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The guy who signed out the ammunition — every Thursday, 1000 sharp, only signed his last name. Reyes, with two dots and three lines added to the second 'e'. Jack Morrison, who had impeccable handwriting and knew enough of Gabriel Reyes to know that he was an orderly kind of guy, a little gruff on the edges but he always wiped down his area, dotted his Is, crossed his Ts and was a damn good shot.
"It's a skull, isn't it?" Jack finally asks, three weeks after he noticed the oddity in the signature. He hadn't exactly cornered Reyes, but finds him in the narrow hall to the side of the shooting galley. There's barely the room for the two of them to stand side by side, but the thick concrete kept their voices from echoing, the low ceiling made them both seem taller than they really were.
"Hm?" Reyes looks at him, just barely turning his head to indicate he's listening. (Even then, he wore all black.) For a moment Jack is struck by the silhouette, the shadow that Reyes casts on the wall and the dull steel and Overwatch logo behind him. It almost looks perfect.
"Your signature has a skull in it. Kind of grim, don't you think?"
"I might be a bit grim."
Reyes's answer is immediate, his expression doesn't change. He's dead serious — Jack thinks, pun included. It makes him smile, he cracks a grin and without thinking reaches out and claps Reyes on the shoulder.
"I like it."
Reyes's lips quirk, not even a smile, but the vague amusement is clear in his voice, "Glad to have met your approval, Morrison."
(He would know that footfall anywhere. Even in the back alleys of Dorado, between the hidden entrance of a church and a steep fall off into the ocean, heavy and just a bit grim. Then comes the warning shot, the warm spackle of shotgun pellets bouncing against the thick of his jacket, some embedding into the leather, just barely prickling his flesh.
It's a warning shot because it's aimed at his back. Just between his shoulderblades, because Reaper is just two steps shy of having the pellets tear straight through his jacket and skin and flesh, burrow into his bones and ribcage and shred his heart.)
Jack insists, he makes a big deal out of it. First times, he says, waggling a finger and breathing heavily, should be special. Gabriel huffs, but if he really wanted to complain he'd push it. Jack thinks that Gabriel must be charmed sometimes, because he always makes that face — lips twisting up to the side, eyes shifting to look in the other direction. It's the same expression he makes if they bump shoulders, if Jack storm in ahead and Gabriel has to come around on the flank — saving grace, you always know where I am, Jack has said, on more than one occasion.
"Now's a hell of a time to make that demand."
"I'm a little old-fashioned. We can't all be good men of the earth like you." He knows he's being a bit cocky, a bit self-congratulatory. It's right on the edge of Gabriel's tolerance. "A little self-control would do me good, didn't you say the other day?"
"Hotshots get killed fast." But, it's probably affectionate.
"Got you at my back, nothing's going to stop us." Jack gives a mock salute. Gabriel catches his hand, there's nothing intimate about the hold on his fingers. Just familiarity, irritation, the knowing they both have that this is who they are and how they fit together.
(He sprints, jumps the first few stairs and turns. Reaper cuts the same familiar shadow, but the trail of black smoke makes a bile rise in the back of his throat. That was never there before.
"We can't all be good men." Reaper says, low, bitter, laughing. "Right about something, for once."
"You're going to make me pull the trigger."
"Never had a problem doing that before, as long as it made you look good. So, what are you waiting for?" Reaper spreads his arms wide, the shotguns dangle from his fingers. He knows, in the time it will take him to squeeze the trigger, both shotguns will aimed for his chest.
"You never had a problem playing by the rules either." Commander Reyes. Soldier Reyes. Hero, Reyes.
Reaper laughs and laughs and laughs. Soldier 76 pulls the trigger. The spray of bullets hit smoke.
"Easy as ever, Jack." Reaper's voice in his ear.)
It's not the first, second, fourth, seventeenth. But it's the first time since Reyes got demoted. A commendation they had called it, but everyone knew what it was. An exile, sending him off to the little seen corridors of the underground.
It was the first week that Jack hadn't seen him at least once a day. They collide. Jack buries his hands in Reyes's hair, they both miss each other's mouths. Reyes's hands on his shoulders, shoving him back. His back hits the wall, the odd pipes that carry water or sewage or some other dark secret down through the bowels of the base will leave a bruise.
There's no time to undress — Overwatch starts early, Blackwatch goes late. Instead it's Jack's hands tugging, yanking, trying to bring Reyes's face closer to his, close enough to kiss. And it's Reyes who leans back, keeps the tension. Jack's hips, the rough of Reyes's trousers. Neither of them removes their holsters, ammunition and both still carry the smell of gunpowder and oil.
They will both regret it, Jack when he is on his way to his quarters and thinking of how the shape of Reyes seems to have changed. Somehow both more tired and more alert all at once. There wasn't any softness left in him. Even a shower, a change of clothes, relaxing knowing the day was over and tomorrow the sun would rise didn't change his thoughts. Reyes, in the locker room, just thinks of how far Jack seems to have risen on the good graces of others.
(It destroys his shoulder. A single shot, with Soldier 76's shoulder caught between the brick of the building and the muzzle of the gun. It hurts less than the explosion that killed Jack Morrison, at least.
"What happened." He grinds out, ignoring the barrel of the gun lined up with his forehead. "I'm looking for the truth, this time." This time, not like the time before where Reaper had spouted some apocalyptic speech. Or the time before, the maniacal laughter and rant of corruption, stench and betrayal of Overwatch. Or, the first time, when Jack Morrison went down to the Blackwatch office to ask what had preoccupied Gabriel Reyes to the point of obsession and had only received a cold shoulder for his efforts.
"Take a look at me and figure it out. Really take a look."
The gun drops from Reaper's hand, it clatters to the ground but Soldier 76 can't afford to track it with his eyes. Not with Reaper in front of him, the edges of his form bleeding and dissolving. The black smoke he becomes smells faintly of rot and makes Soldier 76 wonder, exactly, what was left of the man who had been Gabriel Reyes. Was this is flesh turned incorporeal, was there nothing left but shreds of his mind, was this just a ghost.
It's cold. The smoke is cold and it settles — he, Reaper — across Soldier 76's body. It pours into his shoulder wound and like acid the flesh burns and scars. It pours through his flesh, through the wound and into his bones. It settles into his skeleton, traveling up through his arm across his chest and up into his throat and mouth.
He. It's he. There's not much that anchors him in that thought, not when the smoke has no human characteristics left. Not when it creeps up the back of Soldier's throat, across his eyes and settles deep in his lungs and gut.
He's certain, he's dying again.
Do you feel it?)
It's the first time since Reyes was sent to Blackwatch that Jack has seen him happy. Well, Reyes happy, which means no smiles, but just a little openness to his posture. His stance is a little wider, his hands a little more relaxed. He returns Jack's handshake and then nods his head at the sullent teen next to him.
"Jesse McCree, new recruit."
"Hey," Jesse says. There's something entirely nondescript about him, Jack thinks.
"They come younger and younger," Jack shakes his head and offers his hand to Jesse, "Welcome aboard."
Jesse does not take his hand, but nods to him. It's almost a shadow of Reyes's earlier gesture and Jack can't help but a wry smile.
"Don't follow too much in his steps, he causes trouble." It's a joke. But, and Jack knows it, too, it's exactly what the officers said about Reyes. Too efficient, too head down, too nosy and too driven by some kind of justice not defined by Overwatch rules.
"He's gonna learn the tricks by the book, no worries." Reyes doesn't miss a beat, but the crookedness in his voice is unfamiliar. Jack wonders when they became such strangers and it's too weird to watch Reyes and Jesse turn away from him. He's never felt so left out in his life.
(Reaper's smoke eats away at everything he is, for a moment. It's hot down his spine, gives him a deep craving that's like a hunger but it sits in his veins and makes his limbs heavy, his mind blank, fills him with a void.
It's ironic, because his shuddering breaths, the clouds of smoke ejected from his lungs, feels just a little too much like hurried kisses on the battlefield. Maybe they were always this fucked up.)
"He's proud." Ana says, elbowing Jack.
"Who? Reyes?" Jack laughs. "How can you tell?"
She gives him a vaguely disappointing look.
"I did raise a daughter, you know." And, with a raised brow, she adds, "You haven't been replaced."
("It all leads back to you, Jack." Reaper's voice lingers, even after he's left. Soldier can feel every pore in his body as the black smoke filters away, there's blood running out of his mouth and from his ears, through his skin in places he hadn't been hurt.
"It all leads back to you.")