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“Take off the mask,” the words ring rough in his ears, the same ethereal grind of a voice he’s come to know too well these past years. “Jack.”
“No one by that name here,” he manages to grit out slowly.
“Mmm. Two weeks ago, I’d have believed the same.”
He breathes deep and tries to take stock of the situation. In a room in a facility he should have been out of 20 minutes ago. A dark, empty room, he assumes, since his visor is shot and he wouldn’t be able to tell anyways. He can still hear the faint echoes of gun shots out wide in the distance.
“Take it off,” Reaper growls again.
You can pry it off my dead face when you’re done with me, he wants to say, but what’s the use? He’s tired. He’s tired of fighting, tired of scratching uselessly at Talon’s door like a rabid, worn down mutt to try and sink his teeth into a throat that just disappears from beneath his muzzle each time. He’s old, and he feels his bones creak under the inhuman pressure that’s pushed them past break point for years and years, and this is where it finally ends.
Backup’s too far off. There’s no one here to see his defeat but him.
His hand raises to his face, and he can almost see it like his soul’s left his body already. He cups the bridge of the nose plate with his palm, presses thumb and finger into the release grooves on either side, and breathes the fresh air in deep when the mask releases with a little hiss of pressure. He doesn’t bother catching it when it falls.
There’s silence, for a moment, and Jack waits for a shotgun blast that never comes.
He can’t see Reaper, but he can hear the thump of the boots as they draw close, feel the whisper of a breeze kicked up by the coat against his bare face. He can smell him – the tang of ozone and regeneration that could never fully cover the decay and ash underneath.
“So it’s true, then,” Reaper says, and this time his voice is a little clearer, like maybe he’s removed his own mask, too.
Tit for tat, except Jack can’t see shit. One last little fuck you from life to remind him nothing’s ever fair.
“You were dead,” Reaper says.
“Seems I wasn’t.”
“You were,” the words tear angry from Reaper’s throat. “So was I. And I still am, but you’re-“
“I don’t even know who the fuck you are. You don’t get to go telling me what I was or wasn’t. Let’s just get this over with, already.”
The gun shots are growing closer, and Jack hates the tiny shred of hope it pulls from him. Amid the semi-automatic clamor he can hear the clean, clear shots of a six-shooter, the rapid fire of an overheating mech. He should already be blown to bits, and his team is drawing nearer.
It’s like Reaper can read his mind. “They won’t reach you first,” he hisses. And then he laughs, and it shakes down Jack’s spine like ice. “Pendejo.”
The door behind them slams open and Jack hears the clatter as half a dozen Talon agents push into the room. He knows that when Reaper slides away the sights will all be trained on him – his head, his chest. He won’t see them either way, but he closes his eyes anyways.
“Turn around,” Reaper says, and Jack thinks he must be talking to him, like he’s going to stand up and let them shoot him in the back.
But Reaper pushes into him, instead, the smell of death overpowering and all around him, angles Jack so he’s covered when Reaper turns. He feels the recoil of the shotguns and hears the cries – surprised, then pained. A shot clips his shoulder, another punches into his gut as his inhuman shield turns to nothing but a gust of putrid air, and then there is nothing.
When his eyes open again, it’s a struggle. His eyelids are heavy, crusted together like he’s been asleep for a week. The scent of decay has been replaced by antiseptic, and though he can’t make out the blurred shapes around him, the light is bright, clean, familiar. So is the soft beep-whirr-humm of machinery hooked up to him, the sweet lilt of the voice gently calling his name.
“Jack. Are you finally joining us, then?”
There’s humor in the tone, but he knows well enough to hear the edge of worry underneath.
“’ngela,” he answers, even if it hurts, just to ease some of that worry.
“The doctor is in,” she teases, and though his muscles all feel like lead he tries to give her a smile back.
“Go back to sleep, Jack. Don’t fight it. You’ll be fighting again in no time, whether I approve or not.”
He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to sleep, either, though his body needs it and it pulls to draw him back under. He wants-
“Where is he?” he grits out.
“Jack, I don’t think now is the time to-“
“Where is he?”
“The team was able to apprehend Reaper when they rescued you, and I’ve been-“
“Gabriel,” he says. “It was Gabriel.”
He knows Angela well enough to understand she’s looking for the right way to say something. Always the diplomat. He knows her mouth is pursed and he knows the little furrow her brow gets when she has to tell someone – mostly just Jack – something she doesn’t want to.
“Yes,” she says finally. “The team apprehended Gabriel Reyes at the old Overwatch base in Gibraltar.”
Like she’s giving him a god damned mission report. Like he’s a commander with no attachment to the casualties. Like he wasn’t one of those casualties.
“He’s currently confined in quarantine under my supervision and has remained there, though we both know he could escape if he wanted,” she says, like it’s all Jack’s fault.
“He wouldn’t have let himself be taken in if he didn’t want to be here,” Jack says, and each word hurts more than the last. He needs to sleep. The light needs to go away. Angela needs to go away.
He needs to rip out the tubes and needles and stand up and walk out the door.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she says, angry now. “Jack, why is he here? What does he want? I won’t be able to stop him if – when – he decides he’s played along long enough, kills our agents, burns the base to the ground. If ATHENA can’t… this is dangerous, Jack. He’s dangerous.”
She’s right. She doesn’t have to lay it all out for him, because he knows too well. He remembers what happened the last time Reaper tried to take what he wanted. He remembers being recalled, and he remembers hating Reaper with every part of his being, hating in a way he hadn’t thought he was still capable of.
But now Reaper is back. And he’s not just Reaper anymore, and Jack will never be able to draw that line again.
“Help him, Ang’. Please,” he can barely hear himself above the hum of the room.
“I’ll try. I promise I will try.”
As soon as he’s even marginally well enough to rest on his own, Angela sends him away. He knows it’s for her own sanity, and the rest of the crew stationed with them give him a wide berth, confused and skeptical but unwilling to question the order. Dr. Ziegler is not known for letting patients go without a fight.
Some of them know who else is under her care, but they say nothing, and that’s what worries Jack the most. There isn’t a single person in the newly formed Overwatch who doesn’t know who Reaper is, what he’s done. They’ve all been affected by him in some way.
Mccree was there. Mccree knows, but Mccree knew him before. The younger ones – Hana, Lúcio. They’re too young to have known Reyes, and too young to know better than shoot first, question later. But they haven’t said anything, either. And Ana. Ana was there before, and Ana was there when they took him, and Ana is here now, giving Jack looks whenever he sneaks out of his room at night to grab some chow, always watching.
If there was anyone he would talk to about all this, it would be her, but he’s a tight-lipped mercenary and she’s no one’s therapist.
Lena had come to his room just once, handed him his newly fixed visor courtesy of Winston, but she hadn’t asked any questions. Just gave him a tiny smile and a pat on the shoulder and left without a word, which might be the strangest thing that has happened to Jack since that night.
He's been waiting. He’s given Angela her space and not bombarded her with questions and orders they both know she’d ignore. She gives him the barest of updates each day, and he’s accepted it. But he’s done accepting the fact that no one else will see her patient. He stands from his bed in the dead of night, closes his door behind him, and heads to the med-cell he hasn’t been able to get his mind off of. He is done waiting.
He has to walk past Angela, the only one he’s yet seen awake, to get there. She never sleeps when she has a project. When she looks up, she says nothing and neither does he, just shakes his head once. She sighs, closes her eyes and waves him away. She has the authority to try and stop him, but they’ve known each other long enough to be tired of that game.
There are no guards at the door to the cell. If Reaper wanted out, there’d be nothing they could do to stop him. The cell is for Reaper’s protection, or maybe just the protection of Dr. Ziegler’s reputation. Overwatch is nothing but a hot mess, Jack thinks, himself included. When are they going to stop trying to play God?
He keys in his override code in the console next to the door, almost surprised when it works and the door slides open. He steps inside- he-
He can’t do this. Angela is smarter than even he gives her credit for. She knew he’d try, and fail, and that’s better security than trying to outright stop him, and he-
“They fix that visor for you, Cabrón?” Reaper says – Gabriel says.
Jack can’t do this – he can’t. He does it anyways.
“Reyes,” he says, feet moving him into the cell without his mind’s permission.
“So formal, Jack? Thought we were long past that.”
His voice is rough and clipped, but it’s not the voice of Reaper. It’s not quite the voice of Gabriel, either, but it’s closer, maybe. It’s something he never thought he’d hear again.
Jack Morrison is not a young man. He knows when to shoot first, and he knows when to ask questions, and he knows how to get answers if he has to. But this –
He’s nineteen again, quaking in his boots and staring down a man with dark skin and dark eyes and a wicked streak like Jack’s never known before. He’s twenty and being dragged from the line of fire by strong hands, a voice spitting profanities that are the only Spanish Jack’ll ever learn. He’s twenty-one and half dead and crying at the burn from whatever this shit is they’re pushing through his veins and all he can hear is “Cabrón,” “Cabrón”, “Hush, Cabrón, I’ve got you,” even though Gabriel’s fighting it too – and –
Jack walks forward, by his own will this time, because he thinks he can’t but he knows he needs to. He places a knee on the bed, and looks down. The restraints lay slack and unused over the side. Angela hadn’t even bothered. And Gabriel.
He looks awful. He barely looks human. His face is gaunt, pale and waxy like a corpse. He’s scarred, and the barest hint of tremors shake his muscles like he’s starving but fighting not to show it. He is, Jack thinks. He eats souls. And the thought is almost enough to make him turn around again.
But Angela said she would try. Gabriel never said he would, but he’s still here. They aren’t all dead in their beds. He hasn’t moved away, hasn’t moved forward to take from Jack what Jack’s sure Gabriel sorely needs. Jack thinks maybe it’ll be enough.
His hand slips up to his visor, presses the release, slips it from his face and places it on the metal tray to the side of the bed. This time it’s not broken.
He leans down, slowly, muscles still angry and sluggish from sedatives and disuse. From age. Too damn old for this. He presses up against Gabriel, presses his face into Gabriel’s neck and breathes, smells that same bite of antiseptic he awoke to, and smells ash, but not the ozone, not the decay. He can’t remember what Gabriel smelled like before – it hadn’t been like that then. They weren’t close like this, but they almost were.
He wraps his arms around a torso that is too much rib and not enough muscle but still a little broader than his own. He holds tight, and he’s old enough this time, has seen too much shit to cry or let himself go. But he feels Gabriel turn his head to press into Jack’s hair and feels him breathe in deep and hears the muffled, “Hush. I’ve got you.”
It’s been too long, and there’s been too much time and pain between them from what they were, what they were once heading towards.
He can’t do this, he thinks. But he’ll do it anyways. It’s the story of his fucking life.