This is going on the idea that when Talon broke 76, they actually BROKE him.
They applied way too heavy a hand in trying to bring him in. Long torture sessions and heck, a lot of Talon just wanted to beat him senseless.
They conditioned him to believe that the only way to stop the pain was to kill everything else in the room.
They allowed that vengeful violent side of him to consume everything else. He doesn’t even remember why he was angry in the first place.
He is actually an extremely valuable Talon asset since he has become a master at killing and evicerating, but also a risky play because he will kill ANYTHING in the field. Especially Talon soldiers.
Reaper is assigned to be his “handler” because he might be the only one who could handle him in a fight.
He is given control of a shock collar that is meant to train the “mad dog”.
What would Reaper’s reaction be to finding out that 76 is Jack and that he has been reduced to Talon’s attack dog? Hmmmm
I ficced. Thanks to @tophatlass for the inspiration!
‘Mad dog,’ the Talon scientist had said when he explained the project. The contempt in his voice told Reaper enough about what to brace for.
So he’d thought.
“Oh. Jack.”
Jack is strapped down spread-eagled to a metal frame. Bolted down, really, with metal restraints at his wrists and ankles, neck, chest, and waist. He’s struggled enough that his skin is rubbed raw and bleeding around them. His eyes are glassy. Gabriel recognizes the look. It’s one that’s been turned on him many times: the fear that comes beyond any hope of escape.
When they walk in, he fixates on the Talon soldier who follows Gabriel in to lock the door and take up guard near it. Even as Reaper keeps walking toward him, Jack watches that man, anonymous in tactical armor and face shield, with a fixed white-eyed stare and lips peeled back from his teeth.
For some people—many, most—that kind of fear is a paralytic. More victims than Reaper can remember have cowered before him with that expression on their faces, shaking like traumatized rabbits as his claws descended. But a few are wolves. Corner them like that, cut off every avenue of escape, and they’ll fight just to take their killer to Hell with them.
Gabriel’s always known which kind Jack is.
He doesn’t stop till he’s standing next to the frame holding Jack. Jack finally switches attention to him, wide-eyed and growling. It sounds so inhuman that Gabriel wonders about the state of his vocal cords. His body strains against the straps. The ones across his chest and waist seem to be there to keep him from thrashing so hard he chokes himself.
Bands of sickly color wrap around his wrists, throat, upper arms where he battered himself against another set of restraints. Rainbow blotches spread across his body in layers from repeated beatings, along with burn marks—stun batons maybe—and cuts at various stages of healing. A few suspiciously fresh surgical scars. Gabriel follows one with his eyes, and thinks he’d very much like to know what they went digging around in Jack Morrison’s flesh for.
There’s a line of drool starting at the corner of Jack’s mouth. Gabriel reaches without thinking. Jack snaps at him. Snarls a warning when Gabriel pulls back.
“Hm.” Gabriel looks at his own clawed fingers, a bit surprised at himself. When’s the last time he minded someone’s suffering? Then he looks at Jack, broken and moon-pale, that so-familiar face engraved and twisted with pain, teeth bared like a wild animal. Braced for the next attack in an endless series of them.
He meets Jack’s eyes. They’re still the burning sky blue they were when Jack was young, sane and whole.
In his head, the sneering scientist goes on his list.
The guard gasps when Gabriel reaches up to pull off his mask. Gabriel doesn’t so much as glance at him. "Hey, viejito.“ He reaches again for Jack’s face, moving more slowly this time, letting his talons dissolve into smoke. "Hey, Jack, you remember me?” Jack tries to bite him again. Gabriel avoids it deftly and wipes away the streak of drool.
The guard swallows audibly at the disturbing sound of Reaper crooning and glances toward the locked door.
Gabriel lets his smoke waft around Jack’s head, in hopes his scent might trigger some familiarity. "Come on, guero, just give me a sign you’re in there.“ He drags the claws of his other hand lightly across a knife scar he left over Jack’s hip the day they both died. He’d missed gutting him by inches. "You remember this? Remember when I did this? You gonna let that be the last of it?”
And there it is: recognition flares in Jack’s eyes just before he hurls himself at Gabriel. He moves about a half-inch in his bonds, but it’s the thought that counts. Gabriel laughs to himself, and catches Jack’s chin to hold his tossing head still so he can kiss him on the scar that cuts across his face.
He glances at the now entirely freaked-out guard and points at the table next to him. “Toss me that.”
There’s a control collar around Jack’s neck, just beneath the restraint that keeps him from lifting his head. The scientist said the pain of it would drop Jack ‘like a mountain fell on him’ when triggered. The guard picks up the collar’s little control unit from the tray where it was left for Reaper’s convenience, and throws it to him in a light underhanded toss. Gabriel stashes it in a pocket and turns his attention back to his captive.
“Talon gave you to me, Jack, you know that? They’ve got high hopes for you and me.” He combs his fingers through Jack’s sweat-spiked white hair. Jack shudders under the caress, tense and uncertain. It may well be the first kind touch he’s felt since Talon took him. For a criminal organization with world-altering ambitions, they can be real hacks. It’s up to Gabriel to clean up their mess, as usual. “But they can’t imagine, can they,
cariño? They have no idea what we are together.”
They’re the men who saved the world, then rebuilt it, and then brought it all crashing down again. Talon wishes it had that kind of pull. In fact that’s probably the reason for this. He pets Jack a few more times, enjoying the way it makes him twitch in wary confusion, then straightens up. Time to get on with things.
“Hey,” he says to the guard as he fits his mask back on. “Were you one of the ones who worked on him?”
It’s meant to be a reward. They’d thought Gabriel would enjoy being Jack’s master, seeing him brought low and suffering the way Gabriel has suffered.
They’re right. He will.
Talon, though? Not so much.
When he releases the restraints, Jack leaps through his smoky form and straight at the screaming guard. Gabriel leans back against the door to admire the show. The blood doesn’t bother him. It’s why he wears black.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2aQOWnK