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Araignée du soir, cauchemar (the_widowmaker) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-01-30 02:11:00

Who: Amelie and Angela
What: Nightmares and waking up covered in someone else's blood
Where: Angela's
When: Recent
Rating: PG-13 for blood, violence
Status: complete



New Years had been a bad enough idea, but wine and proximity had made it impossible to resist the doctor’s charms. Amelie could still remember the taste of her and the feel of her hands on her skin.

But it was a bad idea to continue such things, even if Amelie wasn’t her primary care doctor. Propriety and all that.

Amelie had ignored that, evidenced by the naked woman slumbering next to her for the third time.

The second had been after she’d dreamed of being taken by Talon, of things that eluded her memory in all but the barest glimpses. She’d appeared on Angela’s doorstep wearing only her nightgown, and had quickly taken her to her bed in a desperate need for intimacy.

Tonight had been something different; This time, Angela had called her. Something about her own dreams, and her own loss. In a mood, Amelie had quickly set about distracting the good doctor from her troubles.

But now, she stroked Angela’s arm, then kissed her shoulder as she settled in behind her. She was afraid to sleep. Had been afraid since Talon had taken her. But she was also exhausted by more than Angela, and she drifted off quickly.

“Amélie?”

She lifted her head from a thick book as Gerard came through the door. He looked tired, but appeared to be in good humor. She swept some of her hair behind her shoulder as she approached him. “How was work? Fighting the good fight?”

He found himself momentarily distracted as his wife brushed her fingers up his arm. She was clearly in a mood and, well, their honeymoon luster had yet to wear off. “I was going to save your surprise for after supper, but I think that you must see it now.”

Gesturing for her to follow him, Gerard led her to their office and turned the computer on. “Ah, my sweet, I think you will be very pleased.”

Something clicked in Amélie’s mind, her hand grasping the back of her husband’s head and slamming it against the desk. He cried out, his forehead crashing into the keyboard. She grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back, holding his head over the back of the chair and exposing his neck. Fear and confusion reflected in his eyes as she picked a letter opener up off of the desk.

The woman looking down at him was a stranger, her eyes harsh and unforgiving. “Talon sends their regards.”

She sliced the letter opener into his aorta, and shoved him off of the chair, blood splattering across her arms, face and chest.

It wasn't an easy thing to give in to the need to sleep, even in the relative safety of Amelie's arms. Not after her last set of dreams, which had nearly broken Angela's heart. How many times did she need to grieve the loss of her parents? It was cruel, and unfair, and she was glad for the company.

The last few times they'd shared a bed, the sleep had been uneasy; If either of them slept at all. Angela had seen too many things in her life, and they were both plagued with nightmares of events both from this life and the other. It was good to have someone in the bed to offer that moment of comfort when needed, usually when one or the other of them woke up from something they couldn't shake off.

But this thrashing was something more than Angela was used to, and it jolted her awake so violently that she felt as if Amelie must have been dreaming about all out war. She was nearly elbowed in the face as she rolled over to try and wake Amelie up. "Amelie! You are dreaming, wake up!"

Amelie’s eyes snapped open, and she grabbed at Angela, as though grappling with her and trying to stab her neck with a non-existent knife. And her eyes, her eyes were anything but the warm green they usually were. They’d shifted to an amber color and were lifeless. Programmed.

Her hands were slick with blood that wasn’t hers as she tried to wrap them around Angela’s neck, before something clicked into place, her eyes shifted back to green. And then she screamed, shoving Angela away as she pushed back and fell out of the bed.

But her hands were still bloody and Gerard, “Gerard!” Amelie started to stammer in French. Prayers and pleading that were likely heartbreakingly familiar to Angela.

There was too much going on at first for Angela to fully process it all. Caught in a grapple with what felt like a total stranger and fighting for her life, the adrenaline was running so high that she almost didn't register the blood on her skin. Then it was over.

Angela had been nearly tackled to the floor with the force Amelie had pushed her away, but even though it felt like a waterfall was rushing past her ears, she could still hear Amelie's words.

It felt like someone had cracked her own chest open and ripped her heart out. But she didn't know what to say. She'd barely known what to say the last time this had happened, either. All that she could be certain of was that Gerard must be dead in the dream world, too.

That seemed unnecessarily cruel, and she let out a little sigh as she tried to re-orient herself. Going through her classes on handling victims of trauma, she tried to make herself sound as non-threatening and comforting as possible. "You are here in my bedroom, and you are safe."

Amelie was barely able to process it. There was a rush of images, as though a thousand pictures and videos were superimposed over each other. Some of them were her memories. Her wedding to Gerard, conversations at Overwatch HQ, late night calls to friends.

Other images flashed behind them; violent ones. Murder and assassinations, a red-haired woman speaking in a clinically detached voice and pain like grinding stones in her mind mixed with the sound of cracking glass.

Terminate Gerard Lacroix, other voices said. Return to us.

But she didn't know who 'us' were, and she didn't remember any of this happening. She'd been captured by Talon but she'd been rescued, she'd been saved, Angela had cleared her.

"What did they do to me?" Amelie rasped, looking down at her hands and the blood that coated them. They were shaking. She lifted her gaze to Angela's. "What did I do?"

"I... do not know." Angela replied, her brows knitting together. It was a mystery, a greater one to her even than to Amelie. She was 'behind' when it came to the revealing of events. In her own dreams, she hadn't even met Amelie yet.

Her heart was still racing from the moments where she'd been fighting off someone else that was in her bed. Her experience as a surgeon and field medic was the only thing keeping herself steady as she crawled out of the bed. Wherever the blood had come from, it was on both of them and her first priority was to get them clean.

Angela motioned to the bathroom connected to her bedroom, "Let's get you cleaned up. I can brew a pot of tea and we can talk about things, yes?"

Something about Angela’s voice -- maybe how calm she sounded, or just the general feeling of command -- made Amelie sit up a little straighter and nod. “Oui. I would like to clean up.”

But something more like herself asserted itself as her eyes fell to the blood on Angela’s throat. “Did I… are you hurt?”

"It is nothing, Liebling. Just a bit of blood, you barely hurt me." There wouldn't even be a bruise, Angela thought. The emotional scare cut a little more deeply, but that wasn't Amelie's fault. "I think you were having... what would amount to a flash back."

Now that Amelie was more herself, Angela gently put a hand on her arm and began to guide her to the bathroom. It was less cramped than some bathrooms, clean and decorated here and there with a few feminine touches. Angela indicated that Amelie should take a seat on the toilet while she worked around her, running a warm bath. A small kit on the side of the tub held some round bath bombs and containers of oils and salts; She selected one of the bombs that had a calming scent and added it to the water.

A flashback to what? Amelie was afraid of reaching for that memory, afraid of what she’d find. Her mind ground and cracked and she lurched away from the images that were just out of reach.

It was easy to just follow Angela’s orders. Sitting down, Amelie felt both out of place and at home; while Angela’s decor was decidedly more pink than Amelie might prefer, they did share a love of luxurious baths. “I’ll...stain your tub.”

Odd, that being her first thought and worry, but she wasn’t going to be able to sleep again tonight.

"I am not worried about this, it will be easily cleaned with a little bit of bleach, yes? We worked with ceramic basins often enough in the field." The bomb had dissolved in the water, making it fizzy and filling the room with a calming mix of lavendar and sage. It was a light scent, but even Angela felt relaxed as she took in the steam wafting from the tub.

Then she motioned Amelie over. "Come. This will make your skin nice and soft, too. I think you will enjoy it. Or we can enjoy it together, if you wish. There is enough room for two."

Amelie looked down at her hands again, then back up to Angela. She was inclined to take Angela in the tub with her, and yet she worried about it. About what had happened in her dreams. “I… I killed my husband, Ange. How can you even stand to look at me.”

Her hands were shaking again, and she continued. “What if I killed him here too, and do not even remember?”

Angela took in the sight of Amelie for a few seconds, noting the trembling and the indication of her friend's mental state, and trying to stay as clinically detached from her own emotions about this as was possible.

If only because Gerard's death, here in this world, was a very personal matter for them both. But it was no use. Angela's feelings about the past, and about her current relationship with Amelie, were complicated and volatile and impossible to fully ignore.

She stooped down in front of Amelie and cupped her shaking hands in her own, squeezing them lightly. "That is not what happened. There were investigations, Amelie. And we both know... we both know he died on my operating table. You may have been driving, but that does not mean you killed him any more than my failing to save him does. We have to make our peace with that. As for the dreams? I cannot say what goes on in them. But here, we are together and can help each other. I am not afraid of what you will do."

"I hope that you do not come to regret this," Amelie said, a cold, detached note to her voice for the last few words. She seemed to snap out of it, and allowed herself to be led into the bath.

And for the first time since her nightmare, she felt human again.