He's fought him before, along dust ridden roads of Dorado and the cliffs of Ilios. They've bloodied each other with bullets and fists and bitter words. Lifeblood has stained grains of sand and concrete and leather.
He's honestly not thought much about the ingrate, besides as an aside to Jack. He'd certainly set his eyes on supping on his soul, should the opportunity arise, and has a well of bitterness at the sight of the cowboy hat and steady hands. Muttered curses and taunts maybe a tad more than he would otherwise. But he's not his main meal, tonight.
The Talon agents sent with him on this job shift nervously in the shadows of the building they're hiding in. He swallows his irritation at the noise and clenches his guns in hand.
Perhaps that is why he hesitates when he sees the target at last: the annoyance at Talon and their grunts, the faint nostalgia hunting at the corners of his mind at the sight of red fabric and spurs.
It's not an unfamiliar sight, even an expected one.
But there's a newness in the lines of McCree that has him pausing, gun aimed for the heart and finger on the trigger. A certain knowledge in the light of day that has him tilting his head in thought.
These days, he and Talon are on shaky ground. A few too many posturing lieutenants and a few too many holes in intelligence reports. He accepts the jobs when it's convenient, when he knows Overwatch will be there, but he doesn't subscribe to their bullshit plans. More often than not lately he's been forced back and had to watch in anger as the new Overwatch retreated with their objective to even think that there's anything resembling cleverness in their plots.
Their incompetence is only balanced out by their pet sniper, who he can grudgingly admit to having a good eye for detail and headshots.
Despite all that, Talon has reach. A long arm in every pocket. They've promised for a long while to facilitate his revenge, sharing guns and tech and info. Yet he's no closer to uncovering the depth of his betrayers than he was those years ago.
He's starting to think he knows why.
So he sees McCree, and thinks: cast-off loyalty, scented cigars, blood stained grin. He thinks of the feeling of slim muscle under his hands as he corrected a stance, the hollows of too little food and too much activity, that first mission where he brushed bits of bone out of auburn hair.
He thinks: I wanted this man at some point. I wanted him.
The anger that courses through him has the agents stepping back and him stepping into the light, murder in his bones.
Wanting isn't something he's allowed anymore.
—
Once, he pulled a skinny sharpshooter out of the blood of his brothers and told him that he could either hang in prison or live to see himself on the other side. Squeezed a wrist that twitched to knife him and smiled at the bullets lodged in his armour. Told the kid he need a better gun, better aim. Told him he was better than the gutter trash he'd been steeping in.
Dragged him back to base, watched with sharp eyes over the hunger-laden bites of food, at a flinch from a passing arm, at wary eyes watching him back.
Even then the kid had the ability to bluff like a pro, all bluster and machismo as he huddled in his dirty cowboy getup and shivered in fear. Gabe (he'd been Gabe then, sure and strong and pain-free) had watched the ways his fingers had twitched, the way his eyes were blurry and unfocused. Had skipped the regulations for a few hours to get some food into him, a shower, new clothes. Had bandaged his wounds himself, talking as he did.
"You belong to me now, kid. To Overwatch, yeah, but remember who pulled you out of that shithole. You make trouble, you'll be facing me. You get into trouble, and you come to me. You're Blackwatch now, despite what this shiny badge says."
He'd knocked the Overwatch logo on the kid's new uniform and then pushed him into Angela's tender care. He'd known even then that the kid would be trouble. The way he'd leaned into his hands, the way his eyes had been suspicious and wary and just a little hopeful.
The way he'd stuck around, after unit placement and shift changes and training. The way he didn't, years later when Gabe was drowning under the accusations and lies.
He's not a kid anymore, wasn't even when he'd been running with his old gang. He'd been a kid though, in Gabe's eyes, with the way he'd dress like some sort of circus act, the way he'd do anything for praise, the way his skin had clung to his bones like it was trying to squeeze the life out of him. He'd been a kid, until he hadn't.
—
The mission fails, as it usually does these days. He'd feel frustrated but he knows even the little spider has been having trouble with the regrouping heros. Together they can usually triumph, but with only disposable grunts as backup he might as well just throw his guns in the river. The heroes never go anywhere in less than six.
But he can sometimes catch one or two of them on their own, unaware. Can slip through the shadows and press cold metal against their spines. Can hear the hitch in their breath, smell the fear in the air. He's like a children's tale now, a warning for all the bad little girls and boys of Overwatch to watch the shadows. To stay in the daylight.
Evidently McCree doesn't feel the same sort of tension, loping gracefully down the darkened alleys of Kings Row like he belongs there. Reaper times his steps with his, finger tapping a silent beat against one shotgun. He's broader than Reaper's vague memories, muscular arms where he was thin but corded. There's a stockiness in him that was only just beginning to show. His beard is complete too, instead of the patchwork mess he'd been trying to cultivate for years.
More importantly, Reaper notes with something that feels like bitter pride, he's grown into his talents. His relaxed stance belays the attention he pays to his surroundings, the way his hand is near his gun at all times. The way, with one move, he could be behind cover and with a smoking gun.
He's taught him well.
He ghosts on closer, some strange and incomprehensible pain in his gut pulling him forward. In the distance he can hear a clock tower. It rings to the rhythm in his blood.
"I know y'er here, Reaper," McCree says, slowing at the mouth of the alley. His hand is on his gun, fingers stroking the barrel like it's not a glorified pea shooter. Reaper feels his lips curl.
"You know nothing, ingrate," he whispers behind him, black smoke rising in the air. The whirling body and the shots into the centre of his mass does nothing to him, he simply continues on until he's visible in the light from the dim street lamps, able now to pressure the man back into the shadows of the alley.
"I know damn well enough, Reyes."
Reaper chuckles, the sound grating to even his own ears. The thundering of his blood and hunger are drowned for once by the amused rage that sweeps past.
"Ah, did dear ol' Jack finally fess up? And here I thought we would be speaking in riddles and metaphor for a time yet," he hisses through clenched teeth, "but he's wrong again. Reyes is dead."
Dead, dying, decaying. Burnt skin and broken bones and the agony of feeling his eyes peel away from his face. The smell as he disappeared that first time, collapsing in a cloud of black dust.
"Looking mighty alive where I'm standing." The sound of reloading, steps backing up even now, keeping out of range of the meat-shot gun wounds he'd receive otherwise. Eyes roaming, looking for high ground, an exit. Looking for his shot.
No doubt if Reaper lets him he'll try his flashbang. If he's really unlucky, the Deadeye.
The metal of his lost hand gleams wetly. Reaper remembers the tourniquet, the cries of pain. The way their temporary base had smelled of blood and infection for days. Remembers the way a hunched back had begged him, desperate as fever set in. For mercy, or for Mercy.
In the end he'd dragged the man back not in a bodybag but in the back of a Thunderbird. Backup had arrived only just in time, and he imagines wouldn't have arrived at all if the higher-ups had anything to say about it. The pilot had not been the most rule-abiding in order to save them.
But they'd live, and he doesn't regret it even in the face of horrified tears at a missing arm. Of relearning how to shoot. To fight. Gabe had wanted to live, had wanted his men to live.
Reaper only knows death, now.
"What are you doing here, McCree? All alone while your team is ambushed by Talon? Thought I taught you better than that."
A snarl, another shot that goes blazing through black smoke. McCree can't afford that many more; they're shuffling deeper into the alley and every shot is liable to end up ricocheting off the walls and heading back straight towards him.
Narrowed eyes his way, a flush across tanned skin. McCree isn't as unconcerned as he looks.
"Talon can try, but they won't succeed."
Reaper smiles.
"We'll see about that."
—
Gunfire and smoke and the smell of blood. As familiar as the sound of his heat wracked lungs. Curses and sudden silences, and through the tiny comm he mostly forgets in his ear he hears screams and explosions. He can almost make out the crackle of the Australian maniac from far away.
There's a crack in his mask, where it caught a bullet in the beak. Another buried in his thigh. A bruise on his neck where it caught a pistol whip. McCree fares worse; the scatter-burns of a shotgun up close but just missed, a split lip from getting punched into the wall, metal arm limp and barely responsive from the lead shot stuck in delicate joints. His eyes are blazing despite the way his breath hitches. The way his blood drips.
Reapers feels the ache in his guts bloom. There's a superimposed image over the battlefield of past fights, past missions. Against each other, or together. As Blackwatch, or as Overwatch versus Talon. There's the smell of horrible re-hydrated coffee, the sounds of drunk laughter, silent crying. Phantom pains, mostly.
"Retreat!" Comes the command through his com, the sounds of fighting silencing for a second as it does. Reaper doesn't answer. He doesn't take commands. Doesn't give them either, having giving that up when he died.
He's not beholden to Talon, anyways.
"Poor little bird," he crows instead, advancing once again on the other man. The mission doesn't matter anymore, was already a sidenote hours ago, but here with the smell of blood filtering through his broken mask he feels frenzied, hungry.
"You're one to talk about birds, Reaper. Ain't you taking the theme a little far?" McCree's voice lisps just a little, lists like his whole left side, weighed down by the broken prosthetic.
Reaper bares bloodied teeth and doesn't answer. The man doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to clothing anyhow, reverting back to bad habits now that he doesn't have a Commander that will ream him if he shows up to a mission briefing in chaps.
He stops a few feet from the trembling figure, guns lowered at the pathetic sight. McCree's gotten better, but Reaper did teach him all he knew. Killing him is almost distasteful, when thought like that. Three years is obviously not enough for the man to bloom into something more, even if he has improved.
The dissolution of Overwatch probably didn't helped. He's skinnier than he should be, Reaper notes with a frown. Much bulkier than in his youth, yes, but all of it is exhausted muscle and thin skin.
"You still keep your side open," he says instead, voice flat. There's a part of him that wants to make it a taunt, maybe blast a few more shells into said side.
"I'll keep that in mind," McCree sneers, a little bemused. He's hitching himself back, hands numb on the gun but steady. He'll shoot, Reaper knows.
It would be a waste, he decides. A waste of what, he doesn't know. He turns into smoke without another word, letting the wind drift him away. He suddenly doesn't want to see McCree's bloody face, doesn't want to feel the tug in his gut pulling him closer. Doesn't want to think about the things that died with him.
Doesn't want to examine the thought that drifts into his head at the sight of those defiant eyes, bright and gleaming. The seemingly innocuous idea that roots its way into his brain. He licks scarred lips and retreats back to the extraction point.
McCree looked good, he muses as he settles back into skin and pain and decay.
—
He limps back to his team short of breath, what feels like cracked ribs rubbing against his lungs. There's a migraine blossoming behind his eyelids, and he really just wants to sleep for fourteen hours and down a whole pot of Gibraltar coffee.
Instead, he rounds the bend that he knows will take him back to where the payload is getting loaded onto the plane, and runs straight into Mercy. He grimaces as soon as he sees her expression.
A few of the others cry out a little when they see him, something between worry and elation, and he tries not to let the guilt get to him. He'd had his reasons for splitting.
"I will not even ask what you got into this time, McCree," Angela tsks, grabbing his uninjured arm and steering him towards the shuttle. Her eyes are warm and filled only with concern though, so he doesn't worry too much. One delicate hand unclasps his body armour, Caduceus staff already lit with power. He feels the cool touch of her healing and lets himself slump a little more down in his seat.
"Bruised ribs, shotgun burns, a broken nose. Some slight muscle tears. I suppose it is not as bad as it could be, considering," she mutters as she works, pulling his shirt up to look at the bruising. He shoves his sudden urge to cover his chest as far down as it will go.
"The main issue is the arm," he agrees instead, "it's stopping me from shooting properly."
Mercy runs a critical eye along said arm, before shrugging. He knows already he'll need to go to Torbjörn for a fix, something he's dreading even more than Angela's unavoidable fussing. He'll be out of the field for at least a month.
"I hope you at least got the answers you were looking for."
McCree risks a glance at the woman's eyes, steely and suddenly cool in the night air. He swallows down the platitudes he instinctively reaches for. This isn't the time for southern charm.
"Of course, Ma'am. He fights the same, as you've noticed. Talks similar like too, even if he didn't quite used to be so—so" he trails off. So angry, he wants to say. So insane, though he's not sure that's quite true.
Mercy nods.
"I was sure—I did the autopsy myself. But, I suppose if anyone were able to do it…"
He perks up a little, grabbing onto her hand with sudden urgency. He'd tried to push it to the back of his head as he'd fought, already filled with enough distractions. But this is something she'll need to know.
"He said something, when I said his name. That Jack must have fessed up— you don't think?"
She purses her lips, something in her expression pinched more than the subject deserves. She opens her mouth a few times to answer, seems to think better of it, and continues fixing him up.
"The things they did in the Soldier Enhancement program are classified. Most of the candidates died, from treatment or soon after. No one's been able to accurately document the extent of their abilities, not even Overwatch when we had two of them," she says slowly, after a few minutes of silence. Her jaw works as if she is chewing on a particularly difficult problem.
There's a clatter from the back of the plane as the rest of the team troop in. He catches Angela's eye and nods his head, content for now to drop the subject and resume later. Hopefully when he's not sporting a bum arm and bruised ribs.
They all strap in for takeoff, Mercy helping him maneuver all the gear around his injuries, and he lets his shoulders relax into the seat. On his other side Soldier: 76 is methodically checking his gun, and across from him out of suit is making concerned faces at him. Tracer is in the pilot seat, and Junkrat is haphazardly sitting beside , so that's all of them. It feels weird, after years of working alone, to work in a team again.
There's a bit of nostalgia in it too, echoes of both his time in the old Overwatch and Blackwatch. He thunks his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. Gabriel, if it even was him behind the mask, had drudged up memories he'd locked away for some time. Stakeouts and running down streets in black leather, smoking out the window of his commander's office, a hand on his shoulder.
A voice in his ear telling him to stop keeping his side open.
There's anger waiting just under the surface of his thoughts, at the coup and the lies and now, at the fact that a man he used to idolise is running around trying to kill everyone he loves. But over all that, he's just tired. Tired of thinking that Reaper's out there, still angry at the world and fighting it.
Gabe was always real good at getting under his skin.
—
They get back to base, somewhat worse for wear but victorious. Mercy shuttles him to the infirmary, and the rest get shooed out to debrief. McCree watches the shuffling of feet and quiet chatter and lets it wash over him as the doctor puts away her gear.
Out of the field, the Caduceus staff is locked away, unused. Treatment comes in the form of less-refined nanotech, good old bandages and burn cream. He'll heal fast, just not as fast as the staff would have him.
"That's about as much as I can do for you, I have some antibiotics and painkillers for the next weeks, but you shouldn't require any more treatments." She purses her lips a little. "Although I would keep an eye on the ribs, and stay away from training for a while."
McCree tries to smile disarmingly, and mostly succeeds.
"Not gonna be able to anyways, with an arm like this."
Mercy nods, and then turns back to her equipement. McCree takes the time to button back up his shirt, not bothering with tugging on the protective black under-armour. Trying to lift his arms that high would be too much of a pain with his chest mottled in bruises.
"I will take another look at the autopsy reports, but I remember what I wrote. There was no doubt at the time that the bodies were Jack and Gabriel's. Visual confirmation was impossible, considering the amount of damage, but DNA doesn't lie," she says, still turned away from him.
McCree hums in thought.
"DNA is easy to get though, done that a few times myself for Blackwatch ops. And there was enough bodies at the time that someone could have just swapped the results."
"Swapped the results as they happened? I made sure, Jesse. I checked everything, did the analysis myself. Unless someone was able to modify the tests as I was doing them—"
"—Which we've seen with the recent hacking attacks. Data stolen, swapped, changed. The sudden rise of Sombra protocols aren't that uncommon. Heck, there were rumours in Blackwatch even years ago."
There's silence for a few more minutes. McCree can feel his eyes droop, and Mercy can obviously see it, because she dismisses him from the infirmary to get some sleep.
He's exhausted, muscles trembling and eyes dry. The sort of tired that demands dealing with, that blankets everything else so that the only thing you can think of is sleep. He falls into his bed and blinks up at the ceiling blearily. It's dark, and reasonably quiet considering who his neighbours are. More than likely everyone else is in the kitchen, getting supper.
He closes his eyes and slows his breathing.
When sleep comes, it's with dreams of shadow men and black smoke choking him. It's with fire and blood and the silence after the storm. It's with the smell of burnt coffee and gunpowder and sweat. It's with nightmares that are more memory than dream.
—
Breakfast the next day is quiet, since he wakes up earlier than normal and the only ones at the table are Genji and Hanzo. It looks like he's interrupted something, and he very carefully ignores the tension between the two men. The last thing he wants is dragons in his oatmeal.
"Good morning, McCree," Genji says, hands resting on his drawn up knees.
" 'Morning," he grunts, "no Zen today?"
"He's assisting Winston on a project this morning." Genji shrugs as if to say that the whims of his mentor are impossible to discern. Hanzo, on the other side of the table, frowns.
McCree tucks his useless arm into his loosened collar and grabs a bowl down from the cupboards. There's the sound of metal feet hitting shins, and a muffled curse. He ignores this with longstanding practice.
"You will break something if you insist on doing it one handed," Hanzo says, having gotten up, and snatches the bowl from his hands. McCree stamps down on the impulse to mention that he's had practice one handed—had to get good, those months before a prosthetic could be made.
"Appreciate it," he says instead, watching the way the man prepares his breakfast for him. It's not something he would have made himself, but he's never been led wrong by either Shimada brother yet.
Hanzo pours what smells like a pungent soup from a pot already on the stove into the bowl and sprinkles in something black and grated that's sitting beside it.
"You make all that?" McCree asks, leaning against the counter. There's a tension in Hanzo that's visible even under the full-sleeve robe he's wearing, and it only gets worse at his words. He feels regret for a second, because without it he thinks Hanzo would look almost comfortable. His hair is down and he's out of armour, something McCree rarely gets to see.
"He's been up since four making it," Genji pipes up from the table.
"It would not be right, otherwise," Hanzo replies, something defensive in his tone. McCree digs a spoon out of the drawers and nudges Hanzo back into the eating area. He gets a glare for his efforts.
"Looks mighty fine to me," he quips, as he accepts the bowl after sitting. The heat from the soup feels good on his one hand, and he curls the fingers around the ceramic for a few seconds luxuriating in it. Two pairs of eyes watch him as he dips the first spoonful in.
It's good, as he expects it to be.
"Man, I wish I could have some," Genji whines from his left, stretching metal arms on the table and pillowing his head on them. If Hanzo gets wound any tighter he'll probably shatter into really pretty pottery shards, McCree can't help think, flicking his eyes up.
Some strange urge has him picking at the scab. He's not sure if it's a sudden concern for Genji, or anger still flickering under his skin.
"Can't you?" Genji does still have some stomach left, and if what he's overheard in the medical wing is true, functioning taste buds too. He's never see the cyborg eat, but he would think it possible.
"It requires more effort than it's worth, really. I could, but it would mean the cleaning and replacement of several vital components, and well...Master Zenyatta has forbidden that I attempt anymore experiments in that department until they get the smell out of my quarters."
The clatter of Hanzo pushing off his chair and out the room is loud, but McCree keeps his head tilted towards his soup. He looks up when the man starts walking out the door.
"Hey, thanks for the food, partner."
Hanzo dips his head in a jerky nod and continues down the hallway.
"Man," Genji sighs, tucking one hand under his chin, "brother really needs to get laid."
McCree chokes.