Work Text:
Halfway through a mission in Ilios, McCree goes plunging off a cliff and doesn’t answer his com for over two hours.
Hanzo isn’t there when it happens, off at base. They don’t tell him until McCree’s been missing for over thirty minutes, the call coming in almost frantic. They think he passed out when he hit the water, Hana tells him. The height he fell from would have caused enough force to do it. Hanzo spends the next hour and a half more and more terrified they will find a corpse under those dark waves. Lena and Winston fret around him, their attempts of comfort poorly masking anxiety.
When the call comes in at two hours, Hanzo is sure they will tell him they found a corpse. They don’t. Instead, they find McCree tucked away in a cave, breathing shaky but there, distress signal set off by someone besides himself. For hours, that’s all Hanzo knows as they fly back, and check McCree into the med bay for heavy bruising.
It’s Angela who tells him the important part. McCree had been shaking wet when they found him, kept warm by only a cloak. A cloak made of pure black fabric that they’d seen floating across the battlefield countless of times.
No one knows what it means. Reaper is their enemy. As far as they thought, the man Gabriel Reyes was long dead. What was left was only a wraith of bitterness.
Now, they are not so sure. Hanzo does not like it, the business of not knowing. If the man left is only Reaper, they must find a way to destroy him. If the man left is a flawed Gabriel Reyes, they must find a way to save him. Something in between is far more complicated.
Hanzo pushes the thought to the side when Angela allows him to visit the med bay. Answers can wait. Some other things require more pressing attention.
McCree’s hospital room doesn’t contain much, just an I.V and a few monitors. He’s heavily bruised, and Hanzo almost winces as he takes in the purpling skin that is McCree’s right arm. He’s not surprised to find McCree awake. Dark circles linger under his eyes.
“Have you slept?” Hanzo asks. It’s been twenty four hours since the mission gone wrong. McCree doesn’t answer for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is a croak.
“Thought I did enough of that at Ilios.”
“I do think that counts.” Hanzo sits down in one of the chairs next to McCree’s bed. After a moment of hesitation, he takes the robotic hand over the flesh one. He does not wish to touch any bruises. “Do you remember anything?”
“This an interrogation?”
“I assume you’ve received more than enough of those already.”
“Damn right. Morrison asked me every question in the book. Thought he’d never stop.”
Hanzo frowns. That will be a conversation to be had with Morrison later. Genji can chide him all he wants about “being respectful” to the old Commander, but until Morrison earns it, Genji will have to be left waiting.
“He wasted his time anyway. Don’t remember shit. ‘Sides the fallin’ bit.” McCree grits his teeth. “Figures. Finally get two hours one on one to confront the old man, and I spend it passed out.”
“You were heavily concussed.”
“Been worse.” McCree twitches his robotic arm. His entire body is tense, almost shaking. When he speaks next it’s a growl. “Morrison thinks he mighta saved me.”
Hanzo doesn’t speak. He came to the same assumption. Someone had to drag McCree out of the waters below. McCree’s chest and ribs show bruising typical with CPR. Gabriel Reyes is the possible answer, given the jacket.
That’s the problem, Hanzo thinks. Possible answer. It’s no certainty. A nearby civilian could have saved McCree and found the jacket to use as a blanket. Or Reaper could have saved him only for Talon to brainwash. There is no guarantee the person who save McCree is Gabriel Reyes.
“Saved me,” McCree huffs. “One day he’s shooting at me, the next he’s giving me the kiss of life on the beach like outta some shitty movie. I’d like him to be more consistent. Maybe decide if he wants me dead or not.” He looks down at Hanzo and his interlaced hands and sighs. “You know he helped design my first Blackwatch outfit.”
That he did. McCree told Hanzo about it once, how Reyes had seen the young boy’s love of cowboys and worked in spurs into his uniform. McCree told him other things Reyes did too, like helping design the hat McCree wore so proudly, or throwing him the tacky belt he now wore almost daily. Closest thing I had to a Dad . That was how McCree described him.
Hanzo pictures his own father, sword bared, skin the pale haunting white it was when he died, chasing him across a battlefield. He shudders.
“He cared about you.”
McCree looks up at the ceiling. His grip in Hanzo’s hand relaxes. Hanzo knows he’s wishing for his hat to hide his expression. He often tends to use it as a shield, covering frightened eyes with it’s wide brim.
“I want it to be him so bad,” McCree says. “I want to be able to get him back. Even knowing it probably ain’t gonna happen, knowing it probably ain’t him, knowing he wouda shot my head off months ago given the chance, I still want him back. And not like on the condition he goes back to who he used to be; I want him back either way. No matter what he is now.” McCree places his good arm over his eyes. Hiding tears, Hanzo knows. He doesn’t mention it. “Isn’t that fucked?”
Hanzo is silent for a long moment. Thinks of Reaper, the phantom, the monster. Then of Gabriel Reyes, a man who plucked Jesse McCree from a life with few meals, and gave him a purpose, a steadying hand.
“No,” Hanzo says, squeezing McCree’s hand.“It is not.”
They sit in silence until visiting hours are over.