Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jack Morrison, in his time as Strike Commander, was aware of the existence of the Blackpoints--a dozen top secret safe houses and drop points scattered across the globe for use in Blackwatch's more clandestine operations--but had little reason to ever set foot inside one. Blackwatch operations were all handled by Reyes's careful hand, and Jack had trusted him with his work until he didn't.

Soldier 76, in his time as a mercenary,  wanted criminal, and phantom of the man he once was, found the Blackpoints an indispensible resource when a job went wrong and he needed to lay low for a while. In the last five years, he'd needed the Blackpoints more often than he liked to admit. They were useful, especially given the situation he currently found himself in.

A botched infiltration of a Talon outpost on the other side of the mountains had left him with a bullet wound that had grazed his side at the joints of his armor, shotgun pellets buried in the flesh of his thigh, a concussion, and about half a dozen other cuts and bruises all over his body. Jack needed a place to recuperate while waiting to regroup with Ana and plot their next course of action.

Blackpoint Pasubio was it.

A 150 year old remnant of the Italian front from World War I, Blackpoint Pasubio was set into the sheer mountainside of the Italian Alps overlooking the river Soča. It had stood the test of time and avoided notice due to its location and a careful intelligence effort made by Blackwatch to clear any mention of it from the records and discourage would-be tourists. Inside the point, lanterns lined a twisting hallway that led to a small, open chamber and a series of rooms carved into the mountain itself.

The dim light from the lanterns cast long shadows against the rough hewn walls, cut only by the straight edges and corners of supply cabinets and communications equipment that sat under the thick film of five years worth of dust.

It was a relic in more ways than one, an echo of a war fought generations in the past, a painful reminder of the passing glory that had once been Overwatch.

Jack had seen enough Blackpoints that the grim reminder no longer phased him. He'd even had a laugh about the irony of it all a time or two while eating stale, five year old rations in a safehouse built by the very organization that had been a key factor in Overwatch's undoing. Right now, his injuries were more pressing, more urgent.

Reaper had been there at the outpost as well, screaming for Jack's blood with a death rattle that was as twisted as the distortion of the man he once was. Just the sight of the twisting black smoke had set bile rising at the back of Jack's throat, the heat of rage running tight through the muscles of his arms. He'd failed to take Reaper down twice, but if the opportunity presented itself again he'd be damned if he wasn't going to take it.

Just then, a flicker of motion in the corner of the room caught his eye. A shadow separated from the wall, oozing out across the floor like an oil spill. He wasn’t alone. Reaper had followed him.

Jack's hand tightened on the pulse rifle in his grip, fingers clenching in a white-knuckled grip to hold the weapon steady as he took aim at the seething black mass. Helix rockets were out of the question at this range. The risk of collateral damage caused by a cave in was too high, but Jack knew damn well he wasn't in any position to outlast Reaper in close quarters combat.

His pulse hammered adrenaline racing through his veins as he waited for the whirling cloud of smoke in front of him to take shape, waited to see the dull light glint off the barrels of inky black shotguns so he could take his shot without wasting precious ammo, but the moment didn't come.

Reaper swirled before him, contorting in and out of the shape of a man, smoke twisting and lashing like the flailing limbs of some injured beast before him. A distorted laugh started to reverberate from the center of the mass, echoing off the hollow cave walls, twisting into something that was barely recognizable as human.

"Look what the cat dragged in," Reaper groaned, the words stretched long.

"You're one to talk," Jack ground out through gritted teeth. The effort of standing, of keeping his aim fixed on Reaper, was taking its toll against the pain singing through every nerve of his body.

The smoke contorted, losing its shape as it pooled into a shifting mass on the bottom of the floor. It laughed again, the sound surrounding them both in the small space they shared.

"Jaaack," Reaper croaked, low and cracked. "You can't kill me like this, Jack. But you want to try, don't you?"

Jack hissed, stepping back as Reaper's smoke surged forward towards his feet. He was right, of course. The desire coursed in Jack's veins so hard that he could nearly hear it pounding in the sound of his pulse beating in his ears. If he could, he would have dove in with hands and fists, tearing the thick blanket of Reaper's smoke to shreds until nothing remained, until the wraith could no longer defile the memory of the man he had been.

Reaper laughed, knowing  the rage his words had stirred in Jack. He twisted, this way and that without ever quite closing the distance between them.

"I still owe you payback for Cairo," Jack bit out, pressing back against one of the cave walls for support. "Don't think I forgot that."

Reaper chuckled again, the smoke at the ground bubbling with the sound. He still hadn't taken form.

Jack's eyes narrowed from behind the red tinted glass of his visor, a brief moment of clarity cutting through the adrenaline fed by injury and anger. Something wasn't right.

"You never did forget, Jack," Reaper said, slowly rising and falling with a pulsating tempo, like the beat of a heart. "You've got a loooong memory."

"You would know," Jack grunted.

"Better than you do," Reaper sneered, form quivering with the contempt and arrogance dripping from his words.

Reaper still hadn't taken form, hadn't solidified enough for Jack's rifle to be of any use other than as a weight at his side. Jack could already feel his hands starting to shake against the grip, his muscles strained by the extend of his injuries. That was when he saw it, the inky black matter painting the ground beneath Reaper's form, specks of darkness wriggling and writhing against stone before going still. Reaper was injured, like he was. A wounded beast lashing out on instinct alone.

With a sinking dread, he realized what Reaper was after.

He'd seen the reports, heard the rumors and stories of Reaper's victims. The images drifted before his mind--faces contorted in pain, bodies sucked dry of any signs of life. At first he'd thought that it was some kind of torment or torture, but a cache of information on the different courses used by the SEP had led Ana and him in a different direction.

A wraith. An abomination of the enhanced nanotechnology that had turned Gabriel into the super soldier he was, twisted and distorted by death and decay, feeding on the lives of anyone who got in his way.

In front of him, Reaper surged forward with a deep and rippling laugh, whirls of smoke sloughing off of his form. Metal claws materialized out of nowhere, springing forward like a beast from the shadows, closing tight over Jack's shoulders to slam him violently against the wall of the cave. Jack's body jerked with a shout, the pain of his injuries flaring across his body, painting his vision white for a brief moment.

When his eyes opened again, the stark shadows and bone white of the mask were mere inches  from Jack's visor. It was faint, but in the light cast by the lanterns he could barely see the face that it concealed. Shining dots of red blinked at him, tiny clusters of eye winking open before merging into one bulbous, glowing sphere before shadow oozed over and consumed it again. He could smell it too. The sharp tang of ozone layered over the sickly sweet odor of decay and rot.

Jack grit his teeth, sucking a tight breath past them. There was nothing beyond that mask that even resembled the man called Gabriel Reyes. Only a corpse, forever decomposing, but never finding rest.

Reaper breathed out another shaking, distorted laugh. A cloud of smoke oozed from the gaps of his mask, tendrils curling against Jack's faceplate, caressing the line of his chin and jaw. Reaper raised one gauntleted hand, ink-stained claws closing over the edges of his bone mask before pulling it away.

"I've got you this time, Jack ."

There was no other warning before the wisps of smoke at Jack's chin hooked into the release for his visor. It hissed, releasing its pressure before clattering to the floor, the last barrier between Reaper and him effectively removed.

Reaper grinned, a sharp angled slash across his distorted features, rows of sharp, shining teeth flashing yellow before he surged forward and closed the gaping maw of his mouth over Jack's.

Jack's body chilled as his mind panicked in the grips of fight or flight. The touch was like a perversion of the intimacy that Jack and Gabriel had once shared. It was a sad mockery, distorted and rotted to the core, calling back to the history written on their bones beneath the years of decay. Jack felt the hairs at the nape of his neck stand on end, his arms reaching out to grasp at the exposed flesh of Reaper's biceps, breath catching in his throat as Reaper began to pull.

It was like nothing he'd ever felt before, an indescribable pain that rivaled even the agony of having his entire body overwritten from the inside out by the injections of the Soldier Enhancement Program. In a dizzying moment he could feel his veins alight with  cold fire, as if a searingly painful spike of ice had been lodged directly through his heart. He could feel it pull, could feel the tendrils of Reaper's smoke as they slipped past his lips, between the gaps in his teeth, forcing their way down his throat until his lungs filled and every breath that he took was choked on the metallic tang of Reaper. His vision swirled, shadows racing in from the edges, blotting out the dim glow of the lanterns overhead.

Strength left his arms, his hands falling limply away from the worn fabric of Reaper's coat as his whole body slumped back against the cave wall. Jack wasn't sure if Reaper was still touching him, still feeding on him anymore. The blurred shape of a white mask floated in his fading vision, a deep, satisfied laugh reverberating through his bones before the darkness surged forward and swallowed him up.

Detached from his body, chilled to the bone, Jack swam in the black of unconsciousness. He wondered if maybe this time he'd die for good.

Yet Reaper seemed to have something else in mind.

Jack woke slowly.

His vision was still blurred, the lanterns and cabinets around him floating like indistinct shapes before his eyes. He reached for his visor only to stop halfway with a deep groan of pain. Every muscle and joint screamed in protest. He hadn't felt this sore since basic. But he was, somehow, alive.

Through the pain and the slow pound of his heartbeat in his ears, he heard a scuffle at the other side of the cave, the scrape of leather on dusty stone. He steeled himself against the pain, jerking his head up with a grimace.

"Reaper?"

"Close, but not quite," a voice answered. It was a woman’s voice, Ana's voice. Jack closed his eyes as her footsteps drew near.

"Although I suppose that does explain the state that you're in. You had a visitor?"

"Something like that," Jack exhaled. His head fell back against the wall of the cave. The stone was cool to the touch, his whole body chilled by a sheen of sweat against his skin. His lips twisted in a scowl. "You didn't see him?"

"I'm afraid not," Ana said. "I only found you just now. Here, let me help you." He heard the sound of some sort of scuffle, leather against leather before the crisp snap of a biotic emitter's release. A healing warmth instantly suffused through his cold and weary body. Jack breathed a slow sigh.

"Thanks," he grunted, content to rest against the cave wall for now.

"Someone has to watch your back," Ana said, concerned disapproval clear in her tone. She paused, the hum of the biotic field the only sound between them before Jack felt the pressure of her gaze resting on him.

He stirred, just enough to sit up properly, slowly blinking his eyes open to look back at her.

"What is it?"

"I've heard the stories about the sort of things he can do now, the sort of victims that he leaves," she said. "I'm surprised that he left you alive."

Jack frowned, his jaw working as he dropped his gaze. Ana was crouched in the same spot where Reaper had been before, her shadow cast long over black stains. Now that his vision was clearer, now that the threat of Reaper was gone, he could see the long, dragging lines of them, marking a course from the tunnel at the opposite end of the room before gathering in a puddle at Ana's feet. That was where they ended. There was no sign of Reaper's exit, no indication that any injury had remained after whatever it was that he'd done to Jack.

It didn't make sense, not to Jack. Why would a man who wanted him dead--the distorted remnants of the one man who deserved to see him that way--leave him alive?

With a sigh, he shook his head, looking back to Ana with a weary gaze.

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

----

Gabriel Reyes, in his time as Commander of Blackwatch, was aware of the importance of timing when striking the finishing blow against his enemies. Cut off a head too soon and three more would spring up in its place, with all the persistence and tenacity of a mythical hydra. He'd been cautious, patient, biding his time until all too suddenly he found he’d run out.

Reaper, in his time as an agent of Talon, wanted criminal, and ghost of the man he had once been, felt that patience was a wasted effort compared to the satisfaction found in meting revenge against those who had brought about his untimely downfall. In the five years since his death, he'd relished in draining the last traces of life from the ones who had formerly pledged their loyalty to Overwatch and all that it had represented.

To Reaper, Talon was nothing more than a means to an end. A way of getting access to the intel he needed, a stepping stone on the path to checking countless names off of his list. There were plenty of names of Talon agents gracing the list as well, but it wasn't their time, yet. He still had use for them.

It was Talon that had led him to Cairo, to Pasubio, and it was to Talon he returned following his chance encounter with the vigilante Soldier 76, otherwise known as Jack Morrison. Seeing Jack again was a blessing and a curse rolled into one. Salvation and damnation in the same breath. The same way that the explosion back in Geneva had been a death and a rebirth, the same way that Gabriel Reyes continued to linger on the cusp of the living and the dead, buried deep, cloaked within the shadow that was Reaper.

Jack could save him, draw him to life, or end that life once and for all.

Reaper knew he had been the man named Gabriel Reyes, once. Lived and breathed, ate and slept and cried and raged and fucked and loved. Even when the good doctors of the SEP had injected nanite colonies straight into his veins and the sinew of his muscles he'd remained that same man. Thousands of microscopic machines with a mind of their own had infiltrated every damn cell in his body but they'd bent to his will.

The only problem was, they'd been hellbent on keeping him alive, no matter the cost. When his body was spent, bones and brains crushed beneath concrete and the collapse of a legacy he'd built with his own two hands, they hadn't stopped. They revived him from decay, reanimated the corpse of the dead man that he was, heedless to the fact that something might have been lost along the way.

Reaper did care for what was lost anymore. Whatever it was, it had belonged to Gabriel Reyes, a man who passed his time sleeping in an empty grave. Reaper was what remained. He was Gabriel's rage and betrayal. He was the dying echoes of a man who'd been abandoned by those he trusted, those he loved.

Reaper clung to these scraps like a starving dog, wrapped the torn and fraying edges of them about himself as his death shroud, and carried on.

He was a ghost now. Death embodied. But even with the power of nanites giving life to his necrotic remains, he needed to feed. He'd quickly learned that his body no longer worked as it once had. The machines inside him required a different sort of prey. They hungered for something that lived and breathed, a heart pumping blood, the enticing heat of a living soul.

Jack had been that for him at the Blackpoint. A taste to whet his appetite, a fire to warm the thick black ooze that pumped in Reaper's veins. Even now, hours later, he still felt the hum of it beneath his skin. Jack's blood, Jack's flesh, deconstructed down to their base elements and left to mingle with Reaper's flesh, Reaper's blood.

Reaper had known as soon as he'd started to drain the life from Jack that he would be different. The SEP chemicals remained in his bloodstream even in old age. They were unlike anything Reaper had tasted before. Of course they'd be compatible with the mess that SEP had made of his body. Of course there was no one else in the world for him like Jack Morrison. Of course.

He could have ended it there, sucked Jack dry like he had done to so many others before him and left him as nothing more than a withered husk. Ashes to ashes, from Indiana dirt to the dust of his remains.

But no, it wasn't Jack's time.

Jack Morrison's name waited for him like a promise at the bottom of the list, a beacon. Killing him now would leave the rest of Reaper's victories stale in his mouth by comparison. No, Reaper needed Jack to live. He'd live until Reaper's lust for revenge was slaked, live as the last ripe fruit on the vine, waiting to be plucked and savored with the sweet satisfaction of victory.

What he'd had today was just a taste, something to whet his appetite. A promise of more to come.

Reaper's body shook as laughter bubbled up from deep in his chest, the warmth of Jack suffusing through his body. He exhaled, tendrils of smoke curling slowly from under the bone white mask covering his face. It wouldn't be long now.

"Think of something funny, Gabe?" a voice rose from his side, light and casual.

Reaper turned, regarding Sombra with impassive silence. That name didn't belong to him anymore.

She grinned back at him as her fingers curled in a playful wave before returning to the fluorescent screens that floated in the air before her. They were area maps, footage from surveillance cameras, images of a man with "76" emblazoned on his back. Reaper's eyes narrowed, his focus caught by the man, the ghost fleeing into darkness only to reappear once again as the footage looped over and over.

"You can tell me, you know. I promise I won't tell anyone," she said, false sincerity dripping from her every word.

Reaper grunted wordlessly.

Sombra sighed, her shoulders lifting in a show of exasperation. "You know, you really should learn to lighten up. I thought that seeing your old friend would put you in a good mood."

The bone mask tilted up, eyes rising  to meet Sombra's impish grin. She couldn't see beneath the shadow of the mask, but her eyes caught his gaze regardless, something bright and dangerous shining in them.

"It's strange, isn't it?" she said, tapping one finger to her lips before swiping it across empty air to dismiss all screens save for one, a map of the area overlaid with a pulsing neon line that marked the path from where they'd recovered Reaper in the Italian Alps to the base nearby. Sombra's lips pursed, a pensive hum dragging from them before she tapped the screen, concentric circles springing from the spot like ripples in a pond.

"That's where we picked you up. And this..." she went on, dragging her fingertip over the screen, tracing a steady line across the mountains, over the unmarked Blackpoint, and to the Talon outpost that Jack and Ana had unsuccessfully raided. "This is where our little toy soldier went running off to. But you said you lost his trail."

"What's your point?" Reaper ground out, his tone bland and unimpressed.

Sombra shrugged, easily dismissing the screen with a flick of her wrist. "Aren't you upset that you didn't have enough time for a proper reunion with your old friend? It seemed to me like he was dying to see you."

Reaper turned away, resting his head back against his seat, eyes slipping shut beneath the mask.

"Come on now, Gabe," Sombra said with a teasing laugh. "I'm just looking out for you, you know. I know how much you'd love to spend some quality time with him. To really reconnect."

"He got away from me," Reaper said, words clipped.

"I know, I know," Sombra said. Reaper could hear the shuffle of straps against fabric as she shifted in her seat. "Such a waste. But then again, there's always next time, isn't there?"

Reaper didn't entertain her with a reply. The warmth had slipped from his body completely now, replaced by the cold tension of vigilance, the ever present pulse of rage just beneath his bones. She wasn't wrong, at least. There'd be a next time. Reaper would make sure of it.

----

He didn't have to wait long before an opportunity presented itself. Jack was as persistent as he was, as hard to kill as he was. He never did know when to quit, so why would he know better now when he'd cast away every shred of the man he once was?

Talon's bases were a scattered web in the same way that Blackwatch had been. Tiny, insignificant blips on a radar, a network of veins feeding power to something greater. The intel that Jack had raided from their outpost in Northern Italy must have been what directed him to the next strike, a seemingly abandoned warehouse near a railway depot outside of Ankara.

Reaper's presence at the base was purely happenstance. He'd been called in to brief on an assassination strike against an up and coming member of the Turkish Parliament, an omnic representative running on a party platform of progressive equal rights. Disposing of bots was routine for Reaper, easier than human targets, but not nearly as satisfying.

He had only just made his return to the underground hallways of the base when the klaxons rang out overhead. Mask tilted towards the sound, Reaper stood impassive as swarms of Talon agents sprung to action around him, busy little worker bees ready to defend their hive.

The communicator in his ear beeped a moment later, a brusque, mechanically distorted voice informing him of his dispatch. The line only fizzled to silence for a moment before it cracked again, this time with Sombra's playful voice.

"Hey there," she said, enthusiasm barely contained in her voice. "You're in Ankara, aren't you? You'll never believe who we picked up on surveillance."

Already dissolved into a cloud of billowing black smoke, making his way to his dispatch point, Reaper didn't dignify her with a response. She didn't need one.

"Your old friend really is persistent. I have to say, I'm impressed. Oh, but you'll miss him if you go that way. You wouldn't want to miss him, would you, Gabe?"

Reaper paused at her words, stopping short of the point. Slowly, his body reformed, nanites reconstructing into the familiar shape of flesh and bone, sinew and strength. He found the weight of his shotguns resting in his hands as easily as he drew breath, exhaling with a curl of black smoke.

"Sombra," he said, eyes already scanning the warehouse perimeter. Halogen lights cast stark shadows in sharp lines across the concrete at his feet, against the peeling paint of the warehouse walls. Nothing. No sign of Jack.

"He's coming in from the south, I'll send the coordinates if you ask nicely."

Reaper gave no reply except an agitated growl, fingers tightening against the grips of his guns.

"All right, all right," Sombra relented. "Don't say that I never did you any favors."

Reaper's comm beeped to life a moment later with the incoming message. He dropped one shotgun, letting it dissolve into smoke only to be replaced with a small tablet screen. Surveillance footage of the nearby container yard sprung to life on the screen, a small map overlaying it in the upper left corner. Jack was close, but he was outnumbered. The tiny red blips of a squad of Talon agents glowed menacingly against the screen, shifting restlessly, slowly closing in on his position.

Something bubbled inside of Reaper at the sight, at the thought of it. The faded memory of the taste he'd had of Jack's soul only days before lingered on his tongue. Without a second thought he dissolved his form again into smoke and dust, propelling himself down the alleyways between warehouses anger spurring him on. He wouldn't be denied what was rightfully his, not this time.

Staccato gunfire and shouts of agony echoed in the night air just beyond his line of sight, urging him on. Jack was on the run, and Reaper knew the strategy. Outnumbered and outgunned, he'd try to draw them away, ducking behind corners for quick picks until he gained the upper hand.

The corpses Reaper swept past in his pursuit were proof enough of that. He laughed to himself, the sound rippling through his body. Always predictable, Jack Morrison. But even Jack couldn't keep up the pursuit forever. How long would it be until even his enhanced body gave out? Until the agents caught wind of his strategy? Until he ran out of bullets, ran out of time?

Reaper could smell the tang of death on the bodies that he passed, but there was another scent, something stronger, that overlaid them now. Jack's blood. His mind went wild at the first breath of it, his smoke expanding and contracting with anticipation.

He was close now. Jack wasn't dead yet and he was so very, very close.

He found Jack by the smear he'd left on the concrete, a spatter of blood like a bug squashed underfoot and ignored. Jack sat at the end of it, slumped against the wall, head hanging heavily against his chest, rifle discarded to his side. The blood oozing from his wounds stained his armor red like a carapace, shining in the sickening glare of halogen lights overhead.

Rage and satisfaction warred within him for the chance to rise in his throat, to bubble forth from the decayed remains of his lips. Jack Morrison deserved an end like this, but Jack Morrison only deserved an end like this if it was by Reaper's hand.

"Look at you, Jack," Reaper crooned, the top half of his torso emerging from smoke as he drifted closer to the body laid out before him. "You're going to die here."

There was no response from Jack save for a wet intake of breath, a stuttering groan of pain as his body shifted, jarring injuries, one hand pressing harder to a growing stain in his side, trying to keep the blood from seeping out over gloved fingers.

Reaper heard the crack of static that was Jack's comm springing to life. It was too far away for him to make the words out, but he knew who it was. Ana always had Jack's back. Always took his side. A growl rose from low in Reaper's throat. Always the boy scout, man of the people. There wasn't a soul in the world that Jack couldn't charm if he set his mind to it.

He'd charmed Gabriel Reyes, once. But never again.

The sound drew Jack's attention, the visor turning in his direction. Even this close, Reaper still couldn't see Jack's eyes beneath it, couldn't tell where his focus was, but he knew all the same. The sensation of having Jack's attention once again was rich, heady. He drank it in as his mask tilted, lowering down over Jack's prone form.

"Gabe," Jack said. Reaper heard the delirium in his voice. Blood loss and shock, Jack wouldn't be conscious or coherent for very long.

Smoke curled over Jack's body, black tendrils licking at the wounds in his sides, insinuating themselves between torn flesh and the worn leather of the uniform Jack had fashioned for himself. Reaper could feel it then, taste it. Jack's heart racing in the palm of his hand. Jack trapped like the prey that he rightly was. Temptation swept through him as a wave beating against the rocks of the shore. Reaper nearly felt his body sway with it, a deep, choking rasp escaping his lips with a gust of black smoke and decay oozing from under the mask to caress the sharp angles and planes of Jack's visor.

All he needed to do was to close the fist held around Jack's soul. All he needed to do was pull it towards him, to open the floodgates and let the nanite swarm of his body drain every last drop of life from Jack Morrison's worthless veins.

"Any last words, soldier?" he purred, soft as a whisper, and the shadows surged forward, drawing the broken body of Jack Morrison into their depths.

----

Gabriel Reyes pressed a finger over Jack's lips, holding them closed, leaving the words caught in his throat to linger and die there, unspoken. Jack caught himself, swallowed the strange sense of denial away, and glanced up enough to catch the warm gaze of Gabriel's eyes where he rested at the other end of the pillow.

He was as stunning as he always was. The white glow of the moonlight outside cast stark shadows over the crease of his brow, the line of his cheeks and nose, the swell of his lips. Jack couldn't even remember what it was that he'd been about to say. It felt important, urgent, but somehow all things seemed less so when he was caught under the scrutiny of Gabriel's careful eyes as he was now.

"Gabe?" he said, lips moving against the callouses of Gabriel's finger, careful not to dislodge him.

Gabriel's features seemed to come into focus a moment later. He could see more than just the contrast of light and shadow now. Could see the worry in the line of his brow, the heaviness at the corners of his eyes, the way his lips turned down beneath the hair of his beard.

Something tightened over Jack's chest, tense and hot.

"Gabriel?" he repeated, lifting both hands up to frame Gabriel's face, cradling his cheeks in rough worked palms. "What is it?"

"Jack," Gabriel said with a heavy exhale. His eyes slid shut, hands moving to cup over the nape of Jack's neck, fingertips dragging against skin in a soothing gesture.

"Jack," he said again, drawing Jack forward, bringing their foreheads to rest together. Jack closed his eyes, yet somehow he could still see Gabriel's face, could still see the two of them stretched out side by side in the tangled sheets of the bed they shared at Headquarters in Geneva. The windows were thrown open. It was winter outside. The biting chill rolling off of snowcapped mountains cut through Jack's skin, sending a shiver racing up his spine.

He set his jaw, hands pressing more firmly against Gabriel's skin. There was still something he had to say. Something he needed to tell Gabriel, before it was too late.

"Gabe--" Jack said, the words stolen from him as Gabriel's lips tilted to close over his.

Jack sucked in a quick breath, urgency and need warring inside him. His pulse hammered in his chest, goosebumps rising over his skin in the cold air of the room. Gabriel needed to know. He had to hear it.

But Gabriel had other things in mind. He rolled with the kiss, his body pressing Jack's down against the bed, into the sinking softness of blankets and pillows piled high beneath the two of them. His hands glided across Jack's chest, against the outside of Jack's thighs, leaving a chill as cold as ice in their wake.

Jack shuddered, twisted, trying to pull himself away from the kiss. He had to tell Gabriel. Had to warn him. Had to let him know. Gabriel's tongue was thick in his mouth, suffocating. His body was heavy over Jack's crushing him beneath his weight. Jack felt his lungs burn, his limbs dead weight at his sides.

He choked, gasping, eyes flying wide open to see Gabriel's face above him, eyes impassive and dark.

Jack swallowed. He tried to speak, but found his lips too thick to make the words, his tongue slack in his throat. He could only watch as Gabriel's face tilted to regard him before he leaned forward, lips pressed feather light to the center of Jack's forehead.

"It's too late, Jack."

----

Jack woke with a silent gasp, a quick, desperate inhale between clenched teeth that hissed like a death rattle.

The first thing he was aware of was the ceiling overhead. Mold stained and water damaged, a dirty shade of dusty off-white.

The second thing was the pain. He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut and slowly lowered himself back down with a creak of the beat up mattress beneath him. One hand groped to probe lightly at the bandages bound over his side. Painful, but not fatal. He could already feel the itching warmth of the biotic gel that had been applied beneath the gauze. Between that and the SEP chemicals running through his bloodstream he'd only be out of comission for a day or two, at most.

The memories of the mission came third.

He'd tripped the alarm, rookie mistake, and was left running with a dozen or more Talon agents on his heels. He'd managed to thin their numbers, took more than a few of them out with a well-timed shot or a burst of helix rockets, but they'd gotten lucky. The wound in his side throbbed in an aching memory of the burst of gunfire that had birthed it in the first place.

Jack frowned, settling more heavily against the rough pillow beneath his head. He remembered the shot. Remembered radioing Ana for back up, to cover his way out, but at the back of his mind he knew he wouldn't make it. His legs had given out. Blood stained the shredded remains of his jacket over the armor covering his body. There had been so much blood, too much for him to be here, staring at a dirty ceiling and still pulling breath between his lungs.

The door to his right swung open. Instinct drove Jack's body to reach for a sidearm beneath his pillow, the gesture aborted as it sent another white hot lance of pain racing up his spine. He groaned, turning just enough to catch sight of Ana's figure across the room before squeezing his eyes shut against it.

"Calm down, Jack, it's just me," she chided him. Her footsteps were quiet against the wooden floors, crossing the short distance of the room to crouch at his side. "You're going to make it worse moving around like that. Lie still."

Jack heaved a rough exhale, letting the weight of fatigue drag his limbs into stillness. He opened his eyes again, blinking to bring Ana's face into focus.

"Thought you were a hostile," he muttered in excuse, as if he would have been able to fend off any sort of attack as he was now.

"And what do you think you would have done if I was?" Ana said, calling his bluff. Jack snorted in reply, chagrined and amused at once.

"Could've bled on you," he muttered.

Ana clucked her tongue at him, a motherly sound, her hands guiding him to lay on his back against the bed. "I doubt you have enough in you right now to do any good." Her gaze swept over him, lingering for a moment on the white dressing against his side, the stains left on the fabric surrounding it. Jack saw the shift in her expression, lips drawing to a tight line, the corner of her eye narrowing with concern. He swallowed against the thickness that grew in his throat at the sight of it, finding his voice.

"Ana," he said. Unable to find any other words, he let the name trail into silence.

Ana still read the emotion caught behind her name. She was still sharp as ever. With a quick shake of her head, she turned back to look at him, steel shining behind her eye.

"You'll live, Jack. But you should know, I wasn't the one who pulled you out of there."

Jack frowned, his jaw working as he tried to draw up his memories of the fight once again. He remembered dashing into an alleyway between warehouses and containers, shoving himself back against a concrete wall and waiting. Remembered the glow of the halogen lights overhead, burning red through the glass of his visor. He remembered the dream too, with abrupt, aching clarity, remembered the shape of Gabriel's face, the pressure of hands against his body. Yet as he remembered it distorted, features replaced by a bone white mask, the rich warmth of Gabriel's voice echoing in a rattling growl.

"Any last words?"

"Reaper," he said, turning his gaze up to the ceiling with the revelation.

Ana was silent at his side for a moment before she shifted, busying herself with the medical supplies laid out over the bedside table. "I can't say for certain. After you went silent I received a set of coordinates over your channel, no signature, nothing else. I thought it might be a trap, but when I scoped the location it was only you."

"You didn't see him," Jack said.

She met his waiting gaze with a short shake of her head. "There was no one in the area. I swept the perimeter twice, just to be sure, but in the state that you were in, I didn't have much time to question it."

The revelation sat sour at the back of Jack's throat. First Pasubio, now this. Twice now, Reaper had found him, twice now Reaper had saved him. It was like the wraith was toying him, batting him around like an injured mouse, biding his time until the game lost its appeal and he finished it once and for all. Anger twisted in Jack's gut, racing low and hot through his bones, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

"Jack," Ana said. He didn't need to look at her to feel the caution in her gaze. He knew it well over the years, it was the sort of look she gave him when he was impatient, when he didn't want to waste time with plotting and planning, when he rushed at his problems headlong, trying to overcome them by sheer force of will.

"I'm not going to let him do this to me, Ana," he said, voice firm.

"What, save your life?" her tone was incredulous. Jack turned to fix her with a scowl that she met evenly.

"He didn't save me, Ana. He spared me."

"As far as I can tell, the outcome seems the same," Ana said lightly. "Isn't there some sort of phrase about looking a gift horse in the mouth?"

"You know that's not what this is," Jack's scowl grew deeper, jaw clenched hard enough to grind his teeth together with each word. "Reaper isn't giving me a gift."

The force of Jack's words left her unperturbed, a thoughtful look slipping across her face instead.

"It may not be a gift, but it's certainly something," she paused, lips pursed, tongue clicking quietly behind them. "It seems strange, Jack. My shots did nothing to him in Cairo. He could have gained the upper hand, but instead he left. Then in Pasubio..."

"He was injured," Jack said abruptly. He'd told Ana of the encounter before, but that detail had been left out.

"Injured?" Ana fixed Jack with a critical look. "You didn't mention that before."

"Didn't know what to make of it," he grunted, turning away from her scrutiny. "Somehow he made it out, didn't even leave a trail."

"He didn't take your emitters, did he? The biotics shouldn't work on him as he is now."

"He didn't," Jack said. "It had to be something else."

"Perhaps he did drain you like he's done to all his other victims," Ana said with a certain dry gravity to her tone. "But then why would he have left without finishing the job? Gabriel was always so thorough--"

"Don't," Jack said abruptly, catching the thought a moment too late. Ana turned her eye on him and he grimaced, swallowing against the tight feeling at the back of his throat. "That thing isn't Gabriel anymore."

It had been an unspoken division, a line that he'd drawn in his mind to separate the man he'd loved from the wraith that chased him now. Gabriel Reyes had died in Geneva years ago, crushed and burnt to ash in the conflagration that seen their years of hard work go up in flames. The Reaper that remained was nothing more than a living ghost, a corruption of everything that Reyes had been to him.

The stretch of silence and the weight of Ana's gaze on him settled heavy enough that he knew he wouldn't explain himself. She was all too familiar with the coping mechanisms that Jack had adapted over the years. The explosion and years on the run had changed him, but old habits died hard.

"It's only a thought," she said with quiet coaxing, the same sort of gentle tone she'd reserved for new recruits, for agents shell shocked by the intensity of a mission gone awry. "With the way he's acted, what he's done to you, there might be more of Gabriel left in him than we thought."

Jack wanted to trust in what Ana said. He knew she wasn't the sort to instill false hope in him. Ana was pragmatic, reasonable. Even her own death had been an act of necessity, not of passion. Her words weren't meant to be taken lightly.

Yet as his thoughts lingered on the chance, on the possibility that there was still some of Gabriel left beneath the mask, beneath the fetid decay and all consuming shadow of Reaper's body, the image of his dream crept back to his mind, twisting and distorted, eaten away by the stark reality of what had become of Gabriel Reyes. His chest tightened, breath catching behind clenched teeth. He let his eyes fall shut, squeezing them tight, willing it away with well-practiced ease.

"It's too late, Ana."

----

The doors of the briefing room hissed shut behind Reaper, a visceral sound that resonated with the anger thrumming heated through his artificial veins. Mask tilted to the side, he regarded them for a moment before stepping forward, footfalls echoing heavy on the sterile walls of the Talon base.

Censure. A warning. The exchange that had happened behind the closed doors left a hollow echo rattling, disturbing memories that were better off left to rest. His conduct was in question. The fact that he'd left his post during the last lockdown. The suspicion of his involvement in the disappearance of the injured combatant, Soldier 76.

He had answered with ire and thinly veiled threats, none of it revealing the truth of the matter. Talon had no right to act as though they commanded him. As if they had the right to lecture him. As if Talon was anything more than a means to an end.

Jack was his quarry, his prey, his alone. He would decide the timing of Jack's demise and no one else. There was no question in his mind as to why he had ferried Jack's broken body away from the firefight that nearly claimed his life, why he had sent the message over Jack's communicator to Ana for his retrieval. Jack couldn't die, not yet. There were so many names still left on the list.

The air before him distorted, the sight of the hallway rippling in place before taking the form of a familiar figure. Sombra grinned at him, fingers curling in a wave.

"What's wrong, Gabe? You look a little upset," she said, stepping backwards in time with his deliberate pace.

Reaper remained silent, fixing his gaze beyond her, following the path towards the rooms that served as his quarters.

Sombra continued on, undeterred as always. "I heard you got in a little bit of trouble. And here I thought they'd be happy to see you reunited with your old friend."

He swept past her, pressing one clawed finger into the elevator button before them. There was no need to inform her of the details. She likely knew them already.

"Although it is strange, isn't it?" she said, leaning casually against the wall to the side of the elevator doors, one neon finger tapping curiously against her lips. "Wasn't that a perfect opportunity for you, Gabe? He was injured. Defenseless. It would almost be merciful to send him on his way, wouldn't it?"

Reaper turned, eyes narrowing at her beneath the mask.

"Sombra," he grit out in warning. He didn't have the patience for her games.

Her eyes met his, grin sharp and pointed.

"I'm sure that's what they're thinking, at least," she said with a casual shrug of her shoulders. "It's hard to disagree when he's still alive."

He held her glare, mask an impassive barrier to the heated expression beneath it.

"Get to the point," he growled. There was an angle, there always was with her. His patience was worn too thin to put up with her senseless games.

The elevator dinged above him, doors sliding open. Reaper stepped in, sweeping past Sombra as he did. She sighed, expressive and exaggerated, twirling around to lean against the open door, holding it open with one hand.

"Look, I'm only looking out for my good friend's well being," she said. Her voice dropped lower, danger dripping from the words. "If you don't prove them wrong, it might be harder for us to trust you."

Her hand slipped from the door frame, fingers spreading wide in a gesture of surrender that quickly vanished behind the closing doors. Sombra smirked at him, her shoulders squared.

"Let's just make sure that doesn't happen, amigo," she said just as the doors slid shut.

The elevator shuddered, lurching to life as Reaper stood, silently staring at the reflection of his mask in the polished metal of the doors, angles and shadows glaring back at him from beneath the heavy hood of his robes.

Trust was a laughable word from Sombra's lips. Reaper knew well enough that she was hardly someone who could be trusted. The failed operation at Volskaya was proof enough of that, given Sombra's suspicious comm silence as their target supposedly slipped away unharmed. She was the same as him, someone using Talon as nothing more than a means to an end. Not a friend, not a foe, merely a name that had no place on his list.

Reaper had no need for trust. The world would turn on him if given half the chance. His only choice was to make use of the tools at his disposal. To wield them, cutting down all that he could before blades broke and twisted, impaling him on their edges. Sombra was the same. The soldier Jack Morrison was the same. They would feed him, sustain him, until he'd satisfied the gnawing hunter that roiled and quivered within his guts.

The elevator doors slid open, depositing him directly into the entry lounge that preceded the carefully cordoned off quarters reserved for Talon's more elite agents and mercenaries. Normally vacant, the lounge was occupied today, Widowmaker stretched out across one of the austere sofas. She was out of her usual combat gear, wearing a tight pair of black leggings and a loose, deep purple blouse with sleeves that billowed down her slender arms and a neckline that plunged low against her pale blue skin. A tablet rested loosely in one hand, obviously the item that had occupied her attention until Reaper's arrival.

Her gaze flicked up as Reaper stepped forward out of the elevator. Reaper turned, not to meet it, but only to note the curious anomaly of her presence in the first place. Widowmaker broke the silence, her fingers tapping against the device to close the screen.

"They are not impressed with you, are they?"

Reaper felt a growl building at the back of his throat, born more of exasperation than anything else. Sombra was to blame, clearly, but unpacking the reasons as to why she would have told Widowmaker would have to wait. He turned away from her, ignoring the barb in favor of stepping towards the hallway that led to his room.

Widowmaker's gaze lingered on him, sharp eyes following every twist of muscle, every footfall. She watched him with the sharp attention of a predator, of a hunter eyeing her quarry, waiting for a weakness to reveal itself, of a sniper waiting for the perfect shot.

She found it before he had even crossed half the length of the room, her eyes narrowing, fingernails tapping hard against the tablet's plastic case.

"You could not kill him," she said, the words as precisely aimed as a bullet slid into the chamber. "I wonder what it is that you still want from him."

Reaper stopped, mask twisting to regard her with silent ire. The presumption ground at the edges of his nerves, grating against the rolling his skin in another wave of nanite smoke and decay.

She smiled at the display, her expression an empty imitation of flirtation.

"You forget that I have known you for longer than this," she said, her tongue clicking lightly against her teeth with censure. "I know you are a man who does not make waste of his efforts."

"Did they send you to talk down at me?" Reaper growled, the conversation settling his body on edge, smoke rising off of him in angry wisps, flicking against the edge of his clothes, his mask.

Widowmaker's expression went slack, eerily blank, with only one elegant eyebrow arched before an incredulous smile twisted her lips, shoulders shaking with mirth. "Do not be so foolish. You act as though I am their little plaything."

Reaper's arms crossed over his chest, the jut of his chin enough to convey the incredulity hidden by his mask. Widowmaker only shook her head in reply, laughter bubbling up from her throat only to die a moment later.

"They may have made me what I am, but they have not taken what I was," she lifted one hand to curl against her chest with the grace of a practiced port de bras , pale fingers splaying over paler flesh. "No one may claim Amelie Lacroix but me."

"Then why are you here?" Reaper grit out, shoulders squared as he looked imperiously down at the woman before him.

"It would not be so difficult for me to find your little toy soldier." Her shoulders rolled in a dismissive shrug. "The little bird he keeps at his side has been an annoyance for far too long. Putting her in her place would be...invigorating," Widowmaker's lips curled over the last word with the lusty allure of a lover, a barely concealed desire plain on her face for Reaper to see.

"I don't need your help."

"Of course not," Widowmaker said without hesitation. "What is it they would say, back in those days? Gabriel Reyes always gets his mark."

The name sent a spark racing through his veins, hot, angry fire flaring up the length of his spine, burning with bile at the back of his throat, leaving the sight of her simmer in his eyes with the shadow that wicked off him like steam. Sombra used the name like a toy, batting it about, hoping to get some sort of reaction out of him. With Widowmaker it was anything but that. With her it was deliberate, heat and metal aimed to puncture right between his ribs, sinking in deep where his heart had once beat.

"Widowmaker," Reaper said, the words a warning.

"I do not have time for your meaningless denial, Gabriel," Widowmaker's eyes locked on his as she pushed herself up from the chair, as fluid as a silk scarf caught on the wind. The click of her heels echoed sharp against the empty walls of the room, each one closing the distance dividing them. Even at her full height, Reaper still had the advantage on her, but the intensity behind her gaze told him she couldn't have cared less.

"He is the man who stripped your kingdom from you, or so you have said. Do you not want to see the blood drain from his skin? To see the last light slip from those pretty little blue eyes?" The words came as a thick, seductive purr, Widowmaker's eyes half-lidded, demure as she was dangerous.

Reaper knew the scene that played out behind them. In another life he had been the first to respond to the call. Forcing his way into the apartment where Gerard Lacroix had been on leave in Algiers only to find the stench of blood thick on the humid airs, flies already buzzing about the bloating corpse of the man who had once been one of his best agents. A thorn in Talon's side, surgically plucked away and discarded by Widowmaker's careful hands.

She smiled at him, teeth flashing bright beneath blue lips.

"You remember it too," she said, softer than before. "Ah, but you were not there when the curtain fell. The finale was for us alone. It was exquisite, unrivaled."

Her expression fell again, her gaze turning towards the door with an impassive gaze.

"You could see it for yourself. You could kill what remains of that man inside you, if you want. The choice is laid before you, is it not?"

Reaper didn't deign to answer beyond a rough exhale, smoke flooding the crowded space beneath his mask. Widowmaker didn't need any more.

"Try to make up your mind before too long," she said, heels clicking in time with the predatory sway of her hips. "I would not hesitate to kill him for myself, Gabriel."

She turned without another word, vanishing around the corner and down the hallway that led to her quarters.

Reaper's gaze rested heavy on the empty space. The name echoed against his skull, ricocheting off of artificial fiber, decaying flesh and bone, unable to find a place to rest and be still, stirring memory in its wake like a dusty cloud, choking off all other thoughts. Gabriel Reyes was dead, he wanted to howl into the empty room. Gabriel Reyes had been betrayed, killed by the only man he'd ever trusted, the only man he'd ever loved.

But that hit too deep. A sharp pang lodged in his chest, like twisted rebar wedged between his ribs, gouging through lungs and heart, robbing him of blood and breath. Reaper hissed as it throbbed, too alive for the corpse that he was now. His nanites flared, dissolving the chest he no longer had into smoke and shadow. He billowed, twisted, and raced across the pristine white floors in escape.

The feeling would not give chase like this. The memory would be as lost as the sensation of the body he once held, as everything that had made the man he was.

Gabriel Reyes was no more, his thoughts thundered inside a cloud of black. Reaper was all that remained. His hesitation, his apprehension, all of it had been nothing more than the sentimentality of a dead man. It didn't matter when the job got done as long as he did it. And Reaper wouldn't let the weaknesses of Gabriel Reyes hold him back. He wouldn't leave a single survivor. No one left behind.

Seeping through the crack beneath the door to his room, Reaper reformed with a heavy sigh, smoke sloughing off his form in waves to puddle at his feet. His mind was made up now.

Jack Morrison's name moved to the top of the list.

----

The assignment came when he was off base for another mission. A notification springing to life in the corner of his tablet with nothing more than a set of coordinates and a line of text:

Eliminate targets: Soldier: 76, Shrike

Reaper stared down at it until shadows began to creep in at the sides of his vision, until the edges of the letters seemed to dance with the flicker of the pixels on the screen. No back up. No support. Just a simple directive, a challenge so straightforward that there was no way it was anything other than a trap. Kill or be killed.

The neon purple of Sombra's private communication channel sprung to life in the corner of his screen a moment later.

>> Looks like they found where your little soldier is hiding.

>> Better not pass this chance up, amigo.

>> I don't think they'll be too happy if you do.

Reaper growled, anger prickling across the back of his throat, rippling over his shoulders, his arms, in eddying waves of steam and smoke. His hand curled into a fist at his side, felt the sharp edge of claws bite into his palm through the thick fabric of leather and padding.

They left him no choice.

With one clawed finger, he tapped the assignment notification, the window expanding to fit his screen.

>> Accept

----

Jack and Ana made the trip back to the Necropolis a few days after the encounter with Reaper at Ankara. It stung at Jack's pride to retreat. Something about it felt too much like dragging himself away from the fight just to lick his wounds, but Ana convinced him it was for the best. With two encounters in the past month, they'd risk squandering everything they'd worked for if Talon caught them now. Supplies were running low as well, and even with his enhancements, Jack hadn't fully recovered from Reaper's earlier blows.

They crossed the desert from Cairo under a cover of darkness. The chill in the air seeped through his jacket, sinking in deep in his bones as Jack stared up at the blue light of the moon overhead painting the sands around them like some sort of pale ocean.

Ana had been gracious enough to let the topic of Reaper and his true identity rest for the duration of his recovery, but the thought of it was still stuck at the back of Jack's mind. Reaper was as ruthless as Gabriel had ever been. After following his trail for all these years, there'd been plenty of times when Jack had found himself coming upon a converted base or a person of interest in the aftermath of one of Reaper's strikes. There were never signs of much in the way of a struggle, a confrontation. Reaper left no traces of his entry or exit other than the dessicated corpses of his victims.

Why, then, would he leave Jack alive? He'd had ample opportunity at least two times now to sap the life from Jack's veins, to end it once and for all, leaving the husk of Jack's body discarded in his wake.

It made no sense.

They arrived before Jack was able to lose himself too much in thought. He unloaded without complaint, grabbing his supplies and hauling the weathered old Overwatch duffle over his shoulder to follow Ana on the path into the tombs.

Their reunion at Cairo was nearly half a year ago now, but Jack still felt like an intruder in Ana's domain every time they returned to the Necropolis. She had made it clear enough that he was welcome, that although the space couldn't quite offer the comforts of home, it was at least a place where they could recover, someplace that was safe.

At the time, Jack had offered a stilted thanks and set about to find a relatively unobtrusive spot to store his supplies. He had little in the way of personal belongings and felt no need to hunt them down. If the vigilante Soldier 76 made himself known anywhere in the vicinity of Jack Morrison's history it would raise questions that Jack didn't want anyone to find the answers to, not yet.

He set his pack down in the corner next to his cot, staring at the thin layer of dust and sand that had settled over the fabric of his sleeping bag.

"You'll want to air it out again," Ana said from behind him.

He turned to her, curious as to why she'd followed him, but willing to let it rest for now.

"Seems like that's an everyday thing here," he said with a strained sort of levity.

Ana offered a short nod, her lips pursed. It was clear enough that there was something else on her mind. A moment later she jerked her chin at him, nodding back towards the alcove that served as her quarters.

"When you're ready, there's something I want to show you. Some intel that a contact back in town passed along."

Jack gave a cursory glance to his surroundings before offering her a shrug and a lopsided grin.

"Sounds better than airing out my bed. Let's see what you've got."

"I thought you'd be interested," she said with a smile, turning to lead the way across the ruins.

"Anything that keeps us moving," Jack said in reply.

The cool light of the moon was quickly cut by the warm light of candles and lamps that Ana lit as she made her way into the alcove. Rather than the harsh cutting glare of flood lamps and the steel rods of a standard issue sleeping cot, Ana surrounded herself with as much comfort as she could muster in a place like this. Soft carpets lined the floor, a low table sat in the center of her living space, with faded pictures and holo portraits surrounding her bed with smiling, familiar faces.

Jack cast a glance back at them, his eyes drawn to the edges of the frame that held a picture of Gabriel, Ana, and himself like gravity. At this distance he couldn't make out the detail in the photograph, but he didn't need to. He'd had a copy of the same picture on his desk back in Geneva, had stared long and hard at it when the pillars of Overwatch had started to crumble, had spent more than his fair share of sleepless nights wishing that he could trade places with the youthful man staring back at him from beyond the frame, standing with the support of two of his most trusted friends at his side.

He jerked his gaze away before the memories could seat themselves too deep, before they could linger. Ana was already settled in before the array of monitors that was her workstation, tugging a small, flat data drive from her pocket to feed into the machine.

"We may not have succeeded at Ankara, but my contact's informed me they've found a few other sites that should be likely targets." Her fingers flew across the holoscreen before her, tapping against the surface to pull up the contents of the drive, opening them in an array over the empty space.

That was enough of a distraction to catch Jack's attention. He stepped closer, resting a hand against the back of Ana's chair, and swept his gaze over everything they'd been given. It was a collection of maps, geotags, surveillance cameras from local companies, transcriptions of intercepted audio feeds. None of it was definitive, Talon was wise enough not to disclose the location of their outposts like this, but even something as little as knowing whether or not they were headed in the right direction was invaluable.

"Your contact's done some good work," Jack said, glancing down at Ana. "I hope you're paying him well."

"Her," Ana corrected him lightly. "And don't worry, I've made sure that she's well compensated."

"My mistake," Jack said with a bit of chagrin. He turned back to the data they'd been given. "Looks like it's going to take us a while to go over all of this. We'll want to validate too, run recon, see if anyone else has anything out there that might corroborate it. Then there's planning, supplies..." Jack's voice trailed off, a frown twisting over his features.

He squinted, his focus narrowing on one of the maps to the left of the screen. There was something wrong.

"Jack?" Ana turned to look up at him, her eyes catching his for a moment before following his gaze.

"This one," Jack said, tapping the map in question, dragging it to the center of the screen.

It was zoomed in too tight to tell anything about the surrounding area, there were no lines delineating borders or cities, only the glowing purple skull resting at the center. Jack pinched and dragged against it with his thumbs, forcing the perspective out, watching as the skull shrank and the empty space at the edges of the map filled with a twisted blue line of a river cut to the east, the sprawling roads of an all-too familiar city to the north.

Jack's nostrils flared, his eyes went wide. Ana straightened in her seat, her posture suddenly tensed. She saw it too.

"Jack--" she said, her words abruptly cut off as the screen in front of them glitched, pixels distorting for a brief moment before the skull flashed in front of them, larger this time, its empty eyes mocking in their expressionless gaze.

>> Ten cuidado.

Then it vanished, taking the maps with it, only to be replaced with the feed from Ana's outlook at the top of the runes just in time to show the swirl of black smoke and shadow as it raced across the desert towards their location.

Reaper.

Jack stared at the wraith's form, his eyes locked on the way it twisted and billowed against the grainy green and black backdrop of the night vision camera, attention caught for a moment before the blip of several other screens opening in succession.

Radar screens opened up at the corners of Ana's display, each one of them tracking vessels converging on the Necropolis from all directions. It wasn't just Reaper, no. They'd sent an entire Talon strike force after them. They'd been exposed, sold out.

A curse spat from Ana's lips as she leapt to her feet. "She tracked us! I should have known better."

She was across the room in an instant, slinging her rifle back over her shoulder, snatching grenades to strap to her belt, readying herself for their retreat.

Jack stood rooted in front of the screen. His jaw clenched tight, panic racing through his veins as quickly as the thoughts through his head. Something about this felt wrong. Something about this was off. There was no transport on Reaper's path, no troops rallying behind him for back up. Solo strikes weren't unprecedented, but why send him in alone if Talon meant to give him back up? What was the point?

"Jack!" Ana shouted, snapping him from his thoughts. "We've got to go!"

His body jolted, adrenaline pounding a staccato beat into his ears. There wasn't time to think now, wasn't time to doubt.

"I'm on it," he barked, twisting away from the screens to dart across the ruins to where he'd left his rifle and supplies.

The dark velvet blanket of the night sky twinkled with eerie calm as he crossed the open space. Beneath the heavy sound of breath in his lungs he strained his ears for the sound of the approaching carriers only to be met with an unnerving silence. Nothing. A stealth strike? Of course, they wouldn't know about the warning. Talon still thought they had the element of surprise. But then, why? What was going on?

His footsteps echoed off of cold stone a moment later. The dark of his quarters waited, a thin streak of moonlight catching on the line of his rifle, painting it in a stark contrast of light and shadows against bare walls. Jack snatched it up without hesitation, reached for his belt of biotic emitters and slung them over his shoulder. His visor was off, the brace that connected it to the secondary input ports at the back of his neck carefully stashed away with the rest of his things in the duffle at the foot of the cot. There'd be no time to put it on, he'd have to trust his aim.

Hands ran over his rifle like second nature, snapping the magazine out to check his ammunition, clicking it back in place with a hiss as he flicked the safety off. The weight settled back, comfortable in his hands, his finger resting easily against the trigger guard when he felt the press of cold steel at the back of his neck.

"Not so fast, Jack."

Jack stilled, tension rippling through his shoulders, his back, blood racing cold in his ears.

He was alone, cut off, just the same as it had been in Pasubio, just the same as it had been in Ankara. His communicator lay against the dusty fabric of his sleeping bag, dead and silent. A million scenarios raced through his head at a dizzying pace, fast enough that he couldn't grasp any one of them to turn them into anything worthwhile.

Reaper dug the barrel of his shotgun into the nape of Jack's neck, an insistent demand.

"Drop the rifle," he growled, the sound reverberating in the still silence of the ruins around them.

Jack swallowed, his mouth dry. There wasn't really any other choice.

He peeled his fingers off the trigger guard, tossed the rifle against his cot where it silently kicked up a cloud of dust that caught the light like stars twinkling in the night sky above. His hands lifted up, fingers coming to rest against the back of his head, the edge of his thumbs just barely brushing against the smooth metal of Reaper's shotgun.

For a moment, there was no sound behind him. No movement, no reply. Silence suffocated both of them like the rising waters of a flood, pressing hard against Jack's eardrums, echoing the sound of his heart back to him like a heavy, staccato beat. Jack waited for the shot, waited for the split second burst of sound and heat and pain before darkness took him at last, but it didn't come.

It left goosebumps raising over his skin, pinpricks of tension rising against the metal grinding into his skin. Reyes had never been the sort to hesitate. Gabe had always known when to take his shot. Jack worked his jaw, swallowing hard against the ache that rose in his chest with the thought, words building in an eddying rush at the back of his throat, warring against the risk he'd invite by letting them spill out.

What was going on?

Reaper broke the silence with an irritated growl, a ripple of anger that crashed like waves against the tension thick on the air.

"Turn around, Jack," he demanded.

Hesitation gripped Jack, rooting his feet in place for a searing beat before he tore his feet from the ground, turning with two careful steps to face the Reaper.

The shadows carved against the white bone of his mask cut an angry glare in the dark of night that surrounded them. Reaper's talons shifted on the grip of his shotgun, the corded muscle of his arms flexing beneath nanite flesh until the barrel of it rested squarely against Jack's forehead, digging into the stretched scar tissue that cut a violent slash across his face.

"Look at you," Reaper crooned. His voice was low, echoing with some untold emotion that Jack couldn't place. A roiling tempest of anger, violence, and too many other things. "Look at you, Jack. You thought you were safe here, didn't you?"

"Apparently not," Jack bit out. His eyes strained in the dark, trying to see something of Reaper's face beneath the mask, searching for something familiar in the inky black behind its empty holes. Why was Reaper hesitating?

"I should have known I'd find you here," he said, the claws of his free hand curling and uncurling in an agitated gesture. "That you'd be hiding under her wing. But she's led you here. Led us both here, to the perfect spot. The abandoned tomb of a forgotten king. A fitting grave for a man like you."

"I'm not dead yet," Jack said, the barest edge of a challenge evident in his voice.

Reaper paused before him, as still as a corpse. Ethereal and haunting in the cold moonlight. The shot didn't come. The shot still hadn't come.

Jack dared to swallow, dared to let his throat bob with the weight of the realization that hung thick in the air between them. Reaper wasn't going to pull the trigger.

The defiance of the gesture wasn't lost on Reaper, nor was the awareness of what had passed unspoken between the two of them. In a moment his body shifted, shadow rippling at the edge of his frame, fabric and flesh alike shifting in and out of smoke. A growl built at the back of his throat, echoing in the empty air between them, dangerous and inhuman. Jack's skin was numb beneath the barrel of the gun now. He no longer felt the bite, the pressure. All of it settled against him like the eerie calm that permeated a battlefield moments before the first shots rang out.

But Reaper wouldn't be the one to take it.

Jack's eyes narrowed, bright blue piercing deep into the black that waited beyond the holes of Reaper's mask. He willed himself to see the man behind it, his memory providing the familiar features that he knew waited there.

He had one chance, and he knew how to make it count.

"Gabriel."

The shot fired, and the impact of it on the man behind the mask was instantaneous.

Reaper howled, inarticulate rage and sorrow tearing at Jack's ears, piercing to bone. He tore the shotgun from Jack's face, shadows surging as he dove forward to slam his entire weight straight against Jack's body.

Jack's back slammed into the ground. Reaper was all around him, smoke wrapped tight around his limbs, tearing them and pinning them in place all at once. Jack strained against it, hands scrabbling to find purchase against Reaper's form.

"Reyes--" he barked, strangled, before Reaper's solid hands closed over his throat.

"Don't you dare call me that," Reaper bellowed. "You left me, Jack, you left me there to die, left me to become this thing--you took it away from me. You took everything I was away from me!"

Jack tried to draw in a breath, tried to push words past the pressure of Reaper's, but it only seized tighter about his windpipe as he inhaled. His hands scrabbled against Reaper's wrists, trying to pull them away. He could already feel the bruises forming against his skin, could feel the black creeping at the edge of his vision.

"Jack, Jack, Jack," Reaper cried out over him, smoke flaring in waves, the sharp edge of his talons dragging against the line of Jack's jaw.

"Jack--!" The final cry was different, a sharp voice cutting through Reaper's litany of rage, distorted and distant to Jack's ears. He couldn't make out the words, couldn't be sure if she was speaking English or Arabic anymore. There was a sound, some sort of scuffle, something haunting barely at the edge of his awareness, when suddenly the pressure released.

Air burned as Jack sucked it into his lungs again. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision with violent heat. A cough wracked him, leaving pain sparking against the fresh bruises on his throat. He blinked again, vision clearing to reveal the angry swirl of Reaper's smoke, mask twisted to swarm towards where Ana stood in the doorway, an echo of Cairo all over again. Only this time it wasn't just Reaper they were up against. The window of escape was quickly closing in around them.They couldn't risk capture, not here. Not now.

Limbs still heavy from the lack of oxygen, Jack did the only thing he could think of, flinging himself bodily against the cloud of shadow that was Reaper's form just as it coalesced into something more solid. Reaper let out a howl of rage and confusion, twisting beneath him, claws and smoke rippling across Jack's body again. Jack twisted with it, fought as well as he could to jerk his head up, eyes catching Ana's gaze.

"Get clear!" he gave a hoarse shout, pouring all of his strength into the words.

"I'm not leaving you, you damn fool!" Ana spat back, twisting to grab for her side arm.

Beneath Jack, Reaper dissipated with a deep, insidious chuckle, reforming between the two of them with guns at the ready, one shot trained on each of them.

"I'm not letting you get away this time," he seethed. "Top of the list, both of you. I'll bury you both here with my own hands."

"All by yourself?" Ana snapped back at him, shoulders snapped back with defiant bravado. "Is that why they sent a squadron in after you?"

The surprise struck Reaper like a visible wave, rippling through smoke, though his hold in his weapons remained unwavering.

"What squadron," he growled, his grip on his shotguns shifting with uncomfortable tension.

Ana's gaze darted down to Jack, her expression tight but Jack could read the look easily enough. Reaper didn't know. It clicked into place instantly. A trap laid for the three of them. A test of Reaper's loyalty after Cairo, Pasubio, Ankara. The longer that he and Ana remained alive the closer they were to springing it.

Ana knew it too. Her lips twisted with the realization, brows furrowed as she glared back into the empty expanse of Reaper's mask.

"Four fighters, closing in from all directions," she said, voice tight with urgency. "Judging by the signature, they're not transports. They're either going to shoot us out of the sky or drop enough explosives to wipe this location clear off the map. It's only a matter of minutes before they're here and we find out which one it is they want."

"Then I won't have to worry about the burial," Reaper said, his blithe tone undercut by the reverberation echoing through the words.

"If you aren't caught in the blast yourself," Ana shot back. Reaper growled in answer, but she held her gaze tight on his mask.

"Is that what you want, Gabriel?" she pressed on, her voice yielding no quarter even as Reaper's form shuddered with the sound of the name echoing against dusty stone walls. "My darts were nothing to you in Cairo. You could have finished both of us off, but you didn't. You left Jack at Pasubio. You saved his life at Ankara. It's not like you to play cat and mouse."

"It's not a game," Reaper grit out. "You weren't at the top of the list."

"A flimsy excuse," Ana scoffed. "You could finish the job now, couldn't you?"

Reaper growled, but said nothing. His talons rested heavy on the trigger guards of each shotgun, tensed and holding, neither of them moving to pull the trigger, even though the threat was gone from the air, cut down with ease by the power of Ana's words.

Yet before she could say any more, the lashing smoke lapping at the edges of Reaper's mask billowed, swirling forth with an inarticulate cry of rage that tore from his throat, echoing off the cavern walls like a death keel. Jack could barely react, barely parse what was happening before Reaper dissolved, his shadow form darting through the entrance at the other end of the cavern, leaving only a trail of swiftly twisting smoke in his wake.

"Gabe--" he cried out, twisting to get to his feet, casting a panicked glance back at Ana.

She cursed under her breath, glancing up to the dark sky above them.

"What are you waiting for? Go after him!" she snapped. "There's no telling if he knows the way out."

"But Ana, you--" Jack started and stopped, torn for a moment with indecision.

"Who do you think needs your help more here, Jack?" she said, her lips twisted in an sardonic grin. "Now hurry up, go!"

The reminder was all the encouragement that Jack needed. He nodded to her, short and clipped, before turning to dash after the trail of Reaper's smoke, ducking only to grab his pulse rifle on the way out.

He didn't need to go far to see where Reaper had gone. Agitated and distorted as he was, Reaper was now nothing more than a misshapen cloud of darkness, whirling and keening as he fled across the steps carved into the face of the rock.

"Reyes!" Jack shouted on instinct, charging forward on Reaper's trail.

The wraith gave a cry in reply, a twisted, bestial howl that might have been Jack's name, pitched low and shuddering, shaking the very ground beneath their feet.

No, that wasn't Reaper, Jack realized with haunting clarity. He jerked his gaze up, just in time to see the stars above ripple with the exhaust of two fighters screaming overhead.

"Damn," he cursed under his breath.

His feet pounded against the dusty stone, kicking up clouds in their wake. Reaper was climbing, surging upwards towards the high ground, a defensive position that would leave them both open and exposed to whatever it was that Talon's jets had in store.

Jack couldn't let that happen. The earth rumbled again and suddenly it wasn't Egypt, wasn't the night sky overhead, but the pristine hallways of Geneva, lights flickering each successive blast. Panic gripped him like a vice tightening over his chest. The shadow before him swirled and took shape, Gabriel's imposing figure standing before him. Broad shoulders and thighs, power and muscle. Everything he'd lost with the blast.

He swallowed a breath through his damaged throat, pushing down on the memories that rose in his chest, fingers pressing hard into the weight of the rifle in his hands.

This wasn't Geneva. This wasn't Overwatch. Gabriel was here and there was still time.

Reaper turned on him, his form solid again. The two of them stood at a precipice at the top of the ruins, a sheer, impending drop waiting just beyond the edge where Reaper stood.

The mask stared down at Jack, Reaper's shoulders heaving with restless energy, his talons curled wide and open, empty of his guns.

Jack skidded to a halt, the soles of his shoes grinding in the gravel and dirt underfoot. He turned his rifle to the side, kept the barrel aimed low. He wasn't a threat, didn't want to look like one either.

"Jack," Reaper spoke, voice scratching like a whisper, grit like the sand caught on the night wind that whipped between them. "What are you doing here, Jack?"

"We've got to go," Jack said, voice still hoarse and painful. "They ran their first pass, they'll be coming back soon."

Reaper tilted his mask, the pointed features twisting violently before a laugh crept out from behind them.

"Should have known," he groaned, the words dragging, heavy with some unnamed weight. "You always rush in, Jack. Never had a plan. Always charging into danger. Is it just for the thrill? Do you miss it?"

"Now's not the time--" Jack started, cutting off with a hiss of pain as the words jarred his throat. "We need to get out of here!"

Distantly, Jack could hear the echo of jet engines on the horizon. The familiar howl growing closer with each heartbeat, each passing moment. Reaper was still before him, staring him down, caught in some tableau that Jack didn't have time for.

He grit his teeth, another shout building in his damaged throat, when he saw it. A flash in the night sky, a flare that burned too bright to be a star, hurtling towards them at impossible speeds. Jack's eyes went wide, breath caught in his lungs. No. Not this time.

"Gabe--!"

He barked, the muscles of his legs tensing with heat before launching him forward. He felt the impact of Reaper's stomach against his shoulder like a solid weight, felt the dust and stone slip beneath both their feet just as the air above them split with the missile fired from the jet. It lasted only a split second, the inky darkness of the pits of Necropolis spread below him, wide swaths of overhead, Reaper's arms curling tight around his shoulders, before the impact blew them both forward, the cliff face behind them exploding in a blossom of red, yellow, and white.

----

Gabriel Reyes was suffocating. The ground beneath his feet shook, windows buckling and threatening to give way under shockwaves that rippled through the building around him. Black smoke poured across the ceiling overhead, lit in violent shades of red by the alarms flashing at every turn. It was all coming down. The strikes had been coordinated, someone on the inside, someone who knew their weakness with the clearance to access them. The intercoms crackled and sputtered with intermittent life, Athena's broken voice calling out the evacuation orders that he had issued only moments before, warning agents to get clear.

They wouldn't all be able to make it out on time. Already Gabriel was running the numbers in his head, his stomach dropping at the thought of how many casualties they'd face this time. A hundred, at least. Nothing as bad as the attacks by Null Sector, but it would be the most agents they'd lost since the Crisis. Provided, of course, that Overwatch was even left standing when all was said and done.

The thought curled around his guts like a cold weight, threatening to drag him down, chill him to the bone. He scowled against it, heavy boots digging into the floor as he charged forward, intent on the one target that remained.

So what if they were compromised. So what if the whole damn thing crashed around them. He knew they could get out of it, knew they could get to the bottom of whatever goddamn conspiracy this was if they just had time. Rigging a building to blow wasn't an easy task. There'd be a trail, something concrete he could trace and follow. Something to convince his high and mighty Strike Commander that all the talk of eyes behind their backs wasn't just baseless paranoia.

But that was why he had to live, why Jack had to live. Despite the fights, the rift that was beginning to split open between them, he knew they could make it out. They could make this whole goddamned shit show work , they just had to keep on living.

Gabriel rounded the corner to the hallway that should have led him straight to Jack's office. A wall of black smoke loomed before him, the acrid stench of burning flesh hot on the air. His heart thudded heavy with panic.

"Jack?!" he shouted into the swirling darkness. It recoiled, twisted at his words, almost as if it had a mind of its own. The hairs at the back of his neck stood on end, a chill sweeping across his skin, cutting straight to bone, but he couldn't back down, his feet suddenly rooted to the ground.

"Jack, if you're in there answer me, damnit!" he called out, hands balled to fists at his sides.

There was no reply. Even the scream of the alarms, the shouts of agents running for cover, echoes of distant explosions and the foreboding groan of concrete and steel seemed to seemed to fade to nothing beneath the rush of blood pounding in his ears.

The smoke before him shifted again, swelling and contracting, undulating in time with the beat of his heart, the racing breath in his lungs. Tendrils lashed out across the cracked white floors, twisted towards his boots. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get as far awake as he could from the inhuman black shadow before him, but he couldn't. In the blink of an eye the swelling mass had already covered his legs up to the knee, he tried to push his hands against it only to for them to sink into the growing void, the air around them as cold as death.

Suddenly, Gabriel realized what was happening. His head jerked up, just in time to see Jack standing there before him. Jack was bruised at battered, twin gashes across his face covering his gaunt features in a mask of bright red blood, cut only by the white and sharp blue of his eyes. His mouth hung open, unspoken anguish and fear writ clear over his features. Jack didn't know what was happening then. Neither of them did. They had no way of knowing.

"Jack!" Gabriel bellowed at him. His voice was already distorting, twisting, echoing inside his own skull as the black crept higher over his body.

"Jack!" he pleaded, trying to twist his arms free, trying to reach out to cross the growing distance between them, to bridge the precipe, to take hold of the lifeline that Jack had always been for him.

"Jack, please, Jack--" a sob wracked him, his teeth chattering. He felt like he was burning from the inside out, freezing. Everything the black touched blistered and sparked with white hot bursts of pain. He ground his teeth to endure, one hand twisting free to reach out to where Jack stood, staring back at him.

Jack hadn't moved, of course he wouldn't, not until the end. The walls around them buckled again, a fresh explosion shaking the foundation beneath their feet. Jack's body jolted in place, charged with some unseen current. His blue eyes passed over Gabriel once more, seeing without truly seeing, before he turned down the hallway and ran.

Gabriel's eyes squeezed shut, tears stinging at the corners. There was no way to change it. No way to change it now. He howled, crying with rage and pain, as the walls gave under their own weight, the whole of Overwatch crashing down around him.

----

Reaper woke abruptly. He hardly ever slept, and dreamt even more rarely with his body in its current state. The sensation of it was unsettling, uncanny. Nanites didn't need rest like the human body did. There was no sleep or grogginess to shake off with a body that didn't tire. Only one moment he was drifting through images stirred in his unconscious mind and the next he returned to a waking state, back in the world he knew.

He groaned, low and reverberating. It was an unpleasant experience, on the whole. Memories better left buried dredged up seemingly without reason. Although this one was hardly so obtuse in its intentions.

Part of his mind clearly thought it knew better. Reaper wondered idly if he could find a way to kill that part as well, or if it was worth it.

The thought didn't live long however, as a noise in the near distance caught Reaper's attention, drawing his gaze back to where it was that he'd found himself dreaming. The room was familiar, small but not overly so. Reaper sat on a cot laid out in a single corner, a dusty blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Overwatch issue, Blackwatch colors. He turned to take stock of the small space, the lights hanging overhead about the room and into the hallway that served as an entrance, the small toilet and basin tucked into the far wall.

He knew this place. Another Blackpoint. An echo back to Pasubio and the chance encounter that had thrown Jack Morrison in his way once again.

"Go figure," he muttered to himself, low and dry, as he pushed himself up and off the cot. It creaked and groaned under his weight, the sound answered a moment later by a scuffle and the sound of footsteps from the hallway.

Reaper turned to the sound, the same one that had woken him before, hands curling restlessly at his sides. He could reform his guns in an instant, have them ready and waiting for whatever threat might show itself around the corner. But something stayed his hand. There was a strange sense of calm in waking up in one of his old haunts, an outpost of the kingdom he'd once reigned over. Whoever it was that approached had brought him here, brought him home.

As the memories of the firefight slipped back into his awareness piece by piece, Reaper realized he didn't even need to guess at who it was pacing ever closer to his current position. He already knew.

Ana rounded the corner a moment later, confirming his suspicions as she gave him a cursory glance and a sharply pointed smile.

"It looks like you're yourself again," she said simply, arms crossing loosely over her chest. There was no rifle slung over her back, no sidearm holstered at her side. She was unarmed, defenseless.

Reaper narrowed his eyes at the sight of it, tilting his mask up to regard her. "Myself again?" he parroted back, incredulous at her choice of words.

"At least the shape of you," Ana said by way of explanation, one hand gesturing curtly at his body. "It wasn't easy getting you here, not when you didn't seem to want to stay solid after the blast."

The blast. Reaper remembered it now. Talon missiles colliding with ancient stone and dust, Jack's body heavy against his chest, pushing at him, pinning him down. He let out a frustrated growl at the back of his throat.

"I'm surprised you bothered," he grit out. Anger flared hot at the back of his mind, a lick of flame, the memory of his hands tight around Jack's throat, before it guttered out again. "I still haven't finished the job."

Ana regarded him evenly for a moment before her shoulders lifted with a pointed sigh. "Gabriel, don't you think that's enough?"

"You're still at the top of the list," he said with pointed vitriol. Heavy footsteps carried him forward, but his hands still hung at his sides, opening and closing over empty air. It would be simple to end it now. So simple, so easy, but still he hesitated, as though an unseen hand pressed against his chest, holding him in place, echoing the sharp jab of Jack's shoulder against his body.

"Gabriel," Ana spoke his name again. Her eyes tracked to his hands, the line of his arms and shoulders. Even with his face hidden behind a mask, he felt helplessly exposed under her scrutiny. She stepped forward and he fought the urge to recoil, to turn away.

"I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for you, what you must have gone through."

"You don't know anything," Reaper growled, hiding the ache bubbling in his chest under a heavy threat. "You don't know what happened, what he did to me. What happened when we all thought you were gone."

"No, you're right," she said with a short shake of her head. "Perhaps it wasn't the right choice for me to make, but it seemed like it was at the time." Her lips pursed, a tight line drawn against weary features, betraying her years, the weight that rested heavy on her shoulders. Still, her gaze didn't waver.

"I'm sorry, Gabriel. Truly, I am. I never should have left you."

"Do you think an apology is enough for me to spare you?" he said, voice rasping with heat.

"I'm not telling you for my sake," she said calmly. "You deserve to hear it."

Reaper could feel his resolve wavering like a physical force tearing through his body. His hands closed to fists at his sides, his lungs burned. His anger boiled inside him, bubbling to the surface like hot sticky tar, popping to release putrid fumes into the air. Yet just beneath it was the fetid swirl of hurt and betrayal, the festering of a deep wound left exposed, scarred and infected. He wanted to cling to the pain it cut into his very soul, the heat that had driven him forward day after day, but Ana's words struck it like a lance, the sting of antiseptic and the promise of the itching, unsettling warmth of biotic gel. The rush of adrenaline slipped from him like water pouring from an upturned bottle.

"I don't need your pity," he spat weakly, sucking a deep, rattling breath in at the words. "I could kill you right now, Ana. You've left yourself open, exposed," his voice curled over the last word, dragging it out with all the menace and malice he could muster against the unwavering front that Ana presented.

"Do you honestly think that I would put myself at that kind of risk?" Ana asked with a single eyebrow raised in question.

Reaper turned away from her censure, slipping into unsteady silence.

"I may not know what happened, but I know you, Gabriel," Ana pressed on. "I know if that was what you wanted for me, I wouldn't be standing here. That Jack and I would have been long gone. If you're willing to give us the chance to survive, the least you could do is give us a chance to make amends, a chance to help you. Whoever it was that did this to you is no ally of ours, I can assure you. I'd like to see them pay as dearly as you would. Jack would as well."

"Jack..." he breathed, the name catching in his throat. Blue eyes shone bright in his memory, catching starlight and the white hot flare of the rocket's blast.

"Where's Jack?"

"Recovering," Ana said. "You may have shielded him from most of it, but the force from the blast still did quite a number on him. We'll want to lay low here for a while until you're both in a state where you can move again."

"Where?" Reaper repeated the question, turning his mask to face Ana properly.

"Down the hall," she nodded over her shoulder. "The room closest to the mess. You should know it."

"Thanks," he said blithely, the lower half of his body dissolving into smoke as he swept past her into the hallway beyond.

It only took a moment, a deep, steadying breath, before he placed their location. The thin mountain air, the proximity to Ana's outpost in Necropolis. The trappings of Blackpoint Adwa weren't ones that Gabriel had often called home, but they served well enough. A spot on the map close enough to Watchpoint Numbani to keep an eye on any unrest in the area.

Reaper moved silently through the empty corridor. Ana had set him up in the largest dorm that the Blackpoint boasted, the room he had once claimed for himself during his extended stays here. The room where she's left Jack was often repurposed as an impromptu medbay, a recovery suite for agents injured on the field, the proximity to food and showers making it so that there was less worry of strain and injury in the day to day activities of Blackwatch.

It had been years since anyone affiliated with Blackwatch had graced these halls. Even before the blast, before Geneva, Adwa had been shuttered and inoperable due to tense relations between Overwatch and the Ethiopian government. Pressures from Numbani as well and the influence it wielded in the African Union had kept their operations to a minimum, even when Talon had taken advantage of unrest in the region to sink its claws in.

But that was another time. Another life. He knew the Talon playbook now, intimately. Knew exactly how they had made their mark on the demise of Overwatch. Knew that they weren't the only piece of the puzzle.

Reaper rounded a corner, smoke curling and reforming at his feet, nanites carefully reconstructing legs and hips, the body that he had lost. He stood still in front of the door to the dorm room, Jack's room. On the other side sat another piece of the same puzzle, a crucial one. An anchor to moor him in the storm of conspiracy that had engulfed them both. A weight that would drag him to the depths of it all if given half the chance.

Talons curled at his side, uncurled, nanites eddying restlessly just beneath his skin.

Salvation and damnation, all within the palm of his hand. It was his choice as to what he would make of it.

Yet he knew the choice had been made for him, the answer clear no matter how much he tried to avert his gaze. Trust a man like Jack Morrison to refuse to accept death as an end, to extend his hand even at the cost of his own life. He'd woken Gabriel from where he'd slept inside the wraith called Reaper. Now all that was left was for Gabriel to take the chance.

He lifted his hand, claws scraping against the keypad at the side of the door. It slid open with a silent rush of air, leaving a stripe of uneven light cutting across the barren floor to the body that laid prone on the cot before him.

"Jack," Gabriel breathed, his voice as soft as a whisper.

Without hesitation he stepped forward, the door snapping shut behind him, plunging the two of into darkness together.

----

Jack Morrison woke with a groan of pain. He'd slept poorly and he knew it, strained joints and muscles aching from the onslaught of the past few days. The nanites and chemicals racing through his bloodstream courtesy of SEP meant that he'd experienced an accelerated rate of healing for years now, but even a man of his years could feel the effects slowing with age. Even a modified human body had limitations, and this he'd pushed himself hard enough to barrel straight across them, consequences be damned.

He sighed with a heavy weight, gingerly lifting one hand through the dark to scrub roughly over his face. It had been worth it, at least. Necropolis was nothing more than ruins, more so now that it had been before, but they'd made it clear of the blast. Ana on her own, and Jack carrying the twisted form of Reaper slung over his shoulder like some bastardization of a body bag.

Jack knew it would take time to recover, for Reaper to come back to himself, and that there was still the risk that when the Reaper woke he wouldn't remember much of anything of their previous encounter. Jack couldn't say how likely that was to happen, but even though the danger it invited to his livelihood and to Ana's was skyrocketing, he'd met with little resistance when he'd carried Reaper's prone form with him south across the desert.

That had been three days ago now. Ana and he had jumped a hypertrain bound south and made their way down and out of the country, cutting through Sudan and the highlands until they arrived at the small town of Adwa and detoured to the hidden base carved into the mountain overlooking the village from the northeast.

Another one of Gabriel's old outposts, Jack had thought with faint amusement. It seemed that no matter how far they both ran, neither of them could escape the past.

He reached for the light at the head of his bed, a dusty old camping lantern that he'd found packed in with the decades old Blackwatch supplies scattered throughout the base, when he felt the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, well honed instincts alerting him to the presence of someone else in the room.

Jack stilled, hand paused in midair, the motion of it halfway aborted, squinting into the inky darkness of the room, barely lit by the glow of the hallway lights that crept in at the seams of the door set into the wall. It couldn't be Ana, Ana would have announced her presence, wouldn't have sat sulking in darkness watching and waiting for him to regain consciousness. That left only one possibility.

"Gabe?" Jack called out into the dark, deliberate yet cautious.

The words hung in the stagnant air, leaving a weight slowly swelling at the back of Jack's throat before they found their answer. A deep, heavy sigh rippled from the space just beyond the edge of the cot Jack lay on.

"Jack," Gabriel said, the word rasping like the scrape of metal against stone. There was no malice hidden behind it, no spark of rage or violence. Only the heavy, weary weight of a man who'd held them in his chest far too long.

Gabriel had been watching him, waiting. It tugged at Jack's chest, stealing the breath from his lungs, leaving them tight and aching between his ribs.

He swallowed. The muscles of his arms strained and shook in the air. He had far too many memories of waking under Gabriel's watchful eye, of the solid, contented security that came with feeling the warmth of Gabriel's gaze on him. Yet this was nothing like any of them. Too much divided the moment before him now from those tender times. It hung heavy and painful in the air between them, silent like a palpable presence.

Jack couldn't find words to put to it, even as his mind raced to find them.

"I'm turning the light on," he said instead, his voice weak and strained to his own ears. Without waiting, he lowered his hand to tap the switch on the lantern, squinting as the warm, bright glow enveloped the tiny room. He turned to see Reaper crouched before him, only a few feet away.

The light of the lamp cast long shadows against his mask and cloak, somehow softening the harsh edges of it, leaving the shine off the leather soft and inviting in its wake. Reaper's shoulders heaved with a heavy sigh, gauntlets braced heavy against his thighs. There were no guns in his hand, none holstered at his belt. Although Jack knew it took less than a thought for Reaper to summon the weapons out of nothingness, he chose to remain unarmed, no threat held between them save for his words.

Jack shifted under Reaper's scrutiny, pushing himself up to sit on the cot, his legs curled over the side of it, a mirror of Reaper's pose only mere inches away. Jack was clad only in a tight fitting white tank top and a loose pair of pants. His dog tags--Gabriel's tags--hung against his chest, scarred and muscled arms flexing as his hands clenched and unclenched at the edge of the cot.

Tense anticipation left the muscles in his shoulders taut, his throat dry and bereft of words. Gabriel deserved the first word here, whatever that would be.

Gabriel always was the one who cut to bone, who gave no quarter. Jack had loved that about him. He'd been thrilled at having a commander and a comrade who would cut the crap, who pegged him for who he was and not for the pretty faced poster boy that everyone else always saw. Yet towards the end, that self same brutal honesty that Jack had once adored had been their undoing. He hadn't needed Gabriel to drive a knife into every failing point of Overwatch with surgical precision but he had anyway. He'd cut Jack's failing ambition to pieces with a word, he'd lay bare the map that led straight to the conspiracy choking away at the ideals they'd both fought for, but Jack had been to caught up in the swell of it all to heed Gabriel's warnings for what they really were.

But now, he was ready. Now, he knew he needed it. Needed Gabriel to be there to cut him down, to expose every bit of weakness and failing so they could find a way to overcome it, to build strength despite the flaws that had carved a rift between them.

His gaze lifted from where it hovered somewhere just above his knees, seeking Gabriel's eyes beneath the white of Reaper's mask. He grit his teeth, throat bobbing as he swallowed away the tight anxiety that built in his chest. Whatever it was that Gabriel had to give him, he was ready.

Reaper was silent before him, his mask an inscrutable facade against the tumult of Jack's thoughts, unmoving and impassive.

The silence stretched, nearly to breaking, before Reaper shifted, lifting one taloned claw up between them. Adrenaline pricked at the back of Jack's neck, instinct told him to run, but he shoved both thoughts away, steadily holding Reaper's gaze. Reaper's hand drifted towards him, claws dragging along the purple-green bruises fading on the skin of Jack's throat, tracing the marks like a caress, his touch too faint to break skin, almost tender in its intimacy.

Jack let his eyes flutter shut with the touch, his head tilting back to bare his throat to Reaper in supplication, an offering of submission.

The gesture brought a laugh rippling from Reaper's body, deep and rich as it lifted through the air.

"Masochist," he said. The pads of his fingers pressed to the line of Jack's jaw, dragging up and across his face. Claws touched to the scars there, an echo of the strike that had carved them in the first place.

"Some things don't change," Jack replied, his voice steady yet soft.

Reaper grunted. He traced the scars with just the tips of his talons, sharp edges gliding against smooth skin, until this thumb rested over Jack's chin, rolling lazily against it. Jack opened his eyes, looking on in question at the mask before him.

Beneath it, Reaper sighed. His touch left Jack's skin only to press against his chest a moment later, pushing him back on the cot.

"I wanted to kill you," he said plainly, the words a stark contrast to the way his body crowded up over Jack's, powerful thighs straddling across his lap.

"I've tasted your soul, Jack," the words were a purr, languid as they rolled from beneath Reaper's mask. "The sweetest one I've ever had."

Jack swallowed hard. His mind couldn't untangle which part of Reaper's words were a threat and which were seduction, but he wanted them both all the same. Pressed as close as they were, there was no way Reaper didn't see the motion, didn't feel the way that Jack's body tensed beneath him.

"Would you fight me if I tried?" Reaper's mask tilted to regard Jack like a predator looking down on his prey.

"Maybe before," Jack said, his voice breathless and dry. Mentally he cursed at the sound of it, a flush rising to his cheeks. "But not now."

"And what's different now?" Reaper asked mildly. His talons were drawing a new path up against the lines of Jack's chest, feeling taut skin and muscle beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. They toyed with the metal of his dog tags, letting them clink against each other, before shifting higher still.

"I know I need you," Jack said. He could feel heat building at the back of his throat, pooling in his belly and lower, yet he kept his hands curled tight at his side. He wouldn't touch, not until it was clear that was what Reaper wanted, what Gabriel wanted. "I needed you back then, too. I should have listened to you, Gabe. Should have trusted you. You were always the one to keep me on my feet. Knew where I was going a mile before I did, and you'd always be the one to tell me the way. You kept me steady, Gabe. Always have, always will."

"That's my line," Reaper said, words clipped without heat. His hands roved against Jack's shoulders, palms sliding back to rest against Jack's neck, cupping it in his grasp.

"If the shoe fits," Jack shot back, a lopsided grin stretching over his face despite the threat in Reaper's hold on him.

Reaper chuffed, his shoulders shaking with the sound, his touch as light as ever.

"I'm not going to kill you, Jack," he said. "But that doesn't mean I've forgiven you for what you've done."

"Not asking for forgiveness," Jack said evenly. His hands rose, fingertips hovering at the edges of Reaper's mask, waiting for Gabriel's consent. "Just asking for a second chance."

Reaper fell silent before him, hands still where they curled against Jack's throat. The offer in the gesture was clear to him. He held the power now, and he knew it. A rasping exhale drifted from behind the mask, a dry laugh, stretched on a single, clipped note.

"Go on," Reaper said.

Jack nodded once. He swallowed, set his lips into a thin line, and closed his fingers against the edges of the mask to pull it away.

Gabriel looked on from beneath his hood, still recognizable as the man Jack had left behind five years ago. The prominent swell of his nose, the angry line of his brows, full lips, strong jaw. He could see it all there beneath the endlessly shifting rot and decay of skin and muscle striping away only to be rebuilt with wisps of black smoke by the colonies of nanites constantly shifting beneath the flesh.

Gabriel's eyes met his, glowing red like dark embers under the dim light. They met Jack's gaze like a challenge, like defiance. Daring him to look away, to let his disgust win out over the spectacle before him. Yet when Jack held firm, it was Gabriel who looked away first, muttering with a cloud of smoke puffing from between rotten lips.

"Not winning any beauty contests like this."

"Depends on who's the judge," Jack said, his voice light with amusement. He reached forward, brushing over the line of Gabriel's jaw, feeling Gabriel's skin shift and squirm beneath the pressure of his fingertips.

That brought a grin to Gabriel's face, skin tearing and reforming over his teeth as they flashed white in the light of the lamp. "Never knew you had a twisted side, Jack."

"Didn't know I had it either," Jack quipped back, the familiarity of their banter settling in like a warm embrace across his shoulders. "Just takes the right kind of guy to bring it out."

Gabriel laughed, his skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes like it used to, his smile wide and sharp as it had always been. His hands found Jack's cheeks, cupping his face between them, claws pricking at the edge of the input ports at the base of Jack's skull, sending sparks dancing across his vision.

"I missed you, Jack," Gabriel said, a weary ache hanging heavy on the words as he slid forward to press his lips hard against Jack's in a kiss.

Jack groaned under the pressure, caught by surprise at the sudden motion, but only for a moment. He gripped at Gabriel's skin, clutching to find the hem of his hood, pulling him in by the fabric. Gabriel's lips were nothing like before, the taste of him was all off, waxy and metallic, hanging thick like soot against his tongue, but it still left Jack in a heady rush, wanting more.

Gabriel met him with equal fervor. His lips parted quickly, tongue stroking out against the cavern of Jack's mouth, tasting him with practiced ease and a barely contained thread of lust riding under the force of his touch.

The kiss was like a match set to an oil spill, the crack of a dam that left a deluge of want and need crashing against them both. Gabriel pressed Jack back against the cot in an instant, their lips still locked together, his hands and claws roving hungry over the tight fabric of Jack's shirt. Jack eagerly answered in kind, twisting into each sharpened touch, curling his hands in the coarse, familiar curls over Gabriel's head.

Each touch of Gabriel's hands on him was like a brand, a searing heat that marked him, reminding the world that Jack was his, that he belonged to no one else. Errant tendrils of smoke rose in the trails left by his fingertips, soot and ash staining the dusty white of Jack's shirt in their wake. His claws twisted in the fabric, prying it up and away from Jack's skin for the chance to touch the scarred flesh of his belly and chest, tracing the familiar planes that he'd known years ago.

It was Jack who bit off the kiss at first, tossing his head back with a breathless gasp, desperate to suck more air into his heated lungs, but unwilling to drown out the taste of Gabriel left on his tongue. He felt dizzy with want, pitched straight into the turbulent winds of a storm, one that he would willingly let ravage him until nothing remained.

Gabriel laughed over him, an echo of the deep, familiar chuckle twisting and reverberating through his chest. His face tilted, an echo of the gesture that Jack had seen on Reaper so many times now, before Gabriel grinned, lowering his lips and tongue down to work over the column of Jack's throat.

"Look at you," Gabriel moaned over his skin, smoke seeping out from between teeth and lips to stain him. "Just like old times. One kiss and you're a mess, Jack."

"Been a while," Jack said in breathless reply, his eyes squeezing shut with a curse at the sharp bite of Gabriel's teeth over his pulse. "Fuck--I missed you, Gabe."

"You always were the eager one," Gabriel murmured, "I'd be gone for a week and I couldn't keep you off me."

His claws dragged in sharp lines over Jack's chest, their points catching against his nipples with white hot shocks of pain and pleasure. Gabriel laughed as Jack moaned beneath him, pushing the thin fabric of his tank top up and out of the way.

"Is this what five years looks like, Jack?"

"Do you even need to ask?" Jack said with a snort, squirming beneath Gabriel to get his shirt all the way off. As soon as it was gone his hands found Gabriel again, tracing over the broad expanse of rough fabric and armor covering his shoulders, his chest. He glanced up, one eyebrow raised in question.

"You gonna help me out here?"

"Maybe if you ask nicely," Gabriel hissed, wrenching one nipple with a sharp twist that sparked straight to Jack's groin.

"Please," Jack moaned, feeling his cheeks flush red hot under the attention. "Please, Gabe."

Gabriel smirked down at him, hunger and desire barely hidden beneath the intensity of his gaze. With a sigh, his clothes dissolved around his body, rippling off in a cloud of black smoke that ran over his shoulders, his hips, his cock, his thighs. Jack's eyes followed it all, watching as Gabriel's body was revealed to him from under the ebony shadows. Beneath it all, his skin was ashen as his face, an unnatural gray, mottled with decay and reconstruction, smoke wisping into the dark room around them as the nanites worked restlessly to maintain his human form.

"Nick trick," Jack breathed, licking his lips with anticipation.

"You don't know the half of it," Gabriel said, leaning low over Jack's body to kiss him again.

Jack rose to meet him, reaching up to fold his arms over the broad expanse of Gabriel's chest, to spread palms flat against the powerful muscles of his back, only to find his wrists suddenly pinned to the cot beneath them, tendrils of Gabriel's smoke coiled tight around them.

Gabriel pulled away, only enough to breath his words in a heated exhale against Jack's open mouth.

"We do this my way," he growled, teeth biting sharp over Jack's lip.

A thick, heavy moan was Jack's answer, his cock already straining beneath the pressure of Gabriel's hips.

"Please, Gabe," he groaned, his voice low and thick with the taste of blood on his tongue. "I'm yours."

Gabriel's body shuddered over him as he drew a shaking breath. Jack could feel it throbbing in the cords of smoke wound about his wrists, pounding in contrast with his pulse.

"That's right, Jack," Gabriel hissed. His hands pawed at Jack's hips, fingers still tipped with pointed talons that caught and tore as he pulled Jack's sweatpants down and away. "You're mine. You've always been mine. You can't escape me."

"No," Jack gasped, the chill of the air against the throbbing ache of his cock leaving him shuddering. "I can't. I won't. Not again."

"Never again," Gabriel grit out. His claws raked back up and over the weight of Jack's thighs, spreading them wide beneath him, his touch teasing in his desperation, mapping every inch of Jack's skin except the wanting heat of his cock. "Not as long as you live."

Jack swallowed hard against the need building high in his chest, choking at the back of his throat. His hips strained beneath the pressure of Gabriel's hands, his nails digging hard into the flesh of his own palms as he was held down, held still at Gabriel's mercy.

"Never," he said, a pleading whine running fast and hot beneath the word. "Never, Gabe. Please."

"Please?" Gabriel rumbled above him, one talon stroking along the underside of Jack's cock with its pointed tip, tracing the veins straining against his skin.

"Please," Jack begged, voice cracking. "God, please just fuck me."

"Well, since you've asked nicely," Gabriel chuffed, curling his hand to wrap tight about Jack's erection with a hard and fast stroke.

It took every ounce of restraint left in Jack's body not to come right there and then, spattering in an embarrassing display all over his belly and Gabriel's scarred knuckles. The raw want and need of it still coursed through him, leaving sweat beading against his skin and goosebumps prickling against his exposed skin.

Gabriel gave no quarter. The callouses of his palm rubbed over Jack's cock again and again, almost as if he wanted to see Jack lose control, to see him completely undone before they even properly started.

The low chuckle that reverberated over him was evidence enough of that need. Through half opened eyes, Jack could see the grin split white over Gabriel's features, obscured only by the puffs of deep black smoke curling from his lips.

"Don't give in, Jack," he said, the words an order emphasized by the sharp press of his thumb against the base of Jack's cock. "You don't come until I let you."

Biting back a sob that was more pleasure than pain, Jack squeezed his eyes shut and nodded once. "Better hurry up," his voice was thick even to his own ears, breathless with want. "Please, Gabe. Hurry up."

"It's good that you haven't forgotten your manners," Gabriel mused. He shifted, the cot beneath them creaking with the motion, and suddenly two clawed fingers were pressed expectantly against Jack's lips.

He didn't need to be told what to do. His lips parted instantly around them, his tongue lathing against their length, messy and wet. Gabriel moaned above him, the tone of it rich, hot. Jack wanted more of that sound, wanted to hear nothing but the heady way it seemed to reverberate through every point of contact between them, shaking in Gabriel's thighs against his legs, in the hand around his dick, the fingers in his mouth. He worked fervently against the pads of Gabriel's fingers, the sharp edge of his talons, tasting shoot and rot, the texture of them strangely growing slicker with each pass of his tongue, but it only left him craving more.

Gabriel pulled them out before too long, leaving a trail of spit dripping along Jack's jaw as he panted to catch his breath.

"Now, show me where you want them," Gabriel purred.

Jack's legs parted without hesitation, his hips bucking high into the pressure of Gabriel's palm.

"Here," he pleaded. "Right here."

"Good answer," Gabriel said, and pressed both fingers hard and fast into Jack's waiting hole.

Jack writhed with the sudden pressure, back arched off the bed with an inarticulate cry tearing from his throat. It had been so long, so long, and Gabriel's fingers felt perfectly full and right inside him. Before Gabriel even had a chance to move Jack jerked his hips back down against them, twisting and angling, urging him on.

"Demanding," Gabriel rasped, meeting the pace Jack set without hesitation. He was mindful of his claws, gingerly spreading Jack wider with his touch, but careful not to rip or tear. "You're so needy, Jack."

"Been--five years," Jack groaned from low in his chest. His body was burning up, heels digging hard into the mattress, hips working feverishly into every point of contact between the two of them. "You feel so good."

The grip on his cock tightened, Gabriel's thumb pressing against to his base.

"Flattery gets you nowhere," he grunted.

Jack laughed, breathless and pitched high. "Fuck--" he cursed, unable to shake the broad grin that split over his face. "Maybe not--but you're still eating it up."

"I think you're forgetting who's in control here, Jack."

Gabriel's touch fled from him as quickly as it had come, leaving him open and bereft, aching for more. Jack's eyes snapped open, searching in the warm light of the lamp for Gabriel's face only to find Gabriel's hand closing tight over his throat, the bulk of his body shifting to settle heavy between Jack's hips. Jack's breath caught under the pressure, his pulse hammering hard against skin, eyes wide in shock.

"Gabe..." he breathed. His hands were still caught in the grips of Gabriel's smoke, held down high over his head. Vaguely, he became aware of the slick, chilled coil of more smoke spreading across his thighs, catching them in its grip, spreading him wider still.

Over it all, Gabriel looked down on him with lips parted, shoulders rising and falling with the heavy, steady breaths that slipped past them. Words stuck in Jack's throat at the look in his eyes, the adoration written in the softened curve of Gabriel's brow, the steady flex of the hand held tight against his throat.

"I love you, Jack," Gabriel's voice quivered like a feather caught on the wind, tight with rare uncertainty. "Even when I hated you, even when I wanted you dead, I still loved you."

Salty heat stung at the corners of Jack's eyes. He swallowed, jaw working hard just above the edge of Gabriel's grip. He wanted to reach out, to touch, to hold Gabriel in his arms and do everything he could to banish the betrayal that spiked beneath those words. But he knew that wasn't what Gabriel wanted, what Gabriel needed. What Gabriel wanted was what he had right now, was everything that rested in the palm of his hand, Jack Morrison spread before him, utterly at his mercy.

Jack nodded, a shallow motion of his head, his eyes unblinking as he held Gabriel's gaze.

"Love you too," he said, the words quiet like a supplication. "There's never been anyone for me like you are, Gabe. Never will be. It's always been you. Only you."

Gabriel groaned, crowding down over him. The pressure of his hand weighed heavier against Jack's throat, an echo of a threat, power coiled and poised at the ready, but nothing more.

"Only mine," Gabriel said, low and heated, his smoke lapping against the bared skin of Jack's chest, his smoke squeezing tight over the skin of his wrists and thighs. "My Jack. My lovely, headstrong, stupid Jack."

His hips jerked forward, punctuating Jack's name with a rough thrust as he buried the fullness of his throbbing cock in the waiting heat of Jack's hole.

Jack cried out, his screams echoed off the stone walls around them, the bed groaning underneath with the force of Gabriel's hips bearing down on him, the weight of Gabriel's body pinning him in place. Gabriel was as thick as he'd remembered, he fit so well, sliding effortlessly in, his length coated by some strange, slippery ooze that Jack didn't have the presence of mind to question. He didn't care. It was Gabe, Gabe holding him down, Gabe pinning him in place like a prize possession to be claimed, to be adored and held captive. Pain and pleasure alike lit a blaze beneath Jack's skin, his body aching as he twisted and pulled at it. He was desperate to match the furious pace that Gabriel had set, eager for every staccato burst of his hips slapping against Jack's thighs, every pulse of Gabriel's smoke around him, beating in time with the crescendo of Jack's heartbeat racing wild against the unmoving weight of Gabriel's hand at his throat.

He gave himself over to the frenzied want of Gabriel's body writhing above him, breathed in the smoke that curled over his mouth with the desperate litany of his name pouring endlessly from Gabriel's lips. Jack could barely think, could barely form words against the mindless need that consumed his every thought, the hungry desire to give himself over completely to Gabriel's pleasure, to willingly submit, to feed the starvation that had left his heart and body parched for five long years.

It built quickly, cascading like an avalanche, building heat like a barely contained explosion ready to burst in his chest. Gabriel pounded into him harder and faster, his smoke spreading wider where it held Jack's body down and open beneath him, black tendrils swelling to thick, fat ropes winding restlessly over his arms and hands, across his thighs, curving their tight grip around his aching cock, pulsing and sliding against him, smearing precum over his length. Jack bit back a keening whine, his teeth digging hard into his lip until he tasted blood on his tongue, the copper tang mingling with the salt of tears at the back of his throat.

Not yet, he thought dimly, a last, quivering hold of restraint against the pleasure coursing wild through his body. Not until Gabriel told him he could.

His body shook with the effort of it, Gabriel's laughter suddenly floating down over him, dipping low until he felt the press of Gabriel's lips against his cheek, the sharp bite of teeth against his jaw as smoke tickled along the shell of his ear.

"Come for me, Jack," Gabriel whispered, his voice rough and rich with his own pleasure.

Jack's last reserve snapped, his hips driving him hard onto the waiting pressure of Gabriel's cock, back arched up off the bed as he came with an aching cry of Gabriel's name. His climax crashed over him like a wave, like static suffusing through every inch of his body, leaving him shaking and pleasantly numbed in its wake.

Mindlessly, he was aware of the strangled groan pulled from Gabriel's lips that echoed in his ear, the desperate pressure of Gabriel's cock driving in, again and again, until Gabriel's body and smoke tensed over him, the hand at his throat squeezing tighter, cutting off his breath for a fleeting instant before Gabriel spilled inside him, his entire body shuddering, tight and fast, before the hold against him went lax, smoke dissolving into a lazy haze that blanketed Jack's sweat slicked skin.

Jack was breathless, his throat raw, his entire body aching with a pleasant, lazy warmth. He blinked his eyes slowly, opening his eyes to see the mist of Gabriel's smoke, cloaking them both in a dusky golden light, the flickering ebony of the nanites catching the glow from the bedside lamp and reflecting it over their bodies.

Gabriel's body was pressed over his, his chest heavy against Jack's, his face tucked against the throbbing bruises circling Jack's neck. They held together like that for a moment, still connected, neither wishing to disturb the moment, to speak lest they disturb the pleasant warmth of the silence around them, the sound of their labored breathing the only sound to fill the room.

It was Gabriel who moved first, pushing against the bed with one hand to prop himself up over Jack as he pulled from his body, gazing down across his body with lazy contentment writ across his features.

Jack met his gaze easily, eyes shining wet with reverence and adoration. He lifted one hand to brush the backs of his knuckles across the shifting, waxy flesh of Gabriel's face in a featherlight caress, tracing the line of his cheekbones, of old scars, of the hard set of his jaw.

Gabriel sighed at the touch, one hand lifting to catch Jack's hand by his wrist, his head tilting to brush his lips across the back of it, a whisper of a kiss.

"Good?" Jack asked, a comfortable smile settling over his lips.

"What do you think?" Gabriel huffed, a familiar, wry grin flickering across his face before vanishing a moment later. Jack felt his jaw shift, saw the subtle, somber shift in his gaze. He swallowed lightly, waiting for Gabriel to gather his words.

"If we do this," Gabriel said, each word steeped in equal parts hope and uncertainty, caution at the future that might wait beyond them, the implications that hung as heavy as the warmth of their bodies pressed together. "It's not going to be any easier than was before."

"No," Jack said. His hand twisted in Gabriel's grip, turning until his fingers slotted into the space between Gabriel's, holding to him with a tight squeeze. "But that doesn't mean it's too late to try."