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The body lies limp in the corner, limbs askew, head slumping forward. The mask is stark white against the dark gloom of the dusty old bar. One shotgun rests in a limp hand, the other rests abandoned in the center of the room. The black leather coat is riddled with bullet holes. Belts constrain the chest like they’re holding the essence of the man inside.
This is what Jesse McCree sees when he muscles open the door and sheds weak, pre-dawn light inside the vacant pub. He sucks in a breath of stale air like a dying man. His heavy footsteps are hesitant, but he drops to one knee beside the still body. Metal hand hovers over the white mask, then he thinks better of it and pulls the shotgun from the limp hand instead. Holds the wrist, pulls the glove off with his flesh hand.
The hand is pale and stiff, with purple discoloration on the skin. He runs the pads of his fingers over the joints of the knuckles and feels every familiar scar. He thumbs the back of the hand. He lingers over the sliver of a scar that pierces through the hand.
Commander Reyes had many scars. Most healed, but many never had. McCree could draw the canvas of the stars in them. He could trace their familiar stories. Reyes’ hands, he knew. He knew the callouses, he knew the scars. He knew the freckles and the little imperfections. McCree could tell a man he needed to know by feel, could tell bits of history by the way a man walked, by the press of his heels. By the slump of his silhouette. McCree had been trained for it before he’d known -- way back when he was a little punk pickpocketing. A soft hand was always a better looting target than a rough, worn hand.
McCree didn’t need to look Reaper in the eye to know who he was. He held the answer here in his grasp.
He turns over the hand in his possession. He traces the palm of his hand, drifting along the lifeline. He swallows as his nail follows the groove of the split where it breaks and splinters off. Fortune telling and superstitions -- that’s what Reyes always said McCree grew up on. Ain’t healthy for a growing boy, lies and silliness.
There was a time when the hand he holds had grasped him by the hips and held him down. There was a time where this hand dragged him kicking and screaming into Overwatch custody. There was a time when this hand had dragged him through fire and out of hell. A time when this hand reached out and offered a foolish, superstitious boy a choice.
“You always did believe in giving second chances,” McCree mutters. After a moment of breathing in the smoke and dust, he drops his head down to press a kiss to the open palm.
His eyes are closed so he doesn’t see the head’s slight jerk. He doesn’t see the rise and fall of the chest, but by the time he hears the labored breath, it’s too late. The hand snaps to life with shocking force. Within a second, it’s wrapped around McCree’s neck. Another instant and a knee crushes him down to the ground.
Another instant, and the other knee holds down his mechanical arm at the joint. Reaper straddles him, one hand crushing his wrist and the other crushing his windpipe.
“You always were a sentimental fool,” the snarling voice sneers. The body on top of his is cold. The eyes of the mask are darker than night. Spots dance across the field of vision of his left eye. The right is already bad on good days and already blurred out now.
His heart throbs in his chest, his chest could be broken. He’s held in place by a man with inhuman strength and a desire to only ever kill and it hurts. It hurts that he knows who the man is, that he knows for sure that he’s dead. Reyes wouldn’t hesitate, not for a target. Not for one with a big red serape and a silly cowboy hat and a penchant for following up on bad clues.
Peacekeeper is in its holster on his hip, but he won’t get to grab it. He’s going to die, defenseless, because he had to hold the hand of a corpse.
He kicks up but it hits nothing but air. He bucks his hips but can’t get leverage. He twists his metal hand but the hand is crushed down between the tile of the terrible bar floor and the metal plating covering Reaper’s knee.
“You won’t get out of this, Jesse.” Reaper snarls. He sounds almost smug. “I taught you everything you know.”
And McCree can just see it, in his mind's eye. Somebody’s going to find his corpse tucked into the corner covered in a blood red serape. No blood to be found but a dusty cowboy with spurs on his boots and a hat tipped over his face. It’ll look like he’d fallen asleep but for the terrible bruising on his neck.
He’ll never answer the recall in his inbox, he’ll never see another soul. He’s going to die out here in Route 66, exactly where he’d been picked up all those years ago. And it’d be fitting but for the way he’d fought so long and so hard to get to where he was.
McCree juts his chin out defiantly, eyes flashing. He smiles, a harsh, ragged thing.
When Reaper balks, McCree strikes like a desert rattlesnake. He kicks a knee up, twists his flesh hand free. He can’t reach Peacekeeper but he can reach a flashbang and that’s what he goes for, slapping it in Reaper’s face. It goes off with a bang.
His ears ring, his eyes sting, but Reaper’s the one who yells in pain. McCree rolls away in an instant. Peacekeepers in his hand and he’s fired off six shots into the belly of the beast before he’s registered what he’s done.
“Not everything,” his voice is ragged and broken and his hat is scattered to the wind. The air smells like blood and gunfire.
Reaper’s form seems to quiver and shake. He feels the weight of the stare from the two voids that make up the eyes. The form dissipates into smoke with a horrible laugh. It sounds nothing like the chuckle from his memories but it’s there all the same, haunting and bleak.
“You always were a good shot.” His voice almost sounds proud. Then the form is gone. McCree staggers, holds himself upright with his metal arm as he coughs up blood onto the dusty floor.
He takes the abandoned claw-like glove with him when he leaves, chasing after the man in black who haunts his dreams.