The Queen's Toaster, Chapter 2: The Bird Wives
What do you know, this does have a chapter two!
Amélie Lacroix used to be the Widowmaker. She's not, anymore. Talon is gone, and the threat is over. But few if any governments are really willing to forgive a known terrorist with dozens - no, hundreds - of kills under her belt, so coming in from the cold wasn't really an option.
But one has to make a living somehow. A lot of the same skills used to infiltrate for assassination work just as well for other kinds of infiltration, and Amélie always did have an eye for spotting value in art.
[ao3 link]
The Queen's Toaster
Chapter 2: The Bird Wives
The dark-haried woman took off her Raptora helmet, and shook her head, short hair immediately spiking up, as it always did.
Flying in this is so different, she thought, to flying a jet.
She looked down at the armoured helmet with its beak-like visor and grinned at herself. It may not be the same as a jet, but flying in it brought her even more of a rush, with so little between her and the wind, and the clouds - and the anti-aircraft fire, too.
Grabbing a cleaning kit and a towel, she wiped the helmet clean, dried it, and ran the towel through her own hair for good measure.
That won't do, I need a shower! she thought. But it'll wait 'til I get home.
The base showers didn't bother with hot water. Lukewarm from the ground was good enough, unless she had the option of better, and she did.
She'd just about finished flight training, at long last. Since the end of Talon had meant a second end for Overwatch - at least, for a while - she'd had to do something with her life. And sure, Helix might not be the same, but having regular income again helped make up for it.
That, and the other benefits.
I wonder if these come in orange?
She popped the helmet into her locker, and started dismantling the rest of her armour, pulling it off piece by piece, for storage and overnight checkout before next flight.
"Oh, please - take your time," she heard from the disarmament station behind her. "It's far too nice a job to rush."
Lena spun 'round, surprised, and jinked forward, past two benches. "You're back! Already?!"
Angela grinned, and kissed her younger wife's forehead as she leapt into her arms. "Yes!"
Lena wasn't settling for that, not under any circumstances, and hopped up on her toes, to give her elder wife a proper kiss. "Fuck, I've missed you. Where's Reeha?"
"Talking with your instructor. She'll be here any moment now."
Lena pulled Angela against her, holding her tightly. "Fuck, I've missed you."
"I've missed you too, Lena. We both have."
The Englishwoman leaned back, smiling broadly, hands on her wife's hips. "How was the conference? How's Winston? How's eep!"
"Come here, tiny wife!" Fareeha said, hauling Lena bodily up into the air as Lena shrieked, giggling, teleporting just to turn in place, not wanting out of her younger wife's arms, but definitely wanting to see her face to face.
"Reeha!"
The two women kissed, as Angela smiled at the sight.
"Your instructor had good things to say - except for your tendency to teleport your way out of trouble."
"And why shouldn't I? 'Use every tool at your disposal,' first rule of combat, you know that." She grinned.
Fareeha licked Lena's nose. "'Don't get into trouble in the first place' is the real first rule of combat, and you know that."
"Yeh, yeh..." She sighed, and put her head down on Reeha's shoulder. "Fuck me, I've missed you so much."
"I will! But not on base."
Lena bit at Fareeha's neck, and Ree snorted, dropping Lena to the ground. "Finish getting undressed first. And shower here. We're taking you out to dinner before going home."
"Oh, are we? I thought we were gonna get some overdue R&R?"
"You have to finish flight training, Captain," Fareeha replied. "But consider this a downpayment. Undress and shower, and be ready to go in five minutes. That's an order."
"Aye-aye, Colonel." Captain Oxton saluted her wife in the most sarcastic way she knew how, and hopped to.
They'd gone straight from their all-too-short honeymoon to a deployment to two separate conferences and training, so there was no way in hell she was going to be late for this.
-----
"She get there?" read the purple text.
"Oh yeah, she got there," Emily typed in reply, in orange text, sitting at her desk in her small office.
Amélie sat out in the living room, on a couch, communicating with her buyer, confirming acquisition and arranging alternate delivery for the package.
"Right where you said she'd be, too. _And_ about to set off an alarm."
"Thanks for picking her up for me," came the purple hacker's reply. "It's not my story to tell, but"
Emily interrupted, the shared cursor turning orange as she typed. "You saying that is hilarious, you do realise, yeh?"
The cursor blinked for a moment, before turning back to purple.
"Yes. It is. I know. But seriously, she's been through a lot. And she was totally going to get busted sooner or later, and I knew it, even if I didn't know how or where All her infiltration training is based around range work. Close up, she has some, but not as much. But she had to deliver on this job, and... well... I had to make sure it happened."
"I know, I know. What's a favour for a friend? Besides, she's _smokin'_ hot. Totally worth it."
"I told you!"
"You told me, but you didn't _tell_ me, luv. Oh god, it's all I can do to keep my hands off her. But then I'd 'find out' about her too early, and... if she's she who I think she is..."
"I didn't tell you," insisted purple.
"You really didn't," assured orange. "But I'm pretty sure I know."
"Then... in that case..."
"Yeh."
Emily shook out her hands. C'mon, girl. Keep it in your trousers. If I'm right, she's one very hot property.
She looked over at the apparently-black-haired woman whose artificial skin colourant wasn't quite enough to keep a blue tinge entirely at bay in the cloudy daylight.
This is going to be tricky enough as it is. You've laid the table, now just let her decide whether she wants to bite.
"Still - if what you actually will tell me is true," she started typing, in orange.
"It is," purple text interrupted.
"...then hey, maybe you won't owe me one. Maybe I'll owe _you_."
"Now _that_," a glowing purple sugar skull replied, "is what I like to hear."
-----
The newlyweds smiled at each other, leaning back in their chairs, relaxing as the dinner plates were cleared, the dessert course ordered but not yet at the table, the three of them sipping tea, qahwah arabiyya, and abricotine, according to their tastes.
Lena wasn't sure exactly when she'd developed her fondness for abricotine, but she was pretty sure it had something to do with joint testimony to the UN in Geneva - or, much more specifically, when she'd had to share quarters with Fareeha and Angela the whole week. Athena had apologised, calling it an 'accidental oversight,' but at least the one bed was a full king. Hana never let any of them hear the end of it, all while stridently denying being the RPF shipper whose name translated from the Korean meant SoManyBunnies.
Despite what everyone at Gibraltar assumed, they didn't start being "a thing" there - but they had become surprisingly comfortable with each other, very quickly. The actual "thing" would start not long afterwards, the three of them hunkered down in the desert, Fareeha wounded but not in any real danger, waiting for extraction after a successful but extremely difficult mission in the Sudan.
They'd a critical hidden Talon information relay and communications centre deep in the Nubian Desert, on desperately-useful information provided by the Widowmaker herself. At first, all three of them thought of that night as a one-off - the stress of battle will do that, after all - but then there was a dinner, and they found they had so much to talk about, then another dinner, and then an after dinner, and...
Well.
Lena's phone buzzed, and she pulled it from her pocket, hoping it wasn't a callback for mission. Talon may be gone, but Helix's work was never done, not with Vishkar out there, and tensions still high between omnics and humanity, and O'Deorain still on the loose, and more.
But instead, purple text reported Package delivered, and the teleporter smiled, before looking up to her curious wives.
"Is it...?" Fareeha asked, hopefully, as Angela looked to Lena, expectantly.
"She's home," Lena replied, relief in her voice.
"Oh good," Angela said, letting go of a little bit of tension she hadn't been fully aware she carried. "I hope this works out. She's been through so much."
"Yeh," Lena agreed, while replying, "Brilliant. Thank you ❤," and putting her phone away. "She really has."
"So have we," Fareeha noted, having mostly forgiven, but entirely not forgot.
"Yes," Angela said, reaching out and holding her taller wife's hand. "Too much."
"It's in the past," Fareeha insisted, squeezing Angela's hand.
"Not for all of us," Lena replied, as dessert arrived. "Particularly not for her."
"No," Fareeha agreed, after a moment. "I suppose not."
"Still, though," Angela said, "she's in... well. I'm not going to say good hands..."
Fareeha chuckled. "No."
"But," Angela continued, "given everything, probably the best available."
"Give 'er more credit than that, love," Lena said, putting aside her apricot eau-de-vie before picking up a piece of the feteer meshaltet, and dipping it into the lovely black honey served on the side. "It's probably the best chance she'll get."
"For your sake," Fareeha smiled, affectionately, choosing the white honey and cream, as Angela chose, in turn, the soft cheese, "...I'll hope you're right."
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