Work Text:
Jack dropped down and slammed his back against a wall, seconds before the spray of bullets sent chips of concrete pinging off of him as the rounds embedded themselves in the masonry instead of his body. Tacky blood dripped down his leg from a bullet wound in his hip, a moment's carelessness having wrought swift punishment. A long, weary sigh escaped his lips as he cycled through the nearest targets on his visor. The sleepy German Overwatch station was overrun with Talon agents; the guards, all fresh from academy if their panic said anything, hadn't stood much of a chance. They had scattered and the Talon operatives had picked off most of them. He'd hoped to avoid hurting any of them when he'd arrived to storm the base, but as soon as he spotted Reaper all of his plans and scenarios had been thrown out the window. It was both a good and bad omen; good, because it meant his hunch that the base contained important records about Overwatch's final days was likely correct, and bad because he'd heard of the stories, knew how dangerous Reaper was on the battlefield.
He'd seen the victims he left in his wake, ashen and emaciated with nothing left inside of their desecrated husks; no blood, no organs, no life at all. Jack wasn't sure what he was but it wasn't human. Not anymore. They had only clashed a few times prior, all long distance exchanges of fire but he'd seen the way he moved, graceful as a shadow, a ghost. He'd watched him in Gibraltar claw open the throat of a injured guard, saw how his form effervesced to mist and smothered the hapless fool like the roots of a hellish tree. It'd sent a strange primal fear racing up his spine, the same as being in the presence of a predator. In all of his many years of combat he'd never encountered something quite like the assassin. He wasn't keen on fighting him, either. He wanted to get into the station, get what he needed before any Talon operatives did, and get out.
He cycled through his visor a second time as he reloaded and sorted through the nearest targets. The few guards whom he originally engaged were low priority; most of them were dead and he'd much rather take out the Talon agents actively killing them and hopefully spare some of them from a grisly fate. He locked on to several signatures and pointed his rifle over the top of the wall, firing off a volley of helix rockets and ducking back behind the safety of the cement. The explosions of the rounds hitting their marks was muffled by both his ear protection and the masonry he was sheltering against, but the ticks on his visor dropped away as the rockets successfully incapacitated the Talon agents.
Reaper was difficult to track, even with the visor. He vanished and reappeared constantly which made it difficult to lock on and even more difficult to anticipate his actions. A panicked guard from the facility was rapidly approaching his position, pursued by a pair of Talon soldiers and shouting out something in frantic, thick German. Jack didn't know if the guard would fire on him if he revealed his position, but the jolting urge to protect spurned his body into action before he even fully realized he was moving. He leapt up on top of the stoop, balanced as a cat but slowed precious seconds by his wound as he pulled the rifle up to level it at the masked Talon agents. The guard (so painfully young) yelled something he didn't catch, and within a half-second Jack realized what a foolish mistake he'd made. The agents had been flushing the guard into a trap and he'd thrown himself right into—
The shotgun blast came from his left, startlingly loud, and he was blown off of his perch like a game-foul. He let out a hoarse cry of pain as the air left his lungs, falling to the cobblestone in a crumpled heap. His rifle and biotic canisters, knocked loose from the impact, skidded off across the stone far out of reach. Reaper, his mind supplied helplessly, the shadowy figure solidifying overtop of him. Jack's lungs spasmed in desperate need of oxygen, a gurgling scream clawing its way out of him as the pain slammed into him from the movement, his entire left side erupting in jagged, blinding agony. Hot blood poured sticky and thick from his shredded rib cage, bone and flesh having stood no chance against a point-blank round from the weapon. He rolled onto his stomach and wheezed pitifully, his limbs sluggish and heavy and unable to push him out of the pool of his own blood collecting beneath him.
Dark boots crowded his swimming vision, his only warning before icy claws wrapped under his chin and jerked him up off of the ground. His cry of pain was muffled by the pressure tightening around his throat, Reaper holding his entire body weight effortlessly in one hand. Jack choked and gasped weakly, squirming and tugging at the hand at his neck with an animalistic desperation. Rational thought was ousted by the basal instinct of survival. Heart pumping and adrenaline surging he tried to pry the gloved fingers off of his throat, but the claws dug in deeper and cut through his skin, blood dribbling across the chrome metal. His eyes watered behind his mask at the lack of oxygen and pain, vision bleeding at the edges until only the bone-white skull in front of him remained.
The free hand reached towards his face, sharp claws hooking his visor and tearing it away from his face. He dimly heard it shatter as it was dropped, discarded, to the street. Without it his vision went blurry and dark, right eye entirely blind, rendering his aim useless even if he could reach the pulse rifle. The unfiltered air, hot with gunpowder and the heavy pollution of the city, burned his sensitive nostrils; he gasped, desperate for the air his visor scrubbed clean for him. He wasn't afraid of being recognized, his face so scarred and burned from the blast to be nearly unrecognizable from his cheeks down, but without the anchor point of his visor he felt as though he'd lost his mooring, senses fragmented and the world around him effectively drowning into a swirl of murky colors and grey. The claws at his throat flexed and squeezed even tighter, a wheezing gurgle escaping him as blood oozed down his chin from the teeth-deep hole over his lips and up his left cheek.
"I wasn't even aiming for you, Soldier," Rumbling, gravely laughter crept out from under the featureless mask, "so quick to take what's meant for others, aren't you?" Jack tried to kick at him but he couldn't connect with anything solid. The air around him grew cold and heavy, shadows dancing and reaching out to coil around him as Reaper's form dissolved into thick, swirling smoke. His stomach lurched at the sudden sensation of falling, the Earth vanishing beneath him as cold the likes of which he'd never imagined possible crashed over him like the surf of the ocean. It lasted a moment, a heartbeat, an eternity and suddenly he dropped to solid ground, pain stabbing into his brain from the jolt and the jumble of sensory input. The pressure at his throat was gone and he sucked in a great mouthful of air, hot electricity lancing up his lungs and throat as torn muscle flexed and contracted. The inky mist sloughed off of his body and congealed in front of him, realization sinking in that Reaper had shadow stepped with him to who knew where.
Without his visor he couldn't see much of anything in the dark space and without a weapon he was at Reaper's nonexistent mercy. The air warmed as Reaper solidified, but the aura of icy death that shrouded him warned him a half-second before those clawed hands hooked into his jacket and hauled him up off of the ground. Jack groaned in pain and grabbed at the man's wrists but it was a halfhearted gesture; the loss of blood was starting to make itself known and his strength waned dangerously. Reaper laughed at the motion, voice bubbling and thick as tar and just the wrong side of familiar that made something lick up Jack's spine. He wriggled defiantely against his hold, huffing out a meek growl as he tried to pry the claws loose of his uniform and get free. It was useless, he knew it, but he wasn't one to give up.
"I see time hasn't tempered your stubbornness." Reaper purred, crowding into his space to tower over him. Jack didn't know what he meant by that, but something in his stomach dropped as he stared into the expressionless skull. He was still for a moment before he tried to grab at the hood, spitting at the lifeless mask, blood from his filling lungs spattering crimson across the bone white. His back was thrust against a wall as Reaper clicked his tongue admonishingly, the tips of his claws pressing into his chest in a passive display of dominance until Jack let his hands fall limply back to his sides. Blood dripped audibly to the floor from both his hip and cracked-apart ribs, cold that was more than just Reaper's presence settling in over his body. Shock, he realized, instantaneously hyper aware of the likely-mortal damage he'd sustained.
"Why did—"
"Spare me, Morrison," Reaper cut him off with a snarl, pushing harder against his chest, "you know damn well why I took you." Jack's thoughts sputtered and stopped when he realized he'd been addressed by name, eyes going wide and inhaling raggedly as the pieces suddenly, finally, clicked into place.
"R-Reyes?" the name fell from his bloody mouth like a lead feather, voice barely audible as he scanned the man with his eyes. One of the clawed gauntlets untangled from his chest, Reaper admiring it absently before he reached up and tugged away his mask, dropping it at his feet. It wasn't possible. Angela had told him that Gabriel was dead. He'd seen his body. And yet. And yet. The face that stared out at him from under the hood was truly Gabriel's, unmistakable even under all the scars and inhuman changes. His dark skin was mottled with decayed grey tissue and ropey scars, sharp, predatory teeth glinting wettly behind his crooked lips. He looked impossibly young and startlingly ancient at the same time; he hadn't aged since the explosion but the scars and the decay and the emaciated hollowness of his features weathered him by decades.
"Look at you—" Reyes started suddenly, grinning like a cat and dragging the back of a claw down Jack's face, stopping to cup his chin. He felt the clawed thumb rest against his cheek, the tip absently tracing one of the thick scars that cut down his face and at the mangled remains of where his nose should be; a constant reminder of the explosion, of how close he came to death that day. The touch was almost gentle. Almost. "—you've gotten so old." Jack's eyes watered, from pain, he told himself, trembling as though the sky was falling on top of him. A thousand and three things demanded to be said—you're alive, I missed you, I'm so fucking sorry—but the words turned to ash on his tongue. Nothing would ever change what had happened; he deserved whatever fate Reyes had in mind for him.
He tried to force the words out but they caught in his throat, chest heaving as he tried to get air back into his body. His lungs still flared with pain with every breath; he was sure at least one of them was damaged and filling with blood. Gabe's eyes roamed his face and his mouth curled up into a toothy smirk, lowering Jack's body to the floor before crouching down in front of him, arms resting on his knees. Face to face, man to man. He knew he was running out of time, his body growing weaker and weaker even with his biological enhancements struggling to keep him alive. Silence hung in the dark space, heavy and sullen, a thousand unsaid things crackling between them like static on a radio.
"I'm tempted to just eat you, be rid of you once and for all." Gabe broke the silence as he leaned in close, his voice barely above a whisper as he grinned into Jack's neck. The edges of the heavy black cloak draped over the both of them like a burial shroud, blocking out what little light there was in the enclosed space. Jack swallowed hard, trying to control the trembling of his limbs that had only gotten worse as more of his blood stained the floor beneath him. The bodies he'd seen, drained of life and desolate, jumped to the forefront of his awareness. "It'd be a kindness, really, sparing Overwatch's golden boy from dying in the dirt like a stray dog. Can't have that pretty reputation of yours getting sullied, can we Jack?"
"Always lookin' out for me... aren't you, Reyes?" he couldn't stop the warm tone creeping into his voice, the corner of his red-stained mouth ticking up the slightest bit. He missed it, ached for the comradery he'd once had with him. Gabe chuckled against his throat, a low, velvet sound just familiar enough to make his straining heart flutter. He felt him plant a quick, toothy kiss to his neck before he pulled away; it felt much more like a bite than the chaste kisses of the past. He wasn't sure if it was genuine or a hollow gesture of muscle memory. Gabe leaned back, black bleeding into the whites of his eyes and his pupils gleaming a fiery crimson from under the edges of his hood as his human appearance shed away like snakeskin, body turning to smoke.
Jack shivered and gasped as the mist flowed over him like ice water, and screamed when the shadowy tendrils dipped into the gory mess of his side. The cold was absolute, almost burning his insides where the ghostly wisps touched. The black smoke coiled around his heart, threaded through his muscles, his flesh cold as death wherever Reyes touched him. He started to panic, eyes wild like a spooked horse as he felt more of Gabe's intangible body seep through his skin. Was he going to eat him from the inside out? Would he end up like one of the nameless corpses he'd seen left behind in Reaper's wake? He tried to push himself up off of the floor but the oily mist wrapped around him like a serpent, leaching the heat from his limbs and letting the cold of death crystallize in his tissues. His limbs refused to respond to him anymore, a weight settling over him as if Gabe's mere presence was pinning him down.
He was going to die. Reyes was going to eat him. He was sure of that now. A sharp, sudden pain in his side sucked the air out of his lungs, eyes prickling with tears involuntarily. It felt as though one of Gabe's claws had partially solidified within him and cut into his flesh, tugging and pressing against ragged tissue. The hot burst of blood inside of him made his vision go white for a brief moment, another scream withering in his throat. Something metal dropped to the floor with a faint clink, rolling until it was stopped by the puddle of tacky, drying blood. The hollow of his chest swirled as though full of frozen seawater, the cold permeating his heart, his muscles, his very bones. The fog forced its way into his mouth and nose, poured down his throat, swelled his lungs until he thought they would burst. He choked, wheezing and desperate, getting no oxygen and only inhaling more of the heavy mist. When he lost consciousness, he thought he could hear Gabe's sickly laugh.
Hours, days, Jack didn't know how long he was trapped in that room with Reyes. Sometimes when he woke up for a handful of seconds Gabe would be there, picking over his body like a great black vulture with metal talons and wings of oily smoke. Other times he was alone. He would sometimes hear metal dropping to the ground, pried out of his body by cold claws. The lead shot from the gun, he realized much later, but at the time it was a complete mystery. Waking and unconsciousness ran together into a hazy, dream-like state of pain and cold and warmth. Sometimes, he wasn't sure if it was when he was half-awake or asleep, he could hear Gabe's voice speaking to him softly in both English and Spanish. It dragged up memories of the early days of Overwatch when the first enhancements had begun, how they'd try and comfort each other through the pain of the augmentations taking hold in the dark of the barracks.
The last distinct time he woke up with him was due to feeling himself being shadow stepped, the sickening lurch of freefall and the deathly cold and nothingness that accompanied it. There were claws holding onto him, supporting his body, until the world turned rightside-up again and his brain spun dizzily inside his skull. He hooked his hand into rough, scratchy fabric and tried to force his eyes open but he was so tired. He could hear voices distantly—Angela put the fucking gun away he's not dead—growing more and more quiet as he slipped back down into unconsciousness. The words were quickly too muffled and dim to make out, but he felt himself being placed on something soft. He released his hold and sank bonelessly into the cot, it felt like a medical cot at least, and in what felt like mere heartbeats later he was asleep once again.
Waking up, this time, Jack knew where he was as soon as he saw the sterile, immaculate medical facility in the Watchpoint Gibraltar base. His broken visor and rifle were laying on the counter, along with a small firearm he recognized as belonging to Angela. He sat up slowly, groaning at how stiff and sore his entire body was, running a cautious hand down his left side to feel his injuries. His flesh was almost fully mended, an angry red swath of fresh skin and muscle stretched taunt over straight, unbroken ribs. Disturbingly, however, was that the new tissue was cold as ice, felt dead and lifeless to his calloused fingers, and yet it was clearly alive and healing. He inhaled deeply, felt how his lungs expanded and emptied easily with only a slight twinge of pain. His exhaled breath felt cool in his mouth, turning to mist in the warm air of the infirmary. It took a few breaths before his lungs felt warm again. It had to have been Gabe's work, the chill of his touch still lingering inside his body, but he had no idea how.
He heard footsteps approaching, light and quick, and he knew it had to be Angela. Jack couldn't remember how he got here, the last thing he truly remembered being Gabe smothering him in his cold embrace, but somehow he was here now, exhausted, healing, but very much alive. He let out a quiet sigh and laid back down, not wanting to risk opening the wounds and giving Angela a panic. His thoughts, however, remained firmly centered on Reyes. As soon as he was healed he was going to track him down. There was too much left unsaid to just let him go. He needed answers. Even if it meant he would be shot again. Gabe was alive and that was what mattered.