ruffians | [open] come on baby and rescue me

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[open] come on baby and rescue me

[Everything after the explosion is a blur, a hazy collage of barely-there fragments and blackness that just barely forms any kind of coherent series of events. Just about explains what happened and shit all else. Half remembers arguing with Jack — same shit different day — but it was more heated than usual. Remembers the explosion and yelling for Jack in the hope he'd get a response; crushed under slabs of rock and metal bars and his dumb ass still wants to know Jack's okay.]

[Must've blacked out, pain or blood loss or head trauma, who knows. Lights and an alien facility, doctors and agents he doesn't recognise. Bloody hands clawing at arms pinning him to the bed, tying him down. Voices talking about tests, procedures, results. All staunchly ignoring his questions and threats.]

[It took much too long for him to realise where he was, and by that point it was way too fucking late. They'd moved him to a secure room once staying entirely corporeal proved more than he could manage, some explanation about nanites reacting with his SEP enhancements that he didn't fully believe, but had no choice but to accept. He didn't understand what was happening to him; why he felt cold but like something just under his skin was burning. Why something in his chest lurched and rattled when he got too angry, why the pain made his body slip away from his senses, trying to make the feeling of being something so different to what he was make sense.]

[He couldn't control it, and anyone else who gave enough of a shit to come for him was probably already dead, so he didn't have much of a choice but to co-operate. For now, at the very least.]

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[ There's no way that Gabriel is just "fine," but Jack knows better than to push the subject. Never once has Gabriel been forthcoming about what's really going on with him, and that's probably part of the reason that their friendship had become so messy in the first place.

It's not something that will be easily fixed tonight, though, so Jack will just have to let it be for now. (Possibly until things explode all over again.)

He lets out a long sigh and then leans himself back against the wall the bed's pushed up against. ]

That's your call. But we can talk about it more later. It's late.

Like that means anything.

[It's not like they're about to cuddle up and get a good night's sleep, and there's too much to do now. They'll need supplies at some point, probably have to move to another safe house. Gotta figure out which bext steps to take.]

[Still gotta figure out what's going on with him.]

[Gabriel sighs, back to Jack as he looks at all that research. It's becoming a convenient excuse not to look at him, but it's not just that. He just feels... Lost. There's just so much he doesn't know and doesn't understand and part of him can't help but think that maybe if he stares at this long enough he'll get something he can hold on to. Some nugget of truth to anchor him and keep him steady.]

Get some more sleep if you need. I'm gonna look at this for a bit more.

[ It's true that they've never been the types to sleep normal hours, and SEP had seen to it that they'd needed even less sleep than the average person. A soldier was more useful if they could stay up for twenty-four hours or more for the sake of a mission, right? And there had definitely been times during the Crisis when they'd done just that.

That being said, Jack is pretty sure that Gabriel is in sore need of some more rest after everything he's been through. There's no real telling what he went through at Talon, since he isn't bound to discuss the worst parts with Jack. Staying up all night obsessing is the exact sort of thing that Jack does on a regular basis, but... ]

Pretty sure it'll mean more to you when you've got a clearer head. I can run through all of it with you, too.

[ He's done a lot of legwork, and to some extent the information posted on the wall is only decipherable to him. With a grunt, Jack pushes himself up out of the bed and then motions to it. ]

Here, you can take the bed. It's a little more comfortable than the couch, anyway.

Jack-- ["I'm fine." It'd be the third time he's said it in the last ten minutes, anyone's guess at this point if he's trying harder to convince Jack or himself, but Gabe stops himself this time at least. Shoulders sagging with a sigh when he cuts himself off.]

[He is though. Has to be. It's been a long time since he could afford to be anything less than fine, and honestly right now he needs to be more than that. He needs to be on top of things, and he's latched on to this as the key to getting there. The way to get him feeling like Gabriel Reyes again. It's what he does; he figures things out, finds solutions where no one else can. Finds the solutions no one else wants to see. Maybe it seems like he's just being stubborn, but Gabe doesn't know how to be any other way.]

[Time to change tactics. Maybe then Jack will relent.]

Would you be able to sleep if you were me? With all this-- [He gestures emphatically to all Jack's research, as if it were a person who'd done him wrong.] --hanging over your head? Some big mystery you can't figure out and it's all about you.

[It's obvious he didn't mean to say that much, or say it quite so... Insistently; jaw clenched and eyes focusing on anything other than the other man in the room. He doesn't expect Jack to try and talk about it, but honestly who fucking knows what Jack's going to do anymore.]

[ It doesn't matter how many times Gabriel says it, Jack finds it impossible to believe that he's really fine. Again, he knows he'd be the exact same way if their positions were reversed, but there's nothing wrong with just admitting that he went through hell back there and that he's messed up about it. At least then they could try to move on from it, or fix what parts of it they could. Acknowledging it would be better than nothing, at least.

That doesn't seem like something that's going to happen, though. Gabriel does acknowledge it in a way, but only by making the assertion that he can't rest until he takes some time to try and understand more of what really happened to him.

Jack gets it, but he also doesn't know how much his research is going to help. He's got some other bits and pieces about Talon's doings, but a lot of it had just been narrowing down their location, or people who might be secretly connected to them. Maybe with what Gabriel knew of his own experiences, he'd be able to make a connection that Jack couldn't, but...

Ultimately, he doesn't have any interest in getting into a full-blown fight about this. He can see how much this is getting to Gabriel, and he can't blame him for that either. After a brief pause, Jack sighs to himself and closes the distance between them. Maybe Gabriel would prefer to take this all in on his own, but if he's going to insist on doing this now, then Jack's going to insist on being a part of it. ]

All right, then I guess I'd better help you.

[ He gives the wall a quick glance, then moves over to the right side of it, planting a figure on a paper print-out. It's an article about a casino opened in Monaco (by Maximilien, he later discovered). ]

This is where I started.

[Gabriel's posture visibly softens in relief, even as he folds his arms over his chest and straightens his back the way he does when he's paying attention. He has the fleeting thought that he should thank Jack for letting it go for now, but that thought falls away when he switches gears to actually focusing on this instead of desperately trying to get Jack to leave him alone.]

A casino?

[You have to show your work, Jack!]

Yeah. Something seemed off about the way it was set up. Everything got put together way too quickly, like it was a front for something.

[ Jack reaches out to grab a piece of string, which connects the article to a photograph of an omnic in a well-tailored suit. There's no getting around the fact that there's something sinister about him. ]

Turns out this guy was bankrolling it. Maximilien. At first glance he seemed clean, but I dug a little deeper and it turns out he's one of the top people at Talon.

[ That had been his leaping off point. ]

[The name's more immediately familiar than the face, and Gabe makes a noise that suggests as much when he hears it, nodding too. It's a name that showed up in a few places that were at the very least unsavory. More likely putting a lot of money in hands Overwatch was trying to cuff, but they couldn't prove it.]

Mm, flashy Omnic with friends in all the right circles. I remember we tried looking into him, but, uh... [For some reason he could never get the go-ahead on the ~~blatantly illegal~~ legally dubious missions? Crazy.] ... Couldn't find anything concrete.

[Look at him avoiding the easy argument there, he's trying!]

[ So this guy had been on Gabriel's radar even back during Blackwatch. Jack doesn't remember it ever coming across his desk, which means that it had been vetoed before it could even make it that far, and Gabriel had known better than to push the issue at that point. With their friendship on tenterhooks, it wouldn't have gone over well.

Gabriel does talk around the subject rather than starting yet another argument, and Jack can't help but appreciate it. They may not have been on the same page back then, but right now they have no choice but to be. ]

We're not Overwatch anymore. That's all done. Which means that we don't have to investigate through official channels.

[ Really, isn't this what Gabriel had always wanted? ]

Guess there's one upside to all this.

[He'd much prefer to have Overwatch's resources behind him, but not having to go through all the headaches of making sure things aren't against a bunch of rules that leave him hamstrung and useless? Maybe this time they can make a real dent in Talon. A quietly hopeful part of him thinking they might even be able to shut them down for good, but that's a thought for another time.]

Where'd Maximilien lead you?

[That's what's important right now, no time for hope and hypotheticals.]

[ It's freeing for Jack too, to be able to operate within the shadows and outside of the law. Part of him had thought that it would be a difficult change for him to make after he'd done his best to keep to the straight and narrow for so long, but if anything, that had made becoming Soldier: 76 that much easier for him. ]

At first, it was just a lot of proxy businesses and fronts, ways to hide the sheer amount of money that he'd either stolen or laundered.

[ That alone had been disturbing enough to find evidence of, because money was often the most obvious sign of power. And to have that much of it meant this guy was basically untouchable. ]

I had to keep following the trail, and finally linked him to Talon. More than that, he's toward the top of their ranks.

[Toward the top of their ranks? That visibly throws Gabe. Maximilien had been... Well, he'd considered him as someone who might get a leg up after Antonio, but honestly he was bottom of the list. In hindsight, the fact that he was so good at covering his tracks compared to the rest of Talon should've tipped him off that he was more than just the money guy, but. Well, he had a lot going on.]

[Didn't help that there were so many restrictions on what he could do either. His lip pulls in a frown at that thought; at the fact that Jack managed to do something he couldn't just by being free of all that bureaucracy. It puts a bad taste in his mouth.]

Almost seems like you wouldn't have found that out doing things the old way.

[There's only so long he can keep biting his tongue. Jack should count his blessings that Gabriel kept quiet this long.]

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