Obviously, set after Chapters 1-4 :3

Widowmaker's face was right up in mine, and while I was busy worrying about that creepy smile of hers and all the horrible things it meant she was about to try and do to me, I didn't notice what she was doing with her hands until I heard a pronounced 'click'.

I looked up my arms: she'd handcuffed me to the radiator pipe above my head.

Well, colour me not surprised. Who was I dealing with again? "Oh, of course, you just happen to have handcuffs on you."

"Please. I am an assassin."

"Yes, but I always thought you were more of an I-shoot-people-from-five-miles-away-type assassin rather than an I-handcuff-people-to-things-type assassin."

"I'm whatever I need to be," she told me, making it sound way dirtier than it needed to, "to get what I want." She sat back across my hips, skirt hitched up around the top of her thighs as she sat across me. I think it must have been like that on purpose, because she looked dead smug about it when she realised where I was looking.

It was annoying; if she was going to try and kill me, she could at least stop messing about with me beforehand! "You won't get away with this, you know," I informed her, trying to make sure I looked at her face. "I bet someone's already told the police, and Winston has a patch in on London patrol comms."

She laughed. Well, it was more of a kind dark chuckle. "Get away with what?" she asked me. "You're the one that upset a table and drew your blasters on a poor, innocent, sweet comtesse who was just trying to enjoy her tea…" She said the last part in her sweetest and most innocent tone of voice.

It almost made me gag. "No one could possibly think you're anything but despicable."

There was that signature smug grin again. "And yet you are choosing to have dinner with me."

I scoffed. "I'm only here to try and figure out what you're up to, Widowmaker! Someone's got to keep an eye on you!"

"Well, your eyes are certainly on me," she said pointedly, leaning over me and nearly giving me a faceful of her cleavage as she reached slowly above my head.

I couldn't figure out why she'd done that until she sat back up and I saw one of my blasters in—what was she— "Oi! Put that down!"

She raised an eyebrow at me, not putting it down. Instead, she carefully examined it like she was inspecting a fragile specimen at a museum or something. "How crude," was her assessment.

"I'll have you know I could kill you with that!"

She looked sceptical. "I don't even think I could kill you with it."

"It's more powerful than it looks, you know! Each one of those lasers packs the same punch as a 9mm!"

Now she looked interested in it. "Really," she said, and then fit it into her hand to see how it felt.

Suddenly, I got why she hadn't brought her own gun. She was probably planning on using mine all along, wasn't she?! "Oh, that's nice," I said sarcastically. "Kill a girl with her own guns."

She gave me a long, tired look. I found it rather patronising. "You still think that's what this is, chérie? A murder?"

"Well, what else would it be?" I shot back at her. "A church fete? You are an assassin, after all, and I am your sworn enemy! Of course it's a murder!" I paused, realising how that sounded. "Well, an attempted murder, anyway."

"I am a professional," she said with disdain. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead long before you knew it was me who fired the bullet."

She kept on saying that sort of thing, but I was yet to see more than one anonymous assassination out of her. Plus, I'd fought with her loads of times when she could have shot me but wanted to make sure she could parade triumphantly around me for ages beforehand. "That's rubbish, you love messing about with people first!"

"So that's what this is, is it?" she asked tiredly. "Me 'messing about' with you before I kill you?"

Before I could answer, she pushed the nose of my gun into my neck. "Well, now that you mention it, shooting you with your own gun does have a kind of poetry to it," she murmured, her thumb stroking the side of my blaster. "There are so many things I could do with it that I'm not sure which I prefer more. I could shoot you here," she pressed the gun against my neck, "and you would die here on this floor, suffocated by your own blood. Or, I could shoot you here," she moved to point the gun at my glowing Chronal Accelerator, "and you would simply disappear again. Flickering in and out of time." A sound outside caught her attention; she appeared to ignore it, slowly bending forwards over me again, her face up close to mine. She smelt like sweet wine. Oh no, she was about to kiss me again, wasn't she!? I held my breath. "Or," she said, her cool breath tickling my lips, "I could shoot you here, and let someone else do the work for me." She smiled.

Why was she—?

It all happened so quickly; I heard my blaster fire, the pressure on my wrists eased and then suddenly I was flipped over again, on top of her. Underneath me, she suddenly didn't look smug at all. Her grin was completely gone. She looked—

—frightened? What—?

"Help!" she cried out in her regular old Amélie voice. "Help me!"

I didn't know what was—

"Put your hands in the air!" A megaphone-boosted voice ordered me from the door of the restaurant.

I snapped my head up and looked to where it was coming from; the front door was wide open and there were several officers pointing their guns right at me. 'Put my hands…?' I looked down at them. They were free; Widowmaker must've shot those handcuff off with my blaster.

Well, good. I straightened, I pointed down at her. "Don't worry!" I yelled back, trying to explain. "She's the one who started this, not me! I'm the good guy! A moment ago she had me in handcuffs and was about to murder me!"

Widowmaker pretended to weakly struggle underneath me, ignoring everything I'd said and putting on her best damsel in distress voice. "Oh, please, won't somebody help me?"

I scoffed at it—I mean, look at her—but the officers weren't playing about. They'd clearly bought her act, which was bad news for me. "This is your last warning, Ma'am," the constable said to me, megaphone in one hand and gun in the other. "Put your hands in the air or we will be forced to open fire!"

I grimaced. "Okay, okay, I know how this looks," I reasoned, trying to placate them, "but this is all a big misunderstanding, really. This person I've got right here is wanted in like thirty countries for crimes against the—"

"This is your last warning!"

I happened to glance down at Widowmaker while I was trying to figure out what on earth I should do, and noticed her expression. There was a ghost of a smile on her lips. She was enjoying this.

She locked eyes with me, giving me her best 'terrified' expression. "Please, officers!" she said, still looking dead at me. "Please, save me from this awful woman!"

I narrowed my eyes. Oh, you filthy little… That was it, I'd had it with this woman, I swear, I was going to bloody—

A series of bullets whistled past my head. They were almost definitely warning shots rather than a real attempt to kill me, but when I looked up and saw all those barrels pointed right at me, it was like a reflex, I blinked out the way.

Doing that had the unfortunate side effect of basically making me look like some super villain with special powers, though, because all the police gasped and then there were panicked bullets spraying everywhere.

I ducked behind a pillar, peeking around it. "No! Stop firing, there's been a big mistake!"

They weren't listening to me, though. They were beckoning at Widowmaker. "Quickly! Come over to us!" they were saying. "You'll be safe here, we'll take care of you!"

I made an actual gagging noise. That woman. I stole a quick peek at them and saw the policemen all gathered around her, protecting her and fawning over her like she was some sort of brave survivor or something and trying to escort her out. She was playing along. "I was so frightened," she said, glancing over at me to make sure I was watching. "That woman is so scary, please lock her up for a very, very long time…"

You had to be kidding me… I gave her the tiredest bloody look.

It appeared to entertain her more than it did anything else, though, but the policemen didn't notice the smile she was giving me. One of them was gently patting her back. "We'll take care of her, don't you worry. What's your name, Ma'am?" His colleague was already tapping away at a tablet beside them.

"It's Amélie LaCroix!" I shouted over to them. "L-A-C-R-O-I-X! Otherwise known as Widowmaker! She's wanted for—"

The policeman with the tablet stopped suddenly. He was reading something from it. "—for thirteen homicides in the same number of months. 'Amélie LaCroix was added to the international watch list in 2056 after a series of charges were laid against her in Switzerland...'" Even from this distance, I could see there was a photo on his screen.

It happened in slow motion: all the policemen looked from the photo to Widowmaker, eyes widening. It was clearly the same person.

That smile she'd been smugly directing at me abruptly faded.

Hah, time's up! I thought indulgently, this time giving her my own smug grin.

Before the penny dropped and the policemen could snatch her, though, she extended her hand up toward a high window in the entrance. Something shot out from under the wrist of her blouse. "Adieu, chérie," she said calmly, blowing me a kiss just before she smoothly grappled out of the open window.

All the policemen stared at the window for a second, stunned. "Get her!" the constable shouted, scrambling to pull himself together. A couple of the policemen ran out the door.

I stepped out from behind the pillar, feeling pretty smug. I probably had a bit of a swagger. "I told you!" I said primly to them. "I was simply trying to do my civic duty as a citizen of this fine country to make sure that Widowmaker didn't—"

He pointed at me, too. "And her! Get them both!"

What? "But I didn't do anything!" I tried to protest, blinking out of the way of the policemen charging at me. They turned, trying to figure out where I'd gone. I was behind them. "Honest, I was just trying to make sure she didn't—ugh!" One of them spun right around and tried to snatch me. He missed.

I could already see them reaching for their guns again and that was bad news if they were this close. Clearly, I was going to have to bail on this particular party and hope that later it became clear who the real villain was. I blinked over to my blasters, grabbed them, and blinked out onto the balcony again, skidding over to the edge and looking down at the ground below. Could I make it?

"That's a long jump for such a small woman," a voice said from one of the balconies above me. Widowmaker was reclining calmly on a railing watching me; when I looked up, she gave me a little wave with her fingers.

Ugh. "Oh, sod off!" I told her flatly. "This is all your bloody fault!"

She examined her nails. "I'm not the one that flipped over a restaurant table and pulled her guns on an unarmed woman."

Oh, you had to be— "Pulling my guns on a wanted terrorist is hardly the same as threatening an innocent woman!"

"I was innocently eating my dinner," she said in a very un-innocent voice.

"You were baiting me was what you were doing!" I corrected her, remembering the stockinged foot creeping up the inside of my trousers, the wink, and the kisses before that…

"Is that what you're going to tell the police when they catch you? That I 'baited' you to destroy a restaurant and scare all those people?"

I scoffed at her. I'd had enough of this, I needed to get out of here. "Look, seeing as this is all your fault, are you going to stand up there watching me or are you going to redeem yourself by helping me get across this gap here?"

She batted her eyelashes and didn't move a single bloody muscle.

Of course she bloody didn't. I put my hands on my hips. "Oh, nice, you get me in trouble with the police on purpose and then don't even help me escape?"

"You didn't have any trouble escaping across it after I kissed you before," she pointed out with an oh-so sweet smile, and was about to say something else completely uncalled for when a bullet whizzed past her head and shut her up. She ducked, wide-eyed and searching for where it had come from.

At the balcony door, two policemen were aiming their guns at us.

Uh oh. I needed to get out of here, pronto.

I jumped over the railing because she sort of had a point: I had made the opposite balcony before, hadn't I? With three blinks I made it this time, too—just. I needed to grab the railing to stop me from toppling over it, though, and let me tell you, with bullets whizzing all about me it was not that easy. It was rather impressive, actually, if I do say so myself.

Fortunately, the door to balcony I'd landed on was unlocked and there was no one home. I pulled it open and ran through the house, mentally apologising to the poor people who lived here and were going to get home to their balcony door being wide open.

Then, I had a thought. What happened if someone burgled this house because I'd left the balcony door open while I was trying to escape from the police? I stopped in place. I didn't want to be the cause of a burglary. I should fix that, shouldn't I?

I took a quick detour back to close the balcony door and lock it so robbers couldn't break in. Then, I went back to rushing out the front door (stopping for a tick to check that was locked too), through the hallways and up several flights of fire stairs that opened a roof top. Perfect. Police usually had big trouble trailing people up here. I checked about for helicopters, though, just in case.

I couldn't see any flying about in the thick London smog, but what I could see though was the tail end of one Call Sign: Widowmaker as she grappled across the gap between two buildings and disappeared down onto another rooftop.

I should follow her, I thought, thinking she'd probably lead me back to Talon and it would be handy to know where their hideout was in London. That would certainly make Winston less angry with me for being in trouble with the police again.

But… doing that sort of thing was what'd gotten me into this situation in the first place. I was already knee-deep in it with the law already, did I really want to make things worse?

Below me, sirens were already blaring in the laneways, and there were red and blue lights flashing all over the walls of every building. I put my hands on my hips, watching all the police cars pulling up in front of the posh restaurant. There were a lot of them, which meant I was probably going to be in a lot of trouble again.

Oh, who was I kidding? If I was going to cop it anyway (hah!), I might as well have something to show for it, am I right? I should definitely follow her.

Turning, I blinked across the gap between the buildings and followed where I'd seen her heading.

It actually wasn't that hard to follow her trail. Her grapple left white streaks where it scratched the stone, and she must have been in a big old rush to get out of there, because she was leaving them everywhere. It was rather sloppy, if you ask me.

I followed them across the buildings, trying to imagine where they could be headed. I couldn't think what a Talon hideout might look like around this end of London. All the houses were pretty squashy, so unless they'd set up shop in, well, a shop, Talon's base was probably in some dodgy little flat like mine somewhere. Hah, it was funny to think about Talon cramming a prima donna like Widowmaker into a little bedsit above a Chinese take away.

The white scrapes stopped at an industrial-looking skylight, and when I dropped down through it, expecting to fall right down into Talon's London Lair, I found myself in a—

—a car park?

I stood, frowning. It looked a bit familiar, but not really the sort of place I'd imagined Talon would—

"What took you so long?"

I jumped, holding up my blasters. Widowmaker was leaning on the boot of her expensive black car, arms crossed. She certainly didn't look like she was about to attack me. In fact, she was smiling.

I lowered my blasters. "What are you on about, 'took so long'? I just followed you halfway across—" Wait… Those white streaks in the stone… "—oh."

Her smile deepened. She pushed off her car and wandered forward; I backed away from her until I hit someone else's car. Its alarm went off and made me jump again.

You wouldn't have thought Widowmaker even noticed. She was too busy staring at me as she hauled me up against someone's little hatchback and towered over me.

Uh oh. "I should shoot you right now for getting me in trouble with the police!" I managed, pushing my blasters into the soft skin of her stomach.

"Pfft, like you're not completely capable of getting in trouble with them all by yourself," she told me dispassionately. Then, she circled my Chronal Accelerator slowly with an index finger. "But enough of that."

I opened my mouth to protest, but she kissed me with those cold lips again. This time, her tongue was cool against mine, too.

I just stood there, wide-eyed and blinking, being passionately kissed against a honking, flashing car by a woman who I'd been 100% certain was plotting to murder me.

It was hard to focus on the 'wanted to murder me' part of that, though, because her fingers were toying with one of the buttons on my shirt. I was torn between pistol-smacking that bloody hand away from me, and sort of wondering what would happen if she did undo them.

She didn't, though. She left it, leaning back and very slowly and deliberately licking her lips like she'd eaten something really delicious. It made me uncomfortable. The whole thing made me uncomfortable. I shouldn't kissing her, for Chrissake, I should be fighting with her! Talon was my enemy! It was getting harder and harder to link this to some megalomaniacal Talon plot, though.

For the first time that evening, it seriously occurred to me that Talon might have absolutely nothing to do with tonight. After all, why would Talon want Widowmaker to have tea with me and kiss me? Which meant—

She saw my expression. "Still think I'm 'messing about' with you before I kill you?" she asked knowingly.

I gulped. I couldn't look away from her. Suddenly, everything made sense: her making sure I saw her in her bra. Her flirting with me like there was no tomorrow. The fact that while she clearly enjoyed a different sort of 'messing about' with me, not once had she made a single attempt to actually hurt me.

Oh no. No, I didn't think this was about killing me anymore.

She could tell, and she spent a moment indulgently staring at my lips—was she going to kiss me again?—before she bloody didn't kiss me again, and stepped back.

She laughed once; there was something infuriatingly triumphant about it. "Let's do this again sometime," she said casually, like we'd just come back from a nice trip to the pictures or something, and like she hadn't been tantalisingly close to ravishing me.

Then, she climbed into her stupidly expensive car, calmly fixed her lippy, and drove off. I watched her car disappear around the corner of the exit ramp, jaw open.

When I finally exhaled and closed my jaw, I could still feel her waxy lipstick on my mouth.

It actually took me a few seconds to pull myself back together, because I felt completely out of it, suddenly.

What on earth had just happened to me?! I'd just nipped out to do a spot of shopping, and ended up having tea with Widowmaker and she hadn't tried to kill me. Well, not really. I hadn't really tried to kill her, either. There had been kissing too—quite a lot of it, actually. And despite destroying a restaurant, scaring a lot of people and landing myself in trouble with the police, it was becoming sort of clear what I'd really spend my afternoon doing.

Great Scott, I'd just been on a proper date with Widowmaker, hadn't I?!