Title: Null
Author: Ri-Ryn
Genre: Angst/Drama
Word Count: 1409
Rating: M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens)
Disclaimer: Overwatch belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.
Summary: Wounds was a hesitant designation. Scarring didn't even begin to cover what was done to Hanzo Shimada's back.
Warnings: Language. Past Child Abuse. Severe scarring and self-deprecation/hatred.
A/N: Anything in [] brackets between Genji and Hanzo is in Japanese. Also, Hanzo is quoting Buddha at the end, incorrectly used.
A/N #2: My first Overwatch story. I'm a Hanzo whore while my friend loves McCree…for some reason. I main Ana, though! I promise Seyru that I will finish my beta of your Overwatch story!
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Hanzo Shimada was one of the few people Angela truly detested in this world. His actions against Genji not included, the man had continually forsaked Genji's attempts at reconciliation as if he held the right.
The Doctor's oath was a noose, she realized now. Or very much so necessary for this damned reason.
He sat with his back to her as she charted his medical history. Prosthesis at age 28. How?
Hanzo grunted. "I lost my legs, Doctor."
Angela grinded her teeth. God forbid her, with multiple PhDs, be unable to ascertain that from sight alone. "Details, please, Mr. Shimada."
"I seem to recall that they were cut off."
She exhaled. Very well, they'd leave it at that. The medical code say she asked, not pursue dog-mindedly even though the ugly part of her whispered had it been anyone impersonal she would have persisted.
Angela had practiced silencing that voice often with Shimada Hanzo around. "Alright, do you have any tattoos, scarring, or prior surgeries?"
He frowned, of course. Angela felt he was incapable of anything else.
"I had surgery for my prosthesis. Don't ask the doctors name. Date? March 17 of 2066."
The blonde woman looked up sharply, but his back was towards her. That was the day he tried to slaughter Genji. Did Genji perhaps...?
"I've had seven surgeries for ten GSWs. Any others did not require anesthetizing. I cannot even begin to remember all of them. Lacerations? Numerous, most without stitches and treated with butterfly bandages. Tattoos, a left arm sleeve received when I was seventeen through traditional methods of needle." Hanzo paused.
Angela raised an eyebrow at the older man giving pause to anything. "Anything else, Mr. Shimada?"
He worried his lip, not recalling Japanese as a tenured language of the Doctor. "Severe scarring on my back."
"May I see them to document?"
Hanzo studied the sterility of the door to the clinic, his back facing away from it should anyone barge in which happened more often in Overwatch than anybody should prefer. He reached for his hem as she began to inhale and speak again. The soft cotton tee for the clinical went easily over his head and was laid off to the side.
Angela stopped. Scarring didn't even begin to cover the older Shimada's back. Deep gouges scored his back up to half a centimeter deep, repetitious and tightly healed by years only, the skin still split indicating a lack of stitches or bandages after he received them. A smattering of smaller, shallower whelps decorated the intact skin around the trenches buried in the planed muscle of the mercenary's back. The sporadic spread indicated there wasn't any particular thought put behind those, incurred by chance in the elder Shimada's lifetime.
There was no way this man would sit pretty as someone... Were these wounds even made with a knife? Either way, it was unlikely he'd sit through somebody carving his flesh.
She almost bit out the question of 'exactly what hell happened?' when her door opened, Genji accompanied by McCree ducking in with polite bow and a 'Howdy'. Her patient had gone rigid, right hand itching for his shirt.
The former yakuza turned, every bit the young lord in his eyes. His tongue was scathing, tone rigid. "Not a word, Dr. Ziegler."
He had refused to address her by name in all eight months of his stay in Watchpoint Gibraltar.
McCree chewed his cigar, pulling it out. "'Might watch 'dat bite in yer word to tha' good doc, Archer."
Angela swallowed, unsteady. "Maybe you two should wait outside. I'm still with a patient, if you noticed."
Genji and McCree looked at her oddly, the latter speaking up. "Surely it ain't sen'sitive 'nough he's shy bout it? All got a few marks, par'ner."
McCree stalked around against Angela's protests, whistling at the expansive collection the Japanese man had gathered. In poorer taste, without said brother in the room, he might've even quipped that maybe the Shimadas were related. "Mighty nice exhibit. Nothin' ta blush at, though."
Amusement danced in Genji's eyes. "Someone got that close to you Brother? May I see the dead man's work?"
"Absolutely not, Genji. Never." Hanzo spat, a quick hiss of Japanese following suite. "[You will wait right there or I will leave this band of yours.]"
Genji flinched, visibly taking a step back as Hanzo felt a cybernetic hand on his shoulder, baring his teeth lightly at the cowboy.
"Reckon ya' should calm yerself there, Shimada." A hand rested on his six shooter. "Just some old scars. Nothin' big." McCree retreated, noting Angela's pinched face. "Ange?"
"May, may I know how old these...these wounds are?" Wounds was a hesitant designation.
Hanzo stayed silent, eyes tensely on his brother who had retreated a few steps but still maintaining his stance.
Jesse huffed. "Come 'n now, not hard. How old?"
Hanzo looked away first from Genji. "I see not how it matters."
Angela burst out then. "Zes it matters! Doz are more zan ten years old! Maybe fifteen or more, pozzibly. If zou had them az a child, zey could zav damaged your nerves!"
Hanzo cursed as the reluctant pose Genji adopted gained interest and worse still, concern.
"It matters no-"
Genji scowled, mind running numbers. "Of fucking course it does, Hanzo! Fifteen or more years? More? I don't see you getting whipped at twenty-three, Brother!"
"[And what does it matter, Genji!?] What will you do about it if you know?" Hanzo breathed deeply, trying to calm himself.
Genji grimaced, muttering curses under his breath.
McCree raised an eyebrow not seeing what a few harsher scars would do to run the brother's tensions high. He was missing something. "What's the big deal? Few lashes and a pertty pattern-"
"Did they make you count each brush stroke?" Genji guessed, the question dirty.
Hanzo sighed, thirty four years of weariness escaping. "It is why I know what they were teaching me."
"And what was 'dat, par'ner?"
The archer's voice was without inflection. "Obedience."
"... [how old, Brother?]"
Hanzo scowled, long finished with this conversation Genji kept his claws in. "[Why is this important?]"
"Anija." It was there, that scratched hitch tinged with the alloy now keeping him alive, a familiar repetition of their youth when the younger fought tears seconds away from being seen and heard; Hanzo acquiesced without a fight in spite of Genji being a ten year stranger to him, rather than a brother, at this point. He closed his eyes.
"Anija?"
"Hush, Genji. I'm thinking."
McCree was suitably unimpressed with the sparce attention Hanzo deemed to grace Genji with. "That hard to r'ecall par'ner?"
Hanzo ignored him, whether by choice or not he didn't know.
The former scion's mouth tensed, tongue working his teeth as he thought. Genji was young, a year perhaps. What Hanzo did remember easily is why it all started. "Four?" Hanzo hesitated to reiterate. More firmly continuing, "Four...I believe."
"What?" Genji was beyond perturbed. What horrendous thing could their prodigal heir have possibly done to warrant such punishment at the tender age of a toddler?
The elder of the brother's snorted. "Easy, I let you out of my sight. You were one, if I'm remembering correctly the ages."
Genji swallowed, dry even with synthesized saliva to lubricate his esophagus. "That's it? They...they lashed you because I escaped from your sight?" His voice pitched.
The archer shrugged. "That among other things." He flexed his bow hand, the replacement for his katana. "It stopped when I was nineteen." Hanzo looked up to meet Genji evenly. "I killed him." It was an uncle or theirs, the one called upon to punish him. Hanzo had enough of it the year prior to him becoming an adult and coming of age soon to lead the clan. Their father was soundless when he dropped Haruhito's head on the oak desk used for the clan's affairs.
But why stop there, Hanzo figured. "They bested me, before I ever abandoned them, yet again. I lost my legs that night they so easily convinced me cutting you out of the clan's sight was for our betterment. I was facing your body when the blade cleanly sliced through them. Yet I still ran away, without legs, from their eyes, words, and assassins."
"'What you think? You become. What you feel? You attract. What you imagine? You create.'"
Hanzo smiled wanly. "What I've paid is barely a fair price for taking your wings."
Genji felt sick.
FIN