Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was a matter of fact, not opinion, that Angela Ziegler was already ethically compromised. The first rule of thumb they had learned in medical school was that there always needed to be a degree of separation between the patient and doctor. Never treat your own family or friends, because how can you maintain the necessary objectivity when you already possess a substantial degree of emotional entanglement?

This, however, was something far outside of the textbook cases she had studied so long ago.

They had the best doctors in the world on site, but it made little difference; no one in living memory had any sort of expertise for this sort of scenario.

Or this sort of patient.

Anxiety bubbled in Angela’s stomach, no doubt producing excess bile that would result in heartburn later. As she walked down the white and brightly lit ward halls, two massive ‘bodyguards’ on either side of her small frame, she wondered not for the first time if she was already in over her head.

But what else was there left to do except try?

No one had pushed her to this. It had been brought to her attention, of course, but she had ultimately volunteered herself and agreed to it, so there was no place for the momentary jitter of nerves that ran over her as they approached the door at the end of the hall. Nerves would do her no good, and certainly do her patient no good as well.

They had to pause for longer than expected at the door—about five different kind of locks, both traditional and electronic, had to be managed. It was long enough that Angela felt the rare stirrings of annoyed impatience strike her, and she would have opened her mouth, but at that exact moment the final lock was undone and the door was opened before her as she was ushered in.

The room was hardly different than the usual sort of quarters used for such a patient, if noticeably devoid of decorations or accessories. A bed, a nightstand, a small table in the corner, a dresser near a door that led to the private restroom. A chair by the lone window, and a second chair in between the bed and the entrance.

Angela quickly noted how each and every last piece of furniture was bolted down to the floor. Nothing could be easily moved, least of all by a solitary resident without access to tools of any sort.

As for the patient herself…

Amélie Lacroix stood by her small window, back turned to them, but arms still crossed, hands clutching at opposite elbows. In the six months since they had finally defeated Talon, since they had captured ‘Widowmaker’ from the burning stronghold that had been Talon’s last stand, she had changed entirely. Angela still remembered what she looked like as she had been ‘escorted’ into the Overwatch headquarters, completely bound and restrained, the lone member of Talon left alive after the final, bloody showdown between them and Overwatch.

The rigorous nanomedicine regiment they had since treated Amélie with—the medicine that Angela herself had tirelessly designed and engineered specifically for this unique case—had done wonders in those long months since.

No longer was her skin blue, her hair practically indigo. She looked far less like Widowmaker and far more like the Amélie of old...the one that Angela had known during her appointment at the original Overwatch organization. It was the first time Angela had seen up close just how effective her medicinal treatment had been in counteracting the nanoagents initially employed by Talon to condition their ‘Widowmaker’.

This was why Angela was here now, instead of locked away in her usual laboratory.

Angela wet her lips, and then spoke.

“Hello, Amélie.”

Amélie turned around then, a tinge of surprise coloring her words and her expression alike. Whatever she had been expecting, it was clearly not Angela. But then, why would she? Six months in what was first Overwatch prison and now solitary psychiatric watch...and the only times Angela had seen her one-time friend and one-time enemy had been when Amélie herself was sedated to unconsciousness. And that had been early on months ago, when she was still under rigorous nanomedicine treatment.

What was clear, though, was the recognition on her face. So she still knew who Angela was then.

“Doctor Angela Ziegler? Is this a visitation or…?”

Angela watched as Amélie turned, as her eyes flickered to each of the guards who stood with Angela.

“I believe it is one of the insufferable psychiatrists...the man who looks like a small rat wearing glasses...who normally sees me around this time.”

Amélie’s eyes sharpened, and Angela saw no point in mincing words. Honesty was first and foremost.

“Dr. Schauss will no longer be seeing you, Amélie. Nor will any of the other doctors.” She thought a moment hard about that, not wanting to be even inadvertently dishonest. “None of the psychiatrists or psychologists, I mean.”

Amélie took a few slow steps closer, distaste now evident in her features, practically venomous.

“Ah, are you a...how you say…’shrink’ now, Dr. Ziegler?”

Amélie knew just as well as Angela that it was hardly the case. Angela’s original specialty had been in neurosurgery—the occasional crossover with the psych ward yes, but her specialty had never been in therapy.

“Did Schauss and his associates grow tired of being unable to pick my brain? Upset by their failures as world experts to either draw out the Widowmaker they are so certain lurks beneath the surface? Or by their equal inability to condition me back into a happy, healthy, utterly braindead civilian again? And so now you hope to replace them, to pull out what answers they could not.”

Yes and no. Angela was frankly a bit thrown off by it all. So Angela did the thing that came automatically to her: she was blunt.

“Well actually I was thinking we could just start off by taking your vitals, if you don’t mind…”

Angela had not even finished speaking when she noticed the way Amélie’s eyes grew dark and shuttered, unfocused. It was a dissociative and defensive reflex common in people bracing themselves for something forthcoming that was both unwanted and unpleasant. What on earth…?

The answer emerged as both of Angela’s bodyguards who accompanied her stalked forward to take Amélie roughly in hand, forcing her back toward her bed, and toward the restraining straps that Angela only now realized were attached to the piece of furniture. Amélie’s muscles stood out as they clenched, but she did nothing to overtly resist.

Angela was surging forward and yelling before she even realized the words had left her mouth.

“Stop! What are you doing? Herrgott! What in God’s name are you doing to her?”

Seemingly surprised more than anything, the two men stopped, blinking dumbly at Angela.

“You said you wanted to take her vitals, doctor?” The confusion was evident in the man’s voice.

“And since when does taking vitals mean physically assaulting a person?” Angela held her notebook and pen in a vicegrip, her only means of not shaking now that anger was coursing through her.

Her mind had already put two and two together, but was still utterly horrified when the man continued.

“It’s standard procedure, Dr. Ziegler? We always physically restrain the patient when…”

He trailed off, uncertain now that she glaring at him. It took every ounce of self control for Angela to keep her voice even. “Remove your hands from her.”

They didn’t, looking even more confused than before. “But, the orders have always been—”

“Did I ask a question? Remove. Your. Hands. Both of you.”

This time they complied, taking a step back. Amélie remained half-sitting on her bed, arms now folded in and crossed—a typical defensive response—her left hand reaching over her right forearm. Was she bruised from her treatment?

Angela clenched her jaw, stopping her own automatic urge to immediately jump in and check for physical injury; it would present her no differently to Amélie than these...these oafs.

She wanted to rub her temples. Five minutes in and this was already going horribly. How was she supposed to talk with Amélie in these sort of conditions? How was she supposed to even begin to gain Amélie’s trust to open up to her, let alone to help her heal?

Angela took a deep breath. She had to start somewhere. There was yet to be a patient she had given up on. She was not about to let Amélie Lacroix be the first...no matter what history and blood lay between the organizations they had both been associated with.

This was about Amélie.

Now certain that the guards weren’t going to anything immediately stupid, Angela stepped up to the bed, crouching down a bit.

Look as nonthreatening as possible. Nothing unexpected.

“May I check your vitals?”

Amélie looked up at her, golden eyes flat and emotionless.

Ah, yes, part of Angela mechanically recorded down.

She remembered in the notes the remark on how her nanomedicine had been unable to revert the color of Amélie’s eyes. The melanin that had original made her irises a deep and lovely shade of hazel had been permanently altered by the work that had turned her into Widowmaker. Even Angela’s nanotherapy couldn’t change that—it could not put back something that was no longer there.

In the moment, though, she looked hard back at those eyes, not to study the color of the iris, but to try to glimpse something of the mind that lurked behind them.

It was still as hidden to her as the day Amélie had disappeared, leaving Gérard’s body behind her. Still, she waited patiently.

“You act as if I have a say in the matter.”

Suspicion, mistrust...but also something else. Even just saying that to Angela felt like to her like...a certain degree of uncertainty.

Angela nodded slowly. “You do. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I promise.”

Amélie snorted and turned cheek, lips sneering upward. She jutted her chin toward Angela’s ‘guards’. “As if they would allow it.”

The anger flared to life in Angela’s chest again and she straightened backward, turning to glare at the two men who had accompanied her. She would actually deal with the whole...issue...of them after this, but for now…

“I don’t care what your previous protocol was, but you answer to me right now, and therefore directly to Jack Morrison. You will both stay back and hands off while I do my job as the doctor and take the patient’s vitals. And you,” Angela pushed her clipboard and pen out toward the guard closest to her. “Will write down the vitals as I tell them to you. Understood?”

The two shared a clearly nervous glance, but seemed to think better of directly arguing.

“Doctor...our primary job is to ensure your safety.”

“Then do so only when it is actually necessary,” she responded curtly. Then Angela turned her attention back to Amélie, who had still refused to fully face her. “May I?”

She could still see the way Amélie’s lips pursed into a thin line. “Very well, if you must.”

Angela ignored the tension in the room—the way the two guards with her were practically twitching to jump into action, the way Amélie herself, despite her apparent disinterest, felt like a coiled spring beneath her hands. No different than her usual bedside manner for something so simple, Angela forced her face to stay relaxed and calm. She read the numbers off to be recorded. Unusually low blood pressure, low heart rate. A temperature that was several degrees hypothermic. Not at all as low as the stats that had been taken when they had first brought Widowmaker in, before the nanomedicine cocktail had first been administered, but it did indeed seem that Amélie’s vitals might never return to the normal range where they had been before...before everything.

Angela finished listening to her heart and breathing. All slow, yes, but normal. She tucked her stethoscope back down around her neck, and nodded her head once. Thank god her guards had managed to keep to themselves, never mind that they were practically on top of Angela now.

“Thank you,” she murmured once finished.

She did manage to catch the way Amélie’s eyebrows raised the barest fraction before she turned away from Angela again, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

“I presume this is where you are supposed to ask me questions, non?” Amélie stared steadfastly out of the single, barred window to her room. “What I’ve been thinking of? How I ‘feel’? Any sudden urges to kill anything?”

Her voice didn’t need to drip dry sarcasm for Angela know the futility of such a meaningless exercise. Was this really how things had been handled for the last half year?

“I don’t usually like putting words in other’s mouths, but I doubt that’s what you would like right now.”

Amélie made a noise that was not particularly indicative of anything, but did nothing. When nothing else was forthcoming, Angela continued.

“Would it be okay if I visit you again?”

Again, no revealing answer. Amélie gave something like a shrug, as if bored. Wherever her mind was, it was not longer here. “It hardly matters to me.”

Angela waited a moment more, then nodded her head.

“I’ll take my leave, then.”

She and her two guards left from a room just as silent as when they had first entered it.

It took no small amount pulling strings—practically all the way up to Jack—for Angela to ensure that her next ‘visit’ an entire three days later could be done without two intrusive guards at her side, or any guards at all. There had been a lot of push-back to her demand, too much push-back, and it was concerning. She understood the worries, yes—who didn’t?—but there was a point at which such excessive precautions became impediments to progress, and hadn’t the entire reason Angela had been allowed in on this was to see if they couldn’t make headway? They had to start somewhere.

Still, Angela chuckled somewhat darkly to recall that her most persuasive argument to the council of doctors and security experts alike had been that if ‘Widowmaker’ wanted to kill her, two guards were not about to change that, and would just as likely die with her. A morbid argument, but it had worked.

She was not about to be deterred.

Angela walked into the flawlessly clean room for a second time, and the door was closed after her.

Amélie was seated by the window again, this time a paperback book in hand. The book was set down slowly, and Amélie raised one single, slender eyebrow, not looking the least bit surprised.

“Ah, I was wondering why they had installed the new camera. Now it makes sense.” She paused, tilting her head to one side. “No one else with you?”

Angela glanced briefly at the dark-lensed camera that protruded out from one of the upper corners of the room. It was an unfortunate point on which she had to compromise in order to get the final permission for her solo visitation rights. Security just wouldn’t allow the true solitude yet, though Angela wasn’t about to give up on it. Trust between her and Amélie, between her and security—between all parties involved—would take time, but she refused to let that deter her from the hope of being able to help the woman in front of her now.

Angela shook her head. “Just me.”

A smirk that was a half condescending sneer came to life on Amélie’s face, expressing her disdain, and she nodded toward the camera. “As alone as they allow you to be, you mean.”

How else could she respond but with a light shrug? “There is only so much even I can do at once.” Not wanting to get into a potential argument on the subject, Angela tugged demonstratively at her stethoscope. “Shall we, if you are okay with that?”

The momentary emotion Amélie had shown, negative though it was, bled away again into indifference. She rose and joined Angela near the edge of her bed, silent and cooperative, almost eerily more doll-like than human as her vitals were measured and taken.

Once those formalities were finished, Angela took a seat in the chair near the bed again, crossed her legs and resting her clipboard on her lap. Separated by the distance of but a few scant meters, Angela stared at her ‘patient’, who stared right back her.

“So.”

“So,” repeated Angela, waiting to see where Amélie would choose to take this.

“So now what then?”

Angela shrugged again, not dismissively, but to disarm the accusatory suspicion that was present in Amélie’s voice. “Whatever you want. It is only you and I now.”

That seemed to garner a reaction: narrowed eyes, curled lips, flared nostrils...a muted sound of ridicule.

“You and I—alone in name only.” Amélie looked meaningfully up at the camera a second time, and then stood. “How eager are they to come in again, to rescue you, I wonder?”

“There’s nothing to rescue me from,” insisted Angela. She gestured with her pen in one hand.

Amélie’s gaze flickered for a moment. “You think so?”

Faster than Angela could blink, Amélie was suddenly right up against her. The pen Angela had been using was wrested from her fingers before she could even think to protest, and the tip of said pen was pressed right against her carotid artery with an almost inhumanly still grip.

“Anything can be a killing weapon,” whispered Amélie. She was so close that Angela could feel the soft exhalation of her breath, could see only the flashing gold of her eyes. “If you but know how to use it.”

Angela’s heart only had time to thud out five quick beats.

As if it was the very thing Amélie was waiting for, the door flew open, no less than four agents practically flying in.

Amélie stepped back from Angela with a fluid grace, dropping the pen and placing both hands, palms open, in the air in the universal sign for weaponless surrender. Angela was too stunned to immediately react, her hand ghosting over where the pen had been shoved against her throat but a moment earlier, a bit of still wet ink smearing over her fingers.

Finally, her mind caught up to the present.

Amélie was already stomach down, one cheek pushed to the floor, both arms twisted painfully against her back as one of the agents pulled out unforgiving steel handcuffs.

“Stop!”

Much to Angela’s own surprise, everyone did just that, and she suddenly found herself the center of attention for all five pairs of eyes in the room. She was shaking, she realized, her body’s own automatic endocrine response betraying her.

Easy. Calm.

Angela took a deep breath, steadying herself first. She needed to show she was in control first and foremost

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded quietly but firmly. If she wanted the security response to stop being so damnably trigger happy, boundaries needed to be set and started here.

“Doctor, she had you at the point of—”

“Of a pen. At the point of a ballpoint pen.” As she spoke, it became easier in a way to put her instinctive fear and anger alike aside, to speak from behind the wall of reason that shielded her no different than in research, or when preparing the operating table. “I know you are trying to do you jobs, but I too am trying to do mine. I can’t do that when you think my life is endangered by the drop of a—” Pen. “—needle.”

There would be time enough later behind other closed doors to sort this mess out. The time now was meant for other purposes, and Angela was not about to relinquish that.

“Now please, if you would kindly let us continue our session.” She did not frame it as a question.

A moment later and the security agents slowly pulled back, letting Amélie free. Angela noticed how she rotated one shoulder tenderly. God, but this was not starting off much better than the first session.

“We’ll be keeping an eye on things, doctor.”

The phrase was not meant to be menacing, but Angela had to beat down a sigh. She retrieved the stray pen that had started this all, straightening and turning to the men as they began to take their leave.

“You can take the pen with you,” she remarked dryly, handing it over to one of the agents. “If that makes you feel better.”

The man frowned, but pocketed the ‘weapon’. “You realize we will have to write up a report on the incident, doctor?”

Angela nodded. “And I promise to fill out everything you need from me for it. Later.”

She got a brusque nod back, and then the agents finally exited. The door closed, leaving just her and Amélie again, and the growing silence between them.

Well that was all very...dramatic.

Not that Angela felt the need to state the obvious.

She collected her papers and clipboard, and took her seat again. Amélie remained seated on the edge of her bed, and they both stared at one another.

Until…

“I don’t want to talk with you.”

Angela raised her eyebrows the slightest bit. “And I never said you had to. If you don’t wish to talk, then we don’t need to.”

Amélie pursed her lips at this. Whatever she had been expecting to hear, it was clearly not that. When nothing else was forthcoming, Angela began to flip through her papers. Ah, there was the sheet she was looking for.

“You’re just going to sit here?”

Angela readjusted her glasses, looking up from the paper. She tapped her clipboard with a finger to explain. “There’s always work to be done, current scientific literature to be caught up, data to be analyzed. Unless my working here disturbs you? I can leave if you would like that.”

She left the offer hanging in the air, but Amélie’s lips twisted and she jerked her head away. In a few quick steps she rose from her bed and took a seat in the only other chair in the room, the one bolted to the floor by the window. She rested her elbow on the bottom of the window sill, propping her chin up with one hand as she gazed out the window.

“I do not care what you choose to do, Angela Ziegler.”

Angela watched Amélie for a long second afterward, but the woman refused to show anything but her back, her body language betraying nothing but simple disinterest.

As you will.

It gave Angela the opportunity to passively observe Amélie in her environment, to better acclimate the two of them to each other...and to simultaneously accomplish work that always needed to be done regardless.

Angela picked up one of her papers. This data was already going to be one giant headache to untangle.

Still, it was with no small measure of relief that after the upsets of the first two sessions that Angela attended, things actually settled into some semblance of a pattern between her and Amélie, and the near daily meetings between the two of them quickly fell into place in Angela’s busy schedule.

Which was not to say that ‘progress’—or at least what the council of doctors and security specialists who had long been assigned to Amélie’s case defined as ‘progress’—was anything close to immediately forthcoming. It would, of course, have been naïve and rather egotistical of Angela to think her mere appearance into Amélie Lacroix’s life would suddenly be the catalyst for change. They had been close acquaintances at best when Amélie had last truly been ‘Amélie’, and that was to say nothing of many, many years spent in the interim conditioned into Widowmaker. She could have no expectations to make a difference from the get-go. No...if there were any prospects that she kept to herself within those first few weeks, it was to simply let Amélie set the pace; to find who and where Amélie was again...and to thereby hopefully pave the way for Amélie do the same.

This, however, seemed to initially cause no small degree of irritation with her patient, particularly when it became apparent after the first week of sessions that Angela was more than content to let hours of silence pass between the two of them, tending to her own work and notes rather than pestering with questions (as, presumably, the other doctors had done before).

“Why are you here, Angela Ziegler?”

It wasn’t quite a snarl, nor did Angela detect any real threat or anger behind it. She weighed the question carefully instead, noting the way that—never mind how little emotion Amélie ever let bleed into her voice—the suspicion was as clear as day to Angela. And well...didn’t Amélie have reason to be suspicious or her? Both as a doctor and as a member of Overwatch?

“Why do you think I’m here?” she asked calmly back.

Amélie did make a noise of annoyed dismissal at that. Yet for once, instead of taking her usual and silent refuge in a book or staring out the window, Amélie pressed, staring accusatively through a half-lidded gaze.

“Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you asking me questions like all of the others? Trying to get me to speak and to ‘trust’ you?”

“Do you want me to ask you questions?” She wasn’t trying to be challenging; she was curious more than anything else. What was it Amélie expected? What were her preset notions?

Amélie made another sound of vexation, clearly no happier with Angela’s response than she was before. “No! Particularly if these are the sort of questions you mean to ask, rather than giving me actual answers.”

Did she expect interrogating questions then? For Angela to do her best to comb out bits of information from her? Talon was dead and defeated, and Angela was no spy, even if her curiosity could be easily piqued. Ah, but asking anything at all right now ran the risk of pushing Amélie completely the wrong way, particularly if her patience with Angela was already running low.

So rather than say anything more, Angela waited a long second and then moved her hands back to her work. At least she was allowed to bring in a pen again. As sharp as her memory remained, note taking was always preferable to relying on pure remembrance alone. Yet even so busied, she was fully aware of the pair of eyes that still watched her without blinking, clenched jaw and all.

Finally...

“You were never a target.”

She had not been expecting that, and Angela nearly blurted out the automatic question, but then remembered to hold her tongue. Amélie smiled as if reading her mind, but her smile was blank, empty, devoid of any true mirth.

“I remember that much. Morrison, yes. Ana...Reinhardt. But not you. You were never on my high priority list.”

The faintest of chills ran over Angela, triggered by the memories of missions now long past. There was no healing someone whose brain had been literally blown apart by an armor-piercing .50 caliber ammunition shot from over a kilometer away.

The Widowmaker never missed her mark, or so she had boasted at the time.

They were only separated by the distance of the room, but those few meters suddenly felt like a chasm. Angela wondered if Amélie was remembering as well, and just what it was that floated up from the dark depths of her mind.

“Why are you here, Angela?” asked Amélie again.

The question seemed more rhetorical than anything else this time, lines drawn across Amélie’s face as she tried to figure something out that was beyond the confines of the room. She was already turned away, moving back toward her window seat before Angela answered, a bare whisper under her breath that was not even intended to be said aloud.

“Because I believe this is where I am supposed to be.”

Amélie gave no sign of having heard, her brooding focus now pinned to the outside world. Yet as Angela picked up her papers again, she felt suddenly and unerringly certain that her quiet but firm answer had been heard.

Restless today, but not in a negative way.

That was the air Amélie gave off. In the gradual process of things, they had begun to talk more. Not all the time, no, and Angela always brought work with her to do, but today was one of those days where Amélie seemed to have something on her mind, and was not averse to filling up the silence that would otherwise prevail.

Whatever book she had been reading had been set down as soon as Angela had entered the room, focus now instead drawn to Angela.

“Do you not grow bored at all? Of—” Amélie gestured with a hand, remaining seated and cross legged. “—all of this?”

Angela raised one eyebrow primly. “If you are referring to yourself and the regularly scheduled time we spend together, the honest answer is no, I do not grow bored. However,” she tapped her lower lip, as if thinking deeply, repressing her own smile at the way Amélie honed in on her every word. “If you refer to the same decor time and time again...sadly the medical ward designers did indeed have little in the way of tastes.”

Amélie scoffed, and Angela leaned forward.

“Humor me, then. Do you grow bored of all of this?”

“This?” Another scoff. “The same small room day in and day out, a barred window and the whims of my ‘visitors’ as the only glimpses I am allowed of any world beyond these white walls and fluorescent lights. My life, if you can even call it that, is a boring one indeed to talk of. Yours is doubtlessly more interesting.”

“Would you care to know the intricacies of medical research and nanotechnology in biomedical applications and designs, then? I find it puts most people outside the field quite readily to sleep.” Angela was not so wholly engrossed in her own work passions to miss how most non-scientists didn’t particularly care for the...finer details, so to speak.

“Is that what you do all day when you aren’t here?” Amélie’s voice dropped to a pitch that was...teasing? Yet kindly so...a mannerism far more reminiscent of the original woman than of the mindless killer under Talon. “Fiddle with your nanobots and the newest world-saving breakthrough? Hunched over in lab like an old man twice your age? Working until your eyes are blurry and everyone else has long since had the common sense to go to bed?”

Angela cleared her throat, feeling the slight blush of someone who was guilty-as-charged creep up on her even as Amélie smiled in quiet victory.

“But no, you are part of Overwatch, too. More than just medicine then. Travel, and missions, and—” Suddenly Amélie cut herself off, shaking her head the slightest bit. All of the prior mirth had vanished in a heartbeat. “Never mind. I shouldn’t be asking you questions about Overwatch of all things.”

As uncomfortable as it was to admit, Amélie was correct. The privacy of their sessions was still superficial at best, even if it was improved. Ever since the initial ‘incidents’ those long weeks ago when she had first started seeing Amélie, things had gone smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that security had finally gotten their hackles down. Even if other doctors still used guards with them, Angela had gone so far as convince security by this point that constant surveillance was unnecessary (which, she believed, it honestly was...not to mention a deterrent to making Amélie feel more at ease around her). The camera surveillance during sessions had officially ceased, with the compromise being the watch Angela now wore instead. It monitored her own vitals and was linked to the security system. If at any point it stopped reading a heartbeat, or if she activated the panic alert button on it, Overwatch agents would no doubt flood the room within seconds.

She’d had no cause to even think about it since it first started to adorn her wrist.

Even so, Angela was still required to submit regular, thorough reports to the council that was managing over Amélie’s case, and one point that she was constantly reminded of was her obligation to report any behavior that might be deemed as too inquisitive into the nature of Overwatch as an organization and the details of its employees.

“You’re curious,” Angela stated. She didn’t mean explicitly about Overwatch itself. “What do you want to know?”

Conflict flickered across Amélie’s face, not quite so transient or well-masked as usual.

“What...what was I like? Back then?”

That put a harsh stop to Angela’s thought process. She evaluated just everything such a question might imply, just how much was loaded behind it. As a scientist, curiosity was in her nature. But as a doctor and healer, so too was patience and the desire to understand. Angela straightened and leaned into her chair, folding her hands as gave Amélie her full and undivided attention. She mulled over the question, beginning diplomatically.

“You were...you were always perceived as very composed by everyone. Very put together and unaffected. Everyone always thought of you as graceful and—”

Amélie interrupted, making a sound in the back of her throat. “I don’t want to know what you think others thought of me. What was I like to you?”

Ah. That changed the nature of the original question a bit, as well as how to answer it. Angela paused again, careful with her words.

“Well, our interactions were limited at best. I had just joined Overwatch, appointed to head their newly christened medical branch. I was young.” She paused to smile self-deprecatingly in memory. “And tremendously overwhelmed.”

Something like the ghost of a smile appeared on Amélie’s face, but she remained intent on everything Angela had to say, her gaze alternating between focused and far away—as if trying to search the shattered banks of her own memory while Angela spoke.

“You...you were one of the few other true civilians there. I remember thinking the first few times I passed by you that you looked exactly the part that you were: a prima ballerina. Elegant, aloof, well-styled, and composed. But when I actually started to speak with you, I found you almost surprisingly outgoing, and tremendously kind. Genuinely caring. Compassionate. You were a breath of fresh air compared to all of the military personnel we were surrounded by the rest of the time, and a welcome friend, even if work did consume my life.”

“What else?” whispered Amélie, and her eyes practically glowed gold with something like fevered desperation.

“You were also...mm...a bit flirtatious at times, but always in a kind way. Though,” Angela slowed, but the way Amélie seemed to hang on to her every word encouraged her to speak. It was all long past now, anyway. “I think Lena was already beyond hope the first time you opened your mouth to speak to her.”

She still remembered clearly when Lena had walked in on the afternoon tea Amélie and Angela had been sharing, the way the young woman had looked immediately and terribly flustered when Amélie had winked and introduced herself. Angela could have sighed, but Amélie had that effect on people—her charm was infectious.

And then Talon had taken her, and everything that had been Amélie had been utterly warped or buried. The beauty of her dancer’s grace had been turned toward killing people; her teasing and charming demeanor had been molded into a cold yet hypersexualized caricature of her original self—the irony no doubt intentional on the part of Widowmaker’s creators that their creature offered not pleasure to those she lured in, but only death.

Without realizing it, the silence had crept between them again, but this time heavy and imposing. For once, Angela felt the desire to fidget, to break it with something. Her eyes caught upon the one thing that seemed like a safe enough subject to broach.

“You seem like a well-versed reader,” she commented, nodding toward the current book Amélie had in her possession.

For her part, Amélie twisted her lips and grimaced as if in pain. She flashed the cover so that the title could be better seen: ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’ by Hume. Angela understood the grimace before an explanation even started.

“Books are the only pleasure I am given leave to enjoy...though ‘pleasure’ is perhaps too kind a word for some of the literature I am left with.”

A thought occurred to Angela then, and she leaned forward. She understood why, particularly initially, the doctors would have been hesitant to supply their patient with anything that could be possibly used for harm, but considering how much time had passed now, the good standing Amélie was beginning to accrue…

“Are there other things you would like besides books? I know there are limitations, yes, but if there are other hobbies, other things you would enjoy doing, I can put in a request for it.”

Hopefully not knitting. Angela could already imagine the disaster of trying to convince security it would okay to put massive ‘needles’ in the hands of the former Widowmaker.

“I…” Amélie drew a deep, almost shaky breath, momentarily looking away. “You actually make me half want to believe you.”

Angela fought off a frown of her own. Why would she lie? Or worse, exaggerate and present a falsehood of what was beyond her power to achieve? “I mean it, though. As long as it is within reason, I will see what can be done.”

Amélie gave her the strangest of looks, as if Angela was speaking in tongues. She hadn’t said anything in German, had she?

The quiet grew between them, until the discomfort of it had Angela opening her mouth to say something—she wasn’t even entirely sure of just what yet—when Amélie spoke.

“Paints. Pencils. Paper. Something like that.”

Whatever Angela had been expecting, art supplies had not been at the forefront of that list. Amélie had been a dancer once, a professional ballerina before she had tied herself to Gérard. Angela had no knowledge of any history in the visual arts, but what was that to say of now? Wasn’t the entire point of this all for Amélie to try and start a new life? And really, what else was there to do in this makeshift cell.

The thought made Angela suddenly very sad, but pity served no one. She pondered for a long moment. “Paints might be hard right now, but I think paper and graphite or charcoal is not an unreasonable request. I’ll see what I can do.”

Amélie nodded brusquely, any hint of the prior hesitation and momentary vulnerability now completely locked away again.

Angela resolved to put in the request first thing tomorrow.

As it was, it ended up being nearly a fortnight until Angela was able to conduct a visit to Amélie again, the first of the regular evening sessions. Life as a member of Overwatch had happened, as it was prone to, and Angela had been in the Balkans for the better portion of a week and then some. They had only just gotten back to the headquarters in Switzerland during the late afternoon, and by the time Angela had unloaded and debriefed, evening was well upon them. She could have just as easily gone to her own quarters and relaxed for the night, but her gut pulled her unerringly toward the woman she had been unable to tend to for over a week now.

They had conducted a few evening sessions already, an idea Angela had offered up initially when her daytime schedule had gotten overly busied. Amélie had seemed fine with the idea, and considering how little the woman slept according to her records, it provided an intriguing opportunity to see if their interactions differed on time of day, to observe under a different atmosphere. Given the fortnight of absences on her part, she had of course asked security to send word ahead; Angela hardly wanted to just barge in unannounced.

Still, she felt like she was almost doing just that when she opened the door to Amélie’s chambers as the last of a deep orange sunset was flooding through the window.

Amélie was in the middle of pacing across the room, clearly expecting her, and stopped short when Angela entered. Her arms were folded across her chest, the exact image of restless impatience.

Angela found that she was unexpectedly breathless. Had she practically run to get here? She bowed her head downward, apologizing. “Sorry for the last minute notice, but after all the time away on my assignment, I wanted to check in from where we last left off.”

“Where were you?” demanded Amélie, and there was no mistaking the irritation in her voice, though it wasn’t quite accusatory. No, something else was underneath it. “You weren’t here. No one would tell me anything. I thought you were...were finished.”

She didn’t need to elaborate for Angela to understand just what she wasn’t explicitly saying. Yet even the implication was admitting a degree of vulnerability for Amélie that was a massive, massive step forward from the endless of sessions prior to now. Abruptly, guilt washed over Angela for her lack of foresight. Of course she should have at least taken the time to ensure a message was communicated to Amélie over her absence, rather than wrongly assuming that one of the other staff would explain to her the reason.

“I am sorry, Amélie.” And she was, truly. She hadn’t thought about how up and leaving without warning, particularly when they were on such a regular schedule of sessions, would impact things. It was not a mistake she would make again. “I promise in the future...to…”

Her words trailed off as her attention was taken to something beyond Amélie’s shoulder.

Great stretches of butcher paper were splayed across the table, were taped to the walls, each of them filled with splashes of charcoal strokes, of pastel colors.

Her prior thoughts completely drifted away, and Angela couldn’t manage to keep the delight from bubbling up on her face. She had taken a few steps forward before she stopped short, recalling herself. This was not her territory, but Amélie’s, and she would be nothing if she did not continue to respect that. So she turned to Amélie, trying and failing to push down her own excitement.

“May I?”

Amélie turned away, making a noncommittal noise that Angela took as permission to continue.

She walked up the drawings along the walls, examined the ones sitting on the table by the still open set of charcoal sticks and pastel chalks. Some were figures, bursts of motion and movement. Some were abstract strokes of colors or shades of black, blending together in dizzying swirls.

All of them took her breath away, and Angela stared for a very long minute before she found the words she wanted to say.

“They’re beautiful,” Angela stated, and was surprised when Amélie—rather than shrugging or remaining impassive—instead shifted from foot to foot, looking pointedly at anything but her.

Angela chose to ignore it, knowing that to bring any more attention to the apparent discomfort she had called into being would only worsen it. Instead she gave off a gentle smile, bowing her head the slightest bit.

“Thank you for letting me see them.” And she meant it. “I’m glad to know you’ve gotten the supplies requested.”

Now Amélie shrugged. “It is nothing. A pleasant change from reading all day.”

Angela hummed in agreement. Clearly more than just a ‘pleasant change’, and while she would say no more on the matter for the time being, she would certainly be making a pointed note in the next council meeting about the benefits of relaxing some of the restrictions on what sort of items Amélie was and was not allowed.

Her curiosity sated for the time being, Angela reverted back to the usual ritual of taking Amélie’s vitals and recording them down. As she scribbled down numbers, she spoke nonchalantly.

“The doctors who saw you while I was away seemed happy to note you appear to be much improved in the last few months.”

It was true. Even if Angela had yet to sit down and really speak with them or read through the reports, the notes she had quickly skimmed over had been very clear about that much.

Amélie scoffed as her pulse was measured. “Those doctors are all idiots. Poking and prodding with their words, thinking they have all the subtlety and style in the world when they are, how is the phrase...like bulls in a shop of fine porcelain.”

“Do you feel as though you aren’t even a tiny bit better?” murmured Angela.

She watched those faintly blue-tinged fingers half clench into fists, then forcibly relax again. Amélie’s heart sounded the same as always through her stethoscope: slow, but completely normal and healthy otherwise.

“What does ‘better’ even mean? What does it ever really mean unless...unless I am who they want me to be. Unless I go back to being the Amélie they used to know.” She gave a small, pained chuckle at that, and Angela glanced up sharply. “I can’t even remember who I was then.”

Angela finished writing down the last few stats on her clipboard. Her lips frowned despite herself. “And is knowing that important? Would it change anything?”

The questions were meant to be rhetorical, but to her surprise, Amélie responded.

“I...I do not know. Sometimes I remember too little. Sometimes too much. Everything in fragments at best.”

Angela asked, curiosity tugging on her as she recalled more clearly now what they talked about over their last session.

“Do you remember me at all?”

Amélie stared at her for a long time, eyes filled with clear confusion but searching. Always searching. Finally, she spoke.

“Sometimes I’m not sure.”

This night session started out no differently than the others. Angela arrived, took her usual vitals measurements from Amélie, and then took her seat. While she did not comment on it, she had quickly noticed the seeming lack of energy from Amélie, the way her focus seemed turned entirely inward, as if just barely noticing Angela was there.

It was the anniversary of the night that Gérard Lacroix had been murdered in his sleep, the night Amélie had ‘disappeared’, only to return amongst the living later as Widowmaker, a living weapon of Talon.

So it was, perhaps, unsurprising that the atmosphere of things was far more somber. Angela was hardly about to begin prodding Amélie over such a subject, but she was nonetheless acutely aware of her patient’s demeanor, moreso than usual.

Oh, it was nothing so dire as what security had been wringing their hands over—their practically insulting and mindless fear over Widowmaker suddenly resurging on tonight of all nights. Superstition at best. There was nothing that warned of danger at all to Angela’s senses, but rather—peculiarly—the opposite.

Unlike other sessions where Amélie was uninterested in speaking and would take refuge in her seat by the window, tonight she instead sat curled up on the bed, turned away from Angela and cradling her right forearm.

It was habit Angela had quickly picked up on over the course of their sessions, something Amélie had a tendency to revert to when under duress. Not for the first time, curiosity pricked at her. There was no injury that she knew of, nothing amiss. The only thing that distinguished the right arm from the left was the word that had been tattooed onto the skin there. Angela had seen the pictures of it in the original file, harsh and vicious, though she realized now she had never examined it in person. Amélie wore exclusively long sleeved shirts, ones that were certain to cover all skin up to her wrist. Angela had passingly thought of it as more of an aesthetic choice than anything else; could one be blamed for wanting to cover up such a gruesome reminder of their past horrors?

But now as Angela studied her quiet and withdrawn patient, questions began to surface.

No...‘cradling’ was far too soft a term, Angela realized. Amélie was holding her forearm in nearly a vice grip, hard enough that Angela suddenly became worried that she might do herself harm.

Angela stood, trying not to make her movements too jarring lest she betray her own nerves. She approached the bed.

“Cauchemar. Cauchemar.” Amélie spoke with half a sneer and half a grimace of invisible pain, and Angela grew more alarmed, particularly when she saw Amélie brutally dig her fingernails into the limb in question. There was still the fabric of her shirt protecting the skin, yes, but…

The edge of the bed dipped under Angela’s added weight before she had even thought to ask for permission to sit there. Yet Amélie had neither said nor done anything at the sudden invasion of her own personal space.

Angela waited to a silent count of three, and then dared.

“Amélie, may I see your arm?”

For a moment Amélie seemed to curl up further in on herself, and Angela wondered if she had overreached, but then Amélie’s hand dropped away, leaving her forearm open.

Angela scooted in closer. She expected Amélie to be tense, but when she gently grasped the arm in question, the limb went immediately slack, as if all life and fight were sapped from it. Angela waited a moment longer, but when there was no further response, she continued.

Gently, she rolled back the long sleeve of the shirt, revealing the black, jagged tattoo that covered most of Amélie’s forearm. ‘Cauchemar’, French for ‘nightmare’. She had always thought that, even for Talon, it was a rather overstated choice...tattooing the word for nightmare on your forearm so that any victim who happened to be close enough to Widowmaker would see that before their impending death. Rather melodramatic.

Very, very gently, Angela ran her fingertips over the exposed forearm, and then forgot how to breathe. Beneath the dark ink, the skin was raised, bumpy...the stiff but undeniable evidence of what was scar tissue simply covered by the appearance of a tattoo.

“Cauchemar…” repeated Angela, and this time she suddenly understood.

A nightmare from which there was no escape, but not for the Widowmaker’s targets no, but for…

Her breath caught in her throat, and her fingers stilled over scar tissue that had been cut into the skin in the shape of a word.

Had Amélie used her nails? Utensils? Whatever implements she could find to carve into her own flesh a last cry for help as Talon broke and buried her mind and identity beneath a creature they called Widowmaker? Had the decision to cover it with ink been some final remnant of Amélie trying to reach the surface, or had it been Widomaker trying to cover the original evidence of her former self that was irrevocably impressed into flesh even now?

Angela stared at Amélie’s face, horror and sympathy alike welling up in her at the unspoken revelation, at the ghosts that danced in those golden eyes.

Amélie turned away from her, unwilling to maintain eye contact.

“Better I had met my death with the rest of them,” she whispered bleakly.

“No. That’s not true, and you know it’s not true.”

Something abruptly warped across Amélie’s face, vicious and angry.

In the blink of an eye, Angela was on her back, Amélie towering over her with a hand pinning Angela down by her throat, though far from hard enough to even cause discomfort. She was straddling Angela between her knees, and something fierce burned in her gaze, both ugly and dangerous and yet striking.

Angela’s hands were still free. She knew she stood no chance in outmatching Amélie one-on-one, but she could easily reach her watch, hit the panic button that would send security flying in.

She didn’t.

“How can you say that?” hissed Amélie. Her muscles were taut, practically trembling with restrained force. “How can you act like you know? Know that she...that I...won’t just…”

For a second, Amélie’s grip on throat tightened, but Angela still did not reach for her watch. She gazed back up, refusing to waver on this. 

“Because there is always more,” insisted Angela. She swallowed, and felt the pressure against her throat of Amélie’s palm. She needed to say this, needed more than anything for the woman before her to believe it, to hope for it, if there was any chance of her really healing. “You are proof of it even now.”

“Am I? You seem so sure of it. How is it you are so certain, even now? How...” She trailed off.

Amélie’s eyes grew sharper, focusing almost not on Angela, but something beyond her, and her dark pupils abrutly dilated. Angela waited.

The fingers at her neck uncurled from their light grip. They began to trace along the line of her carotid artery, up along her jawline, featherlight. It sent shivers exploding across Angela’s skin, prickles of sensation. She said nothing, though, closing her eyes as Amélie seemed to follow some invisible path over her skin, as if seeking some answer that could not be spoken in mere words.

Something in Angela commanded her to be still, not for fear or wariness, no, but for the gut sense that this—whatever this was—was critical for Amélie, that there was something important she needed to find and take from this gentle and curious exploration.

Not that that was doing any particular favors for Angela’s own instinctive reaction. Heat, not at all unpleasant, ran from her gut to pool between her thighs. She ignored that, too, until the touch ran over the curve of one ear, and a small noise escaped from her throat.

Amélie paused at the response, and then repeated the motion slower, more inquisitively, her eyes practically glued to Angela the entire time. Goosebumps rippled over Angela, and she had to close her eyes in the effort to stay still. Now clearly intrigued, Amélie continued to play with her curve of her ear, until Angela half-opened her mouth, caught between a gasp and a sharp inhalation.

Only then did Amélie stop, instead choosing to drag the tip of one finger across Angela’s lower lip. Back and forth. Then back again.

“You…” Amélie frowned slightly as she whispered the word, not from displeasure but almost a hint of frustration.

Angela waited, and waited, and was just on the verge of speaking when Amélie moved. She dipped her head down, nuzzled into Angela’s neck, nose and then lips pressing so lightly over her fluttering pulse as to barely even be considered a kiss.

Fingers roamed down to her chest, to the press of her nipples against the fabric of her shirt. Then Amélie’s hand drifted lower still, and Angela shifted without meaning to. Her back arched as her head dug into the pillow. A small sound escaped her lips, her own want undeniably clear.

Except…

Angela shot one hand down, grabbing Amélie’s wrist before it disappeared below her waistline.

“Amélie…” Her breath was already shorter than expected, and took a surprising amount of control to even say just that when Amélie’s lips were still brushing against her neck, and their fingers now tentatively intertwined instead.

What she did not expect was what Amélie said next, barely above a whisper.

“Please.”

Angela sucked in a breath, caught at an impasse.

“I..I’m not...I can’t be...Gér—” Her tongue seized up before she could voice the words on her mind, unsure of what they might provoke.

I’m not Gérard.

Amélie stilled over her, pulling back just enough so that Angela could meet her unblinking gaze, filled with a wordless mixture of want drowning in sorrow and regret alike. Even if she had not spoken the words, they had still been understood. Amélie brought one hand back up to Angela’s face, thumb brushing against the jut of her cheekbone.

“And right now, I do not wish you to be. Tonight, I want you.”

Then Amélie kissed her—finally—lightly at first, testing. And then again, more needy, and Angela kissed her back, letting herself fall into the same desperate need for something that Amélie seemed to silently scream. Their kiss deepened, Angela tilting her head and opening her mouth, the first tentative touch of their tongues sending an involuntarily shudder through her.

Angela’s hand was gently grabbed, led up and underneath Amélie’s shirt. Angela moved her fingers over the now pebbled skin of Amélie’s nipples, drawn on by the noises Amélie made into her mouth. Then Amélie guided her hand lower, wordless encouragement to Angela about just what she wanted. Angela only hesitated for a moment.

She was almost surprised at the hot and slick evidence of Amélie’s desire that greeted her, so at odds with her normally hypothermic skin, with her typically unreadable demeanor. This...the way she seemed to lose focus on a kissing for a long moment to instead suck in a breath...more than anything in the tedious and exhausting months of her recovery, this felt so achingly human.

And Angela was suddenly terrified at what might happen should it be swallowed away into the emptiness again.

Amélie groaned, rocking her hips into Angela’s touch, silently asking for more and bringing Angela’s attention very firmly back to the present. She obliged, moving her fingers in different patterns until she found just the right one to make Amélie quake and groan against her.

“Not too fast, chérie,” murmured Amélie against her lips for a moment, and Angela could feel her tremble, could sense just how easy it would be to push her over the edge right now if she but wanted to. “Make it last.”

Angela forced herself to slowness, not to tease but to extend, drinking in the way Amélie’s eyes fluttered and dilated, the way her lips could not longer even come together for a kiss. She drew it out longer and longer still...

No matter her attempts, Amélie reached her climax all too quickly, shaking and falling half onto the sheets and half onto Angela once she was spent. Angela said nothing, almost afraid she might break whatever strange trance had come of the moment if she spoke. She dared to press a kiss to the top of Amélie’s head, ignoring the wetness on Amélie’s face, ignoring the brief thought that wondered how long Amélie had gone without such an intimate touch.

She also ignored the insistent tug between her own legs. That could be dealt with later.

Instead she cradled Amélie’s head into the curve of her neck and shoulder, running her fingers through the silken strands of hair. To speak now would be would be shatter something fragile. Angela felt more than heard Amélie whisper a few broken words of French against her, but their meaning was lost.

How long they lay there, Angela wasn’t entirely sure. She was content to let Amélie slowly find herself again, until the woman shifted over, hands moving. Amélie began to tug down at Angela’s pants before Angela could find her words.

Heat flooded her face. “Amélie, you really don’t need to…you should sleep.”

Amélie silenced her with a kiss this time. “I want you tonight, Angela. And just you. Please?”

Angela swallowed when Amélie stared at her, waiting, drawing circles against her hip bones, and then nodded.

She gasped, jerking sharply at the first touch of those cool fingers finding slippery purchase against her. Amélie hummed something, low and seemingly pleased. She wasted no time in teasing or dallying, easily finding a rhythm. It didn’t take much.

Angela arched up from the mattress as she came, tongue choking on whatever words were trying to release from her throat, clutching onto Amélie’s backside before she could think to stop herself. She shuddered from the aftershocks against the pillow, all energy escaping her as she lay there.

Now it was Amélie who cradled her head, who even now continued to trace her the tips of her fingers over Angela’s cheekbones, her eyebrows, and down the bridge of her nose. Angela opened her eyes at last, and saw Amélie’s lips curled just the slightest bit upward, though her gaze was still bafflingly unreadable.

“It seems I was not the only one with needs.”

Angela flushed, more from the principle of it all than any true embarrassment. She did note how Amélie’s eyes had grown heavy-lidded, exhausted.

“Get rest, Amélie,” Angela urged again, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face. “You need it.”

Indeed, she had already laid her head down beside Angela, and her eyelids were already beginning to flutter closed. The attempt to stifle a yawn failed.

“Perhaps I shall…” murmured Amélie.

For the first time since Angela had started her nighttime observation sessions, Amélie was soundly asleep before the clock was yet to even strike ten.

Having sex didn’t really change anything, not that Angela had expected it to. It was odd in a way. She felt no different about it the day after, or even the day after that. No tugging feelings eating at her thoughts, be it from regret or desire for more. Nothing.

What had occurred between them had changed nothing about the nature of what Angela was trying to achieve, and the only concern that passed through her was the momentary question on whether or not she should be more worried by her own seeming lack of concern over it. Transference was a very real possibility, and yet, and yet...

Nothing was different about their next session. Angela felt no anxiety going into it, and Amélie showed none. It could have been as though what passed between them the night before had been but a dream or a figment of Angela’s imagination.

But no. She was as certain of what had transpired as she could be. The intimacy that had been shared that night, so normally reserved by society’s standards between lovers, had not at all been about love, at least not the sort of written about in books and movies. No, if Angela was certain of anything, it was that the intimacy which Amélie had asked of her, had shared with her, had been a necessity for Amélie.

What precisely had driven her to crave physical intimacy in that exact moment...well, no doubt entire theses could be written on the matter, but reason mattered little. In that moment, Angela knew, Amélie had needed the reassurance, the openness, and the ability to safely explore that vulnerability without question or judgement. Angela had merely been an accompaniment, almost more of an instrument as Amélie sought whatever it was she was looking for. To which she bore neither ill will nor disappointment. The exchange had been pleasurable, certainly, but she had not nor did she currently hold any illusions of something more from it. Pleasure had been an aside. The focus was and remained Amélie herself...and whatever healing process necessitated that, Angela would give as much as she was able.

To heal the body was one thing. To heal the mind and spirit was something else.

And in many ways, Angela was certain she was just as in the dark as Amélie, which normally would have have been far too much cause for rumination to her overactive and analytical mind, yet for once she took an odd sort of solace in the inner certainty from her gut—not her brain—to continue with patience.

She would help in whatever manner as called upon, be it spoken or unspoken.

For now at least, that certainty was enough.

The rest could be figured out as they went.

The sun was shining brightly through the afternoon clouds and into the room, the silence broken only by the sound of Angela scribbling down some notes onto her clipboard. So it was that much more apparent when Amélie’s shoes clipped against the smooth linoleum floor as she walked across the room. Angela ignored it at first in favor of finishing the the last few words she was on, until a shadow cut off the glare from the late-day sun.

She stopped then, putting down her pen onto her clipboard in a slow, controlled, and obvious motion. Nothing sudden, nothing that might be construed as unpredictable. Amélie stood over and in front of her, giving no hint as to exactly what she was thinking or wanted. Angela was about to ask when one set of cool fingers pressed to the underside of her chin. Amélie tilted her chin up slowly, eyes cloudy and searching. Angela wanted to ask just what it was that was confusing her, but to ask would do no good for either of them. The answers were for Amélie and Amélie alone to discern; Angela was but a piece of the process. So she waited patiently. Finally Amélie spoke.

“Your glasses. May I see them?”

Angela nodded once, allowing Amélie to slowly remove them, curious. Once in hand, she rotated them in the air, looking through the lenses.

“Reading glasses. I’m a bit farsighted,” Angela offered. If Amélie heard her words, she showed no interest in them.

She continued to examine the glasses, and then once seemingly done with them, replaced them atop of Angela’s papers. Angela did not move to immediately grab them; she sensed Amélie was not yet finished, was still studying somewhat else.

It took only another moment.

Amélie dipped down to kiss her softly, almost questioningly. Angela yielded to it, giving Amélie the space and time to be in control of it, to set whatever pace and course goaded her actions on. She kept both hands resting lightly on her clipboard, allowing Amélie to explore her lips, her mouth, to take...and to also tentatively give.

Angela wasn’t exactly sure how long they were making out for when Amélie finally straightened, and Angela had to blink rapidly to regain herself. She squinted up at Amélie, only able to decipher something akin to puzzled bemusement behind her cryptic eyes. Angela glanced down at the glasses that sat in her lap, still none the wiser.

“They were in my way,” stated Amélie , as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

Well then. That was straight forward in its own way, if a bit mysterious. But then, wasn’t that Amélie in a nutshell? It was always as if she followed some logic of her own, different and hard to determine to the rest of the world, but there was—Angela was certain—a logic and pattern to it. Like a series of questions leading toward some ultimate goal to be uncovered.

So just what was it that Amélie was searching for? What was she hoping to possibly find? Angela wanted to ask, though she already had managed to form a hypothesis of her own; not romantic love, no...but connection, feeling...the reaffirmation of being real and being human...physical intimacy to anchor her to own fragile and fluttering semblance of humanity. Would it be enough though? Could it be sufficient enough to help Amélie ground herself? Uncertain. Questionable at best. And yet, if it helped even the smallest bit...

“Angela.”

Angela looked up when her name was called, stowing away the thoughts for more analysis later. Amélie was staring out the window, her face mostly turned away, but as unrevealing as usual.

“You are an accomplished kisser.”

Oh.

Angela blushed faintly at the compliment. She supposed that was good to know as well.

Sometimes Amélie was in the mood to talk, sometimes they went entire sessions in silence; sometimes Amélie kissed her, sometimes Amélie kept the whole space of the room between them, and sometimes they had sex.

Sometimes it was curious, exploratory—Amélie taking what felt like hours to undress her, to slowly explore every last inch of pale bared skin, like Angela was some strange riddle put before her that she needed to carefully unravel in order to understand. Sometimes it was fast and hard, desperation practically verging on the edge of crumbling despair. Sometimes it was Amélie clutching onto her, pleadingly urging Angela on to just exactly what it was Amélie needed from her, and sometimes it was Angela grasping back, Amélie expertly driving her onto both dizzying heights and an unknown abyss from which she had to slowly wander her way back from. She wondered what abyss it was that Amélie wandered herself.

Angela had learned to expect nothing, not that she ever had in the first place. No demands, be them through words or other silent languages. She only ever entered into Amélie’s solitary room with but a single concept and thought held in her mind: the person that was Amélie.

And if Amélie thought anything of how Angela never asked of anything back, how she merely followed and acquiesced to Amélie’s own meandering and seemingly random thoughts and desires...well, Angela could not perceive it.

It was not say that Angela lacked the self-awareness of how...odd this current arrangement was. Hell, she knew that most medical ethics board would rightly throw a fit over it. Sleeping with a patient? It was a thought that had never even crossed Angela’s mind in the past. But this wasn’t the same as administering some drug treatment or implant and then walking away back to research, no different than how this was hardly some fairytale romance playing out. The reality of the matter was that, deep in her chest, no matter the standard lines of logic might be applied, Angela sat on the firm and utterly unshakable certainty that her efforts now were inextricably tied to some deeper form of healing for Amélie.

Perhaps she was deluding herself. Any of her peers would say she had compromised her own judgement with emotions. And yet, Angela did not feel that was the case. What she was to Amélie, what Amélie was to her...she truly was not Gérard, nor did she have any designs of filling such shoes. In fact, she had no such designs at all, never mind what others might think based on the progression of physical intimacy.

It had never been about Angela, and she was truly and completely fine with that. In the past months since Angela had first started seeing Amélie, even the other doctors unanimously concurred: the patient was on the upswing. Progress.

But Angela didn’t care about data and numbers and the words of men in white coats behind closed doors. Amélie, and Amélie being herself for herself...that had only ever been her chief concern.

If Angela could provide the room, both metaphorical and literal, for Amélie to find the answers to her own inner questions...if that was what it took…

Angela was a healer at heart. She would give as much of herself as she could if that could make the difference for Amélie, with no regrets.

Because Amélie deserved so much better than what life had dealt her. And because maybe what she needed more than nanomedicine therapy and world class doctors was simply someone to listen and be there to believe in her.

It seemed to be helping so far. The last discussion across the medical board had concurred that Amélie Lacroix was finally showing marked upward trends across the board. The success was deemed substantial enough that they had even majority agreed to allow her access to acrylics and brushes and canvas, something that only months earlier would have been deemed an unthinkable security breach.

Still, when Angela received the urgent summons to Jack Morrison’s office one inconspicuous afternoon, she knew exactly what Jack had called her in for before he even opened his mouth.

“Angela...you’re sleeping with her?! What the hell were you thinking? What the hell are you thinking?”

His hand slammed over a thick stack of papers, and Angela saw both her own file as well as Amélie’s. She had only rarely heard Jack shout like this before, and his voice was a blend of emotions: bewilderment, fear, and anger born from that fear.

Angela flinched as he first lashed out at her.

“Not even touching on the fact that she’s technically your patient, did you even stop to think about the possible repercussions of this? Did you even think about what could happen? About how at any moment she could—”

Now Angela’s own anger flared into life. It was one thing if Jack wanted to criticize her, but for him to touch on a woman that Angela was more and more convinced he really knew nothing about…

She cut off his diatribe mid-sentence.

“At any moment ‘what’? She’ll kill me like Gérard? While my guard is down?” Angela’s eyes flashed, and her voice was far more bitter than what she even realized. “Go ahead and say it. Do you really think you’re the only one to have thought it? Do you think I am so innocent and naive to have not considered the thought myself?”

“It’s not that simple, Angela! The conditioning Talon put her through, even now that the nanobots have been cleared from her system...we simply don’t know the extent of it on her mind. We don’t know if Widowmaker is still lurking beneath the surface, if even now this is just a façade put on by Talon’s creature.”

Angela threw her hands up, incredulous. What the hell was the entire point of the treatment and rehabilitation for then?

“She’s been in solitary confinement for over a year now, Jack! Someone who the Hague cleared of criminal wrongdoing and decreed a civilian. In solitary confinement. A treatment abolished by the UN and all civilized countries decades ago as being ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment. And this under our watch. That’s not justice or safety...that’s crossing the line into immoral and criminal!”

Jack shifted, clearly uncomfortable, but he barked back, defensive. “You think I like it this way? I knew her better than any of you when she was still here, when Gérard was still here. You think I like keeping her under lock and key with only highest level clearance allowed access to her? You think I like keeping Gérard’s wife in that room?”

“Do you even see her as Gérard’s wife anymore?” Angela’s voice rose in pitch, her blood suddenly burning. “Do you even call her Amélie? Or is it Widowmaker? The ‘patient’? The prisoner, even? The damned liability to you and your precious organization?”

Jack’s face flushed red in embarrassment, and Angela knew her words had hit close to home for him. His lips thinned visible, and his voice came out tight and tense.

“Overwatch has a duty and cannot allow her release until we’re certain—”

“Stop acting like you’re doing any of this for any reason besides fear!” Angela yelled at him. They stared at one another, unblinking. Angela had never raised her voice like that before to Jack, and the momentary shock of it shook both of them.

She swallowed, bringing her volume back down to more reasonable levels, but none of the anger left it. “How long, Jack? How long until you’re certain? Until she’s dead and in her grave? Or you are?”

There was no answer to that, and they both knew it.

Suddenly, Angela felt exhausted, drained. She wasn’t interested in getting into any further arguments on morality and justice. She knew what she knew, and in her heart, she knew was being true to herself, and that Jack was in the wrong.

She started to leave. 

Jack found his voice again.

“Angela, you’re compromi—”

She rounded on him again. “You think I don’t realize that I’m ethically compromised? That’s rich.”

Coming from Jack of all people. She might be a member of Overwatch, but she had always remained a civilian. She wasn’t one his soldiers to carelessly command and order around, and she wasn’t so young as to be cowed anymore by the seeming invulnerability of her elders. That illusion had shattered decades earlier.

“Remove my name from the list of doctors to approve when she is ready for release. I’ll rescind myself from that decision. I don’t care. But if you want to remove me from treating her, from trying to help her heal, then by Gott you better use your executive authority as head of Overwatch here and now.”

Her words, spat out so vehemently that they were nearly a shout, echoed in the room, leaving Angela with her own angry breathing and elevated heart rate. Jack said nothing, unable to even meet her gaze as she stared across the office at him.

After a long moment, when it was clear had nothing immediate to say, Angela made a sound of disgust and turned and left, not bothering to look back as she shut the door behind her.

“You’re upset.”

Angela jerked her head up from her notes.

She had assumed it would be one of those quiet nights. Amélie hadn’t said a word since Angela had entered the room nearly three-quarters of an hour earlier, simply nodding when Angela arrived. As such, Angela had proceeded as usual, beginning to study some of her research notes and go over data and work that still needed to be processed. Better that than thinking about the ‘conversation’ from earlier today. At least Jack had not done anything to restrict her visits, as she’d had no problems accessing Amélie’s room again this evening. Angela had, perhaps, been so engulfed in forcing her mind to focus on work that she had not noticed the silent studies Amélie had been conducting back on her until that silence was broken.

Amélie took a few sharp, crisp steps over, closing the distance between them as soon as she had Angela’s attention. A hand reached out to cup her chin and tilt her head up. It was not a hard grip, but it was firm and unwavering. Amélie’s eyes searched hers, her brow furrowed and her lips thin, and there was something less of Amélie and more reminiscent of Widowmaker in the tight and still and almost dangerous way she held herself.

“Someone upset you.”

It was not a question.

Angela swallowed and nodded the slightest bit, and then felt a thrill of fear run through her at the way Amélie’s grip suddenly tightened and her eyes dilated, growing dark. It wasn’t fear for herself, though, but sudden fear for the woman in front her.

“Amélie.”

Her voice didn’t quaver. She watched the way the muscles in Amélie’s jaw clenched. Just what fight was going on internally, and how much of it was Amélie...and how much was not?

Just how much of Jack’s words had perhaps hit closer to home for Angela than what she would have liked?

Abruptly, Amélie released her and walked back away, taking a seat in the chair by the window, leaning her head against the window sill and closing her eyes.

“It is because of me, non?”

“No,” answered Angela automatically.

From her perch, Amélie’s lips curled briefly upward, but there was no true mirth in it. “Because of us, then, as they would say.”

Others might have taken that chance to ask just what ‘us’ meant, just what they were. The thought never even crossed Angela’s mind.

Angela approached the window slowly. Amélie was still yet to look up at her.

“Amélie...do you want to be free of this room? To be part of the outside world again?”

It was a dare, a risk, asking these questions. Part of their silent agreement, part of what had made so much progress for Amélie thus far—Angela knew—had been Angela’s willingness to never push, to never ask, to let Amélie always set the pace to her own comfort, and to simply be there as the silent and unquestioning support. She knelt down, taking Amélie’s hand in her own. The tips of her fingers were always tinged a faint hint of blue. They were the extremities the furthest from the heart, the limbs that had struggled the most to be purged of Talon’s terrible nanotherapy conditioning.

But these were not the hands of Talon or of Widowmaker, and Angela knew that with a deep conviction. These were Amélie’s hands, and hers alone, and Angela would continue to believe that...even when Amélie struggled to believe it herself.

Amélie stroked the steel bars that crossed the window panel with her other hand. “The outside world…”

Then she finally turned to look down at Angela.

“Is this cage to protect me? Or to protect everyone else?” Amélie ran the back of her fingers down Angela’s cheek. “Even to protect you, chérie.”

Angela stared unblinkingly back up; a dull pain blossomed in her chest at the insinuation, but she remained calm. “Is that what you believe? Truly? That you are beyond hope?”

Amélie shifted, fidgeted really. Uncharacteristic of her, as was the way she opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, then opened it again. She wanted to say ‘yes’, surely, and yet she hesitated, and her golden eyes were soft when they connected with Angela.

“You make me want to believe otherwise, if only because you seem to so fiercely believe in that ‘otherwise’.”

Angela began running small, soothing circles over the back of Amélie’s hand that she still held. “And would that be so terrible? Would trying a new life be so terrible...compared to this?”

She watched as Amélie twisted her lips in thought.

“And what would I even do? I have nothing. No skills, no money, no family or friends. I have nothing to my name or person. Nothing that I can build a ‘life’ out of.”

There were more than a few small details that contradicted that, not the least of which was money, but Angela knew better than to quibble over such things. It wasn’t the details that this was really about.

“I think you would manage. I think you’re capable of much more than what you give yourself credit for.” She daren’t break her gaze from Amélie’s as she spoke, willing her to feel the truth and surety of her words.

“You...truly believe that?”

“That’s why I’ve always come back, since our day one session.”

Amélie swallowed, her throat moving just the slightest bit. “Then I suppose I need to try, too.”

“Amélie, today is going to be a bit different, I’m afraid.”

If Amélie’s attention had not been firmly on Angela before, it was now. Her head snapped around, eyes alighting on Angela, who remained standing in the center of the room.

Angela took a deep breath. “Our sessions are formally over.” Well, not really for another week and some, what with all of the paperwork involved in it. She plunged on before Amélie could interrupt or come to the wrong conclusions. The reasons behind this were far better than what even Angela could have hoped for. “You’re a free woman from here on out, Amélie. Your stay in the Overwatch facilities is over.”

Amélie’s face dropped like a stone at the news. She suddenly looked more lost and alone than Angela had ever seen her, and a cold hand gripped her heart.

“You’re free. Really!” Angela repeated herself. Had she been unclear? “The physicians on your case unanimously agreed that you pass all of their clearance tests. You’re a grown woman and a civilian, completely in charge of your mental faculties—they have no reasonable cause to hold you here any longer.”

What she did not expect was for Amélie to turn lily white, to half collapse down into her chair by the window and to put her face in her hands as her dark hair fell down in  makeshift curtain. This was not the response of a woman who was excited, or even relieved. Quite the opposite.

Angela swallowed heavily and approached, now worried as she heard pleading mutterings in French from Amélie under her breath.

“...vais-je faire...que..”

“Amélie?”

She wanted to reach out, to put her hand reassuringly onto a shoulder, but her gut told her hold fast. Slowly, Amélie raised her head, her face stricken. She looked up at Angela, and a hollow, cold laugh croaked out of her throat.

“Oh...what...what will I even do? Where…? How…?”

Angela willed herself to calmness. To reassurance. “You don’t need to know all of those answers right this moment.”

The way Amélie’s eyes flickered around, almost wild, suggested that she thought otherwise.

“Non? But I do need answers now. If I am no longer to stay here, where will I go? How will I even find a place to live? How can I even afford a life outside of here? I have nothing, no money, no funds, no—”

“You do have funds, though.”

Amélie looked up at her, uncomprehending. An explanation was in order.

“The joint bank account—” The one co-owned by the Gérard and Amélie alike as spouses. It hadn’t been touched in years, but all of the money was still there. Angela wasn’t even given the chance to explain, though.

“I don’t want it!” snapped Amélie, cutting her off. Then she visibly struggled to temper herself, clearly regretting her misdirected outburst. “It...it is blood money. I don’t want it. I never want to see it. I don’t care if I’m living on the street even.”

Others would have argued otherwise, would have pushed the reason of how the money was just as rightfully Amélie’s as ever, how if she didn’t want it now it would still be there for if she needed it in the future. Angela knew better. She mulled over the options, thinking, thinking...

“Would it be suitable to donate it, then? I know several different non-profit organizations, for domestic violence, orphans, war survivors and veterans…”

The look Amélie gave her was one of pure relief and gratitude, thanks for Angela’s silent comprehension and wisdom in the matter.

“That...yes, that would be suitable.” She seemed to calm down somewhat, and Angela continued.

“You do still have money at your disposal, though. After having you stay here, Overwatch is obligated to provide you with a reintroduction stipend for moving out of the facilities here and back into…”

Angela trailed off. This time Amélie’s lips thinned. She didn’t interrupt Angela, but it was just as clear as before that she had equal reservations about receiving money from Overwatch. Still, she didn’t outright argue against it.

She inhaled visibly, then exhaled, and her eyes took on a faraway quality to them.

“And where to then? Back to Paris? No...I...just no. I don’t...where…” Amélie shut her mouth tightly, clearly displeased with her own verbal flailing, but it didn’t hide the distress that enveloped her now.

She was looking up, but not really at Angela. Her eyes stared through as if to something beyond, dull and lost. All of the many, many months of progress—everything that they had worked so hard and carefully to build—suddenly seemed stripped away again. In a moment, she was the same stranger that Angela had first warily walked in to see.

Something ached beneath Angela’s breast in response, and she spoke instinctively, the idea coming to her from seemingly nowhere.

Amélie quirked her head to the side, confusion apparent at the unfamiliar, Germanic name that Angela just uttered. But then, why would she be expected to recognize it all?

Angela repeated the name again, this time hesitantly explaining. “It’s a small town here in Switzerland, in the countryside just a few hours out from Geneva. I...I happen to own a small cottage there. It...you can live there.”

The silence between them was deafening, and Angela struggled against a long forgotten urge to fidget beneath Amélie’s incredulous gaze.

She wasn’t exaggerating, though. As it happened, years of multiple ground-breaking medical patents combined with a penchant for working herself to the bone rather than spending on luxuries for herself had left Angela with what any reasonable accountant would consider a sizeable fortune. Not that she had much use for it. Her bank accounts and whatever investments her portfolio managers chose were more there as an afterthought. Money existed as a necessity, not as something she particularly cared for. The impulsive purchase years back of the endearing cottage had been a rare moment of extravagance spent on herself, a charming idea of a vacation spot to retreat to; she hadn’t spared herself a day of vacation in more than three years now.

Of course, none of those details made anything about the offer she had put to the table anything less than utterly genuine.

Given such an offer, others would have dissembled, fallen into the polite refusals that societal norms demanded of such an offer. Amélie did no such thing. Her eyes refocused back in on Angela, now sharp but alive. That was an improvement. She asked only one thing.

“Why?”

Wasn’t that the real question though? The one even now Angela could find not clear words to. She floundered. Normally so straightforward in her speech, for once her mouth moved soundless as she struggled.

“Because...because you deserve someone to believe in you. Because I do believe in you. And I want you to have the chance for yourself.”

Color rose in Amélie’s cheeks now, a sight so unfamiliar to Angela with that it took her a few seconds to recognize the telltale flush of emotion. Was it pleasure? Embarrassment?

She wasn’t given the leisure to unravel just what, as Amélie turned her gaze demurely downward, her voice bitter now, and still no less lost.

“And what would I even be? What would I even do? Sitting in some small town with a roof over my head only by the grace of your good will, pondering out the meaning of my solitary existence for the rest of my days. Not much different than here, in reality, except I wouldn’t even have…”

She trailed off, but Angela had heard the unspoken word ringing in her own ears.

I wouldn’t even have you.

It struck her like a blunt force.

“And what if I joined you?”

Time seemed to slow and then stop. She hadn’t meant to say that, and yet she had without any hesitation, without—even now—any hint of a second thought. Angela registered how Amélie’s eyebrows shot up, momentarily stunned. In that rare moment where her she was caught entirely off guard, Angela too saw the sudden and unmistakable flash of want, like a starved person suddenly presented with a feast...one they feared would be taken from them if they but tried to reach out for it.

“You...would you?” Amélie’s voice caught at the end, and then she seemed to check her own lapse into selfish desire. “But Overwatch—”

The words flowed out easily, and as she spoke, Angela suddenly realized the thoughts had long been weighing on her mind, even if she had not given them conscious weight until now.

“Overwatch does not define who am. It never did, and it has changed in the decades since its original conception. I…” She took a deep breath, continuing firmly. “It has been useful, yes, for some things. For others, perhaps, not quite so much, especially not anymore. It was never the goal, Amélie, only the means to achieving some of my goals.”

She could see the way Amélie’s eyes darted aside for a moment, as if afraid—afraid of asking too much? Afraid of daring?

“And have your goals changed?”

Angela smiled before she could help herself. How sweet a way to tread lightly around the real question at hand. For one clear moment, she could see the tremulous walls Amélie clung onto, the vulnerability her survival instincts urged her to hide, even as her very human nature pushed her to yearn for the fragile connection she and Angela had made.

It was, perhaps, the confirmation Angela needed to be vulnerable herself, to take the risk, to dare the unknown. Was it not something that part of her wanted, too?

She ran her thumbs across the long, elegant fingers and the cool skin of Amélie’s hand . A sudden warmth tingled to life, and Angela acknowledged her own desire and hope.

“Have they changed? No...at the heart of it, I have always wanted the same: to help.” She swallowed. “Will you let me?”

Practically unbreathing, Angela waited, but Amélie did not speak. Instead, she extricated her hand from Angela’s, and then cupping Angela’s face with both hands, answered her with a quiet, gentle kiss.

A single, small suitcase. That was all of Amélie’s worldly possessions to be taken with her once and for all from the Overwatch facilities. It wasn’t a surprising thing when thought about. She had been brought into this facility as Widowmaker, captured from the burning wreckage of Talon’s headquarters, nothing to her but the skin tight combat suit she wore and the sniper rifle that probably weighed more than her entire suitcase and its contents now. But that wasn’t what this was about.

It was about the woman who would now walk out and away from Overwatch of her own free will, not as a sleeper agent, but as a free woman. She wore not a combat suit, but slim fitting pants and a white blouse, fashionable heels instead of steel-toed boots. And if her suitcase and its contents were meager...well, who was to judge? It was the mark of a women embarking now on a new life, trying to discard the heavy trappings of the past.

For her part, Amélie stood sleek and statuesque, not a single hair out of place. Angela was reminded again of how cold that could seem to make her to the unpracticed eye, how her seeming indifference unsettled the guards around her rather than reassuring them.

Yet beneath the unruffled demeanor, Angela could see as clear as day the nervousness, the anxiety of the unknown and the risk of everything she was about to take a chance at.

“Amélie!” she called out while walking over, and both the guards and Amélie herself turned to look at her.

She stuffed her hands into the wide pockets of her lab jacket, allowing herself to enjoy the strange, exhilarating feeling that surged in her chest when Amélie made eye contact with her, when something that held the other woman tight immediately seemed to unwind and give way to relief. It would take getting used to, this excitement and desire her heart seemed to beat with.

“Chérie, I was wondering if you were even going to see me off.”

“Don’t be silly.” Angela waved off the concern. “You’re going to my cottage, after all. At the very least I needed to give you this.”

She pulled one hand out of her pocket, offering a simple brass key.

“Can’t have you starting off your new residency by being forced to break in through the window, can we?”

That finally seemed to break through something, and Amélie smiled the faintest bit at the stab of humor. “It would make for quite the statement.”

The key was finally accepted from her.

“Everything should be ready for you. I’ve had a cleaning service make sure that that the cottage is cleaned up, and even had the pantry restocked. If you need to buy anything, I’ve already had an account—”

“Mon Dieu, Angela, you’ll keep me bored to death with having everything taken care of already.”

Now it was Angela’s turn to fumble wordlessly for a moment, fidgeting now that her hands had nothing to occupy themselves with.

“I just don’t want you to worry for anything,” she admitted. After all, Amélie being put to ease was her biggest worry.

Something of Amélie’s usual stiff mask slid away at that. She put away the key safely in a pocket. “I know. It’s just…” Her calm wavered, and the same anxiety that Angela had originally seen from afar resurfaced. Uncertainty. Like a deer ready to bolt and yet trying to fight that gut instinct—nothing of the calculating and unfeeling spider that the guards still whispered her as behind Angela’s back.

Angela spoke instinctively, not giving herself time to think and second guess herself.

“Wait for me, Amélie.” It was the only time she had ever demanded anything, and she waited a moment before speaking again, watching how Amélie hung onto her every last word as though it were her last tether to anything meaningful in this life. “Two weeks, and I will see you there.”

She watched doubt war with desire, the vulnerability of wanting to believe at odds with fearful reason and logic alike.

“You...chérie, do you pro—” Amélie cut herself off, looking ashamed and upset with herself for asking such a thing.

It spurned something inside of Angela. Not caring who was watching—they all surely knew by now anyway, even the most basic of the guards on the chain of command—Angela dared to reach and cup Amélie’s cheek. Amélie looked back down at her then, eyes still tight but something desperate in them, aching to fill a void. Angela took it as permission and leaned up, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I promise. Wait for me, Amélie, and I’ll be there.”

The next two weeks—the last two weeks of Angela’s extensive career as part of Overwatch—passed as if part of haze. Jack had said nothing when she had submitted her official notice of resignation, but his thin lips and the smallest shake of his head had spoken it all.

After that, things had been...quiet, really. She was still civilian personnel even after all these years, and so the paperwork was far less complicated than for military discharge. Massive contracts of non-disclosure agreements, information and intellectual privacy clauses, screening and checking of all of her own personal equipment and computers she would take with her...it was tedious, but expected.

Like Jack himself, no one seemed to have either the courage or the gall to say anything to their long-time head of medical research. Not that that meant they didn’t have things to say. Angela could keenly feel the eyes on her, piercing and judgemental, when she walked into the cafeteria, when even in passing she brought up needing to transfer data or knowledge of some sort before she left.

Mei emailed her one night, and Angela didn’t bother asking how a woman stuck in the Antarctic again for the sake of science had learned so quickly of Angela’s decision to leave Overwatch—things got around in their circles of society, never mind that Mei herself had decided to leave the organization years earlier to pursue her own research. That was in part why Angela was able to relax reading her old colleague’s message to her, rather than bristle. There was no judgement in Mei’s tone, no lecture or admonition about what she was ‘throwing away’ (as she knew many others would phrase it); there was only the well-meaning concern of a friend, looking to ensure that Angela was choosing what was right for her.

They had managed to video chat briefly, a rare window of clear skies at the South Pole that kept the steady stream from the satellite coming through without lag or interruption, and when their conversation ended, Angela felt something closer to contentment than what she had known—she now realized—in years. She messaged Amélie one last time before going to bed, both aware of and now at ease with the eager and impatient desire that now burned beneath her breast.

That was, perhaps, what made the last days so ethereal and strange: not having Amélie’s own physical presence to temper it. Absence, she supposed, did in fact make the heart grow fonder. Though she had not stayed at the cottage she owned for an appreciable amount of time in years, it was now foremost in her thoughts each day, and she grew just as impatient for the two weeks to end out as what she hoped Amélie, too, felt.

And then the day arrived. There was no fanfare, no tears, no celebration. Angela had put her foot down on all of it, uncertain of who even bore her decision good will, and intent to avoid any awkwardness that could arrive from such a gathering. She would leave just as quietly as she had first came all those long years ago, and she would leave with no regrets.

The whole minor issue of having a job lined up was still not entirely solved, but Angela did have quite a fair bit of money in reserves, enough to live quite comfortably for the remainder of her life even without employment. And even that aside, she was hopeful to start something new at the small university near the town she was soon to be living in. She’d dreamed once of owning a hospital, and dreamed again of bringing peace to a world full of suffering. Now, she dared to let herself dream of something else, something quieter, but hopefully no less meaningful.

Angela stared around the medical bay one last time. Her ‘legacy’, she knew many would call it. She had built up the medical research branch of Overwatch from nothing, had turned it into everything that it was today. Yet at the end of the day, it was expensive equipment, the prestige of names and money, and it was work that would be carried on with or without her—just as she could carry on herself, but without the weight of nations on her shoulders. Her true work was never in patents and big names and fame, but in the lives that she had touched, that she prayed she had saved.

She could continue on with a different kind of certainty—the one that came not from the false grandeur of leaving some global legacy behind, but from knowing full and well that her daily existence would leave an impact on a certain woman whose life was now intertwined with hers...and for the indisputable better.

The tension she had not even realized was being held in her shoulders melted away, and Angela turned, letting the med bay doors close behind her for the last time. She turned in her badges and security access clips, her Overwatch owned communications device and computer, and walked down the familiar hallways a last time with two security escorts at her side—she was a visitor now, due to take her final exit. And if eyes followed her and whispers broke out as she was taken to the landing pad, well...that was no longer her problem to deal with.

Her two meager suitcases were already loaded into the helicopter, and the blades were just whirring into life as Angela stepped outside into the bright sunlight. Her flight would take her almost directly to the small town and her cottage in less than two hours. Just two hours left until…

Even over the roar of the chopper blades, Jack’s voice could still be heard as he emerged from the headquarters building behind Angela, trying to change her mind one last desperate and angry time.

“Think of what you’re doing, Angela!” he yelled, arms spread wide. “For God’s sake...everything you’re leaving, and for what? Why? What about your career, about you? This doesn’t need to be about her. We can make this work still!”

Angela stopped and looked at him—at Overwatch. The pilot was waiting on her, and the wind kicked up by the whirling blades made it impossible to keep her hair from flying across her face. She didn’t doubt Jack, to be honest. She didn’t doubt that they could make this work, that Jack could just as quickly reopen Overwatch to her. But he was wrong about one critical thing: this wasn’t about just Amélie, not anymore. This was about Angela just as much.

Maybe one day he would understand why.

She shook her head slowly, and the stray locks of hair that weren’t tied down by her bun stubbornly flew in front of her vision again.

Goodbye, Jack.

Then Angela stepped into the helicopter, refusing to look back even once.

After all, there was a woman who was waiting for her, and there was a promise she had every intention of keeping.

Some days when Angela came home from the university she was greeted with a kiss. Some days it was nothing, and they would each take their own space in the den, occupying themselves with a book or similar, separated by an easy, comfortable silence. Some days they might curl up on the couch after dinner, content simply with the physical closeness of one another. Some days Angela would barely manage to close the door behind her before being whisked away to the bedroom, dinner be damned and forgotten about until other hungers had been satisfied.

She never minded any one of those evenings over the others.

Tonight, arms full with all of the papers for her graduate students she had yet to grade, Angela received a long and slow kiss at the door, just enough to leave her with a sigh and slow-burning ember that hoped for more.

Amélie laughed, a rare chuckle of amusement that made Angela realize something of her desire must have shown through on her face. Then half of the papers she was carrying were kindly taken from her.

“I see your students will be keeping you busy this week, chérie. I hope you will at least be left with some time for me.”

The raised eyebrow did precisely what Amélie no doubt intended, making the reputable if somewhat eccentric Professor Angela Ziegler stutter and flush. “I will always have time for you.”

And it was the truth that both of them knew, no matter what kind teasing she received.

“Dinner first,” insisted Amélie, leading the way back to the kitchen as Angela removed her shoes.

She only barely had time to appreciate the large canvas stretched out in Amélie’s studio room on the way to the table. Already it was an eye-catching splash of colors and motion just beginning to find form. Angela knew better than to pry before the piece was finished, though, and she didn’t dawdle. Besides, her stomach was already growling at the aromatic lamb that Amélie was only just now doling out onto plates for the two of them.

Angela gladly accepted a glass of wine, and before she knew it, the plate in front of her was empty. Amélie chuckled, finishing her own serving at a far more reasonable rate.

“Someone was hungry. Seconds?”

Angela waved down the offer. She had been more ravenous than she had realized, but her stomach was more than happy now.

“It was delicious. I don’t know how you managed to not eat this before I came home.” She stood, grabbing the dishes together. The least she could do back for the lovely meal was to clean up the dirty dishes.

Amélie stood at the same time, though, and gently but firmly took the plates from Angela’s hands, returning them to the table.

“Unless I am mistaken, dishes, I think, can wait,” she murmured, before finding Angela’s lips again with her own.

Angela sighed, pleased, against her mouth. She could taste the same dry and oaky wine on Amélie’s lips and tongue. No encouragement was needed to leave the dishes behind as they made their way to the small, simple bed they shared.

Angela would eagerly take whatever was offered, and just as gladly give whatever would be accepted back.

Her fingers curled into the dark, silken strands of hair, coaxing Amélie down toward the pillows and sheets. She coaxed Amélie toward her her lips, toward her, until the fragile barriers of cloth and the proverbial masks alike were stripped away, until she could hardly tell where she ended and Amélie began, until the thought of dishes was a long-forgotten memory. Until Amélie arched her back just so and pressed tightly against her, skin to skin, and Angela knew in her bones—just as Amélie knew in hers—the peace of home...not as place, but as a person.