Chapter Text
Amélie Lacroix had always wondered if, one day, she might find herself in an Overwatch holding cell.
After all, since the organization’s fall and resurrection, Talon had ordered her into battle against them more times than she cared to count. Ever since Widowmaker had begun her game of cat and mouse with Tracer, her escapes had gotten progressively narrower as they’d fought again and again, and she’d almost expected that one day the teleporting woman would manage to bring the dance to a close.
When she’d first had the thought, though, she hadn’t expected to feel disappointed.
The more she’d fought Tracer, the more Widowmaker had begun to feel a fire inside of her that Amélie thought would never return. Something in the way the girl attacked, evaded, challenged, and demanded more of her was…exciting. She found herself wondering when she’d see the girl again, and thinking about her. So she’d started to make a little game of it, as Talon had allowed Amélie to have more control of her own mind.
Amélie said every single nasty, filthy, scandalous, flirty thought that had come into her head as they fought, knowing the girl couldn’t possibly understand what Amélie had been saying to her. Talon still had very real control over her body, and the ability to compel Widowmaker’s service, but it was a little rebellion that she’d deeply enjoyed. Tracer had played her unwitting part perfectly, dancing to the beat they’d set as they fought – taunting, chirping, challenging, evading, and eventually escaping.
Talon eventually gave her the ‘luxury’ of maintaining a private residence, and she’d quietly rebelled again by filling it with reminders of who she had been. A print she’d loved as a girl, outfits she knew Gérard would have enjoyed to see her wear, and a few things she’d fantasized about in recent months, but never expected that she would ever actually use.
But then she’d been having a coffee in her favorite café, just a few blocks from the building she’d found with a view of the sea that reminded her of their honeymoon, and a brushy head of chestnut hair had caught her eye. She had turned her head just enough to make eye contact, and felt a shiver in her stomach when she realized yes, it was the British woman who she’d been fighting and fantasizing about for so long. Suddenly in a setting where she was not Widowmaker, and this girl wasn’t Tracer.
So Amélie had invited the younger woman to sit…and her world had tilted on its axis when she realized that Lena Oxton had known exactly what she’d been saying the entire time.
For more than a year after that day, they’d been ridiculous, really. Secret rendezvous, stolen weekends, both sneaking around their respective organizations as Lena showed she was a much deeper and more complex woman than anyone who fought against Tracer would be likely to expect, and Amélie had slowly realized that there was far more of the woman she had once been left under Widowmaker’s mask than she had been willing to admit to herself.
They still fought when they their ‘professional’ lives intersected, of course, but with a new, almost playful edge to it all. Foreplay as conducted with guns and grappling hooks, often followed by inventive and enthusiastic reunions later. A surprising amount of tender and considerate aftercare for both the acts on the battlefield and the bedroom, and quietly making arrangements for their next encounter as just Amélie and Lena.
But just as it had started so suddenly, it came to a screeching halt when they’d gotten a little too focused on each other, and accidentally exposed their private life to Angela.
The last thing she remembered was feeling a sharp pain at the back of her neck as she and Lena had stared at the stunned (and, apparently, quite flustered) doctor.
The next time she woke, it was in an Overwatch cell – just as she’d imagined – dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with the organization’s logo and the word “DETAINEE” printed on the breast. At least, she supposed, it wasn’t orange.
But when she turned to look out the door, the idea of Lena being in the cell across from hers hadn’t ever crossed her mind before, and Amélie’s heart sank as she realized what the discovery of their affair might mean for her lover.
The younger woman must have noticed her stirring and gauging her surroundings, because a moment after Amélie had realized she’d been imprisoned, Lena sat up and offered a weak wave. “Hiya.”
Amélie sat up, looked around, and waved back. “Bonjour, chérie.” What else could she say to that?
“So…” Lena stood, walking to the edge of where a shimmering field surrounded her cell. She was, at least, wearing fairly regular clothes – a Union Jack tank top and a long pair of shorts – though whomever had placed her in the cell had removed her harness, leaving her with only the anchor implant in her chest. “Would you like good news, bad news, or worse news?”
Amélie shrugged, waving a hand in the air. “I will let you pick.”
“Well,” Lena rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, “the bad news is that we’re obviously both in the clink.” Moving to the other side of the cell, she hopped up onto the bed set into the wall, kicking her feet in the air. “Worse news is that half of Overwatch is convinced you’ve been hypno-whatzitsing me into a Talon sleeper agent…and the other half is really pissed about me lying to them about what I’ve been doing with myself.”
Amélie nodded slowly as she considered how the situation must have appeared to someone observing them from the outside. “That is…entirely fair, I admit. So what is the good news?”
Lena gave a crooked grin. “Well, we don’t have to sneak around anymore.”
Amélie knew they were probably BOTH in for a world of trouble – but she couldn’t help but utter a dark little laugh.
The humor in their situation faded for Amélie the next morning, shortly after an automatic chute had delivered breakfast, as she watched ‘Pharah’ and ‘Soldier: 76’ come to take Lena for questioning. Standing, she’d walked to the door of her cell only for Amari to turn sharply towards her.
“Stand back from the door, and no speaking to the other prisoner during transfer.”
Lena’s face fell, her eyes flashing with pain. “Oh, come on, ’Reeha. Are you serious?”
“I said no talking,” the former security chief snapped, her bearing ramrod stiff beneath her armor. “I’m not the one who has been lying about her activities for a year. Now move.”
Amélie stepped back, seeming to take an interest in the floor of her cell, but keeping a careful eye on Lena out of her peripheral vision. Even though the Egyptian didn’t seem to be treating her roughly as she escorted her out, the Brit’s bearing had changed from the relaxed, loose movements that Amélie was so used to seeing, her body language tight and almost painfully controlled under the gaze of her escorts as they disappeared through the door.
She’d expected a long, silent wait after that, filled with apprehension for what would happen to her lover. Instead, a few minutes after Lena had been escorted away, a grate in the ductwork above the cellblock floor opened with just the barest sound of metal moving against metal, and a moment later a small figure dropped to the floor, the barrel of a rifle poking out at an angle over one shoulder.
Clad in a dark cloak and well-patched tactical suit, the figure stood, raising its head to reveal a featureless tinted face shield with a targeting optic projected onto the bowl at eye level, the rest of the helmet wrapped in a bright blue cloth.
Amélie stood, her brows drawing together in confusion. “You are no Talon agent. Qui est vous? Qu’est-ce vous voulez?”
A woman’s voice – heavily processed by her mask, yet oddly familiar – came out in a dark chuckle. “You don’t recognize me, Amélie? I’m hurt.”
The woman pushed back her hood, the faceplate of the helmet sliding back with a soft hiss to reveal the face of a ghost. Amélie took a step back by reflex, a hand coming up to cover her mouth in surprise.
Ana Amari looked gravely into the face of the Widowmaker with her remaining eye. “I’ve come for a few answers of my own.”