Chapter Text
Jack is twenty minutes out from a gunfight when it happens.
There are ragged holes in his torso, meaning he now has the wonderful task of digging the pellets out, and there is a fiery ache in the ball of his shoulder where it was wretched out of the socket.
It spooked him a bit. He’s loathe to admit it because it’s ridiculous for something so banal to leave him squeezing his fist until he can feel his own pulse bang-bang-bang away, but there it is.
They snuck up on him. That scares him, because it means next time he might not be as lucky.
Maybe that’s why he’s seeing things.
“What a dump.”
The voice of a ghost drifts through his little safehouse, at first a whisper and then a genuine sound, as clear as all the other voices in the world.
He knows damn well that he’s hallucinating, but the sound of Gabriel Reyes’ voice is like a fist through the chest, through his mental walls and then through his actual ribs.
“Did you hear me?” the ghost of his best friend repeats, blissfully unaware of the pain he’s causing (or perhaps not caring for it)- “I said, this place is a washed-up dump-hole.”
“Dump-hole isn’t a word,” Jack replies, barely thinking about it. He’s mired in his own worries (that he’s hallucinating) and his wallowing (that he’s hallucinating his dead best friend who he misses terribly.)
"Stickler,” comes the response, another squeeze inside his ribs as the ghost walks towards him with silent footsteps.
Unlike the real ghost, there’s no leaking shadow; this isn’t the ruined revenant that stalks old bases and cuts throats for vengeance. This ghost is together, whole, and younger. Very young; god, he almost forgot what Gabriel used to look like.
But here he is, dappled by dust-mottled beams of light which come through the cracks in the ceiling. The SEP uniform, the 24 emblazoned on the arm. The dog tags. In reality, those dog tags are around Jack’s neck, alongside his own. His own identifiers, and then Gabe’s. It’s the only thing he has left of him. But the ghost has them, much shinier than the real deal, and glinting in that sparse sun.
“You’re not real,” Jack says, as monotone as he can muster. “Go away.”
“Oh well, nice to see you too,” Gabriel says, his form steady as he ends up in front of where Jack sits.
Jack swallows hard and glances up. The last time he saw Gabriel, the real Gabriel, not the ‘Reaper’ that’s become him, he looked as exhausted as Jack felt, older than he had any right to look, his handsome face now lined with stress and scars and he had screamed for Jack to go before their entire world went up in flames. He remembers the way Gabriel looked as he took his last breath. That look of panic, then acceptance, but so fierce even in death as he pushed against Jack’s chest with shaking hands, for him to run, go, before they find you.
The ghost is not that. This is the Gabriel Reyes that Jack first met during SEP induction.
They had them lined up, newly blasted with freezing water and in fresh regulation wear. They were told on a need to know basis, which obviously means they knew nothing, except that they were the second batch of SEP hopefuls. The first were now staring them down.
“Jack Morrison, sir!” he’d barked, snapping a salute as one man stalked up close to him. Well, stalked was untrue. Whilst he was eerily quiet, with a gaze which felt like a super-intelligent wolf eyeing him up, he was looking Jack up and down with genuine curiosity.
“This one’s mine, right?” he’d said, not really a question. Glancing behind to catch a nod. “Just my luck to get someone still wet behind the ears. Do you guys do this on purpose?”
Their eyes lock. The man, his senior; 24, the patch on his armour said. He had hazel eyes.
“Do I look scary to you, kid?”
Jack had instantly committed to what was probably the wrong answer.
“Sir no sir!” he barked. And then the man was a true wolf, suddenly looming over him.
“Are you sure?” he had asked, with real intimidation.
“Yes sir,” Jack had said, surprising himself at how confident he sounded and how unruffled truly he was. And that had brought out a smile on Soldier 24's face- a small one, hidden, just for the two of them.
“Good,” he had said, “Good. And lay off the sir.”
A hand grasped in his, warm.
“Name’s Reyes. Gabriel Reyes.”
They had reeled off everyone else’s pairs and Jack had paid attention at the time but he was hyper aware that whilst Gabriel scowled the minute he returned to his ranks, there was something about him that was soothing.
It was there, on the first day. Of course they’d been roughed up, bullied by senior soldiers, it came with the territory. But after the first set of injections, Jack threw up and thrashed and bit down whimpers. He passed out on the floor and woke up in bed, with Reyes leaning in the door frame. The blankets were tucked around him, perfectly so.
Maybe he fell a little bit in love that day.
He never fell out of love, even when they were strictly forbidden from fraternising, even when the worst war of his lifetime tore through the globe and made monsters of men, even when the war was over and his 24 was the Strike Commander of the brave new world, even when that was suddenly reversed, and when their friends started dying again, and then even over thirty years, thirty years of fighting and reconciling and screaming and loving-
He never stopped loving the man stood in front of him right now.
21 years old, with his non regulation haircut and his prototype armour and his shotguns with an etching done by a paper clip reading ven a el reyes es mejor que no te pierdas in wobbly script because he was drunk when he did it.
“Fuck, that barely makes sense,” he’d said, and Jack had laughed and laid a hand on the back of Gabriel’s neck and felt the warmth of his skin and drank it in like wine.
“None of it makes sense to me,” Jack had said, a joke at his own expense, “So I sure hope it’s something nice.”
Gabriel has cackled, pushing the side of his head against Jack’s.
“Nah man, I just keyed up my guns to insult you. God’s gift, asshole,” he’d laughed, and Jack laughed, and that night had gotten him through many, many terrible ones.
“Go,” Jack says, finally pulling himself out of his trip down memory lane, “Please. I’m tired.”
“I can see that,” the ghost of Gabriel agrees, a grin spreading over his face, free of the lines of stress that would weigh it down later, “You’re not sleeping.”
Jack rubs a hand over his face.
“Can’t,” he answers shortly, pain which thrums under the skin of his forehead when he closes his eyes, “Don’t want to.”
He can feel Gabriel’s eyes on him.
“Jackie,” Gabriel says, a gentle rebuke. His voice is so soft. “Come on now.”
He hasn't heard that in a long time, but he does remember it. Gabriel used to scold him when he'd stay up too late, making jokes about how he slept like the princess and the pea, and would rub his warm hands on Jack's shoulders and tell him to get to bed before the sun rose.
“Gabe,” Jack croaks, unable to stop himself as he shivers involuntarily. Hard to say if it is the lack of care for himself, or the memories, that make his skin prickle.
“You haven’t been taking care of yourself,” Gabriel says, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. What’s your excuse, 76?”
That, at least, brings a tired smile to his face. Or maybe it’s a grimace. Ghost or not, Gabriel is right. He hasn’t been taking of himself. It’s not just that he can’t sleep. He’s barely doing enough to keep his body afloat; it’s really only the SEP’s genetic enhancements that have kept him alive when he’s been trying so hard not to be.
“Don’t have one,” he replies, standing up. He scrubs a hand over his face until he finds the sink, turning the faucet until it runs drips of orange water and then, eventually, a semi-clear stream that he gambles on using to wash his face.
He doesn’t realise that the ghost is gone until after he’s cleaned the dirt off his face, the blood off his hands, and stitched the hole in his jacket.