Chapter Text
almost ten years ago
Angela lets her phone ring once, twice, thrice before she switches to speakerphone.
“Good morning, Angela,” comes Gérard’s smooth baritone, and it immediately puts Angela into a chokehold. It’s about as clear as if he was right there in the lab with her, tapping his fingers against his neat pencil moustache as he scrutinises her handwriting, pulling a face at the general disarray of her notes, radiating that nonchalant energy of being slightly better than Angela at everything. The very idea makes her shiver. “I’m sorry. I know this is way too early–”
“Nonsense. I’ve been up since five,” Angela shuts him down quickly, a small voice in her brain telling her that he could call her at 2 AM and she would have to obey his summons. She owes him that much, even if he hasn’t the faintest clue. Hopefully, he hasn’t, she thinks. “How–how are you? Are you back in London already?”
“Yes, thank you. Everything is fine on my end,” Gérard says. He pauses then, and for a couple of seconds, all Angela can hear is his breathing rasping into the phone, slow and measured, until he picks up the conversation again. “Angela...I know that this is a little awkward to ask, and I’d rather not put you on the spot like this, but”–he trails off again, and Angela’s stomach drops–“is Amélie with you?”
Angela should’ve got rid of her hangover while she still could, she thinks, but she wanted to repent. Now, yesterday’s tequila and rosé are organising a charity wrestling match in her skull, and all proceeds are going to her migraine. Her thoughts struggle to catch up to Gérard’s words, and he uses her hesitation to push onward.
“Look, I probably know Amélie better than anyone else,” he says, “and I’m neither blind nor stupid.”
“What are you talking about?”
“ I’m not upset with you, all right? I only want her to be happy, so–”
Angela’s brain finally jolts into motion, speeding along the length of Gérard’s broken sentences, chasing down that one fragment that burns a hole into her. Like a lost spark, freed itself from the fireworks, setting a thatched roof ablaze. She can feel her bile rising in her throat.
“Is she not at home?”
“I’ve just said that I’m not stupid,” Gérard snaps, no longer trying to mask his irritation. “I already called the opera house, and they told me she left with you. Can you be a fucking adult, for once, and pass her the phone? She left hers at home.”
“She’s not here.” Her words are but a sigh, and her phone slips in her fingers. She nearly drops it, along with the blood sample in her right hand. “We did meet yesterday, but I left before midnight. I am not lying. Gérard, this is really not–”
“Not like her, I know,” Gérard says, and his tone is getting more distraught by the minute, his accent is all over the place, and his calm, deep voice is now painted over by trembling panic. “The flat smells like someone poured Domestos all over the floor, and, and she hates it, you know how she hates it. The fumes make her nauseous and–”
“You need to call this in.”
“Angela, if anything happens to her–”
“It’s going to be fine,” Angela says. “I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding, and she is down at the park playing chess with old men.”
***
Today
July 18
(Friday)
Angela is roused by lips on her shoulders, softer than the call of sleep, kissing her awake.
Ashe’s arm, slung over her abdomen, tightens just a bit. It’s a light squeeze, nothing more, but it anchors her to Ashe, and it is a welcome pressure, crushing the remnants of her dream gently, maybe even lovingly, until only a vague sense of disquiet lingers on. Her breathing is still shallow and frantic, but she feels safe, and that is way more than she has ever expected to get out of their arrangement.
No. Their relationship.
She supposes it is time to call it what it is. They had their date, and it went well as far as Angela is concerned, even if they didn’t get to have that supply closet encore. However, they did kiss on a balcony like a couple of lovestruck teenagers, unable to keep their hands off each other, until someone discreetly knocked on the glass doors and brought them back down to Earth. Aside from that minuscule slip-up, Ashe was an excellent date. She was engaging and funny and not-at-all suave, which worked well for the other guests, who were neither engaging nor funny, but could easily relate to the not-suave part.
Her unnecessarily complicated questions about the nervous system of flatworms and the higher brain functions of bonobos delighted Angela’s colleagues to the point where they all looked ready to pull a soliloquy out of their back pockets just to impress a gorgeous stranger. Then, she let them babble at her for ages, bravely withstanding the sheer, mind-numbing devastation of the strongest nerds on the continent talking about their passion projects. She even laughed at appropriate times, despite no one saying anything mildly funny for hours. Angela would’ve found it comical if she hadn’t spent an embarrassingly long time filtering through all her mental dossiers on primates, as if she wasn’t the very woman already on a date with Ashe.
I leeched your Science Mag subscription, and then I read that on the way to Annecy. It had this article about bonobos. Did you know they have a lot of sex? Like a lot?
That’s what Ashe offered as an explanation, and Angela couldn’t decide which one of them was more unhinged.
“Nightmare?”
“Yes. It’s the usual thing,” Angela mumbles into her pillow. “I think I’m just anxious about today.”
“I get that,” Ashe says. “I am nervous too, you know. You both mean a lot to me, and you clearly mean a lot to each other too”–she adjusts her arm and puts her palm over Angela’s hipbone–“I want this to go well, but if it doesn’t, there will be other times.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I know that it’s not,” Ashe says and pats Angela’s hip. Her touch is so hot, Angela can already feel herself breaking out in a light sweat. It is ridiculous. “But I’m not in the habit of giving up on people.”
Anymore, Angela thinks.
The urge to spit out that word comes out of the blue, and it nearly overwhelms her too, so she bites her tongue and pushes her face further into her pillow. She makes a mental note to mention this to Dr Singh when she gets back, this self-defeating need to lash out at the least deserving. Almost like an intrusive thought. She sifts through her inventory of mental exercises, and settles on one with a solid success rate: she lets her breath whistle past her teeth, counting down to ten, and repeats, again and again, willing her ire away. Ashe, as if she could read her thoughts, and forgave them already, lays a kiss on the back of her neck, soothing away her tension.
“I’ll be only a room away,” Ashe adds after a few minutes of companionable silence, disturbed only by the ebb and flow of their breathing. “The walls are thick enough to ward off eavesdroppers – not that I would, but you know –, but I’ll hear a screaming match just fine.”
“Oh, that’s not on today’s agenda,” Angela says and rolls over to face Ashe. “We are doing that next time.”
“So, I won’t have to jump between the two of you?”
“No, but you can jump me,” Angela says and lets out an easy laugh, and Ashe’s reaction is worth the embarrassment.
Ashe only stares at her for a second or two, face blank, redness rising from her chest to her neck, then she proceeds to suck in a breath that makes her sound like a rubber duck getting the life quashed out of it by a steamroller.
“That was awful,” she croaks out between two short spells of laughter (snorting, really), and then reaches over to brush a few stray strands out of Angela’s face, tucking them behind her ear. “That was terrible. I’m really rubbing off on you, aren’t I?”
“Well, not right now,” Angela says. “But it’s still early. We have all the time.”
Ashe sinks her face into her palms, and a groan escapes from under her fingers.
“Who are you?” Ashe whispers. “And what did you do to Dr Angela Ziegler?”
Angela doesn’t answer her. She doesn’t know how to answer her. She could tell her that the last few months reignited something in her that’s been lying dormant for ages, and her playfulness, her libido, her desire to take risks are only the symptoms of this change. Or, in her case, it’s a slow restoration of a self near-forgotten, buried under remorse and responsibility. She hopes that not all of it has suffocated in her lungs filled with soil, overgrown with weeds. Some of her might still bloom, she thinks, like a cactus in a desert after the rarest bout of rain, bursting in reds and yellows and pinks.
She could tell her that, but it feels like some heavy baggage to handle, and Ashe already carries so much of her burdens without ever complaining about her back. She doesn’t want to give her a mood whiplash, so she files things away for later, maybe until she is ready to tackle one of Dr Singh’s self-compassion questionnaires again. Instead, she shuffles closer, the bedsheets twisting underneath her (she can almost see the shallow red indentations on her skin), and pulls Ashe into a languid, close-mouthed kiss.
“Thank you,” Angela murmurs into Ashe’s mouth.
“What for?”
“Just being you.”
“That’s not a tall order,” Ashe says. “Never been anything else.”
***
“Did you just–”
“Must you,” Angela croaks out as she gasps for air. At some point, she forgot how to breathe, and her current state of consciousness can only be attributed to providence. “Must you ask that every single time? Don’t you already know my tells? I think everyone down the hall knows, actually.”
“I do, but I like to hear it from you,” Ashe whispers, and she looks at her with something like serenity playing around the corners of her mouth, pulling her flushed face into a smile that would make Angela bashful if she were any younger or any less experienced or any less naked.
The Damask duvet bunching under Angela’s back must be some cheap synthetic fabric because it sticks to her burning skin, heating her up even more, and perspiration is pearling between her eyebrows and between her breasts. She can’t be embarrassed about that either. The intimacy of the moment dwarfs her discomfort, and for once, she doesn’t mind this fog weighing down on her brain, fragmenting her thoughts and turning them sluggish. She’s undecided on the technicus terminus, and the scientist inside her begs for some axioms and some hypotheses. Ashe’s fingers, moving slowly as they escort her down from her high, are purely empirical in their approach, and they care very little whether she calls it infatuation, kinship or love.
“Is this some weird power trip?” Angela asks, and she can’t help her laugh bubbling past her lips.
“Not at all,” Ashe says and leans down to kiss her collarbone, then the crook of her neck, then her jawline as it meets her ear, taking her time on her way up to her cheeks. “I just want to make you feel good. I like to know I’m doing a good job.”
“I want that too,” Angela says as she threads her fingers through Ashe’s locks. “To make you feel good, I mean.”
“You do that,” Ashe says and shifts her weight, propping herself up on her elbow, and Angela knows that if it’s not a lie, it’s only a half-truth, an omission. Overheated and sticky Angela may feel, she still misses the heavy pressure of Ashe’s muscles against her and the way her bones jab into her skin, teetering on the brink of discomfort but never crossing over the edge. A part of her is ready to say anything to get that sensation back. It’s the same part that is happy to take and devour, and won’t stop until it’s blindly chewing on nothing. It’s selfish and needy and hungry for everything, from validation to acceptance, from compassion to gratification. Above it all, hungry for that rare moment of self-love that she only gets to experience through the eyes of an honest proxy. When Ashe tells her that she is beautiful and precious and deserving, she can almost believe it. She doesn’t like that part, but it’s hers, nonetheless.
“Do I?” Angela says then, squelching her urges to avoid and gloss over.
“Trust me, I’d tell you if you didn’t”–Ashe kisses Angela again and then she removes her hand–“I’m no masochist.”
“Then tell me this instead,” Angela says. “What can I do for you now?”
“Pains me to admit,” Ashe says, “but I’m a bit worn out. How about we revisit this question tonight, and I promise to think about it?”
Angela takes in Ashe’s face – her eyes growing guarded, the curve of her brows flattening into a strict line, her lips worried under her teeth, whitening. Again, she considers mirroring her and biting her words, putting them away in a neat little box for later perusal, much like how she handles all of her issues, procrastinating confrontations until the problem fixes itself or blows up in her face. She doesn’t want to risk the second outcome.
“Maybe we should talk,” Angela says.
“You’re right,” says Ashe and, as if it’s a peace offering, she covers Angela’s breast with her palm, giving back some of that warmth. Angela takes it. “We should, but not today.”
It’s a cruel echo, and Angela finds herself swallowing down a sigh. She says, “I don’t want to force anything. Anything. But if this is a trauma response–”
“I don’t know if it is,” Ashe says quickly, too quickly, but it is an admission, and it’s a stab in Angela’s chest. “You know where I come from, Angie. I carry a lot of that with me, and I think I’ve so far uncovered maybe half of all that’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Angela says, and Ashe’s eyebrows shoot up at that. “Oh, fine – your career choices are deplorable, but that’s another conversation we’re going to dodge today.”
“We are already so good at this ‘processing’ thing,” Ashe muses. “After a single date, too. Maybe we should call a–”
“I know your aesthetic is very old-school,” Angela cuts her off, then covers Ashe’s hand with hers, “but that doesn’t mean you should bring back U-Haul jokes.”
“Do we still have U-Haul?” Ashe turns her hand palms-up and entwines their fingers. “Didn’t they go bankrupt in the ‘60s?”
“I just don’t want you to feel guilty about something that should make you happy,” Angela says, firmly ignoring the U-Haul diversion attempt. “I don’t think that’s selfish of me.”
“Well, maybe just a little,” Ashe says, and her tone is rich with warm humour. “But it’s a good sort of selfish. I appreciate what you’re doing even if your timing is subpar.”
“I care about you, Ashe, and I want you to be fine,” Angela says after a beat. “And with that, I’m officially dropping this topic.”
“Thank you,” Ashe says and kisses her forehead. “I have a feeling we’re going to need all our emotional reserves for today.”
***
Ashe is right about that, of course, like she is right about most everything regarding Angela, which would worry her if she were two months ago. Now, it only fills her with a sense of lukewarm gratitude, muted by the drone of apprehension that has turned her skull into a German techno party. By evening, Angela finds herself thankful that she didn’t try to figure out all the intricacies of their sex life in that one-hour window between waking up and going down to the hotel canteen for breakfast.
Her last day at the conference came and went without leaving a lasting impression on her, except for that one workshop about the latest industry breakthroughs in bionic prosthetics, where she managed to slap herself in the face with a life-like mechanical arm. Hours later, a black eye is already blossoming around her eye socket. It’s still mostly red and slightly swollen with some dark discolouration around the edges, but she has no doubt it will soon deepen and make her look like an amateur kickboxer on a losing streak.
An ideal look for tonight, she thinks as she dabs concealer onto her skin. She has never been particularly fond of makeup, but applying it now, with hands shaking softly and skin breaking out in red patches of blush, it feels like a chore and a futile one at that.
“How are we feeling?” Ashe hands Angela the sponge and the foundation, and then she kisses the top of her head before she walks back to the bed to grab the freshly ironed shirt laid out atop the duvet.
“Oh, you know,” Angela says and sighs. “Terrible. If I end up puking all over you, don’t take it personally.”
“Come on then,” Ashe says and drops her shirt. “Let’s get it over with before I get dressed. This is Versace, you know.”
Angela laughs, in spite of herself, and some of her unease dissipates with that. She looks at herself in the mirror, pulls at the bags under her eyes with her fingertips, and then she lets her gaze wander to Ashe’s half-naked form. She is all wiry muscle and suntanned skin, the smoothness of it only broken up by her few scars – all-white scar tissue, elevated and grisly-looking, as though she’s never bothered to have them fixed. It’s easy to find her beautiful.
We all have our faulty coping mechanisms.
“I’m going to be fine. I promise,” Angela says and puts her makeup back in its bag. “I’m getting cold feet, that’s all.”
Her slowly building anxiety has been layering lead onto her brain, her head now weighs a ton, and thinking itself feels exhausting. She wants nothing more than to lie down on a couch with Ashe and a bowl of popcorn and watch Golden Girls reruns or, perhaps, a documentary on tardigrades. But it doesn’t matter. Ashe is right behind her, nudging her forward with her brand of gentle determination, and she is grateful for that too.
“Double up on the socks then, darling,” Ashe says. “Cause you would hate me if I let you bow out.”
Ashe rents a self-driving car, a boxy-looking silver Citröen, that takes them to Annecy in forty minutes. Too little time to get over her jitters, but just enough to completely destroy Ashe in a game of piquet, and now, here they are: standing on the narrow pier hosting a single speed-boat, taking in the grandiosity of Château Guillard, and feeling pitifully small in comparison. A light but cold lakeward breeze washes over them, inspiring gentle waves, bobbing the boat up and down, and Angela’s teeth start chattering in earnest. Her lips must be blue too, she thinks.
“It looks pretty cool, right?” Ashe says, sliding her leather jacket off and draping it over Angela’s shoulders. “With the lights and everything?”
Angela isn’t sure if she would call it “cool”. It is certainly an imposing sight with its sharp angles, dynamic arches, and myriad outdoor lamps that envelope the inky blackness of the water in shimmering yellows and oranges. If anyone told her it was a museum and not a place where actual human beings lived, she would believe them.
“Did Amélie have it restored?” Angela pulls the jacket tighter around her body as she looks at Ashe fiddling with the locking mechanism that keeps the boat moored.
Ashe nods and says, “It’s actually a replica of some other castle in France”–she climbs over the gunwale and then holds her hand out for Angela–“Not like I could tell. I know next to nothing about architectural trends amongst French nobility. I just think castles are neat.”
Angela takes her hand, lingers on for a moment, and then allows Ashe to pull her over to the boat.
“Well, you would,” she says. “The bigger the house, the easier to avoid people?”
“Oh, you really know me.” Ashe tests the ignition, and the engine lights up with a low roar and a familiar blue-orange glow. “I suppose I should be worried, huh?”
Angela doesn’t know how to feel about that, nor does she know how to take the plunge now that she is at the edge of the precipice, and the bottom seems miles away. It would be safer if she knew what awaits her down there: shallow waters or the deep end, absolution by Amélie Lacroix or devastation by the hands of Widowmaker. Perhaps all at the same time, churning and coiling around her, much like the lake turning itself around the engine, swift and almost boiling in its vigour.
She reaches out and takes Ashe’s free hand, and when she squeezes back, gripping Angela’s fingers, she thinks that might just be enough to keep her afloat.
***
Angela snaps her face away from the waves of the lake. They’re inviting in the same vein a black hole would be – promising an empty calm, the cold of nothing, a harsh contrast to the entropy in her head. She didn’t even notice they reached the dock.
“Be good and do a clean hitch, chérie. If my boat floats away, you’ll be the one swimming out to get it back.”
It’s Amélie.
Her Amélie.
It’s the same voice, the same intonation and playful edge, the exact same lilting accent with a new raspiness to it that should sound alien to Angela, but it doesn’t. Maybe it has always been there, and Angela simply forgot about it, despite the hundreds of hours she has burned away studying her files, thrifting through their videos and pictures, trying to retain an essence of who Amélie Lacroix was. Maybe she once coaxed it from her, or maybe she only wanted to. Maybe she only dreamt about it.
“That happened once,” Ashe says, without taking her eyes off Angela, and her gaze is a dagger sinking into her ribcage: relentless and inquisitive, and it is full of silent inquiry. Angela could kiss her for it, but she can only nod.
When she finally looks at Amélie, stunning and oh-so-distant, standing with her back against a stonewall, her skin almost blending in with the greys, talking about the ideal way to tie a boat, Angela wants to break out in laughter.
Her body wants to do the next best thing, however. Her tears are running across her cheeks, washing away her makeup, pooling into droplets on her chin, falling into the very same abyss waiting beyond the precipice. There’s something infinitely absurd about their lives, she thinks. Ashe knows this too, just as she knows Angela lied with a mere nod, that she is nowhere near fine, nowhere near ready, that she might just end up puking, Versace be damned, because she gathers Angela into her arms without question, and Angela is pliant under her touch.
“Dr Ziegler... Angela .” Amélie’s voice falters, and that stumble alone breaks Angela’s heart, only a little, just enough to hurt, because it’s real, it’s genuine, it’s Amélie.
Amélie’s stilettos click sharply against the tiles as she pushes herself away from the wall and walks the length of the docks until she is but steps away. Her presence is sharp and impossible to ignore, and almost as painful as her absence once was, forcing Angela to inhale fast enough that she chokes on her saliva and tears.
“Ravi de vous rencontrer,” Amélie says then, and she pauses again to stare at Angela’s blotchy face and the black eye that’s no doubt peeking out from under the makeup. She regards her with a look in her eyes that Angela can’t read, and the realisation slaps her across the face, and it hurts way more than the prosthetic arm did. She once knew all her tells. Ten years down the line, and she has nothing.
“I hope you are hungry,” Amélie adds. “Dinner is ready.”
“You cooked?” Ashe quips as she pats Angela’s hair.
“Of course not,” Amélie says. “Don’t be absurd. I don’t have a crockpot.”
Angela’s laugh arrives at last.