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“Remember, Jack. Our target is said to be heavily guarded, so be very careful in there,” Ana explained.
“Understood.”
Jack’s knees ached as he continued to crawl through the vent as quietly as possible. It didn’t take long for him to find an exit, and he stared through the slits in the vent cover. Not seeing anyone below him, he listened for any noise. There was nothing, not even the footsteps of a guard patrolling the area. The room was silent, suspiciously so. After another quiet minute, Jack decided to contact Ana.
“The room below me seems empty,” Jack muttered. “Not very ‘heavily guarded’.”
“Are you sure it’s empty?” Ana questioned, responding almost immediately.
“I’ve been up here for a while. Haven’t heard a thing.”
“That’s odd. Is there any place you can enter from where you’ll at least be out of sight?”
After taking a moment to think, Jack replied, “I can try exploring the vents some more and see if there’s anything better than this. I’d be jumping down in the middle of the room.”
“All right. Be safe.”
“I can try.”
Shuffling around inside the vents some more, Jack discovered another exit to the vents that was closer to a wall. He pressed his face to the vent cover, once again checking if there was anyone inside the room. There was still nobody in sight. This has to be a trap, Jack thought. This place is too damn quiet.
Slowly, Jack pulled the vent cover away and gently pushed it further into the vent. The opening left was just barely large enough for him to squeeze through. He went in, jumping down to the floor with a soft thud. Once again, he glanced around the area and saw nobody. There were stacks of crates on shelves that lined the walls. It looked like Jack had entered some sort of storage room. He reached up to switch his microphone on.
“I’ve managed to get inside,” Jack whispered to Ana, crouching down behind a stack of crates closer to the wall.
“And? How does it look?” asked Ana.
“I think I’m in a storage room. Still looks empty.”
“Try to navigate the building quietly; they could have expected us to be here and prepared an ambush.”
“Are the guards still asleep?”
There was a brief pause, and then some shuffling before Ana answered, “Yes.”
“Good.”
Jack began to make his way through the storage room, his gun held in his hands. He’d reached a door that should lead further into the building when he heard the sound of something clattering to the floor behind him. Turning around swiftly, he saw that it was just some sort of pipe. His eyes narrowed.
Before Jack could take a step forward, something heavy struck him in the back. Immediately, he fell to the floor with a grunt. He tried to stand up but was crushed under the heavy weight of whatever had landed on top of him. That “whatever” quickly turned into a “whoever” when he felt the person stand up, one foot still placed between his shoulders.
They were putting all of their weight onto Jack, and he struggled to roll out of the way. Unable to see them, he prayed that he was about to hit the person’s other leg and throw them off-balance. Much to his relief, he did, making them stumble. When Jack stood, he could finally get a good look at his attacker.
Jack recognized the person. It was Reaper—no, Gabriel. Quickly raising his gun, Jack fired a few shots that were effortlessly dodged by his former friend. Gabriel pointed a shotgun in Jack’s direction. Jack rolled out of the way. One of the bullets flew past his ear. Too close. One of Jack’s next shots struck Gabriel in the calf, but he barely reacted.
Turning on his microphone, Jack muttered, “Just got attacked. It’s Gabe.”
“He’s here?” came Ana’s surprised reply. “Do you need my help?”
Jack hesitated before replying, “No. This is my fight.”
Rushing forward, Jack knocked the shotguns out of Gabriel’s hands; the weapons were far too dangerous. He could only hope that Gabriel wouldn’t draw any of his seemingly endless extra guns. Gabriel took the opportunity to kick Jack in the stomach, nearly making him fall. Jack groaned. Gabriel punched him in the jaw. Jack’s teeth clacked together uncomfortably, but nothing was broken. The next place his old friend struck was his hand. Jack’s grip on his pulse rifle faltered, and it fell to the floor.
To Jack’s disadvantage, Gabriel knew him too well and always seemed to predict his next moves and counter them perfectly. They continued to fight. Jack began to realize that he was losing. Still, he refused to call for help from Ana. This was his fight. Gabriel landed another good punch on his stomach. Pain shot through Jack’s body, hot as fire. He doubled over with a grunt, taking a few clumsy steps back. Gabriel shoved him, and he fell against the wall, slowly sliding down to the floor.
“Gabe—” Jack groaned out, but he was quickly cut off when Gabriel hit him hard in the cheek.
Jack didn’t get a chance to recover from that punch before he was kicked in the side. There was a loud crack, and Jack cried out in pain. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a rib broken. He recognized the way it felt. When he looked up, Gabriel was holding a new shotgun. His hand trembled as he pointed the weapon at Jack’s head. Several moments passed. Jack stayed silent, unable to find the strength to move, just waiting for Gabriel to take the shot.
But he didn’t.
Gabriel let his arm fall back to his side. He stepped back. Before Jack could weakly call out to him, he vanished. All that remained of him was a cloud of black smoke that quickly dissipated into nothing. Jack was left sitting alone in that empty room, slowly recovering from his injuries. His eyes fell shut. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he heard footsteps approaching, and he forced his eyes back open. Weakly raising his head, Jack saw Ana standing before him.
“Wow. He really did a number on you,” she remarked, looking down at him.
Jack’s voice was strained when he asked, “Gabe could’ve killed me. Why didn’t he? He had his gun pointed at my head. Why didn’t he take the shot?”
“Maybe he’s . . . had a change of heart, or something like that,” Ana suggested, grunting as she kneeled down to get a closer look at the bruises on Jack’s face. “Taken some time to think about what he’s been doing, realized that a lot of things were actually his fault and not yours.”
“But would that really happen so easily?” Jack wondered, wincing when Ana’s fingers brushed over a particularly bad bruise.
“If it took nearly killing you for him to realize that, then I wouldn’t say it happened ‘easily’,” Ana pointed out. She rose to her feet. “I suppose you’ll never know what happened . . . Well, at least you won’t until you ask him.”
“You want me to try to talk to him?” Jack asked in disbelief.
Ana shrugged and replied, “It’s worth a try.”
It was almost as if Gabriel wanted to be found, with how easy he was to follow. Jack ended up tracking him to a bar deeper inside the city, strangely enough. Using his visor, Jack found him quickly, up on a balcony on the building’s second floor. At the sound of his approach, Gabriel turned to look at him. Jack longed to see what expression he wore beneath that mask.
“It’s you,” said Gabriel.
“It’s me,” said Jack.
“. . . Jack.”
“Gabe.”
After that exchange, Gabriel went back to staring out over the balcony. He briefly tipped his mask up to take a sip of his drink, but not long enough for Jack to catch a glimpse of his face. Jack wondered what he looked like under there. Ana had at least given him the vaguest possible description, saying that he was “disfigured” from the explosion.
“Why didn’t you kill me? You had the chance to,” Jack inquired.
“It’s so stupid,” Gabriel muttered, shaking his head. “I was going to. I really was. Then I started to think back to what we used to be, back before the mess that was the later years of Overwatch. I have no fucking clue why that made me spare you. For just a brief moment, I didn’t want to kill you anymore, and that was enough.”
“What we used to be . . . Do you miss it as much as I do?”
“I do,” Gabriel said softly. “I miss it more than anything. I miss the SEP so fucking much, even after all the shit those people put us through, back when we were just two ambitious idiots who were too invested in each other to realize that the weight of the world rested on our shoulders.”
“And after that, during Overwatch . . . Things were nice, once, before we started arguing.”
“Before you were Strike Commander,” Gabriel corrected. “You changed after the promotion. Nobody else seemed to notice, but you got more . . . distant, too deep in your work. And I hated that.”
“You should’ve said something!” Jack exclaimed. “I could’ve set aside some time, and maybe our relationship wouldn’t have fallen apart like that.”
“I tried to talk to you outside of our jobs, but you were so busy.”
“I wish we could go back to how we were before,” Jack murmured. He stepped closer to the balcony, leaning onto the railing and resting his elbows on the surface.
“I don’t think we ever can. Things have changed, Jack. We’ve changed.”
“Maybe we can still fix things. It’ll take some time, but we can try.”
“Always the optimist,” Gabriel muttered, shaking his head once again. “We’re different people who lead different lives now. Too different.”
“You can do better,” Jack insisted. “You can leave Talon. You can work to better yourself and make up for all the shit you’ve done.”
“I could, but what’s even the point in trying anymore?” Gabriel asked, laughing.
Jack gave him a confused look. Gabriel sighed.
“I’m going to die,” he said, his voice cracking.
“What?”
“I’m dying, Jack. I’m dying and I have no idea how much time I have left to live. It could be a couple more decades, years, months . . . All I know is that those fucked-up experiments Moira put me through won’t keep me alive for much longer.”
“Fuck,” Jack muttered. Without thinking, he rushed toward Gabriel and pulled him into a hug. Gabriel made a surprised little sound before reluctantly wrapping his arms around Jack, who continued, “You can’t. Not that soon.”
“Trust me, Jack, I’m as unhappy about it as you are,” Gabriel muttered into Jack’s shoulder.
“I could—I can take you to see Angela. She’ll know what to do,” said Jack desperately. He didn’t let go, still holding on tightly as if he thought that Gabriel would vanish forever if he did.
“I’m not seeing Angela,” Gabriel snapped.
“. . . Does it hurt?” Jack whispered.
Gabriel’s fingers tightened in the fabric of his jacket. “Yes,” he answered. “It hurts so fucking much.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault this happened to you.”
“I was the one who triggered the explosion. It’s my fault,” Gabriel said, laughing. He was silent for a few moments before continuing, “You know, I tried to forget you. Spent the first month pretending I didn’t know you were still out there. But I’ve never really been good at letting go. You and I are the same, in that way.”
“Like Ana once said, we’re two sides of the same coin.”
“Maybe that’s why we never saw eye-to-eye.”
“Gabe, promise me that you won’t leave again after this. We can make this better,” Jack pleaded. “You don’t have much longer to live, and you need to make this last part of your life the best it can be.”
“. . . Maybe I’ll give it a try,” murmured Gabriel.
The past was the past, and they could never return to it. They were in love, once, but what were they now?
They were two comets quickly being reduced to dust as they finally entered the Earth’s atmosphere. They were a couple of strangers who met in a fleeting dream they could never seem to forget after years had passed. They were ships sinking slowly, trying to cling onto the last bit of hope they had of ever returning to shore.