It's a dark night, a chill one. Lacroix stands beside the window and watches the snow fall. Pushed ajar, a flake or two happens to find its way into the gap, settling on her cheek whereupon it leaves a trail of melt-water on her skin. The woman barely feels it; she is too cold. Part of her yearns to be warm again.
Three years have passed since that day. She remembers it well. It's always there, sleeping or awake, and unlike Talon she can't escape it. But even then his shadow continues to haunt her, and so does the ghost. Lacroix will never forget the ghost.
Both women look down at it, and then they look up at each other. Lacroix is intrigued. All humour has left the young woman's face, her laughter, smirks, grins; gone. There is no light in her large brown eyes, nor a cocky quirk to her pale lips. Instead, for the briefest moment, Tracer - Lena - is afraid. Lacroix blinks and almost misses it, because afterwards, the woman is smiling.
"Oops. Look's like you got me."
Tracer's harness scrapes down the wall as her legs give way. Her hand wrapped stiffly around the hilt of the knife, Lacroix follows her down to the floor. The blade sank right to the hilt, devoured by the core of a once functional chronal accelerator. But now it's flickering, whining, and even as Lacroix watches the entire harness begins to rattle around Tracer's body.
"Bugger," the woman sighs, "you really did a number on it."
Lacroix is about to demand an explanation, but then the chronal accelerator simply comes apart right before her eyes.
The core folds in on itself with a terrible, wounded groan and she snatches her hand away from the combat knife. Tracer shudders as her harness is eaten away, visibly disintegrating into neon-tinted ash. In moments she's free of it, naked, for all intents and purposes. Exposed. Then, barely a second later, she begins to flicker. Lacroix jerks backwards, gaze flitting over the woman. Tracer grins as her body momentarily fades away once more. Something, however, is not right about the curve of her mouth.
"Didn't you know?" she asks. "Can't control it without the harness."
Except when she speaks, Tracer is in two places at once, and her voice is an echo of an echo. And when she lifts a hand to her head, the woman flickers simultaneously between three different points in the office.
"Ow," she groans, "gives me a crackin' headache, too."
Lacroix moves, winding her fingers into Tracer's thick bomber jacket. "You sabotaged my mission. Talon will kill me."
"Bollocks," the woman wheezes. "Too valuable."
Lacroix shakes her. "He will punish me. He will torture me."
"Then don't go back, ya' daft bird!"
She is about to reply when Tracer sharply inhales. Her eyes bulge and her chest thrusts out and Lacroix glimpses pain cross her face before she abruptly vanishes.
It takes her a while to reappear, lying curled up on her side in the middle of the room. She's becoming more intangible by the second, melting away. Lacroix pounces on her in a heartbeat. Tracer's laboured moan is choked away by a hand around her throat. Lacroix leans over her as the young woman splutters, eyes lethal and narrow. "Why?" she demands. "Why are you always chasing me?"
"Does it mat -"
"I don't kn -"
"Orders are orders -"
Tracer takes a deep breath and tries to hold together her quickly fading form. She offers Lacroix her last grin. She sees the melancholy weight in her eyes.
"Guess I'm just stuck on you, pet."
Even when she disappears altogether, crumbling into motes of light with a quiet gasp, Lacroix does not quite understand. She remains puzzled by the young woman's words, at least until she hears something beeping at an even, consistent pace. Lacroix casts her gaze carefully around the room before realising where exactly the sound is coming from. Eyes flare wide. Her hand flashes around, snatches Tracer's parting gift off of her backside and tosses it out the shattered window.
As the heat of the plasma bomb's explosion washes over her, Lacroix is certain that she hears laughter.