"Winston, what did she send you?" Angela rubbed at her eyes from under her frames and removed her reading glasses.

Jack leaned back in his chair, watching her, desperately trying to forget his argument with Jesse. Sometimes, he forgot the age difference between the two of them, and sometimes, that drove a wedge in their relationship - the understanding of a situation coming from two, too-different places.

Winston was too absorbed in his work to look up at Angela, and Jack thought he could relate entirely too well. Work had near damn killed him a few times from him being too engrossed, but he guessed that the same rules didn't exactly apply to Winston. Besides having a desk job, Jack figured that being about eight hundred pounds and genetically crafted into a hulking, talking, science-gorilla could change exactly what hardships this particular big guy faced.

Jack helped the guy out a little, "There's intel that there's a bug in Athena, if I saw the screen right."

Winston waved a hand, still vigorously typing with the one that had been glued to the keyboard for the last ten minutes or so since Hana had come in with the news. It was so late, but did anyone really have a sleep schedule anymore? Not really. Angela was clearly more than tired, but she'd been going over books for hours and wouldn't take direction from anyone about anything. Fareeha couldn't even "distract" her away from her work. She said she'd been procrastinating too much, and he couldn't exactly argue with that. But he knew. He knew that she was putting off creating the weapon that would murder her first lover.

He knew Angela well - not just from watching her grow up, either. He'd been with her in her quiet moments where she'd grown to be his friend. He knew her fears… maybe not as well as he knew Jesse or as well as Jesse knew Angela, but Jack knew her well enough. Hell, anymore, he considered Angela a closer friend than Ana, and he'd been very familiar with Ana. After he thought Ana died, he'd cut that part of himself out forcibly, and seeing her again brought up too many mixed and confusing feelings even though they would spend time together after her resurfacing. Their time together before going separate ways again hadn't been long even though they'd shared a Christmas together huddled down in a place, hiding from Talon.

He sighed. He'd obviously been around Jesse too much, getting in touch with his "inner feelings."

He snorted and shifted, his back aching from the old shattered pelvis and twisted spine.

Angela.

He could thank Angela for saving him.

He rubbed at his own eyes underneath his glasses and looked up at her shape. He couldn't see with too much definition, and it reminded him of old days of his childhood and the screens on the massive televisions from his grandmother's house where he pulled at strands of carpet while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

"What am I going to do if you leave again, Jack?"

"Dammit, I can't be your everything, Jesse."

"Well, you are."

He sighed again. It was already so late, but he sure as fuck didn't want to go back to the room he shared with Jesse. Damn… He was already started to pull away from them all…

Even the one he cared about the most.

He'd watched Jesse in a way that he'd watched Angela, but he never once anticipated this would happen - him in his sixties dating someone just shy of forty and worrying about their relationship. Wasn't this the kind of thing he shouldn't be worrying about at his age?

Right. Instead, he should be worrying about the fact that his former best friend and lover was out on the loose. Reyes was… far gone from what he once was. That dark potential had come to fruition and at the heaviest cost.

Jack should have been able to stop it. To slow it at the least. To stem this gaping wound in his soul.

But no, he'd let a child get tangled in Reyes' web and then let Reyes slip through his hands… He gave up and he didn't protect the people that he should have. That he could have.

And Angela was one of those people.

Jesse was another, for that matter.

Jack broke the silence uncomfortably. "Winston, do you have any beers?"

Angela snorted. "You ask the one who can't get drunk if he has alcohol? Jack, dear, you're beginning to sound like me."

He rolled his eyes and caught some fuzzy feedback in his vision from the node temporarily shorting out. Not even my damn glasses can handle my sarcasm… What a world.

On that note though…

"Yeah, you've laid off a lot, haven't you?"

Angela nodded. "Your boyfriend is a sloppy drunk. Put me off the stuff for a while."

A creak from the stairwell to Winston's room made heads turn, and Jack couldn't help but relax from unintentionally tensing up when he saw Hana standing sheepishly in the stairway.

"Hey, kiddo. Er, uh, Hana. What's up?" He mentally kicked himself because he fucking knew how bad it messed with her.

She leaned against the bannister which creaked quietly. "Well, you're all going to be pissed, but I just got off the phone with Lena."

The background clacking ceased and necks practically creaked like an old screen porch door as they swiveled toward Hana.

"What?" Jack's stomach rolled upon hearing that slight wavering ghosting Angela's single word. She'd cried too much these months.

He was beginning to wonder if he was wrong about Lena. Then again, he knew he could never voice it. He was one of the last to believe in her out loud.

"She's in Australia, but she's safe." Hana pushed off with casual disinterest, but years of training and leading his squads set off some kind of Spidey-Sense for distress in his team.

"As long as she's safe," he found himself saying casually when he felt nothing even close to casual.

He was good about that, at least, and it was one of the only things he prided himself on. He could keep his cool when no one expected him to, but it also caused some problems - always had with Reyes. He shook his head, rooting himself in the present.

"As long as she's safe, Jack?" Angela's voice was sharp. "She disappears, reappears, drops a line and casually mentions she's in Australia?"

Hana rolled her eyes, a motion Jack only barely caught with his glasses and minimal vision. "You really think Lena would come out and say it, Ang? Nah, I had to look up a few things. Dig a few places." She opened her mouth to start saying something else but stopped, and Jack wondered what she'd really done to pick up that information but let it slide. It wasn't the time.

Sorta like the casual craving for existential death, but nobody really can dig that except Ana and Rein. Gabr- He cut himself off, remembering the laughter they'd shared about humor of their generation. Where was his mind?

The fight with Jesse had derailed his focus. That was one reason he was so wary of attaching himself to anyone or staying somewhere for too long, but Zenyatta had encouraged it. Now, he wished he'd just devoted himself more to finding Reyes and bypassed the monk entirely.

No, he didn't. Not really.

"Jack?"

He blinked and looked up at Angela from his scarred hands. He hadn't realized he was looking down. "Listen, Lena is gonna do whatever the hell she wants. Do we even really know why she left? We can speculate all day long but-"

"She's going to look for clues to find Amélie and try to find out about Talon's overthrow," interrupted Hana.

He looked over at her dark grey form on darker grey backgrounds with shifting light from Winston's computer. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Angela practically glowed in the corner of his vision, her hair catching the light like it did, and he wanted to take off his glasses. But he didn't. He could be blind to the world, but he was still too acutely aware that everyone was hurting.

"Talon's overthrow?" He found himself sitting up and looking a little harder at Hana. "What do you mean?"

Almost imperceptibly for him, the shadows around her obscuring her a little too much for clarity, Hana clenched her fist. "Reyes has taken over Talon."

"My child, did Lena tell you that?" Angela's voice was soft, but everyone except Winston, who was too absorbed in his work, noticed the tremor in her words.

Hana shook her head. "No, I found out through some… channels."

Jack grunted as he pushed himself up. "You got some names for these channels?"

Hana huffed like a small child. "Does it matter?"

Jack felt himself grumble. "A bit." He sighed, sauntering a bit to try to dislodge his boxers from directly up his asscrack without being too noticeable. "Listen, kid-"

"Jack-"

He put up a hand. "Hear me out. You're getting strangely specific information from some unknown source, and we're all in the dark except you. Now, I know you're pretty interested in this whole thing. Personal interest or whatever. But still. Looks fuckin' weird."

Hana sighed and slipped down the bannister to the floor. "I don't know who it is, but they've been giving me good intel so far."

He didn't like that.

"I don't like that, Hana."

Angela looked sternly at him, but he did his best to ignore her blazing eyes. He knew how blue they were, even if he wasn't wearing his visor. It was hard, but he managed, keeping his focus by thinking about Jesse's dark, hurt eyes as he spoke to Jack not even two hours before.

Fatigue weighed down his arms and legs and eyelids with heavy blankets of sleep fog. "I don't know what you want me to do about this at three a.-fuckin-m. I'm tired out my gourd and have to go make up the couch, so deal with it on your own, I guess."

Hana winced and looked away. His heart sank, but he wasn't really sure why. He'd never been particularly close to Hana except to share his old favorite movies and bands, telling her about the concerts and the life around it all. He sighed and let his knees creak as he sat back in the chair he'd appropriated for himself in Winston's gorilla cave. He could lie to himself that he didn't like being around everyone. He could lie to himself that he didn't like staying in one place for very long. He could even lie to himself about his feelings and his driving desires.

But he couldn't lie to himself about how he felt about Hana Song. Or Lena Oxton, for that matter. He had a soft spot for those two, even if he didn't agree with them. Maybe at one point in his life could he have understood and agreed and supported each of them, but that was long left in his twenties and thirties. Time had not been kind to him, but it hadn't been kind to anyone in Overwatch. He'd watched Hana change in the short time he'd been around, shifting from a lighthearted sparkplug to someone who was much more reserved - much more worried and concerned with others and took too much time thinking about what she said and how it could affect those around her. He wasn't some two bit shrink, but he could clearly see that much. Leading and watching and cooperating with others for the better part of forty years taught him more than some book learning and a degree.

He sighed again, taking off his glasses and resting them on the chair's wide, worn arm. He could almost hear the node click off in his head, disconnecting from the contact in the glasses' temple tips. The shadows and light patches danced like a world of falling and shifting ash, never settling in one place for long and never making anything more than images like clouds in the sky - pareidolia, Angela had called it. She'd said that it would keep happening probably for the rest of his life, considering he'd had sight for the most part and could also see in intervals with the assistance tech she'd made.

He wouldn't let her fix his eyes.

Some part of him, even though the rest of him knew it was Talon's fault for what happened to Gabriel, was afraid that she would do something to him to make him see more than he should. Or that they'd just fall out of his head useless. It was a ridiculous fear, but one that was there nonetheless. He'd watched her reconstruct bodies out of mere organs. He'd watched her give sight to those who had always been blind and care for them afterward to ensure they didn't become depressed. He'd watched her practically stab someone in the chest to save their life and succeed. But he still didn't want her to touch this part of him. He was too stubborn, really.

He knew that deep down he still had some strange fear instilled in him when he was about twelve by watching a weird musical where a character stabbed out their own eyes. He'd made Hana watch it and laughed about how stupid it was with her, but the eyes… that still fucked with him. He really did trust Angela, though. He trusted Angela with his life and more - Jesse's.

Oh, Jess.

He dragged a hand down his face and sighed. He really needed to sleep before he fell in a bottle somewhere, which he hoped would have been there with Jesse, but no, not tonight of all nights. Not when they'd fought about staying together.

He'd been a damn fool, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

A voice like Zenyatta's played in his mind. You should talk to him.

He mocked the voice back in his own head. Talk to him, schmalk to him.

He was tired, obviously.

And even still, Angela needed him to look at some specs for a rifle, which he was more than a little tempted to tell her to shove up her ass or let Winston do it. He didn't know sniper rifles. He sure as hell didn't know how to build them. Ana probably knew more than all of them combined and would probably give even Athena a run for her money. Whatever… coin bullshit that was. Fucking hell, do they even still have coins?

"Ang?"

Angela, who had been talking increasingly faster, fell silent abruptly. He'd tuned her out so hard that he barely noticed when she stopped.

"I know you and Winny boy and Athena and the kid don't need to sleep. Hell, most of you people don't, but I'm old so I do." He stood, feeling for his glasses for a second and closing his eyes to put them back on, then opened them and look her dead in the eye. "I still need to make up the couch like I did five minutes ago, so if you don't mind…"

He shoved his way past and vaguely noticed Hana pointing and waving to Angela and him. He did his best to ignore her. There wasn't a lot he could do at this point. He needed some rest and some recharging.

He didn't get to rest as soon as he wanted.

Ana sat perched on the couch back - a habit she'd had since she was young… since they were all young really. He remembered their superiors letting it slide because she was the best sniper they had and a few quirks wouldn't hurt anyone. That was one of the great things about Overwatch before the collapse… and one of its flaws. He'd always seen that from a military perspective. No, he'd never approved of indoctrination and breaking individuals to make them part of a bigger organism, but he didn't understand the… inconsistency and lack of uniformity that Overwatch seemed to ignore.

He looked at the tiny woman perched on the couch back and sighed, remembering her black hair spilling over her shoulders and hiding her face, streaked with tears - remembering how she could cry and seem to break and pull herself together as if it had never happened, only letting her guard fall around a select few, but now, she never seemed to let her guard down, not even with Reinhardt.

The impish look in her eye distracted him from this though.

"What?" he grumbled. "Gonna watch me sleep like Gabe?"

She shook her head and wrinkled her nose. "Heavens, no. I came to laugh at you."

He raised his eyebrow and scratched his scarred chin, reminding himself to shave as his nails scraped across cactus-like stubble.

"You're in the doghouse."

"Oh my god, Ana." He hung his head, but a smile on his lips couldn't be held back any more than he could be genuinely irritated with Ana. He supposed he still loved her and could never really expect her to be anyone other than herself - a nosy woman with a pension for being a little more than forceful at times, especially when she wanted information. This was one of those times. She would worm the story out one way or another. "Yeah, I guess. Got in a fight. I lost."

She tsked at him and patted the spot next to her. "You tried to be a hard man, and it didn't work out for you, so when you softened up and tried to become hard again-"

"Hey, you never complained."

She smiled wickedly. "This is true. You and Gabriel both were often…"

Jack waved a hand dismissively, feeling a blush threatening to show on his face. He couldn't afford to show that kind of weakness to Ana. She'd exploit it in a heartbeat at the most inopportune time. "What were you saying?"

She smirked, and he knew that he'd been found out anyway. "I was saying that once you allowed yourself to be who you once were, you found someone else who loved that part of you."

"Woah, hey, I never said this was about Jesse."

She smiled her smile that was so rare - the one where her eyes sparkled and her teeth showed. "You never said it wasn't, and I wasn't sure why else you'd be sleeping on the couch." She paused, side-eyeing Jack with her smug look. She looked so feline when she did that - looking so smug, content, and ravenous all at once. She could easily see how Fareeha's expressions took after her mother's in moments like these. "Correct me if I'm wrong, dear."

He sighed in defeat and shook his head. "I said I was thinking about leaving."

Ana rolled her eyes. "Go apologize, and save your back some of the trouble."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You know I never dance around the matter, Jack. I never have."

"Sharpshooter in so many ways."

She smiled, but it was less joyful than before. "I guess so."

He sighed. "What happened to us, Ana?"

She held her sad smile. "We got old."

He elbowed her strong leg and chuffed. "This old dog still has a few tricks. What about you?"

Her smile was still sad, but her eyes twinkled knowingly. "I never stopped learning them, Jack." She paused. "Now, go apologize to your boyfriend."

Which one? Mine or ours?

He hated himself for thinking it as soon as the thought surfaced.

The making up didn't go as well as Jack had wanted, but it happened either way. At least he wasn't sleeping on the couch that night.

He lay awake, listening to the central heating woofing, and Jesse's soft snores brought him some kind of comfort though Jesse's back was turned away from Jack. After an hour of sleep eluding his grasp, he wondered if Hana was still awake. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he'd go find her and watch his old favorites with her. They weren't close by any measure - not that he'd want that, specifically. (That's a lie and you know it, old man.) That would only hurt her more once he left. But… There was something comforting in sharing his old favorite things from a simpler time - a time before superheroes were more than just people on a screen with good costuming and a fuckton of CGI. He still wasn't very old when he'd undergone his supersoldiering, and at the time, he thought it would make him like the people in the movies, and in a way, it had.

But there were very big drawbacks.

Drawbacks the old movies never talked about.

This brand of hero got older but aged much slower. This brand of hero had incredible abilities that wore away over time but never fully diminished. This particular brand of hero could open the way for fantastic discoveries and unimaginable feats, but this hero could also open the way for terrible things to happen.

He'd been responsible for one of those things. The last thing.

And that heat death was coming quickly if he didn't do something about it.

He rolled over in the darkness, his glasses on the table beside him, and lay a tentative hand on Jesse's back, the steady rise and fall bringing him little comfort in the light of what he needed to do - his knowledge of firearms in combination with Ana's knowledge of ranges and types would help out greatly for Angela's research. Angela would have to create something in combination with Winston's forcefields and electrical pulses to interrupt Reyes' molecular shifting. So much was at stake and so many variables were still unseen to. He could help little without the brunt of the work already being done by Angela, but he could still contribute a little. He started mulling over his options while he lay awake, and he decided that the time had come for him to get off his ass and start helping in a productive way.

Being afraid of killing Gabriel…

Hadn't that been what was holding him him back in the first place? He could blame Angela's fear if he wanted.

He moved his hand down Jesse's clothed back and felt the ropey scars under his shirt. He'd had a hard life, and Jack couldn't blame him for having some problems with abandonment. He wouldn't leave Jesse now. This tipping point…

This was the tipping point that everyone had been waiting for.

Mei and Zarya would have to go to Ecopoint Antarctica for some of the cryo-freeze technology they would need for afterward. They needed to be sure that if it didn't kill Reyes, they could at least injure him enough to capture him and put him on ice.

Everyone had their place now.

Everyone had their own mission.

Everyone except Jesse.

He was just… floating.

And he needed Jack's stability now more than he had since they'd met again.

He wasn't sure when he'd fallen asleep, and maybe he'd been in some kind of sleep purgatory, able to think and plan even if it was a meandering path, but eventually, he slipped off into a memory steeped sleep.

"That kid is a fucking waste of skin, Gabe." Jack wiped at his bloody nose. "That lowlife won't amount to anything. Give him a choice? Gabriel, you want to give him a choice? Of course he's going to save his own skinny, pale ass."

Gabe didn't smile, and there was no humor in his voice - a rarity considering he was in one of the most badass sub-organizations in Overwatch. Ana leaned against the wall by the door where a skinny rascal brooded.

"I'll give him a choice, and I'll be responsible for him."

Jack grumbled and saw Ana push herself off the wall. "I think he has a point, Jack."

"You can do whatever you want with him, but I doubt he can be reformed. We can't have a renegade in Blackwatch, and you know that."

Gabriel smiled and put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Just because he decked you doesn't mean he won't listen to anyone. He's probably just got an authority problem with someone who looks like he should be on the front of a magazine naked with the American flag draped over his crotch."

"That's… fucking weird."

Ana laughed. "I think I know what you've been thinking about, ya helo"

Jack watched Gabriel walk in calmly and exit with a red-faced, sheepish boy with barely enough facial hair to call a goatee.

"Good fucking luck, I guess."

Gabriel clapped the scrawny thing on the shoulder and smiled. "If he gives me trouble, I'll put a bullet in his head. No big deal."

Jack grunted and frowned. It didn't sound like a joke, but sometimes Gabe was like that - too dry to notice his actual intended humor.

But then again, maybe he wasn't joking.

The images drifted and swirled, forming the image of a small girl he'd seen trailing behind Jesse, her eyes bright and her head wearing his hat.

"What do you think of that, Ana?"

"If Gabriel trusts him, then so will I."

"He is a firecracker."

"And on the straight."

Jack grunted in assent. "What's the girl think of him?"

"Angela or Fareeha?"

"Fareeha's practically like my own daughter at this point. Why would I call her that?"

Ana smiled, the creases around her mouth growing a little deeper in the last few years. "Fair enough." She paused, thinking and watching her daughter trail the ex-con. "Angela doesn't want to trust him and tries to keep Fareeha away, but she really does want to believe he's good at heart."

Jack shook his head. "She wants to believe that about everyone."

Ana smiled. "I think that's what makes her a good person."

Jack couldn't help but smile as Gabriel walked into Jesse and Fareeha's path, picking up the small girl - even small for her age - and set her on his shoulder. He ruffled Jesse's hair and said something. They all laughed, and for a second, Jack wasn't worried about anything.

Until Angela Ziegler walked into the room and drew Gabriel's eye.

"Jack!"

He looked around his dreamvision, suddenly becoming aware of his dreaming, and the walls of the hangar began to fade, but they only shifted into something else - something hotter and more claustrophobic.

"Jack, please!" A pause. "Please, hold on!" Increasingly frantic words came out in rushes like a river surging from a passing boat. "Please, Jack, I can fix this!"

Dark, clouded his eyes, and heat and ash and dust clogged his lungs. His face burned almost as much as his lungs. He started moving, though his arms felt like throbbing dead weight.

The voice grew closer, repeating the same words.

Angela, he thought.

Everything rushed back like the flames surrounding him. This was the Overwatch Headquarters. He'd confronted Reyes about his affiliation with Talon.

He'd found out by accident, uncovering a file buried in some other data. It was almost like it'd been put there just to draw his attention. They'd been yelling at each other when they'd heard the first crashing - the first boom and the first falling plaster.

They'd looked at one another and taken off toward the entrance.

It didn't matter to Jack what Gabe had done. They both knew that sound, but they were on the sixth floor. It would injure them severely to jump the railing and land in the bottom floor's entry hall. They had to run, but they both knew they would never make it.

Then, Gabriel had done something Jack never thought he would.

He picked Jack up, drew him close, whispered, and threw him further away from the exit.

"If one of us has to make it out alive, it won't be a washed up commander. I've got bigger things, Jack."

Jack Morrison woke with a start, Jesse shaking his shoulder fairly violently. Jack found himself sitting bolt upright.

"Jack."

"What?" It sounded a lot more angry than he meant it to.

"You were doing the thing again."

Jack sighed, "Sorry."

Jesse grunted and yawned. "Wanna talk about it?"

"You sound half asleep."

"Yeah, but I'm still here, ain't I?"

Jack felt himself smiling through the dense fog of waking from restless sleep. He lay back a little more. "What time is it?"

"A little after five."

Jack scooted up closer to Jesse, still laying on his back, and Jesse rolled onto his side, his head on Jack's scarred chest. "You know I spread a lie about the Overwatch Headquarters, right?"

Jesse snorted. "I figured as much. It didn't seem like Reyes to confront someone over a promotion. He had plenty of power on his own and was lined up for more."

Jack nodded but fell silent.

"You dream about HQ a lot, don't you?"

"Yeah…" Jack didn't feel the need to say anything else. He'd only been asleep a little while and managed to fit plenty of nightmares in anyway. He needed rest to start helping Angela and start talking to Ana. Hell, he needed to spend more time with everyone.

There was a dark cloud looming over them all.

It felt very much like it had before Lena's meeting with Amélie in Heerenveen except… except much worse.

He felt it off in the distance, more than anything, but he felt a sense of finality.

The bullet. The construction. All of it was revolving around Brazil, but Brazil was just a distraction from a larger structure. He'd known that for years, ever since Vishkar set up their deal.

But…

That finality was drawing nearer, no matter how much they tried to put it off.