A Soldier of the Night

by Age of Tesla


"Today's the day, Jack?" Ana Amari's black as night hair had grown down below her neck during the last months of the crisis. It was the longest it'd been since the crisis began, and she supposed that this time, she'd keep it and let it grow rather than cutting it. She often cut it short during the Omnic War, for practical reasons mostly, but now the whole world needed to move past it, and to her, personally, the state of her hair was as good a symbol of moving on as anything else. And at any rate, Ana preferred her hair middle length, as opposed to short. On the inside, she hoped her daughter Fareeha would come to see it much the same.

Jack Morrison was a hero of the crisis. He'd never say that, it was always 'soldier' with him, but maybe one day he'd be made to see himself that way. For the time being, he was under serious consideration for a big promotion, from an enlisted soldier, a Sergeant First Class in the United States Army, to Strike Commander of Overwatch. "Yeah," he said. Today was the day, but something didn't sit right with him, and Jack confined himself to a basement office in Overwatch Headquarters in Geneva for hours, thinking of whether to accept or not. About whether the United Nations would even give him a say in the matter, because there was someone else just as qualified, if not more so, for the job than he was. And it didn't sit right with him that Reyes, who trained him, who led him in battle and in life, could be both considered for the promotion and turned down.

Something was wrong. Ana could sense it, always could when it came to the serious things on Jack's mind, or anyone else in the Overwatch family, for that matter. And in the past fifteen years, that was what they'd become. A family. A group that looked out for each other. She couldn't turn a blind eye. She couldn't just look the other way. "You sound troubled. Feeling anxious, or is it something else?" That would be the only probing question before she dived right into it. Blue eyes sharp and focused on something he was thinking about, Jack waited a second before nodding. So it was something else. "You don't think you're cut out for this position."

"Maybe," Jack sighed. "Maybe not. But i know Gabe would have been a better choice." When Jack spoke from his heart, whether he was right or not didn't matter. He had determination and he was a fighter. A soldier, and a good soldier, but there were things that he cared about, that he was rash about, and although everyone in Overwatch knew that about him behind closed doors, Ana took a seat, invited Jack to sit down as well, realizing the rest of the world didn't know that. She wondered how much of him they did see, how much of it was the real hero, and how much was the more-than-real hero.

She wondered how much of Gabriel Reyes the world had seen. "I saw him upstairs. He's not happy about this, and that's not what he told me, but he's not happy about this. He thinks he earned the Strike Commander position." Gabriel was as much of a hero as Jack or anyone else was during the crisis, perhaps more so, being the leading man on most of Overwatch's operations. He just wasn't as famous, and for a man from Los Angeles to be overshadowed by some guy from nowhere, Indiana, and as much as anyone liked to make light of it, it did hurt. Gabriel didn't want to talk to her upstairs. He didn't want to talk to anyone, not now, but sooner or later he'd have to. Someone, something, had to give before this Strike Commander thing got blown out of proportion and became a battle of egos.

Reyes was as much of a fighter as Jack, too. And they were on the same side. "He's not wrong," the man of the day said in response. "I might have earned it too, but it doesn't mean he didn't. And it sure doesn't mean he doesn't deserve it." It was a hard situation. The Secretary General chose Jack. In a vote, the whole world chose Jack. But it wasn't him against Reyes, Jack wasn't going to let this turn into the fight the whole world feared it'd be. It brought a light and a smile to Ana's face to hear, a look of approval, however begrudging. This wasn't going to be Reyes against Morrison. It was going to be the two of them against the world.

And it was going to be hard. It always was when the United Nations made up its mind. "So if you're not taking the job," Ana thought out loud, "how are you going to do this? You already told them what you think. You already told the UN that Gabriel would be the better choice here, and they're not listening." Big government bodies were stubborn, resistant to change. The bigger they were, the harder they were to move, and as the Earth would have it, the United Nations was the biggest government of them all. Still, changes started small, and it only took two people to honestly believe something in order to make it true. They just had to be willing to fight for it. Had to be willing to win for it.

And someone had to be willing to lose. "I got something," Jack said, standing up to go talk to Gabe right now. He had an ace in the hole, something he could use to force the UN's hand. To test how willing they were to bend. If his bet was right, everyone won. If his bet was right, Reyes would lead Overwatch and that would be the end of it. But if he was wrong, there was no telling how far the fallout might go. But Jack had a feeling he was right.

"What kind of something?" Ana asked, curious.

"An old friend of mine, we grew up together." He remembered loving her, remembered it from afar and from close up, even admitting to her it not long after his mother found out. But at eighteen, he wanted to be a man before he could be hers, something about proving his worth, to himself or to her, he didn't remember anymore. Didn't really want to remember either. Jack wanted to get in the army, do his time, and get out and back to the little life. Four years, he aimed for. Just wait four years. He sighed a breath of relief that he never actually asked that of her. "Her name was Sarah."

The nature of her colleague's backup plan was eminently clear. Ana realized he didn't have one. That if he couldn't change the UN's mind, he'd walk away. One way or another, he intended to force their hand.