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The sun sank into the waters surrounding the château, giving way to the evening. Orange and gold tones bled against the rock outcropping where the manor sat, nexus to the now barren neighborhood on the edge of the lake and crown jewel of the region. It was a structure of interesting design, evolved to suit every new owner’s tastes. Smooth grey walls held against the wind, cracked but firm. Tall, blue windows drew the light into dust settled on the wooden floors. Broad arches reached towards the sky and stood guard around a statue of a woman, captured by the sculptor in her youth but made porous and coarse with time. Capped in blue roofs, freshly painted, and orange flags, newly raised, it was half fort and half home, undecided in its purpose. It held more cleaning supplies than furniture. In so many rooms there were only three pallets to speak of, one of which saw little use. Sounds echoed strangely in open spaces, catching on invisible barriers– a creaking floorboard not yet repaired, the growling of the pipes, the manor settling on its foundation. Jagged ruins of a bridge connecting the iron gates and the mainland flourished as home to fish and seaweed at the bottom of the lake, effectively cutting off the house and its inhabitants from the outside world.
Widowmaker stood three stories higher than that underwater paradise, in the space where the balcony outside her bedroom had lost part of its baluster. Her room had undergone the most meticulous repairs, but it was more than she could fix in a day. The haunted castle schtick, while suitable for her aesthetic and thus far liveable, had raised concerns from her companions about… Safety. In some regards, she agreed. It was sorely lacking in real comfort. She expected a delivery by the end of the week: a king-size bed and triple-digit thread count covers shipping in from the capital. All in coral blue, a shade she had endeared herself to.
Talon did not buy her services. She was a weapon, an asset they had already paid for with her conditioning. The manor and the money to rebuild it were products of her own acquisition. Talon seized the spoils of her assassinations, but as the first on the scene and an official agent, no one would question if she took a cut. A paycheck too, if she wanted it, but stealing from a fresh kill prolonged the adrenaline high.
She raised her wine glass, a sheer and fur sleeve slid down to her bicep. Her nightgown cut deep and wide beneath her collar, tapering into a half untied belt and spilling onto the tile in artful black folds. It served no purpose outside its good looks, fluttering to the whims of every breeze. The fabric was thin as cotton candy and the fur spread out sparsely on the lining at her feet, arms, and neckline. Useless in France’s winter, if only she could feel it. Her investment in the weather went only as far as it affected the wine in her hand and the open bottle on the coffee table.
The door creaked open and slippers dragged noisily across the floor. Widow turned to the excessively loud sound of Sombra's stretch and yawn. The other woman made her way drowsily towards her. She scratched her shoulder beneath the strap of her tank top and over the violet lines scored into her skin. The acrylic nail on her ring finger had fallen off sometime last week and they'd lacked opportunities to replace it or the chipping paint of the rest. Her sweatpants hung low on her hips, mustard or biotic energy stained the frayed bottoms. The wings of a butterfly pin glinted at the base of her neck where she had pulled her hair away from her eyes. A hint of liner she had missed while wiping off her makeup stained her temple. Widow raised her hand to rub her thumb over the dark mark. Sombra caught it in her grasp and turned it towards her lips to kiss her knuckles.
She took the glass from her hand and set it down on the banister, tugged her away from the edge, and wrapped her arms around her waist.
“I got Moira to sleep.” Sombra said.
“How did you manage that?”
Moira hadn't come away from the corner she had claimed as her lab long enough to help them re-tile the bathrooms on the second floor. She was, conveniently enough, too busy for manual work that didn't involve sticking needles and tubes into breathing things. Sombra had called her out on her litany of excuses and rain checks as she came up for dinner for the first time in ages, but Widow suspected it wasn't them or their work that kept her occupied. Moira was up to something. She had devised a strange, revitalizing concoction of yellow and violet that kept her awake and alert but did nothing to hide the dark puffiness under her eyes.
Sombra touched her index and middle finger to the hollow of her throat and pulled the trigger with her thumb.
“Last of the sleep darts.” She grimaced and stroked over Widow’s hips soothingly when her eyebrows climbed a fraction higher on her forehead. “I put the shipping order in yesterday, the ingredients for another batch will get here by morning on one of my drones. Moira will be up and about, well rested, and she'll make us more. I was thinking ahead.”
Widow nodded with a single incline of her head, the tense line holding up Sombra’s shoulders bent and relaxed. As if she didn't know the woman that wrapped her up in her arms. Sombra had practical excuses for her softness, but it did not change the nature of her actions. She had been watching Moira since their last field mission, as had Widow, and noticed the only aim of her experiments since was to keep her up late into the night. Moira could not sleep, or rather she did not want to sleep.
“She will be angry you shot her.” She mused out loud.
“No, I--” Sombra tucked her mouth to one side sheepishly. “I got her to take it willingly.”
She would have sat her down on the bed she kept by the pop-up lab, set her head back and injected the dart straight into her jugular. Moira would have dropped instantly, onto the pillow Sombra set precisely where it would stop her from braining herself on the headboard. Easy to picture. The lead-up to that moment was of greater significance.
“You promised her she would not dream.” She guessed.
Sombra bounced on the heels of her feet, she found something interesting on Widow’s sternum and pet her fingers over the space between her breasts. A distraction for herself, and an appeal to Widow’s goodwill. She did not want to be pressed on this. They could talk about Moira some other time. Widow’s silence was enough of a compromise for Sombra to understand.
“Who needs the darts, anyway?” She purred. She carved her hand into the small of Widow’s back and brought their bodies together, nightgown against t-shirt. The words Sass Loading scrawled across Sombra’s shirt angled into amusing folds. She had funny ideas about what constituted as seductive. “I got a few tricks up my sleeve that will tire you out.”
Her brazen disposition was hemmed in unspoken apologies. A clever wink of her eye masked self-reproach. Widowmaker did not sleep. She did not need to. Neither did she need to eat nor drink, but indulged lavishly on both. Unlike with food and wine she could not will herself to close her eyes and slip away for hours at a time. Sleep was a commodity stolen directly from under Ana’s nose after its surprise discovery. Sombra kept her well stocked in darts but stopped short of teaching her how to synthesize them. Information is power, she explained conspiratorially.
It worked out for them. Widow wouldn't be forced to watch her sleep, and wouldn't wake her by wandering the halls aimlessly. She enjoyed it, but it would not kill her to go without for one night. Sombra was turning herself into knots needlessly. She worried and overacted her aloofness. Nothing missed the sniper’s piercing stare, no amount of firewalls could hide Sombra’s sweet-tempered core from her.
She brought them to a kiss. Her hands cupped Sombra’s jaw, tilted her to the most comfortable angle. She darted her tongue past her smooth lips, cherry chapstick mixed with the bitterness of the dark chocolate squares Sombra snacked on after dinner. She walked her back into the bedroom, away from the cold wind raising goosebumps on her dark skin. Sombra’s upturned nose crinkled when she smiled.
“Great minds think alike, mi cielo.” She toed off her slippers and rose up to bite Widow’s mouth, rolling her lower lip between her teeth. Their tongues danced the quick, practiced glide of long-time lovers. Sombra stood on her toes periodically, seizing every chance to guide the kiss. Charming as it was to watch her grapple across the height difference between them, Widow had other plans. Plans which required them both to be entirely horizontal. She picked the butterfly free of her hair, it clinked as it fell on the nightstand.
Sombra fell back on the bed without resistance, the other woman’s breath already hotter and heavier than her own eternally even. She glanced once towards the open balcony doors, mindful of the cold she couldn't feel. Sombra resented that lapse, a mere blip where Widow’s attention was not entirely on her. She whined, dragged Widow’s slim hands upward under her shirt, to her breasts and over her hammering heart. Her nipples peaked into points. Widow wondered, not for the first time, why the biting temperature of her own skin didn't bother her more. On the contrary, she arched into her hands as if it were the very first time. She craved her touch.
One flick and the belt around her robe lay discarded on the floor. She shrugged off the rest of her outfit, undressing down to her stockings. Sombra dragged her fingertips over the fabric, drawing a warning sound out of Widow’s throat. Her nails would catch and tear something, they had been over this before. They were expensive and currently in fashion, the only two things that mattered about any given part of her outfit. She retaliated by pulling Sombra's shirt over her head forcefully, exactly as the other woman wanted. It was worth it to see the mess of brown hair fading into purple caught messily over her grinning face. Her laugh was like the music box she had kept under her bed as a child, her very own secret to pull out and be absorbed by. Widow stroked her hair back, gave her a kiss that begun on her mouth and followed a trail down her naked chest.
The blood-warm curve of her belly shivered and sunk, shying from the ticklish licks of Widow’s tongue. Sombra stopped her as she reached the waistband of her sweatpants. She covered her hands and stroked them with her thumb.
“Let me set up the translocator?” She asked hopefully.
Widow dipped her tongue into her navel while she thought. She ignored the big, purple eyes blinking out pretend innocence like morse code. Sombra always heightened the appeal of the translocator with promises she would be on her best behavior on their next mission. She was under the impression Widow needed convincing. She didn’t mind it. She was not drunk, she was not angry, even conjuring up the low, beeping sound of the translocator in her mind did not spark any distaste for Sombra’s plan. She pat her stomach obligingly.
“Very well.”
Sombra sprung up in her delight. She rose to her elbows, flipped over and pulled open every cabinet on their nightstand before finding her kit tucked away in the last. She tossed the fat bulb of her translocator on a pile of laundry Widow had left folded in a corner. It spread on impact, declared itself active. An imperfect spot, but when the rest of the furniture arrived they could find a better place for it.
The purpose of the translocator was simple: Sombra needed more control than a safeword could provide. In the event Widow could not respond fast enough to Odysseus, Sombra would always have a way to disengage and put some distance between them. It wasn't as though they did anything kinky or dangerous. Sombra insisted. They’d never needed it, but the comfort was there. Widow suspected Sombra feared for her. In a moment of weakness her conditioning had failed her and something akin to tears escaped her in a moment of passion. It was silly to think it could happen a second time.
Sombra sank back into the space beneath her and brushed their noses together. Widow tangled her sweatpants and panties between her fingers before jerking them both down past her thighs. They joined her robe on the ground. She worked her way up in chaste kisses until Sombra’s toned thighs flexed beneath her lips. She could taste her already, drinking her in from a memory. She was in no hurry to bury her face between her legs when she had the quivering muscles of her legs to lavish attention on. She was not playing with her food, but rather ensnaring her, wrapping her in a web of anticipation. In nearly all things Sombra was slow and methodical, double and triple checking her work for mistakes before eradicating them, but she was excitable and impatient in bed, quickest to groan in frustration and cross her ankles over the tattoo on Widow’s back before telling her to get on with it.
Impatient and greedy, her desires fought for the opportunity to bubble up towards the surface. She struggled to be the center of attention and humored Widow’s oral fixation only half because it made her toes curl until they cracked. She wanted Widow’s mouth on her, her fingers inside her, but not at the cost of missing her kisses and the slick slide of their bodies locked together in a most intimate embrace. Her fixation was on reaching a plateau of pleasure they could share in equal parts. It was ridiculous, endearing, and entirely unnecessary, Widow felt every one of her moans like a lightning bolt coiling around her spine or the kickback on her rifle. After an arbitrary amount of time eating her out, Widow was tugged by her hair up to Sombra’s mouth with her lover’s tongue seeking out the taste of her.
Sombra’s nails dug into the meat of her ass. Usually, Widow would let her take the reins to suit her short, desperate thrusts, and focused on kissing her breathless, but Sombra’s request for the translocator set her in a different direction. She kept her fingers firmly pumping inside her instead and curved them into the spot that made Sombra squeal.
“Olivia.”
Her name fit like a key into its lock. It had the intended effect in opening her up to reach that elusive inch deeper. Sombra’s breath hitched like she'd been struck. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She wet Widow’s hand down to her wrist and clenched tight as a vice around her fingers. So much power in a name, and so pretty the way Sombra bared herself to her bones when Widow wielded her’s.
The past washed over her like the waves on the château. In an uncharacteristic strike of fondness, Widow had once offered her Amélie’s name. Sombra had turned on her chair and pulled her between her legs. She had pressed her cheek to Widow’s belly and asked Do you want me to call you that?. Widow did not--could not--respond. She followed the jagged lines of Gothic letters on her forearm Could Amélie survive this?
Amélie could have truly loved her as she deserved. She would have taken everything she made her feel as proof of a bond greater than life, instead of the neurochemical remains of a past life still trapped inside a more perfect body. Olivia would be a story plucked out of the pages of her lovingly hand-restored first editions of fairytale anthologies.
But Amélie could not survive the bits of her life that weren't lit in the violet glow of Sombra’s body mods.
Only Widowmaker could.
Sombra smiled because she understood. Mi cielo, she said instead, and that was just as good.
In the present, Sombra cupped Widow’s smaller breasts in her hands. Violet lines grew like veins on her arms and took root in her blue skin. They found the nanites in her body, the little robots that kept her breath at a slow, unwavering pace. The whites of Sombra’s eyes were black as she read her vitals. She found what she was looking for, a smile flourished across her pretty face. She would later explain, in excruciating detail, that Widow’s heart beat a little faster than its resting rate moments before Sombra came on her hand. She thought this to be a sign of progress. Progress to what? That, she would not say.
Widow could not tell her that her heart had skipped a most dangerous beat the first time she’d laid eyes on her, and then every time she smiled directly at her. The moment of the kill, the theft following it-- nothing could compare to the way she electrified her skin when she clung to Widow in her sleep after a bad dream furrowed her brow. It was dangerous to think about it, much less to say it out loud.
In terms her trésor would best understand: Olivia was a glitch in her system and the people in charge of Widow’s code would be too quick to correct her.
“Mi cielo.” Olivia sighed, and Widow silenced her with a kiss.