Safe

by Rundas Prime1

After an op goes wrong, Gabriel, Amelie and Sombra are forced to take refuge at a safehouse in the Ukrainian countryside. Their downtime turns deadly, however, when the newly resurrected Overwatch launches a savage ambush.(Overwatch: Ultimate - Part Zero)

On a warm night twenty years ago, two men walked into an empty bar at closing time. The young, freckled man running the bar took pause at what he was seeing. He'd seen these men. On the news. They were heroes. He didn't hesitate, when they asked, to let them stay a while.

"Get us a bottle of the best stuff you got," said one. With his chiseled Aryan features, he looked like he'd walked right out of a comic book. He might as well have, considering what he'd done.

The barkeep handed him a bottle, labeled black with golden font, containing transparent tan liquor, and two souvenir whiskey glasses bearing the name of the bar. The hero took out his wallet and prepared his credit chit.

"Oh, no," said the bartender. "The pleasure is all mine… M-Mr. Morrison."

Morrison smiled, nodded, and took a seat uncomfortably next to his companion.

"On the house," he shrugged, popping the cap. He poured the two glasses equally, then slid one over. "Like we're heroes or something."

As if a shadow of the former, the eyes, skin and beard of Morrison's companion were dark. He raised his glass. "To peace. To Supreme Commander Jack Morrison."

"To a job well-done," said Jack, "to Commander Gabriel Reyes."

Gabriel tapped his glass to Jack's, but then swirled the whiskey in his glass, lips pulled back in a wry smile. "Well, ex-commander."

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Jack spoke. "For what it's worth, Gabriel, I'm sorry for the way things went in there. You were doing a fine job as commander, I don't know why they think they've got to change things around."

"I do." Admitted Reyes. "I'm a war-time man. I know where to put people, but in peacetime, you need someone who brings people together. That's you. Always been. You led that strike team, I just ordered it around."

"Hey, we both led Overwatch. Together. Don't sell yourself short."

"Look at me," Gabriel said. He let out a fake chuckle and tried to look happy. He put forth his next words as facts. "I'm a street rat from LA. I'm not the kind of guy who can be the face of anything. I'm not... I don't inspire people. It's always been you. It should be you."

Jack's brow furrowed. "Gabriel, you don't have to be okay with this."

Reyes stared through the bottom of his glass. "I do, Jack." He looked his friend in the eyes, "You're moving up in the world. I need to be happy for you. That's what friends do."

"You just got passed up for the biggest damn gig in the world. Getting pissed at that? Jealous? That's human. I know how I'd feel." 'Jealous' should have sounded like a condemnation, but neither Jack's tone nor intention were accusatory. He just didn't like to mince words.

"Even so," said Reyes. "Congratulations. You're going to do great things."

"You say that like I'm leaving you behind."

"I'll fall off the radar soon enough. Once the whole war hero thing dies down."

"Gabriel, look… Overwatch, it wouldn't be half of what it is today without you, understand? I'm not just making you a part of it, I'm making you a part of its direction."

"What?" Gabriel said, smiling, "Shooting me up to your right hand man?"

"Try second head. You deserve this. You deserve the command. You don't deserve to be a grunt again."

Gabriel contemplatively turned his gaze back to the glass. "Sounds an awful lot like nepotism."

"Sounds to me like keeping the team together." Jack clapped his hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Because face it, we are, Gabriel. We're the best damn team that ever lived."

For the first time, Gabriel's eyes smiled along with his face. "I'll drink to that."

...

Now, Gabriel existed only to punish his enemies. For a price, he'd punish someone else's too. Right now, the one paying was a group of multi-national terrorists known as Talon. As part of his contract, Gabriel worked with their two most elite associates: Widowmaker and Sombra. The Widowmaker murdered her own husband in his sleep, and Gabriel still found her the less unsettling of the two. The hacker had come out of nowhere and became one of Talon's most effective operatives in only a year. That didn't make her much different from Gabriel if he was being honest. But for his part, he had an explanation for his own origins and skills. Sombra did not.

Gabriel had tried to find something about her. He had experience, and a network. Being in command of the world's largest and most pervasive black operation in the history of the world, one picked up a few things, and a few people. He used all his mercenary and ex-Blackwatch connections, every newsnet post, every public record. With how hard he tried, he should have found more than a few defunct chat handles and forged driver's license. Sombra was less than a ghost. If she had a past, she had hidden it so well that it practically didn't exist. That could only mean she was hiding something big.

The three of them, Gabriel, aka Reaper, Sombra, and Amelie Lacroix, the Widowmaker, were laying low at a safe house in the Ukraine countryside for a few days. Their mission in Russia was a complete bust, and returning to Talon's primary headquarters at the moment was too risky with all the heat on them. They were pursued not only by Russian Intelligence and military, but no doubt the newly resurrected Overwatch as well. Fist would not be happy to learn of yet another failure at their hands. For this reason, Gabriel was the closest thing he could be to happy for all the downtime. When they got back, there would be hell to pay. For all of them.

Gabriel spent his time alone. The low-profile, yet exceedingly comfortable house was equipped with two bathrooms and three bedrooms, Gabriel never ended up leaving the garage. It had everything he needed. That was to say, space to exist. Gabriel didn't eat, and couldn't sleep. That didn't dissuade one of the women in the house from bringing him breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Gabriel didn't enjoy the idea, but he decided to venture out, to tell whoever it was that they needn't do that.

Gabriel threw on a black hooded sweater and pulled the hood down to just over his black marble eyes. He closed his fingers around the doorknob, but let go. It was rather silly to go out there at all, wasn't it? If they wanted to waste food, that was their business. Besides, he could just watch for the next time they came and tell them then. As Gabriel stepped away, his foot squished on cold scrambled eggs. He kicked his foot instinctively, knocking over a mug of coffee and making a mess. Growling, he opened the door.

Just outside the garage was the living room. The place still had that new house smell. Less impressive when one realized how easy it was to engineer scent nowadays. On the left side of the room was a television set that no one used and probably didn't work, in front of that, the couch, which got used a bit more, between those, a mahogany coffee table. A china hutch without china was positioned off to the side of the television.

He stopped and retreated to cover when he heard the sudden pounding bass of dance music. The singer rattled off lyrics in Spanish like machine gun fire. Following along, without skipping a beat or word, was Sombra. She was cooking something, Gabriel didn't get close enough to see exactly what. He didn't want to talk to her. He would talk to Lacroix.

Gabriel let his body degenerate and drift apart, becoming a heavy black smoke that lurched along the ground. With this form, Gabriel found he was at peace. The pain that prevented him from sleeping vanished, and he felt the sense that everything was as it should be. But the longer he stayed this way, the harder it was to prevent his cells from regenerating into his physical form. Eventually, the agony would be even greater than when he was solid. He directed himself silently, but briskly across the floor.

Once he touched the stairs, he reconstituted, and the sharp, familiar ache returned. He walked the rest of the way up, assured that the resident chef could not hear him over the sound of the noise on her radio.

On the right was Sombra's room and the upstairs bathroom. On the left side of the hall were two more rooms, one empty, the other was Lacroix's quarters. Her room was utterly un-tampered with. Everything was in the place where it had been when she'd gotten there. Through the window, Gabriel could see a giant dead tree that stood at a little less than half the height of a cliff that curved and stretched out behind an expanse of snow covered plains. No human presence for miles. The way it had to be. The way Gabriel preferred it. Snow had started falling, putting another layer of white on the frozen ground. The Frenchwoman herself was lying in the bed in loosely fitting athletic clothes, one hand behind her head, pointing to a single spot on the ceiling with her other finger.

"Gabriel." The blue-skinned assassin acknowledged smoothly without looking. "Have you never been taught? It is rude to barge into a lady's room without permission."

"Maybe I should be like you. Use a rifle and not come in at all."

Lacroix let her hand drop beside her other one, under her head. "Are you so utterly bored, Gabriel, that you come to make fun of the spider in her parlour?"

Gabriel was tired of banter now. "Tell Sombra she doesn't have to bring me food."

She peered at Gabriel through the corners of her golden eyes. "She's right downstairs, Gabriel."

"I know."

"I already told her," Lacroix said. Her squinting eyes told Gabriel that she was still trying to puzzle something out. "I told her that you don't eat. And that knowing you, you'd probably just step in it and make a mess."

Gabriel crossed his arms. "That did not happen."

Lacroix rolled her eyes. "Do you not want to talk to Sombra?"

"No," said Gabriel.

After a lengthy silence, Lacroix closed her eyes and grabbed the bridge of her nose, sighing, "Why don't you want to talk to Sombra, Gabriel?"

Gabriel thought for a moment. He should tell her. There was no way that the alarm should have been set off so quickly. Sombra followed the target to her office, cornered her, then claimed she'd escaped. Something off about the whole situation.

"Just a feeling."

"You don't trust her."

"Do you?"

"Do you trust me?"

Gabriel stepped out of the arch and closed the door. In a way, she was right. He couldn't trust Widow. She was Talon's slave, and had to follow any order her masters gave her, cheeky banter non-withstanding. But on a mission, she was invaluable. The amount of time they'd spent together as Talon's top operatives created a camaraderie between them. If Gabriel couldn't even trust Sombra on the mission, how was he to accept her here?

Gabriel grumbled and went back downstairs. Sombra was walking towards the garage door. Gabriel receded behind the wall, still loath to speak.

"Buenos dias, esqueleto."

Revealed no matter what he did, Gabriel made the rest of the way down. "Sombra," he said, and crossed his arms.

Sombra was dressed in an over-sized purple sweater and black leggings. She held a spoon in her slender, sharp fingers. The cybernetics on the shaved side of her head glowed violet in the cloudy winter light. "I noticed they had everything we need for burritos colorados here, I'm making that tonight. You don't have a problem with spicy food, do you?"

"I don't eat. Don't need to."

"You don't? Oh, so Arana was telling the truth." She giggled, trying to sound like a little girl, but something wasn't right about it. "I thought she was just being funny. You know how she is."

"We… Are talking about Lacroix? Amelie Lacroix? Widowmaker?"

"Yep."

"Funny?"

Sombra shrugged. "That's weird, though. Not eating? What's the story there?"

"I don't talk about that."

"I guess more for me then. But you better not be stealing the freezer food just to keep the lie up. Arana said you liked to be difficult."

"Lacroix said-" Gabriel found himself more curious than annoyed, "What else does she say about me?"

"Oh, a lot. She talks about you all the time. She likes you, you know. Not in a mushy way. Though not really in a 'friend' way. She doesn't completely hate you though, that's pretty good for her."

"Hm."

"What?"

"News to me."

Something else weighed on her mind for about a second before she put it out. "Is there… Any particular reason you're only talking to me now? I've been bringing the food for like two days."

"No."

Gabriel brushed past Sombra.

"Hey, hey, wait!" Sombra said. "You're just going back in the garage?"

"Yeah."

"Do you… You don't like me, do you?"

"Nothing personal. Probably never will."

Sombra smirked, "Just give me time. Anyone can be hacked, Gabe."

Gabriel stopped and watched as Sombra flopped onto the couch and switched through varying channels of static. She knew his name.

He shook his head. Lacroix must have told her. It didn't matter. If Sombra knew his name, even if she knew everything, what could she do? Gabriel Reyes was dead.

Gabriel no longer slept. Even if he had a reason to, the pain wouldn't let him. But he still experienced boredom like anyone else. Gabriel didn't have anything to do to last him through the night beyond clean up the mess of Sombra's breakfast fiasco. At night, instead of continuing to ignore the pain, he would focus on it, lose himself in it. It reminded him of why he fought, of the reasons Jack Morrison and his Overwatch needed to be destroyed. Completely. Painfully.

And maybe, just maybe, if he became familiar enough with it, he wouldn't notice it. Stupid thought. But then, he hadn't slept in six years. Maybe he was getting desperate.

...

Gabriel had long since lost track of the hours, but he knew it was well into the night. Suddenly a loud noise ripped him out his trance. It wasn't the explosion of the Switzerland Watchpoint that he'd relived a thousand times. It was the driving bass of an annoying pop song. At the moment, Gabriel couldn't decide which was worse.

He nearly ripped the door off its hinges swinging it open. Gabriel moved a deathly pale hand over his face to block the stream of light. It was well into the morning, as it turned out. With his hand off his ear, he was treated to a sensory assault that rivaled some torture he'd undergone in his Blackwatch days. Lacroix stomped down the stairs, even her stomps were nearly silent. Or maybe the song was drowning them out. Gabriel was nearly deaf at this juncture.

A slowed, unfeeling heart didn't seem to suppress Lacroix's rage. "Gabriel!" she shouted, "What is this insipid racket?!"

"Ask the one who enjoys insipid racket!"

With a tap of some holographic buttons on the part of Sombra, the music stopped. She sat at the dining room table sipping from a purple mug.

"Bonjour!" said the hacker, grinning devilishly.

Gabriel and Lacroix stood in silence.

"Please," Gabriel said, "Please tell me there was some point to that. Or an excuse. So I can mock it."

"Well, mostly to get you two out of your rooms. I'm worried about going stir-crazy cooped up in here."

Gabriel shook his head, "Did Lacroix ever tell you about the time when she stayed in a perch for three months waiting for her target?"

"No, but-"

Lacroix continued, "Did Gabriel tell you about the time when he spent two weeks buried in the ground waiting for the perfect ambush?"

"I heard about that, I-"

"We don't get 'stir-crazy,'" said Gabriel. "It's called patience."

"Not you jokers, me! And patience shouldn't mean you sit around doing nothing when you don't have to! The helipad door is snowed over, we should clear it. Otherwise, how's the ship going to get out?"

"That wasn't an issue last time," grumbled Gabriel.

"To be fair," said Lacroix with a sigh, seemingly just as annoyed as he was, "snow is less of a problem in South America."

"So," Sombra teased, "we could take a couple of minutes out of our daily brooding and get moving a little."

Lacroix begrudgingly said, "She has a point, Gabriel."

Gabriel wracked his brain for literally anything else he could be doing. Nothing. "Fine."

"Shovels are by the door. I took them out earlier-"

"I saw."

"O-kay… then you guys can do that."

Oh, for the love of- "Us guys?"

"I've got to cook."

"For yourself."

"Well, yeah."

This was getting worse all the time. Gabriel started towards the door. He stopped and snagged Sombra's coffee mug off the table and chugged it before slamming it back down. Petty, yes. But satisfying.

"Hey, dude. I thought you said you didn't eat."

"I said I didn't have to."

Gabriel walked right outside in bare feet and sweatpants. He aggressively grabbed a shovel without breaking his stride.

"I guess the cold doesn't bother him?" said Sombra.

"If you haven't noticed," said Lacroix, "a lot of things do."

A few minutes later, Lacroix followed Gabriel outside, having put on a thick coat.

"High time you showed up," Gabriel was already a quarter done.

"I could have put my battle suit on if you wanted me to take longer." Though she couldn't feel temperature, the Widow's slowed heart and metabolic rate made the cold rather dangerous for her. Her suit regulated her body heat so that she didn't have to worry about that, but for whatever reason, she wasn't wearing it around the house. Another degree of separation from the mission mentality, perhaps. She scooped a pile of snow up and over the edge of the helipad, onto the driveway below.

Gabriel thought about slowing down. At this rate he'd have done most of the work already. Lacroix should handle the rest. He decided against it. The faster he worked, the faster this got done. The hour dragged on. Every so often, Gabriel would notice Lacroix stop and focus on the surrounding environs.

"Admiring the scenery?" he mocked.

"I keep thinking I've heard something."

"Should we be worried? Not to be dismissive, but there are a lot of bears around here."

"You're probably right… Probably a bear." Lacroix shoveled the last bit of snow off the hatch, still listening.

"I say it pays to be paranoid. Even if it is nothing."

"You would say that, wouldn't you?"

Gabriel scoffed. "Is this about me and Sombra? Again? That I'm not acquiescing to her stupid scheme?"

"What scheme, Gabriel?"

"Playing." Gabriel stopped working and paced around. "She's treating this like a vacation. Like she doesn't even realize why we're here."

The Widow was silent. She didn't slow her pace. She only listened.

"We're here because of her. If she hadn't botched the mission, we could have been home two days ago."

"You're acting like this is something new."

"Isn't it? Sombra's thrown the whole house into disarray."

"Have you ever looked at us, Gabriel? I'm an assassin. You're a barely functioning psychopath whose only ambition is to make his best friend suffer. We're a couple of monsters pretending to be people in an over-sized dollhouse. And here we are, acting like 'roomies,' as if we weren't going across the world and kill people and like we aren't going to do it again, as if we could ever really even have friends. But we still pretend, because that's easier than facing our truths. She's playing to forget who she is, Gabriel. Just like me. Just like you."

The hatch suddenly started to open. A patch of snow fell through one of the wings of the pad doors. It fell right next to Sombra, who was manning the controls.

"It opens now!" she said. "On another note, there's cocoa inside."

Gabriel scoffed and dropped the shovel down the hatch.

"We could stand to warm up a bit," remarked Lacroix, "And by we…"

Gabriel jumped down into the garage. Why bother using the proper door at this point? With a shrug and a sigh, Lacroix followed suit.

In the kitchen, there were three cups set aside, the purple one from before, a blue one, and a black one.

"Cute," said Gabriel. "Color-coordinated."

"So you noticed?"

Lacroix didn't take a cup. She proceeded directly upstairs.

"She okay?"

"She will be. She gets this way. Be on your guard, though. She's not usually wrong."

"What? About what?"

"Anything," Gabriel took a massive gulp of the cocoa.

"Damn, Gabe, aren't you going to wait for that to cool down?"

"I drink it for the pain."

"I… Do you ever drop that act?"

"What act?"

"Oh my God. You really are a full, un-ironic edgelord."

"I have no idea what that is, but I'm sure I don't mind being it."

"You laugh, but we really need to talk about this. Is it really practical to just chuck your shotguns on the ground when they're empty?"

"Yes."

"What? No it isn't."

"I don't have to reload them. I can keep shooting."

"But you… What happens when you run out of shotguns?"

"I don't."

"Are you trying to tell me that you have an unlimited supply of shotguns?"

"No," Gabriel said incredulously.

"Then what- How?"

Gabriel looked Sombra in the eyes. "I only take as many as I'll need."

"How do you know that?"

"It would take a very long time to explain."

"We have time. Explain."

"I don't want to." Gabriel turned away, skulked back toward the garage.

"No no no, sir, you do not get to do that. You are not going back in there after I worked so hard to get you out."

"There's a puddle in my garage I'm going to clean up before it melts."

"I have a movie I downloaded that you're going watch."

"Oh, no. No."

"It took me the whole time to download just this one. The internet sucks out here. All that time and bandwidth would be wasted."

"I don't want to-"

"Ga-abe!"

Gabriel slammed the garage door and stewed in the darkness. That was over, thank God. Maybe he'd practice his wraith form, see how long he could stay in it. After a series of mysterious electronic beeps, the ceiling hatch groaned and slowly started to open. Gabriel backed away from the sunlight peeking through.

"Sombra, stop."

She giggled and snorted audibly through the door, "Not me!"

The hatch control button was now glowing purple. Gabriel touched it, and the door started to slowly close again. More beeps. The door opened. Gabriel repeatedly hit the button, only for Sombra to reopen it.

"Do you want to blow our cover?" Gabriel said, hitting the button with a closed fist.

"Like I said, not me."

"This isn't dignified!"

"Button must be busted from you punching it so hard."

"Stop. What's the movie?"

"They Came from Beyond the Moon."

Sunlight filled the garage. Gabriel scowled. "There is no God."

Gabriel suffered through it. He sat next to Sombra on the couch, arms crossed, and a grimace firmly on his face. He mused that he hadn't seen a whole movie in a very long time. They'd gotten worse. The film lingered on the introductory scenes for so long, Gabriel wished he could just fall asleep and wake up if there was an interesting part. Halfway through, it started to snow heavily outside. Tomorrow, they'd have to clear the helipad again. Lacroix came downstairs, wearing a bathrobe over her battlesuit.

"Expecting company, Arana?"

"No. Nothing's out there. I… I need to unwind." She leaned on the back of the couch, then adopted a quizzical expression, "What the hell are you watching?"

"It appears to be some form of garbage in a video format," said Gabriel.

"Give it some credit, bro," Sombra argued.

"No."

An agonizing hour later, the film closed out with an alien crawling over a pile of rubble and roaring. Gabriel was silent and seething.

"I did not understand any of that," said Lacroix. "Was he… In love with his shotgun?"

"You didn't watch from the beginning. Let's play it over again."

"No!" said Gabriel. "Anything else."

"Gabe, are you okay? You look-"

"They were using puppets. No one's used puppets in decades. It looked completely fake."

Sombra only looked on in silence, lips pursed.

"And the script was the schlockiest trash I've ever seen in my life. I- I…"

Gabriel finally stopped himself. Just like that, he'd forgotten where he was. For a moment, he was home. He stood, and he realized how long ago it was that he'd done anything that didn't involve vengeance. The last time was nearly ten years ago. He could remember it now.

"I… Realize now why I don't watch movies anymore."

"No wait, Gabe. Come back!"

Gabriel retreated to the garage, where he sat for hours. He remembered movie night at the old Watchpoint. He never made it to many in person, especially in the later years. Even so, he'd get the message from Reinhardt, who always braved the hardships of email to make sure that Gabriel knew what was showing in the Overwatch rec room. He'd watch it wherever he was, and could almost imagine he was with them. He'd done that again. Just now.

...

It was Sombra, predictably, that broke the silence. Perhaps hours later, Gabriel didn't know.

"We found some video games," she said, "Arana… Arana's too good. And dinner's ready… And… Could you come back out?"

"No."

Sombra turned around for a moment. She seemed about to give up. She lingered in the doorway for a long while, contemplating. Then she said, "How long is it going to take you to drop the tough guy act with me?"

"I told you there's no act."

She faced him, "You know what, that's bullshit, Gabe." The language shocked Gabriel into finally looking. There was a hardness in her eyes and speech he hadn't seen before. "I thought the stupid coat was just to scare people. Now you took off the skull get up but you're still wearing the mask. Why are you hiding?"

"Hiding? From you?"

"Gabriel Reyes. You want to forget him."

Rage boiled up in him as soon as she spoke the name. But he kept to the record. Only what she could know. "What do you know about Reyes? He's just the man who brought down Overwatch from the inside. He was a psychopath who didn't think twice about killing them all."

"I know Reyes was like a father to his unit. That he trained the outlaw Jesse McCree and treated him like a son. I know he loved Overwatch like a family a long time ago."

She couldn't have known that. "He doesn't exist."

"You think you can't be him anymore, but you can. Who cares if he never existed to begin with, he can here."

Gabriel's arms were practically leaping up by themselves. He wanted to strangle the brat. "Trying to dredge up my past? That what you do? Smooth move for someone who takes care not to have one."

"You want a past? I'm a girl who grew up without a family, not one that cared about her, anyway. Not even a childhood before everything burned to the ground. A girl who disappeared. You think you don't exist? See what happens when you delete yourself from public record." Something was draining from her voice. She wasn't going to crack him, and she knew it. Was she confessing? Confessing because she didn't think it mattered? "But here, here could be different. I thought that maybe… Maybe I could at least pretend to have those things. For once. It's…"

Gabriel was more lost in his own thoughts as she spoke. Here he was, wallowing in his agony, but never considering from where the pain had come. Maybe to cope with the loss, he'd forgotten that he'd lost anything at all. These memories he pushed down were things Sombra had never even known, and probably never really would. The formless, shapeless, idiotic pain was all Gabriel had left. Because he'd made sure of it. "It's pathetic," he said.

Sombra looked down and shook her head. She dropped her hand in defeat. She laughed, choking back a tear. "You son of a-"

Metal groaned above them. Gabriel recognized the sound.

"Sombra, the button isn't busted, is it?"

"W-What kind of question-"

The roof doors exploded open in a rain of razor snow and shrapnel. A savage roar filled the room as Gabriel was knocked into the toolbench by a massive armored hand. A very familiar one. Gabriel retaliated, anticipating that the next strike would come from the opposite hand. He was wrong. He was thrown to the left, hitting a riding lawnmower on his way over. Trying to quickly collect himself, Gabriel grabbed the shotgun he'd mounted on the east wall, whirled around, and let a blast of lead loose into his attacker's face.

The ape, Winston, stood a full two feet taller than Gabriel. His bluish-black body was covered in white armor. A pair of square glasses sat atop his snub nose, somehow never seeming to fall off. Winston got his energy shield up just in time to block the blast, deflecting fragments all around the garage. The force of the device's activation threw Sombra into the wall. Winston activated his tesla cannon, a large weapon more suited for a riot control tank than a ground trooper. White-hot energy arced through the air, following Gabriel. It barely touched him, singing each of his molecules one by one, before he turned to smoke and took cover behind the dropship.

Gabriel would be lying if he said that he wasn't the tiniest bit frazzled at this moment. All the same, he remembered that battles are fought in the mind. Maintaining the façade of confidence would be essential.

Gabriel quipped. "I see you got the shield to work this time!"

The ape roared and pulled the trigger again, but it fizzled out. The lights on the cannon had turned purple. "Confounded-!" he shouted.

Sombra laughed and waved with her fingers. In the tension of battle, her and Gabriel's differences, their entire conversation, were all but forgotten. Sombra was, if nothing else, a professional, even if she didn't act like it.

"Sombra! Coffee table! Now!"

Sombra nodded and immediately took Gabriel's meaning. Winston turned around to pursue her, briefly leaving the safety of his shield dome. Gabriel popped out and shot him in the back. The blast caused some damage to the surface of Winston's armor, but little else. It did, however, get his attention.

Gabriel rolled into the confines of the force field and shot Winston twice in the chest, again, only minor damage to the armor, and not even knocking him back by much. Winston hoisted the hulk of his cannon overhead and brought it down on Gabriel. But the Reaper was too fast. Pushing past the pain, Gabriel again turned to smoke and wisped between Winston's legs to the other side and reformed so that the door was behind him. He aimed the gun again.

"Nice try," mocked Winston, "four shots per gun, Reaper."

Gabriel threw the empty gun at Winston's face, breaking his glasses. The ape roared and doubled back in shock and pain. Bits of glass and plastic were embedded in the skin around his eyes.

"Guns!" Gabriel reached behind and took hold of the weapons he'd had Sombra retrieve. He brought them forward and opened fire.

Pelted by chunks of molten lead, Winston knew he'd been outmatched, and that his armor wouldn't hold up much longer. He retreated to the hatch and made a leap for the ceiling. Gabriel dropped the spent firearms only when he knew Winston was gone.

Gabriel had a bad feeling that this was far from over. He grabbed his hooded leather coat from the rack and threw it on. He took four more shotguns from a toolbox underneath and slipped two into his coat, holding one in his hand and tossing the last to Sombra.

"How many shots does this have?"

"Four."

"Four's not a lot."

"I can't spare another gun."

"How about shells? Ammo? That I can put into the gun when it's empty? Like a normal person?"

Gabriel tossed her a black leather belt with eight shells on it. "Don't lose it."

"Like you were going to use it?"

"Don't test me."

"Three guns gonna be enough for you?" asked Sombra.

"Should. We're grabbing Lacroix and getting the hell out of here on the ship."

"Good plan. Good- Oh, crap, bad plan!"

Gabriel noticed that the shield device that Winston left behind was flashing faster and faster. Gabriel grabbed Sombra and tossed her through the door to behind the living room couch. He slammed the door behind him and transformed into a wraith with milliseconds to spare. The device imploded, taking the wall and the whole of the garage with it.

The pain was unbearable, Gabriel couldn't maintain the form for more than a moment. He screamed, crashing back down to the floor, solid again. Sombra brushed off some rubble and dragged Gabriel under the stairway.

"You're… Heavy for a ghost, you know that?"

"Three is not enough. New… Plan…"

Gabriel grabbed his mask out of his coat's pocket and put it over his face.

"Oh, God, that's not like a comfort thing, is it? The mask isn't your binkie?"

"It's my comm."

"Oh. Oh. Switching on."

The response was immediate, loud, and in French. From the eloquence of the words, Gabriel surmised that Lacroix was cursing profusely.

"Widowmaker," said Gabriel. "We're under attack. Overwatch. The ship's been destroyed."

"I know. I know. And what are we going to do now?"

"We're getting out. And killing anyone on the way."

"I generally prefer more details."

"Don't have any. One hostile confirmed, other pending, but yeah, she's here too. Try and find their ship."

"I need to get my gear upstairs," Sombra said.

"Careful. You see anything, a flash in the corner of your eye, anything, you shout. It's-"

"Tracer. I know she's running with Winston. You act like I don't have an internet connection."

"Widow, make sure they don't get close to the house. I'm going to stock up."

Sombra somersaulted over the stair railing and proceeded to her room. Gabriel stood, slowly, leaning on the wall. His regeneration would heal him soon. He opened the china hutch and retrieved the two guns he'd stashed there. That brought him to five altogether.

Gabriel heard gunshots on the upper floor. He got up the stairs as fast as possible, despite the pain. There was no one.

"Gabe! Careful!"

Tracer appeared out of nowhere and peppered Gabriel with bolts from her pulse pistol. As soon as he got his bearings and was ready to retaliate, she blinked out of sight.

"Group up with Widow!" ordered Gabriel. If they stood back to back, then the next time she tried to ambush them, she'd fail.

Sombra crossed the hallway in a purple flash. Gabriel followed immediately. Tracer blinked out of the empty room, pelting Gabriel with more bolts, each creating a tiny but painful smoking hole in his chest. Gabriel shot her in the gut. Her yellow body suit filled out with red as she stumbled back, gagging and desperate to breath. Gabriel hurriedly took aim at her head and fired. Wincing, Tracer smacked the glowing blue circle on her chest, and she vanished, leaving the wall to take the hit for her. Oily, black blood spilled onto the floor as Gabriel staggered into Widow's room. Sombra crinkled her nose. Reaper's 'blood' smelled like a rotting corpse.

"Form… Up. She blinks in, we'll be ready."

"She's not down?"

"She Recalled before I could kill her. She'll need a minute to come out of shock. But she won't be so reckless this time."

"But we take her out, we're home free right?" Sombra said, "They are Overwatch. The two of them."

Widow interrupted, "Take cover, I have another contact."

"What? No, no."

"Blue and white jacket."

"Take the shot, Widow! Take him down!"

Three blue, glowing projectiles were unleashed from the enemy's gun, but they weren't heading for Widow's room. They hit the house and detonated below them, shattering the window and knocking them all off-balance. The floor started to cave in on the left side. Structural integrity of the house was compromised.

"Widow, shoot Morrison now!"

Another explosion. The floor collapsed and became a slippery ramp. The three mercenaries tumbled into the cold snow outside. Gabriel narrowly escaped being crushed by an armoire that followed them down. They were completely in the open, sitting ducks for what Morrison had in store next. How could Gabriel have been so careless? He should have seen this coming.

Gabriel could nearly hear Morrison's voice in his head.

"I've got you in my sights."

...

Jack Morrison touched down in Ukraine to relatively sunny weather. That is, for Ukraine. Ana, his companion, maintained that checking out every Talon safehouse they'd pulled from the archive wasn't the best use of their limited time. But this one was on the way. And they'd hit the jackpot. Both of Talon's Big Two in one place. They were on the roof, shoveling it off. It was odd, Morrison didn't think of the bad guys doing things like that. It was too mundane.

Morrison scratched his hoary scalp, going through his options. He might be able to take them both down at once right now. Ana could get one of them from here, but if the other acted too quickly, their hangar, their escape, was right below them. Morrison would probably miss if he tried from this distance, and he wouldn't be able to close that expanse of plains between them to get a good shot without being sighted. He'd have to take out their means of escape, then get them out into the open.

Morrison nearly had an idea when he was interrupted.

"Jack," said Ana, "There's someone here."

"If it's another potato farmer, tell them we're the government."

"It's Tracer."

Morrison rested his rifle over his shoulder and followed Ana behind the ship, his mind racing. He'd known Oxton was alive, but what was she doing here?

Morrison could barely believe his eyes. She really was here. Not only her, but Winston. They were joined by a short woman wearing a parka.

"Jack!" Tracer said, rushing up. She wrapped her arms around Morrison and almost knocked him over. At the moment, a feather could have done the same.

Winston smiled, pushing up his glasses. "It's good to see you again, Commander."

Laughing, Lena said, "Come on, you big lug, get in here."

"Lena Oxton. Still up to no good, I see. And Dr. Winston. Great to see you both. But who's the… My God, is that Mei Ling Zhou?"

"Commander Jack Morrison," said Mei. "It's an honor."

"That's… Incredible. I thought you were… You died in Antarctica."

"I thought so too."

"What are you doing here?"

Lena launched into exposition, "We got word that Volskaya industries was attacked by Talon, so we decided to check it out. Mei was at Watchpoint: Chernobyl, so we hit her up as well. Then Winston picked up an Overwatch transponder signal nearby."

Jack could read the question in her silence. Why didn't you answer? Why'd you let us think you were dead? "We've been busy," said Jack.

"And Captain Amari? You're alive?"

"I am now." Ana smiled. Lena looked at her expectant of more information, but Amari gave none.

"This is just unreal," said Winston, "All of us together again."

Morrison frowned and said, "Not all of us. Look out there, see that?"

"That's Reaper. And Widowmaker." Winston's eyes popped wider as he processed, "They don't see us coming."

"We have a chance. Talon's been getting the drop on us time and time again. This time, we have the advantage. We can take both of them out."

"You've already got a plan?"

"Now that you guys are here, I've got a better one. Right there. Sniper point in the window, it's got a clear lay of the land. Widowmaker's going to be up there, I know it."

"So…" said Winston, following, "We take her out first?"

"Like I said, we take them all out. Don't give them a chance to retaliate. Winston, you'll make a bomb and plant it in the garage. Tracer, that's when you'll force them to retreat to the window."

"Then we take the shot?" Asked Ana.

"I'll get into position near the house and fire a rocket under their floor. Then Tracer will detonate a pulse bomb."

"That'll collapse the floor, but it won't finish them."

"That's why Ana and I'll be waiting with my tac-visor to pick them off once they're in the open."

"It seems… So simple," Winston scratched his head. "Too easy."

"That's the element of surprise. That's the reward for vigilance."

"Commander Morrison," said Mei. "Is there anything I can do?"

Winston held up a finger and got giddy. "Yes, there is! Dr. Zhou, you're a master of- Well, you've made great advances in… Weather control tech. Could you whip us up a blizzard? I mean, 'whip' is a frivolous expression, this tech is-"

"That would knock out their long-range comms," interrupted Jack, "keep them from calling in back-up. And reduce their visibility. Good idea, Winston. Dr. Zhou, is that possible?"

Mei nodded in the affirmative. "I can do that. But I will need time."

"Good. Alright, team. Get to work."

As the rest of Overwatch left to prepare their ends of the plan, Ana stayed. "Jack. Are you sure they can… I know they're all Overwatch, but that was years ago. And… Frankly, none of them were ever really soldiers."

"We're all soldiers now. We have to be," Jack took a box out of his pocket and handed it to Ana. She looked inside and almost didn't believe what she was seeing.

"Jack-"

"I made these custom for your weapon's rifling. I know what you think about these, but I need you on your A-game. You know your biotic rounds don't work on Reaper. One of these won't kill him anyway. Only slow him down."

"Reyes." Ana corrected. "He's still Reyes. Have you forgotten that there's a man behind that mask?"

"There isn't. Not anymore."

"Why are we doing this, Jack? You said it yourself, we're supposed to be gathering the old agents together. You said that we needed them. There's still time, Jack. We can regroup."

"This chance isn't going to come again anytime soon. We have to do this. Reaper has to die today."

"Why, Jack?"

"Because I'm Frankenstein," said Jack, "And Reaper's my monster."

...

Gabriel knew there was only a moment before Morrison killed them all. He could turn to smoke and avoid him. He didn't. Sombra and Lacroix would be vulnerable. And even cloaked, Morrison's tac visor might pick up Sombra's vitals and rip her to shreds.

"Lacroix, run. Now. Sombra, stay behind me."

"You're going to get shot." Said Lacroix.

Gabriel braced himself and clenched his fists. "That's the plan."

Widow fired her grappling hook to the giant dead tree and was pulled toward it. She wasn't fast enough though, not to avoid Morrison's augmented aim. She took a bullet and lost her grip, hurtling toward the snow-covered rocky cliff behind.

Reaper and Sombra immediately ran in the opposite direction towards the chest-high brick wall on the edge of the yard. Soldier started aiming for Sombra, but Gabriel took all of the fire. Wound after wound stained the snow with black, and Gabriel slowed with each one.

"Keep running!"

Gabriel could go no further, he collapsed, buried in white. Sombra made a quick roll and made it to cover just in time. But Morrison now turned his sights on Gabriel. The Reaper now turned to smoke, and the bolts from Morrison's pulse rifle passed uselessly through him.

"Goddamn you!" Morrison shouted, emptying his clip in frustration. It wasn't like him, making a move in anger like that.

Gabriel reformed, coughing, behind the wall. The bullet holes peppering his body belched smoke and blood, growing by the second.

"Dios mio," Sombra said in horror. "Gabe."

"I'll… Be fine. Keep moving. Cloak and get to the trees."

"What about you?"

"I'll cover your escape."

Gabriel turned a knob on his shotgun, setting the spread as narrow as possible. Even then, he wouldn't get direct hits, not with this thing. But the goal was not to hit Morrison. Just scare him.

"3… 2…" Gabriel popped out and fired in Morrison's general direction. At the same time, Sombra cloaked and ran, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow.

Hellfire pellets ripped through the air. At the same time, Gabriel's left eye exploded into dark gore. He fell back down behind the wall, screaming and cursing. That was a live round. Amari must have added some to her arsenal just for him. Sombra stopped.

"Keep going!" Gabriel ordered.

Sombra continued, but her hesitance may have cost her. There was no way that Morrison didn't notice the path she was leaving. Gabriel wanted more than anything to jump out, do something, buy her some time. But all he could do was watch the trail get longer, and imagine Morrison lining up his shot. A burst of pulse rounds sent snow and dirt flying in Sombra's wake. An impression the size of Sombra's body appeared in the snow. Gabriel had to suppress his rage. He had to maintain confidence. He waited. Any moment, Sombra's therm-optic camo would deactivate, revealing her corpse bleeding out on the snow.

Bleeding.

There was no blood.

"Translocator beacon," said Sombra over the comm, "pretty slick, eh?"

"S- Sombra. Good. Stay out of-" Something didn't add up. The timing of the shot was too perfect, and they knew where Sombra was running to right away. "Damn it," Gabriel concluded, "they've hacked our comm! Radio silence now."

Gabriel started to regenerate. That was the one silver lining. But he had to move, and soon. Tracer would be coming back, and he couldn't fight her off in this condition.

He looked toward the trees that Sombra had escaped to. Gabriel willed himself to melt into the snow, then he burrowed through to the shadows of the dead trees, where he re-solidified. Moving as quietly as he could, he stumbled, half-blind, between the spindly spires. He took refuge behind a large tree stump with a recession carved out. He drifted deeper into pain, out of consciousness. He fought for it. Why? For that matter, why did he fight so hard to keep Sombra alive? Gabriel could have saved himself the discomfort. Even now, he could let himself drift away, have some peace, leave Sombra and Lacroix to their fates. But for some reason he couldn't nail down, he didn't want to.

The woods shimmered like glass before flashing purple and revealing Sombra, kneeling above him, looking over his injuries.

"Good… Work, Sombra."

"A compliment? That's scary talk, dude. Don't- Don't go saying that just 'cause you think you're going to die."

"I can't."

"You're not seeing what I'm seeing. Why'd you do this, Gabe?"

"It's not you…" said Gabriel. "You're not… pathetic."

...

Gabriel faded into better times. That said something when the times that he was at war with those he'd once called family was a better time than the one he found himself in now. At Switzerland he waited. For what? He did not know. He'd been stuck there after an op went horribly wrong. Angela was the only person left that Gabriel knew he could trust.

Jack appeared in the door. He'd joked with Reyes that he'd never let his uniform get tight around his waist. He'd kept his promise. Though flecks of grey were starting to invade his once golden hair. Morrison was protected, as most days he was, with only a sidearm. He saw Gabriel first. But then he saw Blackwatch storming in from all around. He knew immediately that this was a trap. He shot at Gabriel and the Blackwatch, retreating.

That was when Jack's own backup arrived. The ever shrewd supreme commander planned from the beginning for a betrayal. Gabriel tried to retreat himself, but he found the door locked. He hit it uselessly with his fist. A bullet found its way into the back of his leg, and he fell to his knees. Any second, the place would blow. He, and the facility, would burn.

This is how it happened. This is how Gabriel wished he could have died.

Morrison was suddenly behind him again. "You can change this," he said. "You can change all of this. All you have to do is say you're sorry."

Gabriel looked back. Morrison's eyes were black and dead.

"We both know what happens when you don't. You know what you become."

"No, th- this is your fault." Gabriel whimpered. His hand turned black, dissolving and falling to the ground. Morrison's face turned pale and gaunt like a skull. "YOU DID THIS!"

"Say it."

...

Gabriel was back in the present. His mask hid the tears and sweat that had soaked his face. Sombra still sat above him. Gabriel's wounds were mostly closed now, but his eye would take a bit longer.

"You're… Still here," muttered Gabriel.

"I didn't want to carry you again. Besides, you were only out for a minute."

Gabriel sat up, scoffing. "You should have left."

"After you took all those bullets for me? I'm an opportunist, Gabe, not a puta. But look," said Sombra, "we need to get out of here. The nearest town is just a few miles east, we can walk it, use the forest to stay hidden."

"No. Not yet."

"What, you still want to fight? We're outnumbered, and half their gear didn't get blown to hell. I'd think we should escape like, now."

"Widowmaker is on the other side of their line. I'm not leaving without her."

"Are you nuts? That doesn't change anything I said."

"And nothing you said changes what I said. I'm not leaving her. And she doesn't have much time if her suit was damaged."

"Your problema then, Esqueleto."

"I guess it is." Gabriel propped himself up on the tree stump and wobbled to his feet. "Always is."

"But- Gabe, Do you even have a plan?"

"Attack. Distract. Take as many down as I can."

"Alone?"

"Probably."

"That's a shit plan."

"You're right. Why don't you give me a better one that only involves one person?"

In the stump was a hidden Talon weapons cache. Every safehouse had a few. In it was a small pistol, a Venom Mine, a Widow's Kiss rifle, and two Hellfire shotguns. Knock-offs, reverse engineered by Talon for their soldiers. Gabriel took everything. He was a terrible shot at long-range, but the Kiss would at least allow him to reconnoiter before walking into a trap.

"Gabe, she's dead anyway, we need to-"

"Do you know what it means to operate as a unit? We go in together, we get out together. If they're not dead, they're coming home. I've killed innocent people. Women. Children. I've given up too many things that made me who I was, but I will die in agony and I'll do it happily before I leave one of my people behind. That's what makes me better than Morrison, and I'm not giving that up.
This is a mission, Sombra. It's called survival. And if there's no extraction, it's mission failed. I don't care if you want to keep playing your games and not tell me who you really are, and I don't give two shits if we're friends, but on the mission, as far I'm concerned, Amelie's more important than any family. I'm saving her, because I'll be goddamned if I fail another mission because of your agenda."

Gabriel slung the Kiss over his shoulder and turned away, heading to the hill, away from the field.

"You're going to risk everything to save Arana just because you hate Jack Morrison? Does that make any sense?"

"It does to me."

"Wait…" said Sombra. "I have a plan, Gabe. Just… Hear me out. It'll work. I did the same thing back in the Crisis. Let me-"

She moved her hand up to Reaper's mask. Gabriel caught it, squeezing hard, "What?"

"Setting up a private channel, so they can't listen. We still can't reach Arana, even if she's alive, though. I'd have to do it super-close range to maintain the encryption." She raised her hand back up. "You do realize that if I help, I'm probably going to die too, right?"

"Patch me in. I know how to reach her."

...

"What the hell just happened?" Morrison growled over the comm. "We had them!"

"The third Talon mercenary, Reaper called her Sombra," Winston answered, he was at the ship, repairing his armor and cannon, "She was an unforeseen variable. We should have been more careful, analyzed her capabilities further before engaging. Maybe bothered to find out she existed."

"And gave them a chance to find us? Dr. Zhou already took enough time setting up the weather machine."

"Either way, we have to leave now. When they have a chance to regroup-"

"We'renot leaving. Tracer almost got caught and killed slipping the virus into their comms. We've got too much riding on this. There's two of them. Three if Widowmaker is alive. Five of us. None of them are built for an assault, so they're going to either run or try and ambush us. Hacked comms means that if they try to coordinate, we'll know exactly where they are. We'll be ready either way."

"I… I really hope you're right, commander."

"Tracer, have you confirmed Widowmaker down?"

"No, sir, Jack. Still looking. Um…" Lena said, "Not trying to buck the chain of command or anything, but are you sure, Jack? Winston has a point, it's risky staying here."

"What, you too now? We are not letting Reaper get away, not again. Soldier out."

Mei entered the room as Winston was staring at his shattered glasses. "Didn't… Um… Didn't bring a spare?" she asked, nervously.

"No. No I didn't. No time to fix them, either. Guess it's good that I… Well, don't need them."

"I heard all that," said Mei. "Jack. He's changed, hasn't he?"

"I… How would you know? You never met him. Have you?"

"Only in passing. But back in Overwatch, back in the old days, he had this… glow, you know? And I heard stories. He was like a father to you. To all of you."

"He would have been to everyone if he had the means. If he wasn't stuck in Gibraltar with me." Winston smiled in pain, "You're right. He is. He's desperate. Broken. Maybe even a little crazy. But if we leave, he's just going to keep trying by himself. And as much I'd like to believe he could do it… Well, even Lena's not that optimistic. Come on. We should make this place a little safer while we have the chance."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Some old Ironclad schematics. With a touch of Winston."

...

Amelie Lacroix didn't feel the cold, at least not for a while. She spent the last ten minutes unconscious. The next fifteen on her knees atop the cliff, reconnoitering the land, looking for some clear way out to the forest. None. The rocky plateau gave her solid cover, and a very good look at what she was dealing with. The open field below made her vulnerable to Morrison's tac-visor and Amari's biotics. Right above the field was Overwatch's mobile command center, a MV-261 Orca. An old vehicle from the heyday that served as international transportation and temporary living quarters. She saw Winston there, along with a short woman in a parka. They were setting up some kind of defensive machine. They'd already placed some large, cylindrical device at the center of the base camp. A small eco-drone was plugged into the top. It seemed to be powering the thing.

All this information would be useful to someone who could actually get to the place without being shot, much less through it. Someone like Reaper. She couldn't even contact him to let him know that she was still alive. He and Sombra were probably miles away by now.

Amelie started to shiver, her body's vain attempt to warm itself. She covered the bullet hole in the side of her battle suit with her hand. There wasn't anything better to use around here. Amelie stared enviously at the woman's thick fur coat. She'd shoot her right now, but that would give away her position.

"Widowmaker, this is Reaper." Amelie nearly jumped. So he wasn't gone yet. He'd just shown his hand to Overwatch. "If you can hear me, if you're still alive. Give me a sign. Something I can see."

She searched for him, and quickly picked him up ducking under the trees near the command center, on the opposite side from her. She switched her laser-sight on and pointed it at Reaper's hand.

"Widowmaker? Do you read?" Reaper said, nodding, looking at the sign. "Damn it!" He gave a thumbs up, looking directly at her. He wrote on the ground, "See Amari? Wait for signal."

Amelie smirked, searching her scope for the old sniper. Reaper was going to ambush the command center, give her time to sneak through. Things were looking up. She found Amari perched on another cliff, right above the Orca. She lined up the shot. But then someone tripped her makeshift noise trap. She examined the immediate environs, searching for the intruder. She didn't have any way of telling Reaper to wait. Whatever, more likely whoever it was would have to be dealt with quickly.

A single footstep, ten meters away. That was all she needed. She whirled around and tossed a rock at the sound.

Tracer was right there, having barely blinked out of the way. "You again? You ever get that feeling of déjà vu?"

"You need to work on your catchphrases, fly."

Tracer jumped, blinked behind Widow and emptied her pulse pistols. Widow ducked, slid under her, and kicked her in the stomach.

Tracer used her first breath to retort, "What's wrong with my catchphrases?"

A woman came onto Widow's comm, speaking with a thick southern drawl, "Reaper? Do you read? There was a distress call."

"Yes. I read."

"This is Talon gunship Discord-2. We are locked onto your position and moving in for pickup."

"Negative on pickup, Discord," responded Reaper, "we're pinned down by enemy forces, comms hacked, we need back-up."

"Ac- Acknowledged, Reaper. Switching to secure channel, stand by."

Widow knocked away one of Tracer's pistols with a well-placed palm thrust. Tracer blinked backwards and reloaded the one she had. "Mei?" She said, "A-Aren't their long-range comms blocked? Jack, you don't have to shout!"

Widow extended the barrel of the Widow's kiss and fired a charged shot at Tracer from close range. It nearly hit.

"Take this seriously, fly. You're in my web."

"That was just awful. And you don't like my catchphrases?"

Gunfire came from the command center.

"All sides!?" exclaimed Tracer, "Did they teleport?!"

"Widowmaker!" snarled Reaper, "The signal happened! I'm taking fire from Amari!"

Tracer blinked forward with a lunging kick at Amelie, who poised to counter. At the last moment, Tracer blinked again to Amelie's side, hitting her between the ribs.

Lacroix fought against the momentum that threatened to send her over the cliff, jamming the butt of her rifle into the ground as a brake.

"Widow!"

Tracer tried the same thing again, with a punch. Widow took a calculated guess and punched where she assumed one of the possible places Tracer's throat would be. She was right. Tracer doubled back, coughing.

"One moment," said Amelie. She whipped around, taking a knee and extending the Kiss, aiming it at where Amari was. In a second more, she aimed for and shot the barrel of her rifle, destroying the gun. Widow turned back around and sprayed Tracer with bullets from the Kiss' assault mode. "Amari's not dead," she addressed Reaper, "But she won't be shooting at you."

"That's all well and good," Reaper said, "but shouldn't you be moving your ass!?"

"Got sidetracked."

Amelie backflipped over the cliff and shot her grappling hook at the giant tree, she swung on it to the ground, where she used the momentum to hit the ground sprinting. As she ran, she fired off more charged shots at the two Overwatch scientists defending the command center, just to scare them, and hopefully take some of the heat off of Reaper and Sombra.

When she got close enough, a glob of molten metal whizzed past her head. Two auto-defense turrets were sitting at the front of the command center. Amelie took cover behind a rock, narrowly dodging a sharp flying icicle.

"Careful, there are turrets," said Reaper. "And nerds."

Amelie scoffed. She then watched as Sombra suddenly appeared in a magenta flash behind one of the turrets and shot it with one of Reaper's guns. It shattered to pieces after two blasts. Ice trapped the hacker's foot. The woman in the parka, Mei, had frozen her to the ground. The turret spun around and fired, but Sombra translocated away, leaving the projectile to fly at Mei. She got hit in the arm, lighting her coat on fire. She patted it to put it out. Amelie popped up, and before the turret turned around to her again, she put a charged shot through it, right down the firing chamber. The turret whined, it's circuits popping. Shut down. She advanced to Mei, who was still trying to put her clothing fire out.

"Let me help," Amelie said, shoving the woman down into the snow. The blaze fizzled and went out. Amelie unzipped the coat and ripped it off.

She slung it over her shoulder and advanced to the command center proper. She slipped the coat on, one arm at a time. The arms were a little short, and there was a hole burned in one, but they covered the gap in Widow's suit.

She was jumped. Barreled over by a massive hulk of armor and muscle. Winston. The gorilla looked tired, and he was missing his tesla cannon he carried with him so often. She cartwheeled backward and tried to get sights on the ape, but he moved too fast. She sprayed him with the Kiss' assault mode, but the bullets bounced uselessly off. He bounded forward again, knocking her down and pinning her. He threw a punch at her head, she rolled quickly to the side and returned to avoid it. Once flat on her back, she extended the Kiss right into Winston's neck and fired.

The ape fell onto her, gagging and coughing up blood. Amelie fought to get out from under him. She was nearly free, but Winston grabbed her leg and threw her against the wall of the command center. She screamed as the bone in her right upper arm snapped. She bounced off the white alloy and rolled in the snow.

She forced herself back to standing, using the Kiss as a crutch. Winston was moving sluggishly toward her. Widow tried, but couldn't raise the scope to her eye with one hand. She wedged the stock of the Kiss in the crook of her left arm and fired, praying for a headshot, but the projectile flew through Winston's right elbow. This didn't slow him down by much either. She went for his right knee. She hit his left. He fell forward with a roaring, pained groan.

Amelie stumbled into the command center and fell down, hand on the door switch. The hatches closed and locked shut. She crawled to the cabinets and lockers, rummaging through, hoping Ana had stashed some extra biotics around. Her strength faltered, and she fell onto the floor, exhausted. A clinking noise hit the floor behind her just before the doors locked shut. A grenade. This is how it would be, she supposed. Amelie closed her eyes and awaited the blast.

But only Sombra appeared. She ran past Widow, up to the controls and activated the takeoff sequence. She lingered for a moment before speaking. "Gabe, it's ready. Get in here."

...

"Ac-Acknowledged, Reaper, switching to secure channel."

Gabriel cackled, "Nice one," he said.

"Ah've been workin' on it," drawled Sombra.

As planned, she fired a clip at the weather machine, drawing the attention of Winston and Mei. She then used her translocator beacon to teleport to the other side of the camp, and emptied another.

"We're under attack!" Winston shouted. "On all sides! Get back to the camp!"

That was Gabriel's cue.

He jumped from his vantage point and shot Winston in the back. The ape turned around with a fury in his eyes that Gabriel had scarcely seen before. Gabriel got hit directly in the chest with the ape's fist and was knocked back.

It was about this time that he realized that he had not heard anything from Widowmaker. And also, a sniper bullet passed through his right arm. Gabriel wraithed to cover behind a tree, it would only provide momentary respite from the berserk ape.

"Widowmaker! The signal happened! I'm taking fire from Amari!"

Bits of wood splintered off as another round tore it apart. Reaper fired yet another wasted blast at Winston. He was down to one shot in his hand. Six more guns.

"Widow!"

Finally, he heard the shot. Widow knew that she stood revealed, so it was safe for her to say, "Amari's not dead, but she won't be shooting at you."

"That's all well and good," Reaper said, "but shouldn't you be moving your ass!?"

"Got sidetracked."

Gabriel placed the Venom Mine on the Hellfire. He took out the Widow's Kiss and held it in his right hand. Sprinting from cover, he used the assault mode to pepper Winston with bullets as Sombra decloaked and did the same from his other side. Winston attacked Sombra first, but she vanished in a flash of purple before he got in a single strike. He turned back to Gabriel and attempted another attack. Gabriel fired the last shell at Winston, then tossed the empty weapon at his face. Not one to be fooled twice, Winston caught the gun and crushed it, activating the Venom Mine. He coughed, and his rage broke, leaving him exhausted. It was all he could do to leap away.

Gabriel was blasted upward and across the field by an explosion of blue fire. He knew immediately who'd just arrived. He tumbled back to his feet and took aim at the red visor shining through the wintry storm. Jack Morrison: Soldier 76.

Morrison taunted, "How's it feel, Reaper? Not fun when you're being outclassed?"

"Outmatched, maybe," Gabriel retorted, "Never outclassed."

Morrison opened fire. Gabriel did the same with the Kiss, narrowly side-stepping the first spray of pulse rounds. The old soldier didn't seem to be affected by the flurry as he disappeared into the blur. Gabriel was caught out in the open again. He took out another gun, down to five, and wraithed toward the weather machine, intending to complete his end of the plan. Reforming, he shot and destroyed the drone on the top with a Hellfire blast. It squealed like a dying pig, as if it somehow knew it was dying. The blizzard remained, but without that drone powering the machine, it would soon dissipate.

Gabriel was hit from behind with the butt of a pistol. He turned around and grabbed hold of a scrap of leather for an instant before it disappeared from his grasp. Tracer. He watched the storm for signs of Morrison and his brat, and when he saw either one of them, he aimed for the chest. He saw the rewarding, though tiny drips of red on the ground. He'd hurt one of them, but not bad. That would make them wary, but he needed an escape, and fast.

"Get in, Gabe," said Sombra on the comm, "it's ready."

About damned time. Stepping carefully toward the Orca, Gabriel nearly tripped on the barely moving Mei, still lying near the weather machine, deprived of her parka, wearing only a grey tank top.

Gabriel grabbed her by the back of the neck and held her up as a shield, his gun flitted back and forth between her head and his attackers. This was a coward's move, he knew. But this was survival, not showing off.

"Hold your fire!" shouted Morrison. That wasn't an order he needed to give. Everyone had stopped.

"No one moves. No one stops me, or she dies."

"Put her down!" said Tracer, "Stop it!"

"Is this the level you've fallen to, Reaper? Fine. Leave. But let her go. She has nothing to do with-"

"So you can just shoot me down as soon as I take off? No, she's staying with me. And if my flight is uneventful, maybe I'll leave her somewhere you can find her."

"No!" Tracer panicked and blinked forward. Gabriel shot her in the chest, she fell down. Retreating, he promptly shot Jack in the legs.

Gabriel backed into the door of the Orca, and once the doors were closed, tossed Mei and his shotgun to the floor. "Sombra, take off now."

Sombra complied. The aircraft rumbled, accelerating into the freedom of the sky. "What is she here for?" she asked, looking back from the controls.

"Hostage." Gabriel searched the lockers. Jack hadn't changed much around from the old days. The mag cuffs were still where they'd always been. "We leave her body with this crate when we dump it."

Widow shouted, "Gabriel! Behind-!"

A blast of molten lead hit Reaper from behind, staining the floor black. He growled and turned around. Dr. Zhou was on her feet, shivering as before, shakily holding the Hellfire.

"T-t-turn the ship around now," chattered Zhou.

"Gabe!"

"Stay at the controls, Sombra. Lacroix, don't move. You've got spirit, kid, but I've been over this. I'm not giving you back."

"And I'm n-not just going to let you 'd-d-dump my body with this crate.'"

"Think you can really kill me? What's Morrison told you about me?"

"You're a monster."

"I'm the monster he built. And you know, it takes one to make one."

"You're lying. Jack is nothing like you."

"I'm honest. I know what I am. Morrison, he hides it under a cheap mask and racing jacket he pulled off a clothesline somewhere. But you're right." Gabriel stepped forward, "He's nothing compared to me."

"D-Don't come closer!"

"I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do. Because I know faces. For instance, I know the face that's never killed someone looking them in the eyes."

The panicked and terrified Zhou closed her eyes and pulled the trigger, screaming. An ineffectual click sounded. Gabriel took the gun by the barrel and hit her across the head with the grip. She fell down, her world spinning.

"And I know the face that doesn't count shots." He clamped the mag cuffs onto Zhou's wrists and tossed her into the corner. "Stay down this time."

Gabriel then retrieved the first aid kit, also in the same place as before. He knelt next to Lacroix and started to treat her injuries.

Amelie grunted, "If you knew the gun was empty, why the speech?"

"Your arm is broken," Gabriel dodged.

"Oh, really?"

"Help me get your coat off, smartass." Gabriel removed Amelie's arm from the sleeve.

"Well," chuckled the Widowmaker, wincing, "Isn't this ironic? The Reaper saving a life."

"You might just die anyway," said Gabriel flatly.

Gabriel was no medic. Even Amari's biotics wouldn't fix a broken bone. She needed a cast. Gabriel took a splint out from the kit and fastened it on her arm with a medical wrap. He then used the same wraps to form a makeshift cast, wrapped around her arm and neck. Lastly, he pulled the coat back over her shoulder. He helped her into one of the chairs.

"Don't move. We'll be back at Talon before you know it." He pat her unbroken shoulder.

"Want to get me a cup of milk, too?"

Ignoring her comment, Reaper made his way to the controls, where Sombra was waiting. "They haven't shot us down yet," he observed, "So either they don't have anti-air, or our hostage is doing her job."

"That was incredible, dude. We were good. We're the best damn team that ever lived."

Gabriel sat down and tried to remember where he'd heard that before. He watched the sky. "You mentioned the Crisis? The Omnic Crisis? How old are you?"

"Asking a lady about her age? That's rude, man."

A female voice came over the comm, Russian. "Unidentified vehicle, you are flying unauthorized in Russian airspace. Transmit authentication codes or land immediately."

This day just kept getting better and better. Gabriel clenched his teeth. "Sombra. Did you engage the stealth drive?"

"I didn't know we had one! You're the one who knows the Watch tech."

Gabriel answered the line in Russian. "We copy, we copy. Landing gear is… damaged. Touchdown not possible in this terrain."

"Then you will be escorted to the Ukrainian military base. If you do not comply, we will open fire."

Russians sure didn't waste any opportunities for threats. Gabriel hoped he wouldn't regret this. "Do not open fire. We have a hostage. Say hello, Dr. Zhou."

"Help…"

The line went dark for a few moments.

"Engage stealth now," said Gabriel, "If they haven't locked onto us yet, we should be able to-"

The ship rumbled and rocked, then started falling. The left thruster was on fire. They called his bluff, and he wasn't even bluffing. Gabriel locked himself in and braced for impact.

...

Even though Talon had stolen Morrison's Orca, he still had Winston's. He took it to the crash site, Winston's Overwatch in tow. Morrison pored over the still-flaming wreckage, fuming with anger and shame. No bodies. That meant Mei was probably still a hostage, but it meant she was alive.

"Form up, team. Be ready for when the Russians land."

"What about Mei?" asked Winston. His throat had been healed some time ago, but he hadn't spoken to Jack on account of his foul mood.

"She's alive."

The Russian gunship landed. It was twice the size of an Overwatch Orca, Russians liked their things big, but it couldn't compare in terms of speed. Morrison had been there for three minutes before he even saw them. The landing door opened, and from it emerged three military SUVs and eight men dressed in muted blue. At their lead was a colossal woman in the same blue uniform. A short shock of pink hair sat atop her scarred forehead.

Tracer chuckled nervously, "Russians sure do like their things big."

"Specialist Aleksandra Zaryanova of the RDF, reporting. Identify yourself."

"Soldier: 76. The guy whose ship you just shot down."

"Good one. But a racing jacket doesn't make you the Mexican vigilante."

"I'm going to cut right to business, Specialist," said Morrison, "This ship you just destroyed was carrying three elite operatives of Talon and Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou was their hostage."

"I know. And they told us as much."

"Then you want to explain why they're all a smoking crater right now?"

"We clearly announced our intentions. They did not comply. Tell me, what would you do if they claimed to have a dead woman as a hostage?"

One of Zaryanova's men reported, "Zarya! We've found tracks. They're headed for town."

"Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to eliminate this threat and rescue your hostage."

"You're not going to be able to take out Reaper yourself," Morrison disagreed. "If anything, he's more dangerous when he's desperate."

'Zarya' flatly ignored his council. "You've surrounded yourself with former Overwatch agents. In my eyes, that makes you Overwatch. Overwatch activity is illegal. I don't have that soft spot for you that Mexico does, Soldat. I should take all of you into custody."

Morrison called her bluff. "Dr. Zhou was at Watchpoint: Chernobyl. She'd have needed authorization from the Russian government to even set foot there. To get that authorization, she would have at some point had to be confirmed alive. So if you had any right to be here, if you were actually military, you could have found that out with a phone call."

Zarya's face did not soften, but her eyes told Jack that he was right.

"You don't know Reaper like I do," Jack continued, "He'll slaughter you."

"Like he didn't slaughter you? I think we can manage without your help. But what else is new? Let's move out, men."

Zarya left the ship, jumping into one of the jeeps, and drove off.

Morrison stopped and stared at the ground. He took first step marching towards the town.

Ana grabbed his shoulder, "Jack, what are you doing?"

Jack shrugged her hand away and spoke very quietly, "They have Dr. Zhou. They have her because I didn't know when to quit. I have to get her back. But you were right, Ana. I can't force anyone to fight my war."

"No. You're wrong, Jack." said Lena, "I… I'm the one who brought Mei here. It's my fault. I'm going."

Winston nodded sternly in agreement.

"We go together, Jack. We'll fix this." Ana looked into the distance, at the Russians encroaching on the town. "No one left behind."

...

A man in a dark hood stood by the side of the road. An archaic van grew closer in the horizon, it still used wheels. In hooded entity's charge were three women, one of which was unconscious in another's arms. The shortest standing woman had her thumb extended in the direction of town. The driver stopped.

"She… al… right?" the driver said. He trailed off when he saw the taller woman's skin, blue and cold. The man's face was pale like a corpse, his single eye was black and dark smoke fell from it.

The driver put his hand on the gearshift, hoping to escape. Before he knew it, the driver side door swung open, the specter had teleported to the other side. He pulled the driver out, throwing him onto the hard blacktop. Before the driver had a chance to blink, his head was reduced to bloody pulp by a shotgun blast. With the energy he absorbed from the kill, the monster's wounds closed completely, and his eye returned. The Reaper hopped in the driver's seat, and as soon as his allies were inside, he started toward town.

"What's the plan, Gabe?" asked Sombra.

Gabriel didn't answer.

"Gabe!"

"I don't know. We have to get in contact with Talon somehow. Arrange pick-up. Unless we want to leave a trail of dead drivers all the way to HQ."

"What if we steal that Russian ship?"

"Not likely."

"Well, if I get the internet, I can get you Talon."

They came into town. The night was growing long and late. Few people were still about.

"Specifics. Could we just break into some kid's house and use his Gamestation?" inquired Gabriel.

"I'll need a bit stronger of a signal to send anything encrypted." She squinted out the window. "That cell-phone tower will do."

Lacroix looked out. "I see it. It's near the outskirts, other side of town."

Gabriel drove the car close to the edge of town, and he formulated a plan. "Sombra," he said, "this is where we get out."

"How long will this signal take to go through?" asked Lacroix.

"Don't know," said Sombra. "Could be immediately, could be a few minutes. It's going to take a while for Talon to get here, anyway."

"So we're going to have to hold out." Gabriel stopped the car. "Sombra, take the van. And my rifle. Get to that tower."

Sombra caught the rifle with a dumbfounded look.

"Let me guess," said Lacroix, "you're going to take them all on yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you're wrong about that."

"Are you two completely out of your minds?"

"More or less," said Lacroix.

"I'm not stupid enough to argue with you." And Gabriel needed the help. "Get into position before the Russians get here. If they haven't already come in the gunship, they're going to try and get in quietly on the ground. Let's go."

"Hey, guys…" said Sombra, "Don't… Don't die out there, okay?"

"I can't."

"Always with the edgelord thing."

Gabriel placed the Reaper's mask back on his face. "Get used to it."

Gabriel and Widowmaker exited the van. A mostly toothless woman squatting in an alley stared at the assassins strolling menacingly down the street. Lacroix used her grappling hook to reach a vantage point. Gabriel locked his gaze on the woman, held his forefinger up to his mask, and turned to smoke. The woman nodded slowly at no one in particular.

"I'm heading for that factory," said Lacroix, "It's the tallest thing here."

Gabriel became solid, perched on a gargoyle, "You're strictly recon, Widowmaker. Do not reveal your position."

"You're a fool if you think I'll do that."

"If someone finds you, you're going to have a bad time escaping with that arm."

"Then I'll just keep moving. They're coming from the east. Three vehicles. Be ready. They're splitting up. Trying to surround us."

"Good."

Gabriel morphed to smoke and warped to the top of a nearby building. He saw them too. The few people in the downtown area looked on in fear and bewilderment as the military vehicles hovered into town. The commander, a massive pink-haired woman, addressed the people in Ukrainian. Using the directional microphone on Widowmaker's rifle, Gabriel could hear her.

"Do not be alarmed. We are the RDF. Remain in your homes," she ordered. "We will tell you when it is safe."

"We're not safe?" A woman asked.

"Please cooperate." Said the commander.

The people were hurried away. Gabriel saw one of the jeeps pass the town entirely. A scout, in case he'd already left.

"Sombra, there's a squad heading to your location. Don't get caught."

"Stealth is my specialty."

"Hide if you can, but if they find you, kill them, and use that hostage. We'll keep the main group busy here."

The Russian commander spoke. "Form a perimeter around the town. Make sure they can't escape. Tolstoy, Volgin, you're with me."

"Da, commander Zarya."

'Zarya' and her squad began walking down the streets, searching. Her charges were wearing goggles. They couldn't be thermals, they had to know that kind of imaging wouldn't reveal Reaper or Widowmaker. Gabriel decided to test them. He jumped from building to building, closer to Zarya.

"They're setting up stationary defenses around the town," said Lacroix.

"Any anti-air?"

"Can't tell."

"Tell. If they can take down our extraction, we're going to be right back where we started."

He was finally there. Zarya and her men were none the wiser. The lights were on in the house next to him. He turned to smoke and drifted through the cracks of the window into a room decorated with a chain of paper baseballs. A child's room. Gabriel went further, down the stairs, to the living room.

A portly man watched out the window at the soldiers passing by. "Cursed Russians. Think they can march their military right in."

Gabriel grabbed his head and pushed a shotgun to his neck. "Scream."

He did. Immediately.

A boy entered the room. "Papa?"

"No, Dmitri! I told you to stay-"

Reaper blew the father's arm off. Six shots in hand, four more guns. The boy cried. Gabriel turned to smoke and rose through the boards.

Zarya kicked the door down, she was followed by three of her squad. "Oh, derr 'mo." she cursed before switching to Ukrainian, "Are you alright, little boy?" She ordered one of her men to check the injured man.

"U-up… Upstairs."

Zarya gestured with two fingers, ordering her other two men to head up and investigate. To take the bait. Gabriel dropped down and rose from the shadows. The boy pointed at him.

"Monstr!"

Zarya turned around and decked Gabriel in the mask. He stumbled backward into a bookshelf.

"Stay behind me, child!" Zarya fired her gigantic weapon, a particle laser shining white-hot, leaving a scar in the wall.

Gabriel ducked under it, it only took off a corner of his coat. He moved to get closer and fired a shotgun blast. Five shots left. The air around Zarya seemed to shatter to pieces. Iridescent oblong hexagons filled in the space that the gun hit, then turned invisible. An energy shield. She fired a globule of energy from the cannon, blasting a hole in Gabriel's diaphragm and sending him right through the wall.

As soon as he got back his bearings, he got back up to the top of a house. Now he knew. The three stormed out of the door, looking for him.

"I found target B!" Zarya shouted, "Converge on my position!"

"Should scout squad rendezvous too?"

"Negative, primary target not sighted. Continue search."

Primary target? Who were they looking for?

Focus.

Gabriel had to think fast. If he had to fight both squads at once, he'd certainly lose. But if he could at least thin the herd while they were still separate…

Gabriel moved as fast as he could. Slower, because of his wound. Pulse rounds and Zarya's lasers followed him across the suburban horizon, but they couldn't hit him. He dropped behind a building and sprinted.

"Lost visual," said Zarya, "but he's headed your way, Squad B."

"Speaking of lost visuals," said Lacroix.

"I have a plan. Do not engage."

"I'd love to know what your plan is."

"So would I."

By time Gabriel had reached a vantage point near 'Squad B,' they were already on edge. One man drove the jeep, another stood in the passenger seat with a pulse rifle. The last manned a turret on the back of the vehicle, it looked like the same weapon Zarya was just holding in her hands. They were moving forward cautiously but quickly.

Gabriel shot their front starboard repulsorjet. Four shots. At this range, the Hellfire didn't do much damage, but it didn't need to do much. The repulsor sputtered and died, leaving the vehicle to drag on the ground. They stopped.

"He's here!" one Russian said.

The driver got out of the vehicle and searched the area. Gabriel quickly wraithed behind the man on the turret. He rematerialized, then broke the soldier's neck with a short, violent twist. He tossed the body aside, swiping his combat knife, and took hold of the turret controls. The soldier turned around just in time for the top of his head to be removed by the particle laser.

He took aim vaguely at the next and pulled the trigger. It cut him cleanly in two from underarm to opposite shoulder. He tried to dismount the particle cannon from its pedestal. If Zarya could carry one, how heavy could it be?

Very. It fell uselessly on the ground, the connective wires sparking.

"I heard that over here." Said Widowmaker, "Did you try to-"

"Not important."

Reaper wraithed up to the building-tops again. Zarya was still trying to get into contact with squad B. They wouldn't come.

Zarya and her men stood back to back, watching for any movement. Normally, he'd like to get behind them, but that was obviously an impossibility.

"Widow, you're going to have to reveal your position. Shoot Zarya when I jump."

"Acknowledged."

Gabriel dropped down to Zarya's unattended vehicle. He turned it on, then floored the gas, heading right for them. As soon as they saw him, they started shooting. Gabriel jammed the accelerator and stood, shooting a blast from each hand at the Russians. They didn't go down, but they were hurt.

Two.

As the jeep barreled over the third soldier, he jumped off the side, passing over Zarya. A sniper shot whizzed past his head, opening a hole in the Russian commander's energy shield. He stuck both of his Hellfires in and pulled both the triggers. Zarya doubled back, coughing up blood and dropping her particle cannon. Her energy shield shattered completely.

Reload. He dropped his guns and pulled out two more.

"You lose."

Gabriel was hit with a spray of pulse rounds from behind. Zarya's wounds closed, and she looked just as surprised as Gabriel was. She flexed her renewed arm in awe. Behind her stood Ana Amari, holding a biotic pistol. If that was it, Gabriel wouldn't have had a problem. But at her side stood Morrison and Winston, Tracer blinked there as well, filling out the team.

"Cheers love! The cavalry's here!"

Shit.

Gabriel holstered one gun, then wraithed to nearest scrap of cover he could find, it was behind a dumpster between two houses. How in hell was he going to get out of this?

Tracer appeared. "Hiya!"

Gabriel turned, throwing his knife into Tracer's throat. She coughed, blood streaking down her chest, before disappearing once more. The knife clattered to the ground. Gabriel scooped it up and sprinted to the other end of the alley.

Winston was waiting. Gabriel morphed again and blew past. Winston's tesla cannon hit him, frying each of his molecules one at a time. He turned solid and tumbled into the middle of the street, staining the ice black. Gabriel rolled to his feet and kept running. Morrison stood his path, laying down suppressing fire, preventing him from going any further. He was trapped between bullets and painful incineration.

Gabriel took out the pistol in his coat, holding it in his right hand, his shotgun in his left, and shot at Morrison. Morrison responded by shooting three Helix rockets. Gabriel leapt into the air and turned his body parallel to the ground, spinning, closing his eyes, and hoping to hell this would work.

The rockets whizzed past Gabriel, hitting Winston, blowing him into the wall of the alley. Gabriel landed, whirling around, and shot Morrison thrice with his pistol. Morrison ducked behind cover after the second round hit him in the arm.

Gabriel aimed the Hellfire at Winston, preparing for a killing blow.

Tracer dropped from above, shrieking and unloading both her guns. Gabriel shot her once in the leg, and she tumbled down into the alley. She tried once again to activate her recall, Gabriel shot her hand. While she screamed in terror and pain, Gabriel quickly pressed his knee into her neck and shot her other arm.

He put the pistol to her head. "Brat."

Winston grabbed Gabriel by the head and slammed him into the ground like he was nothing but a wet rag. Winston didn't stop his onslaught. The ape jumped on top of Gabriel and punched Reaper's head repeatedly, cracking his mask. Between Winston's third punch and his attempted fourth, Gabriel shot him in the chest with the Hellfire.

Amari was taking aim at Tracer with her biotic pistol. Gabriel put down a suppressive pistol volley, forcing her to retreat. He spinned it back up, replenishing its charges.

Gabriel kicked the monkey aside and knew he was in way over his head. He had to escape more than anything. Zarya and her remaining men surrounded him. Before he could do anything, Zarynova shot a black ball near his feet. It tugged with a huge amount of force. He slid towards it, despite his best efforts.

"Take aim!" ordered Zarya. Her men and Morrison stood poised to shoot.

Becoming a wraith might buy him some time, maybe until whatever this was wore off. It didn't help, he was sucked into the ball, his formless body wrapping around its surface. Before long, Gabriel was forced, screaming, back into his solid form.

"Fire at will!"

The bullets ripped into Reaper. Parts of his body fell off and turned to ash on the ground. He managed to hit one of Zarya's men square between the eyes before he lost his hand. Lucky shot, but it wasn't lucky enough. Soon he was nothing more than a cloud of particles, at the mercy of his attackers.

...

Sombra hung onto the side of the phone tower, scanning the ground for threats, and waiting for Talon to answer her request for aid.

She considered her options. All she had to do was tell them to pick her up at the tower, and she could escape home-free. Then why didn't she want to do that? It was like Gabriel had said himself. It was a mission. Survival.

"This is Talon gunship Eagle 10, answering encrypted distress call."

"This is Sombra, requesting extraction."

"Roger that, approaching your vector now. ETA forty minutes."

"There's a town not far from my position," said Sombra, eyes rolling, "meet me there."

Gabriel and Amelie were counting on her. They'd trusted her with this task. She wouldn't let them down.

"Roger that, Sombra. Eagle 10 out."

Sombra looked at the hostage, who was staring at her in kind with equal parts fear and icy rage. She was eyeing up her confiscated ice blaster on Sombra's belt. Sombra didn't want to waste a bullet. Her ammo was valuable. And who was going to save Zhou up here?

"What? You want this back?"

"Jack w-will save me."

"If you don't die of hypothermia first."

She saw a military jeep approaching the tower. She compared it to the ancient vehicle she'd driven here, and decided it would do nicely. She shot at them with the Widow's Kiss, fully intending to miss her mark. They parked in front of the tower. She dropped her translocator beacon onto it, then teleported behind the driver and passenger.

She jammed her foot into the nape of the driver's neck, pushing his head against the wheel. She shot the passenger in the head.

The driver violently threw his head back, knocking Sombra off-balance. As she got her bearings, the soldier stood and returned her fire.

She wasn't fast enough. A bullet caught her in the shoulder. She hid behind the Jeep and cloaked. The soldier immediately ran up and searched for her. It was but a matter of seconds before he noticed the bloodstains on the snow. The bloodstains she'd squeezed out on purpose.

He was treated to a Hellfire shotgun blast from behind. Sombra decloaked, then took the last shell from her belt and loaded it into the gun. She checked her belt to take inventory of her weapons. The ice blaster was gone. An icicle impaled the jeep's seat, right next to Sombra's ear.

Sombra panicked, "Pinche hijo de cono!" She put the vehicle into gear, slamming the gas for full reverse, dodging more icy projectiles, which Mei was firing from the top of the tower. When did she find the time to grab that? How did she get out of the cuffs?

Mei jumped off, generating an ice wall below her, and riding it safely to the ground. She shot a few more times. None of them came close to hitting. Confident that she was now far enough away, Sombra flipped the jeep around and faced town. She didn't look back.

...

Gabriel forced himself to think through the pain. He didn't have a body, but the healing presence of entropy was all he needed to turn this around. Gabriel lurched forward, slowly, but it was all he could manage.

Widowmaker shot at Zarya, who was trying to recover Winston's tesla cannon.

"Where is she?"

Morrison touched his temples to his forehead, activating his tac-visor, "She's there," said Morrison. "I'm going to take her out. Fry Reaper. Zarya, make sure there's nothing left of him."

"You don't have to tell me twice."

Morrison headed in Widowmaker's direction, using alleyways and side passages to avoid her line of fire. She knew he was coming, but she couldn't run forever.

Zarya spoke, heaving the cannon next to the pathetic black cloud on the ground. "I'll enjoy being the one to end the infamous Reaper."

Gabriel finally touched the dead soldier, the life draining from his body kick-started Reaper's regeneration.

He reformed, taking Zarya by surprise. He ripped the tesla cannon away, turning it around and using it on her and her men. As each was electrocuted, Reaper was energized further by their deaths. Zarya put up a personal energy shield for a second, avoiding the brunt, but she was still hurt badly.

Power coursing through him, he raised his fingers above Zarya's vulnerable head to rip out her eyes. Amari shot live rounds from her pistol into Reaper's shoulder. He merely shrugged it off, as the wounds immediately closed. Reaper turned to face her, but she'd already hidden. With the team down for the count, Gabriel could make short work of her. She couldn't hide forever. But he didn't have forever.

Pulse rounds buffeted the ground, tiny explosions at Gabriel's feet. Morrison had returned. Gabriel considered pushing right through his assault, but thought better of pushing his luck. He retreated to the alleyways. Morrison followed, shooting practically blindly, like he wasn't even trying to hit him.

That was it. He wasn't.

He was pushed further and further away from the team. Finally, he stopped in the middle of the street. A deserted business district. They were nowhere near anyone else. Reaper scanned the environs for Morrison, but then the soldier announced his own presence.

"Reaper!" said Morrison. "It ends now. Zhou is safe, and Amari's going to heal everyone up. Your work will have all been for nothing. And they're not coming back. This is our fight. Yours and mine."

"I was just going to leave. I would have killed you some other day. But you had to go and piss me off. You made it their fight."

"You should be dead already. I'm just finishing the job."

"You killed me."

"You're delusional."

"You didn't save me, did you? When you saw your own man shoot off my legs? Or is there a difference in your eyes? Did inaction make you less guilty when you wanted it?"

"You were the one who started everything. You were the one who brought it down!"

"Is that what you're telling your pets? I bet you're not telling them that every single dirty little leak was true. You don't tell them that Overwatch deserves to die right along with you. And they will die. Slowly."

"Reaper, stop this."

"You won't even use my name, Morrison? Does that make it easier for you? It's making this way easier for me."

"You think you're the hero? Heroes don't torture innocent people for spite. You don't have to do this to them."

"I'm not doing this to them. I'm doing it to you."

"To me? For what? Vengeance? Jealousy?"

"Jealousy?" Gabriel laughed, "I'd have to be pretty pathetic to be jealous of you. You left me to die because you knew. You knew I was meant to lead. You knew I'd take you down when I realized it. You were afraid of me. You were afraid of what you'd made me! Well, what happened, Morrison? What happened to 'jealousy is human?!'"

Morrison gripped his rifle tight. The fury in his sea-blue eyes pierced even his visor. "Jealousy is human, Reaper. You're not."

Gabriel wanted to scoff again. But his bravado was gone in an instant. Hearing Jack say that, finally admitting what he'd always known. It hurt more than Reaper knew it could. He looked back into Morrison's eyes with renewed hatred. "I guess you're pretty human, then."

The old soldier opened fire.

Gabriel shot back, but his pistol wasn't doing too much. There wasn't much at all he could do at this range. And he couldn't afford to waste the eight Hellfire shots he had left. He moved around the battlefield, ghosting from cover to cover, looking for an opening, but Morrison wasn't a stranger to this game.

"I'm in position, Reaper," said Widowmaker. "Say the word. This is my last shot."

Gabriel tossed his gun into the air and took out his last, dropping the pistol. "Now."

Gabriel bull-rushed Morrison, who predictably responded with a storm from his rifle. Gabriel transformed, and the bullets passed through him, so did Widowmaker's.

Widowmaker's shot just narrowly missed, but Reaper was now in position to do damage. He kicked Morrison's rifle to the ground and shoved the Hellfire towards the soldier's chest. Morrison struck Gabriel's weapon with his palm, putting off Reaper's aim by just the right fraction to miss entirely. Morrison whipped a pistol from his belt and shot Gabriel in the leg.

Gabriel and Morrison exchanged blows, both attempting to catch the other offguard and get in a good shot. First Morrison ran dry. And then Gabriel missed his last shot. He whacked Morrison with his empty weapon, tossing it aside in the same stroke, then caught the one he'd thrown. Morrison reloaded his sidearm in a swift, fluid, motion. They each fired a shot over the other's shoulder, missing. They spun around, and Jack put the barrel of his gun against Reaper's, reflexively pulling the trigger. Gabriel's gun exploded in his hand, however also blasting Morrison's own weapon away.

Gabriel ruthlessly advanced on Morrison's throat with his knife. Morrison caught and disarmed Gabriel, and hammer-struck his elbow, sending the blade into the snow. Gabriel turned to his intangible state to escape Morrison's arm-lock. The old soldier sent a right hook into the side of Reaper's head immediately when he reconstituted. Gabriel was sent tumbling down. Morrison straddled his downed opponent and viciously hit the back of Gabriel's head with his fist, intending to take it off. Before long, he fell into a rhythm.

Gabriel waited, then turned into a wraith once again immediately before Morrison's punch connected. Morrison's bones cracked from the impact with the frozen ground. Gabriel swirled around, reforming in a standing position right beside Morrison. He grabbed him by the neck and tossed him overhead across the street.

Soldier retrieved up his sidearm and quickly fired two rounds. Gabriel turned to smoke and continued his advance. Morrison watched with a steely gaze as the smoke-like, demonic form of Gabriel encroached. He aimed for where his best guess at where Gabriel's head would be. His tac-visor would handle the rest.

Soldier's visor turned purple. Sombra appeared behind him. He was blinded. Not skipping a beat, Morrison took but a moment to rip his useless mask off, but it was a moment off-guard. Gabriel seized the opportunity and served an uppercut to Morrison's jaw.

Morrison doubled back, grunting. He was struggling just to stand. He took aim again as soon as his bearings returned, blood dripping into his eyes. Sombra tossed her Hellfire shotgun over Morrison's head. Gabriel caught it.

Just what he needed.

He popped a flurry of pellets into Soldier's shooting arm, then both of his legs before he could react.

Gabriel walked to Morrison and stood above him, relishing his victory.

"Kill me then, monster." Morrison snarled. His visage was covered in a mix of tears and blood. "Take your revenge if you think it'll fix you."

Gabriel pressed his weapon to the soldier's head, "You are going to die, Morrison," he said, "But you're going to die last. After you watch the life bleed from every single one of your precious Overwatch while they beg you to save them. You're going to die after you see what happens when I decide to really bring you down."

The Talon dropship flew in twenty feet above Gabriel. Sombra called to Gabriel to get in, throwing her translocator beacon into the open hatch. She vanished.

"You know what really makes someone suffer, Jack? You don't go after them. You don't make their lives hell. No. You go after their family."

Morrison spat out blood and looked up. "I am sorry, Gabriel," he said, "I'm sorry I ever made you."

"You will be."

Reaper dropped the shotgun at Morrison's knees. He turned to smoke one last time and reformed on the gunship. Gabriel watched Morrison sob over the dropped weapon. The man Gabriel knew would have picked it up and used that shot. But he was defeated. No more bravado. No more mask. The doors closed. Sombra smirked, Lacroix nodded in solidarity. Reaper took hold of a cargo strap on the ceiling, and waited out the journey home. Gabriel was never happier to leave somewhere behind.

...

Zaryanova had not moved since the battle. She stood vigil above her fallen comrades like a statue. Ashen snow sprinkled on her head.

"Specialist?" said Ana. "The fight is over. Aren't you going home?"

"These men were all my friends. I was counting on them. And someone was… Counting on me. I was to take out the one called 'Sombra.' I didn't even see her. I have failed."

"You can't be that way… You have to keep fighting. Your friend is still counting on you, Specialist."

"Please. Do not call me that. Soldat was right. I am not a soldier. Not a real one. Not anymore. I am… retired. Retired bodybuilder, retired soldier. I am just… Zarya. And Katya… I have failed Katya. And she cannot get me out of this. I must accept it."

"Katya?"

"My friend has means, but… Sombra has more. She knows things about Katya. She will stop Katya from covering this. And I will… I do not know. Prison, perhaps?"

"There may be a place for you. With us."

"Hmph. You are generous to extend your hand to a criminal. But I must accept what Sombra decides. If I do not, she may punish Katya further. I cannot risk that."

"Strong, resourceful, and loyal. You would have fit right in with us, Aleksandra."

"Someday," Zarya nodded. "After my sentence. If you are still around. I hope to."

...

Gabriel had come to a realization: He wanted to live. Otherwise, he would have already found a way to end his life. It was just a matter of finding a reason. Without that, life was hollow. But purpose didn't mean a thing if that reason was hollow, too. Hatred only found its strength in its opposite.

He walked through the halls of Talon HQ at night, keeping to the shadows to avoid being seen. Fist had graciously supplied lodgings, after, of course, chewing them all out double for failing the mission and for getting trapped. That was where he was headed. Sombra's room.

He knocked.

"Um… Come in?"

To Gabriel's surprise, Sombra's room was barren and utilitarian. Not unlike his own.

"Gabe. What are you doing up?"

"I don't sleep."

"We've been over that, but shouldn't you be… Stewing?"

"What are you after?"

"Um… I'm a merc, so… Money probably, man."

"You know what I mean. Why'd you spare Katya Volskaya?"

"You sure you want to say stuff like that here?"

"You're just as paranoid as me. You've already disabled any of Fist's bugs. Don't change the subject. Don't play dumb. You don't want to share, then keep your stupid secrets. But don't keep me in the dark. If you're not going tell me your goal, I still need to know your strategy."

"What are you talking about?"

"If Lacroix gets hurt because of your schemes, I will not hesitate to blow your head off. From now on, Sombra, you're going to tell me when your goals run counter to Talon's mission."

"You think I'm stupid? Why would I tell you? So you could stop me?"

"Because I can't help you if I don't know what you're doing."

"Hold on…"

"You tell me what you need out of the mission, and I'll make sure we both get what we want. We keep failing missions, Fist is going to look at you closer. He might decide you're more of a hindrance than an asset. I'm sure you don't want that."

"Why do you care?"

"Because… If he starts looking at his independent contractors that includes me."

"No, I don't think that's it. That doesn't sound remotely true."

"It's because…"

"Don't change the subject," Sombra teased, "don't play dumb."

"… Because I don't hate working with you."

"Wow. You like me that much?"

"Don't. Hate. There's a difference."

"And what if my goals don't work with yours, hm? What if we can't compromise? No one can be dead and alive at once. I mean, your targets can't- Unless you want to reapify everyone?"

"If your ideal world doesn't involve Overwatch being more than a bad memory, I think our goals work just fine together."

"You know what, I'll think about it."

"I'm willing to give you a favor. Think of it as a token of goodwill. Come to the mess hall at midnight. Lacroix will be there too."

"What are you playing at?"

"I get… lost in the present. I don't realize that there are things that I've known, that I've had, that you never did."

"Dude, what?"

Gabriel growled and rolled his head back. Did he really have to say it? "We never did have a meal," he said. "You wanted to do that."

Sombra raised an eyebrow.

"Midnight. Lacroix will be there too. Come quietly. I don't want anyone seeing you."

"What is all this, Gabe? You scared? Think I got something on you?"

"I'm dead. There's nothing to have."

"How can you do this? I just saw you refuse to kill your worst enemy because you wanted to torture him first. What even are you?"

"I'm a ghost. I punish my enemies. And help my friends. Even my pretend ones."

Sombra smirked. "I got nothing, huh? Wait until I tell Arana you're a big softie."

"Midnight." Gabriel turned his back.

"Gabe. I'm thirty."

"What?"

"I'm thirty. Anos. Old. I just thought… You asked earlier, and… I don't think that's a secret I need to keep. So… I'm thirty. Maybe tonight… We can be real friends. Instead of pretend ones."

"Hmph," Gabriel said, "You don't act thirty."

He melted through the cracks of Sombra's door. He couldn't see, but he could imagine Sombra's impish grin as she lied back on her bed, thoughts racing.

Gabriel enjoyed the meal. Much more than he thought he would. Much more than he let on. Though Lacroix probably knew. She usually did. That night reminded him of those things that he'd had.

When Gabriel was alone, he did what he did before. He thought about his pain, gave himself to it. But he wasn't thinking about the pain of what he was. He didn't think about what Morrison made him. He had something new to fight for.

He thought about Christmas, and Halloween, and movie night. He thought of the good things. The things that had been cruelly taken, but the things that, though they were gone, Gabriel still carried safe within him, if he ever cared to look.

...

It was a quiet ride back to Gibraltar. No one seemed interested in speaking. Near-death did that to a person. Ana nearly ran out of first aid patching up the whole team's injuries. Currently, Amari was closely attending the just-recovered Mei, who was wrapped in a warm blanket. Winston and Lena were at the controls. With her hand and arm in casts, there wasn't a lot Oxton could do other than check instruments while Winston flew. Lena was nodding off in the co-pilot's seat.

"Go take a break," said Winston, "I can get us the rest of the way."

She reluctantly agreed. Though Lena was tired, she still must have noticed that Jack was somehow the quietest one in a silent room. She sat down next to him.

"Jack? You okay?"

He didn't answer. He'd replaced his visor, but Lena still wasn't sure it was back to working. It made his face a blank page.

"Reaper… Is Commander Reyes?"

Jack nodded. "Was."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't know, Lena."

"You were… So close before. I can't believe that you're… That he's our enemy now."

"You trying to make me feel better? Because it's not working."

"I thought talking it through would-"

"He's not my enemy. He's my punishment. My punishment for seeing the best in bad people. Reyes was a disaster waiting to happen and I just let him. Damn it, I helped him."

"Jack, you can't… You can't blame yourself for what Reyes is."

"Can't I? If I hadn't… If we hadn't met…" his voice started to break, "If I hadn't given him so much power…"

"You can't stop caring because of that, Jack. It's a shame, but it's not your fault."

"You don't get it. It is. It's all my fault." He brushed his fingers through his thinning white hair.

Lena was at an utter loss for what to say. She patted him on the shoulder, "Well… It's over now. You're safe. That's what matters. We're all safe."

Jack's voice dropped near to a whisper. "No, Lena. We're not. No one is."

End.