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Gabriel scanned the empty rooms as he sprinted past them, single shotgun in one hand — he’d discarded the other — and he rushed down a hallway and towards a stairwell. Towards an exit. Because the whole damn building was probably about to start coming down on top of him.
A ballistic fucking missile had hit the building next to the one he was currently in. That building was essentially gone. The impact had been so massive that the surrounding buildings also sustained extreme damage. One other office building had already crumbled, he’d been told. This one — the one he was currently running through — would be going down next, according to the information he was receiving.
He’d shouted for a status report over the comm. Most of his agents had reported back. One had not.
The request for evacuation had been approved. Though it was a bit goddamn late for that, wasn’t it.
Twelve minutes. He had approximately twelve minutes to navigate his way about fourteen more flights down to ground level through a partially destroyed building if he wanted to get out of the area. He was currently running to a different stairwell because the stairs in the one he’d been hurdling down previously had suddenly stopped being there. And he was not about to jump three stories downwards onto a pile of smoking rubble.
He touched the comm in his ear again. Yelled for a report from his missing agent. Silence again on the line.
And then a crackle. A voice he’d been listening for so intently.
“I’m — compromised.”
“McCree! State your location!”
Gabriel didn’t stop running. He pushed against a metal door. It was jammed inside the frame. He took a few steps back and then rushed forward, putting his weight behind his shoulder.
“Ninth.” A pause. The comm cut out. Silence on the line. And then, “Floor. Ninth floor. South exit.”
“I’ll be right there,” Reyes replied with a grunt as he stumbled into the stairwell. Nearly dropped his gun. He grabbed the railing and jumped over it.
He counted the flights as he descended.
He stopped himself from thinking about how strained McCree’s voice had been.
It took seconds to reach the ninth floor. There was desperation in the way he searched. He had maybe ten minutes. And he still had nine floors to get down with a wounded agent once he fucking found his ass, God damn, the entire floor was a disaster zone.
Things were on fire. Office rooms were no longer rooms, there were walls blown out and crumbled everywhere. Gabriel had to climb over piles of rubble. The main wall on the west side of the building was gone. He could repel down the outside if he had the fucking equipment.
He almost tripped over McCree when he found him.
“Oh,” Reyes breathed, assessing the situation.
McCree looked up at him, his face covered in soot and ash, tracks of tears streaking his cheeks. He was pinned to the floor, laid out on his belly, trying to curl in on himself and shaking. Reyes could see how hard he was sweating. His hair was stuck to his face.
And his forearm was trapped beneath several huge blocks of fucking concrete — part of the interior structure of the building, or maybe from the building next door, broken apart and blown outwards from the explosion.
“Fuck, boss,” McCree bit back, taking deep and gasping breaths. Rolled a bit to his side. One hand clenched tight around his trapped arm, like he was still trying to pull it out.
Reyes squatted down next to him, set his shotgun aside, and got down real low, onto his stomach so he was face level with McCree. He reached out and put a hand on McCree’s shoulder. Tried to ground him. He could feel him shaking.
“I’m gonna get you out.”
“How.”
Reyes opened his mouth to answer. And then he closed it. His eyes swept back and forth, and he looked around the room, propped himself up on both elbows, searching for something he could use as a fulcrum, something he could use as a wedge, something to get the giant stone block off McCree’s fucking arm. Something. Fuck.
“Building’s not gonna hold, is it.” McCree’s grunted, blatantly struggling to form the sentence. Reyes ignored him. Stood and started looking through the surrounding rubble, semi-frantically shoving shit aside, his breathing quickening despite his attempts to control it. When he didn’t answer, McCree went on to say, “Should leave me and get out while you can.”
Reyes looked back at McCree.
“No.”
McCree looked like he might start crying again. He put his free hand over his face and bit his lip. Reyes turned back to his search.
“When—“ McCree coughed, his voice betraying the extreme pain he was in, but he forced his way through it, “When’s evac coming?”
“Soon.”
“Reyes, you gotta go—“
“I’m not.”
“Y’know it’s my shootin’ arm! I’m fucked — fuckin’ regardless!”
“McCree!” Reyes whirled on him, shouting, taking three quick steps and getting down in front of him again. He grabbed the shoulder strap of his chest armor, yelling over the sound of the everything burning around them, “Your life is worth more to me than your ability to shoot a goddamn firearm!”
McCree did not respond verbally. More fat tears spilled from his wide eyes.
“I’m getting you the fuck out of here, you—“ Reyes didn’t bother finishing the statement, already standing and turning again. But McCree grabbed his ankle.
Parts of the ceiling started falling around them.
“Take the arm off, then.”
“I can’t amputate your arm in thirty seconds, McCree. I have a field knife on me.”
“Then fuckin’ shoot it!”
Reyes stared down at him. The way he was laid out there, trying to get his legs underneath him, trying to get some leverage, a thigh pressing up to his chest and his arm bent awkwardly under a mass of concrete too heavy for Reyes to actually do anything about in the next couple minutes.
“What.”
McCree nodded towards Gabriel’s discarded shotgun. “You still got ammo?”
Reyes nodded.
“Shoot it off.”
Reyes paused for just a second. Took in the sight of the agent before him and what he’d just said.
Goddamn impressive.
“Okay.”
Gabriel moved quickly. McCree rolled onto his side as much as he could and made room for Reyes to unfasten his belt and yank it from his hips, fold it over once and stick it in his open mouth. McCree bit down hard. Gabriel removed his own belt and pulled it real goddamn tight around McCree’s bicep. And then he picked up his shotgun and pressed the muzzle against the back of McCree’s elbow.
He looked over at McCree. Sweating and trembling, McCree stared back right at him. Kept his eyes on him. Reyes grabbed his hand, and they both squeezed.
Without further hesitation, Reyes looked back at McCree’s arm, and he pulled the trigger.
The sound of McCree’s muffled screaming flooded his ears as blood splattered across both of them. Immediately, it was a red and gory mess. McCree was pulling, then he stopped pulling, curled in harder, started trying to press himself further into the floor, twisting and writhing with his eyes shut tight. His arm remained attached and trapped. He did not stop sobbing against the belt. McCree had maybe nearly broken Reyes’ hand with how hard he’d squeezed it.
Reyes shot again.
The screaming was renewed, hysterical, and Reyes tried to block it out.
He shot one more time.
The ulna and part of the humerus absolutely had to be shattered by now. Reyes dropped his gun and pulled out his knife, cut through the remaining exposed sinew that hadn’t torn, and McCree was screaming bloody murder. Reyes dropped the knife and wrapped an arm around McCree’s chest and pulled him free from the concrete rubble.
His entire left arm was absolutely destroyed, a red stump that poured at first when he moved, bone and muscle and tendons exposed. There was no time to attempt to pack it. The belt secured around McCree’s bicep held. The makeshift tourniquet would have to be enough for now. Reyes left his gun on the ground.
Nobody died from losing a limb in and of itself. However, people did die of hypovolemic shock fairly quickly. And McCree’s brachial artery had just been severed.
McCree yanked the folded and bitten belt from his dripping mouth, a string of saliva and pleading and curses falling from it.
"Fuck, oh lord, I can't, I can't--" McCree was moving in Gabriel's arms, struggling to get on his hand and knees, trying to get his legs underneath him. "Fuckin' can't hardly see, God help me--"
“C'mon! On your feet!” Reyes shouted over him, pulling him up, trying to get a better grip on him. He was slipping. Dropped the belt. Reyes grabbed his face with one hand and yelled, “We have to move!”
McCree opened his eyes, most of his weight supported by Gabriel, leaned up against him, and he nodded. He fucking nodded and grit his teeth and did what he could to stand on his own.
“One foot in front of the other. We’re getting out of here alive.”
“Yessir,” McCree said through his tears and hitched breathing.
They moved as quickly as they could with McCree nearly blacking out every twenty steps. Reyes didn’t know. Didn’t know how he was doing it. But now wasn’t the time to fucking ponder it.
Once they got to the stairwell, McCree wavered. He’d stumbled the last few steps.
“Stop.”
McCree stopped. He tried to steady himself on the railing. Reyes went to stand in front of him and bent at the knees. “Get on.”
Silently, McCree obeyed, and Reyes wrapped his arms around the undersides of McCree’s thighs and shifted him a bit. He could piggyback McCree faster than the rate at which they were traveling.
“Hang on,” Reyes said as he started taking the stairs two at a time, and he could feel McCree struggle to keep his good arm gripped tight.
“I never,” McCree breathed against him, shaking so damn hard, his voice getting lighter, “Never in my life knew hurt could hurt this bad, boss.”
“It’ll be over soon. It’ll stop hurting soon,” Reyes told him, panting as he bounded down the stairwell.
“Okay.”
“You will get through this.”
“I’ll get through it.”
McCree’s grip was slackening.
They hit another block around the third floor. A fire and a crumbled wall made Reyes double back, running up the stairs again, ignoring the burning in his legs. He entered another hallway and started making his way towards the opposite stairwell.
Clock was ticking.
“You doing okay?” Reyes asked as he climbed over broken office equipment and destroyed furniture.
There was no answer.
Reyes ran harder. He got to the next stairwell.
“McCree, stay with me!” Reyes shouted when he felt him slipping more, and he jostled him, felt McCree’s grip tighten on him again. “You awake!”
“Yep.”
“Good,” Reyes breathed, getting down the stairs as quickly as he could without tripping over himself. “Stay awake.”
“‘m awake.”
“Almost there.” Gabriel knew the lobby was just beneath them, and the sound of the building starting to come down was roaring in his ears. He ignored it. He kicked open the metal door to the lobby on his second try, and once he was there, it was a dead sprint to the front door.
They exited the building successfully while it was still standing, but they weren’t in the clear. Evac wouldn’t even get this close. They had some distance to cover. If that building came down, he’d have to find a shelter real damn fast.
“We—“ McCree groaned, his voice rough and barely there, “We forgot my—“
“Your what.”
“My belt. Forgot it. The belt I. Because of the arm.”
Reyes could see the evac point. He could see the intersection where they were waiting. He ran onwards.
“I’ll get you a new belt,” he said.
“Mm. Yea?”
Reyes didn’t know how McCree was conscious.
“Yeah. A real goddamn obnoxious one. Get one that says badass mother fucker on it. Just for you.”
Gabriel might’ve felt McCree smile into the back of his neck. Or maybe he imagined it. By the time he got McCree to the medics, he was out cold. But they’d told Reyes that, with a blood transfusion and an operation, he would live.
Reyes stood there next to him while they undressed him and started immediately working on what was left of the arm.
Gabriel watched him. Stared at him. At his pale face covered in sweat and grime and blood. And he took a deep, shuddering breath, unable to look away.
"Tell me what you need."
It was a command. Gabriel spoke flatly, arms crossed over his chest, staring down at McCree, expecting a response.
McCree looked down at the palm of his right hand that laid in his lap over the white hospital bedsheets. His fingers slowly curled into a loose fist.
"Time, I guess. If you're not gonna drop me."
"Drop you?"
"Yeah," McCree rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You know, drop me back off at the prison in Santa Fe."
Gabriel almost felt offended. Probably looked it, too.
"Why in the hell -- no, I'm obviously not doing anything like that."
"Good to know."
The silence between them felt off. The space between them filled up with the rhythmic beats and ticks of the machines attached to McCree.
Only a few seconds passed, but time felt stretched.
"Commander."
Too formal. Gabriel wished he wouldn't call him that. Not right then.
“McCree.”
"Say I can't re-learn to shoot with the other hand as good as I used to. What then?"
"You think I'd let you go over decreased accuracy?"
"Accuracy's my fuckin' job, ain't it?"
Reyes could see McCree chewing on the inside of his lip. Stepping forward, Reyes let his arms fall to his sides.
“Tried to make this clear before — I don't care if you can't hit a target for the rest of your life." McCree blinked up at him, completely still. Reyes took a slow breath and went on to say, "I'm not dropping you because I refuse to." Silence. Exhale and inhale. "I won't let you go."
He knew what he'd just said. And how his own superiors would interpret that, were they to hear it.
When McCree grinned at him, Reyes could feel it in his chest.
"Ain't you just the sweetest thing."
Reyes broke, then. Turned away so McCree wouldn't see him smile.