The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

He never left much in the way of tracks; no foot prints, no scraps of food, not even little piles of dirt where he tried to bury his excrement. He left nothing behind that could show even a little dredge of his humanity – not like Jesse who was leaving empty water sleeves behind like snake skins.

He had long soaked through his gear, the sun an unrelenting force beating down on him; yet he still trudged on undeterred, still following the shadow of his teacher.

He never did seem to get closer. Reyes was moving on like a machine, seemingly never stopping, yet leaving small piles of sick, slow burning grass behind for Jesse to rest at during the night.

He wants me to follow him, he thinks in these moments, sitting down heavily. The grass was the only thing growing in the blight, giving off a sulfuric glow that hurt the eyes if looked at it directly.

Jesse pulled out one of his last cigars and put it in the corner of his mouth – not lighting it, just lightly chewing on the end, staring moodily ahead, trying to see the black dot that wafted in and out of sight sometimes.

He was crazy. He knew he was: following a figment of his imagination just because he couldn’t stomach the thought of Gabriel Reyes dying, crushed beneath so much rubble. It seemed like Reyes was somehow… better than that. Like he would simply walk anything short of an atomic explosion off.

In many ways, he still was the brat Blackwatch had picked up and honed into a weapon; the brat that had idolized his commander above anything and anyone else.

Maybe that was the reason he had gone off after seeing it. Lured back to the organization he’d left shamefully behind by the rumors of Morrison and Reyes having died – and seeing one of the windows along the ground burst open, letting out a thick, inky mass of hate…

McCree shifts, hand falling to his side, fingers curling around the thick, well worn handle of Peacekeeper. Here in the desert where the weapon had no targets to aim at, it had become more of a comfort; a steady, heavy weight at his hip.

No, the man in black was no figment of his imagination. He had seen the black cloud. He had heard Angela’s faint, alarmed scream of “Gabriel!” – and he did sit night after night at the little piles of grass the creature left behind for him.

He would track him down sooner or later; and he would… he would…

…he didn’t know what he would do. He was a sick puppy trailing after his master, and he had the numb feeling Reyes knew it, too.