Entry tags:

amelie lacroix (widowmaker), emma swan

WHO: Emma & Amélie
WHEN: day after this
WHERE: Coffee Shop
WHAT: Discussing some dreams and being distractions.
RATING: PG
STATUS: Complete

Orange County was growing on Emma. Not the weird things, or the strange dreams that made her chest ache in strange ways, but the people and the places. She was used to making new friends, although it was never easy, it changed each time, and more and more recently she was finding that she didn’t exactly want to keep herself at a distance either. Eventually, everyone wanted someone to know them, not just in passing, but to actually know them.

She enjoyed working with Amélie, the woman seemed friendly and capable, and being a ballet dancer, graceful in ways Emma was most certainly not.

The dreams added another element, strange and unusual glimpses into a life that might’ve been, that things could be different in strange worlds or just a different version of life. Emma was thankful that her dreams didn’t come with 50 years worth of future information to rattle around in her head. Amélie didn’t have that luxury.

So she offered to listen, if Amélie needed an ear, and coffee was probably a better choice than alcohol given the potential for getting exceptionally drunk. Emma had a small favoured place, nothing fancy, just coffee and the occasional sandwich or pastry, but it was nice and peaceful. She’d invited Amélie over to it and bought the coffee’s, happy to talk about nothing or the complexity of the dreams, whichever her companion was more comfortable with.

The world looked a little wrong, now. No flying cars, holographic displays or the omnipresence of sentient robots, or Omnics.

There was history with the latter, and she was still sorting through that. Some kind of uprising. The reason Overwatch had been formed. But now there was peace. Or supposed to be.

Wine sounded like a good idea, honestly.

She really should talk to Angela, but that would be awkward, so here she was.

“Bonjour.”

Emma did her best to never really let on how she struggled a little with the slips of French from Amélie, not the simple things like hello and goodbye and thank you, but she’d even bought a little French dictionary to keep up with her new employer.

“How’re you feeling, dreams aside?” Because part of dealing with those had to be accepting the insanity of it along with what you dreamed. Emma was still getting her head around this alternative upbringing she could’ve had, and just how fortunate she’d been that her parents hadn’t opted to try for their own child and send her back -who did that?

She at least didn’t have decades of information crammed into her head though.

“I am feeling well, merci.” Amelie wrapped her hands around her wine glass, and wondered if her dreams might turn her into an alcoholic. It would be tempting to lose herself in them, and nothing too terrible had even happened!

“And you?”

“Not bad, finally starting to settle in.” Which was hard, she supposed, when a place was so strange it was instinct to run. And Emma was very good at just running. She’d started to unpack though, and that was usually the first step in her getting comfortable somewhere.

“On the other hand, I’m not dreaming the crazy things you have to.” If Amélie didn’t want to talk about it, Emma would understand completely. But if she just needed someone to broach the subject, Emma didn’t mind doing so.

“You are not used to settling in,” Amelie noted, not super inclined just yet to reflect on her dreams. “Have you dreamed at all? I am afraid I have not been paying attention.”

“Not really, I move around a lot.” And so far it was only the sunshine and the area that was encouraging her to stay put. She was getting on fairly well with people and the dreams weren’t enough just yet to outweigh all that.

“A little, but nothing too intense, just a general shift in what my life was like.” She guessed she’d always sort of known she’d been lucky to be adopted, but the she’d been a baby when she was left for adoption anyway, babies were luckier than older kids. The dream showed that with how many homes she went back to. “Just some sucky situations at times.”

“I have spent much of the past six years traveling. Visiting places trying to sort out my own head,” Amelie admitted. “After I lost Gerard, I lost my will to dance.”

She leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. “Oui, except for the… future, and this organization, it was much the same for me. Though I did not meet one person until much later, here.”

Losing people did strange things, Emma understood that, because she lost her parents and then nothing really mattered in life. The dreams changed that to a degree -she’d never have those parents in her dreams, but the ache and longing for a family. “It takes a while, I know that. To find peace, enough to want to do those things again.” Losing the love of your passion would be like losing someone else, Emma assumed.

“They twist things,” the dreams changed so much, to the point that it was hard to separate things, “it’s a little odd, right? Keeping what you lived and what you dreamed separate. Remembering what’s real.” Emma started to shred a napkin, nervous energy escaping her in some ways.

“Seeing him again, dreaming of him, of friends I once had and friends I’ve never met before….” Amelie shook her head. “I still cannot tell if it is a good thing or not. I still cannot tell what is real. And I don’t know if that is something I even want.”

Emma had to be glad that her biggest issue was remembering the difference between having family and not having them. She didn’t have to face the reality versus sci-fi of being in the future, she didn’t need to worry about real and fake, because it was mostly just messing up her memories, nothing that she needed to worry about in real life.

She just felt bad that there was nothing she could do to help Amélie deal with things. “I’m sorry, that sounds so rough. I suppose I’m lucky that everything I’m dreaming is behind me.” At least she didn’t need to dream losing her parents all over again.

“It feels like there is something else, too. Something I cannot place my finger on.” So she decided to let it drop, a matter for a later time. “Let us find...something better to talk about.”

Something else, probably some other big reveal the dreams would drop on Amélie, which would just add to the level of suck. But Emma could definitely understand wanting to avoid the subject for now. She was nothing if not an advocate for pushing it down until later.

“How about the dance studio? That has to be a much better topic.” And hopefully something that could distract Amélie for a while too.

Amelie smiled, and nodded her head. “I think that some of the dancers have potential, but I will have to cut one.”

She wasn’t running a charity, after all, and if a dancer couldn’t perform to her standards,or at least show improvement, they were out.