Heroes Never Die... For a Price!

Hey friends. You may have noticed I’ve been less active lately. Around the time I started up this blog I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree. Since then I’ve been planning a move. I’ve been pretty consistently stressed throughout this period and having been in school for so long has gotten me in a “must be productive” headspace where I keep turning things that should be fun (writing, reading, RPing) into chores because I’m not used to having time to relax. 

Add to this that I will be out of the country for over a week, starting next week, searching for places in the city I’ll be moving to. During this time, though I’ll have spotty internet access, I’ll probably be too busy or tired to have the muse for threads.

I also have some plans I want to enact for my tumblr RPing. So I’m putting my blogs on hiatus before my trip so that I can work on that, clear my head, make important progress on my move and then get back into RPing with the right headspace.

My plans are:

Revamp dejavavoom’s theme.

Plot out Gentleman!Tracer AU.

Update and reorganize my RP rules.

Revamp my tagging system.

Start using RPThreadTracker to track my threads.

Trim my following list.

Get my Widowmaker blog up and running.

Get smut sideblogs up for @mercyforthedevil & my WM blog.

Get a steadier queue presence, with more music and aesthetics posts on all my blogs.

As such I will be on hiatus/semi-hiatus from today (June 22nd) to July 10th. I may be active now and again, probably not for threads, as I tool around with my blogs. Feel free to reach me via IM, or at my personal @sleepytimegalpal. My intention is to keep most of my threads on this blog running. If I’m dropping a thread with you I will let you know. If you don’t want to wait two weeks for replies from me, I understand perfectly. But I need to do this for both my mental/emotional health and to ensure my move goes smoothly.

Don’t be strangers, though! I’m loving the OW RP community and can’t wait to be back and active here. You’re wonderful, and I’ll be back soon. Hopefully the hiatus will give me time to work on fanfics, and anything published will be reblogged here.

Lotsa love,

She picks up her glass and swishes the murky liquid around, lifting it to her nose to give it a sniff and immediately recoiling at the smell. “My, vhat an exotic bouquet,” she says dryly. She raises her glass. “Prost!” she says, knocking back the entire cup in a single gulp. It feels like swallowing battery acid.

She looks Jack right in his eyes (visor?), pure unbridled fury painting her face, and begins shouting at him. “How dare you? How dare you? Leaving me to zink you vere dead all zese years!” She paces back and forth, gesticulating with one hand and rooting around for her cigarettes with the other. “I may not alvays have agreed vith Overvatch’s methods, but I cared for you Jack! And I thought ze feeling vas mutual.”

[ @mercyforthedevil liked for a starter ]

“Hmmm…” Angela pleasantly exclaims as the rich scent of freshly brewed tea filled her lungs, the fragrance permeating her entire clinic. Chamomile laced with ginseng and an assortment of other herbs. It helped calm her nerves and relieve stress.

As she was about to serve herself some tea, a brilliant white light would envelop the room, momentarily blinding her. Before long, the light would disperse as quickly as it appeared and her vision would gradually return to her.

In the wake of the phantom light, situated in the centre of her office was a figure garbed in crimson. Instinctively, the good doctor rushed to their side, carefully turning them over and was greeted by a face she was all too familiar with - her own.

Herself...? A better version of herself perhaps; less worn around the edges, hair still its natural blonde, skin healthier. “Mein Gott,” she says, “Zis vas not vhat I expected from ze afterlife.” She leans tentatively on one elbow, and clutches her head. She can feel a the seeds of a throbbing headache budding in her skull. 

But Amélie is sloth-slow to emotions, including anger, even on her best days. For now, all that manifests is a mild sense of amusement and a slow canting down of her head, a raise of her tattooed arm, and a gentle flick against her lavender chest to swat away the cigarette ashes that have rudely left themselves there following the doctor’s disposal of her vice stick.

           [ “If I vere to stub out a cigarette on your skin, would you care?” ]

“You tell me, docteur,” she responds languidly, making sure all the ash is off her chest before she looks up, locks eyes with Angela by peering down from above the rim her sunglasses, which are slid slightly down her nose now. “You just did precisely that, after all. And you are trying much too hard to upset me– really, all that is getting insulted by any of this little outburst is your own intelligence.”

By now she’s strode over to the nearest street lamp, her mechanical legs (the feet of which seem to be fashioned into artful looking haute couture heels) whir-clicking a bit with each step, and has leaned herself up against it. Her gaze never leaves Angela, even as a confused and somewhat worried couple across the street starts to power-walk in the opposite direction following the doctor’s outburst.

“I am curious. If you think I am such a weapon who cannot, and who does not, feel… Would I not simply have killed you the second you stepped off that train? From what I have gathered, there are few people who would, at this point, miss you.” There’s nearly no emotion to Amélie’s voice, but she clearly gets the sense that every word carries infinitely more aural daggers with it (despite her relative deadpan) than the entirety of the fallen angel’s vitriol-soaked angry rant.

Angela sighs dejectedly and rolls her shoulders. What’s the use of struggling when one is already thoroughly trapped in a web? “Et c'est comme ça?” Angela repeats as a question. She chuckles, an edge of self-deprecation in the laugh. “Somehow I do not zhink so. Very vell, zhen, sit vith me?”

She seats herself on a bench beneath the street lamp, leaving ample space for the assassin to join her. “You vish to know from vhat, ja? Failure, I suppose... My mistakes. Grief. And zhe memories accompanying zhem.” Angela’s look becomes distant and she takes a slow drag of her cigarette. 

Part of her wants to say Having failed you, and having failed Gérard, but she’s not certain the other would have any sense of its gravity. And she wasn’t certain she wanted to admit that vulnerability if it wasn’t already known. The spider may have trapped her, but why offer up her throat? 

She breaks her silence and continues, “I cannot help but question vhat my time vith Overvatch amounted to. I became a doctor to help zhose in need. Instead I served an organization vhich vas, I believe, rightfully disbanded.” She sighs and crosses one leg over the other, ashing her cigarette on the bench’s edge. “Despite zhat, I made many friends zhere. Even vith my best efforts--or vhat I hope vere my best efforts--I could do nothing to save Jack or Gabriel. I saved Genji’s life, and in zhe process condemned him to life as a pariah.”

“You seem surprised, Angela.” The exchanged given name prompts her to do the same. Paris is not the sort of city that’s ever devoid of foot traffic, but this time late at night an hour or two before the sanitation workers clear up an entire day of pet waste definitely ranks as its low point. 

“… you know. It is four and a half hours from Zürich. And the only people who take the midnight train–” which is slightly erroneous since the train departs at 11:30 PM (and gets in at 4:00 AM)– “–are criminals, alcoholics, and the desperately poor. Strange. Those are not normally the sorts of people who come looking for poor little me.”

A finger nudges at the top of her glasses to slide them down the bridge of her nose a bit, in a motion that’s simultaneously practiced, elegant, and ladylike. Her free hand adjusts one of the spaghetti straps over her should to preemptively keep it from falling down as her eyes scan the doctor up and down, absorbing every single detail– and she is very good at absorbing details. What she sees is not the Overwatch agent she’d expected, but rather a woman who appears broken by time and experience, made rough around the edges and all around worse for the wear.

“I have to say,” as she holds up one finger, in that ‘please don’t speak until I’m finished’ sort of hold on gesture. “You are not what I expected. What I remember of you– of anything, really– is not much, but. I am certain it was not this. Never this.”

Angela is tired, upset, tipsy and her feet hurt like Hell. Being toyed with by a ghost from the past is hardly what she’s in the mood for. Though the other is clearly not dressed for combat, Angela can’t shake the feeling that this might be a trap. Her nostrils flare and she walks swiftly towards the other woman, reducing the distance between them to a couple meters.

Amélie is correct in her assumption, but they both already know that, so why answer? “Mein Gott, and you are, you insect? Last time I saw you vere distinctly less blue. If my circulation vas so bad, smoking vould be ze last of my concerns,” she says as she flicks the remainder of her cigarette at the assassin. It bounces off the woman’s chest and sprinkles ash on her bust. 

“Do you even feel, Amélie? Or is it Vidowmaker? If I vere to stub out a cigarette on your skin, vould you care?” she advances further as she speaks, approaching until she’s in the other woman’s face. “I see Talon took your legs, and an arm. Your memories as vell, it seems, and your heart no doubt. Vhat are you but a veapon,” she hisses, her face inches from Amélie’s. 

She turns and huffs. Her body quivers with barely contained anger. “If you vish to kill me, nur zu!” she says without looking at her interlocutor. “If you’re just here to taunt me, vell, Talon’s priorities have become petty, and regardless I’d suggest you look in a mirror.” She scoffs and removes a fresh cigarette from her purse. “Othervise, leave me be.” She lights the cigarette up.

Her bile vented, Angela feels a pang of guilt. Amélie had been, perhaps, her closest friend, and it was her failure that lead to Gérard’s murder and Amélie’s transformation. Looking at her, at Widowmaker, hurts. To see such a lovely woman reduced to a mere shade of her former self turns Angela’s stomach; it is far too much like seeing her reflection. At least Amélie, as a victim, has an excuse.