moonshadows

“Boss, you better come take a look at this.”

The voice in Reaper’s ear was somber and slightly worried, and that killed any impulse he might have had to give his agent a hard time.

Jesse McCree didn’t spook easily.

A quick check showed that he was in the detention block, just outside cell G, where Soldier 76 was awaiting…processing. Sullivan’s squad had gotten lucky on their last mission; they’d gotten the drop on Soldier 76 and knocked him out. Reaper had planned to give the vigilante a few days of isolation to soften him up before he went to have a little chat with him, but now – what was it that he needed to take a look at so urgently?

Irritated but not angry, he released cohesion of his form and slipped into the air vents. He’d mapped the currents long ago, and actually enjoyed traveling through the building this way. It reminded him of the time he’d gone white-water rafting with-

The thought cut out with a mental growl. That life was over and done with. Now irritated and angry, Reaper navigated the twists and turns and emerged less than two minutes later to solidify by McCree.

“What, exactly, am I looking at?”

The cowboy didn’t even flinch. He was used to the strained growl of Reaper’s voice and the way he seemingly appeared out of thin air. “Your guest,” he answered, gesturing to the observation window.

Reaper stepped up and peered through the mirrored glass to see that the vigilante – still armored, although his weapons and equipment had been removed – was doing push-ups. He’d stripped off the leather jacket and gloves and effortlessly pumped out a dozen before switching to his right arm for a set, then his left, then repeating the pattern. The visor that protected his identity was still in place, but Reaper didn’t need to see his face to know who he was. He knew every curve of that torso, every imperfection and scar – but no, there were plenty of new ones, and it made his heart lurch. The eyes he didn’t quite have focused on the vigilante’s hands, and sure enough, the left ring finger bore a pale band where the skin had been protected for many years by a ring.

Jack Morrison.

Fuck.

“Vegas, babe? Really?”

Although he sounded skeptical, he was smiling like the goddamn sun and Gabriel Reyes couldn’t help but smile back. “Come on, Sunshine. Don’t you trust me?”

Jack Morrison rolled his eyes as the other man leaned into kiss his neck. “I trust you, but I also know you. Granted, we only have a few days to sneak this in before our new positions take effect, but I don’t want to get married in the Elvis chapel or something similarly tacky.”

“Jack, I’m wounded!” The sparkle in Gabriel’s eyes and the way his lips twitched declared that he was not, in fact, wounded. “You think I would cheapen our lifelong vows by making this a theme wedding-”

“Maybe,” interrupted Jack dryly, arms crossed over his chest.

“-that we didn’t both agree on?”

Both hands now covering his face, Jack groaned. “I’m going to regret this, I just know it.” He let his hands fall. “What did you find, babe?”

Gabriel’s broad smile wasn’t reassuring. The pad he handed over already had the chapel’s picture gallery pulled up.

It was an Overwatch Strike Force themed chapel, with an impressively accurate impersonator of Reinhardt gesturing in front of an altar that was doing an excellent impression of a bastion unit that had come out second best against the Crusader’s hammer.

Jack sighed, trying and failing to hide his smile. “Okay, babe. You win. Let’s go to Vegas.”

Gabriel’s surprised and delighted smile fairly lit up the room.

“What’s the play, Boss?” McCree asked quietly.

Reaper groaned. Both hands went to his mask, clawtips dragging down the bone-white surface in a gesture of exasperation for the maelstrom of conflicting emotions seeing Jack was causing. Part of him wanted to rip the door down, tear the visor from the man’s face, and kiss him…with the lips he didn’t have. The rest of him wanted to beat Jack to within an inch of his life for having left him to become…this. “That depends on how comfortable you are with showing that ugly mug of yours,” he growled.

“You want me to bust him out.”

“I want to work him over first. But yes, I want you to bust him out. Tell him whatever you think he’ll believe. I’ll arrange your path and steal you a motorcycle.”

The cowboy gave him a sly glance out of the corner of his eye, lips curling into the slightest smirk. “Still got feelings for the old man?”

“No,” Reaper lied, and dissolved into smoke to ride the air currents back to his office.

“Reaper,” Soldier 76 snarled from behind his visor. “Should I be honored?”

“If you want.”

Drugs pumped into the man’s cell through the air vents had kept him disoriented enough for two Talon agents to secure him to a very sturdy metal chair, gloves and boots and jacket stripped off and piled to the side.

“I’m surprised you haven’t taken the visor,” Soldier 76 said warily. “You know…unmask the vigilante.”

Reaper snorted. “You assume I care.”

That made him lean back into the chair, surprise and alarm playing across the wrinkles of his forehead. “Then…if you don’t care…”

If Talon didn’t care who he was, that suggested very bad things about his continued survival.

The laugh that rolled out from behind the mask was dark and mocking. “Why should I care? You’re not going to be around much longer.”

There it was; he tried to keep his voice hard, with no tremors to betray the fear that clawed at his gut. “So you’re going to interrogate me before you kill me?”

“No.” Reaper cracked his neck and let a grin slip into his voice, knowing the other man would hear it. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to beat you to hell and back.”

“But why?” The question burst out of him before he could stop it because what the hell? That made no sense; what was Talon up to?

Reaper fisted his hands slowly, the gauntlets creaking ominously. “Because I want to.”

“Hey, hold up a second.”

Hotel key ready to insert into the door of their suite, Gabriel paused. “What is it, Sunshine?”

Jack’s cheeks were distinctly pink. “I want to carry you over the threshold.”

Gabriel thought about cracking a joke, but in the end he just leaned over to give his new husband a teasingly brief kiss on the lips. “If it means that much to you, okay.”

“Really?” Jack looked like a kid on Christmas morning, all surprise and hope and delight.

“Really.” As Jack lifted him into a bridal carry, he leaned in and whispered, “I know you just want an excuse to get your hands on my ass.”

That got Jack laughing so hard that he nearly dropped Gabriel before they got the door open. Pressing his advantage, he carried his husband to the heart-shaped bed and laid him down, covering his face with gentle kisses.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he murmured against Gabriel’s skin.

“I just tied the knot with the second most amazing man in the world,” Gabriel teased, his hands already fumbling at Jack’s pants. “I can put up with a little indignity if it makes you happy.”

“It does,” Jack breathed, going in for a longer kiss.

When the kiss ended, Gabriel looked up at his husband and said softly, “Then it makes me happy, too.”

“Wow. Dad really worked you over. Nothing that won’t heal, but you’re gonna hurt for a while.”

Something cool and wet on his face, soothing bruised and swollen flesh, cleaning his split lip and the crusted blood around his nostrils, dragged him out of memories that cut like glass. Soldier 76 struggled to put his thoughts into words. That was McCree, which meant the man behind Reaper’s mask was…someone whose name he had done his best to bury along with his own. “Jesse? I thought…” He’d thought the cowboy’s father-figure was dead, but he wasn’t entertaining that thought until he had the luxuries of time and security to wrestle with the emotions it brought, and he certainly wasn’t saying it out loud.

“Thought you lost me in the divorce?” Jesse suggested neutrally. “You know I had to stay with my old man.”

He hissed as the ties keeping him secured to the chair loosened, just enough to allow circulation without letting him fall over. “He’s…not…your…”

“Now, actually, he is.” The cowboy’s drawl held more than a hint of warning, anger giving it an edge. “Signed the papers on my twenty-first birthday, and we kept it on the down-low at my request. It never came to your attention because I was a legal adult, but if I were to show my face in public with everything that’s happened, it sure as hell would get dug up and splashed all over the front pages for everyone to see.”

“But you were a victim. You didn’t know…” He trailed off as the cowboy coughed, peeled one eye open to see McCree giving him a look one part defiance and two parts guilt. “You knew?”

“You weren’t listening,” Jesse said softly. “He couldn’t confide in you, so he confided in me.”

The former Strike-Commander struggled to shape his face into a scowl. “So it was your fault, too.”

Black-gloved hands went to the cowboy’s hips. “I’m starting to think you don’t want my help getting out of here.”

That made him blink and frown in surprise. “You…”

“Got a fifteen-minute window to get you outside, with your gear and a sack of rations, and load you on a stolen motorcycle before anyone notices you’re gone. Now, you want to dismiss me the way you dismissed Dad, I can just leave you right here and no one will be the wiser. But if you’re willing to choke on your damned pride for fifteen goddamn minutes and entertain the notion that maybe things weren’t as black and white as you want to make them seem, I’ll get your sorry ass out of here and you can live to blame me and Dad another day.”

The moment stretched, Jack wrestling with his outrage before he nodded.

“Whatever else he did, he raised a fine son.” The words were stiff and forced, grating on his ego, but McCree smiled.

“Now, that’s more like it. Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

“He’s gone, Boss,” McCree said softly as he slipped into the darkened suite.

From the shadows, Reaper growled, “Good.”

“Made it look like he used the chair to break himself out. He’s a stubborn old bastard, though, and I don’t doubt he’ll be back.”

Reaper snorted. “You got that right. In the morning, I’ll give orders to incapacitate him and bring him back if he shows his face again. Let him decide his own fate.”

“Fair enough.” Jesse stretched and yawned. “Been a long night. I’m gonna turn in.”

“Hmph. Enjoy it.”

Jesse sauntered towards the angry growl, eyes adjusting to the gloom, and draped one arm around Reaper in a hug. “Night, Dad,” he murmured before continuing past.

He was almost to his room when Reaper growled, “I told you not to call me that,” but there was no edge to the words and Jesse grinned as the door closed behind him, knowing Reaper couldn’t see it.

It was a ritual they’d established from the first night they’d been working for Talon, and the only time Jesse used ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Boss’. That one word was a pointed reminder that despite his body being ash and nanites, he was more than just Reaper. As McCree got undressed, the gold chain around his neck swung free and he wrapped gentle fingers around the two flame-stained titanium rings strung on it. Although the engravings were worn after spending decades on their owners’ fingers, Jesse knew them by heart.

All my love – J. M.

Forever yours – G. R.

Reaper didn’t sleep.

Not out of guilt or uneasiness about what he’d done, or even by choice; no, he didn’t sleep because that, like nearly everything else he’d once enjoyed, was now denied him. Although the nanite swarm that sustained him sometimes needed a period of powering down for code maintenance, the charred remains of his body required no rest. He’d tried various methods of zoning out or turning his brain off, but none of them were very effective and most of the time, he simply made use of the extra hours to sort through information and plan.

Tonight was not one of those nights. Tonight, he paced the suite’s common room with his thoughts swirling down old, bitter paths they hadn’t followed in years, riled up by the sight of the man he’d once been proud to call his husband.

The ability to sort and plan was one of the things that had elevated him from a simple – although highly effective – mercenary working for Talon to a position of greater trust and responsibility. The same skills for managing troops and equipment, for identifying threats almost before they materialized, that had made Blackwatch so formidable now nipped at the heels of governments all over the world. They’d turned a blind eye to their own greed and corruption, to the damage they were doing both directly and through inaction. They’d slowly starved Overwatch, choked the organization through budget restrictions and red tape, made increasingly-impossible demands while simultaneously denying anything that might actually let Overwatch accomplish those goals.

Blackwatch had been hardest hit, of course. No one wanted to know the dirty details that kept them safe; like scavengers, they were reviled for the unpleasantness of their very necessity. Reaper snarled almost inaudibly, wishing he had a face that could sneer. With how hard he’d had to fight to get any support, in terms of money or equipment or manpower, he’d had to drift to the wrong side of the law more and more, relying on dirtier methods and darker allies. Talon hadn’t been responsible for him learning just how badly the governments of the world were hurting their countries; he’d read those reports every day and had the arguments behind closed doors every night. Talon hadn’t been responsible, but they’d offered support in terms of finances and materials when not even Overwatch would…or could.

Absently, Reaper clenched his left hand into a fist. For twenty-five years they’d made it work, Jack standing in the spotlight while his husband worked in the shadows. But as the years passed, the oh-so-noble Strike Commander had slowly refused to hear a negative word about the governments they relied on. “You can’t threaten people into doing the right thing,” he’d argued. “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” He’d eventually closed his ears on the entire subject, refusing to entertain the topic first and then refusing to even stay in the room if his husband was intent on telling him about it anyway. Although they never officially split or slept in separate beds, their schedules slowly diverged until they didn’t have to see each other more than the bare minimum. And then, that final night-

Reaper snarled, feeling his cohesion weaken, his mass starting to drift around him like an aura of doom. Damn Morrison for making him remember this shit! For a single, pulsing moment his rage burned like molten steel, wishing he hadn’t gone so easy on the vigilante, wanting to make him suffer-

Abruptly, he left the suite and poured through the air vents until he boiled out into the detention block to stand up out of the shadows and loom over the security guard on duty.

“Soldier Seventy-Six has escaped,” he snarled. “I will issue orders regarding him in the morning. In the meantime, which prisoners are expendable?”

The guard swallowed heavily and scrolled through a pad. “Uh…cell R, sir. Hostage whose ransom was denied.”

“Good…” The word was a low, cruel hiss. “In three hours, you may alert the cleaning crew.”

The guard swallowed again, looking distinctly pale. “Understood, sir.”

He strode down the hall, slow and menacing, letting the echoes of his boots against the floor precede him. Prisoners in other cells, the ones who’d been there long enough to hear stories, shrank back and whimpered. When he paused in front of cell Q, a young girl’s voice cried out and the sound of terrified weeping floated past the metal door. Reaper slid the shutter open and peered through the narrow window.

“You. Girl.”

The weeping paused with a little gasp.

“I’m not here for you. Cover your ears.”

The metal shutter slid closed with a scraping clang, and Reaper dissolved into smoke. Slowly, he seeped under the door to cell R where a young man sat huddled on the corner of his cot, knees hugged to his chest. In the dim light, he didn’t see the smoke that billowed up or the man that stepped out of it until suddenly, the bone-white mask appeared to float in the air like a phantom.

One of the peculiarities of his new existence, Reaper had discovered, was that although he didn’t have a flesh-and-blood body, he periodically needed to replenish certain compounds he couldn’t get by just assimilating raw materials or corpses. They had to be ripped out of a still-living body. He couldn’t bring himself to do it in cold blood, or even the heat of a firefight. But when he was angry enough – enraged, infuriated enough to be a danger to his men or, worse, to his cowboy son – well. There were always victims to be found among the prisoners, people who Talon would demand die one way or another, and it pleased the shadowy higher-ups to hold these prisoners until Reaper was ready for them. Sometimes they waited months.

“Your ransom was denied,” Reaper said in a soft, almost pleasant growl. “If you have any prayers you would like to perform, I’ll give you two minutes. And then…” His chuckle filled the cell as the young man quaked. “Then you die, and it will be neither quick nor painless.”

In cell Q, the girl pulled the thin mattress of her cot to the floor and rolled up in it, fingers in her ears.

It didn’t help.