It has been two weeks since she's been in Russia, and still Widowmaker can feel damnably soft lips dancing over hers. She tastes vanilla lip balm, earl grey tea, and warmth, somehow. There is the ghost of a lithe frame clinging desperately to her own, small hands scrabbling for any purchase over her stonily cold body. At the least convenient of moments, she can hear that insufferable giggle bubble up from absolutely nowhere, and though she knows it's all in her head, she still whirls to confront the source.
At this point, Widowmaker's most effective way to confront Lena is to send a bullet between her own eyes.
The assassin frowns. Tracer, she thinks to herself. Not Lena, Tracer.
She has to admit to herself, she is still shocked at the memories stirred by seeing the name of a long-dead woman in Tracer's hilariously poor and illegible scrawl. Widowmaker knows by now that Amélie Lacroix was once the name she went by, before being conscripted by Talon. But she is no longer that woman, and comfortably so. She has to imagine that Tracer believed seeing the name would somehow… reverse Talon's conditioning.
That, of course, is entirely impossible.
However, Widowmaker is not certain that her memory can be suppressed forever. Otherwise, how would seeing her former name stir the knowledge of Tracer's real name?
She tucks her chin, taking a contemplative sip of blisteringly hot coffee. Black.
They knew each other, before. That much is certain. And she had no control over her own reaction to Tracer's presence, now two weeks past.
It seems as if they once knew each other, indeed.
Widowmaker has seen hide nor hair of the Overwatch operative since their rooftop rendezvous, and it has given her time for perspective. For cooling. For analysis. Because she no longer trusts her own mind when she is around that woman. A dangerous thing, for someone like her. She was designed to keep a nearly corpse-like calm in all situations. Emotionally barren and physically unresponsive. Tracer tweaked at it, though. Toyed with her, yet remained almost embarrassingly earnest in their every interaction.
It has taken her weeks to come to terms with it, but Widowmaker felt something very new upon remembering the name Lena Oxton. It was almost too brief for her to put a name to. The closest approximate feeling would be that of when she only barely misses her target. A desire to go back, shoot again, do it right.
Longing? Wistfulness?
She grits her teeth, long fingers tightening around the coffee cup. Normally, the heat of the ceramic mug would have been too much for her to handle against her unnaturally frigid skin. Now, she finds the discomfort somewhat grounding. At least this is present. Tangible.
She glances at the note on the white marble slab that constitutes her kitchen island. The only item resting upon it, aside from a solitary black placemat, is the note. She has only looked at it once. Once was enough. Since then, it has remained dutifully folded.
She leans back against her kitchen counter. Her apartment, an obscenely large and open loft space, is grey in the hazy-pre dawn. Everything is comprised of sharp angles, geometric certainty. To any civilian, the loft may seem too cold, too austere. For Widowmaker, it makes sense. Everything black, white, grey. Crisp and orderly. It is clean, and it is her.
There are times, though, where she finds her mind drifting idly far, far away from the even planes and cool serenity of her apartment. To somewhere decidedly very different.
She has spent enough time in Ilios, throughout her travels, to recognize the hallmark white limestone and heavy tang of salty sea breeze that manifests in her memory. There is squat, heavy-looking wooden furniture; a dresser sequestered to one corner of the small bedroom she finds herself transported to, and two rickety chairs flanking a large window, shutters and panes cast open. The room itself is a mess, and it makes her squirm to consider that at one point, she would have allowed such squalor. Every flat surface is a collection point for various forms of detritus. Wine bottles, some empty, some practically so. Scattered articles of clothing, wrappers, haphazard stacks of books and wrinkled papers.
She remembers the coarse linen sheets tangling around her legs on a hot afternoon. A sticky sheen of sweat clinging to her bare body. She stretches and feels ghostly coils of pleasure rattle up her spine with each satisfying pop.
Widowmaker gnaws her lower lip, wildly offset (as usual) by the sense of contentment the memory brings her. Despite herself, she allows it to consume her. It is the only memory of before that she can summon and yet, it is so vivid. She can really feel the waning sun play ghostly frames of warmth across her chest and cheeks. She can feel threadbare fabric against the calloused flats of her feet. She can smell the ocean, the yeasty scent of a bakery across the street, strong coffee beginning to brew down the hall.
She can hear a voice, as if she were still there, years ago. A cockney chirp so desperately out of place in the Grecian inn, drawing nearer. In her memory, she recalls the feeling of her heart pumping quicker. Not out of fear. It is odd, Widowmaker muses, that such a feeling can become lost in translation.
She remembers the thump of bare feet approaching the room, a door swinging open. The smell of coffee is stronger, now.
Lena.
Widowmaker wants to correct herself, but she knows who this is. This apparition is not Tracer. With her chestnut hair ruffled, wrinkled white t-shirt, loose baby blue cotton shorts, free of any indication of her chronal accelerator save for a faint blue glow at the center of her chest. Easy smile yielding rows of white teeth, dark eyes cast almost orange in the bleeding sunset.
No, this is the woman Amélie Lacroix knew as Lena Oxton. Twenty-three years old, born and bred in King's Row. Former pilot turned savior of humankind. Insufferable and charming. Drinks coffee and tea with atrocious quantities of milk and sugar. Talks in her sleep. A friend, a protector.
Her lover.
It explains why Widowmaker knows the exact constellation of freckles sprayed over her sunburnt cheeks. Knowledge she carries in her back pocket to this day. Explains why they both buckled so easily into one another on that snowy rooftop.
Widowmaker cannot feel love; not in any firsthand sense of the word, at least. However, with the spectral sensations of memory engulfing her so thoroughly, she feels as though she is close to understanding it.
She wonders what Tracer hopes to gain, leaving these breadcrumbs so persistently. What she could possibly stand to gain, fighting to eke emotion out of a woman who can't ever love her again? Widowmaker traces a fingertip idly around the rim of her coffee cup. Her drink has gone far too cold to be enjoyed, at this point. She sighs, setting the ceramic mug down on the marble counter with a soft clink.
She doesn't think she can love again, at least. Talon had never thought to run diagnostics on any cognitive responses having to do with affection. Which makes sense. Strip emotion, and love will have no purchase to grow upon. Yet here she stands, in her grayscale kitchen, pondering what a splash of orange might do for the place.
For sanity's sake, she really should have thrown herself at Talon's feet by now. Beg and plead and grovel to be reconditioned. Truly, this affliction is nothing a little tune-up can't fix. If anything, she is certain that her employers would reward her duly for turning herself over before anything could go truly awry.
Widowmaker folds her arms. She glances at the note that still sits on the island. Even though the notebook paper blends innocuously enough against the white marble slab, its contents are far more conspicuous to her to avoid any longer. She takes a breath to steel herself and begins to slowly unfurl the white ruled paper. Her motions are deliberate and composed, but her throat tightens microscopically as she flattens out the creases.
Her eyes flick over the page, but at this point it's a formality. The predictably hasty scrawl has danced behind her eyelids for weeks now. She ghosts the pads of her fingers over the paper, memorizing the dips and valleys where a pen had pressed too hard.
A name. Her name. Was her name. Amélie Lacroix.
Beneath it, though, coordinates. Coordinates she had been pointedly avoiding looking up, yet somehow had an inkling of where they would lead her.
45.8992° N, 6.1294° E
I'll see you there when I see you there, luv.
Widowmaker folds the note back up. She slides it into the back pocket of her dark jeans and strides toward her front door, picking up an already-packed black duffel on the way out.
She's known that she would cave, eventually. All this time. They both have.