See the boy run. He rides horseback without fear or purpose into an endless horizon and he goes with haste and intrepid spirt. He is a relic born from the past seated beneath a caramel sky that drips to the world in thick globs of sepia light. See the boy watching. From the mountainous lands in his periphery rises a tarantula over the peaks with stained periwinkle fibers grown out of its legs. It walks across the earth leaving craters twenty feet deep with every step of its daggered feet. Its stinger slides from its belly and pierces across all that distance with impossible speed and penetrates the boy through his heart. See the boy laid flat. He breaths air that isn't there. He watches shadows coalesce from vague patches upon scorched earth and assemble into beautiful curves in which he desires to hold. He reaches but finds only the ineffable, only the intangible, only the shadows. See the boy dying. Black clouds moving on treadless tracks. Clap of thunder. A skulled face amidst the cirrostratus with opened maw that lowers to drink of man and land alike. See the boy wake.
McCree opened his eyes. The room around him rose in dim grey slates, a ten by ten foot coffin. He coughed and tasted blood on his tongue. Everything felt swollen and used. He blinked and looked up and saw his hands manacled above his head, tethered to the ceiling. He made himself breath and shifted on feet of lead and stretched in his restraints. Every part of him hurt all at once and nearly collapsed him. He hung from his manacles and leaned forward panting.
The clicks of her high-heeled feet coming from behind him, the only sound left in the entire world. He raised his swollen eyes to look upon her and glimpsed some hideous mutant, some hybrid creature of woman and spider alike. He blinked and then she was just the widow maker.
"Bonjour."
McCree groaned in reply. His left arm still housed no feeling or functionality. He glimpsed upwards to see the wires and failed mechanics hanging from its bicep like some half-beaten piñata. He coughed again and spat blood on the floor. Widowmaker looked at it without expression. He watched her, ribs aching with each breath drawn. Their eyes met and for a long while only the tacit threat of the woman's expression was exchanged between them.
"Do you know why I look this way?" She held her bare blue hand out and fanned her fingers, wiggling them to draw his eye.
He looked her over. Her shapely legs, thin waist, the curves of her chest pressing form into her bodysuit.
"Hell, I don't know. A good diet and plenty of exercise?"
Her stare was mirthless. "My skin looks this way because my heart rate has been modified. It never rises from a slow, steady pounding. As a result, I feel nothing." Her eyes pale yellow and piercing, like sunlight focused through a magnifying glass. The slightest hint of a smirk upon her full lips. "It makes me very good at hurting people."
She moved aside and McCree saw the device for the first time there laid innocuous upon a table. A metal box with gears and levers and cylinders pumping like pistons. Anachronistic, like him. From its belly drove two tubes. The first ran into a dial of sorts. The other forked off and became twinned rods with rubber grips and needles protruding through the tips. Their pointed ends shone bright and sharp against the dusty glow of the lightbulb overhead.
McCree pursed his lips and nodded. "Well, alright."
Widow took the dial in her hands and moved it and the device crackled to life and breathed a low interminable hum into the small confines of the room. The sound sat in every crack, in every nook, in every shadow. Then she swapped the dial for the rods and stepped into him. Without hesitation she jabbed his naked chest. Every muscle in his body tensed, every vein surfaced like a road map across his skin. His eyelids squeezed shut and stayed that way. His teeth felt loose in their sockets. No breath could be drawn against that penetrating cold fire of electric hell.
It went on for either a moment or an eternity and when it stopped, McCree collapsed as much as his restraints would allow and gasped air that tasted of spoiled fruit. He looked down and saw two sear marks on his chest, smoke tendrils lifting in ghastly trails from impact. He could smell the faint and repugnant scent of his own burnt flesh. He swallowed and licked his lips and looked up into the blue woman's emotionless eyes.
"Ain't you supposed to ask a question first?"
"This isn't an interrogation. We know who you are, and we're aware of how little you know."
"Good for you, but I'm still alive, ain't I? Got to be a reason."
"We're trading you."
"For?"
"Your friend. The old soldier."
"Jack? The hell you want with Jack?"
"His life."
McCree had to laugh.
"Honey, if you think this here old beat-up cowboy you're cookin' with them rods is worth a 'Commander Jack Morrison' to Overwatch, I've got some bad news for ya. You might be able to trade me for an 'Overwatch'-branded jacket or maybe a nice hat, but not much else."
"If I were you, I'd hope you were wrong about that."
"If you were me, you'd be one ugly woman."
She prodded him again. A stream of pure agony tunneled from his belly up into his head and blotted all thought. He clenched his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter. Every inch of him convulsed against the electricity wracking across his flesh, consuming him in blue flame. She stopped and he sagged again, fighting to keep his eyes open and draw breath. When he felt strong enough to speak again, he could only think of one concern to voice.
"Where is she?"
"Sombra?"
"Yeah. Sombra."
The slightest hint of a blue smirk on those blue lips. "If I said she was dead?"
"Then I'd say you're a liar. You could've killer her a long time ago but you wanted her alive for something. So you want to try a different answer?"
The spider's reply was to lift the rods before his eyes. McCree didn't bother looking at them. He stared across them, through them, and held the woman's pupils. He made her see the gunslinger in him, what was left of it at least, and even the skeletal remnants of that warrior of old knew no fear.
The moment stretched till it didn't then Widowmaker simply packed her torture kit back up and left. McCree only let out his breath once she'd gone. Omnics came for him not longer after. They released him from his manacles and dragged him to a cot in the room's corner. He was laid out there, and even the soft canvas of the bedding was torturous against his beaten and electrified body. When his machine guards left, he made to stand and found it impossible. Every hurt he'd picked up along the way in this wild adventure of his came screaming alive and he collapsed in a fit of winces and pants. He watched the ceiling, sucking air like it was in short supply. A silk web decorated one shadowed corner of the ceiling. It's crafter maneuvered along those taught lines on fine legs. He had to laugh, but even that simple act wracked him with pain and it was with that pain he drifted into a long and dreamless sleep.
The second day of his imprisonment, Widow came again. There was less banter in this 'round'. He was simply wrestled back into the manacles by omnics and then left strung up for the spider to torture him. She did so, true to her word, without interrogation, wearing her icy indifference like a badge of pride as she watched him twist and convulse against the electric claws of her device. When it was over, she packed up and left and his guards put McCree back on the cot. The previous day's rest hadn't done him any good. He hurt more this second time somehow, and when he slept, it was fitful and broken up by phantom rods of cold fire jabbing him in the dark.
The third day mimicked the second. Spider, manacles, pain, rest. It was routine by then. The only difference was the bit of food and water he was given to keep him alive. Gruel, as far as he could see. Looked like toothpaste mixed with dried paint flakes and tasted about the same. He shoveled it down nonetheless. He had no intention of dying in this room. Fourth day came and went. He'd stopped talking by then. Saw no point in it. The fifth day hurt for no particular reason other than his body was losing endurance from poor food and lack of physical activity. It was rough, but nothing compared to the hell of the sixth day. That one really hurt.
And on the seventh day he opened his eyes to Sombra.
His voice was hoarse with rust. "Am I dreamin' this?"
She shook her head. A profound sadness nested in her pretty eyes and refused to take flight as she looked him over. Her hand cupped his cheek, her thumb stroking softly against his stubbled chin.
"I'm sorry, vaquero. For… everything."
"How are you here?"
"They sent me in. I believe they want me to see what they've done to you. What they've reduced you to. If I'm correct, they'll use this against me to extract any last 'secrets' they think I'm hiding. They've tortured my body, now they want to torture my mind."
He looked her over. She was banged up a bit but not physically decimated like him. She was in soft cotton prison garb and her hands were shackled together.
"How do I know you ain't lyin'? How do I know you ain't been with them the whole time and this is just another part of your game?"
"You don't, McCree. And, believe me, that's what hurts the most."
"I don't know, darlin'. 'Hurts the most' has stiff competition with metal rods spittin' electricity into your chest on the daily."
"I begged them not to torture you. I swear."
"They didn't listen."
"No. Clearly not."
He held her eyes. His world had been all drab greys inside these four walls for the last week. It made those blue wells of hers look bright and radiant as polished jewels comparatively.
"Pain's pain, darlin'. I been through it before, I'm sure I'll go through it again. Someday, this room'll just be a memory, and memories don't hurt."
"Some do."
"Yeah, well… I guess some do. But this one won't. The pain that's gonna last is you and your damn lies. So once, just once, be honest with me. Are you working with Talon."
"No."
"Then why are you here?"
"I manipulated you to get into that Overwatch facility. I admit it. And I'm sorry for it, vaquero. I needed to extract information. I needed to know where Talon's Mexico base was." She smiled bitterly and glanced around the room. "Ironically, I'm right where I intended to get to all along."
"Why?"
"Because they they have something I want here."
"What?"
Her lips pressed together.
"Fine. Don't tell me. Hell, I don't even care. I've got a better question: how are we gettin' out?"
"We aren't. Well, I'm not."
He watched her.
She sighed and ran her fingers through his hair. "They'll torture me for information. They'll torture you to get to me. And when they think I'm dry and all my little secrets are dug up, they'll kill me. I'm never leaving this place, McCree. You might if your soldier friends come through. But me… this is my grave."
"No." He made to sit up and everything in him hurt. He fell back to the cot and Sombra came with him, cradling his head, tenderly gripping his forearm. "I'm banged up. But I ain't lettin' no one die here."
"A true vaquero to the very end." She smiled, leaned, found his bottom lip with her own. Her kiss was soft and sweet as fresh flowers. Had he the strength, he would've kissed back. As it were, he could only lay and pant, feeling more useless than he had in his whole life. "Don't waste your energy, McCree. There's still a chance for you if Overwatch-"
"Overwatch ain't comin' for me. Hell, I've turned 'em down so many times over the years I think of us as scorned lovers. I've only got one friend left among them, and she ain't got enough pull to start a damn war. If this is your grave, shit, then it's mine too."
"What's that makes us then, vaquero? A pair of corpses?"
"Darlin', I don't know what that makes us."
A grin touched her lips. It touched his too, and in that moment all the lies and deceptions were forgotten, and McCree was filled again with the lonely and torturous stirrings of a heart beating too big for its cage. He took her hand and and she took his and when they came together their lips fit just right.
"I wish I'd met you earlier in my life," Sombra whispered against him, breath warm and fragrant upon his flesh. "I wish our story was a romance instead of a tragedy."
"Our story ain't done yet, darlin'."
She stared into him and a wistful smile spread across her face that made her almost too pretty to bare. "You're just like mi padre, vaquero. Always the optimist. You'd be a good leader. Like he was."
"You miss him…"
"Si. I miss him very much." There were tears in her eyes. He pulled her close with his one functioning arm and kissed her again. And again. She smiled her appreciation and wiped her eyes dry. "I can't get us out of this room, McCree." Her hand, warm and on the move across his bare chest, his stomach, lower. "But I can make us forget we're here."
It happened fast then. Words were set aside. So was clothing. Her hands explored him and McCree forgot his pain with every delicate grip of her fingers, every smooth expansion of her warm palms. His own hand found her hair, stroking her. Their lips met and came apart and met again. Legs tangled till it was impossible to tell whose was whose. He rose up for her in the only way he could, and Sombra mounted him. She was a Goddess there, all copper flesh and dark hair and supple curves. His fingers gripped her around the soft mound of her hip. Her lips parted and she seated herself over him. McCree gasped and fell flat back against the bed. Then time moved in strange ways. The room washed away. There was only the steady movements of their hips, the quiet sounds of their sharply drawn breaths, the creaking of the cot. Seconds, minutes, hours. There was no charting the passage of time in this warm, wonderful, world they'd set to exploring. At a point, they drew together as one, fingers interlacing, eyes lost in one another's. It happened simultaneously as if it were meant to be, and in the eternity of that moment all pain receded into a blissful hurricane of which devoured all, of which left only the two of them in that numb void, clasping together to weather the storm.
After, they lay in one another's arms. McCree watched the ceiling. Sombra watched him.
"There's got to be a way out."
"There isn't."
"I ain't dyin' here. And neither are you."
"Mi heroe."
"I ain't a hero, honey."
"No? Then what are you?"
"A man who ain't dyin'. Least not yet." He braced himself and slowly rose to a seated position. His body screamed protest, but he ignored its wailing and sat anyway. He made a fist with the one hand he had left that still could. She rose up beside him and cradled him gently against her. They sat that way a long time basking in the quiet warmth of each other's company. McCree was too weak to do much anything but lay back down after awhile, though, and Sombra laid beside him.
He said, "I want to close my eyes, but I'm afraid."
"Afraid? Afraid of what, mi valiente vaquero?"
"Afraid that when I open 'em again, you'll be gone."
She leaned over him and kissed his lips. His eyes fell closed. The exertion of their passion took a lot out of his beat-up old cowboy's body. He was fast asleep in a matter of seconds.
When he opened his eyes again, as he'd suspected, she was gone. But there was something else in the room instead, with him, beside him, refusing to let him quit. He sat up, ignoring his pain, and took measured breaths to collect himself. Then, with steeled determination, he made his way to the floor and began a set of one-armed push-ups. It was pure hell, but it made him feel alive, reminded him to fight, and he knew then that when the time came, one way or another, he was going to live through this. For the man had receded.
The gunslinger had awoke.