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McCree swears, kicking out in anger and knocking over a chair. If the guards hadn't known where they were before, they almost certainly do now.
Genji doesn't need to ask what had upset him. Genji had been listening to the same comms, had heard Commander Reyes' voice cut off mid-sentence with a grunt. He'd heard the sounds of a struggle, followed by some gunshots. He'd heard the Commander's voice, far away, and then the ominous crunch of an earpiece being stepped on.
It certainly hadn't sounded good, but it hadn't sounded like anything they couldn't handle. The Commander was alive, and some of Blackwatch's finest were in the building. They'd saved Bennett and Amirali from something much worse less than a year ago, with less prep and fewer agents on hand. He knows what has upset McCree, but he doesn't understand why.
Genji's enhanced hearing picks up the sound of many heavy footfalls, headed their way. He steps closer to McCree, reaches out a tentative hand to touch his arm.
"McCree, we must go."
"Go where?" McCree hisses back.
"Anywhere but here. There are--" he pauses, concentrating on what he's hearing, "--at least five hostiles on their way here. We must go now."
McCree does not move, just keeps staring at the chair he'd kicked over.
"It will do the Commander no good if you are injured or killed."
McCree looks up at that, seeming to snap out of whatever funk he'd momentarily been in. He follows Genji to the exit opposite where all the hostiles are coming in, and the two of them hurry though a series of identical rooms and up a flight of stairs, McCree leading the way. When Genji compares their path to the mission briefing and the building layout, he realizes that they're heading towards where Commander Reyes ought to have been last seen, assuming he'd been following the mission plan.
McCree, for his part, is on the comms, talking rapidly to the other agents in the building and their support team on the outside. Edwards has been tasked with getting a last known location from Commander Reyes' comm. Valdez and Riemann have been directed to hold position near the bank of elevators on the sixth floor, which Domingo is busily working on gaining control of. The two remaining pairs of agents are to cover the three ground floor exits, and their pilot, Newton, is to keep her eyes on the helipad on the roof. No one is to leave the building without Blackwatch knowing about it.
"What about me?" Genji asks.
McCree stops, stares at him for a moment. "You're with me. We're going to the scene of the crime."
They walk in silence through a maze of rooms and hallways and stairwells, heading for what Edwards has confirmed was Commander Reyes' last known location. It's unmistakable when they get there: they find a literal pile of dead hostiles and the body of Agent Patrini. She's the one Commander Reyes had been paired with for this mission, and there is a bullet hole in her left thigh and one directly between her eyes.
McCree swears again and stoops to examine Patrini's body. Genji watches him press his fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse--futile, Genji could tell him that from here, even without his cybernetics--and then carefully close her eyes.
"We found Patrini," he says into his comm. "Domingo, you have the elevators yet?"
On the comms, Domingo says, "Yeah, boss." She corrects herself, calls him McCree, but not before McCree has gone stiff and unhappy.
On the ground, one of the hostiles' bodies twitches. Genji reacts faster than McCree does, unsheathing his sword and stabbing downwards into the pile. The twitching stops.
McCree rubs a hand over his eyes. "Riemann, Valdez, take the elevator up to the fifteenth, we'll meet you there."
They follow a trail of blood away from the scene; whether it's the Commander's or one of his attackers' is impossible to tell. The trail goes to the elevators and disappears into the leftmost elevator. Still, they halt there, waiting for the other agents to arrive. Genji feels himself bouncing on the soles of his feet, more impatient than anxious. These idiots have taken the Commander of Blackwatch, and they will surely feel the full wrath of Blackwatch for doing so. Genji can't wait.
The elevator dings, and Valdez and Riemann step out. McCree fills them in on the situation, gives them both a serious look. "Can just one of you handle getting Patrini's body back downstairs? I ain't sure we can spare both of you."
"I can," Valdez says.
"No, no, I can," Riemann interjects, "You're the field medic, Stef, so you stay with them, just... just in case." She pauses here, for just a moment too long. "I'll take care of Patrini. You guys go get Reyes back." With that, she casts a sidelong glance at McCree, then squares her shoulders and heads off in the direction Genji and McCree had come from.
Valdez looks at McCree too. Genji is obviously missing something--then again, he does not spend much time with his Blackwatch teammates outside of their missions, instead mostly preferring the solitude of training in his downtime. If something is up with McCree and the other agents, he certainly has not spent enough time with them to notice. It's never been a problem before, and he won't let it be a problem now.
"I'm sure he'll be okay--" Valdez starts to say, but McCree cuts her off, speaking through gritted teeth.
"Just--don't, Stef. Just don't. We've got a job to do."
The three of them that remain step up to the elevator that the blood trail leads to. "Domingo," McCree says into the comms, "How much of the elevator system do you have access to? Can you check to see what floor the left elevator last went to? Can you get us there?"
Domingo responds in the affirmative, and the three of them step into the elevator. There's a bloodstain on the elevator wall, dripping down into a puddle on the floor, as though the bleeding person had leaned there for a small while. They all step carefully around the puddle, and McCree's jaw works as the elevator door closes. They go up almost thirty floors.
After about eighteen floors, Genji feels like he ought to speak up. He's not sure why, really. He hears Commander Reyes' voice in his head, telling him not to fight angry, that he'll never win without a clear head--it's not a sentiment he subscribes to personally, but he's pretty sure it applies to McCree. He's also pretty sure that McCree thinks they're friends, in the way McCree is friends with everybody, through repeated shared proximity and brute-force cheerfulness and charm. A friend would help a friend be less angry. A friend would let a friend know that things are going to be okay.
That's probably why Genji says, "You know, you can lose a lot more blood than this and still be alive. Trust me, I know."
McCree takes a deep breath and lets it back out again. In retrospect, Genji's not sure he helped.
The blood trail picks up when the elevator doors open; Domingo has brought them to the right place. McCree raises a finger to his lips, and they make their way silently through the hallways, following the trail that's been left for them, all on high alert. The mission briefing hadn't covered anything this far up the building--although maybe it should have--but it's easy enough to guess the layout based on the floors they'd gone through below. They check each room as they go past; Commander Reyes is in none of them, and the blood trail continues. Genji watches as the line of McCree's back goes straighter and straighter the further they go.
The blood trail ends at a closed door. Jesse motions for them to backtrack, and they step into one of the empty rooms they passed so Jesse can whisper into the comms. "Edwards, you have a lock on our location?"
"Yeah. What do you guys need?"
McCree sighs and pinches at the bridge of his nose, then asks for any information Edwards has about the room where the trail had led them. "Layout, size, security, whose space it is, anything you've got that you think might be useful."
"Yeah, yeah, give me a minute," Edwards says.
"Not sure we have a minute," McCree mutters under his breath.
He probably doesn't mean for it to be picked up on the comms, but it is, and Edwards responds. "Look, Jesse, it'll be okay--"
"Will everybody stop fucking doing that? I'm fine, okay, I don't need your--" He stops, takes one deep breath, then two.
Genji raises an eyebrow at Valdez--should they be worried? The look he gets back from her is not particularly reassuring.
When McCree speaks again, his voice is low and cold. "We are professionals and we will cut the goddamn chatter. I don't want to hear another goddamn word from any of you unless it's about the mission. Everybody got it?"
There's a chorus of chastened affirmatives from the comms. Valdez moves closer to Genji, catches his eye and gives him another worried look.
"Who died and made him Commander?" Genji whispers to her, and she elbows him, hard. Brave.
"Not helping, Shimada," she whispers back.
Edwards comes back on the comms with the information McCree had asked. The room is large, ostensibly some kind of office space, owned by the group they're here for via three layers of shell corporation. There are security cameras inside that Domingo has partial access to, but for whatever reason all they can get are heat signatures, not visuals.
"So we can tell you for sure that there are eight people in that room, but not what the interior actually looks like." Edwards sounds apologetic. "Might be an actual office with cubicles and shit, might be a big empty room. Sorry we're not more help."
"One of these heat signatures is really hot," Domingo says.
"That's gotta be Reyes--that super-soldier stuff has him running real hot. He's alive." McCree's shoulders slump with relief. He, Domingo, and Edwards work out the details, where Commander Reyes is in the room and what entrance and exit strategies they have. Valdez is on the comms too, with the people McCree had reassigned to the building exits, directing them back towards the original mission objectives, trying to make sure this trip isn't a total wash.
As part of McCree's plan, Genji volunteers to go in through one of the vents and drop in from the ceiling, and McCree, thankfully, agrees. All of this bullshit, whatever it is, has been making him antsy; Genji has been itching for a fight and it sounds like he might finally get one.
The access point is further down the hallway, and Genji feels a brief flash of regret as he climbs up into the vent system. It's a tight fit, and even now, years after he'd first been given this body, there's still that twinge at its limitations, at the way it doesn't move like he wants it to, the way he unconsciously expects. Dr. Ziegler and the psychiatrist he's forced to go to, Dr. Harrington, both assure him that this is normal, even now, but he hates it. Now, though, there's a job to do, so he grabs hold of the hate and lets it clarify his vision, lets it propel him forward.
He crawls into position in the ceiling vent the other agents had described and takes in the scene below. There may be seven hostiles inside, but from here he can only spot four; the rest must be somewhere in the maze of stacked boxes at the other end of the room. Genji relays this information over the comms, his voice barely even a whisper.
"Can you see Reyes?" Valdez asks.
Genji cranes his head around; ah, yes, there he is, right where Domingo had described along the outside wall. Commander Reyes is pale, his eyes closed, seated or possibly just propped up against the wall. His Blackwatch gear is torn at the shoulder, and it looks like someone--presumably one of his captors--has made an attempt at bandaging up the wound there.
"He doesn't look good," Genji says aloud. "I'm going in."
"No, Genji, wait--" McCree is saying on the comms, but it's too late, Genji has already thrown open the grate and catapulted into the room. He takes out one of the hostiles before they even know he's there, and is headed for a second when he hears the main door to the room open and McCree and Valdez enter, guns blazing. The shooting draws the ones Genji hadn't managed to spot from the ceiling; two go for Commander Reyes, and then McCree calls out step right up, assholes and somehow shoots the other three of them simultaneously? Genji is pretty sure he ought to be disconcerted by this sudden display of almost otherworldly skill, but honestly, it's no stranger than his own dragonblade--and there are still two hostiles left, headed straight for the Commander.
The hostiles skid up next to Commander Reyes. Hostile One has a gun out and pointed at the Commander's head; Hostile Two seems to be a little slower on the uptake, fumbling with the holster on his belt as he turns to face the Blackwatch agents.
"Stop right there!" Hostile One shouts. "Don't come any closer!" Genji hears the waver in his voice, sees the slight tremor in his stance.
McCree and Valdez stop immediately, raising their hands in a placating gesture. Valdez sets her gun on the floor, but McCree's is still in his raised hand, pointing carelessly at the ceiling. Genji sheathes his sword and softens his stance, making it look as though he does not intend to come any closer, as though he certainly does not have a full complement of shuriken waiting at the ready.
"What exactly do you think you're doing here?" McCree asks. His hands are still up, but he sounds calm. Confident. In charge. "Because you're outnumbered here, friends, and your gambit depends on me believing that you'd shoot the man you were willing to drag all over this building instead of leave to die where you found him. Look at you--" McCree gestures at them, still holding his gun, and Genji smirks behind his faceplate when the men don't react, "--you even patched him up. Don't want him bleeding out on the floor after you went to all this trouble. So what's your plan?"
The hostiles exchange a look, and then Hostile Two starts babbling. "He's a hostage! And a dead hostage is good to nobody at all!"
"Why is he your hostage? Why just him? Why not both of the people you found?"
Hostile Two scoffs. "Are you kidding? You know how much ransom we would get in exchange for the guy who leads Overwatch?!"
"Please stop talking, Carl," Hostile One mutters.
"See, now, I see a couple flaws in your plan here," McCree says. Is Genji imagining it, or has his drawl gotten more pronounced? "Firstly, a bright, shiny organization like Overwatch ain't gonna negotiate with an organization like yours. You're gonna call 'em, they're gonna stall and they're gonna send in a team like mine to do the retrieval. You've managed to skip a few steps in the process, but your result is gonna be very much the same."
McCree takes a step towards the three of them, and neither of the hostiles makes a move to stop him.
"Secondly," he continues, "The guy you've got there, he's not the head of Overwatch."
"I told you!" Hostile One hisses. "I told you this was the wrong guy!"
Hostile Two makes a face. "Come on, I would've sworn he was the head of Overwatch! I know I saw his face on the posters, and, like, on the news and shit. And you know everyone else agreed with me!"
"The head of Overwatch is a white guy named Morrison--blond, chin like Clark Kent, smirk like an asshole." Valdez and Genji both laugh at McCree's description. The hostiles look even more unsettled. "You don't believe me? Look it up."
Hostile Two pulls his phone out of a pocket of his jumpsuit and starts typing on it furiously. Hostile One keeps his gun pointed at Commander Reyes and his eyes firmly on McCree. Genji watches Hostile Two closely, turning slightly to keep both entrances to the room in his peripheral vision. It seems unlikely at this point that he's using his phone to call for backup, but they can't be too cautious.
With the hand that's not holding his gun, McCree makes a minute hand sign: be ready.
Hostile Two swears. "Shit. He's right, Vincent. He's right, that Morrison guy is in charge of Overwatch. Look at this." He holds his phone out to Hostile One, who resists looking at it for a moment before glancing down--
And just like that, McCree has his gun up and is firing. Hostile One takes a bullet between the eyes, and Hostile Two gets three of Genji's shuriken in the neck in very quick succession. Hostile One slumps to the floor; Hostile Two goes down less cleanly, clawing at his neck and gurgling until Genji walks over and uses his sword to put the man out of his misery.
McCree rushes over to Commander Reyes, crouches next to him and checks his pulse. Genji gives Valdez a curious look as she walks closer--isn't she the field medic?--but he gets no answers from her, just a level look and a half-shrug.
Commander Reyes' eyes flutter open. He looks confused for a moment, and then his eyes focus on McCree and he smiles. "Jesse. You're here."
McCree yanks out his earpiece and sets it on the floor before answering, his voice soft, "Yeah, Gabe, I'm here. You think I could leave you?"
Commander Reyes reaches up and grips the sleeve of McCree's shirt--McCree hadn't removed his hand where it was on the Commander's neck, checking his pulse. McCree leans forward, pressing their foreheads together. As Genji watches, Commander Reyes tips his face up and kisses McCree, and it looks like McCree kisses back.
Genji's head whips around as Valdez starts speaking on the comms. "We have Reyes. He's lost a lot of blood, but he's conscious. He's--" She pauses, nudges McCree with the toe of her boot, and he jerks away from the Commander, looking a little embarrassed. "Reyes, you think you can walk?"
Commander Reyes shifts in place, then winces. "Not sure. I don't think you'll have to carry me, but help me get up and we'll see."
McCree grabs his earpiece off the floor and puts it back into his ear, then maneuvers himself down under Commander Reyes' right arm and lifts both of them up off the floor. Commander Reyes makes a pained noise as he's being lifted, but doesn't actually complain. Without being asked to, Genji tucks himself carefully under the Commander's left arm; most of his weight is on McCree's side, where the bleeding wound isn't, but Genji knows he has to be ready to take however much he needs to.
Valdez steps forward, looks at Commander Reyes' face for a long moment before examining the wound in his shoulder. "This looks like it'll hold for now. Anything else I need to know about?"
"I took a pretty good hit to the head, so somebody should probably keep an eye on that? Otherwise I'm good to limp out of here." Commander Reyes looks at each of them in turn: Valdez, Genji, McCree. "Thank you, all of you, for coming after me."
"You'd have done the same for us. No one left behind," Valdez says, and Genji finds that he actually believes it. She tilts her head, speaking into the comms again. "Reyes is good to get out of here, but it's gonna be slow going. Riemann, did you and Patrini make it back to the transport?"
"Yeah, Stef, we've got the body in the cargo hold, ready to go."
McCree cuts in. "Did we make any progress on the original mission objective?"
Genji tunes out the mission chatter as they make their way slowly to the elevator and then slowly out of the building to the waiting transport. They don't leave immediately, waiting on something still happening inside. McCree goes to the cockpit, pacing and talking in a low voice to Newton and Riemann, who are both seated there. Valdez gets Commander Reyes situated in a biotic field and takes a closer look at his wound. She makes a face when she tugs the bandages forward to look, blows out an annoyed breath. "Bunch of fucking amateurs," she grumbles as she digs in one of the transport medkits. She pulls out what are obviously better bandages and replaces the ones the Commander is currently wearing. "Still feeling okay, boss?"
"Still feeling like shit, Valdez, thanks for asking. But I'll live."
It looks like Valdez has more she wants to say, but then the other agents return and whatever it was she was going to say is lost in the crowd.
The flight back is less boisterous than the flight out had been, more subdued. They'd lost an agent and nearly lost another one, and nobody is in the mood to play cards or make plans for post-mission drinks.
Partway through the flight, Commander Reyes looks up at Genji and says, out of nowhere, "Thanks, Shimada. For…" He trails off, waving his hands vaguely. "For all that."
"No one left behind," Genji echoes.
When they get back to base, Commander Reyes is rushed to the infirmary and the rest of them are rushed into debrief. It's a grueling process, with none of them knowing exactly what had gone wrong or how they could have avoided it. When Genji is done, he stops by the infirmary to get his usual tune-up and chat with Angela if she's free.
It's late by the time Genji is leaving. He ought to go back to his quarters, try to get some sleep, but no one left behind is bouncing though his brain, so instead he heads back into the maze of recovery rooms to check on his Commander.
He stops up short before he gets there, because McCree and Valdez are standing in the hallway outside the Commander's room. Genji ducks back around the corner and starts to leave, but pauses when he hears what they're talking about.
"You wanted me to tell you when you two crossed the line?" Valdez is saying. Her voice is not loud, but it is obviously angry. "This is it, Jesse. This is where you crossed the line. And you didn't just put your toe across, oh no, you grabbed the fucking ball and ran a thousand yards in the wrong direction."
McCree says nothing for a moment, then says quietly, "Now, I don't know much about basketball, but I'm pretty sure--"
"It's football, Jesse, and that's not the point," Valdez snaps. "The point is that you potentially endangered the lives of a lot of people today and you don't seem to be remorseful at all."
"What do you want me to do, Stef? Apologize?"
"That would be a fucking start! I really ought to report this. You know that."
"I know. I know. I fucked up." When he speaks again, McCree's voice is quieter, smaller. "I love him so much it scares me."
"It scares the rest of us too."
At Valdez's words, McCree snorts.
Valdez's tone softens a little as she backpedals. "Sorry, sorry, that was mean. You know I'm not good at this stuff. But I'm doing it because I care about you guys, and because you specifically asked me to. If you don't want me to call you on this shit--"
"--don't do this shit?" McCree finishes for her.
"I was going to say 'don't ask me to', but yeah, yours is a better idea. C'mere."
Genji peeks around the corner again. As he watches, Valdez pulls McCree into what looks like a particularly gruff hug. McCree doesn't react right away; presumably he's just as stunned by this show of affection as Genji is. When he does react, though, raising his arms and putting them around Valdez in return, Valdez quickly shoves him away.
"Thanks, Stef," McCree calls after her as she turns on her heel and walks away. Genji ducks silently into one of the recovery rooms until she's passed by. He waits until a reasonable amount of time has passed and heads back towards Commander Reyes' room.
When Genji enters, the Commander is asleep and McCree is slouched in the chair next to his bed, facing the door. McCree looks up when the door opens, and something complicated flashes across his face when he sees Genji, but it's gone just as quickly.
"It's real nice of you to come check on him," McCree says carefully.
Genji doesn't buy it. "So, you and the Commander."
"Oh, okay, we're doing this now. Yeah," McCree says. "Yeah. Me and the Commander."
"Is that why you're his second in command?" McCree doesn't answer. Genji can see the storm brewing in his eyes, but it doesn't stop him. "How high up the ranks will I get if I sleep with him?"
"That's not what's going on," McCree bites out. "I worked my way up first, and I've never gotten anything I didn't work for and deserve--"
"I'm right here, you know," comes Commander Reyes' sleepy voice from the bed. McCree and Genji both shut up immediately. "Shimada, are you unhappy with where you are now? I thought you liked field missions, out tracking down the Shimada clan's dirty business, but if you don't, all you have to do is speak up."
Genji's face goes hot. "That's not why I'm bringing it up."
McCree sinks back into the chair, reaches out to grab the Commander's hand on the bed. "I thought you knew, Genji. I thought everybody knew. We haven't exactly been the best at keeping it a secret."
"You are secret agents. If anybody should be able to keep something a secret, it should be you."
Commander Reyes barks a laugh, then winces as the movement pulls at his wound. "You'd think, wouldn't you."
Genji waits, but neither McCree nor Commander Reyes says anything further. "Isn't this the part where you try to bribe or beg or threaten me to keep your secret for you?" Genji asks. "I was looking forward to seeing what you had to offer me."
The knuckles on Commander Reyes' hand go white where he's holding onto McCree, and he frowns. "Not how this works, unfortunately. Despite what it may look like, I don't actually coerce my people into anything they don't want to do."
"So you two are actually--"
"Happy," McCree says.
"I didn't know anybody in Blackwatch got to be happy," Genji says. Even as he says it, he's not sure if it's a joke.
McCree chuckles. "Hard to believe, but one or two of us manage to scrape by."
Genji does not ask for how long? He knows how fleeting life can be, and knows that if he were to somehow manage to find happiness, he'd hold onto it with everything he had. He says aloud, "It sounds like that is no one's business but your own, then." He pauses, keeps his face serious but his tone light. "Are you sure you don't want to offer me anything?"
"The chance to get out of here before I start kissing the Commander, how about that," McCree responds, matching Genji's teasing tone.
"An excellent offer that I will definitely be taking you up on." With that, Genji inclines his head in acknowledgment and goes on his way.
Happiness in Blackwatch. That doesn't sound so bad.