#morreyeson

He could have sworn only fifteen seconds of making sure all the hostages were safely accounted for aboard the transport when Mirembe touched his arm.

“Sir, it’s been two minutes. We have to take off,” she said. There was still a splash of sticky brown-red across the honey-gold curls framing her face from where Bayless’s blood had spurted onto her.

“Amari will be coming,” said Jack, “And once she re-establishes contact over the comms and confirms the enemy sniper is downed, we can go back for Bayless and Al-Faroukh.”

“and Singh,” said Mirembe.

“...and Singh,” said Jack, his stomach hollowing.

“...And Klevstav...” Kimiko’s voice was hollow.

“...Klevstav, too,” said Jack.

“Wh--I’m sorry, you’re waiting!?” one of the hostages piped up, “You can leave and you’re waiting?!”

“Khassan--” another hostage touched his shoulder.

“Captain Amari is a vital agent--” Jack started.

“I’m sorry, but I had the barrel of a talon rifle down my throat 11 minutes ago, and you’re waiting for someone who’s probably dead! We all saw what that sniper could do! They’re dead! The only chance we have is getting out of here!”

“You’re hysterical, sit down, shut up and let us--” Kimiko started but Jack put a hand up.

“...Drone intel says Talon forces are regrouping,” said Mirembe, looking at her own HUD, “If we stay here too long...”

He took a steadying breath. “I did say wheels up in two minutes,” said Jack. He turned toward the ship’s cockpit, “Ray, get us out of here.”

“But sir--” said Kimiko.

“...Amari ignored a direct order and clicked out of the comms,” said Jack, “That was her prerogative. If she hasn’t called in, we have to assume the worst. Our priority is to get the hostages to safety.” It’s what she would do, if she were here, thought Jack. His stomach turned at the thought.

Kimiko paled and Mirembe slumped into her seat.

“Ray?” said Jack to the cockpit, “You heard me.”

“...Right, sir,” said Ray, and the ship started thrumming as it lifted off.

Jack took his own seat and strapped in as the smoking city shrank beneath them.

----

If the two minutes passed in an instant back on the mission, getting off the dropship back in Zurich felt like an eternity. They were able to drop the hostages off at another Watchpoint in Krakow before continuing on to Zurich. The sky was sickly yellow with a sun-through-fog twilight when they touched down. It wasn’t the first time he had lost a soldier, but Ana was far more than just a soldier. He would never forget the look in Gabe’s eyes as the remains of the strike team emerged from the ship. Jack had sent him a short briefing before they landed, told him what happened, but that searching look in Gabriel’s eyes told him that it hadn’t sunk in, and why should it? Of the three of them, both he and Gabe were so sure Ana would outlive them both. The way he lingered, still staring at the open door of the Orca as Jack made his way down to him, made every step sting. She was gone. LaCroix, then Liao, and now her. She hit differently.

“Gabe,” Jack started.

“I talked to Sojourn,” the words fell out of Gabe’s mouth, his eyes not meeting Jack’s, “She’s heading a task force to take on the brunt of Ana’s duties until we can name her as official replacement and the dust settles with the UN.”

Jack’s mouth was hanging open slightly. The orca’s engines were still humming in the silence between them, giving that silence a body and bringing its weight down on them.

“Good,” Jack said, just as hollowly, “That’s... good. Sojourn--yes. She’s good.”

Gabriel took him up in a hug and he returned the embrace. It was tight, there was some relief in the tension of their arms around each other. Jack wanted to wring his fingers against the cloth of Gabriel’s hoodie, press his face just under Gabe’s ear and breathe in his scent, but he settled for pressing his jaw against the top of Gabe’s shoulder. Their relationship was far from secret to most of Overwatch’s staff, but there was only so much intimacy they could express there on Zurich’s tarmac. The pain they would bear together, that true stinging ugly grief that made you want to scream and cry and throw up, that grief that felt like a severed chord leaving you adrift in space, could not be borne here. They knew that as they both gently loosened the embrace. Here, their only comfort was the work. And there was always plenty of work.

“I’ve already organized with our security forces in Krakow,” Jack went on, “We’ll get boots on the ground. Come back with a bigger strike team and work with local law enforcement. Comb the area for her.”

For her body.

Gabriel gave a stiff nod. “She could have been captured,” he said, glancing off. But the briefing had told him more than enough. A sniper like that wasn’t there to take prisoners.

“She got you back safe,” said Gabe, “She always did.”

----

The sheets were in disarray from being pulled over him and pushed off of him multiple times. The smoke detector on the ceiling stared down at him with red, unblinking indifference. The bed was too soft. Gabriel was lying on his stomach, his arm draped across Jack’s chest, his fingertips curling at his temple. Memories of the Crisis always made sleep a complicated subject, but Gabe helped. The fear wasn’t quite the same when Gabe was there--he was afraid of losing him, sure, but at the same time, he always felt like they could take on anything so long as they had each others’ backs, and yet, (and this was that rotten, clawing grief) that invulnerability didn’t seem to be there anymore.

 He remembered Ana playfully swatting them both upside their heads when they’d get too caught up in their own inside jokes and they had to re-focus on the mission, impressive, considering her height. He remembered her showing them pictures of Fareeha every time Sam sent her an update from home. He remembered her easily taking them down a few notches when they got too cocky, or reasoning away any self doubt with only a few well-chosen words. He remembered the three of them taking shelter in the bathroom of a shelled out hotel room in the worst of the crisis, she had taken the tub, forcing Jack and Gabe to lean on each other against the cracked tile wall. And then the next morning she obnoxiously stretched and went on about what a good night’s sleep she got while Jack and Gabe were grumbling and stiffly rolling their shoulders.

But now she was gone, and the bed was too damn soft.

Jack’s eyes flicked over to the comm on his bedside table and he picked up the comm.

“It’s going to be offline,” Gabe’s voice was half muffled into the pillow.

Jack pretended not to hear him, or pretended to assume he was talking in his sleep as he scrolled to Ana Amari’s comm status on his comm.

OFFLINE.

He huffed and set the comm back on the bedside table, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“Told you,” said Gabe.

Jack shot a sharp look over at him and Gabe’s eyes opened, brown, shining, framed by dark lashes. That snark of his was just as much a weapon as a shield. Jack sighed and readjusted himself in bed and brushed his fingertips along the side of Gabe’s closely-cropped hair. Time was not being kind to either of their hairlines, and Gabe loved blaming it on the SEP serum.

“You can talk about it,” said Gabe, turning on his side and bringing his hand up over Jack’s.

“We shouldn’t have been on the mission,” said Jack.

“Mm?” Gabriel’s eyes sharpened slightly.

“I know we said the second we permanently go behind the desk, that’s the second we forget the stakes for everyone we put out there but...” Jack trailed off.

“You think she died because you’re old!?” said Gabriel pushing up against the pillows.

“I don’t know--I--”

“She died because there was a sniper on a level none of us were prepared for, because Talon doesn’t care about fair engagement and Talon’s willing to pump its soldiers with whatever nightmarish crap it can to get an edge in a fight.”

“So maybe I should have pumped myself with nightmarish crap like you?” the words slipped out of Jack.

The shift in Gabriel’s expression made Jack realize his words came from a deeper place of resentment than just his own fury at himself. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m--”

“I get it. Grieving,” Gabriel glanced off.

“I’m sorry,” said Jack.

“I know,” said Gabe, taking his hand off of Jack’s and lying on his back, making Jack pull his own hand away, “I hate it too. If Blackwatch wasn’t benched, maybe we would have had the intel...”

“Gabe, you have no idea how much better I would feel if I could put your teams back out there, but there has to be accountability---”

“Talon doesn’t give a shit about accountability and you know it’s going to keep using the fact that we do to hurt people. To kill people,” said Gabe, “We know what we’re up against and we know needs to be done, not some cardboard standee in the UN pearl-wringing about their voter polls and corporate backers. But when they tie our hands and people die because we can’t do shit, apparently that’s our accountability,” Gabe was gripping the mattress cover, the cloth clenched taught in a starburst of wrinkles under his fist.

“Gabe,” Jack touched on his shoulder.

“I should have been there,” Gabe’s voice seemed smaller, he was trying to half-stuff it into the pillows, “If it had been the three of us...” it wavered, weak, tinged with a song-like pitch of a near-crack, “If it had been the three of us...”

Jack sank down and curled around him and that first shuddering sob that came out of Gabe was all that was needed to break the levees for both of them. Jack couldn’t recall the last time either of them cried this hard--a wet convulsion surging up from the diaphragm, breath looping hot back into the lungs with those gasping sobs, tears saturating faces and pillowcases and sheets, so much snot he’d almost laugh for a second because he felt ridiculous before it all came surging up and breaking down again.

You’re laughing and she’s not here.

Hands tense on skin, fingers digging into muscles, just as much clawing as hugging, they buried their tears and their cries into each other. Maybe if Gabe had the strength to bring his walls back up he’d manage a few sob-choked words about both of them being grown ass men, but the strength wasn’t there. Despite all the crap the SEP program and Moira had pumped into them, it granted no defense against a loss so profound. Their captain. Their team. Their friend. Their family. And at some point it wasn’t just Ana anymore. It was Gérard. It was Mina. It was Bayless and Singh and Al-Faroukh and Klevstav. It was every bright-eyed dumbass kid who had gotten themselves killed following the wrong order from him. It was this great open wound of a world that was eating away at more and more of who they were and what they fought for and how they loved each other. Jack and Gabriel let the grief submerge them both, pushing and surging up in them with their breaths like waves in a storm.

Hold me until this rips me apart, thought Jack, and maybe then it will stop. Maybe then I can rest.

-----

They never recovered the body. That was the worst of it. The Polish government was able to deliver the bodies of Bayless, Al-Faroukh, Singh, and Klevstav, but Ana was nowhere to be found. They had combed through photos of bodies in hospital morgues, but none of them were her. The media had a feeding frenzy with that. And then they had to bring up the Ecopoint: Antarctica fiasco as well. “How many loved ones has Overwatch failed to bring home?”

The memorial service was... pretty nice, for an overcast day. Just a humble little ceremony with laurel wreaths framing holo-portraits of the deceased flanking both sides of the memorial wall, with Ana’s own portrait placed at the center in front of the podium where various teammates and family members gave their eulogies. The bodies themselves were being shipped back to their respective countries, to let their families and militaries put them to rest in their own ways, but there was still a ceremony to put their names up on Zurich’s memorial wall and let their coworkers say a few works and make their goodbyes.

Nearly every Overwatch member not currently on a mission was there. Jack scanned across the crowd. Mercy looked exhausted, as usual, smudges of sleeplessness and mascara around her eyes from her own stuffed down crying. She was comforting a sobbing Tracer with Torbjörn sitting next to her, looking about as stone-faced as he could but letting out a stubborn sniffle every now and then. Genji looked on, arms folded, caught between the desire to help the clearly distraught Tracer and a clear sense of his inability to do so. McCree had tried to clean himself up as much as he could for the ceremony, but Jack could feel his hangover from across the headquarters’ green. Jack didn’t judge him. They all mourned in their own ways.

He and Gabe gave their own eulogies, both relieved they had gotten the worst of their cries out a few nights previous. They were both able to hold it down, give the people in the audience something to lean on. As the speeches and ceremony ended, everyone in the audience stood up in a gently coasting line, the line itself gliding past the memorial wall, each of them passing a hand over the new names carved into it. Jack watched as Reinhardt took up the tail end of the line, of course he had been sitting in the back so as to not block anyone’s view with his massive size. Jack watched as Reinhardt quietly brushed the back of his knuckles against the names on the wall--some of them probably his own soldiers, before stopping at the wall’s end and the new names there. He pressed his forehead against the stone and Jack watched as Reinhardt’s massive shoulders shook with a few suppressed sobs before Torbjörn stepped up and led him off.

If it had been the three of us... Gabe’s voice echoed in his mind.

If it had been the old team... thought Jack.

The memorial assembly was walking to the Headquarters’ reception hall for a light lunch and drinks. Jack and Gabe trailed at the end of the party, while McCree lingered by the memorial wall a bit longer. 

“...You’re going to talk to him later, right?” said Jack looking back at McCree.

“Yeah,” said Gabe, “He wouldn’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn without Ana so... he’s taking it pretty hard. ‘Course he has to do the cowboy tough guy thing about it...”

“Mm,” Jack kept his eyes on the patent leather of his formal shoes as he walked. 

“Commander Morrison?” A voice that sounded like Ana’s did back in the Crisis threw Jack off-kilter for a few moments as he turned around. He had barely gotten a glimpse of the woman’s face before he felt a fist collide with his cheek. She hit hard. He reeled back and he heard a dozen guns loading in his defense as he was splayed out onto the cement by the force of the blow.

“Fareeha!” Sam stepped in and put a hand on Fareeha Amari’s shoulder.

Jack’s eyes trailed up to a tall woman in a formal Egyptian special forces uniform, a beret embellished with a gold-stitched eagle, and her sleek black hair tied back in a bun, save for a few gold beads hanging at her temples. A wadjet tattoo, but on the wrong eye.

The pain of the blow didn’t even really set in. All Jack could think was, ‘God, is that how old she is now? She punches like her mother.’

Her mother.

“You left her to die and you couldn’t even bring her home,” there was a fury rippling deep in Fareeha’s throat.

“Stand down,” Reyes stepped between her and Jack, “Don’t make this more of a spectacle than it already is.”

Jack could hear the rapid clicks of camera shutters from the crowd in the parking lot around him as he pushed up to a seated position on the concrete, he coughed and felt at his jaw.

“It’s okay, Gabe,” he said, as Gabe took his arm and helped him to his feet.

“No, it’s not okay!” said Fareeha, brown eyes glittering with tears, “She gave everything to this organization and you--you---!” 

She choked back a sob and Sam put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged his hand off and walked off furiously, hugging herself as she did so.

“I...” Sam looked after her, “I’m sorry, she and Ana... the last things they said to each other...”

“You don’t have to apologize for her,” said Jack, still feeling at his jaw. 

“She can do that herself,” said Gabe, looking at the growing bruise on Jack’s jaw.

“She needs time. It’s not like back in the crisis,” said Sam glancing down, “Back then you could just say, ‘They were vaporized’ or something crazy like that and... and you just had to deal with it. I know sometimes there are things that you’re never going to get closure on but...you never think it’s going to be something like this huh?”

Jack glanced back at the memorial wall, where several Overwatch staffers were shifting the memorial wreaths around, one wheeling away the podium as the clouds overhead threatened rain. One of the staffers took Ana’s wreath from its stand in front of the podium, her holo-portrait blinking into nothingness with the movement.