Chapter Text
The blood splatters on ancient stone and he drops to one knee, gritting his teeth. It was a glancing blow, but it still burns. His eyes burn too, for a different reason. All night this chase has gone on, since the sun sunk below the horizon all the way to now, as velvet twilight settles across a city that has no chance to sleep. Always awake. Always restless. He averted another man's death tonight, but the Reaper has come from him in revenge.
It would be some play, some tragedy, were it not his real life. He coughs, wincing as his knee refuses to budge. He knows Reaper isn't far behind him. He may run, but he always follows. As relentless as the grave.
“Why!” Jack yells, over the din of the city below; but it’s not as loud as he thinks and his voice echoes across rooftops.
Reaper slips in trails of black smoke along the cracks in the stone, arranging himself back into a black cloaked nightmare, several metres behind Soldier 76. His presence is a felt thing; like impending doom, like what he's named himself after. Ever-present, and inescapable. He makes no sound, says nothing, but Jack can hear laboured breathing. Not laboured from exertion, but laboured- a rasp, a croak, a dying (dead) man.
"Why," Jack repeats, angry as he turns around to face him.
Reaper tilts his head to the side. It looks so much like a bird that Jack has to bite down a mildly hysterical laugh.
It makes sense- after all, his mask is a barn owl. He’s heard people say it’s a skull, and he can see it, but he knows Gabriel and that’s an owl if he ever saw one.
Owls are deadly predators, silent and rather terrifying when they swallow their prey whole.
“Please,” he manages, inhaling and hauling himself up even when his knee feels awfully shredded and his lungs plead for more time on the ground, or below it, “Please tell me why you’re doing this.”
Reaper advances, one step closer. No answer comes.
Jack holds up one hand. It makes Reaper pause, at least, though his glowering presence grows, spits of smog drifting off his form and into the sky.
“Not revenge. Not because I stole your title. Not because Overwatch failed. None of that makes any sense. You’re the smartest man I know, and you’re rash but you’re not stupid-“
In the blink of an eye, a shotgun slots under his jaw. He moved so fast that Jack has no time to brace himself. Not that he would have. At this point, if Reaper was going to kill him, he would have done it. No, he wants Jack to suffer. And squirm. So he banks on that. If he's wrong, he won't be able to regret it anyway.
“Answer me before you blow my brains out,” he grits out, “I never asked before. I should have. It’s not that I didn’t care-“
The barrel pushes up and it hurts all the way on the roots of his teeth. Fight or flight struggles inside him like a caged bird, rattling and squawking, but he's old enough and experienced enough to be able to ignore it. The truth hurts almost more than fighting ancient biological functions of survival, because the truth is this:
“It was easier to let you deal with it.”
There’s a very slight relaxation in the pressure against his throat. So minute no normal man would be able to tell, but they’re both super soldiers and Jack feels that little pause as loud and clear as the piercing cry of a hawk, high above. It's a sign to keep going, so he does. The air rushes from his lungs in a sea of words which he has either denied, ignored, or covered up for so long that he feels like he's exposing himself in some soulful, agonising way.
“I let you take the brunt of all that ambiguity,” he admits, “It was easier on me if you dealt with it. Easier on me if I didn’t even ask because then no one would tease it out of me in some stupid paparazzi press meeting. And I took you for granted.”
Less pressure. He can feel the red glow of eyes(?) on his face, behind the barn owl’s mask, and the cold tendrils of shadow licking against his shins. Maybe Reaper will still kill him. It would be no less than he deserves, but at the same time, he's at peace with wherever this goes, because he's finally telling the truth. Not only to Reaper, but to himself. To the world, to anyone listening.
“You were a constant in my life,” Jack says, “I never even thought about what I owed you because we’d always been a team. I think… I think I stopped pulling my weight because I was so busy-“
He nearly bites his tongue off when suddenly Reaper is on him, the shotgun replaced with a spread hand, tight on his jugular. The panic ratchets up his heartbeat. His grip is a vice, and involuntarily he struggles as Reaper chokes him. He can feel the fury radiating, how freakishly cold those hands are, the steel-tipped claws on his gloves, how he can feel his life fading, being taken away. Robbed from him.
He forces himself to speak.
“It’s killing me,” he manages, his voice a high and reedy whisper.
“Good,” Reaper growls in reply. He does not relent his grip. His voice is deep, like a dull knife against rocks, and so unlike Gabriel's that it hurts. No wonder no one recognised him. How would they? But Jack supposes he doesn't sound the same either; by less supernatural means, simply age and wounds to the throat that have made his own into something similar.
He's not a monster. Neither of them are. They're both just playing pretend.
“No,” Jack says, his own hands finally coming up to grip over Reaper’s, not to pull them away but just to slide over the top of them, “It’s killing me that I never told you how much I appreciated you.”
For a moment, they do struggle. Locked together, Reaper’s hands squeeze and Jack’s scramble against them now, because he's strong and the body won't simply let itself die- but then, Reaper’s grip suddenly slackens.
Jack takes a deep breath which feels like black fire. He breathes in, and out, and even though he tastes iron and still feels like he's going to be sick or pass out (or perhaps bleed out), he talks. He says the things he didn't say before. Because Gabriel deserves that. He deserves to know-
“I never told you how much I needed you. How much we all did.”
Reaper’s hands slacken further. His claws slip down, an inch or two, until they rest on the bottom of Soldier 76’s neck. There they rest, metal against metal, on the dog-tags of both men. Jack can't tell if he knows, or if he's reading them. It doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things.
“We took you for granted. I was so used to you having my back that I stopped having yours. And I never… I never…”
He hasn’t realised how his head has lolled forward until he feels the top edge of Reaper’s mask a hair’s breadth from his forehead. It seems the violence has died now, and Reaper's form is still. For a moment, he can feel everything. The wind which blows at the hair on the nape of his neck. The cold sting of blood on his knee, the shuddering of his chest, the headache which pounds in his skull. How his eyes ache, his throat feels like an iron ball is lodged just below his Adam's apple. How Reaper feels almost solid, not like a ghost at all. He feels like a person, an inch away. He's solid, and real. He's still real.
“I never made sure you knew that-“
His voice breaks. He can’t say it.
“-Until it was too late. I yelled the last time I saw you. I screamed and I said things I didn’t mean and it’s been six years and it still hurts-“
All these things bubbling to the surface. He pauses, to take another breath. He's glad for the visor, and the night. Water drips down his chin. Splashes the stones below, before seeping through cracks. Reaper hasn't said anything else, hasn't moved. They are simply locked in this spot, until the words are done. And Jack's voice grows angry, bitter- at himself- and he grits his teeth.
“I never thought that it would be the last day, the last moment we had together and then you were dead and all I could do was sit at your grave and fucking weep-“
As quickly as the shotgun had slammed into his jaw, two strong hands tug him closer. It feels out of nowhere, as if the seconds of initiation have been removed. Reaper does not move normally; but here he is. He feels two hands tug at his jacket. He lets himself be pulled into a hug. It's freezing. Reaper feels so cold. The smoke feels like nitrogen, like liquid against his bare skin, and it stings in a strange way. But he doesn't care about that. It is a sensation to be catalogued, and promptly ignored.
He returns the hug just as fiercely.
“I should have stayed with you, or died with you, I should have made sure," Jack says, his voice rough with grief, "I'm sorry."
There is a pause, but then an answer.
“Jack,” Reaper mumbles, and though his voice is still the reverberation of a phantom, through it Jack can hear Gabriel’s voice. It's just a whisper, but it's there all the same. Something in that finally breaks him.
“I’m so sorry Gabe,” Jack wheezes, burying his face in the curve of Reaper’s shoulder. Neither man will admit it, nor acknowledge it, but Jack weeps against the cold fabric with years of pent up agony. A quiet, shuddering agony.
For a few moments, they hold each other in the quiet rooftop night. Cars honk far below, the wind hums through aerials, and the stars look down, silent watchers as the tide begins to turn. When Jack's shuddering stills, Reaper stills too.
“I’m not him,” Reaper says, quiet, “He died. I’m just what’s left.”
Jack listens to the people far below them. He feels detached from them- but not in the usual way. He feels timeless, in this moment. A small smile creeps onto his face. A hidden thing, just for the two of them.
“Even as a shadow,” Jack replies, equally quiet, “Even as a dream.”
He feels Reaper's grip tighten.
“Euripides,” Reaper notes, "... Nerd."
It's absurd, and it makes Jack laugh, hoarsely. His throat is locked up tight, his whole body quivers like a newborn foal with how wretched he feels, and yet he feels hopeful for the first time since he died. He chuckles, and chuckles, low and strained, because it feels like something, finally, has changed.
All he can do is cling to that hope just as tightly as he clings to Gabriel. He feels the dull clunk of Reaper's mask press against his visor. Forehead to forehead, as much as possible. Perhaps one day they will both take the masks off. But for now, this is enough.
It is more than enough.