He wordlessly grunts, and Widowmaker extends her palm. The knife carefully slides, handle first, back to her hand, and she returns it to its hidden sheath.
Reaper collapses backwards onto a box of ammunition the extraction team left behind, back against the uneven stone around the edge of the old rooftop. Widowmaker remains focused on the stillness of the building. Everything should be going well.
“You were meant to be with the extraction,” Widowmaker says quietly. Reaper gives a noncommittal grumble. He wasn’t wildly cursing and destroying everything around them, so it must not have been anything terribly serious. Sometimes Reaper has to be removed from an infiltration or extraction or the like because of his mental state, and when he comes to Widowmaker, he does not hesitate to vocalize his opinions of those situations. That he’s merely sulking means that he was sent away for some more innocuous reason.
Widowmaker remains focused as the creaking shuffle of fabric and leather sounds off beside her. Reaper heaves a sigh, then says, “They told me security was lighter than they were expecting. So I got sent up here to make sure you don’t get jumped.” Widowmaker hums in acknowledgment. She is more than capable of spotting any incoming threats, but to have Reaper’s deadly close-quarters combat experience nearby is…helpful.
A clatter of metal has Widowmaker glancing towards her rooftop partner. Reaper has tossed his mask aside, now throws his hood back and drags his claws through his hair to pull out the elastic band keeping it tied. He looks remarkably well put-together. His skin is a healthy bronze tone, his eyes are deep brown with only a hint of red around his pupils, and largely without smoking. He’s fed recently, perhaps on one of the few guards in the offices before he was sent to the neighboring roof.
Widowmaker envies him that aspect - being able to pretend he hasn’t been irreversibly changed by all that’s happened. It doesn’t all go away, of course, but it’s enough.
For a long moment, Reaper is quiet, and Widowmaker can simply focus on the building across the road. It is still silent. No movement from inside or out, and no contact with the infiltration team. To her right, there’s an occasional creak of leather or growl of frustration. Widowmaker doesn’t care to prod him, though. It’s more likely to make him moody and brood for hours on end.
Suddenly Reaper sighs, heavily, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his hair falling in an elegant black wave over his shoulder. “I thought about seeing her.” Widowmaker patiently waits. “Going to her,” He corrects, after a pause. “That’s why…all this.” Reaper waves a clawed hand at himself.
“Why did you decide against it, mon ange?”
Reaper snorts. My angel, she called him. She has all these little nicknames for Reaper that only come out when he’s pissed off or distressed or anxious. A part of him wants to hate it, yet he can never bring himself to. “Same reason as always,” He mutters, picking up the bone white mask. “I want to see them. Talk to them. But they won’t accept this.” Reaper buries his claws into his hair. “Even looking like this, they… They would never.” He releases a breath, and Widowmaker doesn’t know that she’s ever heard a more defeated, broken sound. “She would put a bullet in my head before I could get within thirty yards.” He stares at the mask in his hands, imagining the horror, the anger, the betrayal all of his other former friends have shown in the face of it. To endure that from Martina…from Adrien…
He knows it will break him. Further than he already is.
For the first time in what must be an hour (actually an hour, ten minutes, thirty-four seconds and counting), Widowmaker takes her focus away from the scope of her rifle and straightens, turning to look at Reaper while he gently runs his claws across the contours of the mask he hides behind. The way his fingers linger in certain places, random to an outside observer, are familiar. Widowmaker has done just the same with her old gowns and corsets that she once wore to performances. She doesn’t need to see his face to know it is filled with hurt, with longing, with regret, rage, despair, melancholy.
It pricks at her unwavering frigidness. As if to say, You see what you once felt, no? You see what they took from you? What they now deny you? This simple human thing of emotion. How cruel, Widowmaker thinks, to take away the one thing that could give her some connection to a human being again. Then again, that is the precise reason why she and Reaper connect so well, isn’t it?
She exhales. Turns away. Clicks her infrared visor down to ensure that the infiltration team is progressing as planned, which they are. The visor clicks away again, and Widowmaker takes another breath. Prepares herself for the horrible beast of vulnerability she is about to unchain.
“I go to Gérard. Sometimes.” If it were anyone else, Widowmaker would never speak a word. She ignores the sharp snap of Reaper’s head as he fixes his gaze on her. “His grave, that is.” Her eyes fix on some invisible point in the distance, somewhere far away from this ragged rooftop in urban London. “I do not know what compels me to do it. Moira would see it undone,” She hisses, a hint of true rage showing through the cracking glass of her otherwise impassable façade. “I… I think I miss him. But I do not know if I even remember him properly.”
Widowmaker pulls her rifle from where it balances on the rooftop ledge and allows the weapon to collapse, then sits it down beside the ammunition crate. She leans forward on her crossed arms. “When I go there, I leave his favorite flower. Roses. You told me, once, that he loved them because he appreciated their duality. That a single flower could cause the incautious to bleed, and provide beauty to the attentive.” Widowmaker feels the barest tug of a smile, though she doesn’t know if it shows on her face. “Gérard said they reminded him of me.”
It feels like another lifetime ago, but Reaper remembers that conversation. When he was Gabriel, and she was Amélie, and Gérard was blind to the fact that she was as enamored with him as he was with her. The number of performances and galas he’d been dragged to, ostensibly to act as a wingman of sorts, though more often than not, Gabriel had amused himself watching the two lovesick dancers stumble around in poorly-thought attempts to woo each other, somehow without either clueing in on it for well over a year. Instead of helping the way Gérard always seemed to want him to, Gabriel spent his time getting to know Amélie personally, and dropping little hints to her and Gérard about what the other liked or preferred about this or the other thing. Maybe it was because he had been in the middle of his own disastrous love life, comforting Jack after Vincent had left him and getting to know the charming woman that would eventually propose to him after a lengthy stakeout in Brazil, but helping Amélie and Gérard had been a strange sort of comfort.
That Widowmaker remembers it - even in such a small detail - is a shock. And oddly touching? The fact that she remembers her life before Talon isn’t a surprise, she and Reaper have been close enough for her to speak about it a few times before this. This, however, is the first time she’s ever spoken about Gérard to him. Certainly the first time she’s mentioned visiting his grave.
It provides some morbid camaraderie. Although they’ve both left those lives behind them, practically dismantling those identities with what they do for Talon now, they still have those little golden threads still clinging that they can’t bear to cut, no matter how much they should.
Widowmaker slides her hand into Reaper’s. Without thinking, they lace their fingers together and gently squeeze. Reaper’s clawed gauntlets leave faint violet lines in the skin of Widowmaker’s hand. The pain doesn’t even register to her. There’s a faint buzz in her ear, from the infiltration team. They’ve successfully captured the target and are en route to the safe house where they would await further orders.
That means she and Reaper would be free to do as they like until those further orders came. Keeping their hands clasped, Widowmaker slides into Reaper’s lap, curling comfortably against his chest. He puts his mask back onto the crate and wraps his other arm around Widowmaker’s pale blue shoulders. It’s comforting, if nothing else, that someone still trusts him to hold them so tenderly without fear.
“They’re probably going to radio soon,” Reaper mumbles.
Widowmaker hums. “Let them. I…” Reaper tilts his head. It’s rare for her to hesitate like this. “I want to feel. For a little longer, hibou. S'il te plaît.”
Reaper pulls her closer, rests his chin over her head, and squeezes her hand just that much tighter.
“Todo el tiempo que quieras, arañita.”