The boy stared with glassy orbs at the sky, watching in silent, mesmerized awe as the horizon melted into the endless blue above and rainbows snaked through the clouds.
His back burned where the sun-warmed earth pressed his threadbare shirt against his skin, scalding and healing and peeling, every nerve alight, every neuron firing with more signals than his mind could handle, and they blurred, becoming a noiseless scream that surged through his system while his thoughts drifted, formless, as he seemed to rise, up and up and out of his body, out of a cage that no longer held him prisoner.
His body shivered when a vicious chill replaced the scalding sensation of heat, but it didn't concern him.
The sky, that morning, was beautiful.
"The Omnics sure know their shit, don't they?" The words floated over him, their meaning lost. His heavily dilated eyes flicked to the dark circles shifting in his peripheral, shrinking and growing as the men in the wide-brimmed hats hunched close to monitor his reaction.
He tried to raise his head, suddenly seized by the inexplicable urge to get a better look at them, to burn their faces into his memory, but his head weighed a thousand pounds, and after the failure of his first attempt, he forgot why he'd ever wanted to move in the first place.
A second voice, deep and gravelly, scoffed, "Nah, most of them don't know squat about how the human body works or what it can take. 's why each new batch of Rust is so damn near unpredictable. Bots don't have'ta worry about keeping their clientele alive. Heck, they'd probably be pleased as punch if we all bit it." The thought didn't seem to bother him. If anything, he seemed to regard the sentiment with a measure of respect.
A dangerously low growl from past the borders of the boy's unfocused gaze had the men twisting to face a newcomer, and the boy reluctantly tore his eyes away from the living sky to see one of the more recent Deadlock inductees, a teen only a little older than himself, but there were storm clouds on his brow, spurs in his boots, and a sidearm made of smoke settled comfortably against his hip. And leeching off his skin like miasma, the boy could see wisps of scarlet that swirled around him as the cowboy threw aside his façade of calm in favor of furiously pointing in his direction, and the other two exchanged glances, then spoke slowly, placatingly. And the cowboy listened, his face hard, jaw tight, while their fingers subtly reached for the triggers of their revolvers.
With whiplash speed, they drew. There was a spark, a flash of gunpowder, but after the final bullet left the barrel, there were two bodies lying on the ground, one clutching his shoulder, writhing, the other still and tellingly silent.
The cowboy stood over them, his own weapon still drawn. And the boy saw that the red mist had seeped into his eyes. The air began to leave his lungs in harsh exhales as the red began to fade, taking the majority of his almost supernatural composure with it. He bit out something angry, something tainted with traces of disappointment and hurt, but mostly just coldly furious, and then his attention was on the boy, who couldn't even muster up the will or want to cringe at the intensity of it. Gradually, the cowboy's expression softened. Kneeling at his side, he placed a cool hand on the boy's heated brow, then spoke softly, "They promised your family food, didn't they? Said you'd get a month or a week's worth if ya did them a little favor first."
The boy lifted his chin but didn't nod. He wanted to answer - the cowboy was being kind and the boy wanted him to keep being kind - but how could he when he didn't know?
Distantly, he remembered leaving town that morning to make the trip to the Deadlock barracks. He hadn't been alone, then. Not at the start. Which raised another question, one that his addled mind wasn't yet prepared to face.
The cowboy relaxed, allowing the tension to drain from his shoulders, before glancing at his incapacitated comrades with a raised eyebrow. "Well, don't think I'm going ta be gettin' any answers from my compatriots anytime soon, so why don't I just take ya home. You can sleep this off there." He gathered up the boy in his arms like he weighed little more than a pillow, collected his younger sister, who the boy now remembered with a thrill of fear had followed him to the camp, and escorted them both all the way to their doorstep.
For the next month, enough food rations to feed the entire family were placed on their stoop at the start of each week, and though they never saw who left the food, the identity of their mysterious benefactor was never in doubt.
If there's one constant in the world, it's that the vultures always know where the slaughter is.
There are dozens of them flying in lazy circles over the remains of the harmless rural town a couple Talon wannabes decided to torch to the ground. The young fools had treated the pointless killing like it was an audition, and maybe they hadn't been wrong to. Terrorist organizations tended to desire that kind of wanton cruelty in their members. It was the only reason they'd sent Reaper to clean up their mess, when he should have been blasting them full of holes.
No matter how many times he reminded himself he was a killer now, a mercenary, a worthless gun-for-hire, he couldn't stamp out the spark of rage that flared at every trace of the carnage they'd left behind in a small town no one had ever heard of.
He'd grown up in a small Mexican village just like this one, after all.
The aluminum roof of a collapsed one-room dwelling shone dully in the sunlight thanks to the thick layer of dust and dirt coating its surface. Reaper gave a wooden beam lying close to a pile of smouldering debris a light kick from the steel toe of his boot, and watched as the ash from what had once been a chair crumbled into formless pale embers.
The other houses were more of the same; remnants of lives cut short that would soon be erased from the face of the earth. And judging by the acrid scents of burned flesh and hair saturating the air, the chances of there being any survivors were slim, which meant Reaper was wasting his time here.
A feeble cough, so soft he might have missed it had his hearing not been enhanced to an acuity that bordered on superhuman, gave him pause. He debated ignoring it, figuring that anyone trapped under the rubble of their own homes would soon be dead even without a bullet's assistance, so long as they stayed buried, but it'd be a shame if Talon got wind of a survivor and got on his back about it. Between questioning his skills and his loyalty, Reaper wasn't sure which they enjoyed more. And the many exasperated reminders that he was, in fact, a mercenary and not a devoted believer in their cause, always went conveniently unheard, as though the slightest hint that someone might not buy what they were selling plugged their ears with cotton.
In the end, the long buried instincts of a man who'd spent his life working for the sake of others surged to the forefront, and he approached the nearest stone slab, rifles held loosely at his sides. There was a rustling within the debris that hinted at movement, and a mound of ash further disintegrated thanks to a huge junk breaking off and sliding into the cracks and crevices of the former home.
Reaper focused his search there, and was soon rewarded when the removal of a warped metal sheet revealed the charred and clawed hand of a child. There were black patches decorating the slender arm, thin fingers digging into the dirt as though groping for purchase, and a thick layer of dust and ash and silicates that greyed every inch of skin unconcealed by the stone wall that must have collapsed on top of them during the attack.
Though reluctant to see what grisly sight was waiting for him beneath it, if only because he still had to return after this mission to the men who'd committed this atrocity and not immediately tear their throats out, he tossed his weapons to the side, wedged his gloved fingers beneath the slab, and devoted every last enhanced cell and nanite in his cursed body to lifting the debris. There was a startled gasp, a quiet, relieved cry. He shifted the wall fragment until it was clear, then carefully set it down so that nothing became dislodged and jabbed or crushed the kid.
Who, as it turned out, was a little girl. Her wavy brown hair was pressed against her scalp, matted with blood around her left temple, and a split in her lower lip dripped a steady scarlet stream down her chin. Below her waist remained pinned, however, While a second wall had propped up the first, shielding her head and upper body from the majority of the weight, her lower half was burdened with what looked to be most of the house. There were chipped bricks and smoking logs from the furnace, a splintered support beam from the ceiling, concrete, the aluminum ceiling, and knickknacks - pictures of a loving family with broken frames peeking out from the mountain of junk piled on top of her legs. Even if Reaper managed to clear it all, he doubted there was anything left to salvage. She'd need Mercy to have any hope of ever walking again.
Unfortunately, all she had was him, and he wasn't there to save her soul. Quite the opposite, really.
Though she could barely lift her head, the eyes with which she tracked his movements burned with a steady, indomitable flame. Maybe it was the dust caked over her pointed, hawkish features, or maybe it was the shadows concentrated in the lines and angles of her face, but she seemed older than her years, stern and severe, as though she were the memorial erected in memory of this day, a statue cut from marble dedicated to the girl about to die.
Her strength dwindling, she quickly gave up on keeping her head raised, but her fierce gaze never dulled as it continued to rove over the thick cloak draped from his shoulders and the angular bone-white mask he wore in honor of their shared traditions and culture, of Santa Muerte and the predators of the night that served as her messengers. With labored, heaving breaths that stabbed her throat and inner lungs with silicates, she said in an awed whispered, "You took my parents away."
Reaper regarded her in silence, unsure of how to respond. If they hadn't been home when the explosions went off, then there was a strong possibility that they'd been out in the streets, in which case, their bodies had already been dragged away to be buried in an unmarked mass grave. He'd had nothing to do with it, but denying any responsibility for their deaths tasted like a lie.
Eventually, he gave a slow nod, and she relaxed, relief blooming unexpectedly through the pain twisting her expression. "Will you take me away, too?" She doesn't sound afraid, only curious. He's tempted to attribute it to shock, but then she huffed a laugh that broke off into a fit of wheezing and coughing, and when she could finally speak, she smiled,"Mama said Santa Muerte was a lady.
In different circumstances, Reaper might have rolled his eyes, heedless of the gesture's discovery. This time, he opted with offering a dry, "Sorry to disappoint."
"That's okay. It doesn't really matter, not so long as you can take me to see my parents again." She looked at him expectantly, like he could wave a hand and she'd magically be standing in the afterlife, reunited with her family and whole again, but death was rarely so painless or so clean. Not only that, but his instincts told him that even without any assistance from him, she'd be making that journey on her own soon enough.
"Aren't you scared?" She glanced up sharply at the question, distracted for a moment from the increasing struggle of filling her torn and seared lungs with air.
For a moment, her lower lips trembled, but she sucked it between her teeth and bit down before blinking several times to rid her eyes of a wetness that stubbornly persisted. "When I go with you," another cough wracked her frame, cutting through the space between them with a ripping, tearing sound. Without thinking, Reaper's gloved hand found her curled palm and squeezed, offering her comfort when he'd truly believed he'd forgotten how. She stared at his hand clasping hers, surprise making her dark eyebrows travel up her forehead before a grateful smile curved her dried and bleeding lips.
Besides a steady leaking from the corners of her eyes due to the sting of particles and the heat, she still refused to give into her fear, which was more than Reaper could say for the majority of the soldiers who crossed his path. In another time, she would have made for an excellent addition to Blackwatch.
Finally, a paper-thin whisper trickled out, "… will it hurt?"
For him, that one truth, that pain did not follow you into death, had been a lie. Now that he was more dead than alive, all he knew was pain. But what she needed wasn't a tortured man, filled with regrets and an insatiable hunger for revenge. Those were mortal concerns, and Death's messenger was more than a man, which was exactly why he'd chosen to wear the mask, so that he could be more than Gabriel Reyes.
He'd never expected that Fate would call upon him to become more than a mercenary, as well. "No," he told her, and found that he believed it. "When you go with me, it won't hurt, anymore." She relaxed, satisfied with his answer, trusting it because he was a servant of the lady of Death and thus had no reason to lie. "Close your eyes."
Following his instructions as though compelled, her eyelids began to close. Her long, thick lashes fluttered, as though fighting to stave off sleep. "Relax. You're parents are already waiting for you on the other side. There's no reason to be afraid." He gave her palm a light squeeze. "I'll guide you there myself."
Beneath the thick fabric of his gloves, he could see the tension gradually seep from her limbs, watched as her furrowed brow smoothed into a lineless surface. With each new rise and fall of her chest, her breathing slowed, and the slivers of red-brown eyes that he could still make out beneath the cover of her lashes began to glaze, the fire slowly dying, like a candle reaching the end of its wick.
Finally, the slender fingers curled over his knuckles lost their strength, becoming limp and flaccid in his grasp. He let go, allowing her arm to fall heavily to the earth, where it twitched once before joining the rest of her in stillness.
Almost as an afterthought, he realized that he'd never asked for her name.
He remained crouched by the girl for some time, uncaring of the scarlet radiance of the setting sun or the cooling embers dying in the face of the approaching night's chill. His looming and vast form, crouched in the dirt, kept the vultures from touching her, until his communicator vibrated at his side, rousing him from the timeless trance he'd inadvertently sunken into.
A quick glance at the comm revealed that this was not Talon's first attempt to contact him over the past several hours. Growling under his breath, he switched on the microphone, slipped the device around his ear, and flatly reported on the status of a town in Mexico so small you couldn't find it on a map.
No survivors.
Somehow, getting back into the swing of fighting the good fight on his own wasn't as difficult as McCree had anticipated. After a decade of coordinating his thoughts and actions with a team whose quirks and blind spots he'd learned to know better than the smattering of freckles over his knuckles, it felt almost disappointing to fall so easily back into the rhythm of watching his own back.
He should've known better than to complain about his good fortune, however. Experience had taught him how quickly the tides could turn, how fickle a mistress luck was, and yet it wasn't until he was bleeding out, with cold metal fingers splayed over the gushing mess that remained of his left arm, that he realized his mistake. Strangely enough, his first thought, before the onset of white-hot agony shorted out his circuits for several crucial seconds, was disbelief, because – Really?
This was his last good arm, and his shooting arm to boot. The least folks could do was at least leave him one.
It was followed quickly by the seemingly nonsequitar of – If I live through this, Angela's gonna murder me in my sleep.
And speaking of sleep, McCree was pretty sure that between him and Genji Shimada, the good doctor hadn't gotten a wink of it in years, but he'd still take the chilly burn of her wrath over dealing with the dozen or so trained Talon soldiers currently aiming their weapons unerringly at his head and chest, any day.
The cowboy sensed his former commander's presence before he saw him, but he'd had more pressing matters to worry about, like not dying, and now that he was desperately trying not to bleed out - an endeavor in which his efforts were so far being met with limited success, if the black spots dotting his vision were any indication – finding him still wasn't a priority.
Until the hem of a sweeping black cloak swung in front of him, forming a barrier between him and the majority of the barrels pointed unwaveringly at his chest, and while the sight of Reaper looming in front of him with rifles drawn and ready to fire at his sides wasn't a surprise, he was obviously facing the wrong way. McCree stared at the man's thick back in disbelief, hissing through the pain, "What the hell do you think you're doing, hefe?"
"Shut up," Reaper growled back at him, still blocking him from the sights of the Talon soldiers like a broad and indestructible shield, "and stay down."
A murmur passed through the enemy agents – or rather, McCree's enemy - an uncomfortable shifting and uncertainty brought about by the mercenary's strange behavior. He'd been appointed leader for this mission, and the terrorist organization didn't cover the sudden betrayal of high-ranking members in the orientation.
McCree failed to completely swallow the low, pained grunt that squeezed past his clenched teeth as he tried to tie off the scarlet serape he always wore around the grisly amputation in an effort to cut off the blood flow. It was either that, or bleed out in the sand. There was no time to wait for the wound to coagulate on its own and nothing to cauterize it with. "Gettin' confused in your old age, boss?" Despite the pain and a bitterness that spoiled in his stomach, the cowboy managed to dredge up a cheeky grin. "In case you haven't noticed, you're facin' the wrong way."
Him and Reyes may have been on the outs, but that didn't mean McCree was fine and dandy with the last sight he saw on this green earth being his former commander's execution by firing squad. If McCree was heading to that big saloon in the sky, then he sure as shootin' wasn't looking forward to keeping such grumpy company for the trip.
Unfortunately, some things never changed, because Reaper shut down the idea before the cowboy could get another word out, "Keep talking, ingrate, and I'll kill you myself."
Normally, the surly response would have elicited a low chuckle from the gunslinger, but McCree had a feeling that any laughter he allowed would come out wrong, high-pitched and bordering on hysterical, so he swallowed it down, settling for a grimace, instead. Still, when he managed to find his voice again after a fresh wave of agony from his newly severed limb stole his breath away – and Reaper did look back at him that time, his attention drawn by the sharp hiss of air coming from McCree when he struggled to ride the wave by inhaling through his teeth – it came out soft, gentle in a way that surprised both of them, "Step aside, boss." His gaze flicked past the wraith, settling on the soldiers who seemed to finally be gearing up the nerve to take down not only one very irritating ex-Blackwatch agent, but their mission leader, as well. "Tell 'em you were playin' with my feelings or something." His supervisors might question it, but they both knew he was too valuable to kill without a damn good reason.
Leather creaked as Reyes tightened his grip on his rifles, and McCree closed his eyes, waited for the bullet he knew was coming. Because he was the kind of fool who, even after everything Reyes had done, the people he'd betrayed, still couldn't bear to see his former commander and mentor gunned down in the desert.
There were several reports, screams, shouts, yelling, followed by more gunshots. Then the space in front of McCree was empty. His eyes flew open as he lowered himself to the ground, desperate for any cover it could provide. Just because he wasn't being shot at – and wasn't that a pleasant surprise? – didn't mean he couldn't still wind up with a bullet in his heart.
It wasn't until the screams had died down that the cowboy dared to raise his head, a little at a time in case he'd misjudged the situation, but if he was being completely honest, those guys had been young, green, and McCree couldn't imagine a world where, when pitted against each other, Reyes didn't wipe the floor with them.
And he was right.
He watched as Reaper crouched by the bodies of those gasping out their dying breaths, and stole the life from them, turning the skin beneath their shattered visors grey and their wide, frightened eyes milky-white. It was hard for McCree to pity them after what they'd done but, despite that, he quickly found that hard didn't mean impossible.
By the time Reaper turned his attention back to him, the hot sand beneath the gunslinger was sticky with his blood, with the liquid already beginning to dry into a syrupy thickness. There was too much of it on the outside, not enough on the inside. "Ma always told me Death would come wearing the face of an old friend," he slurred when Reaper trudged away from the dried husks of the Talon soldiers to join him on the dune, "but I guess your ugly mug will just have to do."
"You're not dying, cabron."
He'd said those words before, the first time he'd found McCree curled up on the ground, bleeding out with the useless remains of a busted up arm. McCree hadn't believed him then, back when he'd trusted the man, and he certainly didn't believe a word of it now. If he weren't feeling like the crusty underside of a horse's hoof, he'd have rolled his eyes. Instead, he huffed a tired, "Whatever you say, boss."
He found himself fighting to stay awake while Reyes stripped off his cloak to tear off pieces long enough to create a makeshift tourniquet out of the scraps. The tightening of the fabric around his bicep should hurt more. The absence of electric pain shooting through his nerves would have been a blessing… if it weren't directly related to the severe lack of oxygen getting pumped to his brain. "It's… not so bad, actually," he muttered mostly to himself, still thinking of his mother's words and the days when he used to imagine the sort of face Death might wear when it finally came to take him. "Maybe not my first choice but not my last, either," a wet laugh tore at his throat, "if you can believe that."
Once the damaged limb was bound to his chest, with the leftover strips from the cloak having been wrapped around the forearm and shoulder several times to keep it secure, Reaper stood, slipping his arms through his cloak in one swift motion, before growling into his comm,"Sombra, I need you to send a distress signal to Overwatch and all of its past or present affiliates with the coordinates to my exact location." He paused, obviously listening. Judging by the audible grinding coming from beneath his hood, whatever the answer was, it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Ask questions later," he snapped, "Just do what I said."
"Hey, hefe?" McCree tilted his head and squinted, struggling to make out the bone-white mask through the black spots pulsing through his vision. His entire body was in contact with the sand, which meant he must have gone from sitting to lying down at some point, but he'd be hard-pressed to remember when. "What face do you think the Reaper sees… when Death comes for him?"
His eyes slipped closed, unconsciousness finally taking him, swallowing him whole, so he didn't hear the strangely tender, unfiltered voice that answered, "You're wearing it, dumbass."