Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jack and Ana don’t talk much, the first night in the Necropolis. Her biotic rifle is keeping the pain away and kept his gunshot wound mostly healed, but the tear in the skin is still there, and it’s not exactly comfortable. For the first time, Ana’s having to slow herself down to keep pace with him. She lets him into the ruins, shows him around the little kitchen and lab, and then the back room where she sleeps. She has pictures set up at the foot of her bed, the soft light of the holograms turning them into a miniature shrine. Jack sees the picture of her, him, and Gabe, and it sticks in his throat.

“I should sleep somewhere else,” he tells her. She frowns.

“We’re grown. We’ve slept together in the same bed before. You really don’t have to.”

Jack knows that. Almost every mission, Ana set her sleeping bag right next to his and they would whisper until one of them got too tired or Torbjörn yelled at them to shut up. Even after they were forced to share close quarters, they worked together constantly at Overwatch. They spent the night at each other’s places a good amount, when Fareeha was at school or her father’s. It’s not that Jack’s uncomfortable with Ana.

It’s that they haven’t spoken in years and Ana just saved his life, again. He knows if he cries in front of her, she’ll end up taking care of him again, when God, he can’t keep doing that to her. And he knows if stays around that stupid picture much longer, he’s going to start crying.

“It’s okay,” he says. “This way, we’ll have too different lookout points.” And he leaves before she can argue with him any more.

He sets down his cot in another tomb and dumps his bag and kit next to it. Rolls out his sleeping bag and starts to strip down to his boxers and undershirt. His hand runs over the shotgun pellet holes in the back of his jacket.

He hadn’t expect Gabriel to greet him with open arms. He hadn’t expected Gabriel to waste time monologuing before he killed him. Really, what just happened was the best he could have possibly hoped for, in almost every way.

But it’s still not what he wanted, and not what they had. He still misses Gabriel, even now that all his worst fears about him have been irrefutably confirmed. It wasn’t his first thought, or even his second, but that makes it all the worse that as he was lying there under Gabriel’s boot, he actively felt relieved that Gabriel was alive.

He thinks he could still kill Gabriel, if he had the chance. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t still want him alive.

He lies down, closes his eyes, and tries to sleep, despite the persistent ache in his back.

He wakes up to a light pressure on his front. It’s still enough to send him into fight-or-flight. He bolts up and reaches for his rifle but there’s not grappling or gunshot, just a thump on his lap and a perturbed, “mrow!”

Jack blinks in the dark and as he looks around, he sees glints of paired shine. He turns on the lamp at his bedside. There are four cats sitting patiently by his cot, and one with tuxedo fur righting itself at his feet.

“Uh,” Jack says. He’s still mostly asleep. “Hi?”

The cats don’t move. One of them meows loudly. Jack had cats on the farm growing up. He knows what this means. “Uh. Okay. Hang on.” He pulls up his backpack– the tuxedo cat tries to stick its head in, Jack has to push it back– and roots around. He finds a protein bar. He breaks off a piece and offers it to the pushy cat. It sniffs it thoughtfully, then literally turns up its nose. Jack sighs.

“I don’t have anything for you,” he tells his audience. None of the cats move, because apparently they can smell his lies. Jack’s hand falls to the package of beef jerky at the bottom of his bag. He got it at a Sheetz in Pennsylvania and that was months ago, but he’s been savoring it. His treat when he’s had a rough day or needs something that reminds him of being a kid. He’s only down to a couple pieces and he had been looking forward to them.

But the cats are still looking at him. The one in his lap nudges his hand with its head. Jack scratches it behind the ears, sighs, and pulls out the package. He swears their ears all perk up in unison.

“You’re going to have to share,” he tells them as he rips up the meat. There’s not much to go around but the cats devour it and lick their chops. The tuxedo cat rubs up against him and Jack resumes scratching it. “I don’t have anything else,” he tells it. It purrs anyway. The rest of the cats wander off after a few minutes, when they’ve come to that same conclusion, but the tuxedo cat stays with Jack, letting him scratch its ears until Jack drifts back to sleep.

When he wakes up and heads outside later that morning, he hears a small cacophony coming towards the front of the settlement. He heads towards it and finds Ana with a small herd of cats at her feet and a big bag of kibble in her hands, pouring it into tupperware bowls. She looks up at his footsteps and gives an embarrassed smile.

“There are a lot of stray cats around here,” she says. “And they’re very sweet.” One of them yowls at another but stops when Ana tsks at it. Jack recognizes a couple of the cats, and kneels down to scratch a familiar calico.

“They woke me up this morning,” he says and quickly adds, “It’s fine!” when Ana winces. “You’re right. They’re good cats.” He straightens up and looks over them. “Buying food for them, you don’t think it’s attracting suspicion, do you?”

“It’s just cat food,” Ana says. “And anyway. I’m an old woman. They expect me to have cats.” Jack snorts. “I mean, I guess I could stop if it’s a problem, but…”

She trails off. There’s a cat winding its way around her legs, purring all the while. Jack shakes his head.

“It’s not a problem at all,” he says. “They’re good cats.”

-

A couple weeks later, they have a problem.

One of the cats that stops by every morning has a swollen belly. Jack points it out to Ana, and tells her that it’s pregnant. He grew up on a farm. He knows this stuff. Ana reminds Jack that she herself was pregnant and so she knows this stuff too. In any case, Ana’s a bit more lenient with the pregnant cat, letting it follow her back into the Necropolis and lounge near the warmth of the generator.

One night he’s on lookout when he walkie-talkie crackles on and Ana tells him to come down to the main room. He grabs his rifle and sprints, expecting the worst. Instead, he finds Ana kneeling beside the cat. And a new cat.

“She uh. Decided to give birth here,” Ana tells him. Jack lowers his rifle. Ana’s nestled her cloak around the cat, and while it’s irreparably stained with afterbirth, the kittens seem comfortable in it. The mother is breathing heavily but doesn’t seem to be in any kind of distress. Jack sits where he was standing, a little ways away.

“She’s doing fine,” he says. Ana nods. “But she’s probably going to want to stay here for a bit.”

Ana nods again and sighs. “I wish I could tell her it’s not safe here.”

“Well,” Jack says. “We’ll just have to try to make sure it is.”

The cat stays in labor for the rest of the day, but finally seems to rest after the fifth kitten is born. She cleans the other ones well enough, but the fifth is still in its amniotic sac when she lays her head down. Jack takes out his knife, moves over quietly but quickly, and carefully, carefully, removes the sac. He takes off his jacket and rubs the kitten with it, and when it takes its first breaths he hears Ana let out her own.

“We’re going to have to name them,” Ana tells him as he sits back and lets the kitten crawl to its mother’s side.

“We don’t have to.”

“Don’t give me some farm boy ‘don’t get attached’ bullshit.” Jack snorts because it’s very much not the farm in him, he named every damn tree on the place as a kid, it’s the soldier in him telling him not to get attached, and Ana’s a soldier too. He knows she knows.

But he also knows he really wants to name them too.  

“Uh. Okay.” He looks the kittens over. A couple are white and gray, one’s mostly white, and there are two orange tabbies. He points to the orange tabby on the far left. “Clementine.”

“That’s boring,” Ana says. He stares at her in disbelief.

“It’s cute!”

“As a person who named a human, Jack, trust me. When you have the chance to name something dumb, you get dumb.” She points to the next kitten, the mostly white one. “Stinky.”

“It was just born. Of course it’s stinky.”

“Stinky,” Ana repeats, with greater emphasis. Jack rolls his eyes.

“Fine. Fine.” They both shift to the next one, a white and gray kitten. “Sargent Pudgy.”

“That’s more like it. Mr. Saxobeat.”

“Big Ugly.”

“Aw, Jack, you have a namesake!” Jack shoves her. Ana laughs. The mother raises her head and glares at them. They fall into a chagrined silence, until Ana breaks it with a whisper.

“What do we call her?”

“Can we call her Mrs. Paws?” Ana cocks her head. “That was the name of one of my aunt’s cats. She was one of my favorites.”

“Oh,” Ana says. “Sure.” And then they give Mrs. Paws the quiet she desires, and after a bit Ana gets up and heads back to the roof to continue their lookout.

The kittens grow fast and, even with their stubby little legs, seem to move faster, climbing onto the keyboard when Jack’s trying to do surveillance and knocking over anything they turn their backs on for more than a second. Jack sees one of them trying to play with his rifle once, and he thinks its the fastest he’s ever run.

“We should probably try to move them out soon,” Ana says one night, about a month after they’re born. “They’re big enough to relocate. And it’s still not safe for them to be here.”

Jack nods. Looks at the pictures of Reaper on the monitors. Reminds himself that they’re soldiers, not farmers. Neither he nor Ana say anything for a bit.

“Still,” Ana says, breaking the silence. “It was nice having them around, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was.”

“It was almost like having pets. And I haven’t had pets in forever. Since you wouldn’t allow them on base.”

“It wasn’t me, it was–” He looks over in time to see Ana rolling her eyes, so he rolls them back twice as hard. “It was regulation. And I missed having pets way more than you did.”

“Are you seriously trying to get into a dick-measuring contest with me about who loves animals more?”

“No, because there’s not a contest.” Ana shoves him. He grins. “If you had really wanted one, you probably could have found a workaround. Do you remember–” Jack stops himself.

“Gabriel got those big dogs,” Ana finishes for him. “And got that cabin near base to stash them. Had McCree go walk them all the time during the day. Do you remember that one lab? He smelled terrible.”

“Bertie. And he was a good dog.” He smelled bad because he was old. Gabe always adopted senior dogs. He’d have them for a fraction of the time Jack had his childhood dogs, the ones he raised from puppies, and Gabe cried like a baby every time one of them died. One of them had died within a few months of Gabe adopting them. But Gabe loved his old dogs. Said they were the sweetest. Had the most character.

“Fareeha took the one he had at the time of the explosion,” Ana says, cutting into his thoughts. Jack blinks.

“Really?”

“Yeah. None of his family was able to, and you know Fareeha, she always loved those mutts.” Ana shakes her head but she’s smiling. “Her father had dogs and she always asked me why she couldn’t have one on base.”

“Her and Gabe both.”

“Well, he got his dogs anyway, and so did she. Had it for a few years. Some site did a human interest story about it.” Ana snorts. “Fareeha’s only comment in it was plugging a local shelter, though.”

“Ah.” Jack leans back and takes a sip of his tea. It's still bitter, he'd still like some sugar, but he's getting used to it. “She’s a good kid.”

“Yes,” Ana says in a small voice. “She is.”

-

One morning when Jack heads to the front of the Necropolis, there’s a Helix desert cruiser parked up front, and a Helix soldier among the cats. He freezes– he doesn’t have his gun, probably better, so he can try to pass as a civilian, but what if they recognize him– but the Helix soldier just waves affably at him.

“You the one that stole Ari from me?” she calls out to him. Jack stares mutely. She kneels down to a brown tabby and scratches him behind the ears as she shakes his head. “You little turncoat, you,” she says to the cat. “Ghost your oldest friend the second someone starts giving you food.” Jack tries to set the bag of kibble down without disturbing them but it’s no use, all the cats snap to attention at the sound of the paper and quickly move into position. The Helix soldier stands up and walks towards him.

“Corporal Zanab Khouri,” she says, extending a hand. He shakes it. “Quite the setup you got here.”

Jack swallows. “Is there a problem?” he asks, and his terror is only marginally helped when Zanab laughs in response.

“On the contrary.”

Apparently, Zanab informs him as he feeds the cats, people have noticed that the stray cats in the area have started to hang around the Necropolis. And they’ve seen the food dishes left out. “We don’t want to evict you,” Zanab tells him, and Jack feels a stab of guilt and shame when he realizes she thinks he’s homeless. “Just, you know, we like these guys too. And so we wanted to see how you all were doing.”

“We’re doing alright,” Jack tells her, and what’s baffling is that it’s true.

They talk for a bit. Jack tells her about the kittens, Zanab tells him about her cats at home. Eventually Ana joins them. She must have been watching on the CCTV, because she’s in full niqab, a veil hiding her eye tattoo. Jack sees that tattoo in graffiti and tourist tchotchkes all over the city. Ana’s still a hero to Egyptians. Ana, Zanab would definitely recognize.

In disguise though, Zanab just smiles and scoots over to make room for her on the stoop. “Good morning,” she says over Jack.

“Good morning,” Ana responds. “I have the kettle going, and can bring out tea shortly. But I wanted to say hello.”

“I don’t want to impose!”

“I insist.” Jack can tell Ana’s smiling under her veil and he leans back a little. He knows Arabic, has spent a good amount of time in Egypt, but he also knows when Ana just needs to be with other Egyptians. Particularly young women who remind her of Fareeha.

“I’m always happy to see Helix around,” Ana says to Zanab. “You all did a great job getting Null Sector out of the city. Your people were much more professional than the National Guard.” Zanab beams. “How long have you been working for them, dear?”

“Second year now.”

“And how are you liking it so far?” she asks. Jack tries to keep his face neutral, tries to think how he can help Ana get to the information she wants without arousing suspicion. He arrives at the conclusion that the best he can do is move back even further.

“It’s good!” Zanab says, apparently oblivious to both their machinations. “The temple is a bit of a commute from the city, but it’s been pretty secure. Better than Numbani branch.”

“That’s good,” Ana says. She’s sounding a bit distracted. “And your bosses? They treat you well?”

It’s too forward a question. Jack winces. But Zanab looks crestfallen rather than suspicious. “We had turnover recently,” she says. “My commanding officer was killed in action.”

Ana goes still. Her face is completely covered but Jack can see the terror on her face with perfect clarity. He wants to take her hand so badly but he can’t give her away, but he can’t do anything–

“Oh?” Ana says.

“I wasn’t close with him,” Zanab says. “But he was a good man. Captain Amari is doing well, but she’s a bit more distant than he was.”

Ana’s whole body crumples in relief. Jack can’t bring himself to judge her for it. “That’s good,” Ana says. “That your new captain is doing well, I mean. I’m sure it’s a difficult job.”

“It is what it is. And speaking of.” Zanab stands up. “Ma’am, I hate to put you through work for nothing, but I’m afraid I have to leave now. I’m so sorry.”

Ana waves a hand. “Please. I was making tea anyway. A raincheck, then.”

“Alright.” Zanab stands, giving the cats around her a final scratch, and gets back in her cruiser. Jack and Ana watch it drive off.

“Well,” Jack says. “Fuck.”

“It’s fine,” Ana says, as she pulls off her veil.

“Look, I’m relieved Fareeha’s doing well too, but Helix knows we’re here now, that’s–”

“Jack.” Ana sounds amused. It doesn’t help his stress. “It’s fine. She’s not going to call the U.N. down on us. She’s not even going to call animal control on us. Trust me, Jack.” She stands up. “The way to an Egyptian’s heart is through the pussy.”

Jack throws a handful of kibble at her back as she heads back into the kitchen. She flips him the bird.

-

Ana’s right, though. Zanab doesn’t call animal control on them. She does come by with a box of towels and an old heat lamp. “Us at the base did a little drive,” she tells them. “For the next time you guys get kittens.”

They do have more kittens and this time, it’s an old friend. They recognize the signs now when the tuxedo cat starts following them into the buildings. Jack lines a box with the towels and sets the heat lamp up a safe distance above it. He hopes Tuxedo will pick that, not the generator again. She does, mercifully. She has five kittens fine, but she stays in contractions after that, with no kitten coming out. Ana pours a vial of biotic fluid on Jack’s hands and he carefully helps her deliver the last one.

It’s another black and white cat, Jack realizes, but this one has its white splotch right on his face. Like a mask.

“You know what we should call that one?” he whispers to Ana as she sits back, relieved.

“What?”

“Gabe Jr.” Ana laughs and then immediately puts a hand over her mouth.

“You’re a shithead,” she tells him. He grins.

“Language. There are children present. Gabe Jr., cover your ears.”

They let Tuxedo and her kittens stay in the Necropolis for longer than they did Mrs. Paws. Jack could say it’s because of his sentimentality, but also the cats are just a bigger part of their lives in general. They’ve started looking up symptoms for sickly looking cats, and buying flea collars and other minor medicines. If a cat’s looking especially ill, Ana will coax it into the tombs and they’ll care for it for a few days. Their conversations are less and less about crime and corruption, and more and more about where Boogers the Three Legged Cat likes to be scritched the most.

Jack realizes just how much things have changed a few months after that. He’s at the general store, buying a bag of kibble and a pack of wet food. The storeowner rings him up silently, as usual. But as Jack turns to head out he asks, “Are you one of the people out at the ruins? Taking care of the cats?”

“Uh,” Jack says, very eloquently. But apparently that’s enough for the storeowner because he heads through the curtain into the back. He comes back with a package of cat treats, which he tosses on top of the package of wet food.

“Oh,” Jack says. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” the storeowner says. Then he returns to his book of crosswords. Jack leaves, in somewhat of a daze.

As he walks back to the Necropolis, he thinks. He had been terrified of being recognized as the Strike Commander, and never expected to be identified as the Cat Man. But the latter label fits better, these days. More and more space in the main room is being used for storing cat food and caring for various cats. He doesn’t think he’s touched Ana’s computer setup in weeks. Those pictures of Gabriel are still on the monitors, watching over them. But they’re not doing anything about it.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about Gabriel anymore. It’s just that right now, it’s enough for him to know that Gabriel’s alive.

He brings it up to Ana that night, when they’re having tea on the roof. “I was thinking about that too,” she says. She sets down her cup of and stares out over the desert. The temple where Fareeha works is on the horizon. “It’s not that I’m not still worried about him, or don’t want to help him any more. It’s just…”

“I like this,” Jack supplies, when she seems to have lost her words. She gives him a grateful smile.

“Yeah. And you know, I don’t know how you were doing before we met up–” Jack snorts, because he thinks she has a pretty good idea, “–but I was miserable. I was so angry and lonely and just…”

She trails off again. Jack scoots closer and puts his arm around her. She leans into his shoulder. “I’m not miserable now,” she says. Her voice is soft. “And I’ll be honest, Jack. I was miserable even before I was shot. I’d been miserable for so, so long. But doing this, with you? I’m not. And I know it’s selfish, but–”

“I’m happy doing this too,” Jack says. “I want to keep doing this.” Because he knows Ana, knows she hates doing things for herself, hates that, needs to do something for her. “I love you,” he adds, because he really wants to keep doing this, and really loves her, so much. She smiles and he leans against her head.

“I love you too,” she says. They sit there and look out over the desert, the temple, and the cats.

Chapter Text

There are too many cats in Talon.   

Akande’s the worst offender. He has about four cats, all purebred persians. They have free reign over the base and shed year round. He got them suspiciously soon after Sombra made a joke about him being a Bond villain.

And speaking of Sombra, she just has the one cat, but she and Widow are ridiculous about it. Sometimes they take it to meetings. And Gabriel honestly doesn’t if Sombra’s actually named the thing Cabrón or if it’s just a nickname. And right now, he's having to shove it away to keep it from sticking its asshole in his face when he's trying to look at Sombra's screens.

It’s not like Gabriel hates cats. He just misses his dogs, is all.

“I’ve pinged Morrison a few times," Sombra is saying, ignoring the minor tussle in her periphery. "And he hasn’t gotten back to me. I don’t know if he finally wised up to me or what, but that line’s gone dead.” She stares at the static messaging thread on the screen and sighs. “Which is too bad. He’s with Amari now. I was kind of hoping I could get her number.”

“Sombra.”

“I wouldn’t make a move or anything, just, bragging rights, you know? She’s like the alpha milf.”

“Sombra.”

“It’s like, part of the lesbian licensing procedure that you have to have a crush on her.”

“Sombra.” Gabriel runs a hand down his face. “Find out what they’re doing.”

“So touchy.”  Sombra weaves her way through codes and files that Gabriel can barely make out. She starts frowning at a certain point, and suddenly security camera footage starts popping up more. It all still looks like Cairo, which surprises Gabriel. The city’s been quiet ever since he last saw them there, as far as he knows. And even Ana couldn’t get Jack to work subtly.

Sombra slows and now she’s smiling. “I think I figured it out,” she says. Gabriel leans in and squints. He recognizes Jack, he’d recognize his silhouette anywhere, it sends anger and sadness through his core before his brain even registers. But Jack’s not beating up some criminal in a back alley like he normally is in Sombra’s surveillance. He’s holding a giant bag of something in a minimart.

“What the hell is he doing?” he asks.

“That’s a great fucking question,” Sombra responds.

-

Gabriel’s still not sure this isn’t some elaborate prank Sombra’s pulling on him. It’s not that Jack’s not that pathetic. Or that Ana doesn’t like cats enough. But standing in a mewling mass of felines in front of an ancient Egyptian tomb, Gabriel can’t help but feel massively ridiculous. If pictures of this end up in the Talon group chat, he’s stationing her in Siberia.

But sure enough, the door to the tomb opens, and all the cats suddenly snap to attention. And Ana and Jack step out, Ana holding a big bag of kibble, Jack holding a pallet of cans. Their tolerant smiles turn to frozen shock when they see Gabriel. Gabriel still hates Jack for doing this to him but he’s suddenly incredibly grateful for his mask, because seeing them in the flesh again, he can’t quite move either. He should pull out his shotgun, shoot Jack, at the least. He looks unarmed, and Ana won’t be able to react in time to stop him. That’s what he came here to do. But he just stands there, staring at them staring at him, as the cats’ begging gets increasingly vocal.

Ana’s the one whole finally makes a move. She pours the kibble across the trough they’ve set up, inching closer to Gabriel as she does. The cats fall into line and quiet down. Ana’s standing in front of him. Gabriel sucks in a breath. Seeing her up close, he can see how much older she looks. It hits him that they haven’t seen each other for years, when before they would send “MISS YOU!!” texts if they spent more than a day apart. When he thought she was dead, he had thought countless times about how he would do anything, anything to see her again. And now that she’s in front of him, he can’t seem to do a thing.

Ana takes his wrist, turns his hand up, and pours some kibble into it. Gabriel stares at it, then her.

“You gotta give him the wet food instead,” Jack says from the behind her. And then they both burst out laughing. Gabriel lets the kibble fall to the ground– a cat that’s near the back of the crowd leaps on it– and gawps as Ana walks back towards Jack and leans on him, laughing.

“Come in, Gabriel,” she says, and she turns her back to him. Jack hesitates, but then he follows. “I’ll make you some tea and we can talk.”

“I can’t drink anymore,” Gabriel says, but Ana and Jack are already disappearing don the dark passageway, and he huffs and hurries to follow them.

When he arrives in the main room, he finds they’re not alone. Under the table Ana’s heating her kettle on, two kittens peer at him. There’s another few in the corner, nursing from an unimpressed-looking mother. One of the table-kittens, a little black thing with a white face, gets out from cover and bats at Jack’s leg. He laughs and picks it up and sets it in his lap, where it rumbles happily. Gabriel decides to look anywhere else instead.

“I didn’t come here to watch you two be crazy cat people,” he snarls. He really wants to get this confrontation back on track. “You can’t hide from me forever. We have to face each other eventually, and this–” The other kitten has crawled out from under the table and is rubbing up against Gabriel’s leg. He moves his leg away as angrily as he can without hurting the thing. “–this is– stupid. I’m here to settle this.”   

“No you’re not,” Ana says. Behind his mask, Gabriel blinks.

“Excuse me?”

“She’s right,” Jack says. The stupid kitten is still in his lap. “Don’t get me wrong. I was freaked out when I saw you and all. But if you wanted to kill us, you would have had your guns out.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time we were wrong about each other,” Gabriel says.

Jack’s face drops. “No. I suppose not.”

The tea kettle was steaming and Ana let out her own long breath as she poured a cup. “You still haven’t killed us, though,” she says. “If you wanted to, you would have. But you haven’t.” She holds the tea cup out to him. “Come on now, Gabriel. Why are you here?”

Gabriel looks down in the cup. A mesh diffuser is suspended in it, holding leaves turned to mulch in the water. It's fragrant and reminds him of gossiping with Ana over breakfast and it makes him angry all over again.

“I can’t drink that,” he snarls. “I can’t drink that because of him.” He points to Jack, who still has his hand on the kitten, but curls, a fist on the cat’s spine. “He dumped me on Ziegler and left me there, for her to turn into this. Because he was too fucking cowardly to stay with me. Just like he was too cowardly to stay with you.” He turns back to Ana. She doesn’t seem to have moved, she’s frozen there with the cup in her hands. “I’m glad you two are having fun drinking tea and playing with cats. But I can’t do the former and I don’t really want to do the latter. So.”

Ana walks over to the table and sets down the cup. She puts her head in her hands. Jack reaches across and sets his hand on her elbow. Gabriel was expecting his anger to be met anger in turn. Now that it hasn’t been, he feels his loneliness acutely.

“That’s not what happened, Gabe,” Jack says. He still doesn’t sound angry, just tired. “I don’t know how this happened to you, but I went to the med bay after the explosion, alone, and Angela wasn’t there.” The kitten is looking up at him now, perturbed at the cessation of scratches. Jack moves his thumb over its side in slow, thoughtless motions. “You’re right about that, I guess. I went alone. I didn’t try to look for you after the explosion. And I– you were trying to kill me, Gabe. It’s not like I was wrong to do that.” He laughs bitterly. “But I still feel bad for it, is the thing. I’m still sorry. So if that’s what you wanted to hear– I’m sorry, even though I don’t know if I should be.”

Gabriel tries to think of some way to poke a hole in that argument, some way for him to find mendacity in Jack’s face. But he can’t. As he’s thinking, Ana speaks up. “I’m not angry with Jack for leaving me, that mission,” she says. “He would have risked our team, and the hostages, to do that. And I don’t think I could have kept living if people had died to save me.” Jack looks sick at that and Gabriel feels sick but he still can’t say anything.

“But you didn’t answer me, Gabriel,” she continues. “I asked you why you’re here. And if you’re not here to drink tea or play with the cats, why are you here?”

Why is he here, he thinks, because she’s right. He didn’t come here to kill them. But he certainly didn’t come here to make nice. And so he’s not sure why this argument is leaving him quite so empty.

Ana still has her head in her hands, and Jack’s still got one hand on her and one hand on the cat. They are, literally, connected, and Gabriel is quite suddenly aware that that’s what’s making him so angry. Ana always took Jack’s side. But she loved Gabriel too, he thought. He thought that when she heard what Jack did to him, she would still have enough love for Gabriel that she would finally stand by him instead. And now Jack’s taken that away from him, kept Ana to himself, left Gabriel alone–

What he wants is someone to blame for what’s happened to him. And he wants someone to fight with him, because he’s been fighting on his own for so long. He’s let Jack use him as  a scapegoat so many damn times. What kind of bastard can’t return the favor, just this once.

The kitten at Gabriel’s feet is batting at his cloak now. As Gabriel storms out of the Necropolis, he is very aware of that it’s toddling after him, chasing the flowing fabric.

-

If Sombra was watching him in Egypt, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look up from taking pictures of Cabrón when he comes in. “How was your high school reunion?” she asks.

“Close the Morrison account,” Gabriel says. Cabrón looks irritated that he’s talking so loud. Gabriel raises his voice a bit more just to spite the cat. “Neither of them are threats anymore. And I don’t want to see them again.”

Sombra sets down her holovid. Gabriel can see the instagram she and Widow have set up for Cabrón open on the screen. “Tell you what,” she says. “I won’t actively keep tabs on them anymore. But the next time you want to talk to them, just hit me up.”

“I told you. I’m not going to want to talk to them anymore, Sombra.”

Sombra laughs. “Sure you aren’t,” she says, and hits “post” on her holovid.

-

Gabriel last about a month. Then, he’s back among the cats in the morning sun. Some of them take to sniffing him with interests, and he shifts on his feet to make it very clear that despite the smell, he is not dead meat.

Ana and Jack look surprised to see him again. But they still don’t reach for their guns or anything. They still just start feeding the cats, as if Gabriel’s part of their morning routine as well. Gabriel stalks past them and sits in one of the plastic chairs at the table. He folds his arms and ignores the black kitten with the white face watching him with wide eyes.

“You act like you’re not fighting Talon anymore,” Gabriel says, as soon as Ana and Jack are in sight. “Well, then you won’t mind me being around today.”

Ana and Jack look at each other. “Uh,” Ana says. “Sure? I don’t think we had any big plans.”

“We were going to watch some old Marvel movies.”

“Oh, right.” Ana turns back to Gabriel. “Do you want to watch too?”

“No,” Gabriel snaps. But he’s careful do his more mindful searching of the computer and tomb during the ensemble films and the early Thor movies. When Black Panther comes on, he loiters in front of the computer monitor and watches the movie’s mirrored image in the screen. He might stalk out of the tomb suspiciously soon after the end credits scene is done. He might leave there with no indication that Ana and Jack are lying, no sign that they’re preparing to return to the fight, but with every intention of coming back again.

-

His visits become weekly things, then several times a week. He tells them, and himself, that it’s to keep them on their toes. Make sure they can’t hide anything from him. The two of them nod politely and barely hide their smiles.

That annoys Gabriel, all the more because there’s nothing he can really do about it. He’s not an idiot. He knows he keeps coming back here because he misses them, misses their friendship and Ana’s quick wit and Jack’s lips on his. But he’s still mad at them too. They still left him to fall apart. He’s been angry with Jack in particular for so long now that just dropping that anger feels like abandoning a beloved pet.

And speaking of, the cats are even more annoying than their caretakers. They meow incessantly and Ana and Jack seem more than happy to indulge them. Despite his efforts to stay mobile and look threatening, several of the cats seem so swayed by his smell that they try to gnaw on his ankles. Ana just laughs and shoos them half-heartedly. Gabriel has half a mind to give them a lesson they won’t forget, but he’s not a monster. He’ll shoot Jack in the lumbar region, but he’s not going to kick a cat.

The cats become even more annoying when he realizes why Ana and Jack are tolerating him. That day he’s gotten there early and Ana and Jack are having their tea while Gabriel sits, arms folded, between them. He doesn’t get the caffeine they’re sipping and it’s so damn early, so he nods off. When he wakes, Jack’s hand is in his hair and he’s stroking it lightly. Gabriel grabs his wrist and hates how his first instinct is still to pull his hand closer and kiss his fingertips. He pushes Jack away instead.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Gabriel growls. For the first time since that original reunion, Jack actually looks afraid. He tucks his hand behind his back.

“Sorry,” he says. “Just, ah– habit, I guess?” Gabriel cocks his head. “Like, ah, I would do that to you before, and I’m still waking up, I guess I wasn’t thinking–”

Jack keeps babbling on but Gabriel stops listening as he starts putting the pieces together. Jack isn’t reminding him of the old days, when he would lie in Jack’s lap while they watched some old movie and would weigh his comfort in this position against the prospect of fooling around. Jack’s reminding him of that first day in the Necropolis, when he was petting the cat the entire tense, miserable conversation.

“Oh my God,” Gabriel says. “I’m one of your cats.”

“What?” Jack looks across the table. Ana sets her cup down and frowns. “No you’re not!”

“Yes I am.” Gabriel pushes himself off Jack’s lap, as roughly as he can manage. “I leave but I always come back here. I act like I don’t want to be around here, but you know I do. I’m so miserable and desperate that you give me a little food and attention, and I’ll always come back to you.” Gabriel laughs, and even to his own ear he can tell it’s a nasty kind of shrill. “I was wondering why you put up with me but that’s it, huh? I’m just another lost cat for you to take care of.”

“Gabriel,” Ana says quietly. He stands up and out of the corner of his eye he sees a couple cats go sprinting across the room, spooked by the screech of his chair.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m angry now. But I’ll be back again, right?”

He doesn’t hear Ana following him out of them tomb but her “Gabriel!” when he enters the sunlight is the loudest he’s heard her be this entire time. He turns and now, now when he’s ashamed of his anger and just wants to forget it all, now she’s joining him in that anger.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re so pissy about,” she snaps as she marches towards him, her sandals digging into the sand. “You’re the one who said all that shit, not Jack or I. And even if it’s all true, what are we supposed to do about it?” She’s right in front of him now and she tilts her head up to glare at him properly. “Everything you said is shit only you can change, Gabriel. I know you fucking love being the victim, but fucking own that. Don’t make it seem like Jack and I are the ones making you feel bad.”

Gabriel sits with that for a minute, under the heat of the mid-morning sun and Ana’s glare. Because while she’s certainly not wrong about anything, there’s something there she’s not quite right about either.

“I don’t want to be your cat,” he says finally. Ana blinks. “You and Jack are partners again and I–  I’m not going to catch up. I’m never going to catch up, because of everything that happened. And I don’t want to be less than you are to each other. I want you to actually care about me again.”

Ana drops her gaze and is silent for a minute. “I want that too,” she says finally. “I’ve missed you, Gabriel. I still miss you. But this still isn’t something Jack or I can do for you. If you don’t want us to treat you like a stray, then you need to actually come home.”

Gabriel doesn’t respond, and so she turns and walks back into the Necropolis, some cats swaying after her in her wake.

-

Gabriel can’t sleep that night. So he’s groggy and cranky the next morning when he meets with Akande. One of his goddamn Persians is sitting on his desk when Gabriel comes in. Gabriel glares at it and it glares right back.

“You’ve taken quite a few missions to track down ex-Overwatch members, now,” Akande says. “And you still haven’t taken any more off your list?”

Gabriel swallows and berates himself, for the hundredth time, for choosing an alibi whose progress could be so directly measured. “I believe the remaining ex-agents are aware that they’re in danger,” he says. Akande’s cat jumps from the desk to the window sill and meows. Gabriel raises his voice. “So they’ve likely gone to ground. I’m chasing leads, but there are fewer than there were.”

“Sombra said she had a direct line to Morrison,” Akande says. The cat scratches at the window frame and meows again. Gabriel glances over at it but Akande doesn’t react at all.

“That line’s gone dead,” Gabriel says, forcing himself to stick with this lie. “And now that he’s with Amari–” The cat positively yowls and Gabriel snaps. “Ogundimu, can you please take care of that thing?!”

“I don’t know whose complaining is worse.” Akande stops both of them though, by opening the window. The cat prances out on to the windowsill and bounds towards its next adventure. Gabriel frowns as Akande sits back down at his desk.

“I didn’t know they were outdoor cats.”

“They’re tough. And they like to hunt.”

“Still. How do you know they’ll come back?”

Akande shrugs. “They just do,” he says simply. “They always have, so I trust they always will.”

“But why do they? How do you know you can trust them?”

Akande gives him a quizzical look. “They come back to me because I feed them. They’re cats, Reyes.”

“Right.” Gabriel slumps down in his chair a little. “They’re just cats.”

-

The desert is cold at night. There are only a few cats scattered around the Necropolis as Gabriel approaches it, and they seem content to mind their own business. He winces at the heavy echo of his boots on the stone floor, but there’s no commotion as he crosses the main room and enters the little alcove where he saw Ana’s bed.

He saw it the first time he had gone poking around. There’s a little altar of photographs at the foot of the bed and honestly, if it weren’t for all the pictures of Fareeha he wouldn’t have been able to tell who slept here. Ana and Jack both love their pictures and are both sentimental bastards. He had seen that picture of the three of them, when they were young and whole, that first time too. He had immediately left the room but it had stayed fixed in his mind anyway.

There’s no good way to wake an old soldier. Gabriel tries to be as soft and gentle as possible with his “Ana,” but she still wakes up wild-eyed and reaching for her sidearm. He gives her space as she comes to and blinks groggily at him.

“Gabriel? Why are you here?”

“Can I sleep here tonight?”

She really wakes up at that, even though Gabriel had wanted to keep the quiet, sleepy air that had hung between them. She doesn’t talk about it, which helps. She just says “Sure,” and scoots over. Gabriel crawls under the blanket. He wraps his arms around Ana and clears his throat.

“The ah, the smell, or the parts where my skin’s gone, it’s not too much?”

“I’m fine, Gabriel,” Aba says quietly.

“You’re towards the wall, if you want to get up, you can wake me or whatever.”

“Gabriel,” Ana says. Still quiet but now she sounds a little amused. “Go to sleep.”

“I missed you,” he mumbles.

“I missed you too.”

“I’m lonely.”

“I know.”

Gabriel closes his eyes and holds Ana tighter. The night’s cold around them and he’s going to have to do this and more all over again with Jack tomorrow. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do about Talon and he doesn’t know if Ana will ever really trust him again.

But he’s missed this so much. And here, curled up with her, he’s not alone. This is what he wants. And so he stays.