Reaper76Week 2018 || Day 7: “Depth of relationship” (shared lifetime/togetherness)
Day 1 || Day 2 || Day 3 || Day 4 || Day 5 || Day 6 || Day 7
@lilized: Whoooo! Can you believe we did it?! BECAUSE I CAN’T. Thank you all for sticking with us ‘till now and for your patience. To make amends for the extra time we thought about a juicy bonus scene, set between Day 6 and 7.
It’ll take a little while, cause we only just started working on it, but I think you’ll love it.
There are really no words for how great this experience was for me, working with Irene, seeing my stupid words brought to life in such an extraordinary way...it was incredible.
@ufficiosulretro: When we first started to work on this comic, we discovered that we couldn’t figure anything detailed to tell about Day 7’s theme, since Jack and Gabe were just at the beginning of their story together. We struggled a lot before to surrender to the concept that it wasn’t necessary to tell anything specific to suggest what we all already know about these guys, such as how they fought side by side and loved each other for a lifetime.
In this update we also reveal you the title we thought for this comic, No One Else, and how much Livia and I love to use Jack’s or Gabriel’s quotes to name our comics, you don’t have idea. Ahah!
I think I could say the same: I can’t believe we made it.
Pretty late, as usual, like for everything in my life, but I’m glad I was able to finish a project in a relatively short time. It’s something that really helps out noticing your progresses in something, no matter what (art, writing, studying, anything.) It has not happened in a long and I was definitely starting to give up on some major projects for this exact reason, feeling stuck like I was right about to get into some sort of artblock... again.
We will soon post the full comic for you to see and share and, as @lilized already mentioned, an extra scene. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the ride! Nothing of this would have been as fun and brilliant and cool if Livia hadn’t wrote such fantastic story and dialogues, suggested the best ideas and pointed the perfect corrections.
(@lilized: AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!)
We worked so well together. :’)
Thank you, thank you a lot for every kind word you spent to let us know how much you liked our work. Despite the suffering of making comics, writing or drawing in general, making this comic and drawing or writing about Jack and Gabriel is always fun and brightens our life.
(But a little more of lore would be gladly appreciated - dear Jeff, where’s my Omnic Crisis Event, uh? Where is it?!)
Day 7: “Depth of relationship” - shared lifetimes/togetherness/alternate universes
So I’m not super happy with this one.. haven’t had a good day, it was really rushed, and I’m realizing that drawing on paper is really difficult when you need tiny details (my sketchbook is 5.5x8.5 in) @reaper-76-week
I did underwater AU for the ‘depth’ of relationship, haha...
Sometimes, when Jack was feeling particularly gloomy and a little masochistic, he liked to speculate about what life would be like if the fates had allowed him to be happy. Ana disapproved of this line of thinking, as she saw no point in suffering under “might-have-beens” and believed that a person decided their own fate, even when ill fortune came along. Still, she would entertain Jack when he was in his gloomy moods, talking about his mythical house with a white picket fence and a green lawn and a grill in the backyard where he would live and raise a family.
With Gabriel, of course. He never said it out loud, but Ana knew Jack was thinking about it when he went mused about his life that could have been. Even after all these years and the betrayal in Switzerland, she knew Jack missed him. She saw it in the way his eyes grew distant, his smile sad, and how his rough voice grew just a little too soft as he spoke of his theoretical family, carefully never mentioning his theoretical spouse by name.
It had only grown worse when they had started actively tracking the Reaper, following Gabriel’s movements and trying to piece together what the hell he was doing. Jack would see Reaper do something horrendous on stolen surveillance footage, like the attack on the Numbani museum last year, and he would get quiet and distant for a while as he grieved over what could have been.
Like she’d said a hundred times before, there was no point in getting trapped by the past, agonizing under what might have happened, or what could have been done differently. That’s what Ana told herself as she sat alone in their concealed hideout in the Moroccan desert. They’d set up camp in a bombed out set of ruins that had been a small town before it was destroyed in the Omnic Crisis. It was ideal for two vigilantes looking for somewhere to camp out unseen, and conveniently close to a secret Talon base.
Well. Currently, it was only hiding one vigilante, an old sniper who was trying very hard not to think about her own list of “what ifs.”
She had stuck to the plan, but what if she hadn’t? What if they hadn’t split up? What if she had waited longer for Jack at the rendezvous? What if they had traded routes? What if, what if… Yes, the mission had been a success and Ana had found the information they were after, but at what cost?
Jack, where are you?
Only a sniper’s patience kept her in place for a full five hours after returning to their little makeshift base. Once the sun had finally broken over the horizon, she decided she’d had enough. Jack was either dead, injured, or captured, and that meant it was up to her to save his ass.
He’d better be dead, dying , or captured, she thought as she prepared to set out again, stocking up on ammunition and slinging her biotic rifle over her shoulder. Otherwise, she’d kill him herself for making her worry.
As she was attaching biotic grenades to the bandolier over her shoulder, the shrill beep of the perimeter alarm sounded in her earpiece.
Ana let out a long sigh and set down the grenade in her hand. Jack. Thank the stars. She stepped out of the bombed out shell of a building she’d made into her armory.
“It’s about time! You had me thinking you were…” Ana trailed off as a very different figure approached from across the crumbling ruins of the town. Gabriel, in that ridiculous getup he was calling “The Reaper,” carrying a blood-soaked Jack in his arms. Ana couldn’t tell if he was alive.
No…Oh no…
“No!” Ana dropped her rifle from her shoulder into her hands and brought it up to aim without hesitation. “What have you done?!”
“Ana, wait! Stop!” Reaper shouted.
He was still a good thirty yards out, too far away for those shotguns to be effective, and Ana had a bead on him, her crosshairs aimed right between the eyes of his skull mask, finger on the trigger, and…she stopped.
There was something about the way he carried Jack that caught her attention. He held Jack just a little too close to his chest, clawed gloves clinging to him a little too tenderly, his head resting gently on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” She demanded, keeping the rifle raised.
“He’s hurt. Stable, but he needs serious medical attention. I believe his hip is broken and he took a shot to the abdomen,” Reaper said, continuing to advance.
“From you?” She accused, though she already suspected the answer. Really, why would Gabriel carry Jack all the way back here if was just going to cause trouble? If he’d wanted to kill them both, there were much easier ways to do it. A second glance showed that he also had Jack’s pulse rifle slung over his back.
“Perimeter turret.”
Ana dropped the rifle from her shoulder. “Hm. Every time I leave him alone, he gets himself into trouble. Come on. Follow me.”
Gabe hesitated and Ana rounded on him.
“What, you think I can carry his weight with my spindly old arms? If you’re going to do a good deed, you have to commit to it, Gabriel. This way,” she turned her back on him and headed for a different crumbling building. Gabe followed quietly, holding Jack a little closer.
“I can only do so much here, but I have contacts who can get him the proper care he needs. How did you find us, by the way?” Ana asked as she lead the way inside the building.
“Sombra. You might want to relocate.”
“Good to know.”
To say they’d converted the ruined building into a makeshift infirmary would have still been too grand a description. It was more of a storage room for most of their medical supplies with a cot in one corner. Gabe gently laid Jack down on the cot, set the pulse rifle down against the wall, and then turned to leave, refusing to even look at Ana.
“Why did you bring him back?” Ana said, getting right to work. Damn. Jack really was a mess this time, though he had been bandaged and stabilized.
She fully expected Reaper to just leave without a word. She was pleasantly surprised when he stopped halfway to the door.
“…I never wanted to hurt you. Either of you.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she scoffed. “Last time we met, you literally shot Jack in the back.”
“I could have shot him in the head.”
“You’re saying that makes everything fine again? I still watched you shoot him in the back.”
“In the ass,” he corrected, and for a moment, he almost sounded like Gabriel again, the attitude rising in his voice. “Would you resist the opportunity to try and add some shape to that flat ass? …I also knew you were behind me.”
“So, you shot him knowing I would heal him?” Ana raised an eyebrow at him before turning her attention back to Jack.
“We were on a Talon base. I couldn’t be seen just letting you go.”
“So you half-assed a fight and ran away?” she sighed. “Gabriel, I don’t understand. What game are you playing? Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on my own side.”
“That’s a terrible answer and you know it,” she snapped, keeping her eyes on Jack as she spoke. “Don’t try to play me. It won’t work, and I’m tired of your bullshit. Why? Why join Talon, after everything they did to us?”
He was silent for a while, and for a moment, Ana was sure he’d left, vanishing into smoke rather than continuing this conversation.
“I didn’t betray Overwatch for Talon, Ana.”
“That’s a bold claim.”
“I infiltrated Talon for Overwatch.”
Ana’s hands faltered for a moment as she processed this.
“The best way to take them down is from the inside, Ana.”
“…I want to believe you, Gabriel. I really do. But that’s asking a lot coming from someone who’s hurt so many of our friends.”
“You mean how I attacked Winston and frightened him enough that he activated the Overwatch Recall, bringing back dozens of agents that had been scattered to the winds? Or how I managed to lose to Winston again in Numbani and delayed Talon getting ahold of the Doomfist Gauntlet? Or are you referring to the incident in Venice where a lot of bad people died and I was finally invited to the Talon High Council? It’s taken a long time and I’ve had to do terrible things to get here, but the heads of Talon are finally in my reach.”
“Is it worth it?” she asked quietly. “All the things you’ve done, all the people you’ve killed…is it really worth it?”
“God, I hope so.”
Ana fell quiet again, giving Jack another injection of nanobots.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“You were dead,” Gabriel snorted.
“Alright, you have me there, but what about Jack?”
“I tried to,” he said slowly. “In Zurich. Before the headquarters blew. …Emotions were running a little high.”
“I can imagine,” Ana scoffed. “You two were always terrible at communicating. Whenever the two of you had a problem with each other, you were more likely to fuck it out than talk it out. That’s not healthy, Gabriel. Communication is the foundation of any good relationship.”
“Are you seriously trying to give me relationship advice right now?” Gabe asked incredulously.
“I figure it couldn’t hurt,” Ana said, wiping her hands off with a towel and sitting back, looking down at Jack. “That’s all I can do for him right now. How long has he been unconscious?”
“Four hours or so. While I was carrying him here, he woke up just long enough to swing a punch at me before passing out again.”
“He never did know when to quit,” Ana said fondly.
“That’s what I’ve always said,” Gabriel agreed. He looked down at the pair of them for a moment longer before turning away, sighing from behind his mask. “I need to get going.”
“Thank you, Reyes. You’ve saved his life.”
The Reaper didn’t reply, finally heading for the door.
“Be careful, Gabriel. It’s possible to go undercover so deep that you can’t come back out the other side.”
“…Take care, Ana.”
Without another word, he slipped out the door, vanishing into the morning light.
Ana let out a long breath and took a seat next to Jack. Maybe after everything was said and done they’d leave all of this behind. Jack and Gabriel could get over their own egos and allow themselves to be happy, she’d get back into contact with Reinhardt, and they could all settle down somewhere and live out the last of their days in glorious, well-deserved retirement. Somewhere warm and sunny, with sandy beaches and flexible local laws. Fareeha would visit, of course, along with Angela, and they’d definitely have to go visit Torbjorn and Ingrid a few times a year.
Ana smiled. She didn’t like holding on to what could have been, but perhaps there was something to be said for imagining what could still be.
