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There was a subtle stillness when Gabriel arrived at the base this time. A sense of dread permeating the air, a quietness that spoke of tension instead of peacefulness. He hated it. He had been away from the main headquarters for an excruciatingly long month, operating in secret. Two weeks under the radar, no communication at all. Running things as smoothly as possible as to not draw any more unwanted attention to Blackwatch operations.
That long period of silence did things to his anger. To the tension woven in his muscles. Gabriel hadn’t left for his mission on the best terms: he and Jack had been fighting and said some…unkind things to each other. He hated the way Jack looked at him as if he might drop another Venice on them every time he left for a mission. There was nothing that Gabriel despised more than feeling suffocated.
Suffocating. It was a useful word to describe his relationship with Jack nowadays. His marriage was turning into the metaphorical equivalent of being smothered with a pillow. Keeping things from Jack was getting harder and harder. And keeping his dealings with Moira from him was starting to exhaust Gabriel to the point of turning him into someone he wasn’t exactly proud of.
Still, it was good to be home, and despite everything, he had missed Jack. He couldn’t help but feel sentimental about it. With a sigh, Gabriel dispatched his agents, still concerned about what he could have missed while he was away, and braced himself for going home, stepping out of the plane and into the cold air of Zurich. That’s when he saw Jack’s slouched figure on the tarmac, leaning against a wall. Dark circles under his eyes and nose flushed red from the cold, he was wearing his Strike-Commander uniform sans duster. It made him look more vulnerable.
A cold feeling ran down Gabriel’s spine the moment Jack raised his head and looked at him with tiredness in his eyes.
“We need to talk,” Jack said, arms crossed, visibly struggling to will himself away from the wall, like he had spent hours there contemplating the floor as he waited for Gabriel to arrive.
Gabriel squinted at him, annoyed at the shitty illumination in the place and mentally preparing himself for a We Need To Talk fight.
But no. Gabriel wasn’t doing this. Not when he was tired, starving, and in need of a shower. “Not now, Jack.”
“Gabriel, this is important,” Jack urged him, finally leaning away from the wall to follow him, walking one step behind of Gabriel. He looked miserable and his voice was hoarse and wrecked. “I mean it. We need to talk right now. Please, just let’s go to my office.”
“If this is about the dumb shit you said before I left, I don’t want to hear it,” Gabriel said, resolute in his anger and desire to avoid allowing Jack to have the last word.
“Gabriel—Gabe, stop. Please, I just—”
“Save it, Jack.”
Not looking back, Gabriel picked up his pace.
**
Later that night, Gabriel would be eating dinner in the mess, feeling heavy and weary with Jack’s request to talk at the back of his mind, idly poking his food with a fork, when an agent would approach him with sad eyes.
I just wanted to tell you, she would say, lips turned downward, shadows on her face, that I’m sorry about what happened to Captain Amari. She’s always been a great inspiration and we—all of us—miss her a lot.
And Gabriel, freshly showered and craving a five-hundred-year nap would set his fork down carefully and say, What happened to Captain Amari?
**
“You fucking coward!”
Gabriel barged into Jack’s office at two AM, turning the lights on abruptly. There, at his desk, Jack slept with his head cushioned on his arms, drooling on a sheet of paper, hair slightly ruffled and clothes wrinkled. Gabriel shook him without pity, forcing him to abruptly raise his head and stare at him with bloodshot eyes.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jack asked, cranky from sleeping in an awkward position.
Gabriel didn’t give a shit about his beauty sleep. He stood in front of Jack, his desk serving as a barrier between the two of them, creating a rift.
“Ana’s dead,” Gabriel spat, his voice shaking at the end. “And you didn’t bother to tell me about it. I had to find out from other people. I made one of your agents tell me everything that went down on the mission.”
Shuddering, Gabriel took a deep breath. He tried his best to calm his overactive imagination. He tried his best to not picture Ana lying there on the ground, bleeding and dying as Jack ran away, leaving her to a lonely, undignified end.
“Oh my god,” he breathed, shaking with anger, hands curled up to fists at his sides. “You left her there. She could have been alive. You could have saved her.”
“She shut off her communicator,” Jack replied tersely, face as cold and hard as stone. Closed off. He crossed his arms and Gabriel immediately felt the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “There were people in danger and the mission was compromised. She knew what she was doing and I—I trusted her. I had to do it.”
“Bullshit.” Gabriel slammed his hands on Jack’s desk, ignoring the twitch in his eyes. He leaned in extremely close to him, ignoring the fatigue evident on Jack’s face. Ignoring all the little things that made Jack human. “That’s bullshit and you fucking know it, Jack. You fucking know it. I’m done with your excuses, I just—I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that you left her to die. Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are you, Jack? I just don’t know you anymore.”
He sneered, his head throbbing with anger and exhaustion, a shiver coursing through his body. Feeling like his heart would give up at any moment from grief and rage, he turned away from Jack, without wanting to see his face anymore.
“Don't bother waiting up, I'm going back to my own quarters,” he warned, before stepping out of Jack’s office.
**
The numbers 0445 shone brightly on the clock when Gabriel woke up suddenly, startled and gasping for air, forehead covered in sweat.
Fuck, he rested a hand against his heart to try and will it to calm down. I fucked up.
Gabriel had been dreaming.
He had been dreaming of Ana’s mangled body on the ground. Of Jack begging her to stop and come back. Quickly, in what felt like a blink, the image had turned into Ana’s disappointed stare, standing in front of Gabriel in all her might as Jack bled at his feet. Her eyes seemed to say, “You did this. Fix it.”
He had loved Ana with the kind of love one reserved for his own family.
(Jack, too. Had loved her. Like a sister.)
Gabriel’s eyes stung with tears and he stayed still on the middle of his bed, feeling lonely and bereft, trapped in the painful inner workings of loss. He missed Ana. He missed Jack, too.
Only one of them was still alive. And so, Gabriel kicked his feet off the bed and dressed in comfortable sweats and an old, unwashed hoodie. He grabbed his communicator from the bedside table and his keys before leaving his room.
As he stepped out of his quarters, he nearly tripped over a big bundle resting on the hallway floor outside. It took him a few seconds to realized that this strange obstacle was Jack, curled up against the wall beside Gabriel’s door, hugging his knees with his face hidden in them.
Sadness tugged at his heart. Weighed it down like an iron shackle.
“Jack,” Gabriel kneeled, softly shaking Jack by the shoulder. “Wake up. C’mon. Jackie.”
At the old nickname, Jack opened his eyes and stared at him in confusion. “Huh?”
“What are you doing here, you ridiculous man?” Gabriel whispered, trying to keep his annoyance at bay.
Jack flushed, rubbing a hand down his eyes, trying to chase the sleepiness away. Once, Gabriel had thought that gesture to be endearing.
“I,” Jack started, blinking a couple of times, trying to school his face into something that didn’t betray the way he was feeling. His Just Peachy face. Gabriel knew him well enough by now to know all his faces. “I—I didn’t want to be alone. But I was too ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” Gabriel repeated, a frown etched on his face.
Jack dazedly looked away from him and into the hallway, oddly detached. “To knock. I was ashamed to knock. I guess I just…fell asleep here, trying to make up my mind.”
An ugly sadness settled over Gabriel’s heart as they fell silent. The kind of sadness that felt definite, the kind that made you feel that there’s no turning point, no going back to happier times. The kind that made you realize that something had broken while you were looking away and you had no idea how to fix it. And beneath it, the only other thing that Gabriel could feel was anger. At Jack. At himself. At Ana.
Grief had always looked ugly on him.
“C’mon,” Gabriel said, hooking an arm around Jack’s shoulders and using his other one to help him to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Jack nodded, eyes distant and lost. He allowed Gabriel to guide him to the bed in complete silence. He undressed mechanically under Gabriel’s watchful gaze and crawled to bed with shame written on every movement. Gabriel followed after. He chose to lie down with his back against Jack’s, staring away into the darkness.
After a moment, Jack’s hand touched one of his arms, then searched carefully for his hand. He laced their fingers together very gently as if they were going to be pulled apart at any moment. As if Jack was expecting Gabriel to vanish during the night.
That was the thing that broke Gabriel’s heart the most.