Notes: Let's see how Gabe's handling things, shall we?
It had been three days of no sleep for Gabriel.
The enhancements that SEP had given him put a heavy focus on endurance. He could go days without rest if need be, and the omnic crisis had put that to the test on more than one occasion. Leading a strike team was a demanding job, and oftentimes his only form of sleep was in between drop ships. Sometimes standing, as that was a skill he had all but perfected.
However, Gabriel knew he was at his functional limit.. He didn't want to give up the search, not while he'd made absolutely zero progress. Dead end after dead end, and bad lead after bad lead.
Besides, other people were starting to notice his behavior, and not just other members of the strike team. After everything they've been through together, they can tell when someone's off their game, that was a given. Ana had recognized something was wrong right away, though she'd been off on her guess. But no, these were the faceless somebodies who skittered around the halls of the watchpoint; either junior bureaucrats, or wannabe bastion fodder who didn't have the physicality for the front lines.
They're watching him. Like vultures.
Rather pointedly, he decided to not let it get to him. They can shove their nose in a copy machine, seems more their speed.
He'd been prowling the watchpoint for days now, looking for anything that looked amiss, anyone acting odd, and had come up with nothing conclusive. Searching for similar phenomenon online failed him, and only brought up a bunch of unhelpful scifi stories, and hackneyed conspiracy theories. Wandering the halls aimlessly had been the closest thing he could do for an investigation, so that's all he'd been doing. All that had done for him was remind him how painfully dull the watchpoint was when humanity wasn't in the on the verge of dying. He needed to talk to someone about making this place a little less like SEP.
Still, he was no closer to his target than he was the days before. The girl continued to evade him.
He breathed out a sigh between halfway grit teeth, leaning back against the wall for a brief reprieve. People bustled along by him, but most already had either the lack of spine, or the good sense to know not to bother him when he's not in a good mood. He rubbed at his eyes, and they stung, crying for sleep. Odd thing they missed with the enhancements. He might not have been tired, but his eyes sure as hell would act like he was.
Gabriel's mind drifted to the experience in his mind that continued to feel the freshest. Like always, he could only compare the sensation to scratching away a scab of an unhealed wound.
His breath was warm, almost claustrophobic against the mask worn over his face. A part of it had chipped away around his eye and it eased some of the humidity that comes with wearing a mask, but not all. A strange skin-crawling sensation rippled through his whole body, like ripples. The weight of a shotgun in each hand brought him small comfort, but the scene was still alien and strange.
He knew he was on a battlefield of some sort, and given by the sheer volume of bullets he could hear being discharged, it must have been a warzone, but his eyes were focused securely on a singular target.
"This is how it should have been," he could feel his mouth moving to the words, but on his ears they felt distorted and unnatural, like they had been crammed into a voice synthesizer a hundred times over. "At Zurich."
The man he stared down was also wearing a mask, though this one was halfway broken. An eye and a long scar poke out of a shattered visor, glaring back at him defiantly. His face and chest were sticky with blood. A coat that looked like it should have been blue and white was discolored from splattered blood. He had a crippling leg wound, blood pouring like a spring from his thigh. Without medical attention he'd bleed to death. Bullets whistled in the air.
"Gabriel-!" A voice shouted at him from beyond his line of sight, Ana's to be specific. She sounded desperate.
Something in the man's mask had to be electronic, a spark jolted out from it before the broken remains fell loose and tumbled to the ground.
It was Jack.
Older, exhausted, bloodied, and battered, with two neat little scars tearing through his face. As he stared down the shotguns in Gabriel's hands, then to Gabriel's mask, his eyes burned bright, trying to convey something powerful and vicious.
Even after replaying this memory in his head countless time, the image still made his gut do flips, and left an unplaceable duality of dread and anger fuming in his lungs.
The look made his body tense and his vision blur. He adjusted his grip on his shotguns multiple times, tigger discipline betraying his own hand's hesitance, his finger hovering halfway to the trigger. His head pounded and the rippling sensation doubled in speed until it was like a whirlwind in his body.
There was a flash of blue, a sound like a record scratch made smooth and something reasserting itself besides him. A woman barreled into his his arms, knocking them aside as his hand jostled and he discharged a round harmlessly into the ground. The woman held har grip firm on his arm, barely over five feet tall, hair a mess, goggles cracked, covered in the grime of war, but her expression was firm, mixture of determination and subtle fear.
"Stop it!" She shouted, eyes wide. "Don't do something you'll regret!"
"Lena!" Jack's voice shouted
He stared at her, wide eyed for a few key seconds. Static blared in his ear and the ripples in his body all relocated to the arm the woman held onto until with no preamble it completely disappeared into a puff of pitch black smoke, only for it to reform as he jerked away, shotgun still in hand. The sensation was as incredible as it was unsettling.
"Stay out of my way," he growled, ducking forward slamming the barrel of his shotguns into the side of her face, knocking her down, just as the telltale whistle of a sniper round zipped by his ear.
He moved to take a step forward, Jack still glaring up at him, when something caught his eye, and his gaze shifted to the girl he had knocked aside, eyes widening.
"Oh no," The girl whispered to herself beside him, frantic, "Oh no no no no no no- Shite, shite-!"
He glanced down, and the girl was staring down as a device on a harness on her chest, arms hovering over it twitching rapidly like she desperately wanted to touch it and was terrified to at the same time. Blue sparks poured from the device, bursting out only to collapse back in, playing in timelapse The sniper round had hit it.
She flickered, once, twice, a chorus of shouting from all around him, and he took a step back, from the corner of his eye, he could see Jack trying to right himself to dive away. Whatever that thing was, it was about to-
The girl flickered once more, distorting like static, and a bright blue flash overtook him.
It was not an explosion.
Gabriel knew the sensation of being near an explosion, that hard, full body punch and the shockwaves was something he had grown accustomed to during his time on the Russian front. This was like coming undone. He could feel himself unraveling, one cell at a time, and then there was nothing, only a bizarre sensation of rushing forward faster, far and beyond terminal velocity, with no hint of stopping.
It was one of many experiences that had been forced into his mind since he saw that very same girl wandering the halls of the watchpoint. Other experience told him that her name, or at least her callsign, was Tracer.
It had not been long after his argument with Jack. Jack had been acting strangely for a while now. Avoiding him. It all seemed like it was such a long time ago. Years, almost, though he logically knew it was less than three days ago, it was a sensation that was hard to shake.
All those experience, ones where he was a masked terrorist that went by "The Reaper", that now crawled about his mind, ready to pounce on him with anger, betrayal and hurt if he focused on one for too long until he got swept up in another out of body experience. The one in the warzone with Jack and Tracer was well explored to him by now, having momentarily dipped into the experience many times out of curiosity, searching for hints, or simple self punishment.
It was five long years worth of time inserted into his mind. He didn't have those out of body experience for everything, but all the information was there. It was like recalling a movie, when all but the most poignant details would melt away, but the plot stuck fast in his mind
There were a few other odd experiences, where he wasn't Reaper, but only two of them he could visit with any sense of clarity.
The first was of him entering an interrogation room, file folder in his hand and a dull throb in his shoulder. Inside the room was some kid, bruised, exhausted, and sixteen, tops. Dressed in an oversized flannel vest that made him look smaller than he actually was, his hands lay flat on the table, with shiny new handcuffs bolting them in place near the center. A cowboy's hat sat opposite to him. And while his expression was a pointed sneer in his direction, He didn't miss the small tremble in the boy's hands.
"So you're the one who got me in the shoulder." He heard himself announce, before he shut the door behind him. The boy tensed up, like a cornered rat. "Jesse McCree… Let's talk."
He had no idea what to even make of it. He was certain that he'd never seen the kid before in his life.
The other one was… different.
He found himself sitting on the ground in an apartment, Jack by his side. His face was flush, and a bottle of Vodka was between them, with shot glasses on either side. Jack was babbling, on and on about his mother. How she died. About how he regretted never having come out to her, even when he knew that it wouldn't change anything between them. Judging by the heavy slur to his words, he had managed to drink past their enhanced metabolism through sheer volume. He noticed two other bottles of vodka on the floor, empty.
"You could still come out to your dad." His voice reminded, but it was tight, restrained.
Jack hurled a shot glass across the room, and it shattered on the far wall.
"It's not the same," He hissed harshly, "I just fucking put it off like I always do. Can't own up to my fuckin' problems if I pretend they don't exist, and I don't even know how to fix that problem because I wouldn't be able to- to deal with that the shit I've been putting off all this time."
He pulled his legs up to his chest and hung his head between them.
"Can't fix what broken with it 'cause I'm pretty sure I'd just fucking break it, you know?"
Gabe stared long and hard at Jack before, tentatively, he placed a hand on the other man's shoulder, hesitating just before the contact. Jack seemed to sink lower.
"Sorry," Jack said weakly.
The experience blurred until it was just a senseless mess of color, and then ended.
A wash of sourceless anger, tinged with the smallest hint of hurt, always managed to overtake him from that one.
He knew, somehow that these moments were supposed to take place "before" the experiences as the Reaper. Not only did jack look younger, full head of that blonde blonde hair. But also because, well…
He wasn't supposed to be dead in those.
Call it intuition or whatever, but his experiences as The Reaper were somehow post-mortem. He was living on as some sort of techno-wraith, kept alive, or at least conscious and functional, by nanomachines. If he thought about it at length, he could pull up on some hard facts about his supposed status of undeath. While the nanomachines could stitch his body together for a time, the bonds were tenuous as they were temporary, any sort of massive trauma to his torso reduced him into a puff of smoke and sent the nanomachines on autopilot to rebuild him from the ground up. However, with a bit of focus, he could pull himself apart into a sentient cloud of the things, deconstructing and reconstructing himself almost at will, as well as solidifying his form into almost a fully blooded living human. The ripples that he could feel in the experiences were a consequence of the infinitely finite resurrection, and accelerated rot followed by a reconstruction, heightened by strain but barely kept in line during combat with a containment suit.
A highly personalized, badass looking containment suit that he customized to an aesthetic T. He couldn't help but crack a small smirk to himself as the design for his suit floated easily into his mind. He might have to steal that. It was more than just a suit. It was a work of art.
Truth be told, under any other circumstances, he would have thought the whole thing was monstrously cool. Experiences as the reaper where his state of suspended reanimation proved useful were numerous, and frankly, being a conscious cloud of nanomachines constantly fighting of it's own cellular degradation, sounded like a pretty sweet deal for undeath.
He pondered, far from the first time since the experiences came to him, if that would become a possibility in the future.
He shook his head. One thing at a time.
He had to question if Jack was experiencing something similar. Would explain the strange behavior. Possibly. His throat tightened just a fraction.
He needed to figure out what this- this attack , no other real word he could call it, was, sooner the better. Which brought him back to the problem at hand.
At first he had suspected it was some sort of new mentally-oriented attack, new technology, but no matter what he managed to scour, he couldn't find any proof such a device could exist. He could go see Torbjorn, being the cutting edge weaponsmith he is, with numerous connections in various technological fields, if anyone knew anything about a theoretical mind altering device, it would be him. All he would have to do was explain why.
He decided he wouldn't go ask Torbjorn.
While he was the greatest potential source of information on the subject, Gabe trusted the man about as far as he could throw him. Which was likely a substantial distance given the other's stature, but he couldn't rule out anything. Including the possibility the Torbjorn would naturally be the only one who could potentially have invented such a device. Potentially.
Unlikely, given he'd been working almost nonstop on Anti-omnic weaponry, as well as repairing the strike team's own armory, but a possibility. A small one that nagged at his gut incessantly.
He had tried to pry for information from Ana, but she was too sharp to press too hard. She definitely already realized something was up herself, though mercifully, she seemed to be ignorant as to what for the time being. As for Reinhardt, he could only handle so much of the man to begin with, and information gathering and subtlety were, surprisingly, not the forte of a man who swings a rocket powered hammer in a rocket powered suit of armor for a living.
Fresh out of answers, his only remaining option was to try to find the disappearing woman who could seemingly flicker out of existence. It was going about as well as any sane man might expect it to.
Gabriel huffed out a long sigh, dragging a hand down his face, pressing his back up against the wall. What good was he, sitting here moping? If this attack was designed to occupy his attention and shoot his morale, it worked, not much he could do about that at this point.
His eyes felt heavy.
He dreamed of fire. Explosions that rattled his bones. Mountains of falling rubble and the black jaws closing around him. Over and over. Nothing like the crisis.
Absolutely no escape from those dark, paralyzing jaws, not whole anyways, but torn apart, in one fell swoop, he both cheated death, and has death cheated from him.
Something grabbed him by the shoulder, and he jerked awake, arm lashing out. Spitting and ready for violence, the world whirled around him, and he could almost feel the phantom of the telltale swirling rot of the Reaper on his body.
Slowly the world slotted back into place.
Jack stared back at him, expression blank, an arm raised in self defense, slowly lowering itself.
"You uh," Jack said slowly, "Looked like you were having a nightmare."
A mixture of anger and embarrassment combined to a boil in his gut, he straightens, and looks away from Jack. He can't stand to look at him right now.
"Right" Gabe groused through grit teeth. Dully, he realized that he might want to apologize, but decided instead to hold his ground, given their last encounter.
Awkwardness tumbled between them like an avalanche. It hadn't been like this between them just a week ago. A week ago it was always so amicable. Comfortable. Hell, even as they were readying for the final mission and tensions were running higher than ever,Jack and him were square. He wished that things could go back to that, that this was just one long waking nightmare of his.
He honestly couldn't remember the last time he went three days without talking to Jack. Oddly the silence seems normal to him, though logically, it's an exception.
"I'll go find a place a little less public." Gabe announced, less to Jack and more to the area around him, throwing his hoodie over his head and turning his back on the other.
"Gabe wait," Jack's voice cut through him like a knife, sending a brief flash of rage throughout his body that left as quick as it came, only for the slow building resentment that piled up for the past few days to take it's place.
He's going against you a voice, completely traitorous and unwanted, but all too familiar, whispered in the back of his mind. He shoved it back.
Slowly, he turned back to face Jack, staring at the other's outstretched hand as is it visibly curled back. Jack's face told him that he didn't have a plan. Like always, working on emotion.
Jack bit his lip, just slightly, but enough for Gabe to notice his nerves.
"Are you… alright?" He asked hesitantly.
Gabe inhaled deeply through his nose.
"Well," He started tone perfectly even, "Aside from you playing by your own little boy scouts bad friend guidebook, just peachy."
Jack straightened at that. A part of Gabe hoped that the other would get pissed off, maybe enough to fight, while another part of him wanted to punch himself in the face. Antagonizing Jack had never gotten him anywhere, and only served to make him feel shitty once they worked things out.
But this time felt a little different. Like a massive gulf of silence had managed to carve itself between them in just a few days. Sure, it had been a while since they last had a real argument, but this hardly even qualified as a real argument, and certainly not worthy of the damage it seemed to be doing. His experiences with The Reaper were playing no small part in that.
If this attack was designed to drive a wedge between them, it was certainly working. Gabe hated it. He wanted to get back on his investigation now instead of snap and posture at burning bridges at Jack.
Jack however, had different plans. Naturally, he didn't take the bait. He always was good at that.
"Ana was worried about you," Jack took a step forward, "And you look… Terrible."
"Thanks."
"When was the last time you slept?"
Gabe narrowed his eyes, staring that the bags under Jack's eyes "Could say the same to you."
Jack mirrored the gesture. "I'm not passing out on a wall having nightmares."
Gabe's scowl deepened. So now Jack was interested in talking. After nearly 6 days of radio silence short of an argument they had in a hall that smelled like antiseptic. Anger and bitterness rushed up his throat and threatened to vomit out of him in the shape of words he'd regret. Miraculously, he bit his tongue.
"Look," Jack scratched the back of his head, "Ana was worried about you. Said you talked to her earlier and you seemed off your game. I guess, I just… hah…"
Jack's words tumbled to an unexciting halt, with a pained expression. Jack always struggled when it came to saying what he really felt instead of what other people wanted to hear. Gabe's patience had already been worn far too thin to deal with Jack fumbling on his words.
"Today, Morrison." He ordered, crossing his arms ,and flexing his 'commander' voice.
" I'm worried about you, okay?" the way he said it, you'd think he had to physically pull the words from his throat. "Especially after the other day."
Gabe laughed, breathy and humorless, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly and pointedly directing them away from Jack, where they stayed. It didn't deserve another response. From the corner of his eye, he could see Jack tense up.
"Fine. Be that way." Jack said, his voice growing professional, the tone he used when speaking when their superiors were present, "I just figured I should let you know that you should keep an eye out for anything weird, or anyone out of place-"
"What?" Gabe jerked to face Jack once more, his crossed arms coming undone. "What do you mean?"
Jack blinked at him, his expression clearing to that beautifully bewildered look Gabe couldn't help but love. He could practically see the gears being pulled into motion behind Jack's eyes. As he stared into them, the two of them fell back onto the same wavelength as easily as they ever could, like the past few days hadn't happened.
They had both seen the girl.
A thrill of excitement sprung up from inside him. It was an easy explanation for Jack's behavior for the past few days, trying to avoid raising alarm, or possibly doubting himself. Beyond that, if Jack and him were on the same page, then that means they could tackle the issue together. Jack might even have information Gabe lacked.
Did Jack have similar experiences when he saw the girl? If so, what had he seen?
Gabe wanted to ask all of these questions at once. Instead, nothing come from his mouth, and instead, only held that stare.
"Oh, Captain Morrison!" A relieved voice snapped their wavelength apart as they both jerked to see some random assisant, likely of Adawe's given how clean cut she looked, "There you are."
An experience as The Reaper jumped to mind, when as cloud of smoke he slipped behind a man and reformed directly into a choke hold to incapacitate him. He so desperately wished he could replicate it on Adawe's peon so they could he and Jack could have a moment. He settled on a nasty scowl.
"People have been looking for you all morning! Did you leave your pager in your quarters?" She huffed, pulling out a communicator and rattling off a message in short order. "Director Adawe needs you in the conference room, ASAP." She said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the conference room, before her eyes caught Gabe's and she saluted with a quick 'commander'. Gabe raised an eyebrow, and waved her off.
What did Adawe want with just Jack?
Gabe could see the hesitation in Jack's stance. He made a slightly pained noise, his voice struggling to stay perfectly even and pleasant.
"Is it possible to ask her to wait five minutes-"
"No Sir, with all due respect, the director and her associates have already been waiting for a while since we couldn't contact you. I'm sure they're already restless."
Gabe rolled his eyes, arms crossed once more. Adawe's 'associates' always wound up being politicians, or the media. People who got in his way with absurd consistency, apparently interested in keeping up with their track record, because now, of all times, they had shown up.
Jack glance back at Gabe. Gabe gestured vaguely in Jack's direction, shoulders rising up. He already knew what Jack would do. Too much of a boy scout to turn down Adawe's summons.
"Fine," Jack said, before turning fully back to Gabe, pointing a finger at him, "We'll talk later."
Gabe was unimpressed by Jack's sense of priorities. He let it show. Jack had the decency to look sheepish, if just for a moment, before marching off to Adawe's summons. Gabe continued to stare until Jack disappeared around a corner, and then he sighed, shoulders drooping.
He wasn't sure if he was too exhausted to go much further without getting a little rest, or too wound up form the electric connection he had just shared with Jack. After days of not talking, it was like taking an injection from SEP all over again, energizing, but painful at the same time.
Sighing quietly, letting the tiniest bit of relief settle in his chest, he turned around. He could at least try for sleep. Who knows how long Adawe's meeting was going to run. However, the thought of sleep was quickly purged from his body when he realized that the girl, Tracer, his mind supplied, was standing in his shadow.
He blinked. She stared through him. The device on her chest was still hopelessly cracked. His arms flew into action at the same time as his mouth, trying to grab her by the shoulders.
He made contact, for merely the briefest second, and it felt like his hands had just been electrocuted. Her eyes went wide, like she had been startled awake, and she was whole in his grasp.
"Who-" He started. Indignation rising in his chest like a tower of flame, but the girl shattered in his hands, into bright blue fragments that faded like embers. He stumbled forward as his arms swung in to grasp the empty air.
A thought reached his mind like a brand on exposed skin.
Today, Jack Morrison would take the position of strike commander from him.
Gabriel tumbled forward, as if falling into a lake, submerged in memories, all bleeding into each other, dripping with anger, swimming in regret.
Staring up at Jack on a podium as he makes a nauseating acceptance speech. He stands in the background, face absolutely impassive, but he can feel how forced it is, blunt fingernails digging hard into his palms. His face burns with equal parts anger and embarrassment.
He stares down at a logo. It's not one for Overwatch, but it's emblazoned on his equipment. A sword black as night piercing the top of a skull, eyes red and full of scorn. A watchful shadow. Vigilant, but disregarded. Resentment boiling on his gut that he shoves a lid down on, hard.
Adawe speaks to him like she speaks to a child. Even and placating. He glances over at Jack derisively, who cannot meet his eyes. He has a slightly newer, fancier uniform, and a fresh new coat. She tells him about his new position: Blackwatch. The seedy underbelly of peace is that it cannot be made without the tremendous loss of life. The Omnic Crisis could bring people together out of sheer fear, but now, there will be people looking to gain power that must be stopped at all costs. Overwatch is being rebranded as peacekeepers, so they need a cleaner image, but to still be effective.
Gabriel will keep it effective, through any means he finds necessary. She says that it's a golden opportunity for him, and duly, Gabriel admits she makes it sound good, but his eyes never leave Jack. A silent dare to look him in the eyes when this is happening.
Jack does not meet his eyes.
Jack and him pass in the halls. Infinite times, stretched over the course of years in time lapse. Jack's hair thins, and goes grey, and he is ever preoccupied with something in his hands.
They do not so much as spare each-other a glance.
The world is crumbling around him, literally, as he stares down Jack. He's older, hair stark white, but missing the two scars, Gabe recalled from his experiences as The Reaper. There's a scrape of metal and a crash in the distance. A shotgun cleaves a final stretch of unsurpassable distance between Jack and himself, and both men accuse the other of betrayal. The ground shakes, and explodes from beneath Gabriel's feet.
Gabriel startles back to reality.
He hadn't moved at all. Still staring at his empty hands clutching at the air, one thought still pounding on his mind like the throb of a headache.
Jack Morrison will accept the position of Strike commander today.
Gabriel's hands curl into fists. His teeth grind against one another endlessly.
Jack Morrison will accept the position of strike commander, without even showing him the decency of telling him.
He takes a deep breath, and tries to tell himself that what he had just saw was just another attack. An outside force trying to create discord in Overwatch.
Without so much as a word, Jack Morrison will take his position from him.
Gabriel stumbles forward through the bleak hallway, anger and bitterness and resentment burning hot in his chest, icy betrayal rising up his throat like vomit. He tries to stamp down the emotions before they can take shape, but…
The very thought that everything he'd had with Jack was just one big lie leading up to this moment felt wrong. Like someone just turned off gravity.
His hand slammed into the wall beside him, leaving a mark.
In this moment, it felt real.
In this moment, he could only think about how Jack was being lead to a job offer, Gabriel's Job , and accepting it.
In this moment, he wasn't sure what to believe.
He trudged off into the din of the hallway, to his room. Trying, and failing, to organize the new experiences
Notes:
Not all too well, as it turns out.
A lot of how I handle Gabe's characterization is based on a headcanon I share with A friend of mine, Apologija, who also beta read this fic because she's awesome. Basically, I write Gabe as someone with undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. It's something that doesn't really come up outright in the fic, especially since at this point in time Gabe has it pretty well handled since he's in a pretty positive environment for his mental health, but it does shape a lot of his feelings on the matter. Just a fun fact about his characterization.