There was only ever so much running a man could do before his problems caught up to him. Not that McCree was really all that interested in running from this particular problem. Years have past, times have changed; the man in black flees across the desert, and this time the gunslinger follows.
XXXXX
MARCH, 2075
There's something cursed about the first night you spend in someone else's home. Its unlike the feeling you get a hotel, and its unlike just visiting a place. Its somehow the complete fucking opposite of a liminal space- instead'a bein' the in between spot, you somehow felt like the unwilling voyeur on whatever the hell the occupants had ever done, past present and future, n' also like you're the other woman, or a third wheel to the Nth degree.
Now, if that feeling was amplified by the fact that Jesse McCree had broken in to this particular home, and he had no Godly idea who the occupants were, that wasn't anyone's business but his damn self.
And that was how he'd found himself in someone else's kitchen, making coffee with some ol lady's very nice coffee machine, with someone else's coffee grounds. At least he was a good guest, cleaning up after his messes, and only sleeping on the couch. But hey, it was hard to get a motel when you were upstate of the gentrification line of Arizona, and the only option was a hotel that definitely woulda had questions for him.
Well, the rich white folks who lived here wouldn't really notice his presence. And he always provided his own alcohol, he thought self-deprecatingly as he held his flask, poised to pour a good serving of whiskey into his coffee.
"Really?" Came the familiar, disappointed voice, and Jesse doesn't even bother turning around. Merely snorted, and shrugged, taking a long pause to think over this particular decision, putting a hand to his forehead, in a useless attempt to see if he was feverish.
"You're right, Gabe." He addressed the specter, before downing the burnin' drink wholesale, straight from the flask. "Ain't no point in playing coy." He mumbled to nothin' in particular, seeing as the specter was gone, and he was alone.
And alone he'd been, for years now. Too many years, really.
He turned on the television, because there ain't no point to hiding from the worlds problems right now. The news rang off with the familiar story, of the Second Omnic Crisis, and the spillover from that. New death counts, totals, word of Russian resistance and new casualties in other parts of the world.
He sighed, watching it and rubbing his face, before sitting down with his coffee and whiskey.
The loneliness was really startin' to get to him, that he had to admit- the hallucinations were gettin' worse. The reason he was here, couped up in some rich persons home while he reorganized and reset himself, was 'cause he'd gone out all the way to Hanamura in search of a certain green cyborg asshole. 'Cause once upon a time, Genji and him hadn't exactly been friends, or enemies- but they'd really not just been coworkers either. They'd been somethin' a lil more, and a lil less. Somewhere in the in between.
That last time they'd spoken had been in Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and it felt like a lifetime ago.
"So you're drinking now."
Genji's voice reverberated off in the back of his mind, as he sat there and drank from his flask, hand gently swirling the liquid within as he twirled it slowly around, head down as he thought back to it. Speak of- or really, McCree mused, think of- the devil, and he appeared.
The hallucinations weren't necessarily new; they'd been following him ever since the nightmare that had sent him running out of Overwatch to begin with. But admittedly, they were worse when he was drinking, and if you had to ask if McCree was drinking, then hell, he was sorry for your lack of basic abilities of perception.
He was drinking, yes, back then, and even now. He'd not even realized how bad he'd had it back then. Hell, he was well aware of his vice now, but still, the comment had stung, and it had stung badly, and he'd boiled beneath the surface.
"Don't deflect me. I know how you feel about this mess McCree. There's no way you're just going to simply sit here and do nothing about it. They're going to come for people like us."
Genji'd been right, on all ends. Genji was right about how he'd felt, back then, and was right about how McCree didn't wind up sittin' there, doin' nothin' about it. And they had come for him, oh Lord God above, they had come for him.
He took another harsh sip as pain struck him, his feelings too much for him to deal with. It was easier to cope when alcohol tempered the depression just to the point where he would be sad, but functional.
"Where will you be when all this goes wrong, Jesse McCree?" The specter of Genji asked him, and McCree had to rub his eyes and look down, from its accusatory glare, while the memory answered for him, so stupidly, naively wrong.
Angie's eyes, red from tears, her little hands balled up into tight lil' fists, shaking in her upset. "Genji. He...told me he was leaving. His mission was over, and so he was going to leave." Angie, dear Angie- he'd not seen her, not talked to her in years. It was of his own making.
Torbjorn's face, stuck in horror, unable to find the words as both McCree and the newer baby of Overwatch, Tracer, assaulted him with the same question. "Rookie...McCree... No, Lena, and Jesse." The sorrowful look that melted onto his face. "She didn't make it back at all. Ana's dead."
Reinhardt, so boisterous and proud, his greyed head bent over in submission as he was forced into retirement, effective immediately after Ana's funeral.
"I didn't see her. I wasn't there. I should have gone to her during Ramadan. I should have been with her for Eid. No, she can't be dead, she was barely in her 50s. She shouldn't have died. She can't be gone." Fareeha's cries at her funeral continued to echo in the empty space, the high ceilings of the house reverberating with her pain that she spilled out from her being in the way they were all feeling inside. Ana had been family, their friend. And she was gone. It hurt, even now. He tried to stop himself from thinking, tried to focus on the news, but found himself completely unable to. It took ahold of him, and just refused to let him go.
Torbjörn's rage after the funeral, when the whole base was working in a haze of grief and fear of the future- his dramatic exit from Overwatch also stirred around in his mind as he sipped his coffee, still trying to ignore his own head, shuffling along from the kitchen, trying to locate a computer. "We do everything we were asked for 20 odd years, and this is how you repay us?" Often, Jesse wondered the same damn thing, as he was now 36, having been doing what he felt was just for not yet 20 years- and nothin' to show for it but the warrant for his arrest and the bounty hanging over his head all the while as he hung his head.
And then there'd been the trial. His trial, of course, the one where he was put up for his misconduct by bein' in London when Blackwatch was benched, for stopping a bomb, saving the lives of 11 people, n' blowing his damn self up. They were always so quick to place blame on others. But he finally found the computer, and signed in, quickly, as his guest user- Joel Morricone. He had to just publish a mostly written story, real fast, about what had gone down when he'd been away.
But the worst part of it all was Gabriel himself.
"Ingrate. Don't you know what everyone's done for you? What I've done for you? This is their fault, and I've done everything I can, and you still defend them. You, who have sat on your ass and himmed and hawed about not knowing what to do- about leaving. Talking with Amari all the time, scheming behind our backs."
It had hurt. It had hurt him to the depth of his core- and he couldn't find the words to stop the black tar that was the hatred that spilled out of the man who he'd loved. "Traitor. Should have known you would be one. You were so quick to turn on your bedfellows with Deadlock. Ingrate. I'm doing this for you, and you're telling me that we shouldn't?"
And then the damned end of it all- with Gabriel's eyes cruel, and hard. "Were you going to say we should run away together? Ridiculous. Something out of a children's fantasy. I wanted you because I thought you were beyond thinking of things like love."
But he wasn't. He had planned on asking him that. Because he wasn't beyond thinking, wanting, love.
"I won't be anywhere when things go wrong, 'cause things won't go wrong." He'd said, and god, he hiccupped as he recalled how mistaken he was, his chest hurting as he remembered the end of that conversation "I will follow him to hell. That's what loyalty is. S' what love is." How completely fuckin' blind he'd been to the reality of his situation. Here he was, 5 years past with nothin' to show for it except a crippling addiction to alcohol, hallucinations and ghosts hauntin' him at all hours of the day, and a few million dollars added to his name. And in the end, mocked for his own feelings by the person he felt them for.
But his tears weren't met with more specters. He was seemingly free of them, for the time being. His breathing hard, he just…rubbed his eyes, and kept on keeping on.
He finished writing his article, and uploaded it with ease from the rich folks computer, sighing as he read the title. "THE NEW PEACEKEEPERS: Vigilante Justice- Vital in a Post-Overwatch World?"
The article in itself was admittedly a bit of a leading question, but McCree was damn tired of always playing the villain and walking into his own noose, inadvertently tightening the rope.
5 years since Gabe and Jack went down in flames with Zurich and Jesse's old life, 4 since Overwatch's collapse, and in McCree's fine opinion, that meant that some people were bound to start feelin' nostalgic for how things used to be. True, he'd been in Hanamura attempting to locate a particularly slippery ex-coworker of his, but the people there surely remember how much better the streets were when Blackwatch took down the Shimada clan. And now they're back.
He wanted folks to change their minds about him, n' other vigilantes- he knew other ex-Overwatch folks had the same idea that he did, that they could still do good in the world…
He sighed, rubbing his temples as he sat at the computer, and stared. …Being honest with himself, he'd thought he'd find Genji there, wanting to fight old ghosts and recreate old battles, just as he was about to do. The article in itself was really just…a way of getting the word out to anyone who was lookin'- that Jesse McCree was alive and well, n' lookin' for some good old-fashioned help. The article finished with suggesting that he was rounding up a posse- though the words weren't something he'd ever say aloud, per say, if Genji ever saw it, he'd know that it was McCree that had written it.
A long time mockery that was one of Genji's favorites was accusing McCree of having a posse, given his only real experience with American culture prior to being in Overwatch was through movies, and Genji also had this rather twisted idea he was cosplaying, when really, that's just how some folks down where he grew up dressed. Now that he'd abandoned the Blackwatch look himself, he hoped…maybe, even though they'd parted on nasty terms, they could work together.
He finished looked at his article, having freshly updated the page, and eyed the side links. Beneath the recommended for you section was nothin' but the reminder that he was alone now- and that his sins were still ever present, ever needing accounting for.
"Deadlock Biker Club National Rally." Slick, but Jesse knew em better than that. He'd worked for em for years too, before Reyes plucked him out of the litter as the best damn marksman he'd ever seen with a six-shooter- and the only one to ever get a gun to Gabriel's head. The true reason he'd stood out all those years ago- his confidence as he held a gun to the temple of a super soldier, the hero of the omnic crisis, 12 years his senior, in the middle of his team, having gotten the drop on Gabriel, gotten up closer n' personal, behind enemy lines without them ever noticing.
Their infamous first contact- made so by the Challenge Reyes would set to others, to see who could recreate that- aside…Jesse knew Deadlock. Their new name was to not raise suspicion, but in the 21st century, they all knew the damage that rally's could do, and what types of folks it could bring out given what had happened in the second decade of the century.
That mess aside, Jesse McCree was now placed to continue with Reyes' legacy, and clean up Deadlock now that its head got too big all over again and it's an oversized pimple of the face of the American Plains. Now, that was a fair bit of a problem, considering the people round there hated his face. That Deadlock propaganda that always had a ring o' Truth to it- that he'd been turned over to the other side, that he'd come in with those millions hanging over his head and lead the town into despair. Or they could turn him in and make somethin' more than two coins to rub together. Honestly, he understood them fine.
Money never really changed, see. Didn't really matter to folks if it was covered in blood when they got it out of the vending machine or when they turned in a relatively good man for the ghosts of a gang a lifetime ago. Least it felt like to him. Those times were over, not quite 20 years earlier. Finished when a man who, even now, meant the world to him despite how he was long since gone, took him in under his wing.
Not that these times were truly too much different. He just had a stronger sense of morality.
Which made him sigh, again, because he knew how this was going to go down, if he did show up. But he also knew himself, even if things had gotten a lil more foggy over the years, given how Overwatch's fall and Reyes…had made him question himself, and his loyalties, and his personal sense of justice.
But he also knew, show his face there and he'd get another couple hundred added to his bounty, and there was a mighty big chance he could fuck up this mission he assigned himself. But if he didn't, if he let him get away... He was becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Not just to Overwatch, but to the world. "Someone has to do it, seems fitting it'd be me." McCree murmured, rubbing his face logged out of the computer, staring at the other article's description.
"The Crisis is over- but the search for answers isn't."
That it wasn't. And McCree was still searching for em.
And one day, he'd have em all, 'cause even the devil was bound to get right, and in the eyes of society, the devil was him.
Gabriel Reyes might have changed in the end, but that didn't mean that Jesse would just sit by and let his hard work against the scourge of the southwest fade from living memory. Transporting WMDs made the whole world a whole lot less safe, and it was about time for someone to pay for it.
After all…a bomb like the one that had blown up Zurich had to have come from somewhere- and Jesse had gotten an inkling once he'd seen photos of what the bomb in London had left of itself who was the supplier. Well, really, more than an inkling of who. He knew Deadlock's handiwork from intimate experience, and the more he remembered of his patchwork memories from his stint in London, the more he recalled how easy it had been to disable the damn thing. But that meant Deadlock had been back for a while now. The whole biker club thing had been going for a while, but it was awful strange that they'd had no missions at all investigating the region if they were back to makin' bombs before Overwatch even fell.
And Jesse also sure as hell knew that they'd be eager to make Overwatch pay for thinning their ranks out, taking them out as surgically as Jesse knew Gabriel had. They'd also be real eager to make Gabriel Reyes himself pay for it. They had a revenge streak, Jesse'd know both from havin' been in it once, himself, but also from how he knew, going where he would be goin', he was gonna have the odds stacked against him from the start. Sure, it was fond to be remembered, but hell, he already had the damn cops to worry about.
Which just reaffirmed another point in his editorial on Hanamura- crime was running rampant, and the authorities sure as hell didn't seem to care who the actual bad guys were, nor did they seem ready to do anything about the situation.
The rest of the morning was simple, really. He did a quick batch of laundry, put away the sheets he borrowed for the night, and cleaned up the dishes he'd used in the morning.
Just 'cause he was squatting, didn't mean that he'd given up basic manners, cmon now. He still had a basic sense of human decency, after all.
The sense of morality that Gabriel Reyes had fostered in him after years of working n' following the man who was made of finer things than McCree ever had been, along with the deep love he'd felt for him, despite how they ended, it was ingrained in Jesse as the red was dyed in the wool o' his serape.