"Fuckity fuck fu-uck fuck," Sombra mutters as she runs over blood-crusted snow.
Well, runs is an exaggeration. But it's the best a girl can do when carrying an eighty-four kilo sack of useless ghost.
"Wake up buhíto," she demands to the to the Reaper at her shoulder. "We've got some new friends we really don't want to meet."
Reaper's only response is a creaking sigh, smoke billowing from the crags in his body like an engine that's never been cleaned. He's been like this for almost- god. Has it been a half an hour already? Thirty minutes she's been hauling his steadily-increasing weight over filthy snow drifts while his breathing just gets weirder and weirder- (Too long. The point is that she's been out here too long.)
It was the fucking Overwatchers that did this. (Overwatchers? Can she say that? Or do you just have to call them "Overwatch" all the time and hope no one has to talk about anyone specific?) An easy hit on a Russian base that went awry when someone had tipped off the fledging organization about its rival's tomfoolery. They'd known who'd be leading—Reaper—and this time they were ready for him.
Sombra had pulled out the dart from his side herself. The effect hadn't been immediate. One second he's been fine, commanding the unit in that harsh tone of his, and the next he'd suddenly fallen to his knees.
Overwatch had found his weakness. He'd slowly started materializing, the nanodes that made up his smoke forgetting how to do their damn job and brining the once-wraith into harsh reality. Things had spiraled out of control from there, the squad with no commands and their secret weapon scratching at the dirt, unknowing what the hell had gone wrong. Sombra had found the instigator only later, once she had begun their desperate retreat.
The dart has two wings engraved in its side. That bitch.
Now Sombra hauls Reaper onto her shoulders. The fireman's carry is all she can manage with him now, when he's all but gone. "Damn Gabe. You really need to lose some weight," she jokes, because it's the only thing that keeps her from screaming and alerting their position.
She's not used to him being weak. Being mortal. He's supposed to be her goddamned rock, the thing their trio leans on. Now he's leaning on her.
It's surprising how much that terrifies her.
She crests the edge of a drift, looking back to where Talon agents are still being slaughtered. She runs, but that's just the way she is. A scrapper, always looking to fight another day.
Reaper won't be happy, but he'll have to be alive to chew her out, so it's a win-win.
Looking over her shoulder, she hears chopper blades before she sees them. Ours. And it is; she hails it, and it drops in front of her to kick up shards of ice. No questions, only chucking the massive body her commander inside and leaping through the open door.
They're able to begin the reversal three hours later. She's waiting outside Reaper's room, own injuries fleetingly tended to, and she thinks her stomach might actually fall back out of her throat. She collapses into her chair with sigh.
The relief is surprising. More so than the terror. When someone dies, you move on, planning around the unforeseen event. If they recover, all the better.
What you don't do is hold your breath. You don't wait outside hospital rooms, nearly breaking down when they tell you that the dart was only meant to be a temporary sedative, and Overwatch hasn't perfected its technique on Killing The Reaper.
In fact, what you do do is start planning on a way to counteract that in the future. Now that the crisis is averted, its time to think of next time.
But Sombra instead sits in her chair and looks at Reaper's door. The corners of her lips twitch, and she lives every so foolishly in the present.
