Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

Fandom: Overwatch

Pairing: Gabriel Reyes & Genji Shimada

Warning: Blackwatch era, implied body horror, depression & angst, suicidal thoughts

Notes: my good friend @sidhedcv asked for more Blackwatch Reyes/Genji content in the world and I delivered, lol. She also paid the first 300 words of it, so even more kudos! ♥ 900 words on the house, because I love her to bits and she and her significant other are the best and I’m grateful to have them in my life ♥

Summary: When Gabriel promised Genji - restless after eight weeks of surgery, upgrades and rehabilitation - to send him on a mission if he could beat him at hand to hand combat, he’d underestimated the ninja’s desperation to get out of that hospital wing. Even though he wins the fight, Gabriel realizes that he’s lost somewhere else. He should’ve known that Genji was going to get the wrong message from the arrangement.

Excerpt:

“It’s really funny, if you think about it,” he kept talking as if he hadn’t been interrupted. A glossy sheen of tears was starting to wet his eyes. “Before- before. I planned to run, because I didn’t want to die. And now I spend all my waking hours wishing I was dead.”

More than once, Gabriel had asked himself if he had been cruel, when he told Angela to do whatever it was in her power to make him survive; but then he remembered the kid’s eyes when Gabriel’s team got to him after his brother maimed him, and the way he stubbornly clung to life as half of his body succumbed to organ failure, and - only a moment before - the fire in his eyes as he forced his new, unfamiliar artificial muscles to cooperate into landing a hit on him.

He’d wanted to see that again.

{read on AO3}