Amélie sat on the edge of the tub, a towel wrapped around her. The brush ran through her hair, just now dried. She smiled contently to herself, rising to her feet and approaching the mirror. Her hair was coming along nicely, all straight and smooth. The woman peaked out from inside the bathroom to look at her husband. Gérard sat in the bed like a statue, dead tired. He had surprised her by intruding while she was in the shower, gingerly placing a strong hand on her smooth thigh. It worked its way up, and the kisses he planted on her collarbone only cemented her resolve to give him what he wanted. What they both wanted.

Four minutes.

She blinked, frowning at the unwarranted self-interruption that had placated her inner musings.

As he slept between the sheets, a devious thought came to her head. Perhaps she should discard the towel and pounce upon him, a continuation of their romp in the shower. The past two weeks, they had made love almost constantly in their spare time. Gérard confided in her one night, of his desire to retire and settle down in France with her. To bare two children. Perhaps open a bakery with all the money his service to his country and Overwatch had earned him.

Three minutes.

Amélie let out an annoyed huff. For the past two days, she had been subconsciously counting down the days. To what, she couldn't recall. It wasn't their anniversary or Gérard's birthday. Or some important day in French history. All she knew is that they became more constant as the week went on. She confided in Angela Ziegler, but the good doctor could not find any abnormalities in her psyche. Amélie sighed and pushed the mental anomaly out of her head, just instead wanting to fantasize and reflect over her husband.

Two minutes.

Her disappearance had shaken him to his very core, and the last thing he wished was to lose her again. The Omnic Crisis and the fight against Talon had not shaken their love for one another, but they had little time to share. Gérard took her kidnapping as a sign that he needed to get serious. A ring wasn't enough. However, Amélie wasn't quite sure of her answer. On one hand, it was everything she ever dreamed of. Settling down, raising the children with him, and ending every day with fresh bread the two of them had prepared together. He would knead the dough with his strong hands, and she would lather on the cinnamon, icing, butter, honey, or whatever else tickled their fancy. She would wipe the smudges off their little boy's face. Yet, all of this came with a tremendous sense of guilt.

One minute.

Gérard had been invaluable in the fight against Talon. He was a revered figure for both France and Overwatch. It seemed like a dishonor to rip him away from all that. Words could not even begin to describe the feeling of pride that swelled through her when she would tell people her husband was a member of Overwatch. Her husband, the hero. They needed him. But so did she. Overwatch had resulted in many difficult life choices the two of them had to make. Either decision would be a hard one, but she knew that no matter what, she would always be there for him. To love and cherish him, and he for her. A yawn escaped her soft lips. The clock almost read midnight. Amélie was not used to being up this late. But she would not be awake for long. Soon, she would don her nightgown and climb into bed next to Gérard, holding him tightly. Her hands running over his muscular form, as though it was sculpted from clay on account of all the rigorous physical training he put himself through. For Overwatch. For France. For her.

The brush clattered onto the marble floor, her arm limply falling to her side. She stared into her reflection in the mirror but saw nothing. The world around her was blurry, no definite shape or structure. Her pupils had shrunk, her eyes lifeless without spark reflecting the state of her mind. Slowly, they began to grow. A dullness settled over her consciousness, the space around her eyes numb. Inch by inch, she turned her head to look at her target, still sound asleep in bed and completely oblivious to what had just happened to her. Silent as the night, Amélie strode over to the bedside, standing over him. Her target slumbered peacefully. The dresser drawer slid open without a sound revealing a pistol inside. She reached down and held it in her hand. Her fingers wrapped around the grip firmly. He had taught her many times since her return how to handle a firearm in the event of Talon's return. Little did he know that Talon had beaten him to the punch. Smoke hissed from the barrel. The bullet pierced through his skull, killing him instantly. His body jerked once and then moved no more. Blood painted the carved wooden headboard and the wall behind it.

Two guards burst through, rifles in hand. Amélie stood over Gérard's body, looking at them with no expression whatsoever. The guards lowered their rifles, one of them pressing a button on his helmet and communicating with someone. Amélie picked up the comm device sitting on the dresser, inputting a code. Gérard's comm device had been rigged in the aftermath of Amélie's return to filter out any attempt to listen in. Talon's kidnapping had made him paranoid in his final days, desperate to keep his darling wife safe.

"Report, agent," a male voice said over the comm.

"Lacroix is terminated," Amélie said. "Ze mission is complete."

"Excellent!" the voice said eagerly. "Have the guards arrived yet?"

"Only the two outside ze door," she said. "Zey are radioing for my escape."

"Good work, Widowmaker. Now, I have a few more things I need you to do…" She nodded as his orders came in and placed the comm on the dresser.

"We're on our way," one of the guards said over the radio. Talon had their agents' radios modified with a private connection to their SO. Since the radios' designs were standard military issue, it was easy to swap the faceplating. The guard stuck his head out the door. No activity to be seen. "Coast is clear. Let's g-" He never finished his sentence as the bullet shot through the back and out from his forehead. The other guard had only a second to process his fellow man's death before a bullet ran through his ear and out the other side of his head.

It would've been far too suspicious if she disappeared with two able bodied guards outside, she thought, repeating the doctor's orders to herself. So the two were written off as acceptable losses. Collateral damage. A specialty of Talon's.

Withdrawing a marker from the drawer, she drew the Talon emblem on the wall over Gérard's body. In an act of independence, she also drew a tiny spider beside it. She dropped her towel and wiped down the grip, removing her fingerprints. Still cradling it in the towel, she placed the gun on the dresser beside Gérard. Mockingly, the gun was laid down with the barrel pointing at his head. Shouting was audible down the hall, as armed guards came to investigate the commotion. The comm channel was smashed against the wall, shattering it to pieces. Amélie slinked out through the door and darted through the shadows to meet at the evac point. For a woman in the nude, she had managed to complete evade detection from anyone. The guards smuggled her onboard, and the pilot faked a story about detecting a disturbance out beyond the base. When the ship had flown out of range, she was placed onto an unmarked transport vessel. But not before the guards that escorted her were gunned down.

The official story was that Talon assassins had infiltrated the base, killed Gérard in his sleep, and kidnapped Amélie once more. The dead bodyguards stationed to watch their room and at the rendezvous point out beyond the base only strengthened the story. It wouldn't be until years later that anyone within Overwatch would find out the real story.


The doctor stood in front of the terminals in his laboratory as they read out the brain activity. Amélie had been returned to them only three hours ago, and they wasted no time in reformatting her into the Widowmaker. A door hissed open, and the man in the black suit from before approached and shook his hand.

"Pleasure to see you again," the doctor said.

"Our bosses heard about what happened," he said. "Needless to say, they're impressed." The doctor let out an amused huff of air from his nostrils and then a small chuckle.

"Of course they were," he bragged. "They've never had a success like this." He removed his glasses and began polishing them with a cloth. "The official story has begun making its rounds, I assume?"

"Overwatch intel reports that Lacroix was killed in his room, and that Talon assassins were behind it and the kidnapping of his wife." The story had had a few days to circulate through Overwatch, and Talon had to be extra careful in transporting Amélie. The doctor was severely impatient with the delays but knew better than to speed things along and risk jeopardizing their cover. But once she had arrived through the doors, he wasted no time in his experiments. "What's going on here?" The suit pointed to an x-ray of her head, which showed several thin rods piercing the skull and brain.

"Now that she's ours, we can begin with extensive neural modification," the doctor said. "Applying electrical shocks to orifices of the brain will repress her personality and make her more complacent to Talon orders."

"I thought she was already complacent." The doctor let out a small laugh and placed his arm over her shoulder.

"It's not a one-time thing," he said. "The psyche is like a physical part of the body. It has the capacity to heal and repair itself, metaphorically speaking. In order to keep her in check, we'll need to perform routine neural therapy. Otherwise, Amélie will come back. And we don't want that."

"So you're stamping out her personality completely," the suit said. "Why not just sever some parts of the brain if you want to make her mindless?" The doctor shook his head, waving a hand at him.

"Not mindless. We need her to be capable of independent thought so that she may carry out her missions effectively. We don't need an assassin that requires us to hold her hand. Enough cognitive functionality that she may operate freely on her own but suppressed enough that she will obey orders without question and will not be hung up on morality."

"Ahh. I see."

"Think of it as acting in a movie," the doctor continued. "Reading your lines is fine and good, but improvisation is even better. You can act even without a script or even a writer, for that matter."

"Poetic," the suit said, a twinge of admiration in his voice.

"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," the doctor said. He pointed to a percentage displayed on the screen. A tank was hooked up to Amélie, with some sort of liquid flowing in.

"What is that?" the suit asked.

"A specially modified chemical. It will slow her heart down to faint levels but will modify the interior temperature and structure of her organs so that they will survive the lower heart activity. This will make her undetectable on heartbeat sensors. She'll need to absorb this when she undergoes her routine therapy."

"So even we won't be able to detect her? Isn't that a bit problematic for us?"

"She's under our control. If you're worried about her going rogue, I can assure you that your fears are unfounded. Besides, double blind studies in the field are always fun."

"Double what?" The doctor waved his hand dismissively.

"Sometimes, I forget you're not a scientist." The suit merely frowned. The two of them looked back to Amélie, quiet and still as she lied on the examination table. The suit took notice of her being bound to the table with mechanical cuffs despite being unconscious.

"What's with the cuffs?" he asked.

"To restrain her if she acts up during therapy," the doctor said.

"Acts up?" the suit repeated. "Like she struggles?"

"Correct. You see, sometimes, the therapy can be…. painful. Some sessions will require her to be fully awake, the brain racing with consciousness as we perform. Other times, we can perform with her under. The neural technology is still in its infant stage, you see. It requires specific parameters at times."

"You don't give her anesthetic?" the suit asked. The doctor frowned on him and put his hands on his hips.

"You getting soft on me?" he asked.

"Of course not," the suit said indignantly. "I'm just asking in case she goes into shock. If she dies, your experiments here are done."

"We've taken great strides to secure her safety as well as our own," the doctor said. "The painful sessions are where we need to overhaul entire sections of the brain. Think of it as a patch to a video game. Sometimes, it's as long and strenuous as an entire UI overhaul or revamping a control style. And sometimes, it's just fixing little bugs and hiccups." The suit remained unconvinced.

"But this is a person," he said. "Not some American developed video game. People are more complex in what they can handle."

"Not as different as you'd think," the doctor said. "I've studied engineering, psychology, and medicine. The longer you work in either field, the more similar they start to be."

"Wow," the suit said, genuinely impressed despite his flat tone. "Impressive."

"Of course it is," the doctor said with a smirk. "How do you think I got into both Overwatch AND Talon?" He chortled to himself. "The Widowmaker won't die on my account. We've got measures in place to keep her physical form safe. Plus, the pain builds character."

"Builds character?" The doctor gave him a flat but annoyed expression.

"Are you insistant on repeating my words every other sentence?" he asked.

"Well, like you said. I'm not the scientist," the suit said flatly. "How does pain build character?"

"Constant exposure to pain on the subject's part numbs the body's sense of feeling as well as crushes any sense of hope or desire within their psyche."

"Why not just surgically remove the part of the brain that feels?" the suit asked. "No pain, no problems. Gunshot wound won't deter them."

"Because we need them to be physically aware of their environment," the doctor said. "If they get shot but can't feel it, they could push their body past its limits and then die from exposure and stress. The therapy sessions make them more resilient to pain, but it is not intended to ever deaden them to feeling the world around them."

"Mmm hmm," the suit said, not entirely grasping the concept but conceded with his answers. His uncertainty would've skyrocketed had he seen the session earlier. An hour ago, Amélie was writhing in place and screaming as the neural receptors poked and prodded her brain. Her skull itched and felt like fire as her nerve endings were shocked. It felt like an eternity before they put her under for the softer stuff. "And it also puts them in their place?"

"You see these types of situations all the time in broken homes with abusive partners or family members," the doctor said. "Their behavior and method of functioning changes in order to cope with and outright avoid exposure to pain." The suit couldn't help but squirm in place at the doctor's words.

"You seem to know a lot about this," he said tentatively.

"In the psychology field, you saw it a lot," the doctor confessed. "It was never pretty."

"And here you are."

"This time, it's different," the doctor insisted. "This is for the greater good."

"Greater good?" the suit asked. He had worked with Talon for some time now, and all he could see was another mercenary corporation in for themselves. "What greater good?" The doctor laughed.

"Oh, you don't know," he said, patting the suit on his cheek. "In time, you'll see." He wrapped his arm around him. "Now, let's grab lunch. I'll buy." While he had many other questions, the suit was not one to argue with a free lunch. The room was empty with their departure, only security cameras keeping watch over everything.

Slowly, Amélie Lucroix was being replaced little by little, her personality and original self-fading away into the background noise of history. Even her name would fade away, replaced with her artificial identity. The identity of a Talon spy, an assassin that would strike fear into the heart of man and machine alike. The identity of a ruthless killer that gained a sick thrill out of eliminating her targets, albeit for a little while.

The identity of the Widowmaker.