Chapter Text
Reaper couldn't feel the cold anymore. The first idle flakes of winter dropped from the sky as his breath came in black curls of smoke dying white as his whole form shuddered. The owl mask gazed up at the sky and a brief, unfeeling shiver ran through him as the depths of black that lingered in the coat stole a chilling, deep blue.
He didn't know why his form shifted with the cold, biting chill of the frozen landscape around them and he didn't care. It made him a terrifying sight to behold as the icicles seemed only another extension of him. Reaper only looked down from the vantage point sweeping down to the town nestled near a point Talon wanted for itself. He had only one mission: destroy everything. Destroy the Town.
Soldiers, mindless pawns in Talon's schemes, shuffled uncomfortably behind him whispering amongst themselves before guns summoned from the wisps of snow gathering along his coat formed, "What are you waiting for?" His voice was vicious and the soldiers scattered like roaches, Reaper gazed at the town below once more. It was a decent size, a massive christmas tree lingered in the center and it was bustling with activity. A shame they would all have to die. No survivors. No evidence.
He turned with a silent flutter of his black blue coat framing the icy glow steaming within. A violent flurry of snow and he stepped into the border of that town; soldiers dropping in from various points. Reaper held up his guns and aiming at the closest person near, he pulled the trigger. The shot was loud and echoes of it came from everywhere. Soldiers rushed into homes gunning down families at tables, women and children gathered around their fireplaces waiting for Santa.
Reaper heard himself laughing more than he could actually feel it, the recoil of the guns reassuring as tossed them and morphed into a monster that ripped through the silent masses frozen at the beast lunging for them.
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Winter was, unquestionably, the best time of the year. The holidays a large factor in this reason. Not so for the old soldier standing before the impressive tree. Not long ago he perhaps could have appreciated sight. Now it only brought back memories. Gone where the tactical gear and visor--replaced with civilian clothes. He could blend this way. A bone white jacket and matching ebony pants. Padded against the cold and a sharp cerulean scarf wrapped around his throat completed the look. Those on the late night streets barely spared him a glance. Still, tucked away in the pack slung over his shoulder, were the essentials.
When the first shot rang out he tensed, going straight into defense mode. The flash of a soldier's uniform caught his eye. His feet crushed the snow, shoved him bodily into the nearest shadowed nook. The commotion was something he'd not heard in a long time. The uniform he recognized. It left a sour taste in his mouth. The satchel slammed into the ground, the zipper yanked open and nearly broken. Slipping into the gear of the vigilante was easy. Slipping into that that same mindset wasn't. Geared with visor and rifle, he rolled to the nearest cover. Two soldiers fell to well placed sprays and he kept moving.
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There were pouring out of the woodwork, crawling and festering everywhere like bugs. The warm winter twilight was turning into a hellish night. When 76 shot two, three more seemed to their each of their places as homes lit up with gunfire and bodies leapt from windows trying to escape but only falling to their death on the edges of broken glass. Bullets flew in his direction, peppering everything around him in a sheen of ruby droplets and metal.
Cheery music was drowned out by water screams and pleas being washed over with the sound of gunshots. Everywhere 76 looked there was mayhem and people screaming as they led themselves to their own doom by panicking. A cold, shimmering shadow fell over it all. Right in 76's vision a woman was ripped from the air and cold, biting air dig into his back as her flesh peeled before she fell silent with a claw materializing from the ice to snap her neck.
She fell with a dull thud and over her body, from the snow whipping together a reaper with the glow of an ice colder than winter could ever being formed. The blackened owlish mask looked down at her and knelt for a moment as he trailed steaming black claws down the marks seared into her back. The blackened Reaper glowering with the soul of a frozen wraith stood as the jacket swished around its feet. It looked at the giant, shining tree and it growled, disgusted by the display that reminded it of times that had long past.
The withdrawal was hard to catch as someone ran past and they were rocketed from the sharp blast of the twin shotguns that formed like ghastly icicles in Reaper's hands. No hesitation. Just execution.
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This wasn't a battle. It wasn't a fair fight. This was a slaughter. Through the mess and the mayhem of the screams of the innocent and the bullets of the unjust, he dodged. Taking down those that would see this place turned to ash, the soldier rolled his shoulder and took down one of the infiltrators. The brute grunted. A sharp rifle butt to the head silenced any further complaints. Move on. Find the next one. More shots and more bad guys taken down.
By the time he circled back to the main square, his breath was coming out in sharp huffs of icy air. His clip was half gone. An empty was already tossed away in favor of a new one. Clutching the rifle close to his chest, the visor told him what he would find before looking around the corner. The scene was something from a horror movie. There wasn't much else to describe it. The woman never stood a chance. He ground his teeth together, coming upon the scene at the tail end. He couldn't save her.
"Reaper." The word was a curse--vehement and intoned with a the sharpness of a man finding his prey. Talon was one thing. The death of the innocent he couldn't prevent. It grated on everything--nerves and more. The senselessness of it all was for nothing. There was nothing special about this town. Helpless lives for the taking for no other purpose than to slaughter.
The wrath had taken a new form. The icy blue color of the winter had taken form in his being. His pulse rifle came up, the shot fired out without warning, aimed for the wrath's body.
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He didn't look in Jack's direction and despite a short stagger to the shot there wasn't much reaction. Reaper felt empty, he felt only vaguely aware he'd ripped the woman to shreds. The mark of his claws torn into her flesh a ghastly reminder. The mask glanced down at his chest as the black flesh knit itself together as the cloth sew itself back together.
A shotgun materialized in his hand and he fired in 76's direction. He stepped forward and vanished in the maddening swirl of flurried snow. The only warning was the bang of a shotgun being fired as scatter shot peppered where 76 was standing. Winter itself seemed to heave up and nearly crush where he stood as the horrific monstrous maw of a beast made of inky blackness with rustling snow falling over it spurred into being. The girth of it slammed into the soldier sending him back as screams in the background died.
The whole town was falling silent except for the efficient crush of red snow beneath military boots. They skirted from where soldier fell and pulled back as the monstrous formless wraith surged forward. Reaper did not take kindly to anyone who sought to hurt his combat rival.
Reaper reformed after knocking 76 and his steps were hurried, form barely holding together with the sharp shadows steps as he circled 76. The shotguns in his hands tossed for new ones that he seemed to pull from the air itself. This was the only thrill he could chase now, the desire to hunt the man into the ground. Everything else felt hollow but the urge to bury this man under his foot, under his gun and pull the trigger. A shiver passed over him and it felt painful, almost sweet in a bitter memory.
Flashes of a better time, of sharing cold days with a warm lover that was long dead in his mind. It wasn't him he was gazing at through rose stained glasses, it was a foolish doppleganger who wished large and fell hard. Ghosts.
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Snow turned crimson with the heedless bloodshed, his rifle pierced the wrath's form. He watched the projectile go through and through. Not even the barest hint of damage. What was there knit back together like a minor inconvenience. When the shotgun appeared, he ducked, dodged, rolled to the side and came up on a knee behind the garish christmas tree. The image of the woman's twisted visage, her essence torn asunder, imprinted in the back of his mind.
Gun fire and the screams of those being slaughtered echoed and slowly died down. There weren't many left to be taken by this merciless act. He darted out from behind the tree, felt the clip of buckshot against his thigh and gritted his teeth. Handle it later. For now avoid becoming nothing more than mince meat at the hands of two deadly shotguns.
The chase--if it could be called one--lasted all of a minute. Even less in reality. The visor's read out displayed the danger before the wrath materialized in front of him. In the slick snow he managed to stop but only just. The sudden shortage of forward momentum ended with a harsh cut in his breath as it tugged on the open wound.
In the wrath's presence all heat disappeared. The cold was bone deep and frigid. Behind the mask he snarled, finger pulled the trigger and pumped the remaining half clip into the ice blue form before him. Heedless of the shotguns, it was a matter of survival now. The screams of the helpless had died. They were gone. Nothing to be done for them. Only the winter and him would remember this town's once peaceful community. The only warmth in his body came from the blood spilled across his thigh.
Turning on his heel, using the shots as cover, he darted back across the square. Powerful legs, straining against the pull of an open injury, pushed him forward into a shoulder roll into an alley. Take a minute to catch his breath, the older soldier reloaded, focused on breathing, and waited. Listening. A wrath didn't make sound. But the other operatives did. Three more fell and now he looked for where the wrath had gone.
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Reaper growled, reeling back at the shots, snapping forward only for his adversary to be gone. He didn't notice the tightening grip on the shotgun cracked the icy barrels as they dissipated and those sharp claws dug into his own blackened flesh. Pain was minute after suffering to become the monster he was now, there was nothing that could make him hurt more. The sensation of dark blood running through his gloves and turning to ice against his flesh only made the squeeze turn near sickening as black shards fell to the snow.
Soldiers whispered their success and Reaper only nodded mutely. Lights burned into the darkening sky as winter clad hands threw burning bottles into homes. Flames erupted from the tender of corpses piled into buildings. No evidence. No survivors. Operatives started to fan out to lure out 76 but Reaper stopped them.
"No, surround the town, burn the buildings around the perimeter." They hesitated before they moved out, Reaper was not to be challenged if they wanted to live. The icy wraith shadow stepped toward the glaringly bright tree. He was out in the open. He dismissed the red snow that darkened and spread from the burning buildings, the charred smell of flesh.
Operatives pushing toward the outside of the town back in began to set fires to all the buildings there. Trailing long lines of gasoline as they fanned out. A circular cage that closed in the middle, toward the wraith waiting in the center.
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The last cry of a dying child echoed in his head. Hands tightened around the trigger guard and barrel of the rifle. Behind the visor he snarled, refocused his senses to the situation at hand. Still that small voice repeated like a nail in his coffin--pounded down one after another until he was sealed away.
'You couldn't save them. You didn't even try.'
He tried to banish the thought. Tried to escape the way the word held truth like an iron fist around his consciousness. His fist slammed into the brick wall.
His thigh burned. Slumped forward in the snowy ground, the cold touch of the frozen water seeping in through his clothing. He couldn't ignore this. Or the sound of those in the town losing their lives this night. It was in the past now. Dwell on it later. Light a candle for their souls when his wasn't in danger.
'You couldn't save them. You didn't even try.'
His teeth ground to the point of threatening to break.
Soldier closed around him. The distinct acrid stench of gasoline drifted towards him. The plan of the attackers became obvious. Burn the town down. Scare him out of hiding. Sometimes the simplest plan was the most effective. A strategy he knew all too well and one that made his chest lurch. The familiarity of the actions couldn't have come at a less inopportune moment. Nights spent wrapped around his other half, entangled together and relishing in the afterglow of a clandestine meeting between missions.
"Focus." He palmed at the satchel. Removed a handheld device and pushed off the wall. The wrath stood imposing in the middle of the town square--just where he had left him. The device pressed into his palm crackled to life and landed at the feet of the wrath. It bucked and discharged a wave of electricity. He watched, waited for the brief explosion to dissipate, then observed what the device had left in its wake.
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Reaper thought it was a grenade until it surged and cause an inhuman screech to sound from the freezing blue wraith as he recoiled. His mask shattered and dissipated into nothing as various parts of him simply fell away like rotten flesh. One clawed hand was thrown up as his other arm was frantically reforming, nanites that had been unaffected putting Reaper back together.
Glaring at him through the talons of his claw, a sharp poisonous black eye gazed at while the rest of the face was a monstrous mass of several, red eyes glaring and a formless, ripped mouth stretched obscenely revealing rows of sharp, gnarled teeth. White hairs curled from the top of a head that was no longer hidden in a hood, the sweeping coat also missing having dissipated with the electric charge.
The most jarring aspect was as soon as that claw pulled away and half a familiar face was revealed. Claws gripped to shotguns forming in them as Reaper aimed, black and red eyes slitting in anger before they fired. The monster wore Gabriel's face, an older white haired man whose face was twisted into something akin to a nightmare. "Die! Die! Die!" Bullets sprayed in a wide fan at 76.
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Through less than ideal means he had come across the information in Athena's database. A faulty shield generator had disturbed the wrath's form during an infiltration. The device now was the result of too many failed attempts and at least one blown up safe house. It was the reason for his unusual home white armor. The notorious blue and red outfit had been disintegrated in the fire. He had a replacement waiting for him two countries over. It was supposed to be his next stop after visiting this town.
Abruptly pulled from his thoughts, the old soldier bite down on the gasp. The wrath's cry was inhuman but the mess of a visage that appeared from behind the mask wasn't. Too familiar. Thrown back into the past he stumbled, left giving out and placing him on a knee. The movement jarred his wound and caused him to groan out of sudden pain.
"Get it together," he snarled at himself. It wasn't the time to remember the past. Bullets did real damage no matter what kind of injections or training he had been given. None of that could deflect a bullet aimed for his heart. Nor did it stop the buck shot that caught his shoulder and opposite hip.
Stumbling up, he scrambled for a second electronic displacer and watched when the piece dropped to the snowy ground. He lost it in the white. Blood turned his ivory clothing a shade of unnatural crimson. It mirrored the surrounding and he backed up. The pulse rifle came up and a round of helix rockets knocked him off balance. Against the pain and anger at being forced to face his last he groaned.
He didn't wait to see if the rockets hit home or not. He took off as fast as his wracked body could handle--searching for a way out. A means of escaping to lick his wounds and wonder why the past didn't stay in the past. Nothing from Overwatch stayed dead. First his own mockery of a funeral. Then Ana. Now... Gabriel. He shook his head, growled, and nearly careened into the shambles of the nearest house. The interior was set for dinner. The bodies littered the common room. He closed his eyes. Blocked out their expressions and moved to the back of the building. There he leaned on the wall, panting, taking stock and searching his satchel for the biopic emitter he knew was in there.
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Reaper spun into a flurry of nanites that scrambled away from the helix rounds. He'd seen what they'd done before and his form smashed back together, the hood and a flowing jacket back as the wraith growled in anger. There was blood trailing into one of the last houses to be burned and he disappeared when his boot crunched in snow stained black with his blood.
The house was quiet for a long moment as dark speckled wind swirled into it as the wraith formed from it. A tan, scarred face looked at the home as shotguns materialized around his claws, already settled on the trigger. It was a small house and he stomped his back to the back before catching sight of Jack as he jammed his shotgun into the man's throat while the other dug hard against his chest. Viciously knocking the bag out of his hands as his secondary gun disappeared when he shoved sharp claws against the soldier's chest. Slamming him against the wall and enjoying the dark smear it left. He hoped it hurt, hoped the scatter shot was digging into the man's flesh at that moment. "Game's over, soldier." The voice was viciously dark and grating as sharp teeth ground over the words as Reaper spoke.
His eyes, black before, were a bright vicious blue that bled steam that flowed from between ground teeth in his mouth. White hair curled from his hair peppered with the obsidian curls that had once been there before. Scars chipped along the strong jaw there and hate was bleeding off the form in front of him. More teeth shown from the tattered remains of a cheek, bleeding out more of that icy smoke as the gun against his throat dug in harder.
"Any last words before I put you out of your misery?" It was dark, chiding as if this was the only true pleasure he could pull this. In a way it was, Reaper felt how he was leaning toward it. Actively wishing to see the soldier's blood spread across the wall behind him, see him die in a dead town razed to the ground. Everything else in his life had been buried under mountains of ash, why not this too?
The electricity hadn't worked. The creature that had perhaps once been something more was truly unstoppable. No heavy combat boots or harsh words signaled his own demise. It was simply there. Cold metal pressed to his exposed throat. Claws ripped into the thick fabric of a heavy leather jacket. The mocking grin painted onto his mask stared emotionless back at the wrath. He prayed it infuriated the creature--he couldn't think of the wrath as anything else. To do so would ruin what remained of his sanity.
The teeth. The cry of agony as his back met the stucco wall. The dips and dried cracks in the material dug into the wound on his shoulder. The satchel laid on the ground forgotten. He had a third device in there. He couldn't reach it. There was no third chance. The old soldier raised his head, eased the pressure of the shotgun against his throat and glared back at the wrath from behind the visor.
The wrath--Reaper--no what remained of Gabriel was a sight. Given the blue tinge of the glass of his visor he could appreciate the way the smoke took to the ice environment. Jack could admit to seeing a certain beauty in the unholy. There was truly no other way to describe the sight. Drifting with the snowfall, surrounded in blue and white until the very armor of the wrath became something I touchable he gulped down a deep breath. The words, that final question... There was only one answer.
"Quién sabía que la muerte era tan hermoso?" He ground out. Years of trying to impress his lover with his poor pronunciation and attempts to learn cumulated in that one sentence. This was the end. He could accept that. He would leave one parting jab to be remembered by.