"We're here."
Sombra pushes the car door open and steps out, framed by the beacon of light that swings her way. She winks at the spotlight, hand fluttering in a mockery of little Tracer's salute. The spotlight pauses on her- and then swings steadily away.
Reaper exits the black sedan at the other side, his long coat fluttering dramatically in the wind. The coastline of Busan, especially at this one spot, is constantly being buffeted by gusts of sea air, blowing straight into the peninsula. Sombra likes it- the smell of salt, the glittering waters extending far below them. If she looks directly over the ocean, at the very edge of the cliff, it feels like she's standing at the end of the world.
"A Watchpoint: Talon to match Watchpoint: Gibraltar," she muses. Then she looks towards the back of the car.
Sombra clears her throat. "We're here," she repeats, miffed.
DVA- Hana Song, whatever- she doesn't respond.
Sombra doesn't weigh much more than Hana, so dragging the unconscious girl out of the car takes all of her strength. The hood of her pink jacket catches on everything- her own cuffs, the seatbelt, Sombra's nails- as if it's physically resisting her efforts. Reaper watches impassively from the side, his arms crossed, like a massive, scowling… useless shadow.
"A little- help- here?" Sombra growls, before dropping Hana onto the concrete road like a sack of potatoes. The girl hits her head on the ground a little harder than is safe before flopping limply to rest, but Sombra is past caring about that. Her main concern is… that if her makeup gets ruined by this little excursion, she's going to kill somebody. Literally no-one understands how long it takes for her to get eyeshadow this perfect.
…Maybe Widowmaker. Any girl could tell that the Frenchwoman's dark makeup was drawn with a graceful hand. But she's about as likely to share her makeup secrets as it is for Reaper to start singing Don't Fear the Reaper.
Pissing her off more than the fact that her flawless eyebrows are at risk is that Reaper continues staring, as if he's waiting for Sombra to pick the girl back up and lug her all the way to the building.
Sombra straightens out her hair, her nails. The ocean wind might feel nice now, but give it a couple minutes and it'll be freezing. "Well?" she snips, scowling at Reaper. She adopts his arms-crossed pose, tilts her chin up. "Between the little Spanish woman and the grande mass of muscles and edginess, who d'you think is better suited to carrying her?
"I can't," Reaper states shortly. His thickly muscled arms remain crossed, gates barring a closed-off body. "You do it."
She scoffs in his direction, flipping back a lock of purple hair. It falls against her eyes, which have been a bright purple ever since that one mod operation in 0'6. "Okaaaaay, Gabe. What is this about? Is it because I messed up with that SPECTR classification? Amon or Aman or whatever her name was? It was an innocent mistake, stop being so selfish-"
"It blew itself up."
Reaper is slowly getting irritated, Sombra can tell, even though it's really Sombra that should be getting angry. They have a deal going on- Sombra takes care of the paper trail so long as Reaper does the heavy lifting. She's not some sort of blue-collar worker, dammit.
She toes the ground, voice sarcastic. "Yes, yes, she self-destructed in an attempt to bring you down. Sure. How noble. You're saying you got hurt? So you bitch about having to carry a little weight, eh?"
Every word seems to be causing Reaps physical pain, which is… which is normal, really; he doesn't hide at all that Sombra's voice annoys him more than that of a dying cat, but today it's even more so than usual. As he shifts from metal-toed boot to metal-toed boot, Sombra has the good grace to fall silent.
"When a target is in little pieces," he finally grinds out, "I can't feed."
Oh.
Sombra blinks at the monster in front of her, his shoulders wisping angrily as he stares her down. And even though he stands a solid head above her, his mask gleaming down with a silent sort of menace, she feels a prick of sorry.
It's easy to forget that the people she works with aren't quite that- people. The first time she'd met Reaper, Sombra had locked herself into her room immediately afterwards for three days straight, burning with that signature hacker's curiosity as to who this man was.
Over a thousand caffeine-fueled encryption key cracks and backlog IP traces later, she had found her answer: Reaper was the recently deceased Gabriel Reyes, division commander of Blackwatch. Now romping with terrorists he'd once personally shot down, like he'd always belonged with them.
And maybe he has. Who knows what happened in the darker corners of Overwatch's closet?
Oh, of course, Sombra does, but she doesn't know shit about anything that's not recorded somewhere on a computer… namely, the finer points of Reyes and Golden Boy Morrison's relationship. She knew of the general dissent between the two grumpy old men- who didn't?- but to find out that he'd come back from the dead, well, that was just between her and Gabe.
She'd felt quite satisfied with herself, leaning back as she chugged down a mug of cold espresso. This was obviously something that someone out there, most likely Talon itself, was trying to keep very much on the down-low. Of course, to Sombra, it's just an interesting tidbit of information. A challenge.
Maybe a bit of leverage, in case they figure out I'm not exactly working for them.
And she'd forgotten that Gabriel Reyes is no longer a human that breathes, generates heat, and eats. He is the Reaper now, and though Sombra doesn't completely understand how his new body works, the one thing she knows is that he doesn't eat conventional food. He has no need for rations. When the Reaper kills, he absorbs the energy of his victims.
The rumors say that the Reaper feeds off death, but that isn't true at all. He feeds off life, or the remnants of it that cling to dead bodies. She'd seen Omnic and human corpses alike litter the ground, completely withered away. The energy he derives from them always seem to be the same.
But it's been a solid two weeks since Reaper has killed anyone, Sombra realizes suddenly. Talon agents don't eat together, don't sleep together- they're much too wary for that- and so she'd not once thought about how Reaper was doing, physically. What was the saying? Out of sight, out of mind.
Amin, the SPECTR Omnic, had blown herself up- probably in a last, valiant attempt to rid the world of Reaper, and almost certainly having not known that Reaper needed her, dead but whole, for his next feeding.
Therefore, Sombra pieces together, what Reaps is implying now is that he'll literally start devouring their precious prey's life energy if he gets too close to her.
And not just too close to Hana. Sombra, too. She's alive, too… though not many people like that fact.
Something twists in her gut. Not fear. She refuses to believe that it's fear. There is nothing scary about this grumpy old man. It's just- an involuntary reaction. Maybe disgust. Probably disgust.
She covers for her uncertainty with an overly dramatic sigh.
"Okay, okay," she grumbles, hooking her arms underneath the girl's and heaving her limp body up. She wrinkles her nose in distaste as the girl's head lolls sideways, exposing the spiderweb of blood running down a pale, wan face. Her eyelashes are so long. "I got it. But you owe me next time."
Reaps doesn't answer. Just turns around and begins tromping across the parking lot, towards the stony exterior of the Talon base.
Sombra sighs, her thermoptic-camouflage-sheathed arms already beginning to ache under Hana Song's weight. Some thanks would be appreciated.
Sometimes, being a terrorist can be such a bore.
"We're here."
Sujin pushes the car door open and steps out, framed by the scattering of blinking neon lights around them, from letters to signs to street lights. She turns to peer at McCree, who fumbles for the door.
McCree exits the black sedan at the other side, his hat nearly blowing off again in the wind. He's not sure whether the wind is from Korea's naturally gusty lands, or the miniature torrents of air being created by the thousands of hovercars zipping this way and that around him.
I don't much like it, he thinks as he presses a hand to the Stetson on his head to keep it from being stolen by the breeze. The glove is still slightly damp from spilled soju.
His metallic arm swings limply at his side- he'd cut the nerves with a pair of borrowed pliers, and it's only mildly functional. Hopefully that won't impede him too much.
They've stopped at an apartment building, one that is noticeably dingier than Amin's. He takes a deep, desperate breath in the open air- he'd been nearly squeezed to death by the eight men from the bar sitting around him, packed like sardines in a can.
For some reason, it stinks strongly of booze, especially for a housing development. McCree scrunches up his nose, a frown growing on his face, and Sujin echoes that reaction.
"I don't care much for this place," she says. She waves a hand in front of her nose and coughs. "It gets more vile every passing year, I swear it…"
Boss Jehovah, they called him. Runner of the South American chapter of Deadlock, or so he claimed. The truth is, Deadlock's upper ranks were a twisty turny maze of ladders that all led straight up to someone nobody really knew, and it was hard to figure out who outranked who. Mostly, that was decided by equally twisty and turny duels.
But McCree had taken Jehovah's word for it (he would be dead otherwise) and even visited the man's house once- a sprawling mass of hardwoods and creaking lanterns right in the middle of New Mexico, expensively built, but looking like it had been put together with two left hands.
In comparison, this apartment complex… this doesn't resemble a local gang leader's hideout at all, if the Ssang Kal is as big as McCree recalled it to be.
His thoughts must be apparent on his face, because Sujin answers them. "This is one of Seon's floozy's houses," she says with incredible distaste. "Nothing of importance lives here, I assure you. It's just, he's here often, so…" Sujin trails off, and her face softens. "Him and that girl."
"Girl?" McCree's stomach turns a little as he follows Sujin towards the building. If he recalls one of Jehovah's more unsavory habits...
Well. The life of a gang leader is a stressful one, and one way to take out anger on someone without fear of retribution is picking on someone weak. Something that has no chance of getting even. The sick. The mothers. A child. Easy targets.
It had even been him, once. And that's why Jehovah is a pile of bones in a shallow grave somewhere in Texas.
He's lucky I buried 'im at all.
Sujin clacks up to the elevator, and waits a solid twenty seconds for everyone to file in and get situated- McCree and the eight gangsters- before she lets the doors close. The elevator trembles so much that McCree feels dizzy, through his alcohol-dulled senses, as they rattle slowly upwards.
It usually takes around thirty-forty minutes for McCree to really feel the effects of drinking- when his vision starts doing backflips and his stomach does even faster ones. In other words, he has thirty-forty minutes before he's completely wasted. Thirty-forty minutes to deal with a foreign gang and its boss.
Great.
"I got this," he mutters underneath his breath.
They reach the correct floor and shuffle out. The hair on the back of McCree's neck raises at the sudden stench of cigarette smoke, in combination with the smell of ethanol.
"He won't be expecting you, by the way," says Sujin abruptly. "So be tactful."
"Why didn't you just call 'im?" asks McCree drily as he trails behind her. The entire building is strangely silent. "Could save a lot of hass-"
"Mr. Seon is not the kind of man who answers his calls. There would've been no point. Especially with how paranoid he's become, what with Mr. Chamseh on his heels and everything."
That perks McCree's interest. He adjusts his hat to fit more securely on his head. "Mr. Chamseh?"
"Yes. I already told you about him. Supposedly he and a gang of his men are trying to take down the chapter… or, take over the chapter. Sending my lovely boss scurrying like the fat rat he is." She lights a slender cigarette as she walks right past a NO SMOKING sign nailed to the wall. Her voice is vaguely disinterested. "Not that it matters. Seon, Chamseh, they're all the same."
"Awful loyal, aren'tcha."
"To myself, yes."
Sujin pauses in front of a door that is already slightly opened. The door number has long since peeled off the wood, but as far as McCree can tell from her distasteful sniff, apparently she recognizes it.
"Here we are. Ladies first."
She sweeps her hand to the door in a mockery of chivalry, while the other thugs rumble in quiet laughter. McCree takes it in stride, tipping his hat with a suave little smile, and presses a hand to the door.
It swings open with a quiet creak, opening to…
...nobody. There's nothing here. What the hell?
Well, not quite nothing. There's a mess of empty bottles and El Dorados chip bags on the ground, scattered loosely about an overflowing trash bag. Bowls of instant ramen stands in towering piles in the corners of the room. Someone with obviously too much time on their hands has stacked empty green soda bottles into a giant pyramid, which lines the walls. The only thing that is remarkable about the place at all is a giant computer shoved into a corner, a contraption of wires and whizzing disks that looks homemade. A chair decorated with a single pink bunny sticker sits empty in front of it.
There's also the blood.
He hadn't noticed it at first, as he gingerly stepped over bits of broken glass and bright orange chip fragments. The floor was such a disaster zone that its maroon-colored splotches are half-covered in debris. There was a streak of it going across the floor, heading directly towards the balcony.
A prickle of uneasiness jolts down his spine as he bends over to clear a patch of the floor. There's a photo on the ground, of a smiling woman, man, and a little girl- the girl's face is blotted out with a scribble of marker, it all feels so strange-
Abuse. Everything about this apartment screams that its occupants were abused, and McCree swears a silent oath under his breath. Something about this place makes his hackles rise in a way that reminds him of walking in on one of Gabe and Morrison's arguments- as if he's intruding on a very dark secret.
"What the hell," he spits. McCree swings his gaze towards Sujin, who's standing open-mouthed at the doorway, the cigarette half-raised to her lips. "What the hell is all this?"
"I- I have no idea," she mutters, clacking forward on those stiletto heels to crouch by the largest splatter of blood. "The woman- she should still be here-"
"Did your Seon guy do this?" A strange bubble of anger bursts in side of him. First Hana, then Tara, now this poor, anonymous family. He's laid witness to so many families get torn up recently, and he's helped absolutely none of them.
His own papa had done something like this, once upon a time. McCree touches a gloved finger to Peacekeeper, a frown narrowing his eyes.
Sujin surveys him with creased eyebrows, her face shadowed in the backlight of the single bulb screwed into the ceiling. "Perhaps. I do not know. Maybe Chamseh-nim has come for him with his gang," she murmurs. "They say his group numbers in the dozens. They could've overpowered Seon's lackeys-"
"I'd be glad," he snarls, standing up straight. His calm demeanor is slipping, frustration shining raw beneath the surface. He's sick of running in circles. With every passing second, Hana is further entangled in the spider's web.
I have thirty-forty minutes. "Where d'you think he is now?"
Sujin stands up as well, the eight men gingerly entering the room. "Is it not clear that we are, ah, too busy to help you right now?" she asks incredulously. A hint of sarcasm creeps into her voice. "Your opinion of the Ssang Kal's services is terribly high, Mr. Cowboy."
"I don't need shit from your services." McCree pinches the bridge of his nose, irritation beginning to grate on his nerves. "I just need-"
-fuck this-
"Yer on Talon's payroll, aren'tcha?"
There! He'd said it. He'd said the one thing that he wasn't going to say to anyone but the boss, and now he was damn well going to regret it.
Three, two, one- nine different guns chak-chak into place, all pointing at McCree's head, without an ounce of hesitation.
Sujin's gun is one of them. She wields a little black peashooter, really, its delicate barrel concentrating on McCree's forehead. "How," she begins, voice concrete-hard, "how- what are you-"
"Little lady, I know a lot more about how things go than you lot of thugs," he drawls, fluttering his hands in a half-hearted my hands are up.
He isn't even lying. Years of Blackwatch has conditioned him into assuming that all and any prominent gangs in an area also occupied by an even larger, more dangerous organization is being paid off by the organization, if not outright working for them. If the country is an ecosystem, then a gang and Talon are a snake and a coyote competing for top predator- and only one can take over.
Instead of turning the situation into a bloodbath, all Talon has to do is put some hands in deep pockets and slap that money onto any rising tensions like a big fucking bandaid. Money solves everything in the underworld.
In McCree's world.
"Who sent you?" asks Sujin, voice soft and dangerous. "if you're part of another gang, you won't be getting home alive. I swear it."
"That ain't the best way to get answers. If I were in a gang, my only option'd be to lie," he corrects smoothly much to Sujin's chagrin. "Puttin' that aside-" and McCree smiles, because smiling makes you the one who isn't scared- "I'm not a part of any gang, 'scuse me. I just want to talk to Talon is all."
McCree keeps his tone light and conversational. He can tell that the men surrounding Sujin are wavering, though she herself may not be.
"So you want to talk to Seon because-"
"-because he has information that you certainly do not have, missy. Havin' a direct pipeline to Talon and all." Peacekeeper is a cool weight at his hip, begging to be unleashed, but McCree pushes the swirling rage of the Deadeye down. I have this under control.
Commander had told him, years ago, that one day he'll become indifferent to the bloodsoaked gloves that he wears on his hands. That the amount of lives Peacekeeper has taken will hold no weight at all, and the gun will become just another tool- she's deadly, for sure, but she only has that sentimental value because you yourself are sentimental. I don't name my guns, Cree. And neither do any of my damn best agents.
A gloved finger shoved into McCree's chest. You're one of 'em.
Years later, McCree's proving Gabriel Reyes wrong. Because even now, killing drives an itch in his hands that won't go away.
It'd be simple enough to bring down the six members, reload with a roll, fire off two more times, leaving Sujin the only one alive. Holding her at gunpoint as she tracks down Seon for him. Sujin may be a drug dealer, but that doesn't mean she can overpower someone like McCree- even when his vision goes blurry and disoriented from the Deadeye.
But there's a slight widen of Sujin's thickly lined eyes- silent but heavy breaths moving the gang's chests up and down, up and down- they're frightened of McCree, because of his connection to Talon, and that says a lot about the Ssang Kal's relationship with the terrorist organization.
Fear makes people vulnerable, and McCree absolutely hates hurting those who are vulnerable. Aw, c'mon guys. The weight of Peacekeeper seems to grow. Just put down your goddamn guns.
"It's ok, Talon doesn't have anythin' against me," he lies. "If anything, they'll be pleased-" because I'm being dropped straight into their lap- "and all I want is a talk."
"A talk about-"
McCree waggles his finger. "Nuh-uh. Don't go askin' any questions. It's a talk. Are you taking me to Seon or no?"
He sees the gangsters, their guns still hovering in the air, glance at Sujin, waiting for a cue that never comes. Her gun stays resolutely pointed at McCree, her red-painted lips pressed together into a line.
Fire prickles up-and-down his living arm. Jesse McCree has only so much pity to spare.
Okay then.
He sighs, and reaches for Peacekeeper.
She sits in her swiveling chair, sipping her espresso as she stares blankly at her holoscreen. Two days of being gone, and all her contacts just blow up like mines gone unattended.
What a mess. This will take ages to sort through.
Reaper appears behind her more quietly than he should be able. Even without turning around, she can feel the freezing cold emanating from him, like an open refrigerator. The sound of his breathing- yes, she knows it's a bit counterintuitive- it sounds like someone constantly rubbing brass with sandpaper, slowly. She ignores him, fingers clicking away at the holoscreen.
His baritone does its usual deep growl. "Sombra. We have new orders."
"Fuck the orders. I'm busy!" she scoffs, fingers scrambling to shoot message off of message. "Hopefully you can see that." She gestures with curling fingers at the holoscreen, at the quickly scrolling wall of green text. "Dying didn't ruin your eyes?"
"I don't care if you're busy," growls Reaper. He swipes at the power button on her computer, nearly hits it before Sombra swats his claws away with an irritated hey!
"Look here, Gabi! Look at this." She swivels around to face the ghost himself, jabbing at the screen. At his unimpressed reaction (read: simply standing there like a statue), she begins to hotly explain. "You see these usernames? Do you know who these people are?"
"The orders are-"
"Snow-dot-x-dot-fairy ," Sombra reads off the screen. She whips around to glare at Reaper. "Arms dealer from Siberia. Allsoulz11, leader of a Moroccan militia. J-F-B-1-7-5- one of the last Null Sector divisions still active in China. DeusForMachina- a.k.a. Asuna Winchester, president of Kosovo. These are all very important friends of mine."
Not that Reaper understands. Nobody in Talon understands. It's all about Talon's will this, Talon's will that- it's the same thing again and again, boring, so boring, and if there's one thing Sombra can't stand, it's being bored.
"Friends," Reaper intones dryly. "Your 'friends' all want to kill you."
"¿A quién le importa?" Sombra swivels back to face the screen; three different people are trying to secure eight different arms deals with her at once. Impatience grows like a weed in her system. "We benefit from each other. That is the very definition of friendship."
"You need a dictionary."
"Ach, no need. I-" Her mind blanks.
Wait.
Her ears automatically go through a feedback loop, re-processing the information she had just gathered from the past five seconds.
I… heard correctly.
She turns her head incredulously. "El Segador… Did you just make a joke?"
It's as if someone turned a switch on Reaper, turning him to Mute once again. Sombra scoffs, a smirk growing on her face despite herself.
"I'm rubbing off on you. Mios Dios… You're scaring me, Reaper."
"They need you to talk to the girl," Reaper says tonelessly. His mask lifts a little in the hollow of his hood, starkly white against the black cloth. "She complies with orders, or she dies."
Ugh. More busy work from Talon, the slave driver. "Tell Maddie to do it. She's a trustworthy agent." I mean, she could've shot me at least four different times in Colombia, but never even tried… unlike poor Roberto.
"Maddie isn't even her real name."
"And Sombra isn't mine, and Reaper isn't yours- what else is new. Why don't you go tell the poor little girlie about las consecuencias?" she asks with her Hispanic lilt, sharply smirking.
His voice is casually dark. "Oh, I will. If she doesn't listen."
Reaper turns and leaves, metal boots stomping on ground like dull cymbals. Sombra watches him go, that sharp smirk turning into a sharper scowl.
A talk with the girl.
That's just Reaper's thinly veiled way of saying, if you can't get through Hana Song with words, then I will get through her with pliers, brass knuckles, and kicks to the head. Make her obedient one way or the other, and then the medication starts.
Aah, que dilema. Sombra kicks off the side of the table, sending the swivel chair spinning. Squeak, squeak, squeak- the chair creaks with every twist, like a chorus of mice.
She's been so busy lately, negotiating and keeping up with all the latest news. Monitoring all these things, it's a one-woman job. There's no one to watch this chica's back. Sombra is on her own.
And, to put it simply, she likes it that way. She knows she'll never change. But still... being in Talon is so much goddamn work.
The room spins around her in a lazy circle. Wall- poster -computer -wall- poster- computer-
...A talk with the girl.
Translation Notes:
"¿A quién le importa? – "Who cares?"
El Segador- The Reaper
Que dilema- What a dilemma
Mios dios- My god
las consecuencias- the consequences
Cultural Notes:
On average, a South Korean will drink 13.7 shots of liquor a week- twice as much as the Russians and four times more than the U.S. This unhealthy culture of drink fast, get drunk fast has been a major problem for the country in terms of health- but has turned bars into booming businesses, setting liquor stores everywhere. And McCree has no problem taking advantage of that.
Author's Note:
If you think you saw your username in the story and you're a recent commenter... you probably did.
Oh boy oh boy, Talon finally has a hold of Hana and things aren't looking so good. Luckily, McCree has found a way to locate Talon's base of operations in Korea- by going straight through the gang that had once extorted thousands of dollars from Hana… fate is a cruel mistress, no?
I refuse to believe that Sombra and Reaper are two-dimensional 'evil for evil's sake' characters. You'll probably sense that as we go on.
On a side note… I love you all. I can't believe how many people read this story now, and you probably have no idea how happy that makes me- that, from looking at the stats, hundreds of people out there are actually enjoying themselves and being happy because of something I did.
Thank you to all commenters and followers; I am looking forward to your reviews on this chapter!
-FillerText
