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Jesse sprints down the hallway. Shouts echo off the concrete walls behind him, and fluorescent lights flicker above. His gun is holstered at his hip, but he’d rather this didn’t turn into a shootout. One versus entire-enemy-base are tall odds.
A stupid mistake has him blocked off from the eastern exit route and severed from the team. Just him and his gun now. Him, his gun, and his wits, if he can manage to scramble them together. Last minute wit-scrambling has always been his forte. Last minute wit-scrambling and being lucky.
Reyes had made sure everyone memorized the layout of the building. Jesse knows exactly where he is. The northern stairwell is just a few seconds away, and from there he can make it to the front lobby. Sure, exiting via the main entrance isn’t his best plan ever.
Stairwell, right where it should be!
He lunges for the handle, ducking inside just as his pursuers round the corner. Shots blast against the walls behind him. Dread settles in his chest and festers in his stomach.
Like, it definitely isn’t going to make his top ten list of best plans. This isn’t a plan you bring home to show off to your ma. This was more the kinda plan that lost you never-have-I-ever and would kill you for the life insurance money if it could.
The stairwell stretches up and up and up above him, too many floors for him to really believe he’ll be making it out.
Christ. He’s going to die here. Trapped in an underground bunker, so far from the cloudless skies back home. He’s rattled a wasp’s nest and now he’s gonna pay for it.
It’s his fault, really. He shouldn’t have gotten separated.
His boots pound on the grated steps. He needs to put as much space in between himself and the guards following him as he can. He makes it up one flight of stairs, then another.
The door below him bursts open. Gunfire cracks through the air, resonating in his chest and making him jump. He resists the urge to duck and keeps running.
A door above him opens with more angry shouting and he’s forced to dive out into the nearest floor. The power is still cut here, nothing but the red glow of the emergency lights to guide him. His eyes struggle to adjust as he powers on blindly.
He rounds one corner, then another, then another. The concrete walls blur together. Locker blue doors are a sickly grey in the lighting.
His mouth is dry and his throat aches. He can hear them coming and it feels like they’re on top of him, breathing sweet rot down his neck. Sweat beads on his forehead and he’s wrapped up in the feeling of gore and blood. It settles heavy in his nostrils and his chest. It wriggles through his wrists like a worm and drills his knees hollow. He hates this feeling. The one that shows up when death is tied to your heels like a shadow.
He finds himself hiding in a supply closet, back against the wall. The racks of chemicals and boxes and odds and ends all smell old.
His breathing is uneven and his hands shake violently. Jesse slides down to the ground and tries to rip himself from his spiraling mind. He needs to calm down. He needs to breath. He can do this. He can get himself out. Better to process these feelings later, preferably over stolen whiskey. For now though, he has to concentrate on what he’s doing.
He fishes his broken comm out of his pocket and holds it up to his ear. Not even static. It’s dead.
Just like him! Despite himself, he giggles at his own joke.
Okay, breathe. Access the situation.
He’s trapped. In a supply closet. In an enemy bunker. He checks his watch and discovers that they’re set to be picked up in five minutes. 200 meters away from the front doors of the base.
Jesse’s twitchy hands become nigh uncontrollable. He just has to make a run for it. He has his gun, and he’s allowed to use lethal force if necessary.
Either he dies or he makes it to the ship, but he’s on his own now. He closes his eyes and leans his head against the wall. He takes a deep breath that fills up his lungs as far as they can go. He breaths out. Another.
Focus, Jesse. Focus.
He can’t wait any longer. He swings open the supply closet door, sweeping both directions. Clear. Peacekeeper is heavy in his palm. It makes him feel a little calmer, a little more in control.
He runs. Back the way he came, undoing all of the twisting turns he’s taken.
He freezes when he hears a voice down a hallway he has to pass. Sweat slides down his neck as he strains to listen. There’s another voice, and then two more. Oh thank god, that must mean none of them are watching the stairs.
Jesse starts again at a crawl as he approaches the maw of the hallway. He sneaks past ever so quietly. The vague silhouettes of his pursuers are cast in red, and he’s painfully aware that they could turn and see him at any moment.
As they go down the hallway, loud and coordinated, they open every door. Their barked commands are harsh as bullets and feel just as deadly. It’s painful to be moving so slowly, to be treading so carefully, so delicate in his heavy boots. The seconds tick. Only four minutes left now.
He’s never going to make it. Panic sinks its talons into his chest.
Focus.
He keeps walking.
As soon as he knows he can reach the stairs without them catching him, he breaks into a sprint. His footsteps bang against the walls. There’s shouting behind him. He just has to keep running. Peacemaker in his hand is the only thing keeping him steady and on his feet.
Stairwell. Climbing.
Three minutes.
They’re after him below, and the shouting freaks him out more than anything. It’s like when big dogs bark. It’s overwhelming, demanding that he shut down. He can’t shut down though, not now.
He giggles again. Fools! You can’t catch a man running for his life!
Finally, finally, he makes it to the ground floor. In the moment that he pauses to check if there’s anyone on the other side of the stairwell door through the window in it, someone fires a shot at him from below. He doesn’t hesitate a second longer.
Out the door. He slams it behind him and tries to stir up a plan. He can’t have them following him. He has to do something.
Jesse jogs for cover, squatting behind a fancy, floral patterned couch along the wall. The texture of the fabric is surreally vivid as he rests a hand against it.
He waits for them to appear. They all burst out of the stairwell, one after another, heads whipping around to catch where he’s gone. All he’s done so far is run. They aren’t expecting this, and so they don’t look too hard.
Last mistake they ever make. All dead, right outside the stairwell door, before any of them can fire a shot.
He’s running now, in the well-lit, wide hallways of the upper floor. He knows the layout. He can make it to a door if he just keeps running. If he doesn’t run into anyone.
Which he does. Of course he does. Three guards.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
They drop. Jesse mouths a prayer with cracked lips as he jumps over the bodies.
Hopefully all the gunfire will be ignored. According to the plan, the two teams should be leaving the building from side exits right now. The compound will be focused on that. The security cameras trained on him are broadcasting to preoccupied eyes.
He runs down the hallways, which grow ever brighter as he nears the front lobby with its floor to ceiling glass walls. On the other side will be a big, empty field. For the first time, it occurs to him that he’ll be an easy target for snipers. The realization crushes him, chipping away at the little resolve he has left. Maybe he’ll get lucky.
Despite his best efforts, his inner pep-talk doesn’t feel too peppy. More like the placating coos of your executioner as he steers you to the gallows. It won’t hurt, he promises. Over before you know it. Just keep walking.
Jesse keeps walking.
He slows to a stop and focuses on keeping his footsteps quiet as he nears the front lobby. He hugs the wall and steals a peaks out into the high-ceilinged, bright room ahead of him. There are six in the lobby. Six guards stand between him and a chance.
His hands are reloading bullets. His mind feels quiet, like the eye of a storm. He has one minute to be at the extraction site. A deep disbelief settles in the pit of his stomach as he slides in the last bullet.
He isn’t going to make it. There just isn’t enough time. Even if he can kill the guards, he can’t make it. It’s impossible, and not in the usual, should-be-impossible-but-I’m-Jesse-McCree way either. There is nothing he can do, no trick he can pull, no ace up his sleeve.
Jesse closes his eyes, for just a moment. A moment is all he needs.
You miss all the shots you don’t take.
He peeks around the corner, firing with legendary aim. Two drop before they can react, a third while she’s drawing out her handgun. A fourth while he’s lifting to shoot, a fifth with their finger on the trigger.
Six is when his luck runs out.
A bullet tears through the light armour on his stomach. Jesse teeters, taking a step back in shock. Pain washes over him, dulling him to the world, crashing him into shock. The guard levels another shot. Jesse meets their eyes for a split second. Bang. Might as well take one more with him.
30 seconds to extraction.
Jesse slumps to his knees and drops his gun. Hands clasp over the wound. The slick, warm feeling of blood--his blood--almost makes him vomit. There’s always a sense of wrongness when you see it on the outside. Death looms over him like a circling vulture. It’s just a waiting game, now.
Tears slip down his cheeks and he laughs. Every giggle hurts his stomach, but he can’t stop. It’s just so damn funny, all of it.
There’s nothing he can do. He can’t run. He’s out of bullets and he’s out of luck. It’s only a matter of time until they find him and the carnage in his wake.
Jesse McCree, dead at 18 because he got split from his team during a firefight. Who was even gonna miss him? Certainly not all the folks who’d lost kids to his bullets or the Blackwatch agents that had been depending on him to be there. Everyone from the Deadlock gang would be happy to hear he was gone. Any family of his only existed in distant, foggy memories.
His choices haunt him. Every bullet he’s ever fired feels like another rock in his soul, heavy enough now to drag him down to the bottom of murky waters and trap him there to drown. He knows it's not all his fault, he knows that if he hadn’t joined Deadlock he would have died long ago anyway. Doesn’t change what he’s done, though. Doesn’t change who he is.
He can hear the choppers carrying away everyone who’d gotten out. Everyone who’d actually managed to do their goddamn jobs instead of screwing up like him. This was his first chance to prove he was worth keeping around and he fucked it up real nice.
Sorry Reyes, he thinks. Guess you were wrong about me.
Blood slips through his fingers no matter how hard he presses. It just keeps going. It sops up in his clothes and pools on the floor, spreading out across the linoleum and flowing through all the cracks like water in canals. Too much. He’s lost too much. He can feel his limbs getting weaker, his fingers going cold. The tunnel-visioning from earlier turns into something much foggier and much more insidious.
Helicopter. Getting louder.
The windows shatter and his eyes flash open. A bloodied hand reaches up to shield him from the spray, lagging too slowly to actually be useful. Glass tinkles down in front of him, sparkling in the mid-afternoon sun.
“JESSE!” bellows his commander. He squints into the light, frowning in confusion. Reyes is stepping through the shattered window with two other agents at his side. “Oh thank God,” he breathes.
“What are you doing here,” asks Jesse after a moment of wobbling with squinted eyes.
“Getting you,” says Gabe. He and the agents sweep the room for any dangers. He notices them exchange looks when they count up the bodies.
Gabe pales at the blood. He's at Jesse’s side, shotguns holstered. Gabe drops to a kneel and pats him down, looking for the source. Jesse sucks in air through his teeth when he finds it. On a count of three, he hauls Jesse to his feet. Julian, one of the agents, supports his other side.
“Why?”
Jesse doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget the look Reyes gives him them. It’s all angry and worried and deeply, deeply sad. For just a couple seconds, their eyes lock.
Jesse is terrified by what he sees.
“Cause you’re part of the team.”
He doesn’t want someone to care.
“And we don’t leave people behind.”
He doesn’t deserve this.
“C’mon, we’ve got you.”
They get him up and into the chopper. Gabe keeps pressure on his wound as Julian buckles him in. Jesse mutters a thanks. They take off.
“Do you have any other injuries?” asks Julian. Maxwell, the second agent, is pulling out a first aid kit.
“No, jus’ the this one.”
Gabe’s hand is patting his cheek firmly. “Gotta stay awake, kid.”
“I am awake,” complains Jesse.
“Eyes open, then,” says Gabe.
Jesse opens his eyes. They’re hard to focus and burn from the crying.
Armour is unbuckled, then scissors snip away at his shirt. Nano-goop is squeezed from a tube onto the wound. It’s all cold and buzzy.
“Eyes open, Jesse,” says Gabe.
“Do you want me to give him something for the pain?”
“No, he’s having enough trouble staying up as it is. Jesse, eyes open.”
His eyes pop open. He thought they were open.
“Yup!” he says. He flashes a smile. “Yknow, I had it handled.”
“That is blatantly inaccurate,” states Julian, who’s filling up a syringe with something from an injection vial.
“Eh, maybe,” says Jesse, eyes slipping from Julian to gaze out the window. There’s an empty sky today. Not a cloud as far as he can see.
Every bump and thump sends another shock of pain through his body. It’s too much to think about anything else. It consumes him, swallowing him up whole. All he is is the pain he feels and the ringing in his ears.
Did they really come back for him?
“You did good kid, you did good. Made it easy for us to pick you up.” Gabe is crouching in front of Jesse, holding onto a seat to steady himself. He rocks graceful with every bounce.
“Shouldn'ta though,” says Jesse. His eyes slide closed again. “'S dangerous.”
“We weren't going to leave you behind, Jesse. C’mon now.” Gabe cups his cheek and Jesse rests heavy in his palm. Gabe jostles him a little, making Jesse frown in annoyance. Right. Staying awake. “Vivian, how long to the hospital?”
Whatever answer Gabe hears over the comm, it makes him twiddle a little with Jesse's hair.
“‘M not. Shouldn'ta.”
“Not what, Jesse?” asks Gabe.
“Not worth that.”
“Jesse,” says Gabe. Jesse doesn't like how sincere that sounds. He doesn't want other people to feel responsible for him and he doesn't want to be responsible for other people. “Hell, kid. Eyes open.”
Jesse can't.
When he wakes up, it's in a hospital bed. His arms are heavy beside him and his tongue is comfy in his mouth. He wriggles his toes experimentally and takes a deep breath of sweet sweet hospital air. Sterile and weird. It reminds him of the feeling that medical gloves leave on your hands. Unnatural and powdery, but clean.
Huh. He’s alive. Maybe the plan was alright in the end. The kinda plan you take out a couple times, lose contact with, then reconnect with years later. Not a perfect plan, but definitely passable. No big regrets if you settle for this one.
He feels good, way better than he should be feeling. Angela has been kind to him with whatever's pumping through the IV in the crook of his elbow.
There's wires everywhere and he immediately hates them with vigor. They feel invasive. The heart rate monitor blips faster as he notices the heart rate monitor. Fluorescent lights above him stab at his eyes when he opens them. He shuts them immediately.
“You lived,” says Gabe from beside him. “Died along the way, though.”
Jesse thinks for a moment, trying to process that information. “I don't remember bein’ dead.”
“Yeah I think that's how it works,” deadpans Gabe. Jesse chuckles. “How're you feeling?”
“Awake,” says Jesse.
“How’s your stomach?”
Jesse shuffles a little in his cocoon of sheets and thin blankets. “Still nu--aagh! Shit, did I bang up my ribs too?”
“Two were broken when you were resuscitated,” says Angela, breezing into the room. Jesse squints open his eyes to watch her. Click clack click clack go her heels.
“Gross,” says Jesse.
“Totally,” agrees Angela sympathetically.
Gabe is leaning back in a moderately comfy looking chair, cupping a thermos full of coffee, judging by the smell. He looks tired, but not too disheveled.
Gabe and Jesse watch Angela as she frets over the myriad of fancy looking machines, with all of their different blips and numbers. Her lips move silently and her fingers tap on the cot railings. She nods her head to a silent beat.
She looks at Jesse very seriously. “Are you in any pain?” she asks.
“Nope doc, feeling great.”
“Hm. Be careful,” she says, pulling at her lips and crossing the unoccupied arm across her chest. Jesse can see the gears turning as she reads the machines. “It was tricky to patch you up this time. You might feel alright because of the meds, but you won’t be moving much for the next few days.”
“Will do,” says Jesse.
She nods curtly and frowns in disgust at his finger guns and wink combo.
“Can we have a couple of minutes?” asks Gabe.
Angela nods and leaves the room as gently as she came.
For a few moments Jesse and Gabe sit, waiting for the quiet clicking of her heels to fade down the hallway.
Eventually, Jesse breaks the silence. “Don’t tell me you’ve been sittin’ there watchin’ me sleep.”
“Nah, Angela just let me know she was taking you off the good stuff. I’ve been busy with reports and getting what we retrieved to the right people.”
Jesse gives him a thumbs up. Moving his arm with the IV in it feels weird and unnatural.
Conversation lulls for a few moments. Jesse isn’t sure if he’s supposed to say something here, and Gabe seems pretty interested in the floor all of a sudden. Jesse drums his fingers and chews his lips, looking for patterns in the popcorn on the ceiling. Maybe if he’s really quiet, Gabe will go away and let him go back to sleep.
“You knew we were coming back for you, right?”
Jesse’s fingers start twisting up the hospital sheets beneath them. He can’t tear his eyes away from a crocodile he found in the popcorn.
“Jesse?” asks Gabe again.
“Yeah, yeah I knew.”
Gabe is silent for a few moments. Jesse risks a glance at him and whoops wrong choice, there he goes again with that face. There’s just too much going on there for Jesse’s liking.
His eyes dart back up to the ceiling above him. He’s trying to think of what to say. The crocodile offers no advice.
“Jus’ didn’t feel it is all.”
Gabe sighs. “We’re never gonna leave you behind, Jesse.” Gabe’s voice is tired. Jesse wonders if he’s been dreading this conversation. “I promise.”
Jesse gulps. This is more than he ever wanted, more than he ever asked for. More than he can ever hope to repay, no matter how much blood he spills for the cause or how many bullets he runs into. He just doesn’t deserve it. They’re wrong about him, and someday they’re gonna figure it out and then they’ll get rid of him.
“Okay,” says Jesse flatly.
Gabe opens his mouth like he’s gonna say something else and then stops himself. He shakes his head, staring down into the tightly clasped hands on his lap.
“I’ll let you rest then,” says Gabe, standing from the chair.
Jesse nods, eyes glued to the crocodile. He hears rather than sees Gabe leave the room, and then he is alone.
The window in this room is all full of cloudless sky.