Widowmaker wonders, not for the first time, why she still has to blink.

She was molded in the image of perfection, as far as assassins are concerned. Talon had spared no expense, so she's been told (reminded) times beyond counting. Kept soothingly void of emotion and memory by a regularly scheduled chemical cocktail, outfitted with painstakingly crafted gear and augmentation. They'd even managed to find a way to slow her heart rate without killing her outright, all for the maintenance of their most prized asset.

They'd created a living human with the emotional range and brutal efficiency of the world's most lethal spiders. Yet her eyes still dry out after being open for too long.

It irritates her, as much as she's capable of feeling such a thing. A spider has no need to blink, and a sniper hasn't the time to. A momentary lapse in visual contact is counter-intuitive to the very nature of her job. This would be the case even if her quarry moved at the most natural of human gaits. And hers, most decidedly, does not.

Widowmaker's jaw tightens in tandem with her trigger finger at the trademark hum that signals her arrival. She hadn't known that time itself could make a sound, though she doesn't suppose there has been much research into the subject given that there is only one person on earth who could snap it like it were a dry twig. She scans the alley from her rooftop perch, but when Tracer pops back into time and space, the sniper finds that her aim is off by a more than generous degree. By the time she corrects her position, there is a flash of light and an empty alley greeting her sights. Not the slightest suggestion of chestnut hair or a trademark smarmy giggle.

She sighs and disengages her infrared goggles, swiping the back of her hand over a stinging eye. Talon supplied her with enough intel on Tracer's intended destination and the most likely route she'd take. She didn't typically need an entire route; just a single point of contact would do for her. One location, one target. One bullet. Yet her current target is capable of hurtling through the fabric of time itself. She could manipulate her way through it in such a way that the question isn't simply where she is at any point, it's also when.

Widowmaker's teeth click as she flicks the legs of the tripod from under her rifle. She'll move north over London's rooftops, follow Talon's tentative intelligence, and try to intercept the target further down the road. Pushing to her feet with languid grace (she was told she was once a dancer), she holsters her rifle on her back. She expects she will be able to head Tracer off in approximately three minutes, forty-two seconds, if all goes according to Talon's plan.

What she does not expect is a gentle tap on the shoulder.

"I think you're gettin' rusty, luv."

Widowmaker wheels away, goggles dropping to position over her eyes. Her rifle is drawn sooner than she can fully turn to face her chirpy assailant. Her jaw is clenched. She berates herself for not considering the fact that of course Tracer knew she was being watched. The tiny Overwatch agent, for all her bluster, is far more intuitive than she lets on. Widowmaker wonders how she neglected to remember that.

Tracer raises her hands in a placating gesture. It's all for show. Even if Widowmaker pulled the trigger right now, she can see that the woman's chronal accelerator is fully-primed. She'd yank herself backwards through time without batting an eyelid and be well beyond Widowmaker's range in a (regular human) heartbeat.

Yet.

It's still a risk, having the barrel of a gun pointed at your chest. Whether that chest allows you to swim through time itself or not. Widowmaker frowns slightly. Why is she here?

"Not gonna say hi, are ya?" Tracer says, her eyes a bright orange behind the tint of her goggles. Widowmaker knows their natural color without having to think about it. Knows that they're the lightest of browns, flecked with gold around the pupil. Why does she know that?

Because she's a mark, she testily reminds herself. She lowers her rifle a fraction of an inch.

"No." She answers stonily. Tracer's lip twitches, and Widowmaker cannot decipher whether it's the beginning of a smile or a grimace.

Perhaps Tracer cannot, either.

Her target moves back, the soles of her silly white shoes scraping against cement.

"You 'aven't killed me." The Overwatch agent remarks airly. Widowmaker tuts, raising her rifle once again.

"That is obvious, non?" She purrs, her mechanized goggles slowly sliding back over her forehead and disengaging. "But I could now, couldn't I?"

Tracer shrugs, lowering her hands. "You could." She says, all at once uncharacteristically serious. "But you 'aven't."

Why?

The unspoken question hangs as heavy as the full London moon in the sky between them. Rationalizations roulette through Widowmaker's mind, but she knows them all to be false. She has followed Tracer for days now. She's had clear shots lined up, but she blinks. Talon supplies her with information about Tracer's movement patterns, but Widowmaker knows that they are, for the most part, wrong. Yet she follows them anyway, convincing herself that eventually Tracer will show up along one of the routes. When she does, Widowmaker never takes the shot. She blinks. Sometimes, she doesn't even have to.

Tracer knows Widowmaker won't take the shot. She seems confident enough to bank on it, even with a rifle trained on her point-blank, and how can she be so sure?

Widowmaker's throat is dry. She swallows and composes herself.

"The thrill of the hunt can be a satisfying thing in itself." She answers briskly. Tracer's eyes narrow, skeptical.

"Alright, luv." She says, and something in Widowmaker lurches at that.

Her jaw tightens so hard she wonders if her molars would shatter. Her head is beginning to throb, dull and slow. She looks down. There is something about the other woman that allows her to slide under Widowmaker's skin far too easily. She wishes she knew why. There is something so foreign about the Overwatch agent, yet so blisteringly familiar. It doesn't add up to any amount of sense.

"Amélie."

It is a whisper that Widowmaker barely even registers. Too soft, too tender for their circumstances. Too soft for who they are to one another.

The headache blossoms into a rosette of searing red fury. She growls, but she does not know why. Why that name sets something off inside of her, primal and defensive and raw.

She launches her body at Tracer, abjectly devoid of poise, grabbing a fistful of her jacket and pressing the barrel of her rifle dead on the glow at the center of her chest. The momentum throws them back into a steel exhaust flume, and Tracer grunts as her body meets the unforgiving surface. Still, she looks up at Widowmaker, the assassin towering and seething above her.

The tiny woman doesn't look frightened at all. In fact, there is something dancing in those damnable brown eyes, bathed in ochre hue. Widowmaker doesn't know what it could possibly be. She doesn't know emotion, she just knows when she sees it on other people. And Tracer's wide doe eyes swim with it. Whatever it is.

"You know that name, don't you, luv?"

The assassin tightens her grip, presses the muzzle of her gun right up against the chronal accelerator. Her heart beats slow, but harder, heavier than it ever had before.

"Why do I know it?" Widowmaker hisses. The pounding at the base of her skull intensifies. Her fist shakes, and she screws her eyes shut, unable to keep looking into those wide, dancing eyes for a moment longer. The placid, intricately molded veneer was beginning to rattle apart at the hinges. All over a name and this damnable little girl.

Then... there are hands folding over hers.

They push down, gentle but insistent. Widowmaker releases her hold on Tracer's jacket and allows her rifle to lower until it points harmlessly at the rooftop beneath their feet. Something she distantly recalls as "warmth" radiates from where Tracer's hands rest atop hers. She does not open her eyes. She is exhausted.

"I promise I'll tell you. Next time, luv." Tracer whispers, her usual chirp filed down at the edges to something Widowmaker couldn't recognize. It sets something in her chest to ache, however briefly.

Slowly but steadily, she grows colder once more. Numbness creeps along the edges of her being and she shrugs back into it like a familiar overcoat. Her finger tightens on the trigger as she opens her eyes.

But with a flash of light and a keening hum, Widowmaker is alone on the rooftop again. As if she'd been alone this whole time.

Talon warned her such episodes could occur after her reconditioning. And that, if they did, she needed to resubmit herself to another round of treatment. Widowmaker knows that it would be the most prudent option to do so. She moves to press the homing beacon installed in her rifle, but stops as her finger grazes the button. She taps it idly, but not hard enough.

Hope.

Hope is what made Tracer's eyes dance under her gaze. Widowmaker does not even know how what hope is, necessarily, but she knows she saw it. She moves her finger away from the homing beacon and holsters the rifle.

Readying her grappling hook, she smiles softly to herself as she casts about for her next suitable perch. Next time, she thinks.

Next time, I will not blink.