It doesn't seem right that the sun is out. Reaper knows better than anyone that a man can die in daylight just as well as moonlight, but something about the way the sun beats against the canyon walls offends him. Like maybe it should poke its face behind a cloud for a second and have a little fucking respect for the dead.

Because someone is dead alright. Or will be, if he doesn't find his way out of this goddamn canyon fast.

"I think we were supposed to take a left back there," Widow mumbles sleepily in his arms.

Reaper growls, but only because he thinks she's right. The sounds of pursuit are close behind them, footsteps echoing against the stone walls until there are hundred of them instead of just a dozen. He walks them into a dead end, and seethes.

"We'll have to make a stand here," he tells her.

She nods. "I will help. Give me back my gun."

"You can't even lift that right now," he points out harshly. He's not a kind man at the best of times, but his patience is wearing thin. The men who put a bullet in Widow's hip and her shoulder are right behind them, trapping them like rats in a maze. "I'm leaving you here, I'll come get you when they're dead."

He's already slipping her onto the earth. She can't walk and can barely make a fist with her bad arm, no way is he letting her near what happens next. But she grabs him with surprising strength before he can fully let her go.

"Fine then," she replies, seeing the truth in his words. "But you can't face them head on and alone. They will slaughter you."

And he knows she's right again. He can take out a dozen mortal men, but even he has his limits. The Talon agents are at the disadvantage here, boxed in and nowhere to go.

"I will be the distraction. If they find just me, they will lower their guard."

His eyes flare behind the mask, boring into her. "You want to be the bait."

She stares right back, letting him know that's exactly what she wants. Her yellow irises glow in the sunlight, meeting him unflinchingly, staring death itself in the face while she offers herself up. He's never met anyone like her: someone who is not even remotely afraid of the creature that hunkers before her like a dissolving gargoyle. Ever since he became this, no one ever had the balls to look him directly in the eyes and tell him he's wrong.

Until they paired him with Widow. She is his equal, his partner. A fellow killer who knows something about becoming a monster that no one else on this fucking planet understands.

He nods.

"Alright. I'll be close by."

She takes her rifle, just for show, and calmly watches him disappear into the canyon's shadow. It kills him all over again, this unconscious display of trust. He won't let her die today.

Their pursuers don't even notice him in his wraith form, pressed against the wall as they walk by. He's smoke, nothing, a bunch of bits of things that used to be a person. Instead they approach their target; a deer wounded and helpless, tracked for miles until the wolves break her with exhaustion.

They don't know that her herd has not abandoned her so easily.

"Eyes on purple," one says, raising his rifle at the apparently unconscious sniper. "No sign of smoke. Requesting orders?"

They don't even hear his body tear itself apart and put itself back together, even mere inches away. The only thing they hear is, "boo," as Reaper places his gun against a man's spin and fires.

He tears through the first four like a scythe through wheat. Living up his name, he supposes. The fifth actually turns in time to fire, forcing him to dodge back into the shadows. They're screaming now, formation destroyed, and he pops back into existence to dispatch two more. That's half, but the element of surprise is gone.

He's not fast enough to dodge an incoming rifle shot, but he fizzles out of existence before the bullets fully make it through his body. They keep going with most of their momentum, killing the man behind him. It hurts, briefly, but it's already begun to fade as his body weilds its double-edged sword. Constant pain, and in return, constant healing.

With a rush of hot air, he invades the lungs of the nearest enemy, strangling her from within her own body. Asphyxiation takes too much time, something he is short on, and he instead uses her breathlessness as distraction. While she's coughing up bits of him, he snaps her neck. Four left.

He kills them all in a whirl of bullets, a practiced move that leaves him not knowing where he ends and the gun begins. With that done, he drops the empty shotguns, meeting Widowmaker's sharp gaze.

"Well done," she tells him, in a voice that hides exactly how enraptured she is by the display. A slaughter like this shouldn't take a woman's breath away, but they are so beyond caring about those social norms it's not even funny.

"Thanks," he mutters. "You too."

"I was very good bait," she says, and this time a smile almost crosses her lips.

He bares his teeth back. Not that she can see it. "Come on," he says, crossing to lift her again. "Let's get you out of here."