The Pledge – Gabriel Reyes

Speed prompt, written in 4 hours, 20 minutes.

1. To be part of Overwatch

"To be part of Overwatch," went the pledge, "I acknowledge a great deal will be asked of me. I must be prepared to kill in order to save, I must be prepared to do what must be done, I must be prepared to sacrifice myself to save others."

All Overwatch agents swore this at their induction. Bright-faced, head-strong kids we were, back then. I remember lining up and having the badge pinned to my chest while my mother cried somewhere in the crowd and took a thousand photos.

"That's my Gabriel!" I could hear her shouting in Spanish to anyone who would listen. "That's my Gabriel!"

I'd never been prouder in my life.

I said each and every word of that pledge perfectly, every syllable rolling off my tongue into the microphone. I felt those words in my bones. I felt them with every part of me, I breathed them. I was part of Overwatch: a brand new UN-sponsored taskforce to bring peace on Earth and save millions of lives. It was everything in the world that I'd always wanted with all my heart, and as I beamed at the UN High Commissioner so brightly I felt like my face my crack, he gave me a brief, calm smile and pinned the 'O' to my uniform.

Later, Mom hugged me and reverently touched my 'O' badge with her fingertips. "I told you you'd make it," she murmured, tearful. "I knew you'd pass all the tests. My Gabriel isn't a quitter!"

When she waved goodbye to me as I boarded the plane to Gibraltar, the admiration in her eyes brought tears to mine.

Once, I'd wanted nothing more than to made her proud.

2. I acknowledge a great deal will be asked of me

"But I haven't missed a Día de Muertos since my father died," I tried to explain without sounding insubordinate. "It's important to my mother."

My boss, Commander Smith, lazed back in his big leather chair, impassive. "Terrorist attacks don't stop for cultural festivals, Reyes," he told me easily, despite the fact he'd had last Christmas off. "We deploy tomorrow. You can call your mother and wish her Happy Dios Whatever on whatever day your thing is on."

…on whatever day your thing is— I bit my tongue down on what I really wanted to say to that. It wouldn't help. "But, sir, I specifically put in for leave for—"

"Yes, and I acknowledge your leave was approved, but that was before the pending attacks in Russia. Millions of lives come before you having a little sit-down with your mother."

The way he said it… I knew he was frustrated with me, and I also knew he had a point. But those words, his tone of voice—he might as well have slapped me in the face.

It was pointless arguing, though. He was already bored with that conversation, and, honestly, I knew what I was getting in for when I joined Overwatch. What did I expect I'd need to do? "Very well, sir." I saluted him, and then marched out of the room.

When I called my mother to tell her, instead of gushing up how proud of me she was, her voice shook. She knew. "When are you arriving, Gabriel?" she asked me anyway. Hopeful; she was always hopeful. "I'll pick you up from the airport! I've bought so many candles. You remember the ones we used to get when you were a boy? Well, I've found the man who sells them, isn't that wonderful? I think I bought his whole shop! I just know you'll love them. You always used to love them, lighting them one by one…"

I closed my eyes; I could barely get the words out of my mouth. "Mom, I'm not coming home tomorrow."

The rest of the conversation was a blur.

Afterwards, while I was in my bunk, there was a gentle knock on the door.

I looked up as it opened; Jack. Someone else who enjoyed having Christmas off… I hated him a little for it. "What do you want?"

He stopped in the doorway, raising his eyebrows. "Well, I was going to ask you how you went with Commander Smith, but I think you just answered my question..." He flashed me that perfect white grin of his. There was gentleness to it.

I felt a little guilty for snapping at him, and the guilt added a nice shade of self-loathing to my misery. "I deploy tomorrow. Like the rest of you."

"Oh…" He took a few cautious steps forward and put a firm hand on my shoulder. "That's rough for you, man," he told me. "That's really rough. Is there anything I can do?"

I shook my head. It's not as rough for me as it is for my mother, I thought. I didn't shove him away, though, and he didn't leave. He coaxed a smile to my lips. He made me laugh until my stomach hurt and my chest didn't. And when his pale body was astride me and I had handfuls of that blond hair poking between each of my fingers as we both tried to be quiet, really quiet… I hoped dad wasn't visiting me from beyond the grave that weekend.

3. I must be prepared to kill in order to save

Under heavy fire, the six of us had finally tracked down the militants to the subway in the centre of crumbling Moscow, cornering them inside. We'd blown up the other exits. We'd positioned units strategically around the perimeter. This was it: after 3 years of fighting in this freezing fucking cold, our fingers numb and our lungs burning, we were finally about to crush the terrorists once and for all. We were going to restore peace to this aching, ailing city.

"I've got it!" Reinhardt's bellowing voice tore through the gunfire, holding the two-tonne steel subway grate open with white knuckles. "But I can't hold it much longer, go!"

We piled in under his colossal arms, guns raised, eyes peeled. We were going to get them.

"Over here!" Ana's voice called and we poured single-file, one-by-one into the corridor, jogging down it, rushing through it, torches shining and lasers cutting through the darknes.

When the corridor opened into the subway, everywhere our torches pointed bodies moved: people screamed, and shouted, and swore, and Jack called, "It's him, look! The Spitfire!" He was pointing to someone wearing a yellow and black striped hoodie.

Like I'd been fired from a fun, I ran at 'the Spitfire', who had his back to me and was sprinting towards the tracks. I chased him onto them and up them, eyes trained on his back, his shorter legs no match for my longer ones, his wiry, malnourished body no match for my fit athleticism, and when I caught him, grabbing fistfuls of his hoodie and throwing him against the ground with a sickening crunch, he screamed.

"Hands on your head!" I shouted at him as I pulled down his hoodie to look at who this—

Christ, he was just a kid!

A tiny kid—maybe fourteen at the most, and he was shaking at my hands. This was the great 'Spitfire', the so-called mastermind behind all the cyberattacks?!

I swallowed, shaking my gun at him. I had a job to do. "I said hands on your head, boy!"

There was a solemness about his eyes and defiance in his voice that belied his years. "No."

I cocked my gun. "I gave you an order!"

"Well, I don't take orders from Omnic Sympathisers." He spat each word out like they disgusted him. "Have you ever watched your own father be riddled with bullets? Have you ever watched your own baby sister be crushed under something's foot, and then be forced to act like nothing's wrong when they take over your city? Because I have. And if you had, you'd be fighting with me, not against me!"

Jack must have been behind me, and thankfully rescued me from answering that one. "You have no idea what he's seen, kid," he said. "Now put your damn hands on your head. You're a wanted terrorist, are you trying to give us a reason to shoot you?"

The boy lifted his hands, and for a second I foolishly thought he was going to do it.

Instead, he pointed his AK47 right at Jack.

I heard the crack of gunfire and I opened my mouth to shout before I realised it was my gun that had fired it.

A single rivulet of blood poured out of a hole in the centre of the kid's forehead. Mouth agape, eyes blankly watching me, he folded silently in half at my feet.

I stared down at him.

"You stupid kid," Jack told the body, exhaling at length. He didn't sound concerned at all. To me, he said, "Well, there goes Overwatch's Priority One Target!" he laughed at that. Like it was funny. I mean, I know his laughter was ironic, just…

I shook my head.

There goes Overwatch's Priority One Target: a fourteen-year-old kid haunted by his family's death, shot by a man protecting his boyfriend. The world is safe once again...

"Here," Jack said, distracting me by pressing something into my hand. When I looked down, it was an old, tattered cigar. "I've been saving these for when we finally finished this damn mission and walked out of it together," he told me with a wry smile, putting his between his teeth and feeling around in his coat for a lighter. "I've got some whiskey back on the ship, too, although Commander Smith made me promise we'd share it with him," he mumbled through the cigar. He looked and sounded ridiculous.

It was so difficult to stay messed up over this dead 'terrorist' when Jack was being such a fucking idiot; I think I even smiled. Perhaps against my better judgment, I let him lead me away for the local authorities to clean up the bodies after us.

4. I must be prepared to do what must be done

The lightboard in front of me had the details of my mission on it; my eyes ran over them as Commander Smith spoke. "So, the plan is that you'll pose as hotel staff to get access to the Karina Xi. The details of how we'll facilitate this are in your briefing documents. Once you have access to her room, we need you to confirm that she's in league with the terrorists and then, well," he smiled darkly, and placed a gun on the table in front of me.

I looked down at it. "I doubt she's just going to say, 'Yeah, sure, I'm a national traitor'," I pointed out. "And if you're looking for someone to sweep her electronic devices, I'm not the right person for that."

Commander Smith looked unmoved. "She's not stupid enough to leave any trace of her terrorist activity on her phones."

"Then how exactly do you hope I'll confirm the leak is her?"

There was that dark smile again. "Oh, I'm sure you'll think of a way, Reyes."

It took me a moment to catch on, and when I did, all the blood drained out of my face. "Sir, torture is forbidden in the UN Charter, and—"

"—that's the number one reason Blackwatch doesn't keep records, Reyes," he said smoothly, and then turned back to the board. "Anyway, the briefing documents contain further details about your assignment. We expect your best chance is to apply for the janitorial position that's being advertised currently. We've dummied you up a very convincing resumé, and posing as 'José Luis', you'll—"

"—Janitorial position?" I didn't— "I've been leading a strike force for nearly ten years, Blackwatch for twelve months, I don't think that—"

"We needed something believable, Reyes. This is about raising the least possible suspicion for why you're in the hotel. Who suspects a janitor? And we needed someone who would be a believable janitor."

Suddenly it was really damn clear why I was doing this assignment and Jack wasn't. "I can see why you didn't get Jack to do this."

Commander Smith rolled his eyes at me. "Jack doesn't look like a janitor, does he, Reyes? Think about it." He gave me a patronising smile. "Jack's face says movie star, not 'staff'. I need a face that says 'staff'."

You've been thinking a lot about our faces, I thought, angry about that. I wanted to say it, but I held my tongue.

"But if I had asked Jack to do this assignment," Commander Smith continued, "I'd put money on him not complaining he was above being a janitor if that's what was required. He knows when a job just needs to be done."

When a job just needs to be done? Apparently, what needed to be done was posing as a janitor and torturing a teenage girl.

I caught myself getting into that dangerous spiral again. I needed to focus on the job: if she was the leak, completing this mission could potentially save thousands of lives. It's for the greater good, I repeated to myself, it's for the greater good. The terrorists had probably chosen a young, 'innocent' carrier in order to make it harder for us to bring ourselves to eliminate her, I told myself. It's all part of warfare.

Sick to my stomach, I picked up the gun.

"Look on the bright side, Reyes," the commander told me cheerfully as I left to go and find Jack, "doesn't your mother live in Texas now? You're always complaining you don't see enough of her: well, you can visit her after you've completed your mission." He had the gall to smile at me.

I didn't smile back. I wished someone would put me on a mission to torture that asshole instead of this poor teenage girl.

When I told Jack, he wasn't as horrified as I thought he'd be, either. "Commander Smith has a point," he noted after I told him about the conversation. "He's always very realistic about this stuff, and he's not shy about making hard decisions when he needs to."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked him, my voice shooting way up high. "You agree with his 'we need someone who looks like—'"

"You're putting words in my mouth, Gabe," he told me far too calmly. "But since we're being honest, which of us would you, as an ordinary citizen, believe is a janitor?"

I couldn't fucking deal with this right now; I was going to punch him if I stayed here. "Goodnight," I hissed, storming out of his bunk.

5. I must be prepared to sacrifice myself to save others.

Jack wasn't sitting next to me at the meeting table. He hadn't for a few weeks now; we hadn't been the same since my assignment, and the strain of all the media scrutiny had gotten to us all.

I understood. It was hard; Blackwatch was under a lot of pressure and I was used to it, he wasn't. I still watched him sit silently, though, thoughtful while there were people all arguing around him.

"It doesn't matter how it got out anymore," Commander Smith's angry voice silenced us, "what matters is that it's out, and we need to do something urgently to put it back in again!" He tossed the newspaper into the centre of the meeting table—in front of the entire Overwatch commandership. The front page read, "Overwatch Claims Torturing Children 'Defending Humanity'".

Fuck; that one was more damning than usual. Everyone was looking at me.

"I can't believe you ordered this, Gabriel," Ana's voice harped at me from across the table. "What is wrong with you? This isn't—"

Even to me, my voice sounded robotic. "She was funding the people who plant bombs under your house, Ana, the people who fire bullets at your—"

"She's a child Gabriel, she's younger than my Fareeha! How could you think that she had any idea what she—"

Commander Smith shouted over us again. "Okay, that's enough! You can tell Reyes what you think of his methods later. What matters is how we're going to finish this. Morrison?"

To my surprise, Jack stood. He was smiling.

W-What…?

Commander Smith put a hand across Jack's shoulder. It—seemed a little familiar. They smiled at each other before Commander Smith spoke. "I'd like you to congratulate the newly appointed Strike Commander of Overwatch: the man Overwatch has commissioned to cut out the rotten, corrupted elements in Overwatch and bring it back to its former glory."

…'Strike Commander'? But Jack had never mentioned…

"Commander Morrison will announce his new leadership to the world tomorrow, and how his sole responsibility is dutiful, honest and transparent governance of Overwatch. No more shady operations."

While I was trying to grasp what that meant, Jack spoke. "Commander Smith and I have been talking extensively about how to repair Overwatch's reputation," he said, not specifying when this so-called 'talking extensively' had taken place. "And what we think is that we need to dissolve Blackwatch. It's too much of a liability. Now the war is over, Overwatch's best position is as a beacon of strength, and a beacon of light and hope to humanity: heroes who triumphed over evil." He didn't look at me.

Everyone else was looking at me, though, and Commander Smith was looking at Jack.

I felt sick. "So this is how I find out I've lost my job." I said stiffly to the side of Jack's head. It was apparently how I found out I'd lost a lot of things.

"You'll be reassigned," Commander Smith told me. "I've left it up to Jack how he'll—"

"Did it occur to you that rather than put me out of a job, since I'm the one who's actually had experience commanding for ten years, that maybe you should consider—"

"You were commanding Blackwatch Gabriel," Ana told me. "And look at where that has got us!"

I turned sharply to her. "You were happy enough with what I was doing while it was keeping terrorists suppressed for a full decade." I looked across all of them. "You were happy to claim Overwatch was involved when—"

Commander Smith spoke again. "Times have changed, Reyes. There's no point in being endlessly bitter over everything. Overwatch has a new role to play. We need a poster boy for hope, and just look at Morrison: doesn't that strong jaw and bright smile just scream 'hero'?" I resisted the urge to actually scream. "He's much more photogenic and charismatic than I ever was. He's exactly what we need to inspire faith in Overwatch again. Just think of how great he'll look in front of all the cameras."

They smiled at each other again—for just a little too long. It was surreal. I was too angry even to shout. My chest was so tight I could hardly draw a breath.

"Well, I think it's wonderful, Jack," Ana told him. "I think you'll make an excellent strike commander."

"Of course you pick his side," I muttered; no one heard me, though, because they'd all started to applaud what Ana had said.

Jack was pretending not to enjoy the attention. "Thank you, thank you, but I'm just doing my job," he said 'modestly', like someone had granted him sainthood already.

It was too much. "I've just been doing my job, too," I said loudly enough for him to hear.

He did. Now, he looked at me. "Yeah, well, unlike you, Gabe, I recognise my job is a privilege, not a burden, something you've obviously forgotten at some point," he said clearly. "Perhaps it's time for you to reflect on your recent attitude and remember what Overwatch is: an organisation to inspire hope."

Commander Smith looked positively star-struck. "You see, that's the face we want to present to the media!"

"Not a sour one," Ana said quietly to me—not unkindly, really, but she was always blunt, and I was not in a good place to hear it. "Honestly, Gabriel, you've been so bitter lately. Are you really surprised he picked Jack?"

I wasn't surprised, actually. I was disgusted, but I wasn't surprised. Nothing about this surprised me. It just made me sick. I was done with this meeting. I stood and walked out; I needed to get some air before I strangled Jack in front of everyone; not that they could have a worse opinion of me.

No one stopped me from leaving.

As I marched back to my bunk, my pulse hammering in my ears and my heart hammering in my chest, little things made sense: Jack choosing to sleep in his own bunk lately. Jack getting a new haircut, working out more and meticulously checking his uniform was on right. Jack always picking Commander Smith's side when I tried to complain about my assignments. Little things made sense and they made me sick: he was sleeping with the man who'd put the gun in my hand and then punished me for pulling the trigger.

When I got back to my bunk, Jack's toothbrush was gone. So was his spare pair of underwear, his pillow. He'd known what was going to happen. He'd planned it, and part of me wasn't surprised.

I picked up the photo of us from my bedside table: smiling, arms around each other on my late mother's porch. Sitting in the old chair she'd loved. She'd sent that photo to me for my birthday; all I got now in the post was hate mail from my cousins.

I used to look at this photo and think about how beautiful he was.

It hurt to look at it now. I twisted at my chest and tore at my lungs and I—I snapped it in half with my bare hands. Glass sliced through my fingers; I didn't care. It seemed fitting. The frame snapped in half, I tore the photo in two and dropped in on the floor, treading on it as I walked out.

I needed to get out of here right now.

I couldn't even imagine how I was going to not strangle him on sight when he looked me in the face and told me what my reassignment was—because the thought of strangling him was so fucking attractive. Of wrapping my bloody fingers around his neck. Pressing my thumbs down into his throat. Maybe tying him up; stringing him out. Using all the torture methods Overwatch had made sure to teach me to force him to tell me why he did it, why he did it, why he was doing it and why he was doing this to me. Hurting him like he'd so easily hurt me. After all these years, after everything we'd been through, he was doing this to me?!

Outside, the blast of fresh air cleared my head somewhat—I picked up my feet and ran.

I ran. I ran until my heart pounded and my chest burnt and my head span. Along the cliffs we used to drive past together, through the towns we used to eat at together. I kept thinking I heard the sound of his laughter in each bustling restaurant; every time I saw a blond head, I expected it to be his.

He was probably fucking Commander Smith right now. 'Celebrating' his new position in Overwatch and in Commander Smith's bed, while the rest of the fucking base practically cheered them on.

They made me sick, the lot of them.

Sick.

And no amount of fresh air cleared that disgusting, slimy feeling in the bottom of my stomach.

I was the 'rotten' part of Overwatch, apparently. Not the commander who ordered me to do everything I'd done. Not the man who'd cheated on me for God knows how long. Not any of the people who'd disrespected me and betrayed me: I was the 'rotten core'.

I ran out of road to jog along when I reached the edge of the peninsula; I stopped at the rocky cliff-face and looked towards the setting sun.

I used to think it was beautiful here; twenty years ago, I remember almost crying with joy when I first saw it.

I'd written to my mother to tell her every little detail of it. I'd taken so many photos for her, and listened to her excited voice down the line, gushing 'It's perfect, Gabriel, it's perfect, just like my little boy'."

Her tune had changed before she died, though. The first time the papers came out, she'd been angry. 'How dare they criticize you,' she'd said, 'don't they know how hard your job is?', but as the headlines kept rolling, her emails kept getting sparser and sparser. My cousins loved to tell me in graphic detail how she'd sobbed when people spat on her in the street. 'What sort of son have you raised?' people would shout at her.

By the time she died, she was too afraid to leave home. On her deathbed, she'd touched my face like she was gazing at a stranger and asked me, 'Where did my perfect little boy go? Where is my little Gabriel?'

I couldn't answer her. I couldn't say anything.

Below, the waves lapped at the rocks.

I bet they all hope I jump, I thought, my resolve strengthening not to jump. I bet they all just hope I quit Overwatch and disappear.

Well, I wasn't going to, not after what they'd done to me. They weren't getting the easy way out.

My mother didn't raise a quitter, and I was going to hold those fuckers accountable. Accountable for all the lives the taken, accountable for everything they'd destroyed, and accountable for everyone they'd ruined, one way or another.