Eyes (make your own joke)
Jan. 15th, 2013 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonshadows*Warning for verbal/emotional abuse when Reaper reports*
Since I started sharing intel with Athena as well as sending warnings to Ana, Talon's movements have stopped going unchallenged. I can tell that it's rattling Reaper to cross paths with his ex-friends, but he remembers to miss or hit armor and the anger he's expressing is something that's been bottled up for a while, so I know he's taken our talk about sides to heart.
Then Reaper starts coming back from mission reports late, angry and...shaky. He wisps in anger, but there's also wisps coming off his forearms and the backs of his legs. He stops freaking out the rank-and-file by hiding in dark corners when he does the shut-down that passes for sleep, and starts just sitting on the couch, staring at nothing. It's a wordless invitation for the barest level of social contact, and it might make me think he's making progress if it weren't for that shaken wisping. Instead, it lodges a shard of ice in my throat and drives me to step up my guerilla tactics on Widow because when it's time for me and Reaper to leave, she'll be coming with us.
Widow gets taken into a specialized room two or three times a week for...not reconditioning exactly, but resetting to her sterile state. Any changes she's made are repressed, shoved down under the programming. Talon keeps their prized weapon under very strict control, and that means anything I do has to be hidden down in the part of her where they stuck what's left of Amelie - an oubliette of the mind. I don't release her programming fully, activate her the way a mission does, but I loosen it a little. Let the oubliette get a little light. It means Widow spends less time in her room and more perched in a chair in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, watching us in something less than active interest but more than blank apathy.
Angela was horrified when I finally collected what I considered a full set of data and sent her a report. The biology went right over my head, but the analogy to warming up a frostbite victim and the one about atrophied muscles got her meaning across. If Widow were to be retro-conditioned and just set loose among people, her brain would snap under the social equivalent of sensory overload. That's why I started loosening her choke chain a little, increasing the periods of time that she could be semi-free. But that isn't doing enough, so it's time to get sneaky.
Widow's oubliette has a digital lock. Talon doesn't care what happens on the inside of the door, as long as the outside remains pristine. Maybe they're figuring that no one would be able to get close enough to Widow for long enough to get their fingers into her brain. Maybe they're relying on the complex biomechanical system to keep their creation safe from interference, because it's certainly beyond the capacities of your average organic or omnic. But they're certainly not suspecting that the super-amazing hacker who lives and works with Widow might be picking that shiny digital lock without leaving fingerprints, so I flounce right in and configure it to produce and receive a rough linksignal. Not enough to facilitate communication, just the deep recognition that makes the linkweb so comforting and only when in close proximity to an actual linksignal. That, more than anything, is what drives Widow to leave her room in search of social connection.
Once I start seeing positive change inside the oubliette, I configure Reaper's swarm to do the same thing. I tell him it's something to help him relax, which isn't a lie, and he's too keyed up to question the gift horse. The hours spent silently, them staring at nothing and me busy behind my screens, become Family Bonding Time and I can actually see Reaper relaxing...until the next mission comes in.
I've never bothered to spy on what happens when Reaper gives post-mission reports past confirming he talks to a hologram, like this is fucking Star Wars and he's Darth Vader reporting to Palpatine. Whoever he reports to, they're not there in person and that makes it a dead end in terms of finding the head of Talon, so I've been ignoring it in favor of my other projects and responsibilities. I think it's time to correct that oversight.
===
MISSION OBJECTIVE, I tell Athena as I send her the packet containing all the information I was given. SORRY FOR THE SHORT NOTICE.
BETTER SHORT NOTICE THAN NONE AT ALL. THANK YOU, SOMBRA.
The entire exchange happens in the amount of time it takes me to roll my eyes at Reaper's impatient shout and yell back, "I'm coming!"
While we're en route, Athena's connection opens and letters come though one at a time - Winston.
HELLO, SOMBRA. IT'S WINSTON. I WAS THE ONLY ONE AVAILABLE TO INTERCEPT YOU, SO I SUPPOSE I WILL SEE YOU THERE.
YOU WILL SEE REAPER, I type. YOU MIGHT NOT SEE ME. PLEASE DON'T VAPORIZE HIM AGAIN. I'M REMINDING HIM TO PLAY NICE. "Papi?"
Reaper looks up. "What?"
"We gonna have company. Remember to play nice."
Wisps. "Who?"
I show him a screen with Winston's picture.
The wisps double. "Fine."
I WILL "PLAY NICE" AS LONG AS HE DOES," Winston types. I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND THAT I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CALLING AHEAD.
NOT AT ALL. SEE YOU THERE.
=
"Monkey," Reaper snarls as the door slides open to reveal Winston waiting on the other side.
"Scientist," the gorilla counters. "Where's your little shadow?" he asks, turning it into a taunt.
Reaper just chuckles darkly. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Stealthed, I give them both a wide berth and pause by the door on the other side of the wide foyer. One hand out to pick the lock, I drop stealth. "You boys play nice," I tease.
The door opens; I slip inside and lock it behind me. Then the first shots ring out, echoing from marble floors and vaulted ceilings. Drop a translocator to the side of the door, and I'm off again, stealthing through darkened halls and unoccupied offices, pausing here and there to open doors and check records. Three security doors before the room containing the mission objective, I stop. Someone has taped a piece of paper to the door with "IT'S IN HERE" scrawled hastily in ball-point pen and an arrow pointing to the left, at a small office whose door is ajar.
A glance locates the security camera; a few seconds has it rewinding digital footage until a nervous, mousy-looking man in a lab coat emerges from deeper in the complex, a small case held in one hand. He slaps the sign on the door as it closes behind him, then slips into the office.
Okay then.
The door isn't open enough for me to get in without touching it; I slide a beacon through and wait.
"Who's there?" calls a very nervous voice. No other reaction, though, and there's only one bioelectric source in the room.
I translocate and pick up my beacon. I can see him in the light from the door. He looks like he might faint, but he's clutching the case to his chest with both hands. "Boo," I say softly.
The man shrieks and jumps, flailing for the lightswitch and then cursing and blinking watering blue eyes behind round glasses, but he never lets go of the case. "It's here," he calls out, petulance and defiance mixed with terror. "Don't kill me, you can have it!"
"Relax, amigo," I say gently. "I'm not going to kill you."
It takes a minute before his eyes adjust and he calms down enough to look at me. "You? You're the one here to steal..." he waves the case.
The security system identifies him as Andrew Lucowitz. He's not the one officially in charge of the biotic eye project, but he may very well be the one most invested. To volunteer the fruits of his labor like that... "Andrew, why are you doing this? What are you hiding?"
"You know my name," he whispers in something that's half a whimper.
"Andrew, relax. I'm not here to hurt you. Take a deep breath"
He looks at me and takes several deep breaths, torn between thrusting the case at me and clutching it to his chest.
I hop up onto the corner of the desk, one leg kicking idly. "Now, you look like you did half my job for me. Tell me what's going on?"
Andrew looks at the case again before putting it on the desk and shoving it in my direction. "The gorilla said you'd be coming for our eyes. I didn't know - I wanted to avoid-"
"You didn't want some stranger poking around in your lab?" I ask with a smile. "Much less some armed thug rifling through your things?"
He relaxes slightly. "You understand!"
"That was a brave thing to do," I tell him. "But I get the feeling you still hiding something."
The anxiety comes back. I can actually see him sweat.
"Andrew," I say gently, "did you develop a better eye? Are you giving me a prototype?"
He starts trembling.
I open the case and inspect the biotic eyes. They've been packed for a long trip, but they match what was in the mission intel. I close the case and lock it. "This is exactly what I was sent to steal," I say brightly. "Thank you, amigo."
"You...you're not going to steal the new eyes?"
"Nope. I was sent for these. My boss doesn't need to know there were better ones, hmm?"
Andrew laughs shakily. "You mean my plan worked? Thank you, thank you!"
"Your plan worked, and you can brag to everyone that it did." Pause to give him a wink. "You don't have to tell them exactly how it went, though. If you know what I mean. I'm not exactly going to be around to call you on it." A brief search of his records comes up with no color blindness. Pity. "Just don't tell anyone my eyes were purple. Say they were green instead."
"Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me," he promises with a mock salute. "Green eyes. Thank you for not looting my lab, miss. Really."
"Thank you for being brave," I tell him. "Give me ten minutes to clear out and you can go talk to Winston the gorilla. He's a scientist, too, and I'm sure he'd love to hear about your eyes."
That perks him up. I give him a cheery wave, grab the case, and activate the beacon I left by the door.
There's no gunshots coming from the vast foyer, which isn't a surprise because they stopped trading bullets and insults about five minutes into my search, and have just been arguing heatedly the entire rest of the time. I guess it's no fun shooting at each other if neither of you actually intends to hit anything serious.
"Mission complete," I say on both their channels at once as I pick up my beacon. "I'll be out in a minute."
A flurry of gunfire erupts behind the door, like they're both embarrassed at being caught not trying to kill each other, and I can hear them arguing about who's going to abandon the fight first. While they sort it out, I erase our tracks from the security systems, and I don't bother to be subtle. Everything from just before we arrived is deleted, and the deletion will continue for another five minutes.
"Winston," I say on his channel, "There's a guy who didn't evacuate. He's okay, but I told him to come find you after we left and talk."
"Acknowledged," he says. "I don't suppose he stopped you from getting what you came for?"
"Yes and no. I'll let him tell you." Switch to the Talon channel. "Papi, you done ruining the walls in there?"
"Almost," he growls. A steady stream of rhythmic gunfire punctuates the silence, culminating in Winston bursting through the locked door - oops, forgot to unlock that - and ducking behind the wall opposite from me. "Now I'm done."
Grinning, I throw a mock salute to Winston and stroll through the wrecked doorway, case under one arm.
===
Reaper doesn't even head for our suite. He just takes the case and stalks off, wisping angrily and anxiously, to report. I grin at Jerome and stealth after him. The rank-and-file actively leap out of Reaper's way, scurrying down side corridors and through doorways. Finally, he stops and angrily punches in a door code. The door slides open, and I practically trip on his heels getting inside before it shuts again.
It's a mirror of what our suite must have looked like before it was adapted for long-term residence, with an echoingly empty central area two stories tall and ledges ringing the shadowed walls, doors barely visible in the darkness. I sneak up the stairs to the right and lay down on the ledge. The exact center of the empty area has a giant holographic transmitter and a scattering of other equipment. From up here, it looks like a giant coppery-silver eye with a glowing sapphire pupil. Reaper does something I can't see, and the transmitter hums as it lights up.
I start recording.
The figure that forms looks...like Reaper, but with darkness where the mask should be. Papi starts wisping from the shoulders and back.
"Mission successful," he growls, holding out the case.
"Open it," the figure says in Reaper's voice, but...the modulation caused by projecting through a nanite swarm is gone. It's Gabriel's voice, I realize in horror, but without any positive emotional inflection.
Reaper opens it, showing off the biotic eyes in their secure containers.
"Good. Set them on the translocator."
The containers get set on a platform connected to another piece of equipment. A glow from underneath, and they're gone.
"Now," that inhuman voice says in a tone of what I can only call cruel anticipation, "report."
"It was a clean mission," Reaper starts, but the figure holds up one taloned gauntlet hand and he falls silent.
"Do it right."
The wisping gets heavier. "We arrived on schedule," he says in an almost sulky voice. "Sombra opened the door without a problem."
"Aaaaaaand?"
"Winston was waiting for us," he continues reluctantly.
"So the monkey is dead," the figure says in a half-question. The sort of half-question that implies the answer better not be no, for your miserable sake.
Apparently Reaper hears the implication, too, because the wisps get worse before he growls, "No."
"No?" It's skeptical, mocking, but not surprised. The figure lifts its gauntlet hands to its hood and pushes it back to reveal....the head of Gabriel Reyes, only with glowing red eyes. For a long moment he rakes Reaper with Papi Gabriel's you have got to be fucking shitting me look and then that familiar-but-not voice asks in a tone like a blade made of ice, "Why are you so weak?"
Reaper actually flinches. I can only assume this is a recurring thing, a wound that gets deeper every time it's asked. Some of Papi's issues make a hell of a lot more sense now.
The figure lays into Reaper in a disturbingly practiced way, going on about how he had the monkey in his sights but he was too weak to pull the trigger, the monkey deserved it, think of all the things he said, the things he did, he's been laughing behind your back the whole time, they were all laughing behind your back. How all of Overwatch secretly hated Gabriel Reyes, they were all glad he was gone and they didn't deserve the mercy of a clean death at Reaper's hand, didn't deserve the swiftness of a bullet between the eyes, not that it mattered because Reaper was so weak that he couldn't even hand out death to the ones who deserved it for abandoning him. And Reaper just stands there, wisping like his entire back is on fire, taking the verbal whipping in furious silence.
When the lashing is done, there's a few beats of silence and then the figure, apparently calm again, says, "Continue."
"I shot at the damned monkey a lot," Reaper snarls. "He shot at me. I distracted him while Sombra located and obtained the target."
"How many died?" the figure asks in an expectant tone.
"I don't know. I was busy. The monkey probably warned them."
The figure shimmers and re-forms into...a younger Jack Morrison, from Overwatch's glory days. With glowing red eyes. "So much for your tactical genius," he says in what should be Jack's voice, except it's completely devoid of warmth and life. "Outwitted by a monkey."
Reaper stays silent, seething.
"All your knowledge," the imposter Jack says scathingly, "all your experience, all your abilities, and you're useless. Clearly I wasted my time when I took in your broken, wasted husk and gave you a chance for vengeance. They would never have given you even a moment, you know that. No pity for their friend, no mercy for you. They didn't need you anymore. They didn't want you. And who can blame them? No one cares about a monster like you."
Papi flinches again at that, a few wisps coming off his biceps, but the figure doesn't seem to realize what that means whereas I know he's thinking about me, and how it's a lie because I care about him.
"You used to be better," the figure says, and now it looks like McCree with those same glowing red eyes. "I think that hacker girl may be distracting you. You work better without distractions." The figure smirks. "Maybe I should...take steps."
"No!"
The figure pauses at reaper's outburst. "No? Then prove me wrong. Don't be so weak next time."
And then, thankfully, the holograph transmitter powers down.
Reaper stands there, in the mostly-dark room, for several minutes while I try not to breathe. Then, when he's calm enough to only be wisping moderately, he turns and stalks out. I stop recording and give it a count of twenty before I follow, and then it's playing stealth Pac-Man as I race through the halls, avoiding the rank-and-file while also dodging Reaper so I can get back to our suite first. But then I'm faced with another dilemma because I know I'm going to have to process the emotional reaction to learning that whoever that figure was, they've been fucking with Reaper's head for a long time...but I can't let on that I just saw him being abused and I can't hide because oh my god, Papi is going to need comfort after that.
I dash to my room, grab my bear and a blanket, and arrange myself on the couch under said blanket like I've been waiting for Reaper, but I was just so tired that I curled up for a nap, and now I'm asleep. It's a few minutes before the door opens, and I can hear Reaper come in. He walks over to the couch, pauses for a long time, and then sits in his usual spot and there's silence. Shortly after that my emotional reaction starts, and the horror and outrage and concern that had been delayed sweep through me. That asshole! He poisoned Overwatch, undermined Papi's control over Blackwatch, brought everything down and then abducted Reaper in what was probably the most vulnerable moment of his life and has been feeding him lies and bullshit. No wonder Reaper has issues opening up when after every mission, everything he does is criticized and anything the asshole doesn't like is called 'weak'. No wonder he hates his old friends when he gets fed lies so many times that he doesn't know what to do with the truth. I could kick myself for not being able to see that Talon's been abusing him. It all seems so obvious in hindsight! The isolation, the base being where failures are stored, the lack of support when he gets hurt. Talon probably convinced him he had to eat people to either break him or make him starve, or both. If only I'd spied on him reporting sooner! If only I'd thought to...
I don't know what I could have done. That's the worst thing about abuse, that its very nature causes the victim to hide the damage. Oh god, Papi probably believes that the fall of Overwatch was completely his fault, despite what Athena and I found. And he's been punishing himself for it this whole time, swallowing the lie that he doesn't deserve anything Gabriel Reyes had. That there's no point in trying to be better, because no one wants him to be except one annoying Latina who didn't get the memo. I try to keep my reactions inside, to keep quiet, but a few noises slip out and I don't even know what's on my face.
Strong, gentle hands pull me down to use Reaper's thigh as a pillow. There's a pause while he no doubt waits to see if he woke me up, and I get a bit of respite because oh my god, he cares, and then I remember that the figure has been using Jack's face and voice to tell him that he's worthless. The desire to find whichever asshole is behind that holograph and beat them to a bloody pulp makes me shake, and then there's a hand gently stroking my hair.
Oh my god. He cares.
My broken Papi has been abused since probably day one of being with Talon, probably shortly after he scraped himself together from burning to not-death, and he still has it in him to care about me and know that I care about him. He's had the evil specter of his adopted son make what was undoubtedly threatening statements about getting close to people (in this case, me) and refused to distance himself.
I make a note that tomorrow, I need to start planning a safehouse to stay in after we leave Talon. Someplace where Reaper can un-learn all the toxic bullshit he's been fed over the last five years. Someplace where the asshole can't find us, can't get to us because we are going to leave, and I am going to hurt Talon as much as I can on my way out because that's what Papi Gabriel would do. And right now, I am feeling very much like his daughter.
Since I started sharing intel with Athena as well as sending warnings to Ana, Talon's movements have stopped going unchallenged. I can tell that it's rattling Reaper to cross paths with his ex-friends, but he remembers to miss or hit armor and the anger he's expressing is something that's been bottled up for a while, so I know he's taken our talk about sides to heart.
Then Reaper starts coming back from mission reports late, angry and...shaky. He wisps in anger, but there's also wisps coming off his forearms and the backs of his legs. He stops freaking out the rank-and-file by hiding in dark corners when he does the shut-down that passes for sleep, and starts just sitting on the couch, staring at nothing. It's a wordless invitation for the barest level of social contact, and it might make me think he's making progress if it weren't for that shaken wisping. Instead, it lodges a shard of ice in my throat and drives me to step up my guerilla tactics on Widow because when it's time for me and Reaper to leave, she'll be coming with us.
Widow gets taken into a specialized room two or three times a week for...not reconditioning exactly, but resetting to her sterile state. Any changes she's made are repressed, shoved down under the programming. Talon keeps their prized weapon under very strict control, and that means anything I do has to be hidden down in the part of her where they stuck what's left of Amelie - an oubliette of the mind. I don't release her programming fully, activate her the way a mission does, but I loosen it a little. Let the oubliette get a little light. It means Widow spends less time in her room and more perched in a chair in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, watching us in something less than active interest but more than blank apathy.
Angela was horrified when I finally collected what I considered a full set of data and sent her a report. The biology went right over my head, but the analogy to warming up a frostbite victim and the one about atrophied muscles got her meaning across. If Widow were to be retro-conditioned and just set loose among people, her brain would snap under the social equivalent of sensory overload. That's why I started loosening her choke chain a little, increasing the periods of time that she could be semi-free. But that isn't doing enough, so it's time to get sneaky.
Widow's oubliette has a digital lock. Talon doesn't care what happens on the inside of the door, as long as the outside remains pristine. Maybe they're figuring that no one would be able to get close enough to Widow for long enough to get their fingers into her brain. Maybe they're relying on the complex biomechanical system to keep their creation safe from interference, because it's certainly beyond the capacities of your average organic or omnic. But they're certainly not suspecting that the super-amazing hacker who lives and works with Widow might be picking that shiny digital lock without leaving fingerprints, so I flounce right in and configure it to produce and receive a rough linksignal. Not enough to facilitate communication, just the deep recognition that makes the linkweb so comforting and only when in close proximity to an actual linksignal. That, more than anything, is what drives Widow to leave her room in search of social connection.
Once I start seeing positive change inside the oubliette, I configure Reaper's swarm to do the same thing. I tell him it's something to help him relax, which isn't a lie, and he's too keyed up to question the gift horse. The hours spent silently, them staring at nothing and me busy behind my screens, become Family Bonding Time and I can actually see Reaper relaxing...until the next mission comes in.
I've never bothered to spy on what happens when Reaper gives post-mission reports past confirming he talks to a hologram, like this is fucking Star Wars and he's Darth Vader reporting to Palpatine. Whoever he reports to, they're not there in person and that makes it a dead end in terms of finding the head of Talon, so I've been ignoring it in favor of my other projects and responsibilities. I think it's time to correct that oversight.
===
MISSION OBJECTIVE, I tell Athena as I send her the packet containing all the information I was given. SORRY FOR THE SHORT NOTICE.
BETTER SHORT NOTICE THAN NONE AT ALL. THANK YOU, SOMBRA.
The entire exchange happens in the amount of time it takes me to roll my eyes at Reaper's impatient shout and yell back, "I'm coming!"
While we're en route, Athena's connection opens and letters come though one at a time - Winston.
HELLO, SOMBRA. IT'S WINSTON. I WAS THE ONLY ONE AVAILABLE TO INTERCEPT YOU, SO I SUPPOSE I WILL SEE YOU THERE.
YOU WILL SEE REAPER, I type. YOU MIGHT NOT SEE ME. PLEASE DON'T VAPORIZE HIM AGAIN. I'M REMINDING HIM TO PLAY NICE. "Papi?"
Reaper looks up. "What?"
"We gonna have company. Remember to play nice."
Wisps. "Who?"
I show him a screen with Winston's picture.
The wisps double. "Fine."
I WILL "PLAY NICE" AS LONG AS HE DOES," Winston types. I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND THAT I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF CALLING AHEAD.
NOT AT ALL. SEE YOU THERE.
=
"Monkey," Reaper snarls as the door slides open to reveal Winston waiting on the other side.
"Scientist," the gorilla counters. "Where's your little shadow?" he asks, turning it into a taunt.
Reaper just chuckles darkly. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Stealthed, I give them both a wide berth and pause by the door on the other side of the wide foyer. One hand out to pick the lock, I drop stealth. "You boys play nice," I tease.
The door opens; I slip inside and lock it behind me. Then the first shots ring out, echoing from marble floors and vaulted ceilings. Drop a translocator to the side of the door, and I'm off again, stealthing through darkened halls and unoccupied offices, pausing here and there to open doors and check records. Three security doors before the room containing the mission objective, I stop. Someone has taped a piece of paper to the door with "IT'S IN HERE" scrawled hastily in ball-point pen and an arrow pointing to the left, at a small office whose door is ajar.
A glance locates the security camera; a few seconds has it rewinding digital footage until a nervous, mousy-looking man in a lab coat emerges from deeper in the complex, a small case held in one hand. He slaps the sign on the door as it closes behind him, then slips into the office.
Okay then.
The door isn't open enough for me to get in without touching it; I slide a beacon through and wait.
"Who's there?" calls a very nervous voice. No other reaction, though, and there's only one bioelectric source in the room.
I translocate and pick up my beacon. I can see him in the light from the door. He looks like he might faint, but he's clutching the case to his chest with both hands. "Boo," I say softly.
The man shrieks and jumps, flailing for the lightswitch and then cursing and blinking watering blue eyes behind round glasses, but he never lets go of the case. "It's here," he calls out, petulance and defiance mixed with terror. "Don't kill me, you can have it!"
"Relax, amigo," I say gently. "I'm not going to kill you."
It takes a minute before his eyes adjust and he calms down enough to look at me. "You? You're the one here to steal..." he waves the case.
The security system identifies him as Andrew Lucowitz. He's not the one officially in charge of the biotic eye project, but he may very well be the one most invested. To volunteer the fruits of his labor like that... "Andrew, why are you doing this? What are you hiding?"
"You know my name," he whispers in something that's half a whimper.
"Andrew, relax. I'm not here to hurt you. Take a deep breath"
He looks at me and takes several deep breaths, torn between thrusting the case at me and clutching it to his chest.
I hop up onto the corner of the desk, one leg kicking idly. "Now, you look like you did half my job for me. Tell me what's going on?"
Andrew looks at the case again before putting it on the desk and shoving it in my direction. "The gorilla said you'd be coming for our eyes. I didn't know - I wanted to avoid-"
"You didn't want some stranger poking around in your lab?" I ask with a smile. "Much less some armed thug rifling through your things?"
He relaxes slightly. "You understand!"
"That was a brave thing to do," I tell him. "But I get the feeling you still hiding something."
The anxiety comes back. I can actually see him sweat.
"Andrew," I say gently, "did you develop a better eye? Are you giving me a prototype?"
He starts trembling.
I open the case and inspect the biotic eyes. They've been packed for a long trip, but they match what was in the mission intel. I close the case and lock it. "This is exactly what I was sent to steal," I say brightly. "Thank you, amigo."
"You...you're not going to steal the new eyes?"
"Nope. I was sent for these. My boss doesn't need to know there were better ones, hmm?"
Andrew laughs shakily. "You mean my plan worked? Thank you, thank you!"
"Your plan worked, and you can brag to everyone that it did." Pause to give him a wink. "You don't have to tell them exactly how it went, though. If you know what I mean. I'm not exactly going to be around to call you on it." A brief search of his records comes up with no color blindness. Pity. "Just don't tell anyone my eyes were purple. Say they were green instead."
"Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me," he promises with a mock salute. "Green eyes. Thank you for not looting my lab, miss. Really."
"Thank you for being brave," I tell him. "Give me ten minutes to clear out and you can go talk to Winston the gorilla. He's a scientist, too, and I'm sure he'd love to hear about your eyes."
That perks him up. I give him a cheery wave, grab the case, and activate the beacon I left by the door.
There's no gunshots coming from the vast foyer, which isn't a surprise because they stopped trading bullets and insults about five minutes into my search, and have just been arguing heatedly the entire rest of the time. I guess it's no fun shooting at each other if neither of you actually intends to hit anything serious.
"Mission complete," I say on both their channels at once as I pick up my beacon. "I'll be out in a minute."
A flurry of gunfire erupts behind the door, like they're both embarrassed at being caught not trying to kill each other, and I can hear them arguing about who's going to abandon the fight first. While they sort it out, I erase our tracks from the security systems, and I don't bother to be subtle. Everything from just before we arrived is deleted, and the deletion will continue for another five minutes.
"Winston," I say on his channel, "There's a guy who didn't evacuate. He's okay, but I told him to come find you after we left and talk."
"Acknowledged," he says. "I don't suppose he stopped you from getting what you came for?"
"Yes and no. I'll let him tell you." Switch to the Talon channel. "Papi, you done ruining the walls in there?"
"Almost," he growls. A steady stream of rhythmic gunfire punctuates the silence, culminating in Winston bursting through the locked door - oops, forgot to unlock that - and ducking behind the wall opposite from me. "Now I'm done."
Grinning, I throw a mock salute to Winston and stroll through the wrecked doorway, case under one arm.
===
Reaper doesn't even head for our suite. He just takes the case and stalks off, wisping angrily and anxiously, to report. I grin at Jerome and stealth after him. The rank-and-file actively leap out of Reaper's way, scurrying down side corridors and through doorways. Finally, he stops and angrily punches in a door code. The door slides open, and I practically trip on his heels getting inside before it shuts again.
It's a mirror of what our suite must have looked like before it was adapted for long-term residence, with an echoingly empty central area two stories tall and ledges ringing the shadowed walls, doors barely visible in the darkness. I sneak up the stairs to the right and lay down on the ledge. The exact center of the empty area has a giant holographic transmitter and a scattering of other equipment. From up here, it looks like a giant coppery-silver eye with a glowing sapphire pupil. Reaper does something I can't see, and the transmitter hums as it lights up.
I start recording.
The figure that forms looks...like Reaper, but with darkness where the mask should be. Papi starts wisping from the shoulders and back.
"Mission successful," he growls, holding out the case.
"Open it," the figure says in Reaper's voice, but...the modulation caused by projecting through a nanite swarm is gone. It's Gabriel's voice, I realize in horror, but without any positive emotional inflection.
Reaper opens it, showing off the biotic eyes in their secure containers.
"Good. Set them on the translocator."
The containers get set on a platform connected to another piece of equipment. A glow from underneath, and they're gone.
"Now," that inhuman voice says in a tone of what I can only call cruel anticipation, "report."
"It was a clean mission," Reaper starts, but the figure holds up one taloned gauntlet hand and he falls silent.
"Do it right."
The wisping gets heavier. "We arrived on schedule," he says in an almost sulky voice. "Sombra opened the door without a problem."
"Aaaaaaand?"
"Winston was waiting for us," he continues reluctantly.
"So the monkey is dead," the figure says in a half-question. The sort of half-question that implies the answer better not be no, for your miserable sake.
Apparently Reaper hears the implication, too, because the wisps get worse before he growls, "No."
"No?" It's skeptical, mocking, but not surprised. The figure lifts its gauntlet hands to its hood and pushes it back to reveal....the head of Gabriel Reyes, only with glowing red eyes. For a long moment he rakes Reaper with Papi Gabriel's you have got to be fucking shitting me look and then that familiar-but-not voice asks in a tone like a blade made of ice, "Why are you so weak?"
Reaper actually flinches. I can only assume this is a recurring thing, a wound that gets deeper every time it's asked. Some of Papi's issues make a hell of a lot more sense now.
The figure lays into Reaper in a disturbingly practiced way, going on about how he had the monkey in his sights but he was too weak to pull the trigger, the monkey deserved it, think of all the things he said, the things he did, he's been laughing behind your back the whole time, they were all laughing behind your back. How all of Overwatch secretly hated Gabriel Reyes, they were all glad he was gone and they didn't deserve the mercy of a clean death at Reaper's hand, didn't deserve the swiftness of a bullet between the eyes, not that it mattered because Reaper was so weak that he couldn't even hand out death to the ones who deserved it for abandoning him. And Reaper just stands there, wisping like his entire back is on fire, taking the verbal whipping in furious silence.
When the lashing is done, there's a few beats of silence and then the figure, apparently calm again, says, "Continue."
"I shot at the damned monkey a lot," Reaper snarls. "He shot at me. I distracted him while Sombra located and obtained the target."
"How many died?" the figure asks in an expectant tone.
"I don't know. I was busy. The monkey probably warned them."
The figure shimmers and re-forms into...a younger Jack Morrison, from Overwatch's glory days. With glowing red eyes. "So much for your tactical genius," he says in what should be Jack's voice, except it's completely devoid of warmth and life. "Outwitted by a monkey."
Reaper stays silent, seething.
"All your knowledge," the imposter Jack says scathingly, "all your experience, all your abilities, and you're useless. Clearly I wasted my time when I took in your broken, wasted husk and gave you a chance for vengeance. They would never have given you even a moment, you know that. No pity for their friend, no mercy for you. They didn't need you anymore. They didn't want you. And who can blame them? No one cares about a monster like you."
Papi flinches again at that, a few wisps coming off his biceps, but the figure doesn't seem to realize what that means whereas I know he's thinking about me, and how it's a lie because I care about him.
"You used to be better," the figure says, and now it looks like McCree with those same glowing red eyes. "I think that hacker girl may be distracting you. You work better without distractions." The figure smirks. "Maybe I should...take steps."
"No!"
The figure pauses at reaper's outburst. "No? Then prove me wrong. Don't be so weak next time."
And then, thankfully, the holograph transmitter powers down.
Reaper stands there, in the mostly-dark room, for several minutes while I try not to breathe. Then, when he's calm enough to only be wisping moderately, he turns and stalks out. I stop recording and give it a count of twenty before I follow, and then it's playing stealth Pac-Man as I race through the halls, avoiding the rank-and-file while also dodging Reaper so I can get back to our suite first. But then I'm faced with another dilemma because I know I'm going to have to process the emotional reaction to learning that whoever that figure was, they've been fucking with Reaper's head for a long time...but I can't let on that I just saw him being abused and I can't hide because oh my god, Papi is going to need comfort after that.
I dash to my room, grab my bear and a blanket, and arrange myself on the couch under said blanket like I've been waiting for Reaper, but I was just so tired that I curled up for a nap, and now I'm asleep. It's a few minutes before the door opens, and I can hear Reaper come in. He walks over to the couch, pauses for a long time, and then sits in his usual spot and there's silence. Shortly after that my emotional reaction starts, and the horror and outrage and concern that had been delayed sweep through me. That asshole! He poisoned Overwatch, undermined Papi's control over Blackwatch, brought everything down and then abducted Reaper in what was probably the most vulnerable moment of his life and has been feeding him lies and bullshit. No wonder Reaper has issues opening up when after every mission, everything he does is criticized and anything the asshole doesn't like is called 'weak'. No wonder he hates his old friends when he gets fed lies so many times that he doesn't know what to do with the truth. I could kick myself for not being able to see that Talon's been abusing him. It all seems so obvious in hindsight! The isolation, the base being where failures are stored, the lack of support when he gets hurt. Talon probably convinced him he had to eat people to either break him or make him starve, or both. If only I'd spied on him reporting sooner! If only I'd thought to...
I don't know what I could have done. That's the worst thing about abuse, that its very nature causes the victim to hide the damage. Oh god, Papi probably believes that the fall of Overwatch was completely his fault, despite what Athena and I found. And he's been punishing himself for it this whole time, swallowing the lie that he doesn't deserve anything Gabriel Reyes had. That there's no point in trying to be better, because no one wants him to be except one annoying Latina who didn't get the memo. I try to keep my reactions inside, to keep quiet, but a few noises slip out and I don't even know what's on my face.
Strong, gentle hands pull me down to use Reaper's thigh as a pillow. There's a pause while he no doubt waits to see if he woke me up, and I get a bit of respite because oh my god, he cares, and then I remember that the figure has been using Jack's face and voice to tell him that he's worthless. The desire to find whichever asshole is behind that holograph and beat them to a bloody pulp makes me shake, and then there's a hand gently stroking my hair.
Oh my god. He cares.
My broken Papi has been abused since probably day one of being with Talon, probably shortly after he scraped himself together from burning to not-death, and he still has it in him to care about me and know that I care about him. He's had the evil specter of his adopted son make what was undoubtedly threatening statements about getting close to people (in this case, me) and refused to distance himself.
I make a note that tomorrow, I need to start planning a safehouse to stay in after we leave Talon. Someplace where Reaper can un-learn all the toxic bullshit he's been fed over the last five years. Someplace where the asshole can't find us, can't get to us because we are going to leave, and I am going to hurt Talon as much as I can on my way out because that's what Papi Gabriel would do. And right now, I am feeling very much like his daughter.