Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Reaper hates Jack Morrison. Reaper wants power and glory. Reaper is all of what Gabriel Reyes hid, brought to the surface.

Every movement Reaper makes is pain. His cells are breaking down constantly, falling apart and back together.

“Gabe,” Sombra calls him like it’s a triumph to know who he used to be. All their knowing proves is that it’s on something digitally or that Talon told them, and he can’t really believe Sombra’s a new handler. Maybe someone to watch him, but even then he can’t really believe that as a real possibility.

Sombra had been so disappointed to learn he didn’t speak Spanish beyond Southern California basics. Reaper isn't sure what they expected. (He doesn't say Gabriel's abuela used to curse at his dad in Wixárika. He doesn't say Gabriel didn't know what it was until after Abuela died.)

The part of Reaper that is Gabriel Reyes thinks of Widowmaker as Lacroix, or Amélie if it’s feeling nostalgic enough. It mourns every Overwatch-turned-Talon agent it recognizes. Oh god what’s happened to me what’s happened to you what are you doing, its voice screams at Reaper, and he quashes it with prejudice.

Widowmaker is better-programmed than Reaper. She's clean and efficient and enjoys both the killing and the following orders; if she returns a little late from some missions, that can be overlooked.

In Reaper, it cannot be.

He is too rebellious, Talon says. He is a threat to them because there is some semblance of Blackwatch's commander left in him. Maybe he wishes that were true.

Reaper and Widowmaker tried to fuck, once. Kissing her tasted like ash, and he couldn't bring himself to touch her below her cold stomach. He felt sick when he tried, and retched roiling black nanites onto the floor.

She had waited for him to recover and then stood up gracefully, stepped into her jumpsuit, and left. It was the kindest he has ever seen her be.

Sometimes in his endless wanderings of Talon's buildings, he sees her exiting the rooms of the higher-ups, and he falls into step beside her, silently. He knows why she was there, and this is the most kindness he can offer her.

Reaper is not a kind being; being kind is too human, too soft, too Gabriel. And Gabriel hated being kind anyway.

Gabriel was a rough man, who loved and hated with equal measure. He wanted to do what was ‘right,’ no matter what. He was a soldier, a partner, a commander. He should never have become Reaper, but it was not his decision, and he’s too dead now anyway to know the construction leeching from his soul.

Akande and Moira are not like Reaper or Widowmaker, who are not here from their 'own' wills, or even Sombra, who Reaper knows is here for something else. They want to be here, 'improving humanity,' as they call it, although who knows if that’s really Talon’s goal.

Reaper is with them because he must be, as is the woman who used to be Amélie Lacroix. There's an empty sort of companionship between the two of them them, from that.

The Gabriel-part misses Jack. It misses Ana, and the rest of Overwatch and Blackwatch. It screams and wails and even though it's such a tiny part of him, every noise it makes feels like a thousand stabbing blades.

There is a room assigned to Reaper that he only goes to when that part of him feels like this. It is far from the higher-ups' quarters, in an almost-empty block of simple rooms like cells. Sombra and Widowmaker have rooms somewhere here, too; theirs are used as rarely as his.

There is a cot and a tiny bathroom within his room. He needs neither.

Reaper comes into the room like a thick fog, and Gabriel screams. He lets as much control over his body fall as he can, and becomes a thick mass of nanites, shaped vaguely like a man.

Like this, he has no vocal chords, or he would keep screaming until his voice was gone. Instead, he falls apart as best he can, and just focuses on the bright shooting pain of nerves and nanites, constantly interfacing for the first time.

It hurts more than anything he's ever experienced, every single day. It hurts so much that when he focuses on it like this, he thinks there's no way he can ever get up again, until his higher brain processing shuts down again and he wakes up with a new mission and freshly regained hate.

He stays like this, broken and nanites tumbling over nanites, for a long while. His sight goes black, thoughts and self fading until he's just a mass of nanites churning on the ground.

Reaper wakes up eleven hours later and begins the exhausting task of rebuilding his body. It will hurt, but not much more than it does normally, and he must be prepared to see Talon administration or, at least, Doomfist, later in the day.

He will be prepared.

Chapter Text

He walks to the meeting with Akande instead of gliding. Paradoxically, it makes him feel less human.

Sombra shimmers into existence as Reaper strides through another blank corridor, and falls into step beside him.

“Hey, Gabe,” they say.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, jefe. Anyway, what’s up?”

“Is there a point to this?”

“Weeeelllll,” they tap a finger to their lips, “I was wondering what a certain somebody thought of this.”

Sombra holds up a padd. There’s a paused video of zoomed in footage, probably from a drone; it displays a figure wearing blue fabric, a mask with an unrecognizable symbol blurrily visible under their hijab and cloak.

“What’s ‘this,”” says Reaper.

Sombra leans in, face close to the edge of Reaper’s mask. They whisper, “I have it on good info that this is gonna be your next target, and I’m thinking...you might wanna talk to them first.”

They lean back with a practiced grin.

“Well, that’s just my suggestion! Tómelo o déjelo, bossman.”

Sombra waves their hand in front of themself, and they fade away without a trace, leaving Reaper to think.

“Greetings, Reaper,” says Doomfist as Reaper enters the meeting room. Akande is sitting at a seat near the head of the table. His massive cybernetic hand is curled over his smaller flesh one, and Reaper could almost find the absurd image funny if not for the situation.

Moira isn’t in the room, as usual. The part of Reaper that is Gabriel feels relieved, against Reaper’s will.

The other members of Talon leadership aren’t there, alleviating some of Reaper’s concerns about why he’d been called. He wouldn’t be summoned for punishment or the other things Talon does with just Akande.

“We’d like to assign you a new mission,” Akande continues. Reaper listens silently, as receptive as he knows he should be.

“We’d like you to target this person.” A folder is slid across the table to Reaper. “Termination will most likely be necessary, but injury will be satisfactory.”

Reaper reaches for the folder, picking it up with the points of his claws.

“Do you understand, ░░░░░?” Doomfist asks. His eyes are gleaming.

Reaper's mind goes blank.

“Yes.”

Sombra was right, about the target. Reaper wraithes to the room across from the hacker’s, settling in to read the dossier. There are blurry images, a masked figure in a hijab sniping from the shadows of a temple in Egypt.

One of the images is close enough to see the symbol on the mask; it’s the separated edges of a triangle.

The figure is a vigilante, the dossier says. They’re going by the name of ‘Shrike.’

“You might wanna talk to them first,” Sombra had said. Their gun is familiar in an odd way, as is their posture and body language. He can recognize it even in these blurry photos. It reminds him of something he doesn't want to think of, and Gabriel's pain flares in Reaper's chest.

There's one sniper Gabriel knew who he could recognize like this. And if he can know that Jack is alive, then... Why not her, too?

Reaper dissolves into smoke.