Chapter Text
Hanzo knows that Genji picked the cineplex for their weekly hang-out so that they wouldn’t have to talk to each other, but that’s fine. As long as Genji’s with him, he’s not getting into trouble, and that’s all Hanzo cares about.
The theater has been emptied. There's a cooler full of beer waiting by their seats. The only trailers shown are for the double-feature they're about to watch: a Wild West special, classics of American folklore, displayed with blazing gunfire and a lot of exclamation points. Hanzo cracks open a beer before the first title rolls; if he has to endure Genji’s terrible taste in film, he’s going to be drunk.
His expectations are met. The first picture, in which two haphazard outlaws rob banks in Bolivia, is in turns both dull and overly glib. Hanzo looks at Genji twice throughout: once when the younger man laughs and again when he cries out in shock and gestures wildly with his beer can. Hanzo leans away right before he opens it and sprays all over them both.
He's snoring on Hanzo’s shoulder by the time the second film starts. The eldest considers waking him. Surely one bad flick is enough to satisfy his fraternal duty. It’s not like he's flush with free time. He's already spent half the film's runtime exchanging texts. But during the opening credits of whistling guitars and beating hooves, he brushes Genji’s green bangs out of his finally-peaceful face and decides to let his little brother sleep. He’s probably still hungover from the night before.
And the second movie turns out to be much better: a lone gunman pitting two vicious gangs against each other. It’s slow, brutal. Artfully composed. Hanzo's focus narrows around the nameless cowboy. He appreciates his zen-like stoicism and wry humor. He smiles at the way he speaks around the cigar between his teeth, how his dusty poncho sweeps over his broad shoulders, how his squinting eyes seem to understand that he does not live in a fairytale. Hanzo can appreciate a story where the characters know that heroes aren't real.
There’s also something familiar about the film, but Hanzo can’t place it. He doesn’t strain to try; opportunities to relax are few.
Only when he and Genji are back in their town car does he realize that the plot was exactly the same as an ancient Japanese film in which a gang war between two rival clans is orchestrated by one clever rōnin: an ex-samurai. A wandering warrior that knows neither duty nor purpose.
Hanzo rubs the center of his chest and looks across the car at Genji.
No worse fate imaginable.
デ═—
Hanzo doesn’t even think the word “cowboy” again until his first day at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, nearly fifteen years later. He arrives late in the morning, full of jet lag and misgivings, but Genji seems glad to greet him. He sparkles with an excitement buried under a formal politeness as familiar as it is disturbing. As they walk from the launch pad to the western dormitories, Hanzo examines Genji's new form: the gleaming silver plates, the glowing green slots that periodically let out puffs of what looks like steam, the self-aggrandizing kanji for "bushin" emblazoned on his chest piece. It's hard to accept, but that detail above all others confirms to Hanzo that it really is his ridiculous little brother under all that metal.
The confirmation brings him no comfort. The late-summer sun gleaming off that familiar sword jutting from Genji's back is like something out of a nightmare, the demon of his truest shame. Everything he sees, everything Genji says, he accepts with the false equanimity of a man expecting to wake up. Perhaps even hoping to.
His brother’s dorm is small, thoroughly unimpressive, yet full of personal effects. Some are new, like the blanket of Nepalese design, stitched so fine it could only have been made by omnic hands. Some are old, more akin to Hanzo's own sensibilities: a large futon with a white comforter (unmade), a chabudai with cushion seats (littered with dirty ration packs), and an alcove in the corner with two bonsai and one scroll (formerly a coat closet).
Those items couldn't have come from anywhere but the Shimada estate. That Genji might have been visiting his old rooms while Hanzo was not two hundred yards away, praying in the shrine for Genji's supposedly passed-on spirit... it puts a knot in Hanzo's brow that he doesn't bother to hide.
And he knows, of course, that this is the same room where Genji laid down after countless battles with the Shimada-gumi, where he put away his sword after it took the lives of their kin. Where he struggled with his new mechanical body—the same struggle that rises in Hanzo’s chest every time he looks Genji's way. He's already noted the lack of mirrors.
The younger brother is comparatively upbeat as he escorts Hanzo to his new dorm, which is also dour in comparison: a cot, glaring fluorescent lights, a dresser. All of it industrial, military-grade plastic. Genji mentions that only officers were given private dorms and describes the person who bunked there before, but the eldest isn’t listening. He’s looking out the window at one of the overgrown lawns, a row of outdated all-terrain vehicles haphazardly parked just shy of the cliff. Remnants of a hasty evacuation. Whatever battle took place here lingers still, he thinks.
Hanzo isn’t surprised when Genji branches off into discussing the merits of Overwatch itself and all that the organization has given him. All that they could do to aid the tumultuous world, their renovation of the base. He updates him on their ongoing conflict with the terrorist organization known as Talon and steps they've taken to deter their operations. His ramblings come just short of a sales pitch, but Hanzo knows that Genji knows that his elder brother is no fool; Genji will not ask him to join them until he’s built an airtight case. Like their old sparring matches, the blows will come from all sides, indirectly. And neither will give an inch.
Or, more likely, he will never outright ask, but will expect Hanzo to choose. Like that maddening ultimatum Genji lobbed at him after emerging, ghost-like, in their family shrine all those months ago: it is time to pick a side.
A fine time to play nobility, after appearing as an assassin. Resting his blade at His elder brother's throat. Though, Hanzo supposes, he was the one who attacked first. Again.
Then Genji slyly admits that Overwatch is preparing for an important mission. That meeting everyone in their element is the best way to understand. It is far past the time for solitude—and a drink—but to refuse would only delay the inevitable.
They walk side-by-side down the black tarmac, Hanzo's chin already raised in expectation of veiled animosity; "celebrity heroes" trying to re-start a failed peacekeeping operation on a decimated base, poseurs that will once again dominate his younger brother's mind and turn him further from the path he was meant to walk. Delusional fools who only know of Hanzo from the worst mistake of his life.
But the youngest Shimada is ever lighter—bird-like. His chromed faceplate sparkles happily in the Mediterranean sun, a stark contrast to the heavy, starched blues and blacks of his elder. He tells Hanzo: I'm happy you're here. Hanzo tries to return the sentiment, but fails to convince. He has too much behind him to feign hope in what lay ahead.
Just before they step into the main lab, he detects what sounds like someone whistling. Turning his head, he looks for the source, but the wind only picks up from a pleasant breeze to an oceanic gust.
Winston is in his lab, a two-storied, make-shift command center, exemplary save for the tire swing and strewn tubs of peanut butter. Though he knew what Winston was before seeing him in person, Hanzo is still startled to see a massive gorilla delicately soldering minute robotic parts with the delicacy of a master. Even more startling is the idea that there may be others just like him: genetic leftovers from a botched experiment on the moon, scattered to God-knows-where. Overwatch truly was a haven for any and all kinds of societal leftovers.
At least he is polite. Hanzo watches with interest as Winston shows the two Shimada his latest project: improved security bots he calls OWLS: omnicopter watch-link sentries. Little drones sub-routed via Athena: their AI system with whom Winston seems unnaturally close. The soft-spoken software notes that these units are capable of incapacitating any attacker within a hundred yards as the drones' white eyes turn red and electrodes slingshot towards a dummy omnic at impossible speeds, immediately shocking it to the floor. Winston seems pleased, and adds that, with a little more work, they should be capable of mobilizing dozens of these bots within seconds of Athena registering an attack.
Hanzo is impressed, and says as much. He adds that, at the very least, he can rest assured that they are keeping his little brother safe. Genji lets out an auto-tuned sigh; Winston doesn't seem to know how to respond.
In the medical bay, Dr. Angela Ziegler is arranging for a shipment of supplies. Genji immediately straightens around her, becomes the affected 'White Knight' as Hanzo witheringly assesses from behind his shoulder. The doctor is tall, shapely, blonde—just Genji's type. She is also frosted with intelligence and her long fingers move with efficient precision about her tasks like she was born to it—just the type to avoid someone like Genji.
Yet her smile is warm when it falls on his shining faceplate. They talk like old friends who share a deep, mutual respect, and Hanzo has to once again confront the notion that he truly doesn't know the man his little brother has become. Years' worth of events pass through their eyes as Angela asks Genji about his life with the Shambali, how his health is, how he is feeling. By the time Genji introduces her to Hanzo, he can only stiffly nod.
Her demeanor shifts instantaneously. Chiy at best; polite, yet all the more abrasive in contrast to the warmth she showed Genji. The conversation becomes so tense so quickly that Genji pardons them after only a couple minutes, chastising Hanzo on the way out for his historical stubbornness: his lack of flexibility, the condescension. He brings up 'the karaoke incident.'
Hanzo endures without comeback. His brother has more than a few free shots lined up.
Fareeha Amari and Torbjorn Lindholm are working out the logistics of air support in the comm tower, which Lindholm has filled with holographic intel schematics from both Overwatch and Helix International, the private security force. Helix's premier Captain Amari has a sharp and imposing mind to go with her tall form, and Hanzo likes her immediately: responsible, eager to prove herself, a practical ruthlessness behind a soldier's good humor. She does not respond to him half as amicably; after a terse nod, she arches a broad shoulder in his direction and doesn't look at him again for the remainder of their visit.
If anything, it makes Hanzo respect her all the more. At least someone is honest in their dislike.
Yet the utterly unaffected Lindholm, sparking with genius yet built like a laborer, hastily shakes Hanzo’s hand before returning to the task at hand. Next to Amari, he looks beyond diminutive, but he barks out strategies and engineering solutions with decades' worth of crass authority. Hanzo knows his work; the whole world does. If it weren't for the weapons development of Torbjorn Lindholm, the Omnic Crisis may never have been quite so devastating.
His plans intrigue Hanzo immensely, such that Genji has to gently nudge him before he gets too involved and inevitably takes over. Amari punches the door panel so that it locks behind them.
Mei-Ling Zhou is training with Lena Oxton in one of the simulation bays. The cavernous room is frozen over so badly that Hanzo shivers upon entering. Mei apologizes for the cold, returns his bow and speaks to him in heavily accented Japanese. His returned courtesies seem to make her shy, but she returns his good manners, helpfully explaining the center's climate-control feature and additional combat training facilities with a genius that humility cannot hide.
Her presence is upbeat, but Genji already told him of her departed team at the old Ecopoint in Antarctica. Frozen in their own cryo chambers, forgotten by the world until Mei woke up alone in the dark. Every cheerful word seems like a veil above permanent sadness.
Oxton, the lanky and brash British pilot, appears out of nowhere and laughingly tells him he looks just like his photos. The chronal accelerator that keeps her from blinking out of time catches his eye, and he's about to ask her about it when Hana Song, teenage MEKA wunderkind, appears from behind with coffee and bluntly tells Hanzo that he looks nothing like his photos. "Do your sideburns do that naturally?"
All three of them welcome him to the team, tell him that this as well as all other training facilities are at his disposal, and run through the daily itinerary with him—breakfast, simulations, strategy meetings—all while implying that he is under no obligation to join in any activity whatsoever, and glancing at Genji throughout. More than happy to avoid contact with people with whom he has no need to associate, Hanzo keeps his responses short. Let them assume what they will.
Then they ask Hanzo what Genji was like as a kid, and before Genji can object, Hanzo crosses his arms and calmly throws his younger brother under public transportation: the games, the parties, the indiscreet liaisons. The karaoke incident.
The women are delighted. So much for letting Genji get even.
As if he ever could, Hanzo reminds himself.
They meet Zenyatta on the launch pad when the sky is close to setting. A peach-gold aura surrounds the omnic monk, cross-legged and hovering three feet above the ground. Gleaming orbs float around his meditating form like an orbit of lazy planets. Half of them emit light the likes of which Hanzo has never seen—bottled, miniature suns. The other half bleed a black viscosity so dark that it seems to absorb all other light in their vicinity, as if they were holes in creation itself.
Hanzo stares as they occasionally turn translucent against the power of their innards, but each returns to a simple steel orb as soon as the brothers come close. A trick of the Mediterranean sun, no doubt.
The omnic is too vague and lofty for his liking; even more alien than the rest of his kind. Hanzo could sense the improper reverence in Genji's voice when he spoke of Zenyatta before, and finds he is unwilling to adjust his own irate glare. But it's only reflected back to him off of the monk's unmoving yet irritatingly sympathetic face plate, and Genji hardly pauses to introduce his elder brother before launching into a topic to which only he and Zenyatta are privy. It's as if they've entered their own little world, one that is at least three feet above the ground. Far above Hanzo and all he represents.
He sighs hot air through his nostrils like a weary dragon. The difficult steps that brought him all the way from that springtime meeting in Hanamura to this desolate rock in early autumn is catching up with him. And the launch pad radiates heat, growing warmer by the second; even in his light kyūdō-gi, he feels himself baking alive. He shucks the sleeve off of his left arm to at least let the breeze touch the dragon tattooed from pectoral to wrist.
For ten years, he has had nothing to think on but exile. He wants to be alone to digest the day and collect his thoughts. To figure out what he will do next.
But just when he decides to cut the tour short, he hears that whistle again—a whistle, and heavy footsteps accompanied by a metallic clicking sound.
Hanzo turns his head towards the hangar door and sees a giant of a man with a gray beard and a scarred eye, laughing raucously alongside a shorter man, who looks like—
Hanzo squints.
It’s a cowboy. The shorter man is definitely wearing a cowboy hat, boots, spurs, chaps, a six-shooter and a red cloak—a piece of clothing that takes Hanzo right back to his childhood, makes him wonder if he isn't actually dreaming after all. Or if he didn’t just step out of time.
Things do seem to be slowing down.
The laughing cowboy looks ahead, meets Hanzo's eyes, and drops his grin. He pushes up the brim of his hat, revealing his face: a wide mouth set in a wide jaw, heavy brows over brown eyes, a glowing cigar hooked under a prominent canine tooth. A cynical gaze caught in a permanent squint, as if he grew up in too-bright places. Wild hair and an even wilder beard surround a weathered yet glinting face; sharp, like his clicking spurs, and another vibrant quality that Hanzo nearly whispers out loud: open. Heart on his sleeve; an easy target.
The man’s grin slowly spreads until it’s like looking at the sun, making Hanzo avert his gaze.
Then he glances back, then away again. When he looks back a third time, the cowboy is still staring. The larger man is distracted, monologuing while his companion slowly, brazenly looks Hanzo up and down. The knot in his tawny throat bobs up and down, swallowing. He takes the cigar out of his mouth, forms his lips in a pursed ‘O.' He exhales a stretched-out sound that Hanzo barely catches: hoo-ee.
Hanzo crosses his arms and rolls back his shoulders, arching his already impeccable posture, and the man’s bow-legged gait nearly stutters on the concrete.
It’s such a display that Hanzo almost gets Genji's attention so that he can bear witness, then reconsiders—that might stop it from happening.
The cowboy is now quite near. Hanzo can smell tobacco, something redolent of bourbon and vanillin. He can make out the eyes of the skull carved into the man's left arm: a shoddy, gunmetal-gray prosthetic. He can see the massive six-shooter in its worn holster. His eyes keep traveling down until they narrow on a ridiculous belt buckle, large and golden, bearing the letters BAMF. He immediately regrets the action; the second he looks up, the cowboy’s grin is even wider, stretched like a fox’s jaws, ear to big ear. He can hear the breathy little “damn” as those eyes cascade over Hanzo's bare left arm.
As he passes, the cowboy tips his hat, low voice vibrating, “Howdy, darlin’,” and Hanzo notices how one eye is much more dilated than the other.
They pass with inches to spare. The big man waves amiably as they keep walking, but the cowboy turns, walks half-backwards, hat off and pressed to his chest like he can’t tear his eyes away. He’s still staring and grinning as the big man chuckles: “Mein Gott, Cole! You are like the teenager.”
Hanzo turns back to Genji, whose head is tilted at an angle that Hanzo, despite his little brother’s new face, immediately identifies as 'coy.'
“The big one's Wilhelm Reinhardt, our resident Crusader. And that's, ah, Cole Cassidy,” Genji says, hands knit innocently behind his back. “He’s... American.”
Hanzo glares. His brother is trying not to laugh while Zenyatta’s blank gaze amplifies whatever embarrassment Hanzo hasn’t managed to suppress. He looks away, then towards the edge of the platform, half-expecting the cowboy to be lingering at the corner. But he’s gone.
The sun bleeds into the horizon, the world gradually turns from orange to indigo, and Genji walks Hanzo back to his dorm. They share a meal and then jasmine tea, but the gulf is too wide to cover in a day. Genji winds up excusing himself after one cup, issuing a quiet good night and seeing himself out. The second the automatic door snips shut, Hanzo goes to the bottom of his duffel for the saké bottle.
He sits against the window's open frame with one leg hanging off the edge and examines the silent base three stories below. A lot of patchy grass and small flowers, a few palm trees reaching over the cliff. Open lanes of pale concrete and black tarmac between military buildings and shuttle-launch facilities. Wind-blasted glass shields the few fluorescent lights within. A communications tower flashes a beacon at its zenith, mimicking the more traditional lighthouse on a rocky islet just off the coast.
Hanzo's feels like he's in a nest within a nest: lofty, secure. Trapped.
His gaze grows soft as he pulls the sea air to the bottom of his lungs. He attempts to calm his mind. A mere witness to his body and its surroundings: the moon, the dark, the wind-rustled grass. Gazing at his thoughts like passing clouds in an otherwise flawless sky. Like the crashing waves that are his life's new song.
The bottle is waiting for him when he gives up. It twists open neat and goes down smooth; a much more reliable source of respite in these unreliable times.
And there's little other comfort to be found. The base is all salt and steel; even his dorm is stale with mildew and something unpleasantly clinical, like industrial cleaner. Not that he's enjoyed much better for the past several years. His wanderings led him into chaotic conditions often enough. Even before that, in Hanamura, when he was raised as the crown prince of a castle built on blood, exposed to the finest luxuries whilst simultaneously trained to withstand—even relish—the ascetic and the painful. Always preparing for the day when he would inherit both the throne and the proverbial sword that hovers above it.
But the austerity of a dojo is a far cry from the bleakness of a military base; the warmth of wood versus the dead weight of concrete. Like his brother’s face below that mask of—
He drinks. This is a place for soldiers. Genji, try as he might to pretend otherwise, is shinobi: trained and loved and forged through fire. Now he acts like just another appropriated piece of hardware, reassembled and used by an organization that never taught him. Never loved him—
The bottle isn’t as large as he’s used to, but he's still surprised when he finds it all gone. It's funny how often that happens. He'll be enjoying a high-quality brew, lost in his thoughts, then be shocked when he realizes he's got nothing left. For someone so attuned to his every action, so obsessed with perfection, it's remarkable that he can become so blind to so much.
But isn't that how you wound up killing Genji in the first place?
With a weary growl, Hanzo forsakes all poise and slumps against the frame. His leg swings, the metallic dragon-toes of his leg enhancements tapping the wall below. He stares down, down, at individual blades of grass. Then wider, at the wind's gentle pattern-making. The ripples of soothing moonlight.
His gaze goes slack, but his heart beats faster. He looks straight down from the window's ledge and plots the trajectory.
Not high enough. Perhaps some other time.
Then one of the doors opens on the rocky face of the main base with a shuddering drone, and someone walks out.
Hanzo retracts his leg and leans back into shadow, squinting like an owl in its tree. But even three stories up, he knows immediately who is approaching.
Those spurs are so loud. He doesn’t wear them into battle, does he?
Cole Cassidy swaggers across the lawn, glancing up and down the platform. Hanzo can see yet another cigar burning and fading rapidly, an anxious on-and-off—like a firefly in winter when all the other fireflies have gone. He can smell that very specific tobacco: cheap, over-toasted, yet Hanzo has smoked enough cigars to find the smell appealing—even intoxicating, given enough exposure. He doesn't anticipate that happening.
Though apparently the cowboy does. He stops within range of Hanzo’s window and looks up.
Hanzo almost laughs. Is he really going to—
“Hey! Han-zo!”
The notion of ignoring Cassidy occurs only as a way of passing the time while he lets the cowboy squirm. There’s no way he’s not going to see how this unfolds, and that wide grin is so eager. So open.
A good vantage point, an easy target.
Hanzo watches Cassidy shuffle in his boots and call out two more times before he leans out from the shadows. Unhurried; looking down the proud shaft of his nose.
“I could hear you coming from a mile away.”
Cassidy’s smile has enough wattage to be seen from space, let alone Hanzo’s window. Despite his constantly frowning eyes and rough looks, the cowboy's charm slides through on a smooth baritone, aided and abetted by what Hanzo would call a highly American politesse; a discordant arrangement that somehow manages to appeal all the same.
“Well, you do got the high ground, darlin’.”
Hanzo's voice is remarkably coarse next to Cassidy's smooth drawl, even though the cowboy looks like he was born with a cigarette in his mouth and Hanzo only rarely smokes. “What do you want?”
“I’dunno,” Cassidy hums, with a tone that suggests he knows exactly, “Thought I’d ask you on a stroll. I know Genji showed y’around, but..." that grin grows wolfish, "Genji don’t know all the good spots.”
Hanzo lets his leg slip off the window-sill again, his exposed left side hitting the moonlight. “The good spots.”
“Yeah.” Cassidy glances around the base—a nonchalant attempt at checking the darkness for eavesdroppers. “Some pretty, some interesting... some real private-like.”
Hanzo narrows his eyes. His shoulders roll back, preening. His voice lowers, almost a growl. “Private-like?”
The grave is dug; Cassidy hops in. “Yeah. Real secluded. Lonesome, even. Thought maybe we’d walk on out to the cliffs and I’d show you some of my tattoos.” His brows go up and down with ridiculous, practiced precision.
The breeze is silent. Hanzo tilts his head, then nods it side to side as he turns towards his own room. Then he looks down at the utter lack of saké in his lap.
A flick of his wrist, and the bottle sails through the air. Cassidy jumps as it shatters by his feet, little shards of blue glass flying outward like so many dragon teeth.
“Jesus Christ!”
The window shuts, the latch is drawn, and Hanzo crawls into bed.
It's a long time before he actually falls asleep. Thousands of years echo through his body for hours, delaying the release of unconsciousness. Booming gunfire in empty theaters and pounding hooves across the plains. Wind through the grass and massive serpents rising from waves on a distant beach. Spurs on concrete: too loud, too sharp, too close by.