“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 6) - Sombra/McCree
The sadness on Genji’s face as he settles back into his kneeling position makes Sombra turn away again, towards Jesse. She feels shaky and out-of-sorts, the way she always does after an exorcism, but the act of destroying a demon soul after allowing it to briefly possess her has left her completely tapped out.
(a/n: lol I’m done trying to guarantee how long this is gonna be. sorry for the wait! there will be another after this one, folks <3)
Sounds are strange and muffled in Sombra’s ears, as though she’s underwater. She’s suspended in the air… No, she’s being carried. Her boots sway as she gently bounces along in someone’s arms. Something both soft and scratchy grazes across her forehead. A beard.
She smells cigars and woodsmoke. Jesse.
Sombra tries to rouse herself further, but exhaustion overtakes her. Her eyes open for the briefest moment to the dark streets of Hanamura before she slips away again.
*
“Sombra? Darlin’, can you…”
It’s Jesse again. She turns her face towards his voice. He’s speaking so softly. His metal-fire hand cradles her cheek.
“...make you comfortable. Just your gloves, boots, and jacket, if that’s alright?”
She presses into his warm touch and nods. Jesse’s distraught-looking face fills her vision when she finally manages to open her eyes.
“Hey there. Okay. I gotcha. I’ll...”
Her body is completely drained. Her mind is sluggish. Jesse’s voice becomes muffled again as she falls asleep.
*
Sombra wakes with a start this time as Hanzo sits bolt upright next to her on the bed. She looks up at him wearily and meets his dark brown eyes. They are so similar to his younger brother’s, but harder, somehow. He stares back at her for a moment, gasping for breath, then gets on his knees and presses his face to the mattress. He’s shaking.
Genji immediately rushes over to him and places a hand on his back. “Hey. You are safe now. This is Sombra and McCree, they helped us.”
Hanzo covers his face with both hands and stays there.
“Sombra?”
She looks up at Jesse, who stands next to the bed, running a hand through his hair. He’s down to his pants and black undershirt. He gives her a relieved little smile and squeezes her shoulder.
“How you feeling?”
Sombra looks back at Genji and Hanzo. Genji has dropped to his knees and now sits on his heels, watching Hanzo collect himself with his head resting on top of his folded arms on the bed. He almost looks like a little boy this way, looking up at his older brother with such wary hope.
“It is over, Hanzo,” he whispers. “The oni is gone.”
Hanzo mirrors Genji and rests his head on his forearms, only he looks over at Sombra instead and fixes her with a dark, heavy stare. “You are not oni. You are something different.”
She nods.
Genji puts a hand on Hanzo’s arm, but Hanzo flinches away from him. The sadness on Genji’s face as he settles back into his kneeling position makes Sombra turn away again, towards Jesse. She feels shaky and out-of-sorts, the way she always does after an exorcism, but the act of destroying a demon soul after allowing it to briefly possess her has left her completely tapped out.
“Darlin’... you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Jesse takes both of Sombra’s hands and pulls her up to stand, but she falters and tilts forward into his chest. “Fine, huh?”
She pushes him backwards, walking them away from the bed and towards her bag by the window. She can feel Hanzo and Genji’s tension behind her.
“Hanzo, you heard what I said. I forgive you. Now is not the time for self-pity. That is how that monster took hold of you.”
“Are you still human?” Hanzo asks, eyeing Genji’s mismatched body parts. Genji is still fully covered in his black hooded clothing, but one of his hands doesn’t quite match the other, and neither do his feet. An odd seam in the side of his neck betrays further patchwork under his clothes. These are the parts Sombra forgot when she first met him, the parts that (through her own error) nearly got Jesse killed.
Sombra can’t believe that was only twenty-four hours ago. She has learned so much that her mind, body, and soul have begun to ache with it.
Genji stands and flexes his newer arm thoughtfully. “I am still alive, despite your efforts, and that is what matters. I have made peace with what I am, with what has happened, and I am stronger for it. The same cannot be said for you.”
Hanzo frowns at Genji’s frank assessment. “How did you survive?”
“My angel could answer that question better than I can. She is a healer, and a witch, like Sombra. She also sent McCree to help us.” Genji tilts his head and deadpans, “She may curse you the moment she lays eyes on you, if you ever meet her, but that is a chance I am willing to take.”
Hanzo scoffs. His mood leaves no room for Genji’s attempt at humor. “And you claim to forgive?”
“I do forgive you, Hanzo. But I do not have to forget. Now, will you come with me and eat? Ichika’s light is still on downstairs. I told her we were going back for you tonight.”
Hanzo shakes his head and scoots back against the headboard, tucking himself cross-legged into the corner of the bed. “I need time to… reflect.”
“Then I will bring it to you. Sombra? McCree?”
Sombra still trembles minutely, though she fights to control it when Jesse wraps his arms around her. Only the feel of her body against him would give him any indication of the extent of her discomfort, and he is certainly paying close attention.
Jesse’s voice rumbles against her cheek. “We’d appreciate it, Genji, thank you. Wouldn’t mind somethin’ heavier than miso, either, if you can get it.” He runs a hand over Sombra’s hair as he makes his request. It makes her feel small in his arms.
She hears the door close behind her as Genji departs for the pub. The moment he does so, Hanzo lets out the deepest sigh she’s ever heard and starts shifting around on the bed.
“Thank you for everything you have done. I do not understand what you did, but I owe you my life.”
“You do,” Sombra replies. Her voice is scratchy, reminiscent of the sounds the demon made through her lips, and it makes her shudder involuntarily. She shuts her mouth and pushes away from Jesse to dig around in her bag.
“You felt it. You know what that creature was, from the inside.”
Sombra ignores him. Her fingers wrap around her oversized black sweater and she pulls it to her chest.
“I saw what you did, just before I... passed out. I saw the way you tricked it. You took such a monstrous thing into yourself to free me from it, and for that, I am in your debt.”
A demon settled and comfortable in its host body will always be stronger than not. A demon inside a new host with clear intent and magic laced through her soul will be an easy kill. It was the smart thing to do. The demon’s imprint now lingers inside her, but all hunts stay for a little while, whether they meet death or banishment at her hands.
Sombra sees their souls and learns their secrets. She learns everything they know, which strengthens her magic. And so, while the vision of Genji’s attempted murder now reverberates through her mind’s eye from Hanzo’s point of view instead of his brother’s, she will simply grin and bear it until the information recedes.
“I’ll let you--” Sombra begins, then quiets again, her cheeky response dying in her throat as she tries to clear it. Her voice still sounds foreign to her own ears, and though she knows it is simply from strain and exhaustion, the demon’s cackle won’t leave her memory. She sees herself hurting Jesse all over again, clawing his face with her gloves, choking him and bruising his throat, turning his face red as he struggles to breathe--
She wrings her sweater in her hands and turns to look at Jesse, to see that he’s okay.
The first thing she sees are the thin, red scratches she left on his cheek. Whatever control she gained over her trembling these past few minutes is lost.
“Sombra, hey. Hey.” Jesse curls his metal-fire hand around her shoulder and guides her into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them.
She lifts a hand to his scratched cheek and presses her palm to his skin. She focuses her energy as well as she can; as her fingers pulse with purple light, the scratches begin to fade.
Jesse pulls her hand away from his face and lifts her chin. “Hey. Talk to me.”
Sombra tries to clear her throat. Almost immediately, a cup of water hovers in front of her face, and Jesse watches her carefully as he waits for her to accept it. It goes down coolly and soothes her throat. She tries again.
“This has happened before,” she says. A sigh of relief follows now that her voice sounds much more familiar to her own ears. “I’ve done that, let demons take me. Let them think they can take me.”
Jesse’s face is cross, even though a foundation of concern lies underneath. He rubs her shoulders, still trying to calm her. “Just playin’ with the idea? Takin’ a test drive? For what?”
“For whatever I need. You saw how I destroyed it. I had to. They fight me, try to take control, but I always win. I always will.”
“What if--”
“Jesse, callate! You trusted me in there. Trust me now.”
He leans against the wall behind him in the small bathroom and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Sorry. Just… you seem so shook up.”
She nods, releasing the iron grip she still has on her black sweater in her hands to turn it over and shake it out.
“And, uh. It was scary, watchin’ you get taken over like that. I didn’t get to see it, when Gabe did that, but… it was scary.”
“It used me to hurt you,” Sombra whispers, bringing a hand back up to his neck to caress the slight bruising. She’s never done this around anyone who mattered before, anyone whose pain would have hurt her, so she will never forget the look on Jesse’s face. He was as steady as a rock with her clawed gloves around his neck, even smirking, as though the act had been one of her playful taunts. It grounded her.
“That wasn’t the scary part,” he replies, placing his metal-fire hand over the one she’s got gently resting on his collarbone. “I finally saw you, when I said your true name. You. Your eyes are purple?”
“They are. Here, unzip me.” She turns away from him and pushes her hair over her shoulder so that he can unzip her leather bodice and pull off her leggings. Then she turns back to him, bare, and slips her long black sweater over her head.
“Beautiful.” Jesse lets out a small laugh and quirks up the corner of his mouth. “I knew you had an idea of what you were doin’, ya know. I did trust you. But then when I said your true name, I saw the you underneath it all, and it spooked me, ‘cause what if I never saw you again? What if you really did disappear this time?”
Sombra sighs and steps closer to him. “I couldn’t have.”
He opens his mouth to retort with more worries, but Sombra shushes him and kisses his lips. She intertwines her fingers with his metal-fire hand and, lifting up on her toes, places the other around the back of his neck to grasp his hair and pull him in. She still aches, but the discomfort wracking her body ever since she woke up finally calms, just a little, with the sensation of being so close to him.
Jesse reaches down and underneath her thighs without separating from her and lifts her onto the sink. The way he settles between her bare legs as she wraps them around his waist is easy. Inevitable. His grip on her thighs shifts to the small of her back, where he massages her gently, and to the back of her hair, where he presses just enough to tilt her head down and kiss her forehead.
Sombra tucks her face into his neck and exhales into his warm skin. She hadn’t known that this could be the ‘after’ of her more difficult demon encounters. It’s almost overwhelming. She could cry with how good it feels to have him like this after so long enduring alone. She could, but she won’t.
Instead, she finally surrenders and lets him hold her the way they both need tonight, with her weight fully settling against him as she lets him support her.
“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 5) - Sombra/McCree
She could still disappear, but she doubts she could rid herself of him so easily. She reaches up and presses her fingers into the back of her neck, thinking of Jesse’s touch; he is under her skin as much as any rune, much faster than she could have foreseen and deeper than she wants to admit.
(a/n: lol I said “5 chapters for sure this time.” turns out I wasn’t so sure. It will now be 6. will note it with “end” or “finale” or something when that’s posted <3)
Sombra wakes to sunlight streaming across her face and her cheek resting against McCree’s messy brown hair. Somehow, overnight, they’ve switched positions, McCree lying fast asleep with his cheek against her chest and his arm tucked underneath their pillow. She’s got one hand on his back and the other resting on her own stomach, idly brushing her knuckles against the gauze on McCree’s chest.
“Hm.”
She looks to the source of the noise and finds Genji curled up in the armchair next to the window, staring back at her with his thick black hair sticking up in every direction.
He’s smirking.
Sombra rolls her eyes. She hadn’t meant to get entwined with McCree like this, but… “Do you have a problem, Genji?”
“Of course not. Seeing budding love reminds me that mine is out there, awaiting my return. It both calms and inspires my soul.”
“Dios mio, do you just… talk like that?” she asks, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
The look on Genji’s scarred face is completely neutral when he says, “The alternative was ‘I told you so.’”
“You know, I don’t think it’s too late to call that demon back.”
Genji snickers as quietly as he can. He glances back at the street outside the window and asks, “Would you like some privacy?”
“Would you?” Sombra whispers back, watching the way Genji’s grin gets smaller as he looks out at Hanamura.
“I have been awake for a short while. I’m hungry. I think I’ll go to the pub downstairs for breakfast. We are above Ichika’s?”
“Si.”
“Hm. I have not seen her in so long. She teased me as a fool back then, but I think she liked me well enough.”
Now it’s Sombra’s turn to snort. “She liked your top-shelf wallet, rich boy.”
“Then this will certainly be a test of what she liked most, since I have no money on me now.” Genji stretches his legs, then his arms, before he gets out of the chair and gingerly crosses the room. “To think of something I want, and only hear myself… And then, to actually do it… I forgot how it feels to control my own body.”
Sombra softens a little. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
McCree snuffles and shifts a little, his stump grazing across Sombra’s stomach. He yawns into her chest.
Genji shuts his mouth and gives them a short bow, then grabs his black hooded clothing and leaves the room.
McCree tenses and lifts his head at the sound of the door closing.
“Just Genji,” Sombra says. She can’t help but smile at the way McCree whips his head around to look at her.
“You stayed.”
“You drooled.”
McCree’s eyes widen, and he lifts up on his elbow to get a better look at her. “Shit. I was dog tired, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to dirty up these nice pillows you got here after you so kindly let me sleep on ‘em.”
Sombra squeezes her glowing eyes shut and shakes with a belly laugh, surprised by his frankness. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she is aware that she shouldn’t be. So often, people try to keep information from her, but he only offers it. He has been nothing but blunt about his attraction to her since they met.
When she opens her eyes, McCree is grinning at her, clearly pleased with himself for making her laugh. He shakes his head in awe and says, “Your smile is so pretty.”
Sombra almost closes her eyes again. Instead, she lowers her head, pinning her eyes to the gauze on his chest. “McCree…”
“It’s Jesse. And you…?”
She tenses, staring straight at him when she answers, “It’s Sombra.”
“Fair enough, Sombra.” He doesn’t push the issue at all, but lies there next to her, propped up on his elbow like he’s content to just look at her. He smiles, his messy hair falling into his handsome, rugged face, and Sombra’s neck goes hot.
Why wouldn’t you want that for yourself? Genji had asked. He was so sure, so certain of what ‘that’ meant in his own life. There was no doubt in his mind about Mercy, and whether Sombra found that sort of thinking naive or not, it had saved him when it mattered.
She furrows her brow and runs a finger back and forth across Jesse’s collarbone.
“Somethin’ on your mind?”
“What did Mercy tell you about this job?”
Jesse leans into her touch. He watches her carefully as he shifts his hand over hers and kisses her palm. “Odd time to ask.”
“Mercy sent you to help her…” she waves a hand, leaving purple wisps in the air as she searches for the appropriate label, “her Genji. But she told you to do this by hunting his brother? There had to be more. You aren’t nearly as dumb as you look.”
Jesse narrows his eyes at the teasing sparkle in hers and nips the ball of her hand with his teeth. “Well, you’re just as mean as you look, but I won’t hold it against ya.”
“Gracias.”
Jesse can hear the sincerity in her voice. At this, he kisses over the already-fading teeth mark in her hand and lets her resume her attentions. “I knew Hanzo wasn’t a true demon, that he's possessed, just like Genji was. I knew that before I came here.”
Sombra’s white-gold eyes widen as she thinks back to their conversation outside the castle.
“Sometimes you play demon. Well, sometimes I play dumb. And Mercy’s not as sweet as you think she is. She told me she’d been hurtin’ every day since she found out why Genji never came back to her. She said losin’ him to Hanzo after she thought she’d already saved him from that very same death was more than she could take. Her exact words were, ‘Hanzo causes him pain that I can’t heal. End it.’ She knew damn well what was up with those two, and she still didn’t hire me to exorcise him. She hired me to kill him, and that was it. The way Mercy saw it, exorcisin’ him wasn’t necessary. After all, human Hanzo had tried to kill Genji too.”
“And you didn’t want to, anyway, because of what happened with Gabe.”
Jesse shakes his head. “I’d just been keepin’ to myself for the longest after I let Gabe throw himself to demons. It was selfish, but a job was a job. I was gonna kill the demon, and anything past that was none of my business. But when you showed up, comin’ after Genji, that complicated things. You were here for the demon soul, and you weren’t afraid of what had to be done. So what was I supposed to do, watch Genji get his life back just to kill his brother in front of him? And what was Genji gonna do then? Go back to Mercy like everything’s just fine? Nah. He wouldn’t be okay, and neither would she.”
Sombra mulls this over for several moments, her gaze roaming all over Jesse’s handsome face. To his surprise, she suddenly leans in and kisses him. “You’re exactly the puppy I thought you were. I like it when I’m right.”
As if to prove her point, Jesse tilts his head in confusion.
Sombra laughs, her heart thumping in a rush of fondness for him. She pulls him closer with one hand curled around the back of his neck. “Moira sent me to deal with Genji, trusting that I’d figure out that he was possessed. And Mercy played you. She knew you wouldn’t take the job if you knew up-front that it was an exorcism. So, she sent you on a hunt, knowing that after we met, and you found out Genji would be freed, you would never just kill Hanzo. And after what happened with Gabe, you wouldn’t leave someone with a demon if they wanted to be free. Helping with the exorcism - both of them - would become your only choice.”
Jesse sighs. “How’d I end up surrounded by witches?”
His lips are a little chapped, and he tastes of cigars, but with the way he presses into her, none of that matters. “You have good taste,” she shrugs, kissing him again.
The feeling of Jesse’s breath against her neck as he laughs sparks a feeling of urgency that has so far been subdued in this dance. Sombra pushes herself away from him for a moment to slip her black sweater off over her head. Her grin goes smug at the look on his face, caught somewhere between shock and hunger. The physical, at least, is familiar to her.
“Just give it to me straight, darlin’. Please. What do you want?”
She swallows hard. Right now, she just wants him, and his touch, however it comes. “You owe me for the drool.”
“You are absolutely right,” he breathes out, staring at her mouth. He returns to her throat, kissing his way down until he can drop a kiss between her breasts.
Sombra wraps her arms around his neck and digs her fingers into his hair, holding him in place. She scratches gently, and Jesse groans, doubling his efforts. Normally, she would be perfectly happy to wallow in this sensation and keep him right where he is, but now she wants to swallow that sound, wants to envelop him and drag more out of him. She’s quickly becoming addicted to the ways he makes his affection for her known.
She grasps Jesse’s hair and pulls his head away from her chest, then captures his lips in her own. The little humming noise he makes this time is inquisitive, but just as cute.
“Change of pla--? MMPH.”
She quiets him with another kiss and throws a leg over his hip. That’s not the noise she wants. “Try and keep up,” she whispers, her voice raspy.
Darkness flashes through his eyes for a moment before he takes the hand that was supporting her lower back and gently massages his fingers up her spine, across the runes embedded in her skin.
She keens loudly before she can stop herself, tingles shooting up her neck and through the runes in her scalp. Sombra slaps a hand over her mouth and blinks up at him, shaking.
Jesse grins, painfully smug as he kisses the hand she’s holding against her face. “You were sayin’? Can’t hear ya all of a sudden.”
“I--” She can’t bear to say, I didn’t know that was a thing, so instead she asks, “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” he shrugs, ghosting his fingers over her spine, “but I’ve wanted to do that since I saw ‘em last night. Beautiful, just like the rest of you.”
Her face flushes. “Jesse, por favor…”
He nods, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back, but not touching the runes again. “Too much?”
She nods.
“What I said, or what I did?”
She nods again and gives him a soft kiss.
“Okay, sorry,” Jesse says, offering her an apologetic smile. “Let’s slow this down. I guess I’m just thinkin’ I’ll look up and you’ll disappear on me.”
With less coherent thought than immediate, cheeky instinct, Sombra shifts and goes invisible in his arms. “What do you mean?”
Jesse stares through her at his own hand on her back, then at his own body, where he can still feel her leg slung over him. Her magical cloaking wobbles where they touch, outlining her body in purple light. His mouth sits open like a goldfish as he looks up and down her translucent frame.
“Whatever you’re about to say, I’ll allow it,” Sombra smirks, sliding away from him and out of her invisibility. She reaches for her black sweater and puts it back on, then picks up his metal-fire arm from beside their pile of blankets and sets it in her own lap, waiting.
He rubs a hand through his beard and sighs. “I don’t know if sendin’ us here together was Mercy’s idea or Moira’s, but I gotta thank Mercy next time I see her.”
*
After Jesse reattaches his arm, and Sombra checks the wound on his chest (mostly healed, but with a long scar, thanks to her magical intervention), the two get dressed in their simplest clothes. Sombra pulls on her leggings and Jesse throws on a black shirt before he heads down to the pub by himself to get them both food. She could have accompanied him invisibly, as either her hunting garb or her glowing eyes would have garnered too much attention at this time of day, but the amount of people likely occupying the pub at the moment deters her.
Sombra puts her hair up in a messy knot, the runes in her scalp on full display, and uses these few minutes alone to think. She could still disappear, but she doubts she could rid herself of him so easily. She reaches up and presses her fingers into the back of her neck, thinking of Jesse’s touch; he is under her skin as much as any rune, much faster than she could have foreseen and deeper than she wants to admit.
The truth is always stronger than lies, so in the face of Jesse’s insistent honesty, she has put herself at a disadvantage. But… does leverage even matter? He plays and he flirts, but his intent is always clear. He asks her what she wants, not so that he can dangle it over her head, but so that he can give it to her. He denies nothing. Sombra feared that giving him too much of herself would give him power, but… if truth is power, then he already has it.
Sombra laughs in the quiet of the inn. She has always been drawn to power, hasn’t she? This is only so different. Now she understands what that fool Genji was going on about. Why wouldn’t she want that for herself? She likes Jesse, of course, but more importantly, she’s beginning to trust him. And the truth of the matter is that if she really wanted to run, she would have done so by now.
Jesse returns with Genji at his side and two large bowls, each filled with noodles and miso soup. Genji carries his own bowl, cradling it like something precious between his hands.
“What’s the verdict?” she asks Genji, grinning up at Jesse as he hands her a bowl and sits next to her on the blankets. Jesse smiles back at her, surprised by the warm look on her face, and rubs his knuckles down the side of her arm.
Genji joins them, sitting with his legs crossed underneath him. “Ichika said these are on the house for now, but if we cannot also defeat Hanzo’s oni, they will be added to my tab.”
“Ha, there we go.”
The trio goes silent as they begin to eat. Genji holds his bowl close to his face, breathing deeply, then takes a sip of the soup. His thick eyebrows furrow and he makes a soft noise like a cat’s mewl before he dives in again with a big gulp.
Genji carefully sets the bowl down in front of him and bows his head. “The oni did not care for delicacy or taste. It just ate what it needed to sustain its host. I know this is only miso soup, but…”
Jesse looks sheepish for laughing. “Ah, well… there’s plenty more where that came from. You’re outta that nightmare now.”
“I know. This makes it feel real.” Genji takes another taste, but much more slowly this time. “Mmm.”
Sombra sips her soup, watching him. “We’ll go back to the castle tonight. Are you ready?”
“I will take today to prepare. Fortunately, in a way… I am not out of practice.” He looks over at his sheathed katana laying on the table. “I am sorry for wounding you, McCree.”
“Aw, that’s nothin’ to apologize for. it wasn’t you.”
Genji shakes his head. “My hands. My blade.”
“I won’t accept,” Jesse replies, taking a gulp of his soup. “And anyway, Sombra’s already patched me up. It’s alright.”
“Thank you.” Genji looks thoughtfully at the runes on Sombra’s head. “Will you be able to pull Hanzo’s oni from him, the way you did for me?”
“It might not be as easy as it was with you. Depends on how screwed up he is when we get there. But I’ll get the job done.”
Jesse scoffs into his soup. “That was easy?”
Genji shrugs. “From her experienced perspective, I am sure it was. Sombra, what do you need from me now? I do not know what is necessary for an exorcism, but I am sure foolish missteps are not on the list.”
Sombra sets down her bowl and glances over at Jesse, who watches her much like Genji does, listening carefully for her word. He runs a thumb across his bandage absentmindedly and mutters, “Yeah, we all gotta stay on our toes this time.”
She hates feeling responsible for anyone, but they would be lost in this case without her. Jesse, for his part, would already be dead, and at this point, she can’t allow that. She swallows down the weight in her throat and rolls her eyes. “Then listen up. Here’s the plan.”
*
Shimada Castle has bloomed. In the outer courtyard, the cherry blossom trees surrounding the gazebo have returned in full to their lush pink petals. The weeds and fungus that covered the garden before have disappeared, leaving thick green grass and wildflowers in their wake. Only the dead plants directly outside the castle door remain.
“A lot can change in a day, huh?” Jesse says, following behind Sombra and Genji as they walk slowly through the courtyard.
Genji shakes his head and reaches up to touch a cherry blossom. “My home has been rotting from the inside ever since the oni took over. I found it like this when I returned; only the castle itself was in ruin. The rot spread here because… I liked being outside, and the oni who took hold of me happened to agree. This… rebirth? This is because of you both. Thank you.”
“Your home’s been rotting for much longer than that,” says Sombra. She doesn’t bother approaching the castle invisibly this time. Freeing Genji and banishing the first oni has removed any possible surprise. “You know exorcising Hanzo will only remove the demon, right? He’ll still be the guy who tried to kill you.”
Genji’s face hardens. “I am aware. I have also forgiven him. I returned to Hanamura to clear that rot and rebuild with my brother, and that has become more important than I could have ever predicted. And as McCree suggested, I do believe he feels guilt. Why remind me of this now?”
Sombra raises an eyebrow. “Good. Keep hold of that. Know why you’re here.”
He visibly steels his resolve with a deep breath and a solemn nod back at her. “I understand.”
She doesn’t say anything when she looks back at Jesse, but she doesn’t need to. He just looks down at the stock of flashbangs strapped to his hip in a show of preparation and tips his hat towards her with a little grin.
“I’ve got a successful exorcism under my belt now, y’know. I reckon I’m ready for anything.”
“Don’t make me charm more bandages for you. I told you, I’m not a healer.” Sombra swipes her hand across his jacket where the wound lies underneath. Jesse catches her hand and holds it there. He understands what she means.
Don’t you dare get hurt more than I can fix.
“Yes, ma’am.”
*
Sombra steps over the threshold of the castle first, both men following carefully behind her as they cross the small bridge that separates the garden courtyard from the open, lofty main room. Three shurikens rest between Genji’s fingers and Jesse’s hand hovers at his waist. All of their noses twist as they get closer to the center of the room, where the stagnant air is thick with the scent of mildew and rotted wood.
Hanzo is impossible to miss.
He kneels quietly on the platform above the shrine, staring down at them with dull white eyes and a stony expression. His skin has turned a dark gray-green, and the tattoo covering his chest and left arm, which Sombra knows should be that of his ferocious blue dragon, has morphed into a red, tusked demon. Besides his eyes and skin, his face looks no different from her intel on pre-possession Hanzo.
The demon has settled in. It is comfortable. Hanzo is much further gone than any of them had hoped.
“Brother,” Genji whispers, his breath catching in his throat.
“Genji,” the demon snorts, Hanzo’s deep voice slightly tinted with that strange metallic hissing. “You shun our power? You run away from the comfort we offer, then return the very next day?”
“You are a parasite,” Genji snarls. “All you offer is lies and pain.”
“We would not cause pain if you would accept us. You experienced pain because you earned it.”
“I do not... deserve to be hurt. I did not ask for this.”
“Hanzo did. Whatever foolhardy scheme you have devised with this half-wit and his half-demon would only betray our wishes.”
Sombra bristles at the demon’s implication as Jesse chuckles and lights his cigar. “Well, you might just make this easy for us, seein’ as how you’re so damn wrong about everything.”
“Quiet, human. You have no place here.”
“Y’know, your demon brother said the same thing, right before we kicked its ass. You might wanna reconsider.”
The demon stands, gripping a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. “Hanzo prayed for relief from his pain, and I answered. He asked and I provided. When the source of his pain left, he did not have to think on it. You should stay away, Genji. Now, your presence gives him anguish.”
A slow smile crosses Sombra’s face. The demon may seem at ease, but Hanzo is still in there. If he responds to Genji’s presence, then he must still feel guilt, and if he feels guilt, then he can still be saved. Jesse knew this when he asked for Genji’s help.
Genji glances back at her. This is what they were waiting for.
“Hanzo!” Genji calls. “I know you can hear me. I have forgiven you.”
An arrow whizzes by Genji’s head as he neatly dodges it, his reflexes as sharp as ever.
“Mada mada,” he taunts. “You kept me conditioned to fight all this time, oni. If you experience pain now, you will have earned it.”
The demon growls. “You are a child. Your arrogance will be your death, as it should have been, long ago. If only I had been there to ensure Hanzo finished his task.”
“Do you hear that, brother? This creature shows no remorse, but I know you do. And I have hope for you. I forgive you.”
“You couldn’t possibly. You will say anything to get his attention.”
Two more arrows shoot towards Jesse’s and Sombra’s heads, faster than either can react, but Genji lunges forward with his katana and deflects them.
“Hanzo, I forgive you! We can move forward, together.” Quieter, to Jesse and Sombra, he says, “It is time. Get ready.”
“Genji…?” Hanzo’s voice, low and smooth, with a pleasant little rasp to it, finally pushes through the demon.
“ENOUGH,” the demon bellows, leaping down from its perch.
The battle is vicious. Sombra shifts in and out of invisibility, running circles around the demon as it shoots rapid-fire arrows after her. Jesse uses his crossbow, stocked with much weaker arrows, as he would rather avoid causing mortal harm with his revolver. He tries to shoot near the demon’s feet, but it is quick, leaping left and right with great strides to dodge his shots. Genji darts around the perimeter, catching the demon here and there with little swipes of his dagger. Trying not to fatally end the fight on either side while still wearing the demon down as much as possible is a tightrope dance.
Calling Hanzo’s name does very little compared with the way it worked on Genji. Sombra had already known this would be the case, considering Hanzo’s condition, but that means… well, the guys will find out soon enough.
Sombra takes a punch to the side of her face and falls to the ground, momentarily stunned as the demon catches her by surprise.
“No!” Jesse turns to punch the demon back, but it jumps to the side and kicks Jesse in the chest, catching his wound. He drops, his metal-fire hand curled against his chest as he grits his teeth in pain.
“Jesse!” She turns and crawls towards him as quickly as she can. “Escuchame. Promise you’ll stay back.”
“What? Sombra--”
“My--mierda.” She spits out some blood and wipes her mouth, her heart pounding in her chest at what she’s about to say. She curls a hand around the back of Jesse’s neck, pulling him close, and whispers, “My true name is Olivia. Keep it to yourself unless… unless we need it.”
Jesse’s face darkens as he cups her face with one hand. “What exactly are you plannin’ to do?”
Sombra puts on a cheeky -- but slightly bloody -- smile as she presses into his touch. She thought it might come to this, though she hoped it wouldn’t. “Technically, this wasn’t part of the plan.”
She turns to look at the fight, but Genji is a blur, leaping, flipping, and dodging around Hanzo’s attacks with masterful agility. He doesn’t fight back any harder than he needs to, but guards and deflects Hanzo’s attacks.
“I am smaller and faster! I will always win these fights, brother! Remember when we used to spar?”
The demon growls in its frustration and puts all of Hanzo’s weight behind an aggressive swing of his bow. “All fights but one. Two, with my help.”
Genji laughs, dodging the swing and punching the ball of his hand into Hanzo’s side in one swift motion. “Yet here I am. You have to do better than that.”
Jesse takes hold of Sombra’s chin and turns her towards him. He strokes her cheek with his thumb and says, “Don’t disappear on me.”
Sombra nods and lifts his metal-fire hand to her lips, then kisses the back of it, leaving a blood-red lip-print on the silver. She stands and lowers her hood, her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. “Genji, keep talking to your brother. The other is mine.”
“Sombra will help you, Hanzo! She helped me take my body back. We can do the same for you, but you have to help us, too.”
“The witch is NOTHING!” The demon screams, swinging Hanzo’s bow into Genji’s hip with all of Hanzo’s strength, finally knocking him off-balance to send him sprawling across the wooden floor. “This castle is ours, Hanamura is ours, and when all three of you are dead at our hands, we will take you, too. But Hanzo Shimada,” it says slowly, rolling the syllables of his name in its mouth with no fear, “is mine.”
Sombra walks towards them with both hands glowing with purple light. “Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio… Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio…”
The demon growls and draws the bow.
“Hanzo,” Genji calls from the sidelines, kneeling with his katana dug slightly into the floor. “You do not want to hurt her,” he says, echoing Sombra’s words to him. “You do not want to kill her. This is not a demon’s body. It is yours!”
“QUIET, BRAT.”
“Brother, please remember how we got here. You have had enough of this violence! You want to put an end to this! It hurts you. You cannot escape your pain with that creature!”
Sombra dances her fingers through the air, conjuring a huge, circular rune in front of her. “You can’t do anything without him, leech. Your strength is Hanzo’s. You speak because he can speak. Nothing here is yours.” She shakes her head, staring the demon down. “This entire estate belongs to Hanzo and Genji Shimada, you know. They’ll rebuild it without you.”
“YOU WILL NOT WIN. YOU CANNOT WIN.”
“Aww, of course I can,” Sombra replies, poking out her bottom lip. She bends low, peering up at the demon through the purple ring. “Why couldn’t I? You can’t even walk through this barrier.”
The demon shoots an arrow at Sombra’s face; sure enough, the arrow dissolves before their eyes as it crosses the circle, falling to the floor as dust. She doesn’t blink, only laughs.
“Hanzo, you are my brother. I love you. We are the Shimada family. Now, get that thing out of our house.” Genji flicks his wrist, shooting a lone, razor-sharp shuriken just close enough to Hanzo’s shoulder to graze him with it.
Hanzo cries out in surprise, dropping the bow to grip his shoulder. Twin glimmers of blue light push through his chest, his spirit dragons emerging to cradle his body.
“Brother, fight it! Your dragons can hear you!”
Sombra holds her glowing hands out in front of her, lowers her voice, and snarls, “Venga, hijo de puta.”
All at once, the demon rushes towards her, but as it hits the barrier, it separates from Hanzo’s body with an ugly shriek. The dragons roar, and Hanzo staggers backwards, as the demon’s soul shoots into Sombra’s hands in an orb of red light. She holds her hands close to her chest and lets it into her body.
Jesse finally speaks behind her. “Sombra?”
A wave of nausea shakes her body as the demon attempts to settle in. She hears it speak through her mouth, her low, melodic voice suddenly twisted with that hideous metallic hissing.
“More arrogance,” it laughs. The sound is horrifying. Sombra watches Genji run to Hanzo’s side, but can’t concentrate on them. She focuses her energy, fighting the demon, preventing it from taking hold as best she can. She chants in her head, Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio… Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio…
“Sombra, I’m here.”
Jesse. She tries to turn around, but the demon fights her, and so she ends up swaying on her feet until she falls to her knees, not quite facing him.
He kneels next to her. “Just tell me when.”
“You?” The demon cackles, finally turning to look him in the eye. “An assassin and a witch have fallen before me. There is nothing special about you.”
Of course there is, Sombra thinks. She’s still gathering her energy, still focusing on her magic to keep the demon at bay. Don’t fucking touch him.
“I will do as I please, witch.” The demon whips Sombra’s hand across Jesse’s face, her clawed gloves leaving thin scratches in his cheek.
The guilt stabs her in the gut as she watches Jesse gasp in pain, but Sombra doesn’t try to apologize. She is still capable of speaking for herself, if she fights hard for it, but she can’t spare the energy now. She’s getting closer to what she needs; she can feel her magic pulsing through her body, slowly surrounding the demon’s foul energy.
Jesse, to his credit, doesn’t bother with a snarky remark to the demon. He doesn’t speak to it at all. “I told you you’re as mean as you look,” he jokes, stretching his jaw. “I’m still here. Just tell me when.”
Sombra feels the demon probing around in her mind, trying to figure out what she’s doing. She can also feel its frustration when it fails.
The demon growls, the sound going feral in her altered voice, then grabs Jesse by the neck, choking off his air. “If you do not stop, then neither will I.”
She’s running out of time. This demon has a special talent for feeding on emotional pain. Sombra’s focus sharpens as the demon attempts to double-down on its own. Her body is heavy, but a weightless feeling overcomes her once her magic has fully encapsulated the demonic energy. She fights through the demon’s control and grits out, “Jesse?”
Jesse blinks through the strain on his throat and reaches out to her. He gently presses his metal-fire hand to her cheek, as he has so many times now, and rasps, “I hear... you... Olivia.”
The sound of her true name creates a surge of energy inside her, a rush of I-am-Olivia-I-am-mine-I-am-Olivia-I-am-mine as she feels Jesse’s touch against her skin and releases the hold on his throat. The demon screeches when Sombra suddenly rises in the air, beating proverbial fists against her to regain control, but it can’t vocalize its fury. Sombra crosses her arms over her chest, magical energy suddenly swelling from her core, then sets that magic loose.
“LA OSCURIDAD TE ESPERA!” she shouts, her body erupting in a giant sphere of purple and red light. Waves of energy pulse through the room until the demon, purged from her body, is nowhere in sight.
Sombra can see Jesse reaching for her as she passes out.
“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 4) - Sombra/McCree
Genji’s teasing is gentle, that charming smile finally spreading across his face as he shakes his head. “You are both so obvious. We are not nervous schoolchildren, what is the use in pretending?”
(a/n: lol welp I guess it’s gonna be 5 chapters actually, hope you’re in for more of this. 5 chapters for sure this time! will note it with “end” or “finale” or something when it’s posted <3)
Sombra doesn’t need to hold onto McCree at this point. Technically. But he could use the support, and she… well. She’s fine where she is.
McCree hasn’t said anything since they left the gates of Shimada Castle, so he, Sombra, and an unconscious Genji, still slung over his shoulder, make their way to the inn behind Ichika’s pub in silence. The only sound is McCree’s grunting, partly from pain, partly from the exertion of carrying a grown (if smaller) man down the road.
She can feel the muscles in McCree’s back shift where her hand lays against him. He’s a whole head taller than she is, athletically built and broad-shouldered, so her other hand rests on his elbow. Despite his injuries, and his task, he feels so steady next to her, and she appreciates that he’s being quiet. She takes a deep breath to clear her head. McCree smells like cigars, leather, and woodsmoke, like a fireplace in a bar.
“Sombra.”
She blinks and looks up at him, watching him carefully adjust Genji’s body on his shoulder. How long has she had her cheek against his arm?
“You gotta let us in, darlin.’”
Ah. They’ve reached the inn. Sombra lets go of him and digs into a concealed pocket in her jacket for the key, keeping her head lowered to shield her face from his view. She hates how scattered she gets after an exorcism. She needs to shake this one off.
McCree steps over the threshold of Sombra’s room and carries Genji to the bed as quickly as he can, lowering him onto it with care and turning on the nearby lamp. Sombra follows and turns to lock up behind them. She takes a moment at the door to breathe deeply before she lowers her hood and loosens her red scarf.
Genji stirs when he hits the mattress, waking slowly at first as if from deep sleep. He looks around the dimly lit studio in confusion before his gaze lands on Sombra across the room.
“No,” he whimpers, his body tensing as he suddenly crawls backwards on the bed away from her. “Not again, please--”
McCree puts a hand on his shoulder, and Genji whips his head around to stare at him. “You’re alright, Genji. We took you away from the castle. You’re at Ichika’s Inn. Just breathe, it’s okay. You’re alright.”
Genji breathes, his inhales slow and deliberate. McCree does his best to maintain eye contact, to keep him grounded, until Genji turns back around to look at Sombra.
Sombra stares back, pulling her long, dark hair from the scarf so that it lays over one shoulder. The sides and back of her head are shaved, with thin patterns of purple runes embedded in her scalp gleaming through the peach fuzz she has left. She removes her gloves, revealing more of her natural-looking, non-demon-tinted skin, and wiggles her fingers in greeting. “Hola,” she says softly.
McCree smiles at her. “Sombra’s not a demon, if that’s what you’re wonderin’. You’re safe. And anyway, she doesn’t bite too hard.”
“Like you would know.” Sombra snorts and crosses the room to her bags, unclasping her jacket, boots, and bits of armor to reveal the leather bodice and leggings underneath. Another pattern of glowing runes lines her spine, but only the top of the pattern is visible over the back of her bodice. She can feel McCree’s eyes on her as she stretches and rubs the back of her neck. “Yes, McCree?” she asks, peeking at him over her shoulder.
He quickly lifts his eyes and shuts his mouth, which was hanging open. “Nothin’. Go on and get comfortable.”
Genji, settled back down into a lying position on the bed, watches McCree with a little smirk on his tired face. He looks much more like the Genji that Sombra has heard so much about, albeit an exhausted one. He addresses her as he says, “I am sorry. I should be thanking you. Everything is a little confusing at the moment.”
She waves it off, grabbing a length of gauze from her bag and rolling it between her hands. It begins to glow purple after a few seconds. “I get it. Most people think I’m a demon. I let them.”
“Why?” Genji asks.
“I like to work alone.” She tosses the gauze to McCree and says, “That should take care of the cut. You might have a scar, I’m not a healer, but that will sterilize and seal it.”
McCree catches it and stares at the little glowing bundle in his hand.
Genji grins. “You are lucky, McCree.”
“Why, havin’ a witch here?”
“To be the one she chose to work with.”
McCree chuckles. “Ah, well, that ain’t exactly it.”
“Oh, then you are together?”
Sombra rolls her eyes and keeps rummaging in her bag for her sleeping clothes. “We aren’t anything.”
Genji raises one thick eyebrow. “I see.”
McCree clears his throat and rises from the bed, one hand hovering over the cut in his chest. “Thank you,” he says, approaching Sombra with the enchanted gauze.
“Well, you’re useless to me if that gets infected,” she replies.
“How am I useful to you either way? Your bounty’s complete, remember?”
Sombra doesn’t say anything about how secure she felt in his arms when he caught her from the roof of the gazebo. She doesn’t comment on his easy confidence when he spoke to the oni one-on-one, or the knot that tightened in her chest when it attacked him and laid him out on the ground. She doesn’t tell him that, standing this close to him, she wants nothing more than for him to touch her like he did outside the castle. She doesn’t say anything at all.
McCree looks into her white-gold eyes and takes a step closer, lowering his voice when he says, “I don’t wanna make a big deal of it or anything, but I know wranglin’ that demon took a lot out of us both. If you don’t wanna stick around for the next one, I get it. Your job’s done, you don’t have to. And I’m not gonna sell this like I need you to help me with it, even if I think I do. I’d just like you to stay.”
She hums, dropping her gaze to the cut in his chest before she stares back at him, challenging the softness in his eyes. “Go bandage yourself before you start bleeding on me.”
His metal fire hand takes one of hers. “Thank you for everything,” he says, barreling past her comment. “Genji wouldn’t be here and neither would I. That demon woulda finished me off if you weren’t there.”
Sombra can still feel the anguish that spiked through Genji’s consciousness when the demon attacked McCree. She is acutely sensitive to the souls around her during these encounters; it’s the price she pays for exposing herself to as many different sources of magic as possible. She wouldn’t trade her knowledge for anything. It strengthens her before, and leaves her vulnerable after, but as she is usually alone when this happens, she has learned to deal with it.
McCree seems to pick up on this, and opens his mouth like he’s going to speak, but Sombra holds up a hand and gently pushes him away. “Go.”
He nods and lets go of her hand, then heads into the bathroom to bandage himself, closing the door behind him.
Sombra narrows her eyes. “I shouldn’t have saved you.”
Genji’s teasing is gentle, that charming smile finally spreading across his face as he shakes his head. “You are both so obvious. We are not nervous schoolchildren, what is the use in pretending?”
She bites her lip and crosses to his side of the room, then sits on the bed and starts to remove her leggings.
“Oh. Are you okay with--?”
“Obviously. Like you said, we’re not children. Unless…?”
Genji sighs, looking down at himself for a moment and then back at Sombra with a sad smile on his face. “You reached into my soul and helped me banish a demon from my body. Boundaries have been crossed.”
Sombra grins. There’s a playful hue to his energy, not unlike her own. “I thought so. The zipper, por favor?” She feels the bodice loosen as Genji unzips the back just enough to unfasten it without it slipping off.
“Gracias.” She pulls an oversized black sweater over her head, then removes the bodice from underneath it. When she glances back at him, Genji pushes himself to a sitting position and pulls off his shoes, following suit.
She examines her nails as he stretches and removes his outer layers. “Getting involved, it’s… eugh. It makes people do stupid things. It makes them weak.”
Genji shakes his head. “That is bullshit, Sombra. You knew to use Angela to reach out to me. You knew our connection was enough for me to pull strength from it. Not weakness. Why wouldn’t you want that for yourself?”
She laughs humorlessly, unsure of what to say or how to feel about it. Instead, she asks, “When the oni tried to tell you that Mercy -- Angela, doesn’t love you, because we were here, and not her… how did you know it was lying?”
Genji considers the question, something dark flitting over his face as he looks away. “I trust her, and she trusts me. We know what the other is capable of, and what we are not. And as you know, she is a healer, above all else. I think that she knew it was not wise to come for me herself, when I was not in my right mind. Especially not with my brother taken as well. I would have fought it, but…”
Sombra and Genji both jump as McCree clears his throat from the bathroom doorway. “Sorry, ah… Yeah, Angela said that coming here would’ve… well, it wouldn’t have worked out. She said the grief that consumed your brother and left him open for the oni’s taking would have consumed you, too, if you’d hurt her. It would’ve sent you out of reach.”
Genji wraps his arms around himself and looks away again.
“Is Hanzo ‘out of reach,’ Genji?” Sombra asks, glancing at the glowing gauze bandage that crosses McCree’s bare chest. He already looks much better. Sombra’s heart lightens, just a bit.
“I don’t know,” Genji answers.
The three sit in silence for a while, McCree standing awkwardly in place and Sombra avoiding McCree’s direct gaze, until Genji finally speaks, staring blankly at the ceiling as he does so..
“I came back to Hanamura to make peace with him. I had some time away, with Angela, to rehabilitate myself and come to terms with what happened between us. I had forgiven him. And so I returned, hoping that we could rebuild. Instead, I found him lost, and already infested. He had been broken by what he did to me, so it was all too easy for the demon to take him. It promised him relief from his pain, to help him forget that he had supposedly murdered his little brother, but it was a lie. The oni fought me, in Hanzo’s body, until its own brother could take me, and then it…”
Genji shudders, his voice breaking.
Sombra rests her hand on the bed near him, but not touching him.
He breathes slowly, gathering himself. “The oni made us re-live that pain, over and over, just to break us down. Hanzo never got the relief he was promised. He has only been able to watch as he -- as his body wounded mine, again and again. And my -- my demon, it convinced me that this time, Hanzo would finish what he meant to do. But every time was ‘this time.’ I have… I have fought my brother every night, every single night, since I have been here. Our battles were never enough to kill each other. Just enough to… whittle us down, to get us closer and closer to losing ourselves. Before you two reached me, I was close, but Hanzo… if he is still in there, he is much closer.”
“Goddamn,” McCree sighs, reaching for his satchel for a cigar.
“Do you think he can be saved?” Genji asks them both, their uneasiness suddenly palpable in the little room.
“If he wants to be, yeah.” McCree says. At Genji’s confused frown, he goes on, “The only other exorcism I’ve ever done… well, tried to do. It was an old friend of mine. He was wrestlin’ with some good old-fashioned personal demons long before the supernatural one got to him. He… uh. He called to it. Summoned it himself. The Witch of the Winds, Moira...” and here, he gives Sombra a hard look, “...turned out, she was an old friend of his, too. She helped him do it.”
Sombra can’t help but meet his eyes, then.
McCree sucks on his cigar. “It happened so fast, y’know? I knew he was strugglin’, but… One day, he was Gabe, and then the next time I saw him, he was the Reaper. I tried to get him back, but Gabe didn’t wanna come back. So, he didn’t.”
Genji’s weary, wounded face twists, and he bows his head. “Then my brother is lost, forever.”
“Listen to me, Genji,” McCree says, his voice sharper than Sombra has heard it all night. “That kinda grief, what Hanzo’s holdin’ onto? That’s not a pain he could feel if he didn’t love you. When the demon had you, you weren’t yourself. Hanzo didn’t have anything familiar to reach for. But now we can show him that you’re still here, and that you made it out. And you can finally tell him you’ve forgiven him. The Shimada family is just the two of you now, y’know? He needs you, if you’re up for going back.”
“But no pressure or anything,” Sombra adds, poking Genji’s shoulder with a little snort.
He smiles back at her. “No pressure necessary. I will be there. In a way, this is what I came for in the first place.”
*
Sombra lies on her side, back turned to Genji in the large bed. This is his first sleep in over a year without another consciousness infesting his body and warping his mind, and so, he is out cold on the far side of the mattress. McCree is on the floor in a bundle of blankets and pillows he gathered from his own room, his metal arm detached and lying next to his pillow, where it glows like dying embers in a fireplace. There had been no question that the three of them would keep each other company tonight, but McCree insisted that she and Genji should have the bed. For once, Sombra hadn’t argued.
She can’t sleep, so she slides out of the bed, careful not to jostle Genji or step on McCree on the floor. There is a soft chair by the window, and she sits in it with her legs folded underneath her, peering out at the quiet street below. Shimada Castle rises not too far in the distance.
Her fingers twirl in the space in front of her, conjuring big circular rune arrangements in the air. Three of them float on their sides as flat purple discs, slowly rotating in place like wheels. She swipes a finger across the edge of one, down the top of another, shifting runes and sorting through the symbols. This mindless spell work, a sort of meditation with her magic, often helps to center her and refresh her energy, though she doesn’t find anything new in the runes tonight.
McCree groans in his sleep, his organic hand grazing across the gauze on his chest.
The oni screamed. Genji screamed. McCree screamed over the screaming, trying to push through.
Angela sent me, he told them.
Sombra knew this was it, that mentioning Angela would stir something they could use, so she wrapped them in a spell, breaking them from their space on the roof so that they fell to the ground below.
The oni mocked her, laughing like a xylophone out of tune with those hideous tusks jerking up and down from its mouth. It told her that she was a coward for waiting in shadows, that she was pathetic, that her witchcraft meant nothing.
It distracted her.
Sombra forgot, for that moment, that this body in front of her was not entirely Genji to begin with, that he was Mercy’s little monster with or without this demon inside him. Much of him had been put back together after the attack, but most of him was lost. Sombra had shot, trying to incapacitate it, but in the wrong place. She shot in a place the demon could not fully feel, because it was not originally part of Genji’s body.
The demon, unaffected, attacked, and McCree was left fighting for breath in the dirt.
Sombra made a mistake, and McCree paid for it.
She blinks, her room at the inn coming back into view, the space bathed in gray moonlight from the window and molten orange on the nearby floor. Her runes have disappeared, her hands having fallen into her lap and balled into fists. As she loosens them, she notices how hard she’s breathing.
“Sombra?” McCree whispers. He looks up at her with his eyes sharp and brows furrowed, leaning on one elbow while his stump rests at his side.
“Lo siento,” she murmurs. McCree turns and reaches for his metal-fire arm and its harness, but Sombra quickly leaves her chair and kneels on his mound of blankets. She shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair. “No, lay back down. I’ll be okay in the morning.”
He does as he’s told and asks, “But will you still be here in the morning?”
McCree’s eyes are soft pools of honey in the moonlight, that roguish mouth of his tilted on one side in a hopeful smile. He reaches up and pushes a bit of her hair behind her ear. His magical arm lies nearby, but Sombra can feel that surge of affection from him -- not remnants of Mercy’s magic, as she was quick to dismiss it before -- but pure affection. Her skin still flushes where he touches her.
Something cracks open in Sombra’s chest as she places her hand over his. She lowers herself fully onto the blankets next to him, watching the way his hopeful smile stretches with surprise, and rests her head on the pillow.
“This looks like a yes,” McCree says, as Sombra lifts the covers over herself and gently runs a hand over the bandage on his chest. He can’t pull her in, but she presses close to him on her own.
“Still playing detective, I see,” she replies, though her usual snark is barely present. She closes her eyes and once again tries to communicate everything she can with her touch, her hand glowing softly as she passes it over and over McCree’s bandage to help him heal.
McCree says nothing, but he brings his arm around her shoulders and gets comfortable.
Sombra feels the ghost of a kiss at the top of her head.
“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 3) - Sombra/McCree
Sombra, still invisible, takes a step in the demon’s direction and raises her hands. Despite not awaiting visitors, it is comfortably armed, as though it is always armed, preferring the most dangerous form its human host can take. One katana rests at its back, another sheathed at its waist. Sombra supposes this is most convenient when slaughtering its innocent, wayward prey.
“Genji Shimada.” McCree calls his name loudly and clearly. “I know who you are. And I’m here to help.”
The Shimada estate is rotting.
A cherry blossom tree sits near the gazebo in the center of the second garden. The side of the tree closest to the first entrance blooms soft and pink, but as Sombra and McCree circle the tree, the petals grow withered and brown. The side of the tree near the castle itself has no petals at all, its branches shriveled and covered in fungus. The same goes for the rest of the garden; everything near the exterior still grows, but everything near the castle walls is dead.
Shimada Castle, on the other hand, is falling apart. The roof of the lowest level has caved in at one corner, as though something crashed through it, and the rest of the building is in disrepair. The terra cotta shingles are discolored, some cracked in half, some missing from the roof entirely. The smell of mildew intensifies as Sombra and McCree draw closer.
“God damn,” McCree whispers, his face twisted in disgust. “No wonder everybody thinks these are some ancient oni. Whatever’s here aged the place. These look like ruins.”
Sombra, walking invisibly next to him, flexes her fingers, her gun still resting at her side. “How observant,” she drawls, rolling her glowing eyes at him. “The oni are ancient. It doesn’t matter that the brothers are still young. Soy curioso, I thought you knew. How many exorcisms have you done, McCree?”
He isn’t fazed, looking rather disinterested in her light jab as his eyes flicker around the garden warily. “One, and it failed. It’s not an experience I wanted to repeat. But hell, at least the company’s good this time.”
She smirks at the compliment, but shuts her mouth. Exorcisms are awful enough when they’re successful.
“If we were just here to kill ‘em…”
“I know. But we’re not.” Sombra watches McCree, free to stare at him in her invisibility. That hard look in his pretty eyes is clearly determination, but it’s clouded with regret. She files this away for the moment, her brain buzzing around that failed exorcism as they approach the open front doors to the castle.
The air suddenly stills.
Sombra freezes, an ugly feeling of dread crawling across her skin and into the pit of her stomach. She remains silent as McCree stops in his tracks a moment later. He can’t meet her eyes right now, but she knows he feels it.
A voice like metallic hissing sounds above their heads. “We did not invite you, warlock.”
They both turn. A slim, black-cloaked figure, with a stark white face and glowing red eyes, perches on the gazebo roof, staring down at McCree. Red horns grow from all four corners of its face, and hideous white fangs grow from its mouth like little tusks. It’s… smiling.
Sombra breathes a silent sigh of relief. The oni can feel her magic, but can’t see her next to him, and so it assumes McCree is the source. That’s good. She has always preferred the element of surprise.
“Who’s ‘we?’” McCree asks, keeping his voice steady. He leans back on his heels, crossbow lowered to his side.”I heard there was a couple demons around here making things mighty unpleasant, but… looks like it’s just you and me. Maybe we can do this the easy way.”
The oni crawls down the side of the roof, clinging like a spider. “Leave.”
McCree’s mouth drops open in feigned offense. “Hey now, you don’t even know why I’m here.”
“We do not care why you are here,” the oni replies coldly. Its expression is stuck in that deranged, jagged smile, as though it’s wearing a mask.
“You might not,” he shrugs, tilting his head in the slightest nod towards Sombra. He doesn’t dare take his eyes off the demon. “But I think the other ‘you’ might.”
Sombra, still invisible, takes a step in the demon’s direction and raises her hands. Despite not awaiting visitors, it is comfortably armed, as though it is always armed, preferring the most dangerous form its human host can take. One katana rests at its back, another sheathed at its waist. Sombra supposes this is most convenient when slaughtering its innocent, wayward prey.
“Genji Shimada.” McCree calls his name loudly and clearly. “I know who you are. And I’m here to help.”
At the sound of Genji’s name, the demon shudders and hisses in that same metallic voice, “The human belongs to ME, warlock. You have no place here. This body is ours.”
It shudders again, arching backward to an unnatural degree, its voice gone softer and slightly higher when it groans, “I am...” Then it seems to buck against itself, its voice lowering again into the oni’s timbre. “...OURS.”
“Genji Shimada!” McCree calls again, this time not bothering to hide it as he gestures towards Sombra but keeps his eyes on the demon. His fingers twitch at his hip, but he keeps his crossbow down. “I’m here to bring you home!”
“SHIMADA CASTLE IS OUR HOME.”
“My… home?” The demon grasps its face like it has a headache. “Hana...mura…”
“SILENCE.”
“...not home… not home…”
The demon seems confused, pounding its own head with its palm and writhing against the roof, but not slipping from it. One clawed hand slides across the shingles in McCree’s direction.
Sombra’s heartbeat pounds in her throat. Almost. Almost.
“Genji Shimada!”
The oni screams, the demon’s voice and Genji’s voice minging like piano keys smashed together.
“I’m here to bring you home,” McCree repeats. “Angela sent me.”
Then another scream emits from the oni, but this one is entirely Genji. The demonic face flickers and twists, softening into pained human features -- Genji’s features.
Sombra shifts out of invisibility, streams of energy shooting from her hands to wrap around the demon’s body. It falls from the roof, unable to maintain its unnatural hold on the side of the gazebo, and falls to the dirt, orbited by strings of glowing purple runes. She raises her weapon and shoots it in the foot to keep it down.
The demon hisses, cackling. “Ahhh, we were foolish. She is your power, hunter?” it asks, spitting the word ‘hunter’ like it’s something filthy. It stretches, slowly getting up to its feet as the runes fade from its body. “A witch who hides in the shadows? A coward? Pathetic.”
Sombra notices, a moment too late, that the foot she shot is not bleeding.
McCree springs into action, flinging a small flashbomb at the demon to stun it, but the demon whips the katana from its waist and twists it in front of itself, deflecting the flashbomb back into McCree’s face. Before he even hits the ground, the demon dashes forward, sword drawn, and slices McCree across the chest.
Sombra’s heart jumps into her throat as McCree falls, the demon spinning around to face them with that ugly smile back on its face. “Not good enough. Come here, witch, so we can end this quickly.”
“I’d rather not,” she says, careful to keep her face neutral when she eyes McCree, who now lies in the dirt, blinking his dizziness away and gasping for air. The cut, thankfully, doesn’t seem deep, his protective leather and armor taking most of the damage. He’s bleeding, but he’s okay. Sombra raises a hand and sighs in relief, but sounds like she’s bored, inspecting her nails as an orb of purple light grows in her palm. “I’m not a coward. I just don’t feel like it.”
“You test our patience.”
“Ay, give it a rest, will you? Our. Our body, our home.” She mocks the demon, throwing the purple orb into the air and catching it over and over as though she needs something to do. “Genji’s mine, Genji’s mine, wah wah wah.”
She speaks casually, but each time she says his name, the demon twitches and growls in discomfort. They begin to circle each other around McCree’s prone body.
“We will kill you.”
“Aw, you don’t want to do that, do you, Genji? You, Genji. I’m talking to you, Genji. Do you want to kill me, Genji?”
“N-noo… NO…”
Sombra’s mocking becomes rhythmic, Genji’s name slipping from her tongue with sharp emphasis as she stares into the demon’s glowing red eyes. She can feel her magic swelling, the spell gaining power as she repeats her call to the human locked inside his own body. Truth -- and true names -- are always stronger than lies.
“STOP IT, WITCH.”
“Genji Shimada,” she says, her voice low and coaxing. She keeps bouncing the purple orb in one hand. Her other hand flexes and undulates in the air, more runes twisting around it. “Do you want your body back, Genji Shimada?”
The demon starts to shudder and shake again, the left side of its body twisting as the other half goes tense and grips the katana. “My body…”
“Genji--” Sombra swallows, remembering the way the demon’s face shifted mere minutes ago at the sound of Mercy’s true name. “Angela is waiting for you, Genji. You don’t share this body with a demon. This is your body, Genji. You lost it once before, and Angela gave it back to you. You share it with her. You love her. Do you remember, Genji?”
The demon -- no, Genji -- wails, throwing the katana to the side and drops to his knees. His face shifts, almost looking human again if not for the red eyes whose glow is beginning to dim. “Angela…”
“SHE SENT OTHERS RATHER THAN FIND YOU HERSELF!” The demon bellows, standing up again. “SHE DOES NOT LOVE YOU! THE WITCH LIES, GENJI! THIS BODY IS OURS! LISTEN TO ME, GENJI!”
Sombra grins in satisfaction as the demon’s eyes widen, realizing its error. Genji’s face emerges in its confusion, an aura of green light starting to surround his body.
“I am… Genji… I am MINE.”
“NO!”
Genji screams in Japanese, drawing the second katana from its sheath on Genji’s back and launching himself at Sombra. She immediately throws the purple orb high into the air and shifts her body to meet it, teleporting on top of the gazebo roof and out of harm’s way.
The sound of a dragon roar fills the garden, a bright green, spectral lizard emerging from the sword to wrap itself around Genji’s body. He stabs the sword into the dirt and drops to the ground next to it, heaving on his knees in the dragon’s embrace as he grips the sword’s handle. “I am Genji... I am Genji…”
Sombra kneels on top of the roof, ready. “Do you want your body back, Genji?”
“Yes… it is my body… please…”
“You have to take it back, Genji.”
“Please, help me… Help me...”
A flashbomb explodes in Genji’s face, stunning him momentarily.
It’s just enough; Sombra twists her hand through the air, her purple runes mingling with the swirling green dragon around Genji’s body, and commands, “Libera el alma y deja este cuerpo. La Bruja te vera ahora.”
The demon gives one last scream of rage, only to be swallowed up by Genji and his dragon screaming even louder when his body rises a few feet into the air. A burst of red energy seeps from Genji’s body and collects as an orb just above, then shoots straight into the sky and disappears with a soft screech.
The dragon fades. Genji drops to the ground and passes out.
“Got him that time,” McCree pants, clutching his chest with his metal-fire hand. He holds himself up with the other, alternately wincing and grinning up at Sombra where she rests on her knees on the roof.
Sombra’s trembling, the amount of energy required to help suck a demonic soul from a human body and send it thousands of miles away leaving her spent. The screams keep echoing in her ears, and Genji’s look of anguish, contorted with the fanged, horned demon’s, plays over and over in her head as she stares at his now serene, sleeping face. But hey, Moira should have her new toy now.
She looks down at McCree and laughs, trying and failing to sound less shaky than she is.
Of course, McCree notices. The smile drops from his face and he takes a deep breath, forcing down the pain so he can rise to his feet. “I dunno where Hanzo is, but we don’t need to find him tonight.” He reaches up for Sombra with both arms, letting her slide down the roof and into his arms.
She stumbles, but McCree catches her, and though his expression is soft with concern, he doesn’t comment on it. He just kneels down and hoists Genji’s limp body over his shoulder, letting Sombra lean into his side as she re-centers herself.
“C’mon,” McCree grunts with the effort, gently guiding her towards the exterior gate as he gets a good grip on Genji. “Let’s get him out of here before Hanzo finds us first.”
(based on that amazing artwork of Sombra I just reblogged. if anyone can find the artist credit for that piece, please do) - sweet h/c here, folks
Jesse wakes slowly, his awareness shifting around through closed eyelids as he realizes that something is off. He sits up and notices immediately that he is alone.
“Sombra?” He yawns, rubbing the corners of his eyes, looking towards the closed bathroom door. “it’s almost sunrise, you still up?” He shuffles on heavy feet towards the bathroom and opens the door. “Come on, come to bed.”
“I... can’t.” she says, panting, trying to speak through her clenched jaw. “I can’t. Sleep. Just. Go back to... to bed. I’ll be f-fine.”
The hair on Jesse’s arms and the back of his neck stands straight up. He takes a good look at her, blinking to clear his sleepy eyes in the darkness.
Something is deeply wrong with her.
She’s not wearing a shirt, which isn’t such an unusual sight at this time, but he can see the purple outline of her spinal implant glowing in her back. Sombra twitches and shakes, half bent over the sink and holding herself impossibly tight. Her fingernails dig into her back, where jagged blue waves of electricity buzz and spike around her spine. But all this is secondary, in Jesse’s mind, to the fact that she’s making noises he’s never heard from her before, grunting and whimpering in obvious pain.
“...Sombra?” Jesse flicks on the overhead bathroom lamp and steps closer.
She makes an awful noise, clenching her eyes shut against the light.
“Okay, okay,” he hurries to turn it off and puts his hand on her shoulder. He can feel the electric current running through her in a way he knows he shouldn’t be able to. He makes his voice as soft as possible. “Your head hurts?”
“Si. My... hardware.”
Jesse rubs his palm around her shoulder, hoping to comfort her, somehow. He would rub her whole back, but he’s not sure if that would hurt her. “What’s happening?” Sombra understands more about her own augmented body than he does. He hopes she knows what this is, but prays it’s not a regular thing he’ll have to see her experience again.
“Once in a... a while, when I... I’ve been. Working. A lot. It’s--it’s the same. The same thing I c-can do. In a fight. B-but in a, a fight, it’s... quick, it’s out and it’s over. When.. when it happens like... this, I’m.. demasiada energia, pinche--”
Oh. Jesse does know what this is. He’s been on the receiving end of it before, long before they knew each other this way. He remembers how much he panicked that first time, despite knowing that she didn’t mean to catch him along with the other 3 agents in her radius, but had to treat him fairly with Talon and Overwatch eyes on them both.
“What do you need?” He has to pry her fingers from her back to get her to let go. Sombra is reluctant to move, but Jesse turns her towards him and shuffles her into the dimly-lit bedroom. It’s hard to get her to look at him, but he can see in her eyes that she’s struggling to focus, either from pain or over-stimulation.
Jesse holds both of Sombra’s hands in his, trying to keep her steady. “Hey, just focus on me. It’s just me.”
Sombra’s gaze drags slowly upwards from his chest to his face. She’s still breathing too hard, sucking air through her gritted teeth. She would look like she was snarling at him if it weren’t for the pained look in her eyes. She shakes her head.
It dawns on him, then, what she needs to do. Jesse gives her a lopsided grin and sits on the bed, pulling her to kneel between his legs. “That’s alright. Go ahead, do what you gotta do.”
She shakes her head again. “I don’t...”
“Get it out. It won’t hurt me, okay? I just wanna help.” He moves her arms so that she can wrap them around his neck and nods to encourage her, then braces himself. He doesn’t remember this being painful, he thinks, grasping her hips, but he knows it isn’t pleasant.
Sombra arches her back, much like she had over the sink, and presses her forehead to Jesse’s shoulder. The blue and purple jolts of electricity in her back pulse hard for a few seconds, and then she jerks in his arms as waves of bright purple electromagnetic energy burst from her body.
The apartment goes quiet as every electrical device in the blast radius loses power.
Jesse squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. He was right: no pain. But his metal prosthetic hangs limply by his side and he feels utterly disoriented, his only awareness being the weight of Sombra’s overheated body as she slumps against him, exhausted.
She comes back to herself a moment before the apartment hums back to life again, the white noise of electronics and ceiling fans bursting back into the silence. Her eyes are already clearer when she lifts her head and looks up into Jesse’s face.
“Good morning,” she whispers, sighing in relief.
Jesse kisses her. “Hey. Better?” His lips tingle a little when they part.
“Mm-hmm. Much better. That hasn’t happened in a while.” She looks a little embarrassed, her voice small when she ducks her head into his shoulder again and says, “Gracias, mi amor.”
“Whatever you need.” He kisses one edge of the neural implant at the top of her head. “Can you tell me more about these, in the morning?”
“It is morning,” Sombra yawns, laying down on her side of the bed and grinning up at him from her pillow. “Didn’t think the EMP would short you out this much. Do you have more omnic parts I don’t know about?”
“Ha, ha. I mean real morning, not this 5 A.M. nonsense.” He lays down next to her and pulls her closer, rubbing a gentle hand down her back now that it’s not spiked with electricity. The spinal implant is warm to the touch. “Just wanna learn you a little better.”
She smiles -- one of her increasingly common, genuine smiles that she reserves just for him -- and nods, tucking herself against his chest. “Si, claro. Now, what are you doing up? Get some sleep.”
“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 2) - Sombra/McCree
McCree gently lifts Sombra’s chin with his metal-fire hand and takes his cigar back with the other, his deep honey-brown eyes roving all over her face and well-fit leather clothing. He stops at her white-gold irises and sighs, “Sure is a shame I don’t flirt with demons.”
“Sure is lucky that I’m not a demon,” Sombra replies, her heart suddenly thumping in her chest at his touch.
“So. Your employer’s workin’ with mine.” McCree is first to break the heavy silence between them on their short journey to Shimada Castle. The road has not yet cleared, but Sombra walks in plain sight; she has already vetted this crowd, and the only locals remaining are the sort who either won’t find her alarming or wouldn’t say anything even if they did. There are always a few on these cases. Demons aren’t the only beings who enjoy the shadows.
This is her second night here, but her first approaching the castle. She knows that the demons infesting the estate will sense another living being the moment they step on the property, and a being with her particular energy would draw too much attention before she’s ready. They have to be smart about this.
“Aw, look at you, playing detective,” she replies in as bored a voice as she can. This question has plagued her since they left the tavern, but McCree doesn’t need to know that. She’ll let him supply what he knows.
“Both of us, here, hired to do this now? Splittin’ the targets? That’s awful convenient, don’t you think?”
“I would call it ‘efficient.’” The split targets are the key. The banshee has a lot of enemies, but even so, she’s good at removing her emotions from a situation, if she has any left. When a pragmatic solution exists, she will take it, unless there’s room to entertain her morbid curiosity.
McCree lights a fresh cigar. “You’re not wrong.”
“Of course not.”
His brow flattens as he gives her an exasperated look, cigar smoke puffing ominously around his face in the moonlight. Sombra just presses her lips together to keep from snickering.
“Well then, ya cocky little shit--”
“Ah, mira --” she says, stopping in her tracks to point at herself. “Gorgeous, cocky little shit, remember?”
McCree’s lips tighten around his cigar, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
Sombra lets herself laugh out loud this time, plucking the cigar from his mouth to take a puff of her own. “Sending us here at the same time guarantees that we’ll get this done with no loose ends, and since they didn’t pit us against each other with the same target, we know it’s not a trap. Easy in, easy out.” She sucks on the cigar again and blows the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “You’re taking this very seriously.”
McCree’s smile cracks in full, with nothing to hide behind. He gently lifts Sombra’s chin with his metal-fire hand and takes his cigar back with the other, his deep honey-brown eyes roving all over her face and well-fit leather clothing. He stops at her white-gold irises and sighs, “Sure is a shame I don’t flirt with demons.”
“Sure is lucky that I’m not a demon,” Sombra replies, her heart suddenly thumping in her chest at his touch. The prosthetic is somehow soothingly cool on the metal parts and pleasantly hot with the fire, setting off a strange tingle in her skin. This isn’t a mortal creation.
She takes advantage of his stunned silence to place her hand over his and press her cheek further into his touch, chasing that tingle. “Who made this?”
“My boss. I’d already been hunting demons, but it helps with work, sort of focuses whatever sensitivity I have to magic. And I needed a new arm, besides,” he answers, his attention zeroing in on the way her warm skin and eyes glow brighter against his hand. He grazes a metal thumb across her bottom lip and down her chin, propriety forgotten in this moment of discovery. “What are you?”
It takes all of her considerable self-control not to move. She knows the sweet, welcoming flavor of this magic, or at least, has felt something similar before. Now she knows why he’s here. “The Witch of the Wilds sent you, didn’t she?”
McCree nods.
“She sent you here to kill Hanzo,” Sombra continues, the pieces finally slotting together in her head, “because he’s hurting her precious Genji. She brought that demon back to life because she loved him too much to let him go. But… Moira sent me here to kill him. What, is Mercy putting him out of his misery?”
McCree’s eyes darken at that. “You work for the banshee? The Witch of the Wind? There’s always some kinda catch with her, Sombra. What were her exact words? What did she ask you to do?”
Sombra said it herself: Genji was a charmer. But demons are charmers, too. It hadn’t occurred to her that they wouldn’t be one in the same. Demons play the long game, some born as human-looking beings, living human-looking lives, amassing human family and friends, building a pool of human energy, until they bloom into their true selves, powerful and deadly, and devour everyone around them. But something about this isn't right. She hates this feeling, knowing a crucial detail has slipped through her fingers. “Moira collects demon souls for her magic. She wants the oni. Removing a demon’s soul from their body is the same as killing them… unless…”
“...unless that body wasn’t theirs to begin with.”
Sombra’s stomach sinks. She knows what McCree is about to say. Damn it, she really should have demanded higher payment.
He shakes his head, looking as disgruntled as she feels. “Shit. This ain’t a hunt, Sombra. It’s an exorcism.”
*
Shimada Castle forms an imposing silhouette at the edge of Hanamura. The few businesses just outside its outer wall have been empty for some time now. The mortals who toy with darkness a little farther from the property maintain a safe distance; it is true that those who go near this place are lost. Sombra knows that some have tried, have scaled the gate at the front entrance on a dare, or were simply curious, but the oni inside -- or, the possessed Shimada -- simply killed them and ate their souls.
“A demon infesting the body of a trained assassin. Fan-fuckin’-tastic,” McCree mutters, staring up at the front gate.
“Two. I thought Ichika had been fooled when she said they both used to be mortals. What are the odds Hanzo is a true oni?”
He grumbles, annoyed. “The oni couldn’t have picked the local sushi master or something?”
Sombra snickers and puts a silver claw under his chin, scratching gently. “Aw, are you scared? Pobrecito. I’ll protect you.”
McCree looks like he’s about to swat her away, but thinks better of it, taking hold of her gloved hand instead. “You never answered my question.”
“Well, obviously, the oni wanted someone with power and influence. A sushi master would have brought in lots of people, but--”
He takes her glove off. Tendrils of purple energy stretch from Sombra’s fingertips, then disappear into the air. McCree flexes his metal-fire hand around her wrist, staring down at it curiously before he looks into her glowing eyes again. “I felt that. You know which question I’m talking about.”
Sombra considers that question for a moment. She certainly won’t have time to discuss it once they’re inside the Shimada gates. Exorcisms are messy and there is no way around that, but if they both survive the encounter, then they’ll go their separate ways when the job is done.
The thought disturbs her, and she isn’t sure why.
Sombra looks at her bare hand, and at McCree’s hand around her wrist, then stretches her fingers.
McCree’s mouth drops open as his hand mimics hers, opening with splayed fingers as if it’s going to wave. He tries to move it himself and can’t. Nerves deepen the lines of his face at this sudden lack of control, but comprehension softens them again. “You’re a witch.”
Sombra says nothing.
“But… your eyes. Is that from black magic? Mercy’s not like this.”
“Mercy is a hypocrite,” Sombra snorts, rolling her eyes. “There’s no such thing as black magic or white magic. Magic is magic. The only thing that separates her approach from mine, or from Moira’s, is fear. Magic takes all forms and comes from all kinds of places.”
“Like from demons, for example?”
Sombra stares into his eyes, white-gold meeting honey, and intertwines their stretched fingers. As it did before, the contact sparks something warm and inviting under her skin. She focuses on him, trying to communicate her magic and everything that it is to whatever’s inside him that makes him so sensitive to that energy.
“Does that feel demonic to you, McCree?”
He shakes his head and squeezes her hand. “That feels amazing.”
“That’s power. Mercy will tell you her specialty is life magic, but what she fails to mention is that life magic and death magic go hand in hand. They can’t exist separately. People are cowards, and nobody wants to hear the words ‘death magic’ when it comes time to ask for it. But we’re here because another witch, a necromancer , got caught in her feelings playing with life and death and it backfired.”
She hasn’t influenced McCree to keep hold of her hand, but he’s doing it.
“Feelings ain’t as dangerous as you make them out to be.”
Sombra laughs in disbelief. “Everything I just said, and that’s all you got from it? You’re so sentimental.”
McCree shrugs. “And you’re defensive. It’s like you said. Only thing that separates people is fear.”
For one brief, terrifying moment, something surges between them, tipping the fiery surface of McCree’s hand from enticingly warm to just this side of too hot against Sombra’s skin. She sucks in a breath and lets go.
“Ugh. Mercy’s magic is so… affectionate. It’s coming off you like perfume that’s too sweet..“
A slow smile spreads across McCree’s face. “Oh, that’s what you’re feeling. Mercy’s magic.”
“Of course.” Sombra snatches her glove back from him and puts it on. “It makes me sick.”
“Hmm. Does it, now.”
“Si,” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t be stupid.”
McCree raises his eyebrows thoughtfully. “I’ll try,” he says, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “But if you’re so smart, you might wanna figure out why I feel the exact same thing comin’ from you , darlin.’”
He has the audacity to wink at her.
Sombra fights down an instinctive retort -- and that tumbling in her gut -- and watches him walk towards the gate. She doesn’t even know what she would have said to that, which is yet another feeling she hates.
McCree looks up at the castle and pulls his crossbow from its holster on his back. “This won’t be easy,” he sighs. “A little extra firepower goes a long way, so, if it makes you feel any better, I’m happy to have you by my side. For this job.”
“For this job,” she echoes softly, taking a deep breath as she readies her gun and tries to push his words from her mind. This is no time to be weak. She needs to focus.
“Now, whip out whatever spells you got up your sleeve. We got work to do.” He looks back at her and jerks his head at the dragons carved into the gate. “I’m ready if you are.”
“La Oscuridad Te Espera” (Chapter 1) - Sombra/McCree
Another demon-hunter... but not just any old demon-hunter. This is Jesse McCree: a legend, a myth, a series of stories in his own right.
Sombra sighs, downing the rest of her drink. This had to happen sometime. “I must be getting sloppy,” she says, her voice as smooth as syrup. “If you’re here for me, I’ve made it easy for you, McCree.”
“Papa Reinhardt, is it true?”
“Is what true, child?”
A tall, freckled girl, no older than 14, bounds up to a nearby table and whispers to the huge, scarred, silver-haired man sat comfortably there. “They say there are demons in this village. Angry spirits. The oni are here. Is that why we’re here? Are you going to fight them?” She looks over at another table, where a short, full-bearded blond man and a tall, voluptuous blonde woman share drinks and a bowl of bread. “Does Papa know?”
The man laughs, rumbling the table but holding his huge stein of beer steady so as not to knock it off the table in his amusement. “Nonsense, Brigitte. Where did you hear that?”
She falters for a moment, smoothing her thick auburn ponytail behind her as she looks around the tavern, then seems to find her resolve as she looks at the locals. “The villagers… It’s all they’ve talked about, all night. Something is destroying the castle at the edge of town. All who go near it are lost. They say…” and here, she lowers her voice, “they say, at night... there are dragons. ”
Reinhardt takes a few sips from his stein and beckons Brigitte to sit down. “We are here for a family vacation, because Hanamura is beautiful this time of year. The oni are just an ancient legend. Only stories.”
Brigitte doesn’t accept this, scooting in closer at the table and staring Reinhardt in the eye. “All stories begin in truth,” she insists. “Do you know this one?”
Sombra grins beneath her hood, shading her glowing, white-gold eyes from view. It’s merely on instinct, as she is currently invisible in the corner of the tavern behind them. She takes a sip of her whiskey, the glass also invisible in her clutches, and waits. The mortals rarely have a clue in these matters. This ought to be good.
“Well, there are as many tales of the oni as we have ghost stories in Germany. Or Sweden. But yes, I have heard this one, specifically.”
Brigitte’s big brown eyes light up. She puts both elbows on the table, rests her face in her palms, and settles in.
“Long ago, these lands were ruled by a powerful family who had two sons. Warrior princes, trained to carry on the family legacy. Both skilled beyond their years, both well equipped to lead, and each powerful in their own right. But they disagreed, profoundly so, when it came time to decide how they would protect their land. The younger brother, sweet of heart and warm in temperament, wanted to keep his people happy, above all else. He said, ‘If we care for our people, they will care for each other in turn. If we can nurture one heart, one land, the rest will come naturally.’”
Sombra snorts into her glass. This is already bullshit.
“The elder brother, iron of will and steady in disposition, wanted to keep his people strong, above all else. He said, ‘With the right foundation, our people will be united towards a common goal. To keep them happy at structure’s expense is a fool’s errand. We must instead keep them in control. ‘The rest,’ as you say, will come because we steered it so.’”
“Head versus heart,” Brigitte whispered. “The worst struggle.”
Reinhardt nods, clapping her on the shoulder. “Yes. As you can see, they were two very important sides of the same coin. In order to rule, both were necessary, but neither could see it. And so, the elder struck down his brother, believing him weak. But this hurt the elder brother beyond measure, warping his already weak heart so badly that he began to transform. The mark of the oni spread across his skin, leaving a demon face, and turning his skin gray and his eyes white. The spirits that roamed this land did not approve of his actions, for he had upset the balance.”
“You can’t have one without the other,” Brigitte said solemnly, her palms now flat on the table.
“No, you can’t. And that is why the spirits went one step further, bringing the younger brother back to life to restore this balance. But he, with his heart too full, was forever wounded by the offense, and returned as… something else. Transformed, much like his brother, with the kindness that once cradled his heart now twisted. But balance has yet to be restored. The oni they say inhabit the old castle...”
“The brothers. They’re still there.”
Reinhardt finishes off his beer. “And still fighting, so they say. But these are just stories, Brigitte. Legends and myths.”
Well. Sombra has to admit: part of the story is actually true. But the people are romantic, and the nature of the demon brothers’ torment has been lost to sentiment. Sombra knows she isn’t tracking some wounded soul with a heart too big for his body. The oni known as Genji is as selfish as any other, and was brought back to life for reasons just as selfish. Dragons’ fiery egos are easily offended.
Either way, what Genji wants does not matter, and neither does his brother. Genji is her bounty. Until the banshee’s price also includes Hanzo’s wretched soul, he is of no consequence to her.
She’s waiting here for proper nightfall. Once the clock strikes midnight, and this tavern closes to the public, she can make her way to Shimada Castle. There is only one hour to go.
Brigitte yawns, despite herself. “If they’re only stories, why are the people so scared?”
“People fear all kinds of things they don't understand. Do not trouble yourself.”
“But--”
“Come now, Brigitte. It is very late and I think we are both getting tired.” Reinhardt calls over to the next table and notifies the blond couple that it is time they all head back to the inn, citing Brigitte’s bedtime over her increasingly drowsy protests.
Sombra watches them leave. They were the last patrons.
She shifts, dropping her invisibility, then approaches the bar, glass in hand. “Thanks for the drink.”
“Thank you, if you pull this off. The oni are scaring my customers away.” The owner of the bar, Ichika, a much older woman with one thick black streak in her long gray hair, rolls her eyes and whips her towel for emphasis. “I remember when they were mortals, you know. It wasn’t that long ago, but you know how these things get once stories start to spread. They were handsome young men, beautiful even, but an idiot and an asshole.”
Sombra laughs. “Ay, I’ve heard Genji used to be a charmer! A charmer can’t be that stupid, can he? Mierda, don’t tell me my intel was wrong. I’ll have to rethink my whole strategy.”
“A charmer, yes! Absolutely. But a slave to his whims. Foolhardy at every turn, and his father only made things worse by coddling him. And Hanzo was no fun at all, but at least he always sprung for the good sake. The two of them kept me in business, and now they’re pushing me out of it!”
The bell above the tavern’s entrance suddenly dings with its jaunty little melody. Sombra, knowing it’s too late to shift into invisibility, chances a lighting-quick glance at the newcomer.
Oh. Oh, this just got interesting.
A ruggedly good-looking man in a wide-brimmed hat steps through the door, his eyes shielded from view. A crossbow hangs on his back, and an ornate revolver rests at his hip. He has one prosthetic arm that seems to be made of silver and fire, and he’s strapped with silver bullets. His getup is actually rather similar to her own, Sombra thinks, considering herself, down to the red scarf hung loosely around his neck.
Another demon-hunter... but not just any old demon-hunter. This is Jesse McCree: a legend, a myth, a series of stories in his own right.
Well, Sombra sighs, downing the rest of her drink. This had to happen sometime. “I must be getting sloppy,” she says, her voice as smooth as syrup. “If you’re here for me, I’ve made it easy for you, McCree.”
McCree lifts his head and looks at her with far more surprise than she expects. He takes a drag from his cigar, then pulls it from his mouth with that unmistakable arm of his. ”Sombra?”
Ichika looks back and forth between them. “You two know each other? Ah, of course you do. Can’t be a big circle, your line of work.”
McCree struts over to the bar with his hands on his belt. “Know of. A gorgeous shadow demon who hunts other demons without remorse? Yeah, there’s only one of her. The rest have this thing about loyalty to their kind, or whatever.”
Sombra lifts an eyebrow and flutters dark eyelashes over her white-gold eyes. “Aww, they say I’m gorgeous?”
McCree meets her cheeky gaze with an amused grin of his own, staring for a long moment as the smirk spreads across Sombra’s face. “Nah, I added that part.”
Ichika swats the bar between them with her towel, startling them both. “Stop flirting long enough to kill the demons, if you would be so kind.”
“No worries, ma’am,” McCree says, tipping his hat. “I don’t flirt with demons, but I do have eyes.”
“And I don’t flirt with people who make those kinds of hairstyle choices, because I, too, have eyes,” Sombra snorts with a glance at his ponytail. McCree splutters in offense, but she laughs and goes on, “So, you’re here to step on my bounty? That’s a much bigger problem than if you were here for me, McCree.” She turns on her bar stool, revealing the hybrid pistol and crossbow resting on her lap.
“If your bounty is the oni Hanzo, then yes, I am. And I’ve slain bigger demons than you before breakfast,” he replies, dropping his hand near his revolver. “If not, then I believe we’re square.”
“NO SHOOTING IN MY TAVERN!” Ichika shrieks, whipping the towel around violently to separate them.
“Ow! Relajate, Ichi--”
“Sorry, ma’am, I’m sorry--”
Ichika stares them both down until they settle in their seats, sneaking heated glances at each other, but saying nothing.
“I don’t know who hired each of you, or how you ended up here on the same night, but don’t you dare screw this up. Sombra catches Genji. McCree catches Hanzo. My customers return. Don’t -- I mean it, DON’T! -- get in each other’s way, and we’ll all be happy.”
She stares at them again, silently, but no less stern, until they’re both glaring at each other in a resigned sort of way.
“Si, Ichika.”
“You got it, ma’am.”
“Good. Now, she’s already had hers, but I bet you stopped in for a drink, so here’s one for the road,” Ichika says, filling a shot glass for McCree. “You both get another round if you come back here alive.”
Their tempers are cooling, now that they know they’re here for different demons, but Sombra’s stuck on Ichika’s words. Judging from the curious look McCree’s giving her over his glass, he’s thinking the same thing.
Who hired him, and how did they both end up here on the same night?
He sets his empty glass on the bar, then stands and gestures towards the door. “After you. I got enough demons without adding another one at my back.”
Sombra laughs, the sound dark and not at all amused when she slides off her bar stool, and shifts, disappearing from sight. She savors the look of alarm on McCree’s face.
Demons can’t do that, and he knows it.
She waits a few moments, moving silently around him, then stands on her toes and speaks at the back of his neck. “Looks like you’re in over your head.”
McCree shivers at the feel of her breath against his ear, the only physical indication of his shock that he will allow. He whips around just in time to see her shift back into view. She turns and saunters towards the exit, resting her gun on her shoulder, then glances back to flash those glowing eyes at him before she opens the door.
“Get a move on, McCree,” she says, beckoning him closer with one claw-gloved finger. “We don’t have all night.”
(I remembered that every animated short so far takes place around the same time, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. So, this takes place right after "Reunion.")
With Echo successfully reactivated and Deadlock preoccupied for the moment, it's time for McCree to head home. As it turns out, he's not the only one who needs a breather.
Read on AO3
He’s been riding all afternoon. Twelve hours, to be exact, from that trainwreck on Route 66 to his favorite bar in Castillo. Ashe’s bike, as he expected, is perfect. Jesse grins to himself as he remembers passing her and B.O.B. on the highway, her face contorted in rage and black-lined red eyes lit up with fury as she screamed at him and struggled against her ropes. She’d get out soon enough, she always did, but not before Jesse was out of her reach.
Not that he’s worried about her following him or anything. Even if she wanted to track him, Deadlock knows they aren’t welcome here. Any business across the border is certainly none of theirs, unless Los Muertos feels like sharing.
Los Muertos rarely feels like sharing.
Neon graffiti glows around him, the dark little alley where he parks Ashe’s bike decorated with spray-painted codenames and sugar skulls. Los Muertos protects little Castillo, bigger Dorado to the north, and all the other coastal towns surrounding it where LumeriCo has dug in their claws. But Castillo is not like its flashier big sister. Jesse is safe here. No one comes here to ask questions.
Well. No one except her . Jesse sees the hexagonal skull at the top of the stairs, and the quick, angular “SOMBRA” scrawled on a nearby wall, and gets that familiar tumbling feeling in his chest. He heard her voice just this morning, but it’s been weeks since he last saw her. Touched her. This reunion, much like the last one, is overdue.
He doesn’t bother trying to be quiet. Sombra hates his boots for how conspicuous they make him, but he knows she appreciates the alert when he’s approaching her safehouse. He enters a code in the digital pad next to the door and waits.
The first of two hexagons underneath the display lights up with blue. Jesse enters a second code -- his code, the one she sent him this morning, the one that changes before every visit -- and the other hexagon lights up to match the other, the door sliding open to allow him entry.
When it slides shut again behind him, he takes off his hat and says, “Thanks for the tip, darlin’. I found her.”
“Yo se. She’s almost made it to Gibraltar. The flight speed on those frictionless wings is impressive. ” Sombra throws him a cheeky little smirk over one shoulder, her dark hair falling over the other. She and everything around her glows violet, from her eyes to the lights around her computer screens to the neural implants gently pulsating around her skull and down her spine. The room buzzes with cool electricity in a soft, constant hum that welcomes Jesse home from the dry heat and relentless sun.
Sombra is the center.
Jesse slips off his gloves and throws them on the table. The serape is next, a day’s worth of road dust puffing into the air as he whips it off and hangs it on the back of a chair. Then he unclasps his chest armor, setting that in the chair itself.
Sombra watches him, her fingernails twitching and tapping against the desk. She’s already down to minimal layers, in just her underwear and thin, loose pink tank top. Jesse sees quite a lot of skin he’d like to get reacquainted with.
When he’s down to just his black undershirt and dirty old jeans, he finally comes to her. They reach for each other at the same time, Sombra wrapping her arms around Jesse’s neck as his organic hand takes the small of her back. His metal hand presses into her bare thigh before he reaches underneath her and scoops her up out of her chair, letting her wrap her legs around him.
Her first kiss is bruising and almost frantic, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. Jesse just holds on and backs up until he hits her bed. He drops them onto it as gently as he can, accidentally sitting on her stuffed bear, but when he lets go of her to move it, she pushes him onto his back.
“Sombra, hey…” Jesse laughs, putting his hands on either side of her face. He holds her there, smushing her cheeks a bit until she grows still. “Slow down, there. How you doing?”
“I’m wondering why you aren’t kissing me,” Sombra snaps, pinning him to the bed with her hips and holding herself up with both hands on Jesse’s chest. She isn’t wearing a bra, and at this angle, with her breasts just slightly pushed together between her arms…
Lord have mercy, it has been too long. It sure wouldn’t be a bad idea to give her what she wants. “Maybe I just wanna look at you.”
“Then keep your eyes open,” she says, placing his hands on her ass, “and kiss me.”
He sits back up, letting her adjust her legs so she can sit comfortably in his lap, and does as he’s told. The relief on her face is obvious, the little furrow between her eyebrows smoothing out as he slips his tongue into her mouth. When he squeezes at her ass and moves his kisses to her throat, nipping at that special spot, just underneath her jaw, she just wraps herself around him even more, like she’s holding on for dear life.
“I… missed you,” she admits, her voice cracking so quietly that Jesse might have thought he was imagining it if he couldn’t feel the vibration under his lips.
Hmm. He lifts his head again to kiss her forehead, then pecks her nose as softly as he can. “Boop.”
It has his intended effect: Her body relaxes against his and she laughs, giving him the first genuine smile he’s seen all day. She calls him pendejo, but it’s all affection when she nuzzles her nose into his cheek. “Hola.”
“Hey.” Jesse pushes her hair back from her shoulder so he can kiss that warm skin. “I missed you, too. You okay?”
Sombra nods, biting her lip, then kisses him again, much gentler this time. She dismounts from his lap to grab something from her desk, then returns and sits next to him on the bed. She takes his mechanical arm in her hands and starts to work on it, carefully blowing a can of pressurized air into the nooks and crannies to clean out the dust.
Jesse frowns. He knows she needs to keep her hands busy when she’s anxious.
“Looks like Ashe got in a couple of hits.” Sombra peers closely at a new nick in his metal forearm. “Hmm. She makes things personal. Good to know.”
“Her butler was the worst of it.”
“The omnic? B.O.B.”
“Yeah. He’s got a damn turret in each arm now.”
Sombra wiggles her fingers in a complicated pattern; her coding swirls around the metal limb in a violet double-helix as a diagnostic screen appears above it. “I’ll just give you a couple of updates,” she says, tapping at the screen. “You can’t let dust particles build up like that. Slows down your reaction. Looks like the last time this got cleaned was the last time I did it.”
“Aww, worried Deadlock is gonna get me?” he teases, watching her face carefully. She’s fussing, for some reason, but he’ll let her get to it. “I promise, Ashe might not be my biggest fan, but I’m not worried about her.”
“I’m not worried about her, either.”
Jesse waits, scooting closer so he can rest his organic hand on her thigh while she works.
Sombra swipes something on her screen, and a loading bar appears as a couple gears start whirring in his arm. “Katya Volskaya?”
“Yeah, I remember.” Last he’d heard from Sombra, she had Volskaya under her thumb.
“She sent someone after me.”
Jesse’s grip tightens on her thigh, but she shushes him with a wave of her hand. “No, no, de nada. I wasn’t hurt. But… Volskaya’s puppet, she had this… como, this... black hole thing I couldn’t get out of. And she had my name.”
“Well, I’m sure she ain’t the first to know who you are. The whole ‘Sombra collective’ ruse had to run out some time.”
She stares at him.
“...Oh.” That name. Well, shit.
Sombra shakes her head. “Jesse… I thought you were the only person alive who had it. And her puppet is about as sharp as a concha, so Volskaya must be the one who found me, somehow. Or, I slipped somewhere. I missed something, and now--”
“Hey,” Jesse starts, moving to pull her close, but Sombra clutches his metal arm.
“Wait, it’s almost finished.”
“Come on now, we can do this later, just--”
“NO! It has to be right, you have to be ready--”
“Shhh, shhh, okay, come here.” He shifts so that he can wrap his organic arm around her while keeping his mechanical arm to the side. Her diagnostic screen distorts a bit as it moves, but it eventually resettles. The updates are almost complete.
He hugs her with one arm. It never seems this way when she’s commanding the room, but she’s so small against him. “You’re okay, baby.”
Sombra breathes against his chest.
“Did she have anything else?”
Sombra shakes her head.
“Then all she’s got is a name and a fancy gadget. That ain’t enough to do anything with. And I know you got all your ducks in a row, as best you can. That train this morning, the number of Deadlock traveling with Ashe, finding Echo’s key… all of it went exactly as you said it would. You had everything covered. All I had to do was pull the trigger.”
“...I didn’t know B.O.B. had turret arms.”
“Okay, now you’re just fishin,’” Jesse laughs, kissing the top of her head. “We’re fine.”
His arm beeps. They both glance at the floating screen above his arm, where the loading bar has become full. Sombra relaxes, just a little.
“Something is happening, Jesse. And it’s only moving faster and faster, ever since the monkey sent out that recall.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the news.”
“I’m not talking about the omnics. It’s not just Overwatch. Talon is shifting around, moving assets. Volskaya Industries has even more resources than I thought. Vishkar is very happy. And LumeriCo… pinche LumeriCo. Everything is in motion and I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet.”
Sombra looks over at the glowing web on her wall, and Jesse looks with her. The map linking Overwatch and Talon to every heavy-hitting corporation since the Omnic Crisis seems to grow every time he comes back here, splintering further and further as agents reactivate in the recall. She has added almost every active member of Overwatch to it, except for him. “You will.”
“Yeah. I just can’t get caught off-guard again,” she sighs, though it’s not as sour with anxiety as everything else she’s said tonight, and for that, Jesse is thankful. She turns back to him, smirking, looking more like her usual self, and says, “I’ll be pissed if you die, vaquero, so don’t. Me entiendes? ”
He grins and hugs her to his chest. “If nobody’s managed it at this point, I think I’ll be alright.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sombra runs a hand over his metal arm.
“Thanks for the maintenance. I do appreciate it.”
“Well, somebody’s got to keep you up to date, old man.”
Jesse pulls her down on the bed with him with a deep belly laugh. “Oh, I see how it is. But somebody’s got to watch out for you, baby.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Sombra rolls her eyes and gently grazes her long nails through his beard.
“Alright, take your shirt off and lay on your stomach,” he says, getting up to remove his dusty jeans. Sombra’s eyes light up when he grabs a bottle of lotion from her bedside table and she quickly follows his instructions, slipping her top off over her head.
Jesse groans at the sight of her, his eyes trailing over her soft breasts and the round curve of her hips as she lays down and moves her hair to one side. Later , he reminds himself, kneeling on the bed next to her. He warms some lotion between his hands and starts to knead her back, working through the tension, carefully navigating around the hardware in her spine and little glowing nodes alongside it.
Sombra moans, muffling herself in her pillow. “Ohhh, muchas gracias, Jesse . ”
He kisses the back of her neck, just below her neural implant. “My pleasure, darlin’, I got you. You need maintenance too.”
