This is the final chapter of this story! Thanks to everyone who liked it. I'm going to continue with a larger series about McCree's life, always framed through other peoples' perspectives, so Overwatch starts next, mostly through Reyes' eyes. This is the last of the Ashe, trilogy, however, so I hope you enjoy it!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Ashe finishes strapping the concrete to the feet and pulls the body to the edge of the cliff. All it took was a twilight drive out to the dam built in the early 60s' and Ashe found herself enough water to dump a sorry excuse of a man in.

She pushes the corpse off the edge with the heel of her boot. It's too dark outside to see anything, but she hears the telltale splash and relaxes. Looking around, it's quite a nice night—this far from the city, two or three starts are blinking down at her, and wind of some kind is making slight waves in the water below, ones she can hear from her perch up here. She sits on her bike, but she doesn't start the motor, enjoying the cool air and the glimmer of green grass against burgeoning moonlight. Even the concrete of the machinery around her seems beautiful, like the gray has been elevated to silver in the wash of the night sky.

There's a beeping from her pocket. She'd turned off all communications except the emergency channel, which only her, McCree, and B.O.B. have access to. McCree's out on a drive with his grandfather (not that he remembers to carry something she can reach him on), so it's B.O.B., which means it's more important than the good hot dogs McCree had at that convenience store or the poker game he won last night. Best case scenario, B.O.B. has updates on the gorge she's been trying to repurpose as their headquarters—being located in Santa Fe isn't good for the long term, not if they want to avoid the authorities and spread their influence.

When she opens the comm, it's not related to the gorge, and it certainly isn't from McCree. The air feels chiller when she watches the short clip, sent from B.O.B.'s memory banks just now. It's her loyal butler, struggling against constraints as he's manhandled into the back of a mansion. The video is blurry, grainy like some old spy thriller, but she knows those Corinthian pillars anyway. B.O.B. has been kidnapped by her own parents. They're not so willing to let her go after all.

She turns the key in the ignition of her bike so hard she nearly overheats the engine. She'd ride all the way to their house if it wasn't a stupid idea, ride all the way back if that particular home wasn't on the East Coast. There are faster ways to get there, planes to sneak aboard. Briefly, she wishes McCree wasn't sleeping out on the plains with his old man tonight—but then she's glad for it, glad that he won't see her dirty laundry. She knows he doesn't like the way she flaunts her money, that he secretly thinks she's faking this, that she'll go home when the going gets tough.

She's going home, all right. But not the way he thought. Not the way her parents are thinking, either.

She stops for food, guns, and a flight. It's only three hours before she's back on the East Coast, stepping off a private airport with a shotgun on each hip and her rifle snug in its holster. Gun laws are restricted by pesky peacekeeping organizations like Overwatch and the like, but Ashe knows how to get around those. With enough money, she can get anything she wants.

Back on the East Coast, she feels out of place. The air is all wrong, the level of humidity too high after the dry desert air. She's not used to so many people anymore, and as she walks through the streets of the bustling port city she spent a fifteenth of her childhood in—more than any other town—it becomes apparent that Santa Fe is behind the times in both technology and money.

Deadlock isn't, though. That's the important thing. That, and getting B.O.B. back. He's been there her whole life: she cannot abandon him now, even if the idea of facing her parents again has her winded. She stops on the side of the street and sits down, legs cold against the bench as she stares at uniform trees dotting a metallic landscape. The rich reds of the New Mexico landscape are nowhere to be seen. It's been less than two years, but even as the days whip by in the thrill of illegal cons and back-alley deals, it seems so much longer.

When she stands back up, it's only a few blocks to her parent's house. It feels like she's marching to certain death, even though she spent the short flight examining her blueprints of the area, like she doesn't know them already from setting off homemade bombs in the gardenias and taking a sledgehammer to her least favorite busts (she's always hated Newton, for some reason—she thinks it's the wig). She knows the staff her family keeps on-site, but she checks recent logs of all the security in the area to double check that they aren't hiring more to keep B.O.B. safe. Nothing abnormal.

She reaches the Corinthian pillars with her face flushed and her heart beating fast, the manicured lawn and long drive she grew up with to her back and a closed door ahead of her. Ashe has roughed up gangs and killed hardened criminals. She puts one foot in front of the other until she reaches the door, passing the still-indented circles of grass where B.O.B. had built her her own swing set. She'd torn it down with her bare hands years later when her parents failed to show up for the fifth piano recital in a row, and the gardeners had spent thousands trying to repair the soil.

Ashe shoots the door open with one slug, watching with a smug smile as shards of wood explode outwards, splintering her skin and littering the front steps. "Oops," she says. "I forgot to knock." Her words echo in the empty air.

The home security alarm is on a trigger, but she disconnected it remotely from the police on her way in: they're probably more concerned with accepting bribes and beating up civilians anyway. Her smile widens as the trill of the alarm barrages her eardrums. Alarms are the sound of chaos. They know she's here, now. They can't run, not with the driving mechanism on all their hovercars disabled. She even slashed the tires of the vintage Rolls. She's not taking any chances. They can't get away from her now.

The foyer is unchanged from her childhood, a big marble hallway kept clean by a staff that rarely sees their employers. The red carpet rolling down it is untouched, and Ashe relishes in leaving big muddy footsteps down the length of it, craning her neck up the spiral staircase, trying to figure out which of the many rooms they're keeping B.O.B. in. They want her back? Well, she's here.

As she's looking up, there's movement out of the corner of her eye. The bodyguards—three for each of her parents. They're trained by a good school, hired from reputable sources, but nothing can compare to fighting on the streets. Two black suits are down before they even reach her, shot in the stomach or the leg, something that'll take them out for as long as she needs to be here. The blood on the marble isn't Ashe's usual aesthetic, not that she knows the thrill of cracked skulls on soiled barroom floors, but she's relishing it anyway. She fires from the hip for the third and fourth guards, her grip on the trigger iron until screams echo in the oversized foyer, bouncing back on her open ears. The fifth guard slips in blood and doesn't get back up. The sixth guard runs—she shoots him in the back.

"Is this it?" she announces. "Is this all the guard you have for yourselves? For B.O.B.? He's worth ten times that." B.O.B. is worth every armed guard in the world, but her parents never understood the value of hot dogs grilled outside in summer heat.

Her boots track gore up the stairs, and she grinds her heel every few steps to make sure she's leaving her mark. The hallway yawns before her, an abyss of empty rooms. She ducks her head through the open doors and kicks the closed ones down, but finds only sheets covering the furniture and a fine layer of dust over items the servants have permission to leave be. She passes her original nursery, but the room is empty now, and the master bedroom, on the other side of the floor, is untouched. B.O.B. isn't upstairs. No one is.

By the time she's downstairs again, Ashe can feel her last meal threatening to rise up her throat. The hair on her neck is standing: there are six guards, but no sign of her parents. She searches the first floor with a hand on one of her guns, ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble, chipping her red nail polish against the cool surfaces of the weapons in her latest nervous tic. There is no sign of life anywhere except the surviving men in the foyer, groaning with agony and incapable of moving. She steps over them and heads to the cellar.

There are signs of a struggle here. Ashe lets out a deep breath, relaxing. The polished floor has been scraped by huge boots, and the door barely hangs on its frame. Her parents must be down here interrogating him, trying to figure out her whereabouts. Like they'd know the beginnings of how to interrogate someone—they'd grow squeamish at the tools, afraid that the blood would stain their designer clothing. With a sneer on her face, Ashe slams open the door and descends the wooden stairs. They don't creak, not with the care her family's servants put into their home, but the darkness is as gloomy as any cellar across the country.

At the bottom of the staircase, Ashe finds B.O.B. Alone. He's been tied up with the kind of steel robe that corporations sell to omnic prisons and vigilantes—Ashe should know, Deadlock handles it—and stacked against the back wall, surrounded by huge crates and boxes. It's dark down here, all the crates casting long shadows, but there is no sign of movement, no sounds other than the soft whirring of the machinery keeping B.O.B. alive, a noise only she knows to listen for and one that comforted her to sleep for many years.

"Of course I came," she says in reaction to B.O.B.'s eyes lighting up, voice steady as she puts a series of bullets through the omnic wire. It takes a long time to destroy. It dates back to the Omnic War: even Bastion units have trouble with it

She doesn't want to ask the next question. She waits until B.O.B. is untied, her hands red and raw from pulling on the wires, her arms shaking from the effort. "Are they with you?"

B.O.B.'s gaze lowers. He shakes his head. When Ashe stands, saying nothing, he stands with her. He starts to put an arm around her shoulder, comforting her. "Where are they?" she asks, hating the tremble in her voice. This was never about her. It was B.O.B. It was all about the investment: he'd been an expensive purchase, the first of his line. They couldn't afford to lose that. It was never a trap to lure her.

B.O.B. doesn't reply, refraining from motions with his head or hands. Ashe thrusts his arm away from her, pushing him away. He held her like this after every missed birthday, every sporting event he was alone in the stands for, every bedtime tuck-in that was just the two of them. It's stupid. She's stupid. She kicks the wall, nearly breaking her toe inside her boot. She grabs her gun. There's no one to shoot, but maybe she'll find someone anyway. She'll show them what happens when Ashe gets ignored. This whole city will remember her name.

"Boy, howdy, this is a damn big house!"

Ashe stops gritting her teeth and looks up. In the light of the doorway, all the way up the stairs, there is a silhouette outlined by a cowboy hat and a pair of spurs. "What in tarnation, Jesse McCree?" she says. It's all she can think to say.

"I got that video too," he says, clomping down the stairs in boots with bits of grass and cow dung still attached to the bottom. "Didn't take much digging to find the plane you disappeared on. The three of us, we're a team. I can't abandon B.O.B., can I? And I'm not about to abandon you, either."

He shoots her that easy grin. Everything about him is easy: the brown locks mussed by his ever-present wide-brim, his clothes straight out of the pulp novels he likes stealing, even the man himself, according to the rest of the boys in the gang. Ashe goes to reply, but instead hot tears well in her eyes.

"I didn't forget what you said," he adds. He's still grinning, but there's a real tinge of seriousness to his tone. "I mean it, Ashe. We're a family. And family don't just run off on each other."

Ashe grabs his bandana, still intending for some hurtful comment, some sarcastic remark. Her fingers still clawed in the rough fabric, he wraps her into a bear hug. It's hard to believe this overgrown weed is two years younger than her with her head pressed against his chest, strong arms holding her in a way totally different than B.O.B. used to. She sniffs and then gags.

"You smell terrible," she says.

"Well, I did have my fingers up a cow's asshole about ten hours ago."

Ashe struggles to escape the hug while McCree laughs loud enough that the sound reverberates against the walls of the cellar, freeing one of his hands up so he can tousle her hair unforgivably before trying to get her to smell his finger. B.O.B. walks over and places a hand on each of their shoulders. His hand holds more warmth than this entire mansion has ever had.

"Let's get the hell out of here," says Ashe.

McCree winks. "Where to, boss?"

Ashe wipes her tears with McCree's bandana and pushes him away from her. "It doesn't matter," she says, heading for the door. "Not with the two of you by my side."

If you liked this chapter of the story as a whole, I'd love it if you let me know!