"Hey Lena, you in?"

"Yeah, In here love"

The sound of Emily taking of her shoes and grumbling lightly when you hear her stumble over brings a smile to your lips. You take a quick sip from the mug of tea in your hand before setting it down on the table and trying to focus on what the data pad in front of you says.

You've been reading this for the last half hour and it's possibly the most depressing thing you've ever read. Winston finally, with a lot of persuasion from Emily, sent over the files concerning Widowmaker. And Emily had of course sent them straight to you. So after you'd done all your official Overwatch business, a.k.a watching some boring supplies being transported, you'd rushed back home and opened up the files with such a strong feeling of determination you felt unstoppable. That determination soon dwindled down as the file started to sound more and more like something out of a horror movie. The things Talon had done to widow were horrifying, they made you feel sick to your stomach even reading about them.

Soft footsteps making their way into the room makes you look up to the doorway. Emily is there, her gaze on you with a small smile on her lips. "Interesting read then?"

You just shrug in response, looking back to the words on the page. When you feel Emily slump down beside you on the couch you sigh loudly, eyes closing as you will the headache you can feel coming on to go away.

"That bad, huh?"

"You 'ave no idea, Em" you say quietly, head resting against the back of the couch as you look at the celling blankly.

You don't look at her until she touches your arm. Her fingers gently slide down your forearm until she reaches your hand. With a small hum of approval, you think she's going to take your hand, but instead you find her carefully taking the data pad out of your hands. You open your mouth to say some sort of warning, but you know she won't listen. She may not be as stubborn as you, but when Emily has her mind set on something there's no changing it. You watch her as her eyes skim across the words in front of her, practically feeling the hurt when her face scrunches up as she reads that one bit you know made even you feel sick.

"This is…God this is terrible Lena" she says almost in disbelief as she looks up at you. You don't know what to say so you just nod. She places the pad down on the coffee table in front of the couch and lets out a little sigh. You curl into her, feeling instantly better when she wraps an arm around you and starts to gently brush her fingers through your hair.

"Her name was Amelie then?"

"Seems so, they must'a proper fucked her up to make her go from some ballet teaching perfect wife to a cold-blooded assassin just like that"

"God, I know. have you watched the videos that were attached yet?"

"Nah…Not sure I want to watch them, love. Reading about the torture was about to make me bolk"

"I get that. Winston phoned me before he sent the stuff over warning me that the videos were a bit much. Think he was more worried that you'd see them honestly. I mean, he knows about how interested you are in her"

You find yourself laughing softly at her "How interested I am? Love, you make it sound like I'm trying to date her"

Emily simply grins back at you, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead before detangling herself from you and standing up. "Are we forgetting about the 'Widowmaker's arse is the best arse I've ever seen' conversation?"

"Oi shut up!" you try to say with at least a little bit of anger but the smile on your face just spreads as you see that adoring smile Emily is giving you. You don't know how you got so lucky, finding someone as great as Emily. She's all you've ever wanted and her little smiles light up your entire world.

"I see that dreamy look Miss Oxton, your thinking about her arse right now, aren't cha?

"Nooooooo" you whine, picking up the cushion next to you and hiding your red face in it. You'd rather she think that than know you're thinking about her. It's not that she doesn't know you desire her or love her, she knows that plenty from the fact you could spend days in bed together if your jobs didn't get in the way. You just don't talk about feelings much, your actions speak a hell of a lot louder than words ever could, and Emily seems perfectly fine with that.

"Well I'm gonna get started on tea, spag bol alright?"

"Spag bol sounds great. Guess I better get back to this" you say, picking up the data pad and waving it in her general direction.

"Alright, come bother me if you get too depressed"

You watch her leave and just stare after her for a moment. It's not that you don't want to go back to reading, you obviously want to know everything there is to know about Widowmaker- Amelie, whatever name she goes by. According to the file Talon erased all her past memories as well as her capability to feel emotions. She only knows that she's a weapon for Talon and that's it apparently.

You're just about to turn the page after reading a particularly gruesome report on exactly how she was tortured and brainwashed, when you notice a small piece of text at the bottom of the page linking to a video. It takes you about two second of consideration to decide the video can't be any worse than what you've just read so you click on it and give a tap to the side of the device to enable the sound.

It starts off in pitch blackness, you tap the side a few more times to turn up the volume. That's when you hear the hear the heavy breathing of someone who's obviously in quite a lot of pain. You think you might even hear a few soft sobs but the sound quality isn't the best and the screen is still pitch black so you can't be sure. When the light comes on you almost flinch, the small room is still dull but you can now see someone slumped forward on a chair.

The room slowly starts to get lighter until you can see the bloody broken person trying to push themselves up right against the chair they're tied to. Your breath catches in your throat when she looks right up to the camera with a look that could kill. Her eyes are a different colour and her skin sure as hell isn't blue. But there's no mistaking it, that's Widowmaker sitting there covered in blood and bruises, giving looks that could kill to a camera she probably can't even see.

"Good morning, Widowmaker. I hope you slept well" says a voice somewhere to the right of the camera. She just glares in the direction, her mouth folding into a single straight line as if she's determined not to speak.

"I thought the meds would have kicked in by now. Although how are we supposed to know, you're our first special project like this" A man in his thirties walks onto the camera, slowly stalking around her like an animal hunting his prey. "Still not want to talk, my little spider?"

There's a deafening silence for a few moments as She meets his eye. His calm demeanour suddenly drops and he lunges forwards and grabs her loose hair harshly. It's clear she tries to not make a sound but as her gives her hair a sharp tug she lets out a sharp cry of pain. He backs off looking happy with himself before continuing to walk around her.

"So you can speak. Good, that's good. I was worried those idiot doctors had ripped out your vocal chords. That wouldn't do, now would it? As pretty as it would be to watch, we need you to be able to speak. After all we need you to tell your targets exactly who's responsible for their demise"

"Non" she says it so quickly that you could have easily missed it if it weren't for the dangerous edge to her voice. The man stops in his tracks, although you can't see his face clearly, it's obvious he's surprised.

"No? what do you mean no?"

"No, I will not do anything for you people" she sneers angrily, but instead of retreating the man gets right up in her face and stares her down.

"Listen to me. Your name is Widowmaker, you belong to Talon and you will do-"

"My name is Amelie Lacroix and my husband will be here to kill you any minute now!"

Anger flashes across his face and you watch in horror as he brings his fist back and smashes it into her face. You expect her to cry, to beg him to stop, but she just smirks which infuriates him more. She does it again and again, until blood is dripping from her incredibly broken nose and he's breathing hard. She grimaces as she looks up but the smirk is still plastered on her face.

"For every punch you give me, Gerard will give you twice as many back. When he comes for me, you're dead"

You expect the man to fly into another fury and do goodness knows what to her, but he just straightens up. To both you and Amelie's surprise, he starts to laugh. He's still sniggering when Amelie demands to know what's so funny,

"You poor naive girl, you think he's actually coming for you" You can see the confusion evident on her face before it turns into one of rage.

"What do you mean he's not coming. What have you done to him!?"

"It's Overwatch protocol for agents to not know about private affairs while they're on mission so they stay focussed on the task. Did you forget he was in Egypt and can't be contacted for another two weeks? Maybe the meds are working already"

"That's- that's not a rule, they can't do that….I-I can't remember if that's true!" The panic in her voice is truly unsettling and you find your heart sinking as the realisation washes over her that whatever they're trying to do to her is working.

"Excellent, looks like they are working indeed. We can proceed to stage two sooner than we thought"

"He'll come get me, I know he will. You can't trick me like this!" she's trying to sound so sure of herself but it's obvious she doesn't believe what she's saying. Her façade is gone now and she's no longer this strong woman they can't break. She's this scared little girl who's terrified of them and what they can do.

"Enough chit chat Widowmaker, it's time for a treatment" You can hear some sort of cart being wheeled in and judging by Amelie's reaction you know exactly what it is. Sure enough a cart of medical supplies is wheeled on camera and the man leaves her side to carefully examine the instruments he's been given. Her eyes widen and you see her mouth moving in a silent prayer as he picks up a scalpel and makes give way back over to her.

"Now, let's get into that pretty little head of yours now shall we?"

She shrieks in response, trying to move but her restraints won't let her "Non, no no no no no! stay away from me!"

The video ends on a blood curdling scream as the screen turns to black and the replay button appears. You just stare at it, your eyes wide and your breaths coming out as harshly and panicked as Amelie's were. You push the device away from you, forcing yourself to close your eyes and breathe. After a minute breathing becomes easier and you open your eyes. Your hands are shaking and you feel pretty shit, but you figure you'll live so it isn't that big a deal. Tentatively, you reach for the data pad and tab back to the information. There waiting for you are pictures of Amelie Lacroix smiling happily with her husband. If only she'd known back then that she would become the world's greatest assassin and slit her own husband's throat in his sleep.

There's not that much more to read after that apart from details on missions where Overwatch has encountered her. You remember most these occasions and find it quite…well quite strange to read about her being the bad guy and that you distracted her to save your team. That's never how it feels in the field, never how it felt to start with. When you first met her, you'd treated her as any other talon operative and tried to stick a pulse bomb on her. The moment she grappled away and threw a poison mine at you, you knew she was something different.

You remember trying to ask Angela when she was patching you up if she knew anything about Widow, but Angela had avoided your question completely and hadn't been able to look you in the eye for the rest of the day. Reading the report and seeing how Angela was the doctor to look over Amelie and give the go ahead that she was fine sure explains why she couldn't even look at you. You remember feeling just more intrigued about all then, you were determined to see Widow again and play with her a bit more.

There are several reports talking about how you two always fight but the way they're written make you sound like you're a hero for it all, but you're not. She's never tried to really kill you, she's come close a couple of times but that's just how your game goes now. You make it look good but you swear you've seen her smile during your game of cat and mouse.

You sigh tiredly, standing up and stretching before deciding a bit of fresh air is just what you need. You consider going to the kitchen to see Emily, but you can hear her singing along to the radio in there and don't want to disturb her while she's having fun. You know no matter what you say when you next talk to her, it's going to bring the mood right down.

The metal of the balcony railing is freezing against your hands but you don't really mind. The cool air feels heavenly against your slightly flushed skin. You find yourself leaning lazily on the railing as you look out into the distant lights of the city. You're a good few streets away from the main shops so you don't really get much noise from cars and people, and the lights aren't totally blinding like they are when you're in the city centre. You once lived in a shitty little flat right above a whole bunch of shops and chippies. The noise of cars passing by and the constant chatter of teenagers walking by about drove you mad. And that isn't even going into how no matter what curtains you bought your flat was constantly lit up by the dozens of signs flashing away into the early hours of the morning. There was a reason you worked the evening shifts back then, and surprisingly it wasn't so you could bring girls back to your place and have extra-long lies with them.

You're day dreaming absently, just staring out at the city when a quick flash on a nearby building catches your attention. You rub your eyes, thinking you're just tired or you've been reading way too much, but then you see it again. You stay completely still trying to figure out what it is. And when you do, Your heart hammers away in excitement, but your stomach also sinks. It's a scope being caught in the moonlight, moving in the way she always moves it to get your attention.

You would blink on over there to her if you were wearing your accelerator, but you're not. You think about just shrugging at her and going back inside but that just feels too casual and improper now. You know all these things about her that she probably doesn't even know herself. You desperately want to talk to her, not even to talk about what happened but to ask if she's okay. After all, it was only last week she asked you to kill her.

You stand your ground, giving her a slight nod, as you know for a fact she's watching you through her scope. At first nothing happens, you'd stupidly assumed she'd just come over here so you could have a chat. Yeah, not happening, of course not. It doesn't look like she's going to move at all, but then you see her slowly coming out of hiding. She's in her ridiculous bodysuit as she usually is but she looks almost shy now. When you two play your game of cat and mouse, she always has that teasing smirk or that occasional look of anger when you guess her next step and beat her to it. But now she looks unsure, not cocky or angry, unsure and almost a little afraid of what you're going to do. This is new, very new.

For a split second, you wonder if she knows that you've read her information. But you quickly dismiss that, because really, how would she know? She's probably just acting like this because for the first time in her life she isn't here on an order to kill anyone. That much is clear from the fact she's snooping around the rooftops by your apartment instead of waiting for the perfect kill somewhere.

She grapples a few buildings over so you can see her better, but stays where she lands so she isn't too close to you. You try to say her name to beckon her closer, but what comes out your mouth isn't her name at all "Amelie" you stop yourself before you can say anymore but even from this far away you can see the confusion on her face. Your mind flashes back to that video and how she had the same look when they told her Gerard wasn't coming to rescue her.

You both stare as each other for a few moments before she shakes her head and starts to back off into the shadows once again. You can't let her go, not now. "Wait, Widow-"

"-Lena? Where are you?" You don't turn around at the sound of Emily's voice, some part of your brain telling you quickly to go back inside so Widow doesn't see Emily. But that part of your brain fails to tell your body what to do apparently because you still keep your eyes on Widow even when you hear the balcony door behind you open.

"There you are, was wondering if you'd gone and- Lena, you alright?"

"Yeah, just needed some fresh air after all that reading" You say as you look towards Emily, giving her a small smile and hoping that will reassure her enough. She doesn't say anything, just carefully shuts the balcony door behind her and comes to stand beside you. Your eyes flicker to where Widowmaker was standing only moments ago, but she's gone now. You try not to stare and to not look too disappointed, but Emily doesn't miss a single thing when it comes to you.

"What's up?" she asks touching your arm while she gives you the most sincere look you've ever seen. It makes you smile, even with the gravity of the situation. Without a second thought, you wrap your arms around her and bury you're head in her neck.

"…Lena?"

"It's nothing. I just…God I love you Em"

Emily hums back contently, kissing your hair and rubbing your back soothingly. You swear you hear the sound of Widowmaker's grappling hook grappling away, but it might just be your imagination.