Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’re on a mission, and there’s a man who is very beautiful, and he smiles like a killer. Widow can’t help but smile back at him, accepts his offer of a drink, watches his lips. She checks her phone: no calls or texts.

She’s done a lot of terrible things. But this is the worst.

*

Some nights, she wakes up screaming.

It’s nothing particularly new, or surprising. Widowmaker is a cold-blooded killer, with a past so heavy it holds her down, and she dreams about it every night, about the thick satisfaction of a bullet between the temples.

Mercy usually wakes up as Widow is shaking, wraps her arms around her and holds her down. To some, it might seem suffocating, but it grounds Widow, holds her there.

One day, Widow feels Mercy awaken, shift, note that Widow is dreaming.

She turns over and goes back to sleep.

This is the beginning of the end.

*

They fall in love slowly, carefully, because Widow thought she would never love again and Mercy is a bit fucked up too. The first time they meet off the battlefield, Widowmaker’s voice cracks on ‘Angela’ and Mercy just smiles.

She’s the only one who meets Widow after a grueling three days of fighting for Overwatch and betraying Talon. The others hang back, hide in their groups, watch her suspiciously.

“You don’t even look scared,” says Widow.

“I’m not scared of a terrified spider who wears the body of my old best friend,” says Mercy, and it’s harsh, but Widow revels in it, in the acknowledgement that she isn’t Amelie. Because there are two sides: the people who want her to be Amelie and the people who think she’s unredeemable. There is no in between.

“Come inside with me and I’ll patch your wounds,” Mercy says, and she smiles again, and Widow can’t help but smile back.

*

Nobody’s ever had that much faith in her before.

Not even back then.

*

They don’t fall in love immediately. In fact, some days it’s like they hate each other.

Mercy doesn’t hold Widow’s past against her, but some days she is distant and difficult, grating on Widow’s mind like teeth. Widow wants to hide then, to shut herself in a room and never come out, press a gun to her head and call it a good attempt.

But she doesn’t, she tries harder and harder, and she befriends the others, one by one, and fuck, she tries. Widow’s instincts are always screaming at her to kill, kill, kill, and it’s exhausting to defy them, and also seem like a functional human being, but God, she tries.

They don’t fall in love immediately.

But.

*

But between the fights, and the war, and making friends, and making a new home, and fighting against all her murderous instincts. Between all that, Widow falls in love with Angela Ziegler.

Some nights, that kills her.

It’s not until a chilled night, and Widow is five glasses in, and Mercy is rosy-cheeked and dancing, when Widow breaks.

They walk out on the balcony for some air. It’s the most beautiful night, the stars hanging from the sky like gravity’s dragging them to Earth.

“It’s fucking cold out here,” Mercy says, and the words drag along her tongue.

Widow laughs, almost joyous, and kisses her.

*

They’re good with each other.

Sometimes, Widow’s not sure anybody else could deal with either of them.

They’re good.

*

Widow’s not a good person. She’s killed adults, children, innocent people, over and over again. She’s terrible.

Mercy loves her through that, despite that, until she doesn’t.

Until she’s away more and more, in warzones on extra missions, in places she doesn’t even need to be. Widow tries to understand at first, knows that Mercy lives to heal people, that she would die herself without it.

By the third week alone for the fifth time that year, Widow is tired.

Their house is cold and empty. The sheets reek of loneliness. Widow can’t even look at Mercy’s dirty clothes spread over the floor, ones she couldn’t bring herself to clean.

*

Mercy promises she’ll be back this Friday and never comes home. Widow doesn’t get an explanation until a week later, by which point she’s already torn through a bottle of vodka.

*

Winston messages her about a mission, says it could be dangerous, says she should take backup, to wait a couple of days. Widow agrees, and goes alone that night.

*

“You’re not home enough,” Widow snaps. “You’re always away –”

“Doing my job.”

Widow laughs. “Do you even want to be home anymore?”

Mercy doesn’t answer.

“Do you even love me anymore?”

Mercy left. And that was three weeks ago.

*

Russia is cold at this time of the year, but Widow doesn’t really feel it.

She looks up into the clear, clear sky and thinks about whether there’s redemption for her in the stars.

The mission should be in and out, easy, a quick kill on a weapons boss. Winston calls Widow because she’s the only one who’ll feel no guilt about the kill. The satisfaction is duller now, mostly because Widow supresses it. Killing is an addiction. She doesn’t want to be an addict anymore.

He’s in a bar, drinking whiskey. She spots him immediately in his crisp suit, comfortably leaning against the bar. And of course, he sees her immediately.

Who wouldn’t? She’s beautiful, she knows that. Men would, and have, died for her looks again. Harry Andropov is only the next in line.

But he’s charismatic, and she is so, so angry. She lets him talk to her, because it’s been so long since she’s received this sort of attention, and he makes her laugh, with all his ridiculous stories. Widow shares a bit about her, leaving out the bits where she’s killed men with less than a paperclip before.

He walks her out of the bar when she says she has to leave, and he stops her just outside. He searches her eyes for a moment, and she’s very drunk and very stupid, and she kisses him.

She kisses him.

This wasn’t part of the mission.

Before she can throw up from the taste in her mouth, she raises her hands to his head, breaks his neck and runs.

*

She doesn’t go home.

*

The job is done, she messages Winston.

He calls her, and leaves a voicemail, asking only, ”Where are you? Angela is worried.”

Widow doesn’t reply.

She keeps running for weeks and weeks.

*

By the time she makes it home, it’s December, and snow is beginning to fall over New York.

Moving here was mostly a joke, something about becoming Americans and a joke about football. Mercy isn’t home when she arrives, but Widow knows she’s not away, because Mercy had told her. Had messaged her thousands of times, getting progressively more sad, until Widow aches with the pain of being away from her.

Widow sits out on the balcony in the freezing snow and waits.

Mercy comes home in the late evening, looking exhausted. Her footsteps slow, and Widow knows the exact moment Mercy spots her, because her whole body goes rigid.

“You came home,” she says. “I wasn’t sure you ever would.”

Widow grits her teeth, because she feels like she might cry otherwise, and she can’t. It’s physically impossible, she thinks, but. Still.

“Aren’t you going to say something? Anything?” Mercy sits beside her. She reaches out as if to touch her and then changes her mind, snatching her hand back. “I know about the Russian job, about the kiss.” Mercy swallows. “I deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did,” Mercy says. “I was scared. Everything became so normal. And I love you so much, I always have, but I didn’t know how to deal with normal. To deal with happy, with having this apartment with you and not fearing for my life every day. I was so scared of you leaving me that I scared you away, that I came home and you were gone.”  

“I have tried so hard to love you, Angela,” says Widow, and she only says Angela when she’s really upset. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Mercy breaks, and she sobs. Widow can’t be cold anymore and reaches forward, pulls her in, presses kisses all over her face. It’s the closest they’ve been for nearly six months now, and it breaks Widow’s cold, dead heart.

*

Widow moves out.

Mercy is gone when she comes to get her stuff, and Widow tries to think that this isn’t the end, but it sure as fuck feels like it.

*

The last time Widow kisses Mercy, a single tear rolls down her cheek, and she thinks Huh, I can cry.

*

They don’t speak for a year after that.

*

They meet again in the strangest of places, a bar in a small island in Europe. They’re both there for the same thing, they’ve both finished their jobs, and both of them look half-dead when they find each other.

Widow sits on the stool beside Mercy and raises her hand to the bartender, asks for two shots of the strongest tequila they have.

“Tequila,” Mercy drawls. “Are we teenagers again?”

“You didn’t know me when I was teenager,” says Widow, but it’s a joke, and she smiles around it.

They get delightfully drunk, and they laugh like old times. It’s easier not to think about it, with the thick haze of alcohol in her mind. About the way they left things.

Before Widow even thinks about it, the bar is closing and they’re getting kicked out.

It’s sharp and cold outside, which is ridiculous, because it was cold the last time Widow saw Mercy. They go back to Mercy’s room, and they don’t do anything, just talk about their friends and their own little love triangles and it’s nice.

They fall asleep innocently on the rug in front of the fire, Widow’s head pillowed on Mercy’s stomach.

Widow wakes up in the night and thinks about how easy it would be to slip away.

She doesn’t.

*

The next morning, before she leaves to report back to Winston, Mercy pauses in the doorway, a hand on Widow’s arm.

“Would you like to go to dinner sometime?”

A thousand thoughts flash through Widow’s head – about broken hearts, about the heartbreak of somebody who doesn’t know how to love you – and all she can say is, “Yes. Just tell me when and where.”

*

They have dinner at a beautiful restaurant in Switzerland, near Mercy’s hometown, and Widow meets Mercy’s mother.

It’s the most bizarre thing, since they’ve never met each other’s family, but it feels so natural, the way the old woman is so delighted to meet ‘the one she’s heard so much about’.

They stay in a chalet, and they sit by the fire as snow begins to fall outside. It’s the most at peace Widow thinks she’s ever been, and she realises that maybe they’ve both grown a bit over the last year.

When Mercy kisses her, it’s not really a surprise, but she’s not expecting it either. The kiss is gentle, and a little desperate, and Widow aches.

*

Widow leaves for a few days, and they meet up again at Overwatch headquarters.

“I don’t know that it can be like things were before,” Widow says, when Mercy walks into her room that night. The curtains are open, flapping with the growing wind. A storm’s brewing outside.

“We’re different people,” Mercy says. “And that’s not a bad thing. I would understand if you wouldn’t trust me again.” She says it like Widow didn’t kiss another man, and Widow has made peace with it but it brings the self-anger up again, broiling in her stomach.

“Hey,” Mercy murmurs, and she cups Widow’s face in her hands. “I just want to try.”

Widow bites her lip and tries not to smile. “Okay,” she says, “we can try.” Widow kisses her softly, so gentle, as if a kiss can convey both I missed you and I’m sorry at the same time.

And they try.