Chapter Text
Nothing registers at first; there’s simply an awareness of his own existence. Then comes the cold that he will later learn is so deeply ingrained to his being that he will never feel warmth again. He sucks in a deep breath, stretching his lungs to capacity. An exhale and he realizes that he isn’t in the dark. Rather, a mask is fixated over his face; the eye holes filtering the sunlight to an extent that it’s almost like it’s night. As he sits up-- he’s in the middle of a field, the ground scorched and littered with debris-- he registers the agonizing pain that shoots through his whole body. He tears the mask from his face and retches onto the ground.
When he recovers enough to look around, he realizes that the sun is agonizingly bright, to the point that he worries for his vision. The mask is slid back onto his face and he tries to recall how he got here. Who he is .
This is his moment. His glory. His victory….except it isn’t. At the podium stands his “friend.” Bright eyes, bright smile. Bright future. Betrayal and love.
Then comes Blackwatch. Corruption. Innocent people slaughtered with his own hands. For what?
Torture. Arson. Murder. No one is safe from them.
Talon. Dorado. Betrayal. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.
Hatred, hatred, hatred . Why does he hate so much? Why can’t he remember ?
Dissent. Rumors, whispered words in the dark of night. Protests.
A bomb, a plot. Destroy Overwatch and end its influence. End its politics. Expose them.
(One sided friendship. Mutual love. Jealousy, hurt, betrayal. But still love.)
Hatred.
A kiss. And then a gun. A fight, a fall. An explosion.
(A set up. A plan to kill them both.)
The building crumbles. Overwatch crumbles. People die. Gabriel dies.
Black.
Blinding white.
A figure, stark black to contrast the white surrounding him. A voice both too loud and too quiet. A condemnation and a curse. “Walk the earth, see the suffering you’ve caused and suffer yourself.”
A resurrection.
It’s too much at once, memories flooding back faster than his ability to comprehend them. He’s screaming when he comes back to himself, watching his own body dissolve and reform over and over in his emotional distress. He is nothing more than mist masquerading as a man; a body that lives even as it dies. It hurts as he pulls himself back together.
He’s no longer Gabriel. He’s nothing so holy. The name doesn’t fit. His hands are stained with blood, even from his days in Blackwatch. He planted the bomb. He killed them.
Jack was never supposed to be in the room. No one was supposed to be in the barracks.
The only thing that stands out, a blaring alarm that sounds until he directs his thoughts to it, is one word. Talon. Talon did this. (Talon did this?) Talon used him. (Talon used him?) They had been there from the start, a cancer that spread through the organization (the world) and he… He had helped them. Why had he helped them?
Why can’t he remember ?
He decides, after a period in which he reorients himself, to become a harbinger of death; a force of nature that rallies against Talon and sows its destruction. Get his revenge for the hand he’s been dealt. There is nothing else for him, here. He doesn’t belong. Bring down Talon. That’s all he’s for.
Reaper, then. The name falls off his tongue like acid being spit onto the ground. The mask distorts his voice to something menacing. A perfect match to his new self, he supposes.
He stands amongst the wreckage, rusted metal that has lost it’s shape to time and grass that will never grow again, to begin his journey. The field isn’t familiar, and he can’t see anything across the stretch of land. He has no idea where he is. He barely knows who he is.
He has to start somewhere. Something is bound to show up.
The first few miles of empty dirt road afford him some introspection. This is something he can’t avoid. Being the practical man he is-- was -- he lays out the facts he now knows about himself. He is alive, but also dead. He is sensitive to light. He is cold. He is angry. He is Reaper. He is nothing. He hates.
He is so very, very hungry.
(There are memories that are hazy to him, but he begins to piece his past life back together in his mind. He doesn’t like what he gets. Hatred and anger cloud over everything. Is this him? Is he anger? Is he hate? It’s all he knows, now. All he can think of.)
Eventually the dirt road gives way to pavement, and with it comes a small town nestled between grassy hills. It’s evening by now and the sun is a dim orange glow heading towards the horizon. The short buildings are warmly lit and paper lanterns line the street and streetlights. He won’t be the weirdest person to cross through, surely, but he will garner questions like this. Ones he won’t be able to provide answers for.
Reaper hovers there, at the edge of the town, unsure of where he stands in this world now. Heroes have always been known for their eccentricities and costumes, but he’s no hero.
The sun sets around him before he makes his decision. The town, he realizes, is too quiet. No one is on the streets. No voices muffled by windows and walls. No music playing. The atmosphere forebodes something awful.
Something is clearly off and Reaper wonders if he should involve himself in this. His answer comes in the form of a soft hoot and a pressure on his shoulder. When he turns his head, he finds a barn owl perched there and looking directly at him. It tilts its head. They make eye contact and then it takes off, swooping down into the town and landing on the railing of someone’s porch.
It looks at Reaper again, and calls out once more. His feet are moving before he makes the conscious decision to follow it. Uncertainty builds as he moves.
When he arrives, the owl turns towards the window beside it. Still unsure, but unable to resist the urge, Reaper peers into the home. At first glance it appears to be empty, but upon closer inspection he can see a body laid out on the ground. Blood is pooled around the person and they twitch with an effort to move. Away from the source of their pain?
No, towards something else. He looks to the left and there is a child, a young girl. Her eyes stare blankly back at him and she doesn’t move. He can’t see her wound, but he knows it was fatal.
Her mother, maybe? Reapers moves to the door, and finds it knocked off the hinges. As he steps inside he realizes he doesn’t have much of a plan. What help could he even offer, and does he want to? He’s death, he can offer no life.
Still, he moves. The mother notices him only once he’s in range of her daughter and she opens her mouth to scream. All that comes out is a strangled noise, her throat torn through. Her eyes dart between her daughter and him, and her hands scramble across the hardwood floor in desperation. He wonders if she’ll try to fight him for this child.
The woman collapses onto the ground, unable to move, before he gets his answer. Reaper approaches, crouching down in front of her. Her glossy eyes plead at him, though he doesn’t know what for; and then they slide shut. Her body goes limp and he feels nothing.
A black mist tinged with orange rises from her and he jerks away from it, expecting poison. It seeps into the mask no matter how far he backs away. It suffocates him until he has no choice but to breathe it in. It’s sweet; a heavy, honeyed taste that lingers in the back of his throat.
When death doesn’t come, he realizes it wasn’t poison. And if it was, it hasn’t had any effect. Whatever it was, though, it’s sated his hunger. He suspects it’s tied to whatever’s been done to him to make him this way.
He reels as he stands, feeling disgusting.
The owl is still on the porch when he goes outside and it leads him from home to home to home. A psychopomp of sorts. He follows numbly. Each one is similar to the last. People dying, and black mist. And each time his hunger dulls until he feels full.
The final house had one word scratched into the floor, as if carved in desperation. A warning or a hope for retribution: Talon.
Reaper sits on a curb outside of the final home and lashes out at the owl that perches on his knee. “Is this what I’m supposed to do, now? Feed off of death like a maggot ?”
The bird tilts its head to the side. Is a maggot not what you are?, comes the reply.
(Reaper can’t even find it within himself to be surprised that the animal is speaking. Because it is an animal, no signs of artificiality in it.)
Reaper considers the question. He, himself, had first made the comparison so he can hardly blame it on the owl. The indignation at the idea of being compared to something so lowly makes his blood boil, however. With a snarl Reaper stands, the owl fluttering into the air as it’s jostled from its perch on his knee.
“No,” Reaper growls, a low and feral denial that tears its way out of his chest to be spat back in the face of this creature. “I am not. “
The silence that follows his exclamation is charged, the owl landing on the ground in front of him and staring. Though it’s not capable of a facial expression, he gets the impression that he is being appraised. Its head dips, and a brown wing is extended and gestured towards the road heading out of the town.
Then prove it.