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If a lifetime of waking up after being knocked unconscious has taught Reaper anything, it’s that pain is always what comes back first. This time is no different; it fades in, a heat and throbbing intermingled across his back that means burns. There’s a dull edged ache in his left knee that feels like it’s going to stick around for a while.
Compared to the last time he woke up after an explosion though, he’s practically right as rain.
Except. He can’t feel his body, not in the way he usually can. The constant background awareness of every individual nanite communicating its location, coordinating its position in relation to all the other nanites he’s composed of, is silent. It’s gone so quiet inside his head.
Fear cuts coldly through him and he tries to move, but nothing’s responding right. He tries to lift his arms. Bend his legs. Nothing happens. For a moment he’s convinced that he’s pinned down by rubble at Zurich – no way out no help coming he’s going to die here they’ve left him to die – and his mind whites out in gibbering terror.
Stop. Stop, calm down, breathe, panic’s not going to help right now.
He’s not at Zurich. Zurich is nearly a decade behind him, and rubble can’t pin down smoke. Whatever’s wrong with him must be because of that device that Talon sent him in here to retrieve, the experimental tech in the secure storage of an old Overwatch facility that’s been stripped down to automated functions since the Petras Act.
It’s not impossible that Talon knew the thing would blow up in his face and he’s been set up. Considering how fast the infiltration went belly up, it’s even likely. Either that or suddenly they’ve turned into a bunch of amateurs who’ve forgotten how to do proper surveillance on a target before sending someone in. The new and not at all improved Overwatch having moved back in is a pretty good indicator that it should have been more than a one man job, unless the goal was to get that man killed from the get go.
Not definitive proof, but it’s better to prepare for the worst than be surprised by it.
The rush of anger surprises him, if only because Reaper hadn’t been that personally invested in his contract with Talon, but it does wonders to unwind the suffocating panic he’s gripped in. With a clearer head he can tell that his body is coming back online by degrees. Twitches spasm in his limbs, his hearing’s returning with a swell of ringing in his ears. He still can’t see.
Pressure closes around his arm at the same time that something hard presses against his face, smothering. He flinches away from it but it follows him – must be his mask, he thinks dimly, though something about the shape of it doesn’t sit right – clicking into place and the blackness of Reaper’s vision washes red like a screen flickering to life.
Ana’s kneeling in front of him, only inches away, and her single eye’s wide with fear as she grips his forearm.
He jerks backwards in a flail of surprise and his back collides with something solid that elevates the stinging into agony. The red that tinges everything almost distracts him from her wince in response.
“Oh, thank god,” Ana breathes. “I thought it killed you.”
Her voice wavers like the concern in it is real. Like the prospect of his death frightens her. Disorientation mixes with the bitter fondness that seeing her brings; for all that Ana seems to mourn Gabriel Reyes she hadn’t been pulling her punches with Reaper earlier any more than Soldier 76 had.
Reaper can see now that he’s slumped against the base of a metal strut, the freestanding ceiling support close to a wall lined with small alcoves. There’s a used biotic emitter on the ground by his feet. All the alcoves are sealed off by individual hard light barriers, the last line of defence for the malfunctional prototypes this facility was built to secure. Well, all of them except the one Reaper had broken into which is now a charred hole in the wall.
He’s still in the subterranean level then. If they haven’t had time to try and move or restrain him then he can’t have passed out for that long. With any luck the backup Ana and 76 have undoubtedly called for hasn’t arrived yet.
Reaper tries to speak and nearly chokes on a cough. His throat feels… rough, like there’s something wrapped around his vocal cords. He tries again and it comes out as a growl, but all wrong, not his usual cadence. “… W-what…”
Ana hauls him to his feet.
“We need to move. Whatever that thing was that Gabriel was after did something to him, he’s…” She trails off and gestures helplessly at something further into the large room.
Right here, Reaper thinks as his eyes follow the motion. He can feel that something’s wrong right down in his bones. Nothing Ana’s said quite makes sense and the way everything is tinged shades of red like he’s wearing shitty night vision goggles is pissing him off and he looks over to see –
Himself.
Himself in a state he hasn’t been reduced to since he got a handle on his new state of existence. A thick column of black smoke writhing and twisting in on itself, the vague suggestions of solid shapes at the dark heart of it ripping apart within seconds of coming together. It looks like it should be as loud as it is violent; accompanied by metallic shrieks like rending sheet metal, or the wet screams of a prey animal set upon by wolves. But it doesn’t make any sound at all. It’s shrouded in the kind of silence found in dead, empty spaces.
Reaper’s seen this before – lived it – but never from the outside. The sheer wrongness of what he’s seeing has his head spinning as he looks down at himself. At the body that isn’t his. Looking down gives him a strange sort of unmoored vertigo, like he’d felt whenever he’d looked in the mirror after shaving his hair off for the first time and had the jarring reminder that oh, the image of himself in his head didn’t match what he actually looked like. But now it’s so much worse.
This isn’t his body. It isn’t him.
He’s so thrown that it takes him a moment to recognise the jacket this body is wearing and put together what’s happened.
It must have been something to do with the prototype he’d been trying to steal, the explosion it set off. It explains a lot, at least. This literally isn’t his body. And if he’s here, then Morrison is…
Savage satisfaction burns in Reaper’s chest like bile. Morrison is feeling exactly what he did to Reaper.
The nanite swarm is laboriously winding over the ground towards them. Ana’s face twists into a pitying grimace as she brings her rifle up and takes aim at it.
“Stay back, Gabriel!” Her shout is choked. He can’t tell if it’s by disgust or grief.
“That won’t do anything.” Reaper says, ever practical in a crisis. “You can’t dart nanites.”
Ana lowers her gun and backs away from the swarm instead, pulling Reaper with her.
An arm made of blackened flesh manifest from the swarm, ending abruptly in thick tendrils of smoke halfway up the bicep. Its hand scrabbles at the ground, like it’s trying to pull itself towards them.
Reaper doesn’t remember a lot of the first few weeks after he became what he is. It’s mostly melted together into a vivid swirl of agony and desperation. He remembers enough, though, to read the terror in the cloud’s churning movements for what it is.
The arm dissolves so suddenly it’s like it was torn apart.
“We should do something to help him. I think he’s in pain.” Ana says.
He is. People aren’t meant to be aware of themselves at a cellular level. Morrison probably thinks he’s dying.
“Like what?” Reaper snorts. “Anyway, he brought this on himself.”
Wrinkles cut through the lines of her tattoo as she throws him a confused look.
Ana’s tone is laced with implication, like she’s referring to something. “So now we just leave him here like this? You’re really okay with that, Jack?”
Jack.
Ana called him Jack. She doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t. There’s no way for her to tell unless one of them tells her, and Morrison’s certainly in no state to.
He can’t believe he didn’t see the opportunity he’s been handed until now.
Morrison has already integrated himself with the new Overwatch. They trust him. So many old agents have answered the Recall, and like this Reaper can waltz right in among them and they’ll welcome him with open arms. It’s a golden opportunity. He can get his hands on agent lists, the locations of where this new Overwatch has set up bases. He could finally seize the revenge he’s been hounding for years by the throat.
Reaper knows Morrison inside out, it wouldn’t even be difficult to pretend to be him. It’ll be over before they even realise he isn’t what he seems.
He should leave Morrison here. Let him struggle like Reaper had when he was nothing more than a swarm of nanomachines and the vague idea of a man abandoned to suffer alone in the smoking ruin of everything he had devoted his life to. It’s fucking poetic justice, an eye for an eye.
He starts limping for the exit, lugging the pulse rifle one handed, slowed down by the pain in his left knee giving him shit with every step and the scorching in his back. Ana hesitates, tries to call him back before trailing after him, keeping her eye trained on the thing she thinks is Reaper. Resentment blooms in Reaper; she always has chosen Morrison over him.
The swarm – he knows it’s Morrison but it doesn’t feel right, looking at that mess and thinking his name – keeps slowly following them, zig zagging low to the ground. More and more coiling tendrils of smoke break away from the mass to drift in different directions. Morrison’s ability to hold himself in one piece is deteriorating as he loses focus. Or hope.
The door’s jammed, probably because the place is old as shit and no one’s been around to keep up on maintenance. Reaper sets his shoulder to it and slams it with enough force that the hinges shriek and give way.
It also sets off a chain reaction of crackling agony down his back like electricity sparking along a wire. He grabs the edge of the doorframe to try and hold himself up.
Ana’s rifle clatters to the ground as she drops it to catch him, and Reaper would give her an earful about being so careless in what is technically still a combat situation if he wasn’t gritting his teeth to hold back a shout.
“Careful, you’ve aggravated the burns.” She pulls his arm across her own shoulders and he leans on her because the only other option is falling on his face.
Fuck – fucking shit he can barely breathe through the pain. Jack must have taken the brunt of the device’s blast across his back –
A shout, the name of a dead man that Reaper still responds to out of instinct. It’s the decades old association of that tone with Jack’s grip on his shoulder, yanking him back out the line of omnic fire that has him acting on the hardwired ‘danger!’ response (stop, pull back, assess) faster than he can think, even inches away from the device he needs to retrieve.
Morrison, shouldering him aside, pushing in between him and the alcove and pulling them chest to chest to bodily shield him right as the prototype flares with harsh light like a star going supernova. Reaper has sunk his claws into Jack’s shoulders instinctively to pull him along as he starts to Shadow Step, already halfway to disintegrating as the white-hot heat engulfs them.
– and if how much it still hurts even with the enhanced healing is any indication then he’d probably saved Reaper’s life. There’s only so much even nanites can do at the epicentre of a blast radius.
He and Soldier 76 hadn’t even been on the same side of the fight. The sentimental fool.
If Reaper leaves now, leaves him like this, it will take weeks of agony before Jack will be able to figure out how to pull his body together. Reaper knows from lived experience.
Ana’s planted like a rock at his side, won’t cross the threshold even when he tries too and his arm across her shoulders brings him up short. He tries to wraith through her fingers out of habit and he stands there stupidly for a second before his brain catches up.
“I won’t abandon Gabriel, and you shouldn’t either. You said you wanted to put things right, Jack. Start now.” She says.
Put things right? What, with Reaper? Bullshit. For someone who’s so eager to snatch credit, Morrison’s got a massive blind spot for his own culpability. Always has. The only thing that Morrison would think needs ‘put right’ between them would be him putting Reaper down in some fumbling attempt to avenge the old corpse of Overwatch.
The burns on his back throb.
Because nothing says ‘I think you’re irredeemable and I’m planning to put an end to you’ like jumping between Reaper and an explosion. Right.
Ana is still steadfast, watching the nanite cloud nervously. She thinks that’s him, and she’s refusing to abandon him even as that thing.
It makes a complicated feeling pass through Reaper. Something warm but sharp edged. It tips the scales, makes him want to match her loyalty.
Slowly, he takes his weight off her and passes her the pulse rifle. She’s clearly confused, but she takes it. That the pulse rifle’s bulkier than what she’s used to shows in the awkwardness of her grip, but it’ll be a lot more effective against Jack as he is than her darts would. Wouldn’t pass straight through him, for a start.
Questioningly, Ana says, “we should contact the others. Angela will –”
“Don’t.” He snaps, this mask’s modulator filtering out the revulsion in his voice at the thought of Mercy being anywhere near him. “I know what to do.”
“How? What are you going to do?”
“Help him.” Or something like it. Revive a habit he fell out of practice with; Jack’s bitten off more than he can chew again, and Reaper’s going to pick up the pieces. It’s an old pattern.
Ana looks skeptical, but nods. She’s trusting him and it makes Reaper feel like a thief, because it isn’t actually him she’s trusting.
“Can I do anything?” Again, it sounds like genuine concern, for Reaper. He doesn’t know what to do with that.
“Just keep clear. And shoot him if it looks like he’s going to try and devour me. Won’t stop him, but it’ll probably slow him down.”
Ana nods again with a murmured be careful.
Possibly, after this, Reaper’s going to regret giving her pointers on his weaknesses. He’ll deal with that when he gets to it.
Reaper keeps his distance from Jack. Confused doesn’t mean not dangerous, and the last thing he needs is for those nanites to swarm his body and strip out all of the useful resources to leave him a desiccated husk. With any luck, Jack will be just as disconcerted looking at his own body walking around separately to him as Reaper is and that might keep him safe.
He circles the contained tempest slowly, moving away from Ana to get Jack to focus just on him, keeping his movements as smooth as he can with each step jarring his injured knee. No part of Jack is solid now, which isn’t a good sign. Reaper holds his palms out, the universal ‘look at how very unarmed I am right now’ gesture.
Puffs of mist unfurl from Jack towards him only to retreat back when they spread thin, a push and pull like the tide.
Reaper tries to pitch his tone soothingly, but Jack’s voice still comes out like he’s been gargling rocks. “Look, I know this sounds like bullshit, but you’re okay. What’s happening right now? It’s normal.”
He recognises the warning signs for Jack’s uncoordinated pounce right before it happens.
He tries to dodge back only to have his left leg give and knock him down onto one knee – does nothing about this body fucking work right – and mist coils around his outstretched arm to sink through the jacket and into his skin. A prickling burn sears up the limb and it goes numb within seconds.
There’s the smooth click of a firing pulse rifle and the cloud releases him and flinches back.
Another shot scorches the ground between them in a blue flash and Reaper’s never been so grateful to have Ana at his back.
“Are you alright?” She calls.
Reaper clenches and unclenches his hand. Sensation is kind of fucked, but it doesn’t seem damaged. “I’ll be fine!” He calls back to her, before turning to Jack, “I’m trying to help you, you asshole, the least you could do is not kill me for it.”
He’s banking on Jack being confused rather than deliberately trying to kill him, but he’s not certain. It’s hard to be sure that he’s reading Jack right, or if Jack can even understand what he’s saying. It’s possible that Jack’s not even conscious and the nanites are acting on their most basic programming; gathering whatever resources are in reach to repair the body they sustain. If that’s the case then Reaper’s already passed over his chance to get out of this alive. Part of him can’t believe he’s taking this risk. Will Jack ever not be the death of him.
“I use this form to feed, okay? So I need you to keep your distance while you’re like this.”
The smoke’s churning less thickly, now. Does that mean that Jack’s calming down? That he understands? Hopefully. Reaper hasn’t had a lot of opportunities to observe how he expresses himself in wraith form, until now. If Widowmaker was here she’d probably be able to tell him more.
Really, what they need is to be able to talk to Jack. To have him talk back, rather. Be able to tell them exactly what’s going on with him so Reaper can work out if he’s just disoriented from the switch or if he’s in as much pain as he seems to be. It’s possible the explosion has messed up Reaper’s body even more than normal. So, he needs to get Jack out of wraith form. Easy enough, right? He knows how that works.
Reaper gets back to his feet, gingerly keeping his weight on his right side. He curls his numb arm around his chest and the way Jack coils in tightly on himself seems almost ashamed.
Solidness comes naturally to Reaper’s body. It remembers the shape it’s supposed to be and settles into it automatically.
Like breathing; your lungs manage it perfectly fine on their own without any conscious input, and it’s only when you think about it that they lose the rhythm.
There’s no way Jack’s not thinking about it now, but just telling him not to would be useless. Nothing makes it more difficult not to focus on something than being told not to think about it.
So, Jack needs a distraction. Reaper’s usual tactic of intricately planning his revenge against everyone who had a hand in twisting him into what he’s become probably won’t be helpful here.
If their positions were reversed – reversed again – Jack would know what to say. He’s always had a knack for picking out the right words, of knowing how to say things in a way that makes you really believe it. It’s something that Gabriel used to admire, and then despised. That Jack could make empty platitudes sound so meaningful when Gabriel had found trying to find the right way to say even the most important things about as easy as shooting in the dark.
He knows Jack, though. He just needs to think of something to take Jack’s mind off what’s going on enough for instinct to take over.
“You’re going to be okay.” He says again. He racks his brain trying to think of what else he can say that’ll ground Jack. A memory, maybe. Something that matters. Jack’s always been sentimental. “It seems bad, but you’re going to be fine, just like – remember that time in the Crisis when I got cut off and cornered by a Bastion and you went after it by yourself and got shot to shit like an idiot? I was sure then that you were going to die.”
Reaper goes to rub a hand over his face without thinking and jostles the visor. He redirects and runs it through his hair, Jack’s hair; brittle and too thin. His chest aches, and it’s not from the burns. He hasn’t thought about this in a long time.
He doesn’t want to be digging it up now, but he can see something forming at the centre of the cloud. It’s working.
“You were lying there bleeding out and I was so sure that was it, time’s up. And I thought fuck it, if this is the last moment I get to have with you then I’m not losing you without – without at least once –”
Reaper can’t say it.
He’d watched the fabric of his hoodie soak darker with blood, felt Jack shake against him, felt Jack’s hands get slowly colder against his as they’d held the jacket down against his gut and applied pressure together. All Gabriel had been able to think about was how they’d been dancing around each other for months, years. Afraid of rejection and awkwardness and dumb shit and what ifs. And Gabriel had thought; if this is the end, then I’m not losing him without kissing him at least once.
Their first kiss had been a goodbye, bitter with regret. Jack had tasted like blood, and he’d left a smudged handprint of it on Gabriel’s face where he’d cupped his jaw.
Reaper’s eyes are stinging, he can tell that they’re wet, and it doesn’t interfere with his vision at all. It must be the visor.
The nanites twist and pull together and for a moment Reaper sees the slope of the shoulders, the cut of the coat, and he thinks they’re going to form into Jack as he was years and years ago. But then they solidify and Reaper’s standing in front of himself. No mask, though. Just what’s left of Reaper’s face.
Jack shudders the gasp of a man who hasn’t drawn a breath in far too long.
“G-Gabe.” Jack says.
Reaper’s voice shakes, “I’m not –”
Jack fists a hand in the jacket Reaper’s wearing, the claws digging bruises into his chest as Jack holds himself up. “Gabriel. I’m so sorry. I didn’t– didn’t realise– fuck.”
Jack crumples, and Reaper lets himself go down with him to control Jack’s descent to the ground. It’s still a graceless near fall, and he ends up somewhere between sitting and kneeling with Jack awkwardly half draped across his lap. Jack is hunched in on himself, his spine a curved line of agony as whimpers are torn from him. Reaper pulls him in close, chest to chest with his arms around Jack’s shoulders, and does his best to hold him together.
Reaper wants, in this moment, to feel viciously glad that this is happening to Jack. He wants to feel like gloating. Wishes this felt like retribution.
He just feels sick.
“You can beg me for my forgiveness later. Let’s just focus on keeping you in one piece for now.”
“It hurts so much. When does it stop?”
Reaper laughs hollowly, because he’s asked himself the same thing. “It doesn’t. You just figure out how to cope.”
Jack drops his head onto the curve of Reaper’s shoulder and makes a broken sound. Reaper’s kind of glad that he can’t see his own face anymore; the needle teeth gleaming through gaps in shredded cheeks.
Ana circles around into his field of vision, still at that careful distance, her grip tight on the pulse rifle. Her expression is shuttered as she looks them both over consideringly. He can see her putting the pieces together, and it’s a sign of how much their lives resemble a b-grade science fiction movie on the regular that it doesn’t even seem to faze her. When she locks eyes with Reaper and speaks, it’s not a question.
“Gabriel.”
Not quite. “Reaper.”
Ana’s mouth twists. She almost looks betrayed.
“What did you do to Jack?” She says.
Reaper bristles at the accusation. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t even know this could happen. He was the one who jumped in front of the unstable prototype.”
“But you – your body’s not normally like this,” she gestures at Jack, how he’s slumped against Reaper with little puffs of black mist wafting off him, “what did you do.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he repeats. The surprise of it coming out in Jack’s voice every time he speaks isn’t fading. “He just needs to adjust.”
It’s clear that Ana doesn’t believe him. She looks like she wants to turn her gun on him, but won’t with Jack in the way.
Jack’s in no condition to stand either way, but it gives Reaper a little extra incentive to keep him where he is, the stabbing pain in his back be damned.
Reaper’s still raw from memories best left forgotten, and the grating frustration of Ana’s distrust sparks up his anger. She’d trusted him so easily when she’d thought he was Jack.
“How about instead of bickering about me like I’m not here, you two argue about something useful. Like how to reverse this.” Jack says as he raises his head and sits up a bit. He sounds better already, like he wasn’t just emotionally and literally falling apart. Then again Jack’s always put a lot of stock in appearing to be okay, even when he’s anything but.
Reaper can’t help looking away from his face.
He looks over at the open alcove that housed the prototype. It’s mostly just scorch marks now, with blackened shrapnel lodged in the walls as all that’s left of the device.
“Looks like it was a one use only thing.” He says.
Jack and Ana both take in the wreckage.
Jack grimaces, and he probably doesn’t mean for it to be a menacing bearing of teeth, but that’s how it turns out. “Everything here is registered, there must be blueprints and records. Maybe Winston can rebuild it.”
“Angela is an expert in nanotechnology, she’d be able to work out how this happened.” Ana says. It’s directed at Reaper, all challenge.
“You bring in Mercy and I’m gone.” Reaper retorts.
“You can’t just take Jack’s body.”
“You going to try and stop me?”
“Enough!” Jack snaps. The inhuman rasp of the voice he’s using inlays it with threat.
Jack struggles to get his knees under him, wobbly like a newborn foal. Honestly, Reaper’s impressed with how well he’s coping. There’s no more smoke drifting off Jack at all so he seems to have settled entirely into solidity.
He helps Jack up. Ana makes an aborted movement, like she wants to lend a hand but she’s still afraid to come close. Jack leans heavily on Reaper once they’re standing.
“Angela isn’t our only option, she doesn’t have to get involved if we don’t want her to. We will need to head back to Gibraltar, though. Come with us.” Jack appeals to Reaper.
“You’re giving me a choice?”
“Can’t do much to fix this if you don’t stick around. I figure the easiest way to get that to happen is if you want to.” Jack says. Reaper never noticed how off putting the grate of his voice is until it didn’t belong to him. “Don’t you want your body back?”
Reaper looks at Jack. At the grey tinged flesh. The slow crawl of skin melting away into shadows to shift across the landscape of his face and resolidify elsewhere. The deep black of his eyes punctuated by the burning red of his irises. Four of them; two where you’d expect, and two smaller ones clustered together just back from the right eye.
No. Not particularly.
But Talon’s going to figure out he’s still kicking eventually. He’s not sure why they’ve suddenly got it out for him, but it’s good odds that they’ll come after him again. Well, after Jack at this point. Overwatch can shelter them both until he sorts this out.
“Sure, let’s go to Gibraltar.” Reaper says.
He feels Jack sigh a deep breath from where he leans against him. “Ana, can you organise transport?”
“Of course.”
She pulls out a communicator and starts trying to get in contact with Tracer, to arrange for them to be collected by jet.
While she’s busy, Jack makes a hesitant attempt to stand on his own. Reaper catches Jack before he topples and he’s lucky that his left knee buckles but doesn’t give with the effort. He ends up leaning on Jack just as much as Jack is leaning on him. He can feel him straining to bear Reaper up, but he doesn’t complain.
They’re both struggling, both unguarded, and it’s making them slip back into old habits. Covering each other’s weak points as best they can.