Araignée du soir, cauchemar (the_widowmaker) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-03-18 01:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, amelie lacroix (widowmaker), angela ziegler (mercy) |
What did they do to you?
Who: Amelie and Angela
What: Ballet Lessons and Turning Blue--kind of
When: Early to Mid March
Where: Amelie's studio
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Wee bit of medical stuff and mental brainwashing stuff
Amelie had not been feeling herself very much, very lately. Some nights, when she was in that other place, she dreamed of a spider on the web waiting for prey. These prey had faces, and names and when she pulled the trigger she felt something.
It was impossible to put into words how numb she felt, when waking from those dreams. The only joy the joy of the kill and that fading quickly upon consciousness. But the numbness remained, day in and day out.
The only thing that made her smile still was training her dancers, and Angela.
There would be no dancers tonight except herself. Amelie wore a simple leotard and tights. She stared at herself in the mirror, admiring herself and her shape. She still felt that, at least, her vanity and her pride in how she looked. She felt other things too. Anticipation and anxiety over Angela seeing her.
A little guilt too, over what Angela represented.
But there was something… wrong with her. There were blue and purple splotches on her skin, her face, fingertips and toes in particular. She poked at the latter, but it didn’t hurt. A little numb, perhaps. But it didn’t hurt, and she was still able to hold herself up on them.
Wetting her lips, she considered asking Angela about it, but instead pulled on her ballet shoes and then applied makeup to her face.
This was an important night, and Angela dressed up a bit. Not overly much, because she was worried that if she went too far it would make Amelie nervous. But she'd taken care to make her hair look nice, applied a little makeup, and definitely made sure to wear one of her nicer skirts.
So as not to scratch up the floor, Angela kicked her heels off next to the doorway as she entered the studio. She pulled up a chair and took a seat, swinging one leg over the other and folding her hands in her lap. Perhaps it would have been better to simply wait for Amelie to come out and start dancing, but it was hard to be patient.
"I am here, Liebling," She called out. Just in case Amelie was nearby somewhere and could hear her.
The time of getting ready, and stepping into the studio itself seemed to be almost a blur to Amelie. It was as though she were watching herself through a fogged, cracked window and she scarcely recognized herself. Only when she heard Ange’s voice did she snap out of it, that aspect of herself that was herself reasserting itself.
It could have been the music, too. The flow of the dance as she moved like water and wind. And when she realized she was not faltering, Amelie’s eyes fluttered closed and she let the dance take her, found the passion within herself that had long ago been strangled and brought it out like a rising phoenix.
For the first time in weeks, she felt human, and it wasn’t just that Ange was watching, no. It was that Amelie could fly again.
It was one of the most beautiful things Angela had ever seen. She hadn’t gotten much of a chance in her life to take in as much culture as she would have liked, and thus Angela had never gotten a chance to see Amelie dance when she was the principal dancer of her ballet troupe. But she wished she’d gotten that chance. If this was breathtaking, what would it have been like back then?
Angela shook her head at that thought, shaking some tears off of her cheeks in the process. It was best not to think about that. The past was gone, and it couldn’t be restored to either of them. It was good enough that Amelie could dance again, in a way that it was so obvious her heart and soul were fully committed to it. It was grace and poetry in motion, entrancing in so many ways that when the music stopped and the dance had ended she found it difficult to speak.
She felt like if she did, it might break some spell that had been cast over the entire studio. Instead, she put her hands together and clapped.
Amelie breathed heavily, not entirely from exertion; there were a great many emotions flooding her and it was so good to feel again, since she did not … feel.
Shaking her head of the visions of another world, she turned and smiled at Angela and tried not to think of the way Angela’s expression made her heart twist. She needed her suddenly, wanted her, and wanted her for more than the dance between the sheets.
The thought frightened her and she pushed it aside. She held her hand out. “Merci. I was hoping to give you your first lessons tonight. But I … wanted to show you first. It felt… important.”
Needed to. She felt alive and alive was something that was rapidly slipping through her fingers. Even her cover up was starting to come off, revealing a few blotches of purple and blue.
"I am glad that you showed me... I doubt I will every match your grace or ability, but it was beautiful." Angela took Amelie's hand and pulled herself up from the chair she'd been sitting on. It was hard to get a good grip; Sweat and something else had made Amelie's skin slick, and when she let go she could see that there was some makeup coming off.
She thought nothing of it at first, merely glancing around for somewhere to wipe the bit of excess cover up off of her own skin. Then her sharp eyes noticed the blotches that were starting to show through Amelie's skin. There was a smear where Angela had grabbed on that also showed signs of discoloration, and Angela grabbed the hand again to pull Amelie in closer.
"Was ist das!?"
Amelie would be the first to tell Angela that the good doctor was graceful in her own way. But she flushed somewhat noticeably at the compliment, and tried to assess just why that had such an effect on her. She’d always felt drawn to Angela, even in that long ago time in Switzerland; though she’d been far too preoccupied with her anger and grief to notice.
Now, though, she knew Angela from her dreams too, which explained some of the allure. Before she could comment, or offer a suggestion as to where to start for Angela to dance, Angela noticed the splotches.
“Merde,” Amelie sighed, trying to pull her hand away from Angela and failing. She sounded almost bored. “It is nothing.”
The doctor had been handling surgical equipment and triage - along with difficult patients - for nearly a decade. She held onto Amelie's arm with a grip stronger than the surety of death, poring over Amelie's skin with her eyes. "This is not nothing, Liebling, this is most definitely something. Discoloration like this..."
Her mind was already rattling through all the various medical conditions that could cause it, both in the real life and in the dream world. Necrosis came in a variety of different shades but not so bright a blue. It almost looked like Amelie had dragged blueberries across her skin and stained it on purpose.
That was just ridiculous, though. "What did they do to you?"
Eyes that seemed a shade too close to amber flicked from Angela's face, then to her hand, and back. Amelie tried to find the words to tell Angela what had happened to her. What she was feeling when she could feel it.
Slowly, she took Angela's other hand and pressed her finger against her jugular. Her heart beat was abnormally slow for the exertion she'd just undergone. One beat, another, like a slow march and each beat sounded like a dull knocking in the back of her head.
And her skin was a little paler than it had been last time Angela had seen her.
What came out of Angela's mouth next was a string of German too quick and too colloquialized to translate correctly. Her brows knit together furiously, and then she shook her head. "You are coming with me to the clinic. I want to run tests."
Amelie frowned, shaking her head. “We are here for dancing, not for tests.”
But she didn’t make any moves, mostly because she knew talking Ange out of this would be next to impossible. Amelie’s throat bobbed as she studied Ange’s ocean-deep eyes, lifting her fingers to trail two down the doctor’s cheek. “But you are stubborn. More stubborn than I, Ange?”
Whatever this was, it was going to eat Amelie alive. It already had, if that incident in her bedroom was any clue as to what would follow. It was just exactly like Amelie to play it off as nothing, to act casual; Especially in light of the posts she'd made before. Angela could see her in her mind now, giving in to the darkness and letting Talon win.
Hope was something that maybe Amelie just couldn't afford. It did, after all, seem to prick people like thorns at times.
But Angela wasn't about to let Amelie give in. And if she had to, she'd carry that hope - and all the pain it caused - for her. She clutched Amelie's hand and squeezed it. "I had better be."
Amelie stared at their hands, silent and thoughtful, before her eyes lifted to Ange’s. “... let me change first. And then… oui. Tests.”