Men With No Names
"I don't know if I should be worried that you planned all of this in two days."
Jesse almost sighed when he heard Brigitte speak up from behind him; he had no quarrel with the girl, but she had gotten quite talkative in the last few hours, apparently overcoming whatever trauma had rendered her almost mute for two days straight. Jesse turned to look at her, not yet replying; he had figured out in just a few short minutes that Brigitte usually didn't finish her observations in a single sentence. Her orange and grey armour whirred and clanked as she gathered her thoughts, putting a hand on her hip.
"I mean… I knew you did this before." she continued, looking up at him on his seat atop a small flat top rock. "You were a criminal. Reinhardt told me all about it. But… I thought you left that behind when you joined Overwatch."
"Way I figure it, your godfather left a few details outta his tall tales," Jesse replied, grinning at her. "I was never part of Overwatch, really. I was more of a Blackwatch fella; Overwatch wrote my paychecks, but I wasn't on the team proper-like. Wasn't even in the paperwork most of the time; I did the hush-hush stuff they couldn't have clutterin' up the papers. Kind of stuff that made us all look bad."
He looked skyward for a moment, taking in the late-morning sun and closing his eyes. He could see them all; Genji, sword in hand, with his cold stares and silent act. Moira, prim and proper and wholly disapproving of his roughneck nature. And Gabriel, grim and brooding Gabriel, always overworked, always needing a few more hours of sleep and another meal, never willing to actually give himself the necessary breaks.
"Guess you could say I never really stopped bein' a criminal," he continued, looking back to her. "Difference was, I got my paycheck from someone else instead'a writin' it myself. Besides that… it was more of the same, really. Guess I was shootin' at the bad guys, with Blackwatch, instead of security bots and cops."
Brigitte looked disappointed, and Jesse wasn't sure if it was disappointment at him, at Reinhardt, at Blackwatch, or at Overwatch for letting Blackwatch exist. He hated to shatter that happy little worldview of hers, but… it had been shattered a month and a bit ago, when she saw the face of her father's past herself, for the first time.
And saw her father's face for the last time, if Jesse wanted to get morbid about it all.
"I… they had spoken of Blackwatch before…" Brigitte swallowed. "You worked with… Reyes. Genji. The… the scientist too. Moira."
"Yep." McCree gave her a thumbs up. "One big dysfunctional family unit. Hell of a time we had; Blackwatch wrote its own rules. We weren't beholden to any man or country. Only the greater good, though I got no idea what the hell that meant."
Brigitte nodded once, though Jesse wasn't sure she really understood. That was fine; most people didn't. Genji had, though; it was good to catch up with that wily old ninja again, even if he'd changed a fair bit since Jesse'd last seen him. Now… now Jesse just hoped he was still kicking. Woulda been a shame to lose a man like that. He would be damn good to have for a mission like this.
"Blackwatch…" Brigitte said, quiet. "What was it like? Working with… with Reyes and Moira. What were they like? Before… they joined Talon?"
"Well…" Jesse leaned back, pulling a cigar out of the satchel at his hip and slipping it between his teeth, before grabbing his light. "Hell of a story, that. Long one too. Figure it's the sort to be told when we've got plenty o' time. Another time; our train's due real quick now. Then we've got a whole lot of business to do."
"We're with you." Brigitte told him, nodding with the same resolute self-assurance her mentor had possessed in spades. "This will work."
"It'd better." Jesse said, hearing the sound of the train following it's magnetic tracks, that thunder of a large object moving quickly. "Get low now. That armour of yours workin' right?"
"Better than I expected." she replied, tapping one pauldron. "None of the joints are sticking and the shield seems stable."
Jesse gave her another thumb's up, as the distant roar of the train growing louder as it came closer. They were overlooking a trestle over the gorge proper; prime positioning for a derailment and ambush. With storage crates being so damned sturdy nowadays, most of the cargo would survive. Jesse saw movement amongst the base of one of the trestle's primary support beams, and signalled to Brigitte to duck down. They were positioned on a clifftop about eighty feet up from where they needed to be, but they had a solution for getting down.
A few moments passed, and the train was crossing the trestle. For a moment, there was a roar of sound, then an even louder bang as something big exploded. The trestle came down hard, and with it the train, cars splitting from each other as they were suddenly subjected to total freefall. Jesse watched it fall, admiring for a moment the clean efficiency of it; the centre of the train landed smooth and even, several cars hanging from wires and spars of jagged metal. Movement again, quick and nimble, after a moment for the wreckage to settle.
Jesse gestured for Brigitte to move, and she attached her rappelling line to the hook they had hammered into the rock almost an hour ago, Jesse following suit. Their descent was hasty, shielded from sight by the smoke and dust rising from the corpse of the fallen train. Jesse grinned as he slid downwards, metal hand immune to the friction burns flesh would have suffered. The two hit the ground hard, but unhurt, before unhooking their lines and turning towards the wreckage proper.
"Remember, you stay behind me, and cover my backside." Jesse reminded the Swedish squire, giving her armoured thigh a smack. "I'd rather not be shot up if I can manage it, and you're half of that managin'. So keep your eyes open and your mouth shut while I try to convince my old flame that she should hand me a carrier jet, millions in cash and an armory."
Brigitte didn't reply to that verbally, but she did give him a smile and a pat on the shoulder, which was a damned site more reassuring than any measure of words as far as Jesse was concerned.
And so peacekeeper holstered at his side, spurs jingling softly, he walked into the smoke to greet his oldest enemy; and the woman he'd once considered asking to be his wife.
iiiiiiiiii
Vicente Rodriguez was not a man who considered himself particularly courageous or cowardly; he preferred to take measure of a situation, riding along tracks and rails as he pleased but always keeping the end destination in mind and analysing the route before him. So when his latest ride was dropped from its bridge in a wash of fire and smoke, he didn't panic; instead, he used the trailing wires of the falling train to swing to a relatively safe landing amidst a pile of twisted metal that was likely all that remained of the fallen cars.
In one hand he clenched a sawed off shotgun, a single barrel he'd lovingly named Mia and sworn to love until his dying days. In the other, he had an exact copy of that weapon named Josefa, whom he had also sworn eternal love to. Both were named for women with whom he'd made the exact same mistake, and both were just about as dangerous when provoked.
Vicente was concerned with a single issue at that point; surviving the current mess and escaping with his own life intact. This wasn't the first time he'd been suddenly and very nearly killed by an explosion, though this one hadn't quite put him out of a job and killed both of his life's greatest regrets (and triumphs) in a hail of fire and shattered concrete. So Vicente took stock of the situation, as was his forte, and realized almost immediately that there was a man walking through the smoke.
The man was tall and lanky, wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of ill-fitting fatigue pants held up by a very tight black belt. In one hand he held a double-barrelled shotgun, and the other was empty. His face was mostly obscured by a green bandana, upon which was written a word Vicente had hoped to never read again.
Deadlock.
Vicente scurried away through the smoke, abandoning his current cover for a more bulky crate further back and away from the body of the wreckage. The man had apparently spotted him, however, given that he hefted his shotgun in two hands and began pointing its barrel in Vicente's general direction. So Vicente improvised a solution, holstering Josefa and grabbing a rock at his feet.
He threw it to the side, where it made a healthy clattering amidst some other boxes similar to his own, and the man turned towards the new sound, giving Vicente the opportunity to rise and shoot him with Mia.
Mia clicked loudly, and Vicente suddenly remembered that he hadn't actually taken the time to load his chosen weapon.
The man whirled and fired, but the recoil of his own weapon seemed to knock him off balance. Vicente watched him tumble to the floor, the pellets from his weapon ricocheting off of Vicente's cover, and then Vicente grabbed his backup blackjack from his belt and rushed the man, clubbing him in the head as hard as he could. A loud clank as his weapon dented the man's helmet, and then he fell still with a low groan.
"Many apologies, friend," Vicente said, before grabbing the shotgun. "But I am afraid I will need this."
Then a ghost from Vicente's past walked out of the smoke as well, and Vicente froze when Jesse McCree looked him dead in the eye, shocked, then grinned and shushed him with one finger before walking right by him. Then a very beautiful young woman with gleaming red hair clad in clanking armour followed Jesse away, giving Vicente a little wave and a blush, and Vicente watched them both go with shock only to shrug, pocket the fallen man's wallet and turned to run.
He hadn't wanted any part of Overwatch affairs in years, since they had taken from him both his daughter and his wife. He would not be changing that now.
iiiiiiiiii
When the love of her life walked back into Ashe's life, it was exactly how she had imagined it.
Her brain, her stupid, hormone addled brain, had dreamt up a hundred different means by which Jesse McCree would return to her. Some were violent, some were heroic, some were downright disgustingly sugar sweet, but all of them had involved a slow walk through smoke, usually gunsmoke or the smoke of a motorcycle, before giving her that trademark roguish grin and a 'sorry I'm late' before sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to either a bed or a bar… or any other flat, mildly comfortable surface upon which they could-
"Howdy, Ashe." That twanging voice broke her reverie-turned-fantasy and returned her to the present, where Jesse goddamn McCree was smiling at her after walking from a cloud of smoke. "Sorry about the wait."
The men and women of Ashe's gang all looked to her, either in shock or in expectation, then looked back to him, then back to her again. Bob stepped up beside her, staring right at Jesse with his omnic equivalent of wide eyed shock. Ashe steadied herself, eyes narrowing. She had to keep it all under control. Deadlock expected her to stay calm, collected...
"Jesse McCree…" she said the word slowly, deliberately giving it her over the top drawl, before giving him a downright wicked grin. "Been a while. You said you'd write."
Jesse took a moment to light himself a cigarette, and her men took up positions around him in the midday sun, weapons in hand but not yet aimed. They were smarter than that. She noted that Gilly was missing, which didn't surprise her; that boy was as thick as mud and about as quick to react to anything new.
"Well, I have been pretty busy…" he flexed the fingers on his mechanical hand, and she felt a pang of guilt in her chest as they whirred and hummed softly. "Got straight with the law, saved the world… you know how it is."
"But here you are…" Ashe looked him dead in the eye. "What do you want, McCree?"
"Really, Ashe? No first names?" He looked genuinely hurt. Ashe had to pretend like she didn't care. "Well, if you insist… I need your help."
That surprised her. Jesse McCree did not ask for help. You asked him for help, but he would never make the same request. He was a liberty-loving free-riding hero of the highway; he craved independence and worshipped free will. He had once told her, on a cool midsummer's night, across a motel pillow, that he had sworn upon his father's grave to be beholden to no man. For him to swallow that down and ask for help, from her of all people… that was downright unthinkable.
"Well…" he continued, tilting his head to the left a little. "We need your help. I brought some friends, Ashe."
And out of the smoke walked a man and a woman Ashe had never seen before. One had a pair of mechanical arms, a glowing orange visor over his eyes and a mean attitude. The other, the woman, was clad in a big suit of armour that clanked with every step.
"Help with what, exactly?" She should have turned him down outright, but curiosity and that damned look on his face had her ask the question.
"My friends and I…" Jesse rubbed the back of his head, which Ashe knew meant he was trying to think of the best way to answer her. "We're on a mission, Ashe. Lookin' for payback. Probably gonna save the world somewhere along the way."
"And you want me to help you out?" Ashe's smile grew, and she noted the man with the mechanical arms and visor stiffen up. "How… charming. You know, Jesse, I should've figured it was you who sent that tip. But the way I see it…"
She cocked her rifle, the lever clicking and then clacking, and Bob stepped up beside her. Jesse's friends all readied up as well, as did the Deadlock gangers surrounding them. The girl in the armour had some sort of big metal club. The man with the arms cocked a very big rifle of some kind.
"Deadlock don't owe you a thing." she aimed her rifle,smile turning to a scowl, and the expression on Jesse's face nearly broke her heart. "And all I owe you is a bullet in the head."
Then the world erupted in white, a splitting pain filling her head as Bob decked her to the floor with one giant mechanical fist. She rolled over, eyes wide, and saw the omnic bruiser's own typically green orbs glowing a brilliant violet instead.
"Bob…?" she whispered, before his wrist-mounted guns popped out, one aiming at her and the other at her gang.
"I'm afraid Bob's mine now, senora…" a voice said, before a woman wearing black and purple materialized from thin air right before Ashe's eyes, a finger pressing against her nose. "Sweet dreams…"
Then Ashe took a boot to the face and saw nothing more.
iiiiiiiiii
Jesse winced when Ashe took a punch from Bob; he'd been on the receiving end of the omnic's fists before himself. It was not fun, and a sucker punch to the back of the head like that… his own various injuries flared up in sympathetic pain. Ouch.
Then the Deadlock gang was shooting and Jack was shooting and Brigitte was shouting and Jesse had to focus now. A gunshot came very close to taking his hat off his head and his head off his shoulders, and Jesse whirled towards where the shot had come from, where a hooded omnic crouched atop a fallen train car. He cleared leather but before he could open fire Bob blew the omnic and most of its train car away in a hail of gunfire. So Jesse dropped his aim about a foot and put three shots in a box marked with a caution sign, blowing that entire section of gorge into kingdom come.
He rolled for cover. Jack was laying down short bursts of fire, the occasional helix rocket blasting away at boxes and twisted metal the gangers were using to hide, while Brigitte gave him shield cover and called shots. The lady in purple (why didn't he know her damned name?) was firing away with submachine gun small enough for her to wield with one hand, while her other danced and twisted, fingers tapping at some invisible keyboard. Bob, still under her control, was firing away at his fellow Deadlock members.
Jesse ducked as a bullet whizzed past his head, before turning and firing two shots with his peacekeeper. Neither hit but both encouraged the targets to keep their heads down and guns lowered, which was a damned improvement over taking even more fire. A woman wielding a shotgun like a baseball bat rushed Jack, who decided to oblige her apparent desire for severe injury by ducking her swing and smashing the butt of his rifle into her guts, before levelling her with a savage headbutt.
Brigitte swung that mace of hers overhand and the head, attached by chain to the handle, flew some fifteen feet through the air to smash into a ganger's chest, throwing him off his perch atop a train car and down to the ground. Jesse fired two more shots at an omnic ganger holding a sniper rifle, blowing his right arm clean off. The omnic just looked at the stump before turning to Jesse and charging. Jesse obliged him with a third shot to the chest, before ducking another heavily modified omnic furious slash with a long, arm mounted blade, putting his last shot in the thing's chest.
Jesse took a moment to reload, calling it to Jack as he ducked down again. Jack, halfway through slamming his fist into another ganger's face, didn't say anything. Jesse knew that meant he had been heard, and Brigitte rushed to his side to give him cover with her shield.
"Are we winning?" she asked him, giving another charging omnic a smack around the chops for his trouble.
"That's subjective," Jesse replied, sliding the last bullet home before sliding the cylinder back home, giving it a spin for luck. "We aren't losing, that's for sure. On your right."
She turned and lunged with her shield, giving him room to turn himself and let the adrenaline pumping through his veins really take over for a moment. The world seemed to slow down, his eyes narrowing, and he noted that the sun had reached its zenith. His hyperfocus revealed to him six opponents, half sheltered by the smoke. He took a breath and grinned.
"It's high noon…" he muttered, before firing all six shot in rapid succession, watching as six hapless Deadlock gangers hit the dirt, crippled but not dead.
Jack gave him a sideways glance, throwing aside a ganger he had choked into submission and then unconsciousness. Right, robot parts. He had probably heard that. The old soldier just shook his head, before firing a burst of rounds past him to knock out the arm-blade omnic from before, who had apparently recovered from the bullet to the chest.
Jesse tipped his hat in thanks, and Jack shook his head again.
"I figure that's about enough!" Jesse shouted, looking over the train wreckage and, for a moment, admiring their handiwork. "Any of you left standing can stop cowerin' and slink on out now!"
A few gangers emerged from the smoke, hands up, but apparently Jesse, Jack, Brigitte and a hacked Bob had handled most of the crew themselves. Handy. Brigitte rejoined him, her shield stowed on her vambrace again and flail on her shoulder. The mystery woman did some more shenanigans with her left hand and Bob slumped, apparently deactivated.
Bob.
Ashe.
Shit.
Jesse rushed the truck, suddenly remembering exactly how all this had started. He was an idiot, he had gotten caught up in the rush of the gunfight again, like he used to with Blackwatch, he had forgotten why they were here. He found Ashe on her back on the truck, breathing slow, face bruised something fierce. Shit. Head injuries. Shit shit shit… Jesse didn't know what to do. He wasn't a medic. Angela, Moira, they had handled that all back in the day. He knew how to clean and sterilize a cut or bullet hole, how to sew himself back together after a scrap, but his usual solution for a punch to the head was whisky and a nap.
He grabbed her, arms underneath her, picking her up a little.
"Ashe?" he spoke quietly, and to his surprise the white-haired crime boss stirred a little in his arms, eyes flickering open, that same honey gold with the tinge of red. "Ashe, can you hear me?"
"J-Jess… Jesse…?" she groaned, closing her eyes again hard when the sun hit them. "Wh-what… where…?"
"Jack!" Jesse turned, looking over his shoulder at the old man. "I need some of that nanite juice of yours!"
Jack was moving too slowly and Jesse wanted to shout at him, but Ashe had winced at his volume the first time, so he didn't. He didn't want this; they were supposed to talk. Maybe knock out a couple of her boys, have a fistfight… he didn't think it was going to turn into THIS.
"What's her status?" Jack asked him, grabbing from his hip one of those medical beacons he had likely 'procured' from some Overwatch storage facility.
"I don't fuckin' know, Jack!" Jesse hated how close his voice came to cracking there. "It's Ashe, Jack, she's tough, but… fuck, a hit to the head like that? Even you…"
Jack just nodded, slamming the beacon to the ground, and a golden glow filled the air around them. Jesse could feel his injuries fading away, he could see the bruise on Ashe's face slipping away, but these beacons weren't neurosurgery. They were meant to fix minor injuries, maybe patch up a bullet wound or some shrapnel damage. Not potential brain damage.
"Ashe?" Jesse looked down at her face, and she stirred a little.
"Hurts…" she groaned. "Head… hurts… Jess. You… where…? You… left…"
Jesse swallowed.
"I know, Ashe, I know." he took his hand from her back to touch her face, the flesh hand, the one she knew. "But I'm back."
"Took…" her eyes fluttered again, and gold met brown as they met his, a weak grin on her face. "Took you… long… enough… Cowboy…"
Jesse picked her up, and from how she nuzzled herself closer to him it was obvious she was at least a little out of it. Ashe hated being pick up, hated feeling small. She had taken to wearing heeled boots just to be as tall as him, and he hadn't complained. Made casual pecks on the cheek easier, for certain. She still wore them, and part of him wondered if that was out of habit at this point or if maybe she had been keeping him in mind.
He swallowed again, shaking his head resolutely. Not the time for that, not now. He had to focus, keep himself in check. There was a mission to be done. But… this was Ashe. Jack was staring at him as they walked away, towards where Brigitte and the mystery woman were watching the remain Deadlock gangers.
"Holy shit…" one of them said, eyes wide as he stared at Jesse. "Jesse fuckin' McCree… in the flesh."
Jesse grinned, a fake grin, but it was his trademark and he needed to keep up appearances for the rest of the team. Ashe shifted in his arms a little again, and he adjusted her to be closer to his chest. Christ, he was weak. Ashe had never been all that heavy, but Jesse was still damaged from a month ago and even now it was affecting his strength.
"In the flesh." he agreed. "Now, you boys and girls know who I am. And as my friends and I have proven, we could take you all down any time we damn well feel like. So when I ask you to gather up your boys, run off back to your headquarters and wait for us to mosey on in and give you some orders, what're you gonna be doin'?"
"Gathering our guys, headin' back to base and waitin' for orders?" the guy hazarded, looking genuinely confused. "Right?"
"As rain." Jesse said. "Ashe comes with us. But you boys try anything, and it ain't her head on the line. It's yours."
The guy swallowed, before nodding rapidly. Jesse watched as he and the other handful of gangers left standing grabbed their boys, before turning to Jack again.
"There's a motel a little further down the tracks." he said. "We can report the train wreck there, and find a doctor."
Jack agreed with a nod, apparently too tired to offer anything more verbal.
IIIII/Author's Note/IIIII
Hey howdy rootin' tootin' pointin' and shootin' sure is fun to write. Nothin' like a good ol' cowboy shootout to get the blood pumpin' and Word Up by the BossHoss stuck in your head for a day because you listened to it the whole time. (Hint hint.)
Anyhow, just wanted to give the fair warning that this story will probably take a while, and I'm probably not going to be able to update almost daily like this, so don't get too excited about update speed. I start work again soon, I just have a touch of time off.
Hope you all enjoyed, and sayonara 'till the next one!