There were footsteps, and Jesse took in a deep breath, prepared to tell the kids to go fuck right off, he wasn't going to say anything else on the matter, but when he turned around, he had to pause.

76 stood there, quietly, his mask glowing red over his face. He held up a bottle of pain pills, and flowers, sighing as he sat down next to him. "I didn't realize it bothered you that much. I'm sorry for doing it to you."

The flowers looked like they'd been picked on the side of the road, and McCree laughed a bit, rubbing his eyes tiredly, before he patted the ground next to himself. 76 came over at the silent invitation, holding out the medicine. Jesse took them out of his hands quietly, staring at the ground.

McCree popped the pain meds and swallowed, before he rubbed the nape of his neck. "Apology accepted, and thanks for the meds- but I'm still…upset? I suppose."

76 nodded, sighing quietly. "That makes sense- but I do want to be apart of your life still. And I want to make it up to you somehow."

Jesse licked his lips, staring at the flowers. "Well, how 'bout we start with an explanation. What happened that last day? I was in America, I found about it because the radio was on, went to that emergency broadcast channel as they immediately assumed that it was a terror attack, but they had announced you two had died."

There was a moment of quiet, and McCree worried that perhaps he'd pushed him too far. But 76 only took in a deep breath. "I suppose you deserve an explanation…" He rubbed the nape of his neck, sighing. "The explosion was set by Reyes. You all know that. But he did it because he was jealous of me. Told me that…I had taken his glory from him, that I'd ruined his life from the second I was given the position as head of Overwatch." He looked down. "And I had some shit of my own that really fucked with me, but I shouldn't have taken out that pain on you and the others. However, depression and bad memories made me think you'd all be better off without me."

Jesse wrapped an arm around 76, and the older man sighed again. "I never told Reyes or you, or anyone really, about my past, before I got pulled into the military. A lot of what Reyes had said that day…well; it mimicked rather closely what my father had told me growing up. Left me in a real nasty spot."

The two sat in silence, before 76 leaned over and put his head on Jesse's shoulder. "I loved him- so much so that it blinded me when I needed to see clearly. He had broken up with me by then, you know that. But…I still loved him. N' while you and I definitely had something, it wasn't anything like what I'd had with Gabe before it all went to shit...It wasn't enough. But that's not your fault, Jesse."

Jesse let out a deep breath, pulling out a cigar. "Well, suppose I can't be mad about that. The only thing that bothers me is what we might have been if things had gone a different way, but I can't change the past anymore than you can." He blew out a smoke ring, staring at the ground. "So, you're probably here to ask about him, arentcha?"

The silence was telling, but Jesse couldn't even really keep prying after Jack had told him all of that. He'd not been the one near murdered by an ex, and as said ex was still alive, he probably owed it to Jack to tell him what he could.

"Goes by Reaper now, apparently." He murmured.

"I knew that. I've run into him a few times." 76 informed him, sighing. "How'd it go down, though, and what'd you notice about him?"

"I didn't recognize 'em. Widowmaker came in and ousted him to me. We were in such a spot that I imagine if he had wanted to kill me, he easily could have, but he didn't. He also didn't seem to have a great handle on himself, though- when he got, mmmm, overexcited- he became smoke. Pickpocketing him for a condom led me to find that the guy has absolutely no money on him, but since he's with Talon apparently, that might not be an issue for travelling. He's following us."

76 nodded after a moment. "Thanks, Jesse." He murmured, going off to do his own thing, as per usual. Jesse hadn't been the only one to notice that there had been a severe personality change since he'd come back as Soldier 76, but he was perhaps the first to realize how profound an effect the fall of Overwatch had had on Jack, multiplied by the culprit of his attempted murder.

XXXXX

Coming back to Overwatch hadn't been easy for him. Talking about what he was feeling wasn't easy for him. Talking about his past was certainly almost impossible, even now. He'd never done it before. He'd tried to, once, and that had blown up in his face. Quite literally.

Jesse's shoulder had been nice to lay on for a second, the younger man a casual reminder that should he choose, he wouldn't have to keep going down this path alone. After Gabriel had broken up with him, 76 had thought cruelly that McCree would have been happy- he'd finally be able to cross their names off his little 'list'. And yet, he didn't seem to be pleased. In fact, he'd done everything he could to try and put things back together.

Jack had never spent much time with McCree before the break up, given that Jesse was Blackwatch, and that was Reyes stomping grounds. After it though, it seemed like he'd made a more earnest effort to get to know him.

Talking to Angela as 76 had revealed that in actuality, if Jesse had just been 'achievement hunting' as he jokingly called it, then he would have slept with each of them once, or perhaps twice. Repeat performances were rare unless the lover was particularly good, and they almost always happened on Jesse's whims.

He knew that hadn't been the way it was between them. Jesse had slept with him whenever Jack had asked, and had been extremely insistent on a threesome between him, Jack and Gabriel. By the time Overwatch fell, Jack would have considered him a good friend and a good lover, but… they could have been more. He'd never asked, kept his heart carefully out of the mixture after Gabriel had hurt him so badly, but by the end of it, Jesse McCree had allegedly done the impossible. He was staying afterward, for cuddling.

Angela whistled when 76 had told him that. "He was always one and done with most of us. Jesse wasn't much one for cuddling, but… I think he had to have cared about you. I know he cared about Gabriel, deeply, perhaps even lovingly. And you didn't see him…after the explosion." She'd tried to tell 76.

He had resisted the urge to laugh. She'd not seen him after the explosion. He'd not been in any state to be with others. He remembered it clearly, the bright light engulfing Gabriel from behind and then launching him far out of the Swiss base, into the mountainside and into the snow. He'd vanished into the forest.

Body sore, he knew he couldn't keep walking. It was unfortunate how his body was so… tired.

He all but collapsed to his knees, his adrenaline having failed him after what had seemed like forever. Jack Morrison, at the very end of his strength…who knew that could happen? He certainly had never thought of it as an option, and yet…here he was. After a moment, Jack went the rest of the way down, unable to stop it anymore.

He laughed after he met the snow again with his face. The places where the fires of the explosion had licked his skin burned on his chest, his chest that was heaving from the prolonged strain of escaping while severely injured, his eyes barely able to see five feet in front of him and his vision growing blurrier by the second, blood still dripping from where he'd landed as well from all the minor shrapnel injuries.

After a second, he took out his last biotic field, and planted it on the ground, curled up around it. "Lord in Heaven." He muttered, curled up on the floor as blood ran down his face, some of it getting in his eyes. It had been from shrapnel in the explosion. Gabriel had been in its range, but Morrison had just been launched out amongst the metal and burning wood. He might have damaged the nerves to his eyes even, given the placement to the scars. "Goddamned traitor ." The words were indignant, but the feeling behind them was still raw. However, he shouldn't begrudge Gabe too much anymore- after all, the poor sunvabitch was dead now- and his Momma always told him not to hate the dead.

Momma also told him never to hurt the ones you love, something that apparently it Gabe's mother hadn't taught him.

He stopped himself there, forcing himself to sit up. Jack wasn't about to let himself sink that low, to such hateful thoughts. Not about someone he'd loved so much.

They overcame him anyway, reminding him that there was no point. Calloused hands gripping the front of the shirt of a too-thin boy, telling him that this was his entire fault came back sharply, ringing in his ears. Or was that the explosion?

Jack didn't know anything anymore, lying down on the cool grass, his own blood soaking his clothes. It'd been decades since he'd seen his father last, the man having died in the omnic crisis, and good riddance. But at the same time, it was hard to completely shove away the images, and though he'd buried them a long time before, they still came out in force.

He was the weak little boy again, too thin, wearing his mother's clothes because there wasn't anything else in the small broken house in Indiana, and getting punched in the face because his father accused him of being a queer.

This is all your fault.

The words rang in his head. His father and Reyes both.

When he was 18, he left the house with a bag of all his belongings and joined the army. He was scooped up by the super soldier program because he had been young, and a few of the scientists felt he was kindly enough to deserve it. In reality they'd wanted a lab rat with no one powerful enough behind them who could find out about the truth should something go wrong in the experiments. When the experiment had been a success, and he'd lobbed himself to fame, he'd re-hashed his image. It was true, he was from a farm, and it was true that he was from Indiana. But the plan to live in Indiana his whole life was something that made him seem more 'down to earth'. He'd gone with it the moment the scientists told him he'd be seen as a better leader if he left his true past behind him. Like he was shedding away dead skin.

You did this to yourself. It was an accidental parallel, but a parallel nonetheless. Gabe, a man he had once been on the road to marry had sneered down at him and punched him in the gut, almost exactly where he'd shot him only seconds before. His father, kicking the boy that had tried to fight back and stop him from hurting momma.

JACK, GET BACK HERE!

The voices of his father and Reyes had overlapped, his father a looming figure just as Reyes had been, striking fear into his heart and trying to kill him. His small legs hadn't been able to run fast, and though he knew he could run faster now, Reyes was moving quicker than him.

You don't deserve what you were given. Reyes had told him. Weakling .

Weakling, his father had spat as he had come home from a fight that had left him with a black eye. You don't even deserve to come home if you let those kids do that to you.

"Weakling," Jack Morrison whispered, clutching his wound as a reminder of the man who had created them, and where the ghosts of old ones still lived. He'd torn his family apart twice now, he thought with a grim smile. Just by his presence. He'd destroyed his family just by existing.

And just before he passed out, Jack Morrison wondered if things would be better for those he loved if he just stopped being Jack Morrison.

That, of course, would be too simple an explanation. He'd never told anyone about his past. Not even Gabe. Suicide had been a thought for a few days after the incident, but after all that he'd done to survive, it felt cheap. His body soldiered on, just as it had every day since the explosion, and every day since he'd become a super-soldier, telling Gabriel Reyes, an older officer, he was scared of needles, and every day since he'd left home for good, and every day since the day he was old enough to understand that the only one who could look out for himself was himself.

76 had survived.

And it wasn't like he'd just magically wished his old self away, and it had vanished. No. It was a process of decay, of withering. His hair had gone fully white only a few weeks after the explosion, and he had to keep cleaning his eyes. He had about a five-foot radius of vision now, and that was being generous to his failing eyes.

At some point, when police had begun chasing him, referring to him as Soldier: 76 from the moniker on his back as well as the fact he had obviously been army at some point, it had become his. The silence in his life that came when your friends all thought you were dead allowed him to forget Jack Morrison.

He didn't know when precisely the full change had happened, but by the time he visited his grave, he was convinced that Jack Morrison was dead. His voice was gravelly, in part from inhaling the smoke at the Swiss base, in part because of prolonged disuse. He wasn't actively trying to not speak, but he was alone. It was easy to let Jack Morrison die if he was alone all the time.

After a while, he began to respond to 76, and introduce himself as it.

When he'd rejoined Overwatch, after being outed by Mercy, the woman honestly hitting him upside the head for daring to think they'd be better off without him, he'd allowed them to call him Jack for a few days. Tracer and Winston, Reinhardt, and Torbjörn had all called him Jack, and yet…every time they'd done so, it was a rush of cold blood to the head, and if there was enough stress...well.

His hands would shake and he would see the ghost of Gabriel Reyes, taunting him, reminding him that Reyes had suffered, and that he'd meant for Jack to suffer instead, to die. He'd lose his grasp on reality and be back in the fires of the base as he and Reyes had fought tooth and nail, to the death. He'd occasionally had to be sedated so that he didn't hurt himself or others. Mercy would stroke his hair until he slept, telling him that he was okay now, that he was safe now.

But as long as he was Jack Morrison to them, he was a danger- to himself. So he'd put a stop to them calling him Jack. "Jack Morrison did die." He'd tell the ghost. "I'm just a soldier."

You're such a trooper, Jack. My little soldier. His momma's voice would call out to him from the deepest recesses of his mind, reminding him where he got the moniker to begin with. Reminding him that no matter what he called himself, he couldn't escape the truth.

"Call me 76." He'd murmured, even as his old friends struggled, wondering how they could reach him, how they could help him. The sad part was that he was partially convinced that they couldn't. Reyes had crafted a grave for him, and now he was going to lie in it, waiting for the day where life decided he could rest and cover the grave with dirt. He didn't know if things would be any better now if he'd spoken up about his past back then, if he'd gone to Jesse after the explosion. And he couldn't change the past, so he wouldn't dwell on it more than he could help.

As new members showed up, the only ones that got put in the loop were Fareeha and Zarya. Both had their experiences with Jack that would have outed 76 anyway. McCree seemed to notice the distance that had grown between them the moment he'd arrived and seen him. He'd come the moment he knew that he was there, and yet…he never seemed to find the courage to speak to him, just as 76 hadn't found the courage to say anything to Jesse.

And now Gabriel Reyes was still alive, no longer just a ghost that haunted 76's nightmares and his waking moments when he lost himself in the feral version of himself that was his enhancements. He'd known it for about a year or so, the two running into each other and fighting each time. Each time, it felt like 76 lost more of himself, or who he used to be. Reaper would taunt him by calling him Jack and tell him of how he'd meant to kill him.

Mercy's diagnosis of his condition was grim. It was impossible to separate out what symptoms PTSD caused and what the long-term effects of the super-soldier serum caused. She had no idea how to treat it, but it was clear that she would take a hard-liner policy on not calling him Jack. They couldn't risk him losing his grip on reality in battle. The knowledge he was Jack Morrison once would be kept amongst the older members as well as the ones who knew him from before.

He got out his phone, and contacted Roadhog, another man who understood his inability to go by his actual name. Roadhog still owed him a favor or a few.

"I need you to look into some things for me." He murmured, voice dark, cleaning his guns. Perhaps he'd be able to finally rest if he ended the monster that Gabriel had become fair and square.

XXXXX

Later that day, Tracer came to find and tell him there was to be a meeting between all former Overwatch members. It was a Secret Meeting in a fucking hotel room, and not for the first time, Jesse wondered how his life became this chaotic.

"Is 76 coming?" Winston asked, and Tracer gave a huff.

"No! Old man said he'd be taking things on himself." She rolled her eyes. "But that aside- how on earth do we find Reaper? We know he's following us now and, wait- was Lacroix there too, Jesse?"

The group turned to McCree, to see him lighting his cigar in a no smoking room. Reinhardt confiscated it and put it in a pocket. McCree huffed, before he tried to place who the fuck Lacroix was again. Then it hit him.

"Ah. Amelié. The blue skinned alien looking boob lady, uh, Widowbitch?" A giggle went through Tracer, and Reinhardt was definitely trying hard to maintain a straight face. Mercy just rolled her eyes.

"Yes, Widowmaker." She answered sarcastically, still waiting for a response.

"Yes, she was there. She outed Gabriel to McCree." Winston said, adjusting his glasses and coughing a bit.

"Okay, Winston, what the fuck. How on earth do you know all this…?" Jesse asked, scratching his hair. He was 99% certain he'd not told anyone about the finer details…unless…

The gorilla rolled his eyes and snorted. "Jesse, do I really have to tell you- you tend to over share when you're that inebriated." Ah. So, Jesse'd told him too much information, and that was one of the more helpful bits of it, judging from the unimpressed look on Winston's face. At least Jesse then had the decency to look embarrassed.

"You all know that the youngest members, uhm, Lúcio and Hana, are right outside, correct?" Mei piped up, curiously looking at the door.

Torbjörn nodded. "It's at…you-know-who's request that we don't… let them or the other ones with no connection to us into all our secrets-specifically the ones surrounding…you know what."

Genji snorted. Zenyatta hadn't been allowed in because he wasn't an old member, but the monk had already figured out 76's secret. "He is not even here, can we not speak openly?"

"Best get more practice in." Mercy smiled. "In not saying his name or over-sharing, as Winston kindly put it. Jesse, it was only because Tracer and I were on double duty that the kids didn't go peeking into 76's past trying to see who he was. But that issue aside- we need to find out a way to draw out Reyes and Widowmaker, so hopefully we can begin tracking them as much as they are tracking us."

"Could we try to bait them?" Winston asked, scratching his chin. "We know they're tracking us…potentially if we go somewhere that we'll be at an advantage in, they'll follow us, correct?"

"Yes, I do believe that would work. But with what could we bait them with? McCree's fine ass?" Genji asked with a snort. "It's not like they'd charge into an ambush."

Winston and Tracer turned.

"Hey, Jesse." Lena said, and the cowboy felt all eyes in the room turn on him.

"What?" He asked, nervousness building in his stomach. He didn't really like where this was going.

"Do you still have connections to stripping?" Tracer asked innocently, even as Angela's face turned bright red, and most of the other members had to snicker quietly.

Somewhere deep in his soul, Jesse McCree felt like this was heavenly punishment for all of his sins, or just cruel and unusual punishment. Or perhaps, it was just payback for the time that Jesse told on her when she had sex in the kitchen in Gibraltar with a cute girl from Spain all those years ago. Lena didn't really age- it made some sense that she'd hold onto grudges for so long. But at the same time, he had to grumble. Must all his secrets come to light all in one night?

"...Yes." He answered belatedly, rubbing his temples.

Tracer gestured to him as though incredibly pleased with herself, and McCree screams to himself.

"However much I hadn't ever wanted to know your hobbies, Jesse, that would be the perfect kind setup." Mei noted kindly, if slightly weirded out. "They'd hardly expect an ambush in a strip club."

"So Jesse, would you like to strip for a night?" Reinhardt asked him excitedly, definitely a bit too eager to get involved in an ambush. To be fair, Jesse remembered how sad the old man had been when they'd benched him for good back when Overwatch did exist. This was probably going to end in a fight, and Reinhardt knew it.

Did Jesse actually want to fight Reyes? Now that was a good question.

"Um, well I was still stripping until a few weeks ago." He admitted lamely. "It was a cover. I went by Justin McCree, claiming to just be a fan. But, listen, if Imma gonna be bearing my ass like that y'all better actually be on my ass protecting me."

Angela spoke up, her voice sounding off somewhat. "My goodness, I certainly don't know what that feels like…to be so exposed and vulnerable during combat operations and not have any defense…" None of them knew where that came from, but as Angela stared them down, they all had the decency to feel somewhat called out.

"Don't worry, McCree, all of us will be going." Torbjörn nodded, looking thoughtful. "We just can't be easily recognized."

"Disguises will be easy enough to craft." Tracer grinned. "My best friend growing up loved costume designing!"

Jesse hummed, still a bit perplexed by this plan. "Alright, I do feel better knowin' that all of us are coming…but how in God's name are we gonna hide a gorilla in a strip club?"