STTA 2: Bruises, bourbon, and guilt

[moonshadows]

McCree didn’t look up when the console chimed. It wasn’t his business what Talon wanted until Reaper said it was his business. Things hadn’t exactly been quiet since he’d helped Soldier 76 escape, but the vigilante had kept his head down and hopefully this would be no different. He stayed sprawled on the couch in the suite’s common room, reading his pad like he hadn’t even heard the chime of orders coming in. When Reaper started laughing – a low, evil chuckle – then he looked up.

“Who they wantcha to kill?” he asked casually.

“It doesn’t have to be me,” Reaper countered. The rare playful note in his growl, though, only proved that the cowboy had guessed right. “I could assign this mission to anyone. Even you.”

“But yer not.”

“Nope. This one’s all mine. Data retrieval, government facility, casualties optional but preferred.”

Wisps of black smoke trailed down from the back of Reaper’s shoulders, telling McCree exactly how eager the man was to get started on killing people. It was hard to read his mood without a face, but he’d found that reading the wisps was sort of like reading a cat’s body language: good enough to get a sense, even if he didn’t get specifics.

“Have fun,” he said dryly. “When should I expect you back?”

It was a deliberate reminder that he cared, and they both knew it.

“I’ll check in after the mission is complete,” Reaper growled. “With travel, should be about twenty-two-hundred hours your time. Don’t wait up for me to get back.”

Ten at night. McCree nodded. “Alright. Fly safe both ways and g’night in advance, Dad.”

For a moment, Reaper almost looked like he wanted to hug his cowboy son. Then he nodded sharply and wisped out of the suite.

---

Flights across the Atlantic weren’t Reaper’s idea of fun. He generally spent the entire time going over reports that were only slightly less boring than doing nothing at all, and this trip was no different. The target facility had a landing pad in a recessed courtyard for the privacy and convenience of it usual visitors, and although the sun had not yet set, they were in no danger of discovery. Privacy for the usual visitors included no windows facing the courtyard.

Reaper flowed out of the ship, solidifying just before he reached the door and then kicking it in for as dramatic an entrance as he could manage. That brought half the population of the office running in to see what was going on, and the gunshots as he took them out elicited screams from deeper inside the complex. Some of the office inhabitants were dumb enough to run towards the commotion, but most of them were smart enough to flee. He chased them all down, painting cubicle walls with blood and brains as he found them. A handful tried to make a break for it, but they weren’t fast enough to outrun shotgun shells or a river of black smoke. The last one died waiting for the elevator, and then he was alone with cooling corpses and unfettered access to their computer systems.

The first thing he did was turn the security cameras off. Then he erased the security logs for the entire day, not just the ones that showed him massacring the office workers. Once he’d covered his tracks, then he started digging for the reason he’d been sent. He found it easily enough, siphoning it out of storage and straight onto the ship’s server and deleting swaths of unrelated data just because it amused him.

While it was transferring, the elevator chimed.

He was waiting when the door opened, and a terrified woman in a pencil skirt shrieked and hit the ‘door close’ button a second before Reaper blew her head off.

The doors closed.

Reaper knew he had until the elevator arrived at its next stop to get out of there, because once the body was discovered the entire place would start swarming. Luckily, the transfer completed a few seconds later, and he put half a dozen shotgun shells into various terminals before flowing back out the way he’d come in. The ship was well out of range by the time the alarms actually sounded and he reported to Talon first, data already transmitting from ship to satellite, but his success was brushed off with new orders.

Soldier 76 was attacking a nearby Talon warehouse.

The ship’s pilot had changed their course before the communication even ended, and instead of opening a line to McCree, Reaper sent him a brief update by text.

I’m going to turn in, then, the cowboy sent back. Night, Dad.

The reminder that he had once been Gabriel Reyes was not what Reaper needed when he was on his way to confront and possibly kill his ex-husband.

---

When the small transport ship touched down in the loading area for the warehouse, Soldier 76 was already inside. Reaper wisped in as a river of smoke, utilizing one of the few perks of his condition to take a spatial reading of the area as he moved through it. The motion of his swarm generated a three-dimensional map as the cloud of his substance spread, and finding his target didn’t take long at all. The man was rifling through a crate he’d pried open, unaware that Reaper had solidified behind him.

For a moment he just stood there behind Soldier 76, one shotgun aimed at the back of his head. A twitch of his finger and the nuisance would be gone out of his life forever. He’d never even know what killed him.

The shotgun cracked against the back of the man’s skull, and he collapsed bonelessly against the crate.

A quick death was too good for him, Reaper told himself as he shouldered the man’s limp body and carried him out of the building. He certainly wasn’t sparing the vigilante’s life out of some atrophied sense of affection. That would be pathetic, considering the man had made his opinion of their relationship quite clear. One coil of rope and an all-clear report later, they were alone in the far corner of the property and Reaper was putting the finishing touches on his homemade piñata. He’d tied the man’s hands together behind his back with a short length and tossed the rest over the arm of a lightpole, looping both ends around Soldier 76 just under the armpits and ensuring that the man’s toes just barely scraped the ground before securely tying the knots.

Although the backhand didn’t hurt, it jarred Soldier 76 enough to wake him up.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” he growled as the man jerked against his bonds.

It didn’t take Soldier 76 long to realize the position he was in. “Awww,” he drawled condescendingly. “You think I’m beautiful?”

The fist that caught him in the solar plexus not only knocked the wind out of him, but set him swinging for a few moments.

“I knew you were a fool,” Reaper growled. “I didn’t know you were a sucker for punishment.”

“I married you, didn’t I?” When Soldier 76 stopped swinging from the second blow, he was laughing. “Sorry, did I hit a nerve? Actually, wait – I’m not sorry.”

“You’ll be sorry when I’m through with you,” Reaper promised. “I didn’t think you’d be so eager for another beating after the one I gave you not so long ago.”

“You used to give me worse poundings than that, remember?” the man taunted. “We’d go at it all night sometimes. What’s the matter, can’t get it up anymore?”

Reaper bristled, hating the reminder that his body was charred beyond all functionality, hating that for the moment, he had no comeback for that accusation past punching. He punched anyway. “You’re not worth it,” he said as Soldier 76 swung from the rope.

The vigilante spat blood off to one side. “Or maybe you’re just too busy choking on Talon’s cock.”

For a minute or two, Reaper worked him like a boxer with a heavy punching bag. The pained breathing Soldier 76 was reduced to as he swung was gratifyingly sweet.

“That’s more like it,” Reaper said smugly. “Any time you want to get the shit beat out of you again, just bother a Talon facility.”

“Good to know,” Soldier 76 wheezed. “Are you done? Because I am.”

“You- what?”

With more core strength than he’d thought the man had left, Soldier 76 tucked his knees up under his chin and brought his bound arms around to the front of his body. He reached over his head to grab the rope and then swung his legs back and up, catching the rope with his feet and taking himself out of reach. Upside-down, he inched his way up the rope towards the arm of the lightpole while Reaper watched in bemusement.

“You know I could still shoot you,” he pointed out.

Soldier 76 didn’t so much as flinch. “But you won’t, or you would have done it in the warehouse.”

Reaper waited until the man was almost to the lightpole’s arm. Then he shot the rope and laughed as Soldier 76 flung himself at the pole and clung to it, like a monkey.

“Remember,” he taunted as the man tried to inch his way up the pole. “Any time you want another beating, just bother Talon. But I won’t always be around to put you in your place. Someone may panic and actually shoot you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Soldier 76 growled.

Chuckling, Reaper returned to the ship.

---

Soldier 76 peeled his signature jacket off, groaning slightly. He wasn’t as young as he used to be, and Reaper hadn’t pulled any of his punches. Combine that with being pistol-whipped and the stunt he’d pulled climbing the lightpole, and he was going to need something more than a hot bath to ease the aches – not just the ones in his muscles, but the way it had hurt to banter like that.

He shrugged into a nondescript brown coat, tugged a knitted cap down over his hair, and stuffed a handful of crumpled bills into one pocket before heading out into the night.

At the time, it had felt great, getting those verbal kicks in. Refusing to be cowed by the man who’d turned his back on them and joined the Dark Side. Fighting back the only way he could. But now, without the adrenaline, he felt…empty.

Reaper hadn’t killed him. This was twice now, and a pathetic corner of his heart – the place where he’d stuffed Jack and Gabe and Ana and the rest of their friends – hoped it was because he still cared. He’d promised, right? They both had. Until death do us part.

The bell on the door to the liquor store jingled as he pushed it open. He selected his bottle, presented falsified ID that the jaded clerk barely glanced at, and handed over the crumpled bills with a minimum of chatter. Then it was back into the night, bottle in its paper bag clutched in one hand.

They’d promised, but the memory of working the ring off his finger, flinging it at his shocked husband, hearing the ting as it fell to the floor…

He twisted the cap off his bottle and swigged golden liquid that burned but didn’t burn away the guilt that crept up his throat like bile.

---

Between the bourbon and the bath, he was feeling pleasantly numb as he bundled himself into briefs and blankets. At least, he felt good physically. As soon as his body stopped moving, his brain lurched into a higher gear and gnawed on the issue of Reaper. Twice now, he’d escaped with nothing worse than heavy bruising and maybe some fractured bones. Things he could easily heal from. And McCree…

McCree was loyal, but he had also been the first to call Gabriel on his words or actions if he went too far on anything. Would he have helped a prisoner escape in defiance of Reaper’s orders?

Would Reaper have given the order to help a prisoner escape?

Did Reaper want him alive? Did he care? The beatings…

…were no more than he deserved, he sighed to himself.

Maybe things weren’t as black and white as you want to make them seem, McCree had said. The cowboy hadn’t sided with either one of them on the Shimada incident, but he had befriended Genji and given him something to think about that wasn’t the ruin his life and his body had become. A good kid, Gabe called him. Less concerned with the rules and consequences of the bigger picture than the simple fact that someone was hurting. And the uprising in London, the Null Sector incident…

The man who had once been Jack Morrison slipped into fitful slumber haunted by the ghosts of the past.

---

“You’re suspending me?”

“I’m suspending Blackwatch.”

Gabriel’s face darkened. “This is a mistake.”

“No,” Jack snapped, rounding on him. “Vienna was a mistake. What happened in Japan was a mistake. This is me cleaning up your mess.”

“By bowing to the UN? Caving to political pressure?”

“The UN is why we exist!” Jack shouted. “Overwatch exists at the sufferance of the world! It’s not our place to question that!”

Scowling, Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, it is, and this is a mistake.”

“I’m not arguing this with you, Gabriel.” Jack sighed and massaged his temples. “Blackwatch is suspended until I can get the furor to quiet down. Send your agents on a vacation. End of discussion.”

“Fine,” Gabriel snapped. “But this isn’t over.”

---

Gabriel sauntered into Jack’s office, smug dripping from every line in his body. “Decided the Brits didn’t have it all under control after all, Jack?”

He didn’t return the other man’s smile. “You used my words against me. I told you to give your agents a vacation, and you sent McCree into a war zone to assess a situation we were explicitly told to keep our noses out of.”

The cold, angry tone made Gabriel frown. “I asked where he wanted to go. He said London.”

“Without prompting?”

The frown escalated to a scowl. “Yes! Believe it or not, Jesse cares about little things like world peace and hostages. And apparently you agree, because you authorized that mission!”

Jack surged to his feet and roared, “You twisted my arm!”

“So well that you argued Ana down?”

The Strike-Commander looked away. “She agreed with you.”

“And Angela? Torbjörn? Reinhardt?” Gabriel pressed. “Did you have to order them to go?”

“No,” Jack said quietly.

“So I was right. We were right. It was the right thing to do.”

Jack turned to glare at his husband. “It was the right thing to do,” he ground out, “but we were explicitly told not to do it, and now there’s even more resistance to Overwatch than there was before! We can’t operate like this, Gabriel!”

“When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and-”

“Stop. Don’t fucking no, you move at me.” Jack sat back down, massaging his temples with both hands while Gabriel hovered awkwardly. “Politics doesn’t work like that, Gabe. I can’t just strong-arm governments into doing the right thing.”

Quietly, Gabriel said, “You shouldn’t have to.”

“No, I shouldn’t. But that’s the way the world works. All I can do is play by the rules and try not to get kicked out of the game.”

Gabriel took a handful of steps closer and laid one hand on his husband’s shoulder, squeezing gently in silent reassurance before leaving quietly.

---

Sunlight poked sharp fingers through the blinds, prodding him awake. His mouth tasted like something had died in it, his head was pounding, and he wasn’t sure if it was the hangover making his stomach churn…or guilt from the realization that he’d been lashing out at his husband for the crime of refusing to play a rigged game, and now here he was doing the exact same thing.

Groaning, he struggled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. Shower, breakfast, and then he’d have to see if he could figure out some way to cross Reaper’s path. Maybe think of something he could say to determine if there was anything left of the bridge that had burned between them.