Work Text:
It starts with the edges of his vision, just the corners.
It’s nothing dramatic, not like he thought it would be. In fact, it’s so subtle at first that he barely notices it, a flicker of blackness here, a shadow out of the corner of his eyes. Something easily chalked up to something in his eye, or hair in his face. Later on, he’ll think himself a fool for not noticing, for not putting the pieces together. It’s not like he was ignorant to the effects of Deadeye; he knew this would happen someday. He knew the price.
He just thought he wouldn’t have to pay it so soon.
It comes to his attention during a mission, when a bullet catches his metal arm and ruining the machinery inside. The attacker would have ruined more if not for Satya on his flank. It’s a sloppy mistake, sloppier than he knows himself to be, and when he returns back to base that night, he goes to Angela to make sure something isn’t off.
It’s not. At least nothing he didn’t know about. She gives him the diagnosis like it’s new information though, and when he takes it in, he doesn’t close his eyes despite the temptation to do so.
He’s not gonna be able to see out of them soon enough. Might as well enjoy what he’s got while it lasts.
When Jesse McCree was seven years old, scrappy and mean, he’d made a slingshot out of rubber bands and a tree branch.
It was a shitty slingshot, not meant for aiming. He loved it anyway. Soon enough, days were dedicated to testing it in his backyard, taking shots at cans he stacked on the fence there. It was constantly off target. He worked to compensate. Days upon days of practicing left marks from the rubber bands in his fingers.
The day it happened he remembers clearly. Sitting on a tree branch, he’d taken aim, hoping to impress his Mother watching from the window. He could still remember the moment where it all clicked, where time seemed to rush then slow, how he was suddenly aware of where he needed to fire each of his pebbles, how he’d been able to tilt his wrist to just the right angle.
Six pebbles flew through the air. Six cans fell to the ground. And when Jesse had grinned wide, yelped for joy at his sudden found talent, he’d looked to the window to only find his mother looking on in horror.
It would be later he would learn that in that moment his eyes were blood red, not brown.
He goes back to his room after he talks to Morrison.
It’s not just his room anymore, not for almost four years now, and the thought makes him smile as he opens the door. Hanzo is waiting inside already, hair down and damp from a shower and McCree grins at the sight, gaze fond. Even with the deterioration he’s already experienced, the picture in front of him is crystal clear. He drinks parts in to commit to memory, just to start early; the tattoo that is too complicated the trace, the scar from a mission that almost went terribly wrong, the brown eyes currently looking at him like he’s a special kind of fool.
“Must you gape?”
He’s not gaping; he’s remembering. It’s different. But admitting to that means admitting to something he’s not quite ready to own up to yet. So instead he leans against the door frame and grins wider.
“Can you really blame me?”
Hanzo rolls his eyes at him, walking over for fresh close. McCree doesn’t miss the sight of his smile in the mirror. Small, clever and terribly fond.
McCree decides to commit that smile to memory too.
This is the gift of Deadeye; time slows, the world clarifies and every shot you make becomes as simple as pulling the trigger.
This is the curse of Deadeye: For every life you take, you lose the ability to see it in front of you. For every shot you make, your sight fades with it.
In his time living, Jesse McCree had made a lot of shots. And none of them have missed.
He doesn’t tell everyone, not at first.
There’s a reason for it, a good one, honest. If he explains he’s losing his sight, he has to explain why he’s losing it, and while he’s sure he could scrape up a bullshit medical excuse from Angela, he knows they’d find out the truth eventually. About Deadeye, what it’s doing to him, what it will take from him eventually as long as he doesn’t stop.
He won’t stop. And therein lies the problem. Because McCree knows, he knows that if he tells them, if he lets them know what his service has cost, they will never let him use Deadeye again. Even if they know the damage is already done, even if they know it will only slow the progress. If they know, they will force him to stop, to give him a few more years. He will keep his sight. And they will lose lives.
And he ain’t worth that. His sight ain’t worth Lena’s laughter, or Hana’s nightly live streams, or the light projections of butterflies Satya makes to dance around the common room. It ain’t.
(Somedays, when he’s feeling selfish, he wishes it could be).
Some of them catch on though, because they’re a smart bunch and he knows it. Not the cause but the symptom, picking up on how he doesn’t notice things out of the corner of his eye. Hana makes sure he gets a seat closer to the television during movie nights. Lúcio takes care to walk around him by an inch as if not to startle. And while Hanzo says nothing at all, McCree hasn’t lost enough sight to notice the way he frowns when McCree can’t see his the boots he’s been looking for resting in the corner.
Ana is the first to confront him about it directly. How she knows, McCree has no idea, but he wouldn’t put it above her to go digging through his medical files. She invites him to tea, typical Ana fare for interrogations. It’s fifteen minutes into their conversation before she gets to the point of the meeting. She looks at him for a long moment before asking the question, her gaze just as piercing with one eye as it is was with two.
“You losing it in both or in just one?”
There’s no point in lying. “Both.”
“How bad?”
“Just the edges but it’ll take everything eventually.”
“Jack know?”
“Yep.” That was a must. McCree likes his secrets, but he wasn’t going to put his team in danger over it. Morrison plans the strikes; he can work around McCree’s new limits. And prepare for the ones yet to come.
“Can Angela stop it?” McCree shakes his head. “Why not?”
“Can only slow it, Amari. And I ain’t willing to do that. Not with everything going on.”
She catches on quick. Clever as always, Ana. Her frown deepens. McCree is almost worried it will stick on her face, a permanent scowl.
“You knew this would happen.”
“I had an inkling.”
“Jesse-”
“What do you want me to say?” He grits his teeth, scowls himself, leans forward in his chair. “I knew the risks. Only used it when I had to, when someone’s life was on the line. Still do.” He slumps back in the chair he’s sitting on, runs his hand down his face. “Lot of lives have been on the line over the years. Don’t regret saving a single one.” He smiles, just slightly. “I’d reckon you’d say the same.”
For a moment he’s worried he pushed too far, that he’s crossed a line. But after a moment Ana nods, sweeping the bangs that always fall out of her hijab to the side. Showcasing the eyepatch.
It’s as close to a verbal agreement as he’s going to get.
Deadeye is a legacy, a skill passed down on from McCree to McCree. Back when he was fourteen, Jesse had gone and looked all of them up, at least the ones that had seemed to use it on the regular. What they were up to. What they’d done. When they’d lost their sight.
The answers were as follows: 68, 59, 70, and 31 for a man who’d had what looked to be a varied career. Former sharpshooters and trickshots, now sightless.
Jesse McCree is 42 when he begins to join them.
He tells Hanzo the next day, outside, on the roof.
He gets angry at first, about the lying about the deceit, and for that McCree can’t blame him. It takes him minutes to explain why he can’t quit, and how even if he quit now, the time he’s spent will eventually catch up with him. As he gets into the reason why, the other man calms, the explanation something he understands, something McCree knew he’d understand. Redemption is a song both of them know well, something that has haunted their dreams for decades.
“I didn’t think it’d go this soon,” he says, staring up at the stars. “I knew I’d been busy, but I thought it wouldn’t start till I was fifty at least.” He lets out a low whistle. “I guess I was busier than I thought. Now that is wasn’t worth it but-” He shrugs. “Be nice to keep it around, that’s all. Got a lot I still wanna look at.”
“You talk about this like it is a minor inconvenience.”
“I mean, it ain’t minor. But it ain’t the end of the world either, if you know what I mean.” Hanzo is looking at him with an odd expression, and McCree waves his hands in the air, trying to find the right words. “I...hm...I’m not going to say I’m cool with it and all. It’s a right bummer, that’s what it is. But it’s one that I knew was coming my way. One I’ve made my peace with a long time ago. I’ll just have to adapt. Not like nobody’s done this before and turned out fine.” He looks down at his fake hand and smiles. “I guess, after losing my hand, I look at shit differently.”
“I suppose you do.”
“I mean it’s not great. I’m gonna miss a bunch. Like, man-” Reality sets in for a minute and he lets out a huff of air. “Shit, like I’m gonna miss so many things. Like looking at stars. And sunrises, I like those. And movies, I’m gonna have to get all of those described. Do they even have described Eastwood films?”
“McCree-” Hanzo’s left eyebrow is raised.
“This is a realistic concern. I gotta have my yearly marathon. Sure, I know how it all plays out, but like, someone’s gotta narrate those action scenes.”
“I will find you a copy,” Hanzo says, voice dry but firm. “Or I will narrate it myself.”
McCree pictures that for a moment, Hanzo’s narration of an old pulpy Western, and busts out laughing.
“McCree!”
“What!” McCree wipes at his eyes, holding back giggles. “You’re terrible at fancy narration and you know it. You’d just tell me someone got shot and leave it at that.”
Hanzo glares at him. “Not all of us are prone to dramatics.”
McCree laughs some more at his expression. After a second, the glee fades to something else, something more somber. The idea of listening to a movie instead of watching it reminding him of other things. “I’m gonna miss that scowl,” he says quietly. Letting himself dip into sementilism. “And that smile of yours.” He wipes at his eyes, but this time the wetness there is not from the previous laughter. “It’s a good smile.”
Hanzo’s expression softens. He reaches forward to grab McCree’s shoulder, steadying him. A gesture he will be able to keep even when his sight goes.
“My smile is not going anywhere. You will just have to find other ways to see it.”
"You suggesting I feel your face every five minutes?”
“Perhaps in private.” Both men snort at his poor attempt at humor. “I think listening will suit you just fine.”
And he’s right in his own way, and McCree knows it. Because yes, he’s losing the smile, but the tone in Hanzo’s voice, the tone before that grin appears is something McCree can recognize even in the dark. He slumps forward, letting himself be pulled into a hug.
This Deadeye can’t take from him either.
After a few minutes he pulls away. Looks over to Hanzo and tilts his head. “You think forty two is too young to retire?”
“Do you want to retire?”
“Well, nah, but-”
“Then we won’t retire.”
“I don’t know about you, but shooting with no vision is kinda tricky-”
“We have worked past harder obstacles”
The stubbornness instead of sense stops McCree in his tracks. Hanzo is looking up at the stars, the constellations there, and the look on his face leaves no room for argument. McCree wonders what he sees up there, what constellations he finds comfort it. If he found any answers hidden there during his time on the run.McCree looks up at the sky and decides to look for some answers of his own.
Like how he could be lucky enough to earn the man sitting next to him.
The first time they try it, it’s a test run. A sonar system, a pair of headphones and a blindfold.
It’s not the first thing they’ve tried, not by a long shot. As long as McCree was willing to try something, his team was willing to help him find something to try. This is perhaps the tenth thing on the docket they’ve given a shot, the visor 76 uses proved useless in McCree’s case.
It’s simple. The sonar system, that that of Hanzo’s arrows, picks up enemies in the area. The system’s AI tells him the angle to shoot, and where. Angles and everything. The headphones don't block out any noise at all, make it easier to hear what's going on around him. Compared to everything else, it has a chance of working.
That doesn’t mean McCree doesn’t feel absolutely ridiculous.
“Do you want to give up?” Hanzo asks after ten failed test rounds. McCree considers it for a moment, then shakes his head. He wasn’t able to shoot with his other arm in a day. He’d been a fool for expecting this to work as well.
He reloads his gun and waits for everyone to go back into the viewing room. Waits for the system to tell him where things are. Fires five shots, hears them hit the back wall instead of the target. Grits his teeth.
“Seventy five degrees to the left, angle up fifteen degrees.”
He does as he’s told. Years of sharpshooting don’t translate well into exact angles, but he tries to match it. Shoots.
The sound of a bullet firing through paper echoes through the room.
Silence.
Then-
“Bloody hell, you got one!” Lena.
McCree takes off his blindfold. Sure enough, even with his failing vision, he can see he’s nailed one, right in the torso. A fatal shot. Even only with a day of practice.
“Good work,” Hanzo says from behind him. McCree pushes back his headphones.
Hanzo was right. Even without seeing him, McCree knows Hanzo’s smiling.