Memories
(( Hi there! It’s been forever since I posted, it’s three in the morning, and here’s some angsty Reaper shit because I love to Suffer))
((I may do a part two if y’all like this, so feel free to tell me if you think I should continue this mess or not))
How long had it been?
How long had it been since he had been comfortable? Felt like he was actually stable enough to pick something up? Gabriel didn’t know. Everything was a haze. Memories had a tendency to bleed together when your brain didn’t seem to stay in tact for more than a few minutes at a time.
The Reaper often had a hard time remembering who he had once been. Beyond snatches of blue eyes, fragments of yelling at someone, and an annoyance he could never be rid of, but never hated... It was emotions mostly, things tied to situations but never the context to match them with. He couldn’t put together anything coherent enough to call a backstory.
Once he had known what he was doing, at the beginning of everything he had been sharp, dangerous as any other vengeful wraith.
At least, that was what Talon told him.
He hadn’t always been such a fucking mess, he hadn’t always had to ask what his name had once been. But according to the scientists that seemed to constantly hover about him, he was fading. His mind was becoming more and more scrambled as time went on. He no longer felt anger, he no longer remembered why he had become part of Talon, only that it was important.
And he guessed that it was important, it kept him rooted in Talon anyways. He had long since stopped fighting, stopped ignoring orders or making snarky retorts to things he was told to do. Widowmaker, the woman who worked beside him most of the time had told him this, more than once. But once again, he couldn’t remember.
A faint sense of familiarity was usually all he had. Whether he was listening to Sombra and Widowmaker bicker about something, or the smell of sand and hot air... Sometimes things had him wondering where he’d experienced something similar. Sure he didn’t need to breathe, but sometimes he found himself inhaling just for the sake of some scent that caught his attention, air rattling around in his useless lungs before he would give up.
Often times he didn’t have any sort of time to connect the fragments, to let the coalesce into something he could recognize. They remained a frustrating jumble that he couldn’t understand, like the tangles of wires he often saw Sombra picking at or messing with.
It was the air again. The heat blazing against his jacket, the sand getting caught in everything, Gabriel could feel it getting caught everywhere. Something about it scratched at the back of his mind, it definitely wasn’t the first time he’d been stuck in the heat with something to do. The weird part was that there was no urgency in whatever he was ‘remembering’. It was just, calm. Which was an odd change from what he usually dealt with.
“Where the hell did you go anciano?” Sombra’s voice came over the coms, snapping Reaper out of his muddled thoughts as he let out a displeased growl.
“Get off my back, shut your mouth, and do something useful.” Reaper hissed out, he felt part of his face melt away into smoke as soon as he was finished. His comment earned a stifled laugh, it seemed almost patronizing. As it was, he tuned Sombra out, instead focusing on the mission at hand.
Overwatch had been poking around again, showing a bit more and more to the eye of the public. Something about the name elicited disgust and betrayal from Reaper. Why? He couldn’t be sure, but he was going to follow what his superiors told him and actually get some shit done.
“I’ve got a visual on Overwatch.” He had found a place lurking in the shadows. He melted into them once he had spoke. Letting his physical form go was getting distressingly easy. The wraith didn’t think about it though, instead focusing on the group that had come into view. They hadn’t caught sight of the Talon operatives yet, but Gabriel knew that he and the other two would be hard to shake.
His gaze found one person in particular, one that seemed to stand out from the others. Mostly because the guy actually seemed to blend into the scene, softer colors and the hat to match. The rest stood out horribly against the background of the heat and sand.
The Talon agent was about to make a move of some variety when he saw one of the Overwatch members move quickly. Within a second a bow had come up, an arrow had been loosed, and the team scattered. He heard a sound of discomfort over the coms before a thick french accent met his ears.
“We’ve been spotted.” Widow’s tone was laced with disgust, and Reaper let out an equally disgusted scoff as he materialized once more.
“Next time find a better place to lurk, if we loose them because of you-” Reaper was cut off by the click of someone cocking a gun right behind him. The wraith didn’t have much to fear, but the fact that someone had managed to get behind him with a weapon without him noticing in the slightest... It bothered him.
“Either drop your weapons or I shoot you.” The voice behind him was cold, gruff, and for some reason it had Reaper frowning, trying to retrieve a memory that hovered just out of his grasp.
“I said drop ‘em, last chance scumbag.” The man behind the Reaper growled out. The wraith let his shotguns clatter from his hands. It wasn’t like he was unarmed, but he was sure whoever had snuck up on him had no idea about that.
He turned slowly, leather creaking as he moved. Reaper needed to actually see who had taken him by surprise.
When he turned fully, he froze.
At first he didn’t know why, it was just the man he had taken note of earlier. But as a moment slipped by, A name flashed through his mind.
Jesse
He didn’t know what the significance was. His brows knitting together in a scowl as he struggled for the memory that still kept slipping away. Sure the guy was pointing a revolver directly at his face, but Reaper had priorities, and anything that could give him any clue as to who he once was... That was far more valuable to him than any mission. He needed to know he had a life before Talon. Otherwise he was starting to wonder more and more if they had created him. And as much as it made more sense to him over time, he didn’t want it to be true. Some desperate part of him clung to the hope that he may have once been human.
“C’mon boss, you can’t be that determined to work yourself to death.”
The laugh flitted through his thoughts like some sort of wild thing. For some reason the comment nobody had directed at him at that moment had him stifling an exasperated huff. Reaper recoiled a bit though, something told him that what was bubbling to the surface of his mind had everything to do with the man that stood directly in front of him.
“Who the hell are you?” It was a low hiss from behind his mask. A plume of black smoke went with it. His brain argued that he knew already, and he was just asking a stupid question. That was absurd, he didn’t know McCree at all.
Hold on, where had that come from?
Reaper was having some sort of mental fucking whiplash, his mind racing as red irises bore into the man he faced down. He hadn’t made any move for his shotguns, and the other man still hadn’t dropped his weapon, but they hadn’t killed each other yet, so there was that at least.
Someone was talking to him over his coms as he watched Jesse. He had decided that was probably the other man’s name. It was the name that kept ricocheting around in his mind after all, so something about that had to be important.
“I could ask you the same thing, who’s behind the mask? Who’s this big bad Reaper everyone’s been talkin’ ‘bout.” Jesse muttered, advancing a couple of steps on the leather clad figure as Reaper frowned.
“Head’s up, big bad commander Morrison is gonna have another hissyfit. I’d bet Peacekepper he’ll come lookin’ for you to remind you I’m a shitty teenager.”
A low laugh rumbled in his chest as he watched a lanky young man drop into one of the chairs in front of his desk, hat falling low on his brow as he slung long legs over the arm of the chair.
Reaper shook himself a bit. That was... an actual memory. It wasn’t just incoherent emotions tossed into the abstract hell that his mind had become over the years.
“Jesse?”
He hadn’t meant to speak at all. Hell, any other time and he would have already pulled a gun and blasted this guy’s skull open. But something stopped him. Something in his mind screamed not to hurt the other man, hell, all of his instincts told him to protect the fucker that had a gun pointed directly at his face.
The man faltered at the name though, confusion flittering across his face as he shifted his grip on the weapon, before it was pulled right back up again, eyes narrowing under the brim of his hat. It was the same hat Reaper remembered. But that wasn’t right... Jesse was some scrawny kid, not, this...
Wait how did he know that?
“Yeah, you know my name, big fuckin’ whoop.” The other man snapped, squaring his shoulders as he glared Reaper down fearlessly.
Reaper caught the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye, gaze drifting down to the other man’s free hand. It was a prosthetic, metal catching the light that filtered down between the buildings.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, just keep talking to me kid, we’re going to get you out of here.” Panic clutched at his chest. He needed to make sure Jesse was safe. The young man’s blood stained his shirt from where his arm had been ripped off by the explosion.
“It ain’t worth it Gabe.” Jesse’s voice was a slurred mumble against Gabriel’s sleeve, his eyes were dazed, unfocused and glassy.
“You’re going to be fine, don’t talk like that.” Gabriel snapped, desperation clawed at him, reminding him of the building that had come down partially on their heads, was there even a way out?
Jesse
It hit him like a hammer to the gut. Memories seemed to blind him for a moment. The kid that had stuck to his side like an overenthusiastic burr. The one he had taken in, cared for. He had dried Jesse’s tears, been there when the young man needed him, he’d been a mentor, a father, for the kid who would have been dead in a ditch by the time he was twenty.
He knew this guy, he knew the person standing in front of him better than he had known himself at one point.
“It’s a shame you don’t recognize me, cabròn.” There was an urge to hug the other man, pull his idiot cowboy close to his chest just for the sake of the closeness he remembered. Remembered being the astonishing thing there. He actually remembered this guy, he remembered the relationship they had once had, long nights spent pouring over paperwork with Jesse snoozing away in his lap. He recalled long nights spent with Jesse’s face in his shoulder when Jesse had nightmares about his family.
The Spanish felt natural falling from his lips. It was his first language after all. Which he was only remembering at the moment. He had all sorts of little nicknames for Jesse, and a lot of them were Spanish. He even remembered teaching Jesse a few little things, phrases and whatnot.
The other man seemed absolutely disarmed by the comment, blinking in surprise and scowling deeply as he glared Reaper down.
“What’n the hell’re you blathering ‘bout?” He was still stubborn, still not backing down, even as Gabriel took a step forward, he didn’t have to be afraid of Jesse. He hadn’t been afraid of the other man in the first place, but he was especially unafraid at that point.
Without thinking, Gabriel raised a hand to his face. The metal of his gauntlet caught against the edges of his mask before he peeled the skull from his face. He never took the mask off outside the Talon base, he wasn’t even sure if he was allowed to. The taller man let the mask drop to the ground, red irises locking with shocked brown. Jesse recoiled violently, nearly dropping Peacekeeper as his wide eyes fixed on the wraith.
“Gabriel?”