Chapter Text
Like all young girls her age, Amélie wanted to do ballet. So her parents enrolled her in a professional class. Regular classes were not good enough, no, only the best of the best would do for their daughter. And when two years later she expressed feeling tired of the constant training and wanting to quit, she was given a private tutor instead.
She was good for her age. Many children lost interest, and were allowed to quit or slack off, but not her. Every time she cried in frustration, she was expected to do better. She enrolled in a school for the sole purpose of building a career in ballet, along with only a select few others. Not many got that privilege. Not many were good enough. It would be a waste of her talent to quit.
When she was thirteen she used a notebook as diary. Just to vent her frustrations in, since no one would listen. Two months later her mother found the diary, read it, and it resulted in a huge fight. She was no longer allowed to leave for any ballet-unrelated excursions. No friends. Only ballet, school, or sit in her bedroom. Amélie stopped talking to her parents. Even her teachers and peers were lucky to receive a nod or shake of the head as response. What was the point of talking if no one listened? She didn’t want friends who did ballet anyway.
A year later she had an idea. A way to vent her frustrations, and keep it all hidden. She scourged the internet for acting lessons. She learned to fake her smile, to mask her anger, to control her body language and facial expressions to perfection. If she could pretend to like ballet to her parents, maybe she would be allowed out of the house again.
It worked. With her freedom restored and the ability to hide everything others did not wish to see, she set out on secret ventures. It began with buying a disguise; clothes she would not normally wear. Her parents would have an aneurism if they saw her. That is, if they even recognized her. Then she started sneaking out to wander the streets at night. Getting into fistfights, clinking beer bottles with some guys she’d just met, and tagging walls with graffiti.
They never knew her name. She was just ‘that mute boy with the ponytail’. Baggy clothes helped hide her figure, she only communicated with sign language so they never heard her voice, and she grew tall enough not to stand out as ‘short’ among the guys.
Her parents would never find her.
No one would know.
And if she and her street friends happened to beat someone up one night? Well, her parents knew she had been practicing for ballet in her room before bed, in case the police ever came knocking on their door.
She was a star in the ballet world. And when she met Gerard, that was what he wanted to talk about. She let him talk, smiling and nodding in the right places. Her parents approved of him, and when he told her about Overwatch, she saw her chance to maybe, finally escape her life for something new. Something with more action. So when he proposed, she nodded excitedly.
She saw their training facilities once. Picked up a gun, got lucky on a few targets, and then Gerard walked in. Told her to drop the gun. For a moment she considered shooting him. He was supposed to be her ticket out of her boring life! But the gun didn’t have real bullets, so there was no point.
Her parents died. She didn’t care, not really. Took a break from ballet to ‘mourn’ and check up on everything she’d inherited. Gerard insisted she go back to dancing. To not ‘waste away’ in response to her parents’ death.
She was on her way to a lawyer to file for divorce when it happened.
Talon. She’d heard of them. Enemy number one to Overwatch. The attempt at training or whatever they were trying with her didn’t work. She’d been told what to do her whole life with no regard for her own wishes; now that her parents were gone and she was about to divorce, why would she choose a new keeper?
She played along, seeing their reactions and figuring out what they wanted to make her into, just so she’d be free faster. She’d been doing the exact same thing with her parents regarding ballet and had never been caught. Why would this be any different? Besides, it wasn’t like she’d never thought of killing her husband before. She didn’t have to completely fake her compliance, even if she’d never act on the thought.
After a final test, Talon was convinced of her brainwashing—really, who actually thought that was possible—and let her go home.
Gerard was sweet, wanting to take care of her after what happened. Never letting her out of his sight. Never giving her a chance to meet with her lawyer about divorce. He even watched over her when she sat at her computer, fearful that they’d send something to scare her with. But of course she was allowed to do ballet without his supervision.
One night, they were sitting down at the balcony at the chateau, and she just couldn’t take it anymore.
“I don’t understand why you won’t go back to the stage, or even practice,” Gerard said. “It would do you good to have something you enjoy in your life after everything that happened.”
The glass of wine she held in her hand shattered under the pressure of her fingers. The glass cut into her skin, but she ignored the pain as she had ignored the pain in her feet, her childhood, and marriage for years.
“I hate ballet.” The venom in her rarely used voice caused Gerard to look up from her bleeding, wine-coated hand. He flinched when he saw her glare.
“What do you mean, you hate ballet? I thought it was your one passion in life. Your parents said so too.”
Amélie laughed, cold and humourlessly. “Passion? Hah! I was like all little girls, wanting to try out ballet and then getting bored with it soon after. But quitting was not an option for a Guillard. No, if I even dared express any unhappiness with my special training, I would have everything else taken away. No friends. No games. No toys. Nothing but my ballet shoes and endless hours of practice until my feet bled and even then it wasn’t good enough. I thought marrying you would finally let me escape, but of course it didn’t. It’s funny, really. I was on my way to file for divorce when Talon kidnapped me.”
She shot him a look and licked her lips. “They want me to kill you. I played along with their little brainwash game so they’d let me go faster. I never planned to obey. Why would I? But now you stand here, watching my every move like a hawk, not letting me out of the house or even send an email without your say-so; I still can’t file for divorce, and now you won’t even let me quit ballet?! I’m starting to think killing you and joining Talon might just be the better option here!”
“Amélie, sweetheart, you don’t mean that.” He stood from his seat and stepped towards her. “We’ll get you into therapy, we should’ve done so from the start.”
Amélie quickly stood—the table jolted, something fell to the floor—and tried to get away from him. She didn’t need nor want his attempt at comfort.
“I don’t want therapy, I need freedom! For once in my life can I be the one who makes my choices?!”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Amélie, you’re just stressed, we can—”
She pushed his hands off and punched him in the face. He staggered back, slipped on a wine bottle—why was there a wine bottle on the floor—and tipped over the edge of the balcony.
“Gerard!” she called, grabbing after him, but it was too late. He fell.
She grasped the edge of the balcony, staring down into the darkness. Was he alive? What did she do? Talon wanted him dead, but she really hadn’t meant to kill him! Angry enough to break her silence and yell, sure. But death? It wasn’t his fault she’d lied to him since the day they met. She never meant to kill him. Vent the pent up anger she had been carrying around her whole life and then get a divorce. That was what she wanted.
“Gerard!” she shouted, throat throbbing in pain, but there was no response.
She fumbled for her phone and dialled 112.
“I need an ambulance!” she said as soon as her call was picked up.
“I will direct one to your location, can you tell me what happened?”
“He fell off the balcony. I can’t—it’s dark and he’s not responding,” her voice shook.
“Okay, someone is on their way, are there any lights you can turn on? It can help the emergency workers.”
“Ye—yeah, I think so.”
She staggered down the stairs and fumbled for the switch for the exterior light. She saw him. Bleeding. Limbs at odd angles. She knew the ambulance would be too late. It seemed Talon had what they wanted. But not her. Never her. Amélie Guillard-Lacroix never got what she wanted. So she cried. Not because he was dead, but because she never had the chance to walk away from him on her own terms.
His body was taken away by the ambulance, and the police questioned her. Not that they could do much to prove her guilty of a crime. The call to 112 had been recorded, and the offending wine bottle had been found at the scene of the crime. It was declared an accident, and Amélie was let free.
But she never made it to his funeral.
Talon had found her again.
She thought it might be her chance to try something new. But they had other plans. Or at least their scientist did. She never signed up to be a guinea pig, but if a cold-blooded, emotionless killer was what they wanted, she could play that role. She had plenty of practice hiding her feelings. The fact that she didn’t need to cover it up with a fake smile anymore brought at least some relief.
The slowing of her heart and everything that it entailed was painful. But her sudden inability to shiver did not make her immune to cold. Instead, she always felt cold. Even when in a hot room. She learned to ignore it. Who cared if the doctors wrote down yet another false result of their experiments.
But she got a gun, and training. She got to kill someone she didn’t know or cared about, and this time getting caught and sent to jail wasn’t even a risk she needed to consider. It was a fitting way to take revenge on the world for everything it had done to her. Even if the only person she really felt like killing was Moira O’Deorain. But that would only leave a target on her own back, so she let her be. For now.
Her room had a camera. Her attached bathroom did not. So she’d put on loud music, in case there were listening devices too, and let all her tears, screams and laughter out in the shower.
Talon treated her with respect, some of the lower ranking employees with fear; and while it wasn’t perfect, it was the best her life had ever been. After some time of working for Talon, she was even allowed to come and go as she pleased, so long as she responded to calls. Assassinations paid well too. All in all, her life was looking up.