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"A little on the nose, don't you think?" Jack said.
Ana shrugged. They were standing at the entrance to the Necropolis and she had to admit, while she had gotten accustomed to the shadowy pathways and ominious hieroglyphics, it was perhaps a bit much for what was intended to be secret hideout. Especially given that it now housed two people presumed dead by the rest of the world.
"It works," she said, and Jack scoffed but followed her down the corridor and into the room at its end. "Nanobiotic synthesis machine is over there, if you need to recharge your fields," she said, pointing around the room. "I'm tracking Talon mentions on that computer, be careful with it though, I doubt it's particularly secure. That's the feed from the camera on the roof, it's motion sensitive but I want us doing shifts keeping watch as well. Kitchen's in the corner, I have some food stored, but we'll need to start making more runs now that it's two of us."
"I have some MREs with me," Jack said. He adjusted the straps on his pack and Ana could almost have laughed at how much this reminded her of when they had first met. The first time that her life could be contained in a single bag, the first time she had survived on vacuum-sealed calories and sleeping with one eye open, the first time Jack had taken over the communal living quarters.
Then, though, it had been because of his insomniac habit of plonking down in a chair, wrapped up in one of Gabriel's hoodies, and chatting with everyone who passed through and laughing too loudly and too often. Before, Jack had made his mark by virtue of being big, now, her life was so small that he did so simply by virtue of existing.
"Where do you sleep?" Jack asked. Ana jerked her thumb back at the small rear exit of the room, and Jack nodded and started towards it. Ana's threw out an arm to stop him.
"What do you think you're doing?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Uh. Setting up my cot?"
"Absolutely not." He stared at her for a moment, baffled, and then groaned.
"Ana, come on–"
"Five years."
"Ana–"
"Five years of me not getting a goddamn wink of sleep, after all day stakeouts–"
"This was decades ago–"
"Because YOU snore like a truck made of chainsaws."
Ana's arms were folded and her feet firmly planted in front of the exit. Jack cleared his throat.
"It's, ah, a security risk–"
“We both know that is patently untrue."
"I don't want to have to walk across this whole thing to get breakfast," he said, now somewhat openly whining.
"You are literally a super soldier. You'll manage."
"Ana–" She pointed at the main entrance.
"There is a perfectly nice tomb just across the way. Go."
With one last hangdog look that somehow was conveyed through his visor, Jack turned and left.
-
"We have a new report,” Jack said. Ana looked up from her tea and over to where Jack was sitting, in front of the monitors and computers they had accumulated.
It was four weeks since they had been reunited, and they had fallen into a routine. Their days began staggered, Ana's as she watched the beginning of dawn creeping out from around the temple, Jack's when she woke him and handed him a cup of Nescafé and he stumbled up to the rooftop to relieve her. If they needed something, Jack would go down to the market later, hiding his face, and come back with supplies, hiding his bottle of whiskey unsuccessfully. Otherwise, one would sit on the roof keeping watch, and one would sit at the computer and scroll through pictures of Reaper and the husk-like corpses he left in his wake. The times they were in the same room together, they would tell each other what they had seen, or they would sit in silence.
Ana walked across the room and Jack scooted over to one of the other monitors, the map where they marked down every sighting of Reaper. Ana felt a pang of dread– they were both waiting for the day he found them, neither of them prepared, neither of them the least bit sure how to prepare, and while Talon seemed to be giving Helix a wide birth, he had been at the compound for a reason, and he knew them, and Gabriel had always seemed to know their enemies' next ten steps, always knew where to lay the trap, always knew where the breaking point was–
But Jack put the mark down an ocean away. Relief washed over Ana, but Jack remained staring at the map, his shoulders hunched and tight. Ana looked at him quizzically, looked back at the map, and realized.
"Oh," she said.
"Yeah." She sat down next to Jack and they stared together at the little blinking dot that said Los Angeles.
"There were only two dead, this time," Jack said, breaking the silence. He sounded hopeful and pathetic and so Ana swallowed the snide observation that two murders were still two too many.
She allowed herself to ask, "Were they...?" Jack shook his head quickly.
"No. Just... randoms." Ana nodded.
"Do you think he...?"
"I don't know," Jack said. "I don't even know if anyone’s still there. His father died, a couple months after you left." Ana winced at the euphemism but he did not seem to notice. "That was the last time he went home, as far as I know." He laughed bitterly. "'Course, I clearly wasn't the most observant about Gabe, those years."
Ana did not particularly feel like reliving Jack's guilt at the moment, so she said nothing. He moved on on his own, and turned to her and asked, "Do you think he would even want to see them?"
Ana thought back to her years alone, thought back to sitting in libraries and googling Fareeha's and Sam's names and crying quietly at all the wonderful and terrifying things they were doing without her. She thought back to the darkness that swallowed up all of her old friends as they either sank into obscurity or below the law or into the earth, and thought back to the guilt that she let in as their lights went out. She thought back to the letter, how it had taken her weeks to write it and months to get up the courage to send it. How it had taken so long for her to convince herself that it did not matter that Fareeha was doing better without her in her life, she should still have the right to choose.
She thought back to the communicator that sat at the side of her bed, its number scrawled at the bottom of the letter, always reading "0 NEW MESSAGES."
She thought back to Gabriel's face.
"He would want to see them," she said. "But I don't know if he would go. He's not..."
She did not know how to finish the sentence, but Jack still nodded. They were silent for a bit before he spoke again.
“Do you remember the time I met his parents?”
"Oh my God. That was amazing. He got so flustered when he let it slip that that's what you had been doing, even though everyone knew about you two–"
"Everyone knew about us!" Jack gestured empathetically and Ana grinned. "I kept telling him that but he was like no, no, plausible deniability–"
"And then Rein and Liao started going in, asking him when it was going to be their turn to meet them, and what did he say?"
"'They're moving to Canada tomorrow.'" The two broke down in laughter. Still giggling slightly, Jack exited out of the police ticker and pushed the map away. Ana walked back to the kettle and began her attempt to salvage her tea. About an hour later, she heard a massive snorking noise, and looked up to see Jack resting his head on his arms on the desk, fast asleep.
"Jack," she said loudly. "JACK!"
He woke with a start, looked back at her, and grumbled “You’re not even asleep,” when she pointed to the door.
“Five years,” she said, and he snorted but got up and left, leaving her alone with the dot marked Los Angeles.
-
"Ana."
She gasped as she woke up and instinctively reached for her sidearm, but Jack said, "Ana!" again and she stopped, took a breath, and tried to will her heart rate down.
"What is it?"
"That Sandcrawler was parked near us again tonight. Ten minutes, around the same location as last time. I came down as soon as it left."
"Shit." Ana sat up and rubbed her face. "Helix plates?"
"Yeah. But..."
"I know." They could not trust anyone, and Fareeha had no reason to trust her. "It was about time to move anyway. Where are we going next? Numbani?"
"Not with Doomfist at large, we aren't."
"Right. Capetown?"
Jack nodded slowly. "It'd be easy to get lost there," he said. "As good a place as any." He stifled a massive yawn.
"We can start moving out in a few hours, if you want some sleep."
"Thanks." Jack stood up and she closed her eye and rolled on her side, only to open it and roll back when she did not here him leaving. He was kneeling at the foot of her bed, holding one of the photos she kept there.
"Jack," she said in a small voice. He turned the frame to her and her heart sank as young versions of themselves and Gabriel stared out at her.
"I had this one on my desk, back at Overwatch," he said quietly.
"I remember. I... God, this is ridiculous, I broke into my own home and stole my copy from myself." She sat up slowly, feeling the strain of fatigue and age. "After... I thought about getting rid of it, but..."
"Yeah." Jack set the picture down and looked at the other pictures, Fareeha and their team grinning and posing, Fareeha soaring on her back, Fareeha floating there in three intangible dimensions.
"I missed you," he said. Ana looked over at him and he had taken the visor off, and she knew he could not see very well without it, but his gaze remained fixed on the pictures.
"I'm sorry," she said, and he shook his head.
"I'm not– I don't blame you– I just–" He rubbed his face, tracing the scar that cut across it. "There were so many times when I wondered what would have happened if you had been there. When everything was falling apart at Overwatch, and I couldn't trust anyone. When I woke up after the HQ exploded and I just ran, without even trying to find out who was dead and who was alive. When Gabe had the gun to my head. And then you were there. And you saved me. And I don’t know what I did to deserve getting you back. But I still don’t know what to do.”
"I missed you too," Ana whispered. "And I'm sorry." He shook his head again, vigorously, and she saw that his eyes were wet.
"I'm not–"
"But I am." He rested his head on his hands and she tried to keep her voice steady. "They died because of me, Jack. Please," she said as he opened his mouth to cut her off, and he closed it reluctantly. "You almost died because of me. I'd failed before but never that badly and it all just added up and I–"
Her voice cracked and she stopped and closed her eye. Took a breath. "It felt like the world had outgrown me," she said. "And I wanted to give Fareeha and you and everyone left the chance to do the same."
Jack snorted and she looked over at him, surprised. "I think the world's outgrown the both of us," he said, and she smiled.
"Yeah." There was a long silence.
"I miss him, Ana."
"I do too," she said.
She said nothing as Jack turned and sat down at the foot of her bed and rested his head against the end of her cot. She waited until he started snoring, and then she crawled out of bed and sat down next to him, took his hand and lay her head on his shoulder. She closed her eye and they sat there, her pictures all spread out behind them.