A/N: what am I doing I have no time to be writing an entire new story right now what is this

WeLL, guess what I've been dragged into lately! I've got several chapters lined up and ready to publish under this story, so we'll see where it takes us.

Like I mentioned in the description, this is a Jesse-centric fic, but there will be some POV shifting in a couple of chapters here and there. As per usual, disclaimer that all these characters belong to Blizzard, yadda yadda yadda-

EDIT: Added to the interrogation scene to adjust some timing that was nagging me.

Jesse McCree wasn't born a fighter.

He was carved, crafted, expertly molded by years of learning to survive and maybe even live a little, the grains of knowledge necessary for keeping his head where it belonged beaten into him the moment he may as well have sold his soul to Deadlock.

His life was snatched from his hands the day he was jumped in, fists and feet flying from every direction as he forced himself to stand tall and not make a sound for as long as he could. It was necessary, they'd told him. Showed your resolve. Showed if you deserved to be respected. Showed your dedication to the people who would become your only family. They would tell him in the days following that he was the first recruit to last as long as he did before his knees had given out, their arms draped over his bruised shoulders in camaraderie as they lit up celebratory cigarettes and knocked back bottles over stained teeth and split lips. The same hands that had only just been used to break him down wherever they could clapped him over the back. He would end up on the wrong side of an argument against some of those hands later on, and the chalk tally he kept on the inside of his boot would gain another notch as he would find himself yet another bullet short.

But that was how you survived.

They gave you a choice when you wanted to join. You either get jumped in, crime in, or walk in. They'd all seen what he could do on the streets already, so committing a crime to gain entry was too easy for their purposes; it was difficult to miss the chatter surrounding him before he'd so much as hit his teenage years in a town so small. He was a scrappy thing, and a stranger for the most part, so his odds of being sponsored by a member and walking in were incredibly low. So, from day one, he'd been put through the wringer to prove he was worth the time they would take to form him into the kind of member they'd need.

He doubted they saw the irony until long after he'd surpassed them all in their own craft.

All the same, they had taught him some valuable things over the years. He'd gotten along best with those with their specialty crimes among the gang, and his hands grew steady as he constructed crude imitations of explosives (whose use he didn't care to think too hard about) and ammunition as he absorbed their knowledge. He learned to stop thinking so much when a skirmish broke out between neighboring gangs. They had plenty of arguments over the weapons they trafficked for their wages, and it became a rare occurrence to have a shipment move out without some sort of bloodshed. "'Red sky at morning', Jes," they'd ribbed him the first time, and they'd laughed at the way his face paled.

The who and the what stopped mattering so much the longer he ran with them, because at the end of the day, all he needed to know was that they insulted us, McCree, and no insult goes unanswered, you got that? He hadn't noticed just how numb he'd become to the whole business until the day they'd gone out of their way to follow a lead on a group that had been exchanging talk over the newest shipment of firearms in Deadlock's possession (overheard by a friend of a friend of a friend of a member, of course). And just like that, with no need for confirmation on the information, they'd pulled a hit and run on a party crew (a damn street gang-wannabe party crew, they weren't even armed) and he'd found himself taking a long drag off of a cigarette and laughing not ten minutes later as one of the newbies turned several gorgeous shades of green and stumbled off to the bushes as the guilt clenched at their stomach. The kid would understand eventually.

(In the end, the newbie never did. He'd lasted a month or so before deciding to leave, but he'd broken the number one and practical only rule of the Deadlock gang. Other street gangs you could walk away from. But Deadlock? Deadlock was blood in, blood out. Jesse never saw the kid again, and he doubted it was by the poor sap's choice.)

The day he was branded felt an awful lot like becoming property to him, but he didn't care. If it meant he could wake up the next day with food to eat and people to watch his back, he would have willingly done the inking himself. A simple symbol, a lock in the webbing between his right thumb and index finger. Generic enough to make it known you had gang affiliation, but obvious to anyone in the region just who they were dealing with. From there, they didn't care what you decided to do to your skin. You were already marked, what you did from there was your choice.

There was a man with a name inked beautifully across his shoulder blades, a long, winding line of thorned rose stem drawn expertly twined around the cursive. It would have been a sight to behold in its original days, Jesse was sure, but it had long since been branded and scarred over, making the name illegible beneath the mass of welted tissue. Another had a cross in the webbing of his other hand to complement his lock. At first glance it appeared normal, but he had told Jesse over drinks on the roof of the dive that was their local diner one night that it had once been a key. A sort of promise to himself, he'd said after taking a pull from his bottle. A promise that he'd find a way to break away from the rat trap that was Deadlock and go his own way when he could support himself. Word never stayed secret in the gang, though, and before long the key had been inked over to form a thick, jagged cross. The man never spoke of leaving again.

Jesse had entertained the thought of adding another himself. An eye, most likely, to match the rank they'd dropped on him as the gang's sharpshooter. It would be ironically delicious, he was certain. He never did get around to following through on the thought.

Reputations came with consequences, as he found out early on, but that didn't stop him from earning one all the same. As the gang grew to recognize his skill with a revolver (six bullets, six graves, Jes, that's a gift you got there) he grew to have a say in strategy on the incredibly rare occasion when it was used and found a bounty the size of a small city hanging over his head before he'd even reached legal age. And yet, he'd been taught to survive. Told to survive.

So he survived.

It was enough for him, at first. Picking off competition, moving the shipments, making contacts with his quick wit and natural charm. And yet, despite it all, he'd find himself staring at his ceiling as he blew rings of dusty smoke to the rafters each night, feeling the hole where his life, his soul had been growing wider. Each life he took, each dirty deed, all of them settled into his being, he was certain.

But he couldn't feel it anymore.

He'd stared at the tattoo on his hand for hours at a time, long into the night, rolling the image over in his mind.

Deadlock.

They'd already given him the lock.

He just wished he could remember when exactly they'd killed him inside to complete the set.

The day the sting happened was the day he wasn't at any of his usual haunts.

In the end, he'd reflect, that was probably what had saved his ass.

He'd been posted in the diner as a watchpoint that day, but he'd soon gotten bored waiting on news of their next haul and wandered out into the midday sun. None of the others called him back or so much as spared him a glance from their cards as he tossed the doors open. They'd long since learned to let McCree be McCree. The air had been stifling, and he'd stretched languidly in the New Mexico heat as the first bead of sweat appeared beneath the rim of his hat. He'd rounded the building with the intent of stretching his legs and finding a better vantage point when he first noticed how silent the town had gone.

That should have been his first clue.

All the same, he'd been bored and the day was warm, and he'd run this exact operation too many times to count. What did a little silence matter?

Everything, apparently.

He'd been gone all of five minutes and managed to pick his way up to one of the crevices dug out of the canyon's walls when all hell broke loose. The explosion rocked his entire body as he found his footing high above the rooftops, and he'd whirled in place to gawk at the cloud of dust and smoke rising steadily over the gorge. The shipment had clearly been intercepted, and he dropped instinctively to his stomach as he'd edged out to the lip of the rock for a better view. The second explosion took him off guard, and he'd glanced between the two, bemused.

They were on complete opposite sides of the canyon.

In retrospect, it was the helicopter that confirmed anything for him.

The black chopper had dropped in relatively far from Jesse's position from seemingly nowhere, the blades kicking up more dust and dirt and blowing the smoke through the gorge as the sound of shouting and gunfire began to echo up to the walls of the canyon. He'd fumbled for his revolver, the weight of it in his hand grounding him as he watched the scene unfold below.

The fight was over before it had even started.

Men and women in lithe, black tactical gear had dropped from the chopper as they'd completed a quick, brutal sweep of the ground forces Deadlock threw at them. They'd joined halfway with a group of individuals dressed much like the R6 gang, a neighboring group that had been causing trouble for the Deadlock rebels for several months. The way they grouped together, however, had Jesse's eyes narrowing as the pieces fit together in his brain.

This was a fed operation. And if the R6 had been infiltrated-

They'd been sold out.

Most of the struggle had been squashed by the time Jesse had an inkling he'd been spotted. He had carefully made his way back down the other side of his hiding spot the moment the feeling swept over him, and he heard far less gunfire as his boots hit the dust at a near-silent run. He'd dodged his way around the back alleys of rock and buildings, biding his time as he tried to find the right angle to…

Well, he didn't quite know yet.

He wouldn't expect to win in a gunfight against what he had easily counted to be at least twenty five operatives.

But if it came down to it, he knew he could hold his own against at least 12 of them before they'd have a chance to get a word in otherwise.

So he'd slunk around the outskirts of the buildings as the black-clad operatives had busted down doors and dragged out his fellow rebels. Those who didn't come willingly or fought back didn't get back up.

He supposed he should have felt something in his gut as he passed by the third higher-up of the gang where he lay in the dirt, neck at an odd angle.

All he'd felt was the primal need to get away, survive this and you can get away-

Ironically, it had probably been his one-track focus on just that that did him in.

His luck ran out about fifteen heart-stopping minutes into his game of hide-and-seek, and they'd spotted him at the end of the street as he darted back around a corner to grab his hat where it had fallen in his haste to duck out of sight. The shouting was instant, and he'd taken off running faster than he'd ever run in his life, heart in his throat. A man popped out of nowhere in front of him, and he'd shot to kill before he could so much as open his mouth. The bullet simply knocked the man breathless, however, as the bullet pierced his body armor with all the effect of a small sucker punch. Switching tactics, Jesse had gone for the knees then.

He'd left the man howling in the dust.

Three more tried to stop him as he ran, and each time he'd shot for the knee, downing them as they fired after him. He'd almost made it to the edge of town, and he knew one of the bosses kept a car prepped for hot wiring in a shed just beyond their territory's limits for emergencies. If he could make it without running into anyone else, he was home free. He just had to run-

He'd rounded the corner at a sprinting crouch, eyes glued over his shoulder as his heart hammered in his chest and the sound of shouting voices grew closer.

He'd hit something solid, his gaze snapping forward to be filled with black-

-and he found himself instantly flipped to land painfully on his stomach in the dirt, his arm twisted behind his back as his hat skittered across the ground. He'd let out a shout, his other hand raising the revolver as he twisted desperately beneath the hold, and a startled noise from whoever had pinned him was all the warning he got before the gun was kicked cleanly out of his fingers, the scuff of metal-toed boots positively burning against his hand as he let out another shout of frustration. He was almost there, he could still make it if he just-

"Woah there, Eastwood, knock it off."

The voice had the audacity to sound amused. He found himself wriggling even harder, a somewhat feral snarl ripping from his throat as he had tripled his efforts to get away. He could feel his arm twisting painfully with each tug, and after a moment he'd heard a heavy, theatrical sigh as a knee came down on his back roughly.

"That clear enough for you?"

Jesse was nothing if not resourceful, and he'd let himself go still as the owner of the voice responded to a garbled series of voices on what sounded like a radio. "Got the runner, sit tight. Rendezvous on site and get ready for evac, sectors five and eight were the last to be cleared." There was a pause. "No, he won't be an issue. Will he?"

The knee dug a little harder into his back at that, and he couldn't quite hold back the grunt that escaped him. All the same, he forced himself to lay still, waiting for the right moment to make his break for the car. There was a shift in the pressure above him as the man tucked the radio back against his chest, his focus turned back to Jesse.

"Alright, up 'n at 'em-"

Now!

The second the knee had let up on its pressure and the grip on his arm had shifted, Jesse had spun with the force of a hurricane, the world around him blurring as he rolled out of his captor's hold and came face to face with them.

He had a split second to relish in the surprise on the man's face before he smacked his forehead smartly into it.

There was little more than a grunt for his troubles, however, and as he dropped away from the man and scrambled into a slightly disoriented crouch, he was disappointed to find he had not so much as discombobulated the operative. There was a sort of dull annoyance on the man's face, but aside from that, he showed little pain. Jesse's eyes darted over him furiously, scanning for some weak point to manipulate, some opening he could take-

As his eyes darted for his revolver, the operative spoke, voice gruff and chastising.

"Not a good idea."

The man had been crossing his arms. Eyebrow raised, he'd regarded Jesse with a careful, critical eye, and Jesse instantly felt uncomfortable as he shifted in his crouch, his own eyes narrowing in challenge. Something seemed to occur to the man he was facing, however, because a dawning look of realization had widened his eyes ever so slightly as they darted between the hat and the revolver. Jesse almost missed it as he saw his chance arise.

"Ah, hell, you're M-"

Jesse hadn't give him a chance to finish as he rushed the man. At the last possible second, he'd feinted left and rolled to his knees on his right, sliding past him expertly. He'd felt a thrill of satisfaction as he slid past.

It probably would have worked if the man hadn't decided to clothesline him.

He fell back into the dust, hands flying to his face as it exploded with pain. Eyes watering as hot blood began to seep down his face, he saw the man lean over him, expression exasperated. "What part of 'knock it off' do you not get, kid?"

Jesse made to snap back to his feet then, but the vice grip that had lifted him by his forearms had him thinking otherwise as that face suddenly came closer. There was that spark of amusement again, that mocking glint that made Jesse want to just shoot that stupid beanie right off of his head-

"Fine, we'll do it your way. Just remember, I didn't want to have it go like this."

He'd barely had a second to process that before the man's forehead had slammed into his own, and his world blurred into oblivion.

At least they'd left him his hat.

He'd woken with a start in a dimly lit room(and it unnerved him that he didn't know where it was), three things immediately apparent to him.

The first was the throbbing encompassing his face, undoubtedly from the unorthodox knock-out he'd been given along with the clothesline treatment. He'd spat a gob of blood to the floor in dull annoyance. He'd have to return the favor first chance he got. No insult goes-

The second was his hat, perched haphazardly atop his head as almost an afterthought.

The third were the thick cuffs pinning his wrists to the metal of his chair.

He'd been surprised, at first. He'd expected to wake up in a cell somewhere. He was certainly no stranger to interrogation, but after the fuss of gathering up lord knew how many of the rebels that were left, it seemed redundant to him.

The surprise had worn off hours ago, and by the time Mr. Meat-Arms-Mc-Beanie had made his appearance, Jesse was thoroughly bored.

They'd been sitting across the table from one another for hours now, Beanie asking his questions about the gang and Jesse doing his best to piss him off in as few words as possible before Beanie would up and leave him to his bloody nose and not much else. He'd caught himself dozing between interrogations, each time being jolted awake by the slam of the door as Beanie dropped back into the seat across from him. The dance would begin again, and he'd lock his jaw tight as he glared at the man responsible for the loss of the only sense of security he'd truly had.

"Age?"

"..."

"We'll put you at 15, then, if you're planning on acting like a child-"

"Twen-"

"Nah-uh. One of your buddies already gave us this one, and he's got lead in his foot from lying the first time. Feel like lying to me, friend?"

"...seventeen, and still shot three'a'ya without thinkin' twice."

The time passed, with him sitting in stony silence for as long as he could before his boredom got the better of him as Beanie poked and prodded.

"Feel like telling me where the last of the safehouses your boys used for shipments are before I find out anyways?"

He'd sniffed, the noise wet and the taste of copper hitting the back of his throat. "Feel like sleepin' for thirty years an' maybe punchin' you in the face, actually, but thanks for askin' all the same."

And so the hours crept by, each minute passing excruciatingly slow as question after question was met with a wall of indifference.

"Your boss-"

"Who?"

"Family-"

"Hah."

"That gun you've got-"

"Not for sale."

As Beanie ran a hand over his face wearily, Jesse dug deep inside himself to not yawn as his stomach growled, discontent. He hadn't been keeping track from the start, but the moment he'd seen the watch on the man's wrist, he'd followed the tiny arms in small glances when he got the chance.

Eleven hours.

They'd been at it for eleven hours now, not counting each of the breaks Beanie would take to leave the room.

As if on cue, the man stood, stretching long over his head before shooting Jesse a dour look and making for the door without a word.

"Come back real soon, we 'preciate your business!"

Jesse's mocking call was only met with the silence that slammed into place with the door.

He had no idea how much time had passed after that. He'd drifted again, allowing himself the barest hint of thought towards his fellow rebels. He'd known they'd rounded up some of them, sure, but from what he'd seen, most had gone down fighting. Probably served them right, he supposed. The next time the door opened, Jesse was awake and whistling tunelessly under his breath. He kept whistling as his eyes tracked Beanie's movement to the chair, a flash of something red in his hand catching his eye for a split second before the object disappeared under the table to rest in the man's lap. His whistle died slowly, but on a strong note as he met the other man's eyes.

His tactic had been to aggravate, and it had been working pretty well so far.

Beanie had appeared to have enough. The man's face was etched with hard lines as he sat back and regarded Jesse. He barely moved as he spoke.

"You hungry?"

Jesse didn't have time to answer before the man sat forward again, eyes narrowing as he switched tactics almost instantly.

"So what was your deal, then?" He sounded genuinely curious. "They point you in a direction and you pull the trigger?"

Jesse gave a dull, emotionless smile (just like the Deadlocks had given him before they'd jumped him in all those years ago, they'd be so proud), the effect losing some of its menace as the movement reopened one of the slashes over his nose and blood dribbled over his lip onto his teeth. "Ran the straw purchases,'s all. Errand boy."

Beanie didn't so much as blinked at that, his eyes hooded as he stared into the pit of Jesse's numb soul. He was sure that stare had worked on plenty of riffraff before.

But he'd been beyond feeling anything for so long now he doubted it was meant to come across quite as bland as it did to him.

The man leaned forward, his elbows planting on the rickety table and his hands folding in front of his face, his head tilting to address Jesse around them.

"You're trying to tell me that all you did was get guns from civvies. That's it."

Jesse gave the man a thoughtful once over at that. He hadn't really expected him to know what he'd meant by straw, and yet he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. This was the man who, from what he could learn over their time chatting, had more or less single handedly hunted them all down and flushed them out like rats from the sewer that was Deadlock Gorge faster than Jesse could so much as blink.

Which, speaking of, the man now had yet to do.

It was surprisingly unnerving.

Jesse rolled his shoulders, the steady crack from his aching joints centering him as he spoke, tone distant.

"Sure."

The man had laid a palm down on to the table the second he spoke, and Jesse prided himself in the fact that he did not so much as blink. He raised a sardonic eyebrow, his gaze traveling up to meet Beanie's. The eyes he found were so suddenly different than the ones he'd been staring back at all day, and the change almost startled him. There was fire there, mixed with something dangerous he'd seen plenty of times on the streets. The thought was interesting.

Not interesting enough.

"Bullshit."

Jesse felt his eyes droop. He'd almost been hoping for a better reaction. Yelling, maybe. Frustration. But this?

This was boring.

"Is it?"

"Complete bullshit," the man said matter-of-factly, "and you know it. After all this... conversation, I really don't think you realize just how much we actually have on you, Deadeye. But thanks for the further proof that you're a horrible liar."

At the drop of his rank, Jesse felt something in his jaw tick ever so slightly. It wasn't much, but Beanie caught it instantly. The spark in his eye caused Jesse to inwardly curse himself. He knew better than to react to such obvious bait.

Idiot.

The man shifted his hand across his lap and onto the table to slide a large red folder in front of him, and before Jesse could make a quip regarding the operative's agency still using paper filing, honestly, what were they, neanderthals?, he opened it casually without breaking eye contact.

Jesse's curiosity got the better of him then, and his eyes darted down to the table before he could stop himself.

"This," drawled the man, "is you. Paint quite a pretty picture across the west there, don't you Mr. McCree?"

Jesse couldn't find it in himself to answer as he stared at the photo of himself paperclipped to the front of the surprisingly thick dossier. He was much younger in the photo, hair shorter and face rounder, eyes still dull but not lacking quite as much luster as they did these days. He recognized it from the first ID he'd been issued at a checkpoint in Nevada when he'd been forced to put a name to his face for entry to the territory he'd been given to stake out for what would end up being an incredibly successful home invasion. There was a fake name beneath the photo, but it was undoubtedly him. He heard himself speaking as his eyes bored holes into the paper.

"Where did you get-"

"Not your concern." The curt interruption drew his attention upward for a moment, and he saw the man leaning back into his chair, arms crossed over his broad chest. He met his eyes as they darted upwards, however, and uncrossed his arms to tick off numbers as he spoke.

"Twenty known counts of grand larceny and god only knows how many unknown. Upwards of fifty seven known aggravated assault charges. At least seven known cases of first degree murder. Upwards of thirty known counts of second degree in the last seven years. That's to be expected with Deadlock, I suppose, they did always seem to know that juvies got less jail time there-"

He bristled slightly. "I was ROP-"

"-which certainly explains your purpose and no, you weren't running your own program, thanks for that derailment-"

Jesse could do little more than stare as the man steamrolled on. "Countless cases of property damage, drug running, ammunition and weapon trafficking, and… well, who knows what else you got into in your earlier days."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

That alone should have told Jesse something. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt a silence quite so oppressive.

The man across the table exhaled noisily before running a hand over his head, tugging off the beanie and dropping it on the table as he leaned forward, resting his weight on his elbows once again. His eyes darted between Jesse's, clearly searching for something as his expression grew stern. His voice was soft, but the steel at its edges added an extra layer of frostiness to the silence.

"All of that before you turned seventeen and not a day you ended up pushing daisies."

Jesse simply returned the stare, the slightest crease in his forehead the only giveaway that he was processing any of this.

"I want," Beanie said, "to know why."

Then, and only then, did Jesse drop his facade.

He blamed the fact that he'd been keeping it up for the better part of a full day.

He blinked, bewildered, his mouth moving before his brain could shut it up. "All that and all y'want is why?"

He didn't give the man a chance to respond before he let out a short, unbelieving laugh that gave way to a full on fit of snickering. He shook his head, the laughter dying down slightly as the man stared expectantly at him and made no move to interrupt. The stoic silence is probably what did it, but Jesse found himself puffing his chest ever so slightly, rolling back his shoulders with another crack and spitting the blood from his mouth to the floor as he spoke evenly.

"'S all respect, isn't it? Y'get them to fear you, and they ain't gonna mess with you. Only way to be left alone-"

The man clearly wasn't buying it. He gave a humorless laugh and was speaking before Jesse finished. "They tell you to sell that company line or you just adopt it yourself? More violence, more respect?"

Jesse felt his lip curl at the interruption. "Wouldn't expect you to understand-"

"-right, right, because I don't know criminals like you do," he interrupted Jesse once again. "I may not have been in your little club, kid, but I know enough about reading people to know that what you're selling here? This whole-" He made a sweeping gesture up and down the length of Jesse's raggedy figure. "-devil-may-care bullshit? It's an act. A damn good one, sure, but I'd expect nothing less from the likes of you. But let me be very, very clear."

He leaned across the table, and Jesse prided himself on the fact that he only shifted in his seat by a millimeter.

"There are two more of you chained to chairs just like this one the next room over, and each of you has only just started to scratch the surface of what I need here. Twelve of you have squealed, and they aren't about to start regretting selling you out over their shiny new sentences. The rest are toes up and being sent back to HQ in body bags. Your damn lives are at stake every day, so that tells me you've got a brain somewhere behind all this snide bullshit and yet none of you have so much as twitched at the chance to strike a deal. So while I'm still in the giving mood and even willing to consider shortening any of your sentences, which should really be a goddamn crime in and of itself, then you had better start talking and cut. The. Crap."

Something about the way he said it did it in the end.

He wasn't sure if it was the condescending expression. The tone. The fact that he had been awake for easily two days straight and had been shot at and rough-housed and forced to watch his comrades dying like dogs in a ditch around him with nothing but six shots and a primal need to live only to be cuffed to a chair and smirked at and told off like a petulant child-

In the end, it didn't matter.

He'd have found himself at this point eventually, anyways.

Because suddenly, he could feel again.

And he was livid.

"It's all crap to you, I get it!" The shout was raw, the anger behind it adding extra power he'd forgotten he had, and he watched the flicker of grim surprise cross the man's expression as he continued on, his voice lowering but seething with words he'd been forced to bury in layers of desensitized nothingness for years, and suddenly he couldn't stop if he wanted to.

"You don't have to pretend like you get it, I don't care! You wouldn't know what it takes to have t'just- t'make sure you even wake up the next day! It ain't about all the violence and the stealin', dumbass, it's about-"

He couldn't stop himself, he couldn't stop, he needed to stop before he said something he'd regret-

"It's about survivin'!"

Shit, shit, shit, he'd said that out loud-

"Y'don't just start- start killin' people because you want to, y'do it because you have to, and if you can't see that early in the game-"

He inhaled sharply, his tone positively frigid.

"Then you ain't got a snowball's chance in hell to live to see another day."

The man's face gave nothing away as Jesse's words echoed back to him in the small room, his breathing the only thing filling the empty air. This silence was worse than the one before. Before, he'd only felt it clawing at his insides.

Now, he could feel the instant shame burning across his skin as he glared down the agent, the regret of letting his own guard crumble quite so easily punching him solidly in the gut over and over and over again until he was certain he'd be sick from the tension alone. He could fix this, he just had to think fast, act fast, and that's what he's best at, that's why they kept him around, wasn't it? He can be quick, he can fix this-

"You're looking at twenty five to life for this, kid."

He knew that, damn it, and there was the "kid" again, and he knew that, he knew, he knew-

"Hell of a long time to do a whole lotta nothing."

His breathing was back under control. He could get his guard back up, he could rebuild that wall around his soul if he was quick enough, he was always quick enough. His skin was still flushed, and he was still bleeding like a stuck pig and bruised and battered and so damn tired but inside he was shoving everything back into its respective box where it needed to be. Where it couldn't compromise him. Where he could ignore it and act aloof and pretend the world owed him everything for the sake of saving his skin.

Where it belonged.

"Sounds like a waste, don't it?"

He could almost speak again, if the asshole would just stop talking, he just needed a moment to-

"So let's discuss options here."

His eye twitched as his jaw ticked once again, the only outward sign of surprise. He had to concentrate, he was so close to getting back behind that wall-

But…

Options?

People like him didn't get options.

He must have voiced the thought aloud, because something changed in the agent's face.

"Door number one: you go to prison. For a very long time." The man held up a finger and slashed it across the front of his throat with a harsh, grating noise reminiscent of an antique buzzer. Before Jesse could react, he held up a second finger.

"Door number two: you start paying off the debt you're gonna find yourself with in hell. And you start now."

When it was clear after the few seconds of silence that Jesse didn't follow, the man stood, pushing the chair away from the table with a shrill squeal. He planted his palms on the table, the added height doing little to intimidate Jesse but certainly piquing his interest as the man continued.

"You give me everything you have on Deadlock. What's left of your friends gets chucked in a cell too small to stand up in. Your info comes across clean, then you work for me. When the head honchos ask you what you're doing here, you're a criminal consultant. You'll still face charges, but this way you can do some damn good for yourself instead of scratching tallies in the wall alongside the rest of your little motley crew for the rest of your life. You work for me, and I can promise you I won't be letting that… talent of yours go to waste."

Jesse stared.

And stared.

And stared until his eyes watered. Something in his head was screaming at him, pounding against that wall of his that was almost up, he's lying, he's going to send you to the slammer and you know it, you can't redeem the things you've done-

But something on the outside dripped sluggishly down his lip, and he blinked as he realized the blood from his nose had stopped flowing. The blood from the nose this man had broken.

The blood that wasn't currently painting the sands of Santa Fe like the rest of his gang.

Because of the man in front of him.

The blood that was still running through his veins.

His palm itched. The chair he was cuffed to was cold, and the metal dug into the undersides of his shoulder blades. He was bruised. Battered. Tired.

And yet, he couldn't remember a time when he could feel quite as much as he did now.

Hope.

It was hope.

The man's expression was slowly beginning to darken back into a glower, and he knew his time to answer was running short when he gave a long glance to the two-way mirror lining the wall. Jesse had barely spared it a thought until now, but he stared it down resolutely as he wondered just how many people had been watching. "Last chance, kid," the man's voice drew his attention forward once again. "You're the only one they're planning on letting me ask this, and I sure as shit wouldn't consider the two yahoos next door worth my time. Don't waste this shot."

One of the gang members he'd run with a whole lifetime ago had a tattoo of a bulky, black and blue shark. The thing had been ugly as hell and they'd collectively given him shit over it, but he'd been proud of the detail he'd managed to etch into his skin across such a small surface. The glittering, cold eyes, the toothy grin that was positively dripping in mischief and menace and practically screamed the promise that you're next-

The shouting in his head was drowned out as he rolled back his shoulders one last time. They made no noise as he stared up from beneath the brim of his hat. There was a fire in his eyes that he'd thought had long since been extinguished as he stared Beanie down, and he knew the other saw it rekindling as a slow smirk grew on the man's face. Jesse's voice was hoarse when he spoke, and the noise in his head finally quieted the moment the words passed his lips.

"When do we start?"

The man inhaled deeply at that before exhaling in a loud burst. He rummaged in his pocket for a long moment, drawing out a small tablet that he began tapping away on insistently in lieu of answering. After a moment, he put it on the table and slid it across for Jesse to examine. There was an empty form staring back up at him with four simple words typed across the top.

MCCREE, JESSE. BLACKWATCH OPERATIVE.

Jesse glanced up to the man. "Blackwatch-?"

"That'd be mine. I'll get to the details of it later, but from now on, you'll be answering to me. Lucky you."

Jesse gave the man a once over, seeing him through an entirely different lens than he had before. He layered on the drawl as he spoke, his overwhelmed confusion obvious as his accent flared.

"And, uh… you are?"

The man's demeanor changed entirely at that, and he tucked the tablet off of the table and away into his pocket in one swift movement that Jesse almost missed. He picked up his beanie with a small nod (though for what reason, Jesse couldn't for the life of him know) and jammed it roughly back over his head as he made for the door of the room. For a moment, Jesse was convinced he wouldn't answer, and just as he was beginning to puff up in indignation, the man turned.

"Gabriel Reyes. Welcome to hell."

When Jesse ran with Deadlock, he knew a man who had a shark with the grin of the devil carved into his skin.

Up until the day Jesse met Gabriel Reyes, he'd never seen a human with that very expression.

The door shut behind Reyes with a click of finality, and Jesse was left alone to his thoughts as the silence bore down upon him once again. He searched for that nagging little voice, that numbing shell around what was left of him-

And came up blank. There was nothing but the usual burning need, and it was glowing brighter than he'd ever felt it in his gut. But this time, it wasn't a need to survive.

It was to live.

He stared at himself in the two-way mirror for what felt like an eternity before a slow, blood stained smile grew across his face. His expression looked a little wild to him in the reflection, but he couldn't find it in himself to care much as he saw his own eyes (his real eyes, not the ones that had given him his moniker all that time ago) for the first time in years.

Jesse McCree wasn't born a fighter, but he'd be damned if he wouldn't die one.

A/N: boy howdy who's ready for some Blackwatch shenanigans

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