#probably drink with sombra and avoid his ex

[brownfrogs]

Baptiste on vacation, what will he do?

[diniidjarin]

that reaper roomba au, part 1

i said i would do it and i am doing it, have the kinda angsty pre-crack bit of exposition and probably terribly ooc interactions

words: 1915, rating: gen, cw for implied body horror and a minor mention of substance abuse, set roughly a year or two after the Recall.

He recognizes the monkey. The ape had no place in the world. It lived in an old watchpoint, doing nothing in particular, sighing for a time when it meant something to be a hero.

The Reaper only sees an enemy. It confronted Winston once, to steal the data the ape had kept and collected over the years. Every Overwatch agent, and persons of interest. He can barely recall the mission. He wasn’t punished, so it probably ended in at least a partial success. He is rarely conscious of his actions, these days. He remembers what he did, sometimes. They’re ugly visions of violence, fueled by old rage he doesn’t really understand unless he feels it.

He fires his shotguns, the pain of the kickback barely registering after so many years. Reaper snarls.

stop drifting we have a mission

He snaps to attention. He has an objective. Sombra was intercepted by the guerrilla cell calling itself Overwatch. Funny, that name used to mean something. There are three Talon agents infiltrating the base, looking for the hacker. He is the diversion, engaging as many agents as possible. He doesn’t have orders to kill, not explicit ones anyway. The Reaper is bloodthirsty nonetheless.

They dissolve into smoke a split second before a rocket missile explodes where they stood. He laughs. It’s not his instinct to avoid projectiles, not anymore.

A shot rings out, and Pharah cries - Widowmaker is in position. One of the jet propulsors putters out and explodes on the ex-security chief’s back. She shouts for support as she tries to break the fall with the remaining engine, but she collapses in a heap on an outcropping of the cliff. She hangs on for a tense second, and topples off the narrow shelf, crashing gracelessly not twenty feet away from Reaper.

He approaches. Pharah’s helmet slides off her head, revealing a handsome face with a familiar tattoo. Half her face is drenched in blood and she looks up at him, dazed. He tilts his head.

“Amari,” he says, and it comes out as a snarl. He hates his voice. He hates… Amari?

sniper enemy traitor selfish selfish dead selfish amari enemy enemy enemy always takes his side -

He levels one of his guns at her, ready to pull the trigger, but suddenly golden light blinds him.

“Stay away!” someone shouts, and there she is, the child prodigy, the brilliant doctor, her staff aimed at Pharah - Wait, that’s the wrong eye! - she’s made improvements to the healing technology, he can see the gash on Pharah’s brow closing. Amari, That must be Fareeha, when did she grow so much?, she stands up and clenches her fists, but it’s not her that clocks him in the head, making him spin.

Angela Ziegler has fury written on her face as she unholsters a dinky pistol from her hip and empties a whole clip into him. He falls apart into smoke after the first three catch him in the shoulder, chest, and the mask, but she pursues him as he tries to ghost away. Winston is bellowing from afar, sprinting on all fours to shield his teammates from sniper fire. Mercy drops her weapon when the clip runs out, and as he regains physical form, the foot of her staff smashes into the owl skull protecting his head - once - twice - Ziegler twirls the Caduceus and smashes the functional end into his chin from below.

He sees stars. He’s forgotten how colorful they are.

too bright too much disgusting vile poison get away get away

Something in his chest is knocked free and he gasps. He’s breathing. The mask is gone and there’s the chilly evening breeze on his face. Ziegler screams. An unholy shriek answers her, and he’s heard that noise before, once. It latched onto his bones and hasn’t let go for seven years.

The night sky rushes to swallow him.

***

He comes to in a bed. A familiar scent surrounds him, but it takes a while to register. This is what a medbay smells like. He breathes in - breathes out - he hasn’t thought about breathing in so long - breathes in - he hasn’t breathed in so long -

“Gabriel?”

He’s hyperventilating, he’s dimly aware of it, and he fights through his body’s responses, trying hard to observe every detail of his surroundings at once. His muscles tense and pain blocks out his senses, and he tries to dissolve into smoke, but his body remains stubbornly flesh and bone. Some machinery starts beeping angrily, and he wants to hit it to make it stop, but his wrists are bound, and blind panic overtakes him. Nothing feels right, there are alarmed voices shouting all around him and he can’t see, can’t move, can’t think -

A wave of nausea washes over him and he loses consciousness again.

***

The next time he is awake, someone is snoring to his left. His vision is still blocked, but he manages to fight down the fear this elicits in him. He takes stock of what he knows about his situation.

Mercy knocked him out, and for some reason… the Reaper is gone.

He sets that thought aside for later deliberation.

He’s in a medbay, probably on the Gibraltar watchpoint he was attacking - how long ago? He has no way of telling. His body feels like heavy roadworks machinery drove over him, but the last reliable point of reference for what it should feel like is well and truly outdated. He can smell a faint trace of decay among the scent of sterilisers, medication, and cleaning products. There’s also a hint of cigar smoke that’s painfully familiar.

There’s a lull in the snoring, and a creak of the chair the person must be sitting in.

“Y’all’dn’t’ve, …” comes a sleepy murmur, followed by a loud snore. Gabriel Reyes is on the verge of tears, or maybe hysterical laughter. Jesse McCree came to watch him and fell asleep.

He tentatively moves a hand, and tries not to feel bitter about the restraints still firmly clasped around his wrists. He can feel IV tubes trailing along both his forearms, and bandages covering most of his body. He feels sluggish, probably firmly under the influence of some or other sedative being pumped into him.

The room he’s in must be small, if the soundscape is anything to go by. They are probably holding him in a containment cell, but why would Jesse be in the room with him? Perhaps they fitted some nook of the base with prison bars. His mind briefly flashes to all the reasons they would want to keep him imprisoned, and has to forcibly bring the layout of the watchpoint to the forefront of his mind lest chaotic shreds of the past five years overwhelm him. He goes over his memories of the sprawling facility instead.

“Hola, Gabe.”

He startles, and curses colorfully. “Sombra?”

“The one and only,” and he can hear her wicked grin in her tone. He wonders if she’s camouflaged, and his mind supplies the image of a vanishing Cheshire Cat, with its too many teeth and keen eyes disappearing just a little while after all the rest. He huffs a small laugh.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Better than you,” she answers.

“This tells me absolutely nothing and you know it,” he says. She laughs quietly.

“I’m not bed-bound, literally or figuratively, and not under surveillance, if that puts your poor heart to rest.”

He grunts, appeased. “What’s my status?”

“Really, Gabe? Ever the soldier,” she teases. “No one knows how, but when the good doctor knocked you out, she beat the whole evil wraith thing out of you. It was really fun to watch. Anyway, you dropped to the ground, and this cloud of black smoke with your mask attached just… slunk away somewhere. You’re in a repurposed medbay room. The cowboy is sleeping off an entire bottle of whiskey, and yeah, he snuck into your holding cell. He gave a very dramatic monologue at you earlier. I can show you a recording when Ziegler unwraps your eyes later.”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

Sombra hesitates for a heartbeat before answering. “I didn’t read through the files too closely. Ziegler spent, like, thirty hours operating on you right after your scuffle. She thinks you’re gonna need some implant in your right eye, but the left should work normally once you recover. As for the rest, well, Blackwatch has always had a knack for refurbishing ridiculously large portions of human body, no?”

He groans. “What does that mean,” he demands, trying to fight the unease.

“Well,” Sombra starts, and by the tone of her voice, he knows he’s in for a gruesome report. “Half of your organs are suspended halfway through the process of rotting, but most of your muscles, the nervous system, and skin are mending. I’m making air quotes, because, according to Doc Z, they don’t work like any organism known to her. A lucky mix of SEP and being possessed by an eldritch abomination, I suppose? By the way, you never shared that the Hot Topic take on Lovecraft wasn’t one hundred percent you. I wouldn’t live down people thinking that about me, Gabrielito.”

“You had color-changing pieces of neon plastic implanted on the skin of your head purely for the aesthetic, and you’re judging me?” Gabriel finds himself genuinely amused. He laughs softly, then louder. He cannot stop. “Hot Topic Lovecraft, oh god.”

Don’t think about the rest of what she said.

He keeps laughing until he starts coughing. He hears Sombra’s nails clink on glass, and her jacket rustle when she leans in closer. “I’m giving you water, here’s a straw,” she says, and a small plastic tube pokes him in the chin.

“Isn’t it going to leak out through a hole in my back or something?” he manages.

“At least it’ll be funny,” she answers. He grunts, not voicing his dissent.

The water feels divine in his mouth and throat, and he lets out a small noise after the first gulp. Sombra holds his head back when he tries to chase the half-emptied glass.

“Lay back,” she says. “You’ll be sick...er if you drink too much at once.”

“I don’t think I can feel any worse than this,” he grumbles.

“Have you never learned that things can always get worse?” Sombra counters. She sounds gentler than usual, and it instantly sours Gabriel’s mood.

“Should I even be awake?” he asks, hating the tightness in his throat. He swallows and winces.

“Nah,” says Sombra, voice back to its usual, sassy tone. “You burn through the sedatives faster than Mercy thought. Want me to crank them up for you?”

He hesitates. He hates the thought of being prone and unaware, but he doesn’t want to lie awake, nauseous and in pain, until someone comes to prod at him in the morning, asking questions and demanding… something for certain. Sombra picks up on his train of thought faster than he can come to a decision.

“For what it’s worth, I believe you’re in no danger here, and I’ll stick around. I can wake you up before anyone comes to see you.”

“Will you be safe?”

Sombra just chuckles.

“Sombra!”

“Shh,” she puts a finger on his mouth. “Don’t wake the sleeping cowboy. I’ll be fine.”

He just sighs. He feels so tired. “Okay. Knock me out.”

He can hear Sombra clicking, and he is pulled under. The last thought in his mind is about what might have happened with the Reaper.