Standard disclaimer: None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Blizzard. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.
Author's note: Tiny Overwatch ficlet that grew out of a dream I had of Reaper & Widowmaker dating. No, I haven't given up on my Fallout crossover; had to put it aside to work on a novel draft, but I'm working on it again. Also one more TF2 fic is on the boards. Thanks to LadyKate1 for giving this a lookover!
He said "Dance for me," and he said,
"You are too beautiful for the wind
To pick at, or the sun to burn." He said,
"I'm a poor tattered thing, but not unkind
To the sad dancer and the dancing dead."
-Sidney Keyes, "Death and the Maiden (Four Postures of Death)."
"I do not love you, mon cher," she said. "You know that, right?"
Her light French accent tapped the words, precise and neat. His own voice rasped, grating in his ears - did he still have ears? Of course, he must.
"I don't know what love is," he ground out. "I don't remember love."
She smiled gently, cold lips curving in that colder face; a smile with no warmth. "Then all is well. Come here, my darling."
She had held out her arms, and he had gone to her, and they had ... what? He could not be sure. A few flashes: himself, propped on one arm - he thought he still had arms - watching her in the cool morning light: the sweep of her long lilac limbs as she went through a simple ballet routine; himself gathering up the long black garments he wore, a bright shock as he lifted his white faceplate and realized he had discarded that too - had she seen? What had she seen? He did not recall. But mostly he remembered the chill of her: quenching the burning heat that tore his cells apart moment by moment in her icy coolness - cooling, even for a moment, the blaze in his mind.
She had a pet, a black widow spider; she fed it flies and let it crawl on her without the slightest hint of fear. "We are alike, she and I," she said. Or he thought she said; his memory was as amorphous as his form. But this memory felt real; it sounded like something she would have said.
She was Widowmaker, and the first widow she had made was herself; after her kidnapping and "reconditioning" by Talon, she had slain her husband in his sleep and then fled. It was said her heart no longer beat, but he knew that was not true; he had felt it - or so he thought - slow, so slow, like the heartbeat of torpid creatures in the depths of winter.
She was Widowmaker, and he was Reaper; both of their codenames spoke of death, and both of them were dead. He remembered little of his life before death, and less since: images, thoughts, sensations. Some things were clearer than others: Jack Morrison; McCree; Moira. He had had a family once; somehow he knew that, and he knew they were still alive. But everything was fuzzy, indistinct. The only constant was the burning fury that was always there. Sometimes he thought the fury was all that was left of him: all that he truly was, the only thing holding him together, and that if the fury ever dissipated, so would he.
She, in contrast, remembered everything. "Oh yes, I killed him," she said calmly when he asked about her husband. "In his sleep. It was ... not satisfying. Too easy." She might have been discussing the weather. He did not ask if she felt grief; he knew she felt nothing.
Neither did he, he might have thought - except for the rage. But as they waited together in the dropship over Nepal or Lijiang or Giza, as he rested his eyes (did he still have eyes?) on her cool elegant form, he knew there was something else that defined him. He could not name it; all he knew was that she was a part of it: part of his world. And he thought for the first time, that perhaps if the rage dissipated, something of him might remain.
As long as he had her.
He said, "You shall be my daughter and your feet move
In finer dances, maiden, and the hollow
Halls of my house shall flourish with your singing."
He beckoned and I knew that I must follow
Into the kingdom of no love.
Finis.