Chapter Text
Ever since the Omnic Crisis hit its peak, field hospitals became a place where reality was slightly altered. Within the sterile walls and fluorescent ceilings, the borders and political red tape that defined the rest of the world came to an end. The colours of skin that Dr. Ziegler injected anesthetic into or opened for surgery varied widely, as did the people’s tongues in which they cursed and complained of their injuries. Alongside each other in rows of beds, nations met in the forms of their once champions, now considered little more than maniacs.
The latest incident in the field came from a botched attempt to (once again) reclaim the Volskaya factory. Every other detail of the assault was muddled, made worse by the squad frantically trying to translate their accounts between 6 different languages while delirious from blood loss. The ensuing explosion had, in any case, ushered them into Angela’s care with haste. She had sighed, chose to concern herself with medical reports instead of sitreps, and got to work.
Doctors had oaths, and rules, ones that had scarce changed regardless of whom or what powers controlled the world. Chief amongst those rules was that everyone got treated. Everyone. Even if they were presumed-dead rogue agents with ungodly powers.
The aforementioned super-powered ex-agent had, incidentally, been the only one conscious when the site was evacuated. Making matters more curious, he came along, quite literally, quietly.
Fearing reprisal when the others awoke, she’d placed privacy curtains around his bed in an innocuous-looking corner. It was what Commander Morrison had taught her to be a “blind spot”.
However, the trouble with trying to
not
draw attention to something was that it often had the opposite effect.
“You need to be resting, Captain.” Angela insisted in a stage whisper, trying to be discreet but not so discreet that someone might actually notice her hiding something.
In spite of the crutch she leaned on and her visible age, Ana Amari looked no weaker, nor less dangerous than she had during Overwatch’s Golden Age.
“I’m not asking for your permission, Doctor.” Ana replied, kindly but firmly.
Needing to check on the half-dozen other injured heroes, Angela crumpled slightly in defeat.
Sliding through the curtain to meet her old colleague, Ana found it almost a comical sight: the fearsome Reaper, legendary outlaw and terrorist, in repose on a nondescript hospital bed, still in his full garb.
“Gabriel,” she began sagely, “If the rumours of what you can do are true, you hardly need to be here,”
The man in black exhaled in what could have been a chuckle,
“Why leave when my own personal Dr. Frankenstein arrived to fetch me? She’s been dying to see her pet project in action, hasn’t she?” He was wheezing, speech a labor when he wasn’t in battle assuming the voice of Death. Whatever Ziegler had done to resurrect him seemed less successful on his vocal chords.
Ana made a mental note to have a word with Angela about informed consent and the importance of obtaining it from the subjects of her ‘miracle surgeries’. But first, the matter in front of her.
“What are you doing here. Really.” A simple statement, her usual sweet and matronly airs gone as she said it.
Reyes shifted his weight on the plastic mattress, thinking. For a moment, the Captain Amari of yesteryear wanted to return, to stride the length of the room and lay into him with one of his own old Blackwatch-style interrogations. To strip whatever flesh he had left for his stupid rebellion, his stupid fight with Jack that had destroyed their team, their family . Instead, she waited, pacing forward with more weight than she needed on the crutch, a gesture to show she wouldn’t do what she wanted to. She was always less inclined to impulse than her male comrades.
“Had a tip. Thought that… he... might be there.” grumbled Reyes, then changed the subject immediately,
“The good doctor will be wanting to see me soon, hermana.”
Moving slowly, deliberately trying to appear calmer than he actually was, he hoisted himself upright, starting to remove his layers of gear in preparation for the endless tests that Angela and her team would want to run. He turned fluidly towards the wall, excluding his old friend from the sight of him.
“Gabe, I have known you long enough to know when you’re full of shit, experimental augmentations or no.” She never even had to raise her voice, at least not with him,.
His hand, at his face beneath the huge black hood, paused. She pressed on,
“So, what do you want?”
Tentatively and jerkily, he brought his fist down, clutching his mask; the single, carved piece of carbon fibre that had separated himself from his past. Were it any other team member, he wouldn’t have turned back around. It was Ana, only her, that he knew to be made of steel.
He looked older. In spite of the scar tissue that shifted and crawled across his face like a living thing, and, was that smoke coming from his skin? But in spite of it, he still looked like himself, maybe even more than he ever had. His hair and beard were white and patchy, nothing could grow where he was burned and mangled. But he was, wholly and unquestionably, Gabriel.
“Ana,” he choked out, “I’m tired.”
His expression was cautious, waiting for her to scream or flee. When neither happened, he stood, carefully peeling away his cloak and discarding it on the bed like a dead thing. Where he wasn’t covered by his undershirt, the skin on his arms and torso was much like his face. But if it surprised the Captain, she didn’t look as such.
Knowing the others would never be so kind and that he had a million questions ahead of him, he began to walk, still slowly and with none of his grace as Reaper. Towards Ana, then past her, then to the heavy drapes that had provided asylum.
He was about to pull back the cloth when Ana asked the questioned that charged through him. No matter how hard she tried to be gentle, it still came out like a bullet:
“You loved him, didn’t you.”
He was too tired to be Reaper. He had run out of terrifying things to say. He only had left the truth:
“I never stopped.”