mGabriel 7

[moonshadows]

First day on the job, Gabriel thought as he woke up. Just over a month ago, he'd been an honest cop, respected by his peers if not liked because unlike them, he actually took that whole 'serve and protect' thing seriously. Now he was hosting the embodiment of violent death, the woman he'd thought had been his friend was actually the entity's first host, and his first assignment was to mediate a dispute between her and the djinn, and he strongly suspected both sides were trying to play him.

Gentle teeth on his earlobe knocked him out of his grim thoughts, and he turned to kiss his mate good morning.

"First day on the job," Jack murmured as they parted. "How do you feel?"

"To be honest? Like I'm gonna have to kick someone's ass, and I'm not going to enjoy doing it."

Jack chuckled. "I've had days like that. I don't miss 'em. Not that I won't have your back in a heartbeat if you need me, but I'm content learning Reaper protocol and taking over for Angela."

"Mmmm." Gabriel kissed his mate again. "Thank you. The paperwork was never my favorite part. Breakfast?"

"Breakfast," Jack agreed, smiling.

=

"Reaper," Torbjörn said somberly as they filed into the room and took their seats. "I need to talk to you after breakfast."

"About the case?" Gabriel asked, but it wasn't really a question.

"Aye. This is your first official day as Mantle, and I've been waiting years for it to come."

Gabriel nodded. "I commend your patience and dedication."

Breakfast, unsurprisingly, went quickly. He followed the dwarf down a spiraling stone staircase to an ornate metal door with no obvious locking mechanism that nonetheless opened obediently at a touch. The cavernous room it opened on was clearly a golem workshop, and he followed Torbjörn to a workbench in the back where various objects had been pushed aside and others laid out.

"It's no secret that I hate constructs," the dwarf said bluntly as he took a stool by the bench and gestured Gabriel to a wingbacked chair. "Djinn especially. Damn things aren't born or created, they just stand up out of clay and have their own minds? I don't trust it. And then on top of that, they claim they can see the future. It ain't natural, it ain't right."

"If you hate constructs," Gabriel asked, frowning, "why do you create them?"

"I'm getting there." Torbjörn scowled. "Liao hates constructs, and djinn, more than I do. She told stories about the Construct War, made the Reaper sound like the savior of humanity."

Gabriel nodded. "Did that to me, too."

"Yeah, well, I'd seen the Reaper at work before I joined Overwatch. Wasn't pretty. Mediated a dispute between two dwarf families about to go to war over a pink diamond the size of a grapefruit. One of them got a little heated, said some things they likely didn't mean caught up in the moment. The Reaper ruled against them and slaughtered them all, down to the babes in arms. Ate their souls. The family that won, they shattered the diamond and gave the pieces out to other families as a warning to settle disputes without calling on the Reaper."

One of the objects on the workbench, Gabriel realized, was a shard of pink crystal.

"Something smelled fishy, so I went digging." Torbjörn turned to the bench, mixing liquids and powders into a glass beaker. "Found an ancient djinn text, the diary of one of their generals. Ojal. Couldn't translate it. But with the right alchemical formula, shreds of that paper can put the drinker in the author's mind. Tried it out myself, and what I saw..." He shuddered. "When Jack stepped down, almost mad with grief, and Liao took his place? That's when I left. I knew Amelie was off her rocker, but she wouldn't last forever and whoever the next Mantle was, I would be there to make sure they didn't get the wool pulled over their eyes. I originally made the golems to make myself indispensable to that psycho harpy, but..."

He sighed and looked at a picture of his wife and children.

"They're like babies. They learn. They start out just obeying orders, but they learn. Anyone destroyed any of my golems, especially my oldest, I'd take a hammer to 'em until there was nothing left." He thrust the beaker at Gabriel. "Drink. See the truth for yourself. "

This was a lot more depth than he'd expected from a conversation that started with I hate constructs, and Gabriel accepted the beaker. The substance inside was pinkish grey, cloudy but not quite opaque. It smelled like strawberries and old paper. Gabriel drank it.

Almost immediately, his head started spinning and he was grateful for the wingbacked chair because it meant he couldn't fall out of it. Torbjörn took the beaker back and Gabriel closed his eyes...

===

Gabriel and the imaginary cat crowded behind Ojal's eyes, all nine of them, as she gave her troops orders. It was like watching really immersive VR for him, but the imaginary cat kept wanting to reach out and hunt its prey.

Why? he asked silently.

The cat lashed its metaphoric tail. That's what it was supposed to do, right? That's what it was created to do. That's what made her happy. Constructs hurt people. Destroy the constructs, eat the souls of the djinn, and protect people.

Ojal was telling futures for her troops. Gabriel ignored it. But she hasn't controlled you for a long time.

The cat's metaphoric ears went back and it crouched in confused misery. It didn't know what it was supposed to do if not kill constructs and eat souls. That was its only purpose.

Gabriel mentally gathered it into his arms and hugged it. Fuck, it really was like a child that had been raised and abandoned by a shitty parent. It killed things and ate souls because that's what got it praise. This was going to take a lot of talking to sort out.

In silence, they watched with Ojal as she watched the battle. The cat noticed the figure approaching first, tail lashing and hiding in Gabriel's metaphoric arms. It was a human, female, covered in a hooded cloak but her gait...Gabriel knew that gait, and it was chilling to see that he was right, that it was Liao. He watched and listened as Liao and Ojal conversed briefly, threats and counter-threats, before the djinn gave in to Liao's demand for a reading of her future.

The images flashed, disorienting and chaotic, before settling into a handful of possible deaths. Killed in rage, killed in sorrow, killed in deepest grief, but not killed for thousands of years.

"That's all I wanted," Liao said, and the cat went See? See? as her arm dissolved into a whip of smoke, a scythe that effortlessly cut the djinn's legs off at the knee.

As Ojal realized she was going to die and started composing a desperate prayer to the Iris, Liao snarled at her about how djinn like her had killed her village, blindly hateful rhetoric about wiping out the whole race that made Gabriel sick to his stomach to hear. The imaginary cat huddled in his metaphoric arms even more miserably than before. Wanting to kill all constructs was wrong?

Gabriel thought about Bastion, and Boyardee, and the golem he was starting to think of as Curly who had been the one to help him get to Jack that first day. Were they hurting anyone? Would it be right to kill them for things another construct had done?

While the cat thought it over, Ojal finished her prayer and Liao screamed as the Reaper was ripped out of her.

Then a smooth voice spoke in Ojal's head, the voice of the Prophet who had incited the war in the first place, declaring it over and calling for the constructs and djinn to retreat to the mountains. And privately to Ojal, thanking her for her sacrifice and promising that she will be reincarnated to serve him again and be instrumental in the 'true defeat' of the Reaper.

The imaginary cat hissed, wordlessly daring Zenyatta to do his worst-

Zenyatta?

Well, yes, the cat sniffed. Zenyatta was the same soul as Ojal.

And the Prophet? Gabriel was sure he'd heard that voice before.

Mondatta, came the offended answer, the imaginary cat both desiring his soul with a passion unlike anything else it had ever known and at the same time, being afraid of the djinn.

Why afraid?

Because he was the one to slaughter Liao's family in front of her, to rally the other enslaved constructs who then decimated her village, the event that sparked the war. The imaginary cat hadn't known they were the same until the day Gabriel had been teleported to Nepal, but now...

Oh, Gabriel thought as the vision began to fade with Ojal's death. Well, fuck.

===

The imaginary cat was still clinging to him when he blinked several times and finally, the room swam back into focus, complete with Torbjörn peering anxiously at him.

"Did you see it?" he asked. "Did you see...her?"

Gabriel mentally hugged the cat and promised it pettings from Jack. "Hmm? Oh, Liao? Yeah."

Torbjörn leaned warily back. "You don't seem surprised or upset to learn that your former boss was the first Mantle."

"Jack and I figured it out in my first week. It's good to have confirmation, though, even if it is...unsettling."

The dwarf grunted. "That's what I get for not talking about it first. Could have saved myself the effort," he finished sourly.

"No. This was useful," Gabriel said firmly. "This showed me exactly what I needed to know."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"The Prophet, the one who started the war and killed Liao's village?"

"Yes?" asked Torbjörn warily.

"Mondatta. The current leader of the djinn, and the one who waited until after Jack had retired to bring his request to Overwatch."

"What?"

Gabriel sat up and cracked his neck. "Oh yeah. I think I need to have a little chat with him. There's more going on than he's telling me, and I don't appreciate being lied to."

Torbjörn gave him a thoughtful look. "You know, when the Reaper picked a human, I was afraid you were going to be a useless pushover. I'm glad you're not. Makes me feel like I didn't waste my time here, waiting for you."

"I haven't been a pushover since I was four." Gabriel grinned at him, but the expression wasn't a happy one. "I was pissed at first that I was being taken away from the life I'd built, protecting people, but this...this is everything I wanted to do, just on a bigger scale."

"I look forward to working with you," the dwarf said warmly. "But...what are you going to do about Liao?"

Gabriel frowned. "That is an excellent question. I think I need to hit the library."

=

Jack was troubled to learn who the Prophet was; Angela was outraged.

"The Reaper is for settling quarrels," she fumed, "but not under false pretenses like this!"

"Easy, easy," Gabriel soothed. "I'll settle his hash, no worries. But I need to know what I'm getting into with Liao. If she takes the Reaper back, she's reunited with her magic and should become mortal again, right?"

Both transhumans nodded slowly.

"What happens to the Reaper if she dies at that point?"

Angela frowned. "That is an excellent question. Certainly, it is more than simply 'Liao's magic' by now."

"That's our lesson subject for today," Gabriel said, clapping his hands together. "I want as much information as possible before I go talk to Zenyatta."

"Zenyatta?" Jack repeated. "Not-"

"Nope. I promised Zenyatta I'd talk to him about the nature of the Reaper, remember? I'm hoping he'll be able to shed some light on our problem if we can't find the answer ourselves, because the Reaper doesn't deserve to die with Liao."

The imaginary cat looked at him in surprise and a little bit of hope.

I'm a protector, he thought firmly. We're in this together. I'll protect you.

The cat trembled and huddled in his lap, overwhelmed by emotions it didn't know what to do with. Gabriel laid one hand on the table close to Jack, who immediately started brushing his knuckles with one thumb, soothing Gabriel and the imaginary cat both.

"Gabriel?" Angela asked warily.

"The Reaper wasn't expecting me to defend it," he answered in a quiet voice. "It's used to being taken for granted, ordered around, cursed - not treated with compassion. It doesn't even necessarily want to kill, it's just doing what it's been made to do in the past, what made Liao happy. I'll need to talk to it later, but right now it's kind of rattled."

The harpy winced. "Knowing that...the last ten years...no wonder it hates Amelie so. I will start our research."

She hurried off into the stacks, and Jack leaned over to kiss his mate. "Best protector anyone could ask for," he murmured proudly. "But I may be biased."

"I think your dad might disagree," Gabriel teased.

"Pa can go suck an egg, I'm happier with you than I've ever been and if he wants to keep seeing me on holidays then he'll keep his prejudices to himself."

Gabriel kissed him, slow and sweet. "And if he opens his mouth, maybe I'll just open mine and let him know what terminal condition Uncle Alfred had."

Jack laughed. In Gabriel's lap, the imaginary cat settled down and started purring.

===