aperture_high | (no subject)

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[Jack is not necessarily a patient person--during the Crisis, he'd made something of a name for himself rushing headfirst into things, seeing what needed to get done and doing it, drawing a straight line from point A to point B. No amount of criticism for it really broke him of the habit, which is why Ana was so valuable to him. Having her back tempers him in a way few others can, especially when their current mission is one that requires some measure of subtlety and caution.

This, however, has been agonizing. Reyes has been one step ahead of them for far too long, and Jack is starting to get frustrated with leads to nowhere, or brief encounters that end with him slipping through their fingers. Jack has been in pursuit ghosts for six years, and he's starting to get tired. All he can really do is hope that this time their plan works, and that maybe Gabriel's just as through with running as they are with chasing.

Between both him and Ana, they've managed to corner him, he's fairly sure. Backed into an old safe house with little room to fight and nowhere to run, Gabriel is going to have to face them both sooner or later. Jack is expecting this to get ugly, so despite the fact that he wants nothing more than to bust right in and get down to business (as is his wont), he recognizes that this might take a more delicate hand.

Read: Ana. Ana should go first.]

You want to do the honors?

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[This isn't her style - the part where they're about to get up close and personal with a very real physical threat. Not that she thinks she can't hold her own (she's older now, but she gets her shots off at close range too), or that she doesn't trust Jack to get her the range she might need. This, cornering a target and the target knowing it isn't her wheelhouse. That's why she can't shake the unease crawling under her flesh, she tells herself; it has nothing to do with the brief glimpse she'd caught of Gabriel behind his mask all those months ago, and it has nothing to do with the fact that once she would've trusted the man as implicitly as she does the one beside her now.

But it's fine. She's here to make things better, not worse. She likes to imagine it won't come to that.

(She'll kill an old friend if she needs to. She doesn't need to make peace with that for it to be true. --Though cn he even die now?, a smaller part of her might wonder if she let herself.)

Doing anything but jumping Gabriel with her pistol drawn might be irrational, but she's determined to not unholster the handgun until absolutely necessary. Which is why when she steps up to make her way down from the safehouse's roof by way of the rickety old fire escape, Ana is empty handed. It's all right. She can draw pretty quickly if pressed.]

Always a gentleman, Jack.

[Will Gabriel try to run? There's only two of them and no one on the safehouse's door. They could've run a tripwire in the hall, but he's fully capable of drifting straight through one now isn't he? No, if he wanted to he'd be gone already, she thinks as she swings her leg over the ladder and descends quickly and quietly to the correct landing.

There's a window there - locked, of course, though it takes no effort to bypass it. Maybe that's on purpose too. No matter. She raises it in its framw, let's the warm Turkish air murmur past her into the room, then slides in after it with a soft clack of her boot heels.]

[Six years doesn't sound like such a long time in theory, but in practice (when you've been hunting and on the run at the same time) the time stretches on far too long. The sound of Ana's heels catch Reaper's attention first. He'd known they were coming long before that -- if he hadn't, Jack likely already would have gunned him down. That was what their 20 year relationship had turned into -- taking whatever shot they could any time they got the chance, and hoping one struck in a critical place.

Reaper is older now. His resurrection sickness has worn him down as much as his anger had worn at his sanity when he was still alive. His decays don't recover as quickly as they used to, his headaches last for days at a time, and he's tired. But as tired as he is, he's also committed to see Jack Morrison pay for what he did to him.

Of course he would send Amari in first is what runs through his head, clawed fingers curling with frustration. Of all the times he'd run up against them, Ana had carefully measured her response to protect herself and her family without taking him out. He can't imagine it was anything more than inexperience dealing with a ghost like him; but he's had time to think about just how many enemies he's made.

He'd thought Ana was dead as long as Jack had -- and maybe she never knew it, but she had been the glue holding them together. When she disappeared, everything had fallen apart. And while Ana might not have come back from the literal dead as Reyes had, she understood some of his struggle.

Reaper's growl echoes off the wall of the safehouse. He was a super soldier. Ana was a sniper. The disadvantage was easy to see, but Jack had told her to go in first anyway. It strokes the chip on his shoulder, makes his chest swell with indignation for his once-friend.]

Still taking orders from Morrison, Amari?

[There's a low hollow light coming in from the street through the open window behind her, but it's dark in the safe house itself and her shadow stretches long before her. It melts into the rest of the room and her eye strains after it to parse any shift or curl of smoke.

She doesn't stray far from the window. Maybe that too is an old habit - stay somewhere an ally can see you if they're looking, though it paints her against the light for Gabriel's benefit as well.]

The ones that suit me. [On the rooftop, she might have dreaded hearing him talk - something revolting in the unatural drag of his voice -, but she's put it out of her mind now.] I don't remember us being very good at respecting rank and file to begin with. Do you?

Edited 2016-12-19 19:01 (UTC)

Bullshit.

[Everyone respected Morrison more than they respected him--even if that wasn't what Ana was getting at, it always rounded back to the same thing. Reyes saw nothing but his own thirst for vengeance in a wrong he would never be able to correct. Even if what she said was mostly true, that Overwatch functioned upon its own principles and not what the UN had set forth for them, he wouldn't favor it.

She doesn't have her rifle. He can't see it in her silhouette. Only an idiot would have come to him without a weapon, even with the rest of the world closing in on them. A very brave idiot, with back up.]

You think because Talon is gone that I am going to change my mind.

[He was only ever using them anyway. Amelie and Sombra--all of them were nothing but resources in his crusade against his once-family.]

Telling you that you're wrong has never gotten anyone far, Gabriel.

[No, I think because Talon is gone that you have no other option, but there's no world in which that's smart to say.]

Would you tell me why you think so? Wouldn't it be easier for us to come here for another reason?

[Her pistol is light, modified to perform in close quarters under fire circumstances with the absolute least strain possible. Maybe he can see it in the dark, or maybe he can't but surely he doesn't think she's come unprepared. She's been wrong before, but she isn't so stupid that shed face him as he is unarmed-- or without the bug in her jacket collar feeding this whole conversation to Jack as they speak.]

At least you've got that much figured out.

[Reaper's hands aren't visible for a very obvious reason. He doesn't hold any delusions that they didn't come here to do anything but kill him -- or maybe he wouldn't have, if not for one little detail:]

You've got your shot. If that's what you came to do, then take it.

[Amari hesitated once, and she lost an eye for it. He can't imagine she's making the same mistake twice.]

[He's there, lurking in the dark though it's hard to make out the shape of him from her vantage. The minor contrast is hard on her one eye, depth perception untrustworthy at this range. Not so for him, she thinks. There would be no mistaking the movement of she chose to reach for her pistol now.

So for her sake (and his and Jack's and, she believes, others), her hands remain loose at her sides.]

I won't fuel this mission of yours. If you want to hurt me, it won't be because I tried to take you down first.

[The idea of sending Ana in first--backwards and risky as it is--had been largely to stop Reaper from erupting into a rage the moment he laid eyes on his worst enemy. If Jack had been the one to initiate this conversation, it would have gone nowhere and erupted into violence almost immediately. Ana taking a stab at it first lessens those odds enough that Jack is willing to take that chance. His entrance will need to be carefully calculated, as he doesn't want to get this close only to have Reyes flee. He and Ana have told each other that this was going to be it, which means he's going to do everything in his power to make sure they don't fuck it up. He's tired of chasing and hunting only to have Gabriel vanish all over again. One way or another, they're going to make some kind of breakthrough.

Easier said than done, of course. Jack has been listening to the conversation the whole time, staked out close enough that he can flank Reyes and extricate Ana if the situation takes a turn for the worse. He may have sent her in first, but he's not going to let her get hurt because of it.

Unfortunately, it seems Reaper isn't exactly interested in reaching any kind of truce, and Jack isn't sure what he can say to change his mind. If Ana can't get throug to him, he's not sure who can.]

Tell him we're not here to fight.

You went with Morrison. You can't talk your way around it.

[There's no sense in hiding his jealousy -- it was the fuel that powered his entire scheme, and it hadn't been a secret for some time. He'd spent too many of his years shedding his own blood for Overwatch -- for a family that didn't care about him like he cared about them. Reaper comes out from the corner he had put himself in, now confident that 76 wasn't in shot a good enough range to take advantage of his movement.

He hadn't had much of a chance to talk to Ana in the past few years, for a very good and obvious reason, but he wasn't just about to let her off the hook.]

Morrison drowned what we built, and you still went back to him.

[Jack's voice is a tinny grumble in her ear, overlapping enough with Gabriel that it might be difficult to parse the two if they weren't so equally frank - if the shape of the man melting forward through the darkness didn't hone every part of her to a point.

Ana clucks her tongue. Fear is for children, she thinks, and raises her hands to the height of her shoulders. Jack may be done with fighting, but she's just getting started.]

Come now, Gabe. I'm flattered, but let's not pretend this is all about me.

[He's moving now, not at all certain this isn't about to get very ugly very quickly, wondering if he hasn't made a fatal mistake. Jack tries to be as quick and quiet as possible, repositioning so that he can at least see them. It's a risk, because any movement on his part increases the chances that Reaper will realize he's there.

If he doesn't already know. He probably already knows.]

Don't fight him, Ana.

[There's warning in his voice--obviously, he can't stop them if the two of them want to throw down, but he'll be adamant that they should avoid that if at all possible, and he can sense that's where this might be going. He reminds himself that they're technically prepared for this. Reyes might not want to accept the evidence that the whole thing was just one huge international conspiracy, but they're going to have to tell him either way.]

We have the files. He'll know they're real.

[Even if he doesn't want them to be.]

Its not all about you.

[He practically snarls it, the points of his shoulders going rigid as his anger begins to get the better of him. Did she really think she had never mattered? Had Jack so thoroughly convinced her that he was always going to forget about them? Or maybe he'd just read her wrong all those years -- that seemed more likely, all of a sudden. He'd let himself be distracted by the bond he'd thought he had.

Perhaps the first time he hadn't blamed Jack Morrison for something out of his control. That doesn't make it sting any less.]

He destroyed everything when we finally traced the God Program virus leaks, and dropped a building on us to keep his name clear. But I'm sure he didn't tell you that, did he?

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