#but... gabe treats his cherubs in a child-like way for a reason? like

[heaven-saidx]

{{ Actually, I'm... genuinely kind of uncomfortable and I think I should just go for now. }}

[strikecommanding]

Lucy

a 5k piece commissioned by an anonymous user, featuring gabe loving on their OC lucy :-) i’ve updated my commission information, which now accommodates OC requests for anyone interested!

---

A stabbing pain that lit a fire all across her shoulder blades jarred Lucy into consciousness. Her fried nerves needed a moment to wake themselves back up and hit her with an abrupt, unpleasant sensation, causing her to writhe and scream for whoever was nearby. She could hardly make heads or tails of her surroundings while in the throes of such agony, but the sight of her bed hinted that she was currently in some sort of hospital room.

The pain in her shoulder blades spiked up in intensity, causing her to thrash around a bit more violently. IV drips and various other machinery hooked up to her fell to the ground with a crash so loud that it rivaled her own pained screams. If she had to put words to the excruciating sensation, she would think her rib cage was snapping out of place to try and break free through her skin. Lucy searched frantically through her memories to pin a cause to this phenomenon, and her last conscious memory pointed to a serum introduced to her veins by the Talon scientists who kidnapped her in the first place.

By the time all sorts of people rushed in to observe her, Lucy felt just about ready to curl up and die. Her body, however, couldn’t decide what to do with itself. Lying on her back and applying pressure to the site of trauma exacerbated the pain, but so did turning over and exposing it to the air. She continued to flail helplessly until a number of hands turned her on her stomach and strapped her down.

Lucy urged herself to fight through the pain and turn her agony into coherent sentences. “What’s happening?! What the fuck did you do to me?!”

“Subject’s belligerent,” said a faceless, uncaring voice overhead. “Hit her with a shot of morphine. ...Maybe up the dosage to keep her body still and her mouth shut.”

A latex-gloved hand wielding a needle hovered close to her, and she did what she could to avoid it. However, she was powerless to her restraints and the pain in her shoulder blades, leaving her no choice but to accept the injection. Its effect were near instantaneous, as she could feel her eyelids getting heavier with every harsh breath she took. She wondered if it was really the morphine that was knocking her out, or if the agony had simply become too much for her to bear.

---

“She’s stable, sir, but the outcome isn’t what we intended,” said an impassive, uncaring voice. “We’ve achieved advanced mobility, but with those wings, stealth is simply an impossibility…”

Upon hearing the word ‘stable’ in reference to her, Lucy could have laughed. After all of the scientists’ experiments and the pain they put her through, she didn’t feel stable in any capacity. The least of which was physically, as her muscles and bones ached under the strain of foreign growths in the form of wings.

Apparently finding it unnecessary to keep their lab specimen updated on changes to her own body, the Talon scientists neglected to tell Lucy what exactly happened the night she blacked out. Once she woke up, she had to eavesdrop on some nearby nurses just to learn that she’d been out cold for nearly a week. She had yet to hear anyone speak about the peculiar, peach-colored wings that suddenly sprouted from her back, and this was the first time she’d heard anyone speak so candidly about them.

Lucy stood before a council of criminals who hid their faces in the shadows. The brightest light source in the room shone directly above her head, and it was the closest simulation she’d had to sunlight ever since she first found herself a prisoner of Talon. She had to squint just to see ahead of her, but when she found dozens of pairs of eyes staring back, scrutinizing her and trying to decide her fate right then and there, she found more comfort in simply staring at the floor.

A long silence filled the room until someone spoke up, this time directly addressing Lucy rather than talking around her. “How do you feel?”

It felt like ages since someone last asked her that, and Lucy thought of a myriad of colorful answers to that particular question. Her bones were brittle and her muscles weak, all because of an unnatural pair of wings that constantly sapped the energy out of her natural body. It was as if they, too, could tell they weren’t meant to be a part of her, as the human body simply wasn’t meant to maintain such appendages. She wanted to tell them all of these things, but this was the first time in weeks that anyone had directly spoken to her and asked for her honest words. She couldn’t resist the impulse to tilt her head back and spit out a scathing answer, “I feel like you bastards ruined me, and you don’t even know how to fix your mistake.”

The tension in the room was palpable after her bold remark, but she didn’t take it back or apologize. Instead, she maintained eye contact with the man who kept himself concealed in the shadows. She tried to make out his features and got as far as a creased forehead and tightly pursed lips before both suddenly relaxed, revealing to her a slimy smile that made her sick. “Silly girl,” he said, deliberately slow so she would hang on to each and every word. “You’re Talon’s greatest mistake, and you’re foolish to think we’d want to ‘fix’ you.”

Lucy’s eyes widened and her wry smugness dropped at the implication that she would be stuck like this for the rest of her life. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would leave her as is, neither fixing her nor killing her out of mercy, and instead leaving her to live as an abomination who suffered constant pain. Her hands curled into fists and her nostrils flared. The thought angered her as much as it scared her, but she could hardly get a word out before the man spoke up again, this time to a nearby lackey.

“We’ll observe her, see if she can take to her wings,” he said, and Lucy felt herself slip back into a sort of helplessness where everyone only ever talked about her and not to her. “We can still use her.”

---

Lucy’s unwillingness to adjust to her wings hardly put a damper on her overall recovery. Her body no longer felt like her own, as if that strange serum had reprogrammed it to follow the twisted will of her captors. The process during which her wings burst from her skin and grew out to their full span had been the most painful experience of Lucy’s life, yet she recovered relatively quickly. Just under a month was all the time her body needed to recuperate and begin recognizing those wings as merely another set of appendages.

It took some time, mainly because she was so resistant to learn in a process not unlike learning to walk all over again, but she was able to start flying. The scientists overseeing her recovery and adjustment period only ever let her practice on indoor training grounds, never allowing her too far out of sight. She couldn’t yet be trusted not to simply fly away.

Even if she were free to fly outdoors, Lucy often mused, there weren’t many places she could go. By this point in her life, all she knew was Talon, and even though they mistreated her, they kept her alive. She detested them, but she relied on them for more than she cared to admit to. For this reason, she toned down the rebellion and tried to make herself useful when Talon offered her an ultimatum: either live and work for Talon as a sniper, or die.

Though neither option was particularly appealing, one was obviously better than the other. She yearned for freedom from Talon, but not to the point of seeing death as a better way out. Begrudgingly, she accepted her role as Talon’s newest sniper under the pseudonym Siren.

It was a shaky start, but Lucy ended up being a huge asset to them. Her precision and aim were superb, and her advanced mobility afforded to her by her wings allowed for easy getaways if ever the situation called for it. This was definitely a common occurrence when they first began sending her on missions, ones that typically seemed too risky or challenging for someone on her own. Lucy had a feeling that her higher-ups didn’t intend for her to come back from those particular missions, and it might have been spite alone that fueled her and encouraged her not only to return alive, but to report back with stellar results. Whether they were testing her skill or simply trying to get rid of her, she never asked. Instead, she internalized everything and took it out on herself.

There was no personal fulfillment to be had in being a terrorist organization’s favorite toy. She had to kill to survive, but she had to wonder what the point in surviving was when every day was just like the last: do your job, keep your mouth shut, and maybe you’ll be treated decently. When she was still a fiery adolescent who had a penchant for talking back in any situation, she learned the hard way that Talon wouldn’t hesitate to resort to violence, even against a child. Over the course of the ten years they kept her, Lucy somehow came to stop blaming Talon as much for her situation and began blaming herself instead.

Her biggest gripe with herself was her wings, for varying reasons. For one, she resented them for working efficiently enough to serve Talon’s interests, effectively trapping her as their lapdog. Long beyond the habit of biting the hand that first fed her, she instead berated her own body for taking so well to their experimental serum. She detested these wings not only for the grim future they’d secured for her, but also because they made her look and feel like a monster. Ordinarily, wings carried with them beautiful and cherubic connotations, or imagery of free-flying birds who could travel the world as they pleased. Lucy’s current lifestyle as a weapon felt neither angelic nor free; she felt like a freak who needed to be fixed, and since Talon refused to do so, she took matters into her own hands.

Around the halfway mark of her captivity, when she was just shy of 20, she resorted to some destructive means to undo Talon’s work. The wings were the source of all her suffering, she’d reasoned, so she tried to get rid of them with nothing but a pair of old scissors that one scientist was too careless to notice she’d had. It had been a painful process that Lucy couldn’t finish before blacking out from the pain, and by the time she woke up, she found her wings patched up and healing extraordinarily quickly, thanks to the regenerative effect of the original serum she’d taken all those years ago. She was a monster who could kill anything but herself, and that realization made her feel helpless.

Now, however, those feelings and memories had to be stowed away. No longer the unstable wreck she’d been when the role of sniper was first bestowed upon her, Lucy had been on enough missions and taken enough abuse to realize that her only job was to get from one day to the next. Meaning and personal fulfillment didn’t matter so long as she was alive, and she could only ensure that by completing her current mission.

Talon shipped her off to a quaint little city known as Rialto, where she was ordered to take out a prominent member of the UN. It was an ambitious mission, but to Lucy, it was just one more thing to get through to prove her worth for another day.

Her target was out to dinner with a number of bodyguards to go around. In order to avoid their sightlines, Lucy was forced to set up shop a bit further than she would have liked, but it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. It was during situations like these that she swapped out her usual bullets for non-lethal ones, whose sole purpose was gathering intel. When fired, they highlighted a wide radius for just a moment, just long enough for her to take the shot, so long as she was quick about it.

However, these bullets still left behind casings just like their regular counterparts, and even the most incompetent bodyguard wouldn’t be so daft as to excuse a bullet casing within a foot of a member of the UN. Lucy had to take the shot before it was noticed.

Unfortunately, even from her perch located so far back from the target, she was the one who was noticed. Just as she swooped into the air and lined up to take the shot, a gun fired behind her and jarred her focus. She heard it before she felt it, only realizing after a moment that she’d been shot. The pain was so sudden and intense that she couldn’t even think to scream, nor could she get a good look at her wound or assailant before plummeting directly into the canal below.

The water was cold and bracing, especially when her fresh wound was submerged in it. Already unsteady from having been shot, Lucy could hardly stay afloat with her now-heavy wings weighing her down and urging her into the depths. She could feel herself sinking faster the more she struggled, so she took in as much air as she could before going under completely. The injury to her wing was nothing compared to the helplessness and hysteria she felt as she fell further into the depths with no signs of help nearby.

Just when she thought she couldn’t hold her breath for much longer, something else abruptly joined her in the water. Someone else, she realized upon further inspection, had jumped in after her and pulled her into their arms. Lucy didn’t know their identity or their intentions, but she was quick to cling to them anyway. She didn’t want to die, and it seemed this person didn’t want her to either.

The moment her head was above the water, she gasped for some much needed air. Her rescuer, too, was out of breath, if their heaving chest was any indication. But, as Lucy pressed her palms against their sturdy chest and felt their racing heart, she concluded it must have been more from the adrenaline of going after her than merely from having been in the water. Lucy looked up fully and stared into the chocolate brown eyes of her rescuer.

A man with dark skin and unruly facial hair looked back at her, his expression impassive and unreadbale. He carried her in his arms like she was nothing, taking great care not to press against her wound. Lucy’s eyes dropped to the shotguns holstered to his sides and she realized he was likely the one who’d shot at her.

“I’ve got questions,” he said gruffly, carrying her towards a dropship. “So you’d better not die on me.”

---

By now, Lucy was used to waking up in a hospital bed after sustaining injuries. This time was different, however, in that she found herself somewhere other than Talon headquarters. A quick glance down at the edge of her blanket revealed a particular logo, that of Overwatch, which she only knew as her employers’ number one enemy. Looking over her shoulder, she noted some bandages wrapped around the base of her wing where she’d been shot. Likely a mere formality, since her cells were surely doing a quick and efficient job at putting her back together already.

“You’re awake,” said the pleasant, lightly accented voice of a cheery blonde woman who abruptly entered the room, startling Lucy. She seemed to notice Lucy’s agitation, as she maintained a distance and lowered her voice. “How are you feeling? Are you experiencing any pain at all?”

The woman was far too talkative for Lucy’s liking after having just woken up, so she simply didn’t answer. Lucy sank defensively into her sheets while eyeing this woman with distrust. The tension that filled the air was not lost on this woman, as she simply kept to herself while bustling around the room. They both looked up when a third party joined them.

The same man Lucy had seen the night before walked into the room, and she could see his imposing physique fully now that he was under good lighting. He practically towered over the blonde woman as he approached her, and Lucy’s eyes dropped to a conspicuous manila folder clutched in his left hand. “How’s she doing, Angela?”

The woman known as Angela briefly glanced at Lucy before turning away and answering the question. “She seems stable, but I haven’t had a chance to take a look at her injury yet…”

“In that case, how about you let me take over for a sec?” he suggested, patting her gently on the shoulder as he ushered her towards the door. When she looked back at him, he raised the folder to her eye level and waved it. “She and I need to talk.”

Angela wore a bit of a warning stare as she moved to exit. “Don’t stress out my patient, Gabriel.”

He waved dismissively before pulling up a chair beside Lucy’s bed. She treated him to the same distrustful stare she’d given Angela, only breaking it to look down at the papers he pulled out of his folder. He read off of them in a neutral tone, “Siren, Talon’s secret weapon responsible for a number of assassinations over the past several years. Signature mark is bullets that emit a high enough frequency to completely shred whatever they come into contact with. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Conditioned not to talk back by years of abuse, Lucy just stared at the blanket in front of her. The only thing she really wanted to say was, “My name is Lucy.”

Gabriel maintained his unflinching gaze as he put all the papers away and shut the folder. He set it aside on the bed by her leg, and she inched away from it just the slightest bit. “You’ve been on our radar for a while. You were sloppy last night, and that’s why you got caught.”

Lucy knew that better than anyone else, so she didn’t need to be told. Instead of expressing that, she just wrung the edge of her blanket in her fists.

When she didn’t answer, Gabriel filled the silence for her. His once uncaring and impassive expression dissipated into something a bit more gentle, almost tired. “Look. We’ve had eyes on you long enough to figure out exactly how Talon got their hands on you, and everything they did. It isn’t right, what they did to you. ...Ordinarily, I’d arrest you, but Blackwatch doesn’t operate under quite the same set of rules that Overwatch does. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

Lucy looked up, astonished only by one thing he’d said. She’d never heard anyone express contempt for Talon’s sordid activities, specifically the things they’d done to her. That Gabriel looked back at her with a softer expression than what he’d had on upon first walking in only encouraged her to want to listen to him, along with inspiring a strange, fluttering feeling deep inside her chest. She cautiously kept her mouth shut, but she communicated to him with an attentive gaze that she wanted him to continue.

He leaned in, speaking in a hushed tone like he was worried someone would pick up on their conversation. “You’ve been with Talon long enough to know the ins and outs of their organization. You’ve got more intel than I can possibly imagine. Plus, they won’t expect to find one of their own against them. What I’m saying is… Blackwatch could only benefit from having you around.”

This situation wasn’t unique to her. Lucy experienced the same thing when Talon first modified her, except the alternative to joining them was to die by their hand. In this case, it was likely she would simply get arrested and that would be that. Alive, but not free, the same way her life had been for the past ten years. The situation wasn’t unique, but the outcomes being offered to her were. If she were to work for Blackwatch, she had a feeling her life could only change for the better.

Gabriel took her silence as her being in need of a little more convincing, so he went on to add, “Don’t worry about your record. I’ll take care of everything,” he assured her, and then he wore a roguish smile that brought back that odd fluttering in her chest. “I’ll take care of you.”

The idea of choosing something for herself was so foreign to Lucy that she almost couldn’t respond right away. Finally, when she gained a firm hold of herself, she nodded with confidence. “I want to join you.”

---

When Gabriel said he would take care of Lucy, he meant it. He oversaw everything from her discharge from the medbay to her adjustment period as Blackwatch’s newest agent. Blackwatch, Lucy learned, was still finding its footing as a sister organization to the all-encompassing Overwatch. As things were now, she and Gabriel were the only official members.

Consequently, they were able to acquaint themselves a bit better by going out on missions, and Lucy learned that he was actually a pretty friendly and easygoing guy despite how intimidating he looked. He was the first person to treat her like an equal, like a person, rather than the weapon Talon wanted her to be. It was for this reason that she couldn’t help but grow attached to Gabriel, and she was glad to see that he appeared to be fond of her in turn. At least, that was how she felt most of the time, but the few months they shared together wasn’t enough time to rid her entirely of the demons that festered in her mind for the past ten years.

Thanks to Talon, Lucy had her fair share of insecurities, but it was because of her environment that she never had the means to deal with them in a healthy way. Now that she had the freedom to express herself, she didn’t know where to start. So she never quite dealt with her issues, instead electing to bottle everything up.

It all came to a head one evening when she and Gabriel returned from a mission. Everything had gone fine except for a few rogue decisions on Gabriel’s part, which resulted in him getting a bit more banged up than he would have liked. Though he definitely took the brunt of the damage, he insisted that they both go and get checked out by Angela.

Despite how long she’d been with Blackwatch, Lucy never could bring herself to get along with the kindly doctor. At its core, this issue was rooted in insecurity. She still remembered the first time Angela donned her wings to go to battle, and how the sight had made the eyes of passersby shine. She was undeniably beautiful, the perfect image of an angel. But, whenever she grew tired of them, she could just take off her wings and still be adored. Lucy didn’t have that luxury. Her wings were on her for good, and they only ever made her feel like a monster.

She never expressed these feelings to anyone, however, which led to her silently stewing in the corner while Angela patched up Gabriel’s wounds. Gabriel, too, had the tendency to look at Angela with stars in his eyes, and watching the two of them interact inspired within Lucy a pain she didn’t know how to treat. She carried the burden without telling a soul, but doing so for too long made her liable to blow up. When she sensed her agitation rising to a point she would no longer be able to control, she stood abruptly and headed to her room, ignoring Gabriel as he called after her.

Lucy didn’t have much time alone before Gabriel went after her, entering the room unannounced. From her spot curled up in bed, she glared at him and murmured, “Go away.”

“Not before you talk to me,” he retorted, shutting the door behind him and moving closer to her. “What’s bothering you so much that you had to storm out like that?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” she insisted. She tried to turn over in an attempt to cut off the conversation, but he was quicker than her. Bracing her arms and holding her still, he forced her to look at him.

“It is when you’re on the verge of tears like that,” he muttered, and his grip loosened just enough for Lucy to reclaim her limbs and swipe at her inexplicably damp cheeks. She sighed in frustration and rubbed harshly at her eyes while Gabriel took a seat on the edge of the bed. His voice took on a softer tone, the one that made her weak in the knees. “What’s bothering you, Lucia?”

Hearing him call her by her full name both made her heart skip a beat and informed her that he wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. At least, not until he heard everything she had to say. Lucy stared at her hands folded in her lap and started slowly, trying to articulate what had been on her mind for weeks now. “When I see you and Angela together like that, I just… I don’t know… it makes me feel horrible. The way you look at her is so… sweet… and it kills me to know you’d never look at me like that, not when I’m such a freak.”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away, likely soaking in her words and thinking of the best way to reply. She peeked up shyly and flinched at the abrupt contact of his hand against her cheek, only settling when she felt how gentle his touch was. The rough pad of his thumb wiped away any remaining tears, and she closed her eyes when he spoke to her, smooth and slow. “You’re not a freak. After all this time, you’re still the only one who thinks of yourself that way. As for Angela and I… we’re just friends. We’ve been working together for a while so we’re close, but we’re just friends.”

While she did feel comforted by his affirmation that his relationship with Angela was strictly platonic, Lucy felt silly for having to ask him for it. It made her feel like a child. Perhaps he could sense that she was still not fully settled, as he moved in close enough for their legs to touch. She looked up into his eyes only to have her face flush upon seeing the intensity of his stare.

“You’re always right next to me, Lucy, but you never see the way I look at you,” he remarked, letting out a soft exhale not unlike a curt laugh. When he gently placed his hand on top of hers, she didn’t move away. Instead, she tried to still her rapidly beating heart when he looked back up at her and went on, “And when you look at yourself, you never see what I see either.”

“Gabe…?” she breathed, a mere whimper in comparison to the rumble his voice had been when he made that heartfelt confession. She held her breath when the distance between her lips and his slowly began to close, his hand gently pulling her in for a sweet kiss. Unsure how to react right away, she simply sat still and let him hold her. He touched her with a sort of warmth she’d never experienced before in her life, and she wanted more of it, quickly. Her clumsy hands moved to reciprocate by wrapping around his neck and pulling his body closer to hers.

Gabriel followed her unspoken directions with ease, practically purring against her lips. The feeling of that rumble deep inside his chest as he pressed it against hers made Lucy tremble. Soon enough, she was curled up in his lap, cooing and whimpering as his teeth nipped playfully at the soft skin of her neck. His hands glided up and down her sides to feel her, all of her, before he decided that her clothes were too inconvenient a barrier.

Lucy sat back and allowed him to undress her. He moved gently, especially as he removed the fabric around her wings, and she could see the way his eyes lit up with adoration as he looked them over. She’d never seen him wear a loving expression like that, and the idea that he apparently looked at her like that all the time filled her with a mix of pride and love that she didn’t know she could feel.

Bare before Gabriel’s hungry eyes, Lucy flushed and crawled back into his lap. Her waist fit perfectly between his large hands, which held her firmly as he ground her down against the bulge in his pants. The sensation came so suddenly that she couldn’t help but yelp, at which he questioned, “You okay?”

She nodded frantically, almost whining when the delicious friction stopped. “Keep touching me.”

He responded with a smug smile, gently pulling her off of him and positioning her on all fours. She was self-conscious about having her wings on full display for him, but the thought left her mind instantly when his index finger dragged along her spine, making her shiver. His knuckles brushed gently against her soft, peach-colored feathers, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Are you ready?”

Lucy bit down hard on her bottom lip upon feeling his arousal stroke against her sopping wet pussy. To know that he wanted her just as badly as she wanted him was reassuring, and she showed her enthusiasm by grinding against him the slightest bit. “Please, fuck me.”

That was all the encouragement Gabriel needed to line up the tip against her entrance and bury himself inside her in one go. Every nerve in Lucy’s body responded to his touch, even the ones in her wings as they expanded briefly before settling. She melted into the feeling of his palms against the swell of her ass, holding her in place as his movements became harsher. It wasn’t so much painful as it was purely passionate, allowing Lucy to feel all the tension that had built up between them over the past few months finally come to a head. All this time, when she thought about how much she liked Gabriel, she never once realized that the feeling was mutual.

She no longer had the time to view things in hindsight when one of his hands crept between her legs, idly stroking at her swollen clit. At that, she jolted and tightened around his cock, causing him to let out a deep, rumbling groan right beside her ear. In an effort to chase after the pleasure he offered her, Lucy bucked desperately against his hand. He got the hint and picked up the pace, simultaneously thrusting harder so that they could finish at the same time. Lucy’s toes curled and her wings expanded, every inch of her body tingling as Gabriel helped her over the edge of release.

Not long after, he pulled out with a groan and finished on her lower back. They both needed a moment to catch their breath, but he was the first to get up. He briefly disappeared into the bathroom to grab a towel and clean her up before settling in bed next to her. Lucy clung to him almost immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Gabriel smiled fondly as his knuckles stroked along the base of her spine, and he murmured, “Do you get that I like you yet, or do I have to spell it out?”

Lucy laughed in the form of a soft, breathless exhale as she settled against his chest. “I get it, but it’d be nice to hear you say it anyway.”

He leaned down to kiss her forehead in a way that made her truly feel loved, something she’d never experienced before. “I like you, Lucy.”

She smiled and allowed her eyes to flutter shut. “I like you too.”