Chapter Text
This was not how things were supposed to be.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere.
He was supposed to have died months ago. Throat slit, bleeding out on the wooden floors of the Shimada Estate.
Hanzo fidgeted on his seat in the dropship, edging his fingers along the straps holding him in place.
His visions had been steady for years. Everything happening just as predicted. Just as they always had. Seek out the target, foresee the victim’s demise, accept the job, move on to the next. It was rare these days to see a target’s survival. He’d only had a handful of jobs that he’d turn down in the past decade.
Then there had been his last vision, the one that was to be his last vision. His annual return to Hanamura.
Climb the gate, dash across the top ledge. Strike the omnic, and beat and kick the nearby guard off the raised platform. Dodge the katana, slipping past the clumsy stab to wrap them in a choke-hold while drawing back on the bow. Release, hit and destroy the phone of the last guard as they run into the large bell, knocking themselves out. Drop the now unconscious guard. Move on.
No need to move or otherwise bother the bodies, they were all but stepping stones on the path to his end.
Approach the altar. Kneel beneath the shadow of the dragons. Lay out the bowl, the feather. Light the incense. Honor Genji the only way you know how. One. Last. Time. Wait for the assassin to appear.
He had not been able to resist calling out his bluff to the creature in the shadows.
“You are not the first assassin sent to kill me,” he had said. “And you will not be the last.” The lie felt bitter on his tongue.
Feel the shadow drop from the rafters, landing with no more weight than that of a feather.
Hanzo had found bitter pleasure in the skill they obviously carried.
Banter with the confident machine. Reach for Stormbow, grab, pull, release.
But even at that first arrow, Hanzo could tell something was off.
The assassin knocks the arrow to the side...
But no, a simple turn of their shoulder and they had dodged it instead. A small change perhaps, but Hanzo’s visions were not so fluid a thing.
Suddenly, the vision Hanzo had seen of this moment for many months was blurring at the edges. He worked to focus past the shift taking place before his very eyes.
The assassin had seemed to dodge the second arrow even as he drew it, curling down to follow the arch of the shaft as it struck the floor. Again, not where it was supposed to land.
Arrow after arrow missing their mark by an inch, or only at the last second, and Hanzo felt his composure slip as his opponent seemed to foresee his movements. The assassin speaking in quips and phrases that did not match the vision Hanzo had seen.
Hanzo could still foresee the end, his end, but whereas before it was akin to gazing into a calm pool, it was now more comparable to looking through a running river, the borders bending unpredictably. Things were different, and different was wrong.
Hanzo drew and released an arrow to his left. His opponent was already far behind him and to the right. He had not felt this on edge in a fight in years.
Hanzo rarely ran low on his arrows. In this conflict he ran out. One of them had even been sliced in half! He had to resort to using Stormbow itself as a blunt weapon. It was unfathomable.
All the while the assassin seemed to dodge and shift past his attacks, moving around that which had already been predicted. They had him pinned down, literally. At no point had he seen himself pressed against the cracked railing of the deck outside the shrine, a sword held off of his throat with only the force of his arms. He was sweating. He had not experienced such a fight since…
Then, as if the assassin could read his mind, they taunted him over his greatest mistake.
“You think you honor your brother Genji with incense and offerings!?" they had sneered. "Honor resides in one’s actions!”
How dare they. How. dare. they. Who were they to lecture him about honor?! To disregard his endeavors!? They knew nothing! They did not know of his burdens. Could not understand his regret. They could not comprehend how it was to feel the weight of your biggest mistake years before making it.
With a show of strength he had thrown the assassin off of himself, as the vision again reshaped it’s form. Still, it was almost over. He need only call on the dragons, the assassin would somehow avoid them, and then it would all end.
Knowing, didn’t prepare him for his dragons being turned on him. To have them reflected back with a dragon of their own.
Hanzo had fallen to his knees, and while he felt the weight of his end pressing down on him, he could not help the confusion running through his mind. He could not help but ask the assassin who they were. Only a true Shimada could control the dragons, and Hanzo knew himself to be the last. He knew soon there would be none at all.
In a final moment of clarity, he knew no answer would be given.
Without a word the assassin dashes forward, slits his throat, drops his body to the floorboards and…
But then, once again, that didn’t quite happen. The assassin dashed forward, blade against his throat, then they hesitated... and continued to hesitate.
The moment seemed to last a small eternity. Impatient for them to finish it, Hanzo had said, “Do it then. Kill me.”
And just like that, everything had fallen apart. No longer could Hanzo foresee an honorable end at the hands of a skilled assassin on the fitting battlefield of his brother’s death.
Like the snap of a broken chain, the world shifted, recoiled, painfully throwing Hanzo off balance. His head throbbed, his arm and leg burned . Sudden visions flew through his mind at the abrupt continuation of his existence. A desert temple, an abandoned castle, the night streets of some foreign town. Visions upon visions appearing from the black nothingness that was supposed to signal his death. All of them looping back to some military base creeping out from the rock of a cliff along the coastline.
Even more jarring than the influx of visions, even more unexpected than his dragons being reflected back upon himself, the words of the phantom in front of him shook him the most.
Yet even as the not-assassin spoke, even as they called him “brother,” Hanzo stood in denial of it all. It was not possible. His brother was dead.
But as the figure in front of him removed their mask, revealed those eyes, eyes that could “see,” Hanzo knew it was no illusion.
Hanzo could not even recall the words spoken as his would-be assassin took their leave, and he was left with the muddy mess of his future stretching before him.
The next few months had been clear enough at least.
Take a job. Wallow in indecision. Take another. Remember the futility of resisting the future. Seek contact with the impossibility that is Genji. Come to an agreement. Follow Genji to the Mediterranean. To Overwatch.
After that however, the future was unclear. Upon arrival to a place known as “Gibraltar” the future grew blurry along the edges. Meditating on his visions only resulted in said visions shifting further out of focus.
It was unprecedented. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It gave him a headache.
He could see his brother, and he knew now that it had to be his brother. He could see a blonde woman with white wings, a large man covered in armor, and many, many others. He saw them working together for a common goal. Working as a team to make the world a better place. Working to include him on that team. They would not succeed.
At least… he didn’t think so. His headache grew any time he tried to hone his visions, but it was as if the future was full of holes. Full of gaps that shifted and warped everything surrounding them. Even as he sat in the dropship and concentrated on the vision of his arrival at the watchpoint, it blurred, faded, and disappeared.
Previously, he would have seen this as a sign that the vessel was going to crash. That he would die before reaching his brother and his ill-thought scheme for redemption.
But no, Hanzo could see futures past that. There was just a strange sudden gap of a future he could not see. His head hurt. The dragons roiled unpleasantly in his chest. He supposed he would have to wait and see, just like everyone else.
Hanzo drew himself back to the present. He would have to settle for visions of the near-future instead.
The lone pilot, Agent Oxton, attempts to make small talk, refills their coffee. Hanzo ignores them. They overfill their mug. They give up on talking. They clean up. Hanzo remains silent.
Easy. Predictable. Familiar.
Hanzo knew they would land after that and then... Hanzo did not know. Not knowing made him uncomfortable, and he absently rubbed at his shoulder as the dragons shared in his displeasure.
A few minutes later agent Oxton came down the ramp from the cockpit, wielding an empty mug.
“You know you don’t gotta stay strapped in the whole flight right?” she asked.
Hanzo remained stoic, holding his expression in place.
“Umm,” she rocked back and forth on her heels. “I was just refilling my coffee if you wanted some?” She trailed off on the question, and waited a moment. As the moment passed she stepped to the side to fill her own mug. “Guess not,” she muttered.
Agent Oxton glanced in the direction Hanzo was facing, but finding nothing he could be staring at. She whipped back around at the sound of coffee spilling out onto the counter and floor, swearing sharply as she rushed to turn off the machine.
Silence reigned through the dropship, save for the gentle hum of the ship’s engines, and the sounds of the coffee slowly dripping to the floor.
Agent Oxton did not speak as she stiffly fetched paper towels and cleaned up the mess. Hanzo too remained silent. Afterwards, Agent Oxton returned to their seat. Her mug forgotten on the table.
Hanzo let out a sigh as he rubbed at his sore thigh. At least that vision had remained unchanged. All that was left to do now was wait.