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The small man behind the desk was grey in every aspect - his suit, his watery eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, his papery skin, his thinning hair. He could have been anywhere from forty five to seventy and he had the kind of face shady corporations loved; one you could be in a room with and mistake for part of the furnishings unless you bumped into it.
The man steepled his fingers. “I hear you’re one of the best.”
“Then you have heard correctly.”
When he the man squinted at him Hanzo shrugged - it was only the truth.
“Right. Right, I like your confidence. Very promising. Hm. Do you know why we wish to engage your services?”
“I understand you want me to track someone down.”
“Absolutely.” He smacked a piece of paper - rather archaic, really - onto the desktop, and Hanzo glanced down at it. His heart tripped on a beat like a child misjudging the step of a stair - he hadn’t even thought it knew how to do that anymore. Cole Cassidy, wanted for innumerable crimes including multiple counts of destruction of private property, murder, theft, public profanity…
“Are you familiar with the gentleman in question?”
“I know of him,” Hanzo said noncommittally. He found himself disliking this weasel of a man more with every passing second, but when he had followed the tangled strands of rumor they had lead him here.
The man smiled mirthlessly. “Don’t we all get to know about him, sooner or later. Don’t we all.”
“May I ask why you are so set on his capture?”
The grey momentarily gave way to some dark and seething passion. “He is a troublemaker. A dispenser of reckless do-goodery and the center of a hurricane of mayhem. Wherever he goes chaos, humiliation and insurance claims follow in his footsteps.”
Hanzo had to keep his face deliberately blank. That did sound like Cole.
“And the paperwork ends up on my desk. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Well, within reason,” he added, as if his accountant’s soul wrested back control of his mouth. “Just… just make this little problem disappear for us, and it could be very lucrative for you.”
“Mhm.”
Hanzo ran his fingers over the drawing, not quite touching the lines of Cole’s face. It didn’t look anything like him, really - only the hat, the cigar, the theatrical trappings. Cole had always set himself up as a caricature, and as it turned out he was cleverer than even Hanzo gave him credit for. It must be nice, having a backup self to retreat into.
His eyes were all wrong, though, flat and expressionless.
Or maybe that was what his eyes looked like now. It had been a long time ago. He pulled his fingers back.
“So this is the man you want me to find.”
“Ah. Yes. Find him and bring him here - dead or alive, as they say. Ahaha.” The small man let out a chuckle so dry it should have crumbled like chalk in his throat. “Preferably dead, between you and me. He is, pardon my French, a slippery goddamn son of a bitch who will haunt my every nightmare as well as my in tray for the rest of my days. He heh. Heh.”
Somebody might end up dead, but will not be him, Hanzo thought. “Last known location?”
The man pushed a tablet towards him. “All pertinent information, for your reading pleasure. Half the payment up front, the rest when the job’s completed - the usual drill.”
Hanzo took the tablet and tucked it away. “Are there others working on the same contract?”
“...I don’t think that’s information you need to complete the job, do you?”
That meant yes, then. Too bad. It was always annoying to deal with incompetent clowns getting in his way, but at least it would probably not take too long.
“Very well.”
The man watched him with narrowed eyes for a while. ”Be careful. I mean it. He started out as a crook, and if you ask me he’s still a crook even if he has turned his hand to carrying out ’justice’ or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing. He knows all the tricks.”
He certainly knows most of mine. ”I will take that into consideration.”
”Good. Very good. I have high hopes for you. Do not let us down.”
He nearly rolled his eyes at the implied threat in the man’s tone. ”I understand.”
”Hm.”
Hanzo didn’t bother to close the door after him as he left.
-------
Five people lay bound and gagged on the floor, most of them likely to be lost to the world for hours to come – the sedative he’d used was commendably reliable. One of them whimpered pitifully into the ratty carpet; Hanzo poked at him with a toe but decided he was not waking up any time soon, so he settled back into the window sill and watched the street. The abandoned apartment building was freezing right in the middle of a Russian winter, surrounded by the husk of a town that had been all that remained at the end of the omnic war. Hanzo huddled down into his clothes and folded his arms over his chest. Why anyone would live in a climate like this if they had any other choice was beyond him.
Genji had always liked the snow, especially the part where he could sneak up and throw snowballs at the back of Hanzo’s head or pour it down his neck. He…
Hm.
Maybe Cole would have been fine on his own - he usually was, miraculously so considering the way he insisted on going around dressed in the least inconspicuous way possible. There had been many traps and he had evaded most of them completely... but this last one had given Hanzo pause. It seemed more serious than the others, organized, better funded, like people in high places had glanced down, decided the problem needed squashing and thrown money at it to make it go away.
Thankfully the window of time where anyone would be able to pin down where Cole would be was very narrow; it was why all these amateurs had decided to strike at the same time. Once he got out of this place it was anyone’s guess where he could turn up next - Hanzo would stay long enough to make sure he had tracked down all of the grey man’s little minions and leave before any of them woke up.
He wondered if Cole still had that stupid belt buckle. He probably did. It seemed like the kind of thing that stayed a universal constant even as the world fell to pieces around it.
...Hanzo still remembered how to undo that belt with a simple flick of this thumb. He leaned his temple against the glass.
Five minutes went by, then ten, and keeping the past at bay became harder. One of the people on the floor smoked a cigarette brand he recognized; it clung to their clothes just enough that there was a faint scent of it in the room. He wished he could turn off his senses on command until he needed them.
After a while he startled out of it, because there was a figure in the distance, just a slinking shadow against the brightness of the snow. He would have recognized that silhouette anywhere. Hanzo didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until his chest started aching – he let it out slowly and then picked up the bow, kicking the window open to climb out and up to the roof. This building gave him the best line of sight without being easily seen himself, something he had figured out while scouting out the surrounding valley from up there earlier.
He wasn’t even sure what Cole was here for – his first guess as to why anyone should trek out here would be remnants of omnic technology left from the war, but that wasn’t the sort of work he usually took. But then he didn’t usually associate with people who were careless enough to leak where he could be found either, so maybe it was just a momentary lapse. Everyone made mistakes sooner or later. There was a car parked some distance away that he must have arrived in.
Hanzo kept an arrow nocked. Just in case.
Cole moved quickly – whatever he was looking for he must know exactly where to find it. Hanzo kept his eyes on the snow dunes, looking for anything unexpected, but everything was tranquil enough. Seemed like he really had gotten all of them.
Once Cole reached the bombed-out town square he kneeled down next to a broken fountain and felt around in the snow. It took some time, but eventually he perked up and retrieved something. From this close Hanzo could make out that he was wearing a thick winter coat – and the Stetson. Of course he was. Of course.
Hanzo knew he had never deserved it in the first place, but all he could think about now was the jocular lilt to his voice and how warm his hands were - his back as he walked away. It was like being stabbed with a rusty blade again and again. He had thought no other pain could ever break through the unending dull ache of Genji being gone. He had been wrong.
He held on to the bow until his knuckles hurt.
Cole was heading back to the car with his loping gait. Hanzo hesitated. If he was really quick about it he could get down and...
And what, exactly. What could he possibly offer him now that would be worth having.
The wind whipped at his face in icy lashes and the car pulled out onto the ruined highway; Hanzo climbed down the side of the building and slid back in through the window. He kicked his boots against the wall to get the snow off and looked around the room. No clue that he had ever been here. Good. He imagined his tutors would have been pleased, and he didn’t give a damn anymore.
He tossed the grey man’s tablet down between the unconscious mercenaries. They could bring his money back to him, if they didn’t decide to do the stupid thing and try to run.
For a split second he thought he saw a flash of red down on the street - but it was gone as soon as he blinked. It must have been his imagination.
Hanzo went over to the door and closed it quietly behind him.
-------
”So... I am to understand that you – all of you – were outwitted by one man.”
Anja sweated under the glare of the man behind the desk. ”I, uh. I’m not sure, sir. I wasn’t conscious for most of it. Last thing I remember was someone dropping down from the roof behind me, and then I woke up drooling into the carpet.”
”We almost had to gnaw through the ropes, but then Anja here got the idea to smash the window and use the shards to cut them,” Ahmed supplemented. She nodded gratefully. There was nothing like trying to headbutt a window until it shattered together to build a friendship. They had decided to take on their next job together.
”He left this behind,” Anja said, putting the tablet down on the desk. ”I think he wrote a message for you.”
The man picked it up and glanced at it.
”’Leave him alone, or the next grunts you send will not be as fortunate’. Ha. Aha ha.” The man ran his fingers over the paperweight on his desk like he was considering hurling it at the opposite wall with all his strength. ”I knew there was something off about him, but I thought he was just an arrogant bastard. Fucking...”
”Who? The target? You’ve met him?”
”Never mind.”
”Do we still get some kind of hazard pay?” one of the other men ventured after a while. ”Because I kind of got chilblains in some private places and I feel like I deserve something for that.”
The man behind the desk took off his glasses and rubbed at his forehead. ”No.”
”Right. Okay. Gotcha.”
They stood there while the man’s left eye developed a disconcerting twitch.
”So can we go, or... are you going to have us all killed for failing you?” Anja asked. Through the years she’d had a lot of employers who didn’t have much in the way of a sense of humor.
He waved her off, eyes squeezed shut. ”Whatever. What. Ever. Covering up your deaths would take too much paperwork. Just get out of my sight and never come back.”
They exchanged glances, and for that one moment they were all linked in a telepathic bond of pure relief. They filed out the door like someone had activated a fire alarm - Anja grabbed Ahmed by the arm and towed him into the hallway. As the door swung shut behind them there was the sound of something heavy hitting the wall with serious force.
”Maybe we should get into a safer line of business,” Anja said eventually. ”Like grizzly bear wrestling. Piranha juggling.”
”I really don’t want to be one of the ’less fortunate’ ones, anyway. If we ever see a ’Cassidy’ mentioned anywhere in a contract, we just pretend we never saw it and go the other way. Deal?”
”Sounds like a plan.”
And they walked out of the building together into a bright new dawn, subtly keeping an eye on the rooftops.