Save Him One More Time: Phase 3

Chapter 9- Breaking Through

The shuttle pulled up to the hidden Talon jet.
"Hey sleepyheads, wake up." Sombra poked Reaper in the shoulder. He grabbed her arm and nearly hit her.
"Hey hey hey, calm down Gabe it's just me," she yelled, pulling away.
Angela sat up and Reaper grabbed her hands.
"I won't shoot you again," she protested, trying to break free.
"You don't have a gun." He pulled her to her feet. "And I don't want you running off. Moira would have my head."
She refused to move.
"Then let go and I'll come with you."
He tugged on her arms.
"No. Stop messing around and get moving."
"If you let go I won't run."
"Fine," he said, pulling out a shotgun and holding it to her back. He let go of her hands.
"Get in the jet and don't try anything or you're dead." Sombra turned around, one eyebrow raised, and he added, "I don't care what Moira says." Sombra gave him a look. He rolled his eyes and nudged Angela with the gun.
"Get moving, we've got a plane to catch."

The flight overseas was long, and aside from a bit of turbulence, uneventful. Reaper spent half the flight watching Angela, and then when she fell asleep, he let himself doze off too.
He was rudely awakened several hours later.
"We've arrived, idiotas."
Sombra rapped her knuckles on his mask.
"Wake up, Gabe." She walked over to Angela and shook her shoulder. "You too, chica."
"Sombra, quit knocking on my face," Reaper growled, sitting upright and kicking the hacker in the back of the legs. She nearly fell but recovered.
"Well, you try to murder me when I try to wake you up nicely, so until you can learn to control your fists you get knuckles on your head."
Angela remained silent, seemingly broken. She shuffled quietly from the jet to the shuttle that would take them to Talon HQ and sat demurely on her seat, ankles crossed, hands in her lap, head bowed, her hair obscuring her face.
After several hours, in which she hadn't moved except once to cross her feet the other way, Reaper began to worry a bit. What if he'd injured her somehow? His head hurt from thinking, but he knew what would happen to him if Moira found a single bruise on the doctor. He shifted uncomfortably in his own seat. After a few more minutes he cleared his throat.
"You alright, doc? You're not hurt, are you?"
She looked up at him. Her eyes and nose were red, and it took her a few tries before she could speak.
"No, I-I'm not hurt." She bowed her head again, and Reaper thought he saw a silver flash fall to her lap.
"Then what's eating you? I haven't been too rough, have I?" If he had, asi que ayudalo, Moira was going to torture him for hours and he did not want that to happen.
"No, you've been about as gentle as can be expected from what you've become."
"What do you mean, what I've become?"
"I mean the cold-blooded murderer Moira's turned you into." She rubbed her face. "Gabriel, what has she done to your mind? You never minded killing in the first place, but now you kill unnecessarily. You destroyed an entire town in one night. Almost no survivors. Why? How could you do this?"
He frowned.
"I did what?"
She stared at him.
"Gott hab Erbar- you don't remember? You murdered hundreds. In less than an hour, the reports said. Why? What purpose did so much death serve? They were innocent, Gabriel."
Oh. He shifted in his seat and sighed.
"It's hard to explain. I used to be worse than I am. I couldn't keep it together for long at all. Being in one piece was exhausting." He stopped, suddenly. Why was he telling her all this? He hadn't even told this to Moira without prompting and threats from her, why would he talk so readily to this one?
"Why am I telling you this? I don't even know you."
"You used to. We were very close." She looked at him again. "Which is why I want to know how you could justify killing nearly seven hundred innocent people. Innocents, Gabe. How could you forget so much?" She held his gaze for another second, then broke down crying.
Oh $#&%. He'd been very important to her. Maybe he'd been in her group, and she'd been the leader. He knew groups were very close with each other. Still, he didn't like seeing people cry.
"Shut up."
She quieted down, but she was still crying.
"What do you mean, how could I forget so much? What was there to forget? Jack? He's dead now, and I never liked him anyway. Always yelling and bossing me around."
She pulled her feet up on the seat and buried her face in her knees.
This was not going well.
He stood up and walked over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"I said shut up."
She slapped him. He grabbed her arm and prepared to rip it off her shoulder.
"You little-" and he stopped. No. She was not to be harmed in any way.
"Pull a trick like that again and you're dead."
"How could you kill so many innocents, Gabe?"
Her voice was muffled through her knees.
He sighed. This again?
"Are you ever going to shut up about that?"
"No."
"Fine. I'll tell you about it and then you shut up. No more questions."
She put her feet down.
"Okay. So I couldn't maintain this form for long, I got too tired and I'd let go and then I'd have problems reassembling. But I could restore my energy by taking others' life force. I could steal their energy to keep my own up. And that's why I had to kill them. So I wouldn't be stuck in wraith form. Moira's done some things since then and I don't have to do that anymore." He smirked, not that she'd notice. "If you'd kept up with the news, I'm not noticed as much these past couple months."
She looked as though either she wanted to kill him or she wanted to take his mask off, and he didn't know which.
"Gabriel, why don't you remember me? What has Moira done to you to make you forget so much? Do you even remember the old team? Genji, Jesse, do you remember them?"
"I remember them all right. Killed the cowboy. The ninja I'd love to see the same way." He chuckled. "Wouldn't mind killing you either, but Moira will make me suffer for that. That's why you're still alive," he added.
"I'm sorry, Gabe," she said, bowing her head as a tear slid down her cheek. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I tried, I could have, but he got in the way. I'm sorry."
A flash of light went off in his head. It was cold, he couldn't see, but he felt something fall out from underneath his head, heard screaming. She was screaming.
"No! Let me go, Jack! I can save him! Let me go!" The screams faded into the distance, and everything faded after them. The light, the pain, even he faded.
He stood up.
"Angela."
She was asleep.
That was her name, wasn't it? Angela? Or was it Angel? The two were mixed up with each other in his head.
Another flash of light, and he saw her, lying lifeless in a corner, her eyes closed. He touched her neck, feeling for a pulse, and her eyes opened. She was alive.
Sprawled out asleep in his office. Almost crying for sheer joy, helping someone off a bed. Dying, watching her pulse drop slowly. He fell to the ground, head spinning, gritting his teeth, willing it to stop. It hurt too much. He let go, welcoming the sweet relief he found in becoming a shadow. He remembered her. She hadn't been his group leader. She had been his friend, more than that, if he remembered rightly. Much more than friends.
"Heroes never die, Gabe. I'll come back."
She had nearly died then, but Moira had brought her back.
Moira.
She'd kill him if she knew. Moira tolerated no slips. He couldn't let her know he remembered his target, that he knew her. No matter what happened.
He rematerialised and looked at the sleeping medic. And he knew that one of them would die. A slip was bound to happen. And when it did... He shuddered.
Moira was going to kill them.

|| My apologies for the late chapter, Christmas week was much busier than I anticipated.
I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, and I hope everyone has a wonderful new year!
I plan to continue uploading every two weeks until either I get a lot of free time and I can backlog a few chapters or I get a different schedule. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoy writing it! Thanks for reading! ||