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When he wakes, the world is on fire.
He shudders, muscles twitching feverishly. His skin crawls. The stench of burning flesh fills his nostrils and he blanches.
It hurts. It hurts, it hurts. It hurts so fucking much he wants to die.
He should’ve died.
Why isn’t he dead?
Why isn’t he—
“…Jack.”
He chokes on the name, spluttering. Pitiful. He can taste copper on his tongue, feel his throat close around heaving sobs. They tear him apart from the inside, tugging sharp and stinging like broken glass.
“Jack! ”
He lets out a garbled scream, writhing in the ash, blood and smoke oozing from his skin.
Suddenly, a hand is on his chest, pushing him down, holding him, gripping so tightly that it hurts.
Everything hurts.
He opens his eyes. His surroundings are washed out with red. The first thing he sees is Dr. Angela Ziegler’s face looming over him. A Grim Reaper. An Angel of Death, crying, clutching at his ruined body, muttering a frantic stream of “Stay with me. Stay with me, Gabriel. Please, come on now. We need you—the world needs you…”
His hand ghosts over hers, painting her pale skin in crimson.
“Jack…?” he breathes. The rest goes unspoken.
Did he make it?
Oh, God please tell me he made it.
Angela only cries harder.
Gabriel closes his eyes once more, letting the world drown in darkness.
He should’ve died.
**
Gabriel Reyes wears death like a cloak.
He dons a white mask, the skull of a barn owl, and he hunts.
Weeks pass, months, years. He hits old Overwatch bases, steals any intel he can get his hands on and kills anyone who stands in his way.
Overtime, he forms a list. A list of questions he needs answered – a list of loose ends. He ties the ‘what could have been’s and ‘what should have been’s into a noose and hangs every ex-Overwatch agent he finds.
He drags their deaths out, lets them try to run, waits for them to scream and beg for mercy. Only then does he grant their wishes by slitting their throats with the talons of his jagged gauntlets.
There’s a list of old Overwatch agents who deserve to die, and Gabriel Reyes is one of them.
**
He knew the Soldier would come for him. It was only a matter of time.
They are polar opposites, pulled together by some magnetic force. The light and the dark. The vigilante and the terrorist. Parallel lines running side by side, close, but never quite touching.
The Soldier is everything and nothing like he was before. A black muzzle and blood red visor masks his features. His forehead is lined with wrinkles, weathered skin marred with scars both old and new.
Gabriel Reyes lets the Soldier beat him within an inch of his life. Because it’s what he deserves. Because it’s what he wants.
Because Jack Morrison is still the only person who could ever make pain feel like a blessing.
The barn owl mask is ripped from his face. Jack crumples it in his fist, a crack splitting it clean in two. Gabriel holds his breath, eyes screwed shut. He hasn’t looked at his bare face in a mirror since the explosion and God knows he doesn’t want Jack Morrison to see what he’s become.
Silence hangs between them. The crushing pressure on Gabriel’s chest eases up as Jack freezes, limbs going slack where they were pinning him to the ground.
Smoke crawls up Gabriel’s throat, curling around his tongue and oozing past his lips in a haze of black. His mind goes blank and he sputters, as though he’s been buried under the rubble of the Swiss Base all this time and is only now being dragged out of the wreckage.
“Look at me…”
Jack’s voice is hoarse, rusted with disuse, like it’s the first thing he’s said in twenty fucking years.
And, god, if that doesn’t make Gabriel hurt in ways he hasn’t felt in so long that he forgot he ever could. This foreign agony, living and dying over and over again in a span of mere seconds, like every cell in his broken body.
Hesitantly, he opens his eyes. Jack’s hands unwind from where they were wrapped around Gabriel’s throat. He lifts them to his mask and slowly unclasps the sides. Steam hisses from the locking mechanism as he peels the metal plate and visor from his face, tossing them haphazardly onto the ground.
And damn, damn it all to hell, if Jack Morrison isn’t the most beautiful fucking thing Gabriel has ever seen.
He lifts his hands to Jack’s face, smoke oozing from his fingertips. Gabriel traces the deep scar that cuts across Jack’s lips, hands brushing against the smattering of grey stubble lining his chin.
“…You got old,” Gabriel says, wincing around every word, smirking through bloodstained teeth.
Jack sighs, softly. Wistful.
“You didn’t.”