{A/N: Hello everyone! Just for reference, I'm a terrible writer, but I've always wanted to draw out how I think the relationship between Genji and Mercy developed in the OW universe, beginning with Genji's operation. Thus, the setting will be immediately before Genji's cyberization. This is more for myself, but I figured I should share. Keep in mind that this means the progress will be one sided and slow at first (plus I'm heavy with the science), but I promise that this is a Gency fanfic haha.
ALSO very important to note: I started writing this before I realized that Genji was cyberized before the emergence of Soldier 76 and Reaper, so my fanfic will be inaccurate in the beginning (maybe during the first 4 chapters). I'll be keeping this in mind for future chapters though!
This is also available on my tumblr, but I'm making this available here for ease of reading.
Anyway, please enjoy!}
Warning: Angst, gore, self hate in later chapters.
"I'm sorry - you're sending me a patient that needs what?"
"A patient that needs complete cyberization. He's on the brink of death, so we need you to perform on him."
Mercy pursed her lips. These were words that she had hoped to never hear again. Perhaps it was her stubbornness at its finest - after all, she was the head surgeon at the Swiss headquarters prior to her relocation. She still is, in fact, a doctor, bound to care for those in the worst of worst conditions. However, following the incident with Jack and Gabriel, her mental state had a chronic (although low) baseline state of stupor, especially in these cases. She didn't know how to handle this when she had failed to save their lives. What good could she do now?
"I'm afraid I can't," Mercy responded desolately. "I've tried it before. I'm not a miracle worker - you of all people should know this by now. At most, all I can do is supportive care."
"Mercy, push the past away. We virtually have no time left. You're our first responder. Are you just going to sit there with simplified treatment and watch someone die, then?"
No. They were right. She had to snap herself out of her senses, as much as her confidence in her skill was abysmal. This wasn't the professional liability and care she had sworn to the moment she became a medical student and practicing doctor. This wasn't her best interest as a physician - to simply let her patient die. No matter what, Mercy was to treat every and any patient to the best of her abilities. She had seen plenty of people die, and another one at this point - especially someone she didn't know - should not faze her. If she did fail, she would at least walk away saying "I've done everything I could" instead of "I refused to treat him."
Even then, the more important question to herself was: do you want to repeat the past?
Finally, after a long silence, Mercy looked up with more determination. "No. I won't back down. What's his history?"
"Genji Shimada. Somehow this guy managed to last long enough to tell us that he had a fight with his brother - the Shimada clan is known to have some internal drama recently. Profuse bleeding on every inch of his body, no muscle function left, only neuro seemingly in tact - everything's virtually gone but his brain and some of his face. You won't be able to find him in the system, by the way. He's not a current Overwatch member."
"And why are we wanting to utilize our resources on one stranger? Cyberization is anything but an inexpensive procedure." Especially in my hands.
"We made an agreement that if we were to help him live, he would work for Overwatch. We think that he would be a great asset, especially considering that he seems belligerent towards his own family. If anything, he'd help us take down their sketchy activities. Not to mention a Shimada's known for dragon powers, or whatever Japanese lore you want to believe in." Mercy's eyebrow twitched. "Overwatch has specifically requested that he be equipped with gear that would assist with fighting. Anyway, he should be in any time now."
And indeed, her new patient had just arrived. A group of robots (nothing like the omnics, however) and paramedics rushed through the double doors of the critical care unit, with their center of attention on the man who lay in the cot before them. From afar, she could tell that it was as they said - no, more than that. He wasn't just on the brink of death, but he looked more or less, well, dead. Not to mention she couldn't even see most of his body since it was completely covered in blood-stained bandages.
Mercy immediately rushed over, quickly assessing and evaluating him closer up. Despite a poor clinical prognosis, his vitals were still present - he was still living, but barely. She could see that his eyes were tightly closed, a clear sign of him experiencing something unpleasant. There was no response from him when she called out his name. With her gentle chest palpitations, she was able to feel fragments of bone lingering inside. And lastly, it was to be expected that he didn't have clear lung sounds upon swift assessment with her stethoscope.
"Take him to bed 25 in the back," Mercy ordered urgently. "Prepare an IV fentanyl, 50 micrograms - he's in immense pain and needs rapid sequence intubation. We'll give him more if needed. Make sure to keep a close eye on his respiratory rate. Meanwhile, I need his bandages removed, one at a time."
A small robot assistant rushed off, but Mercy realized she nearly forgot something important. She turned around to another robot. "One more thing - I need a cup of coffee too. Black coffee, at that." The machine chirped and floated away, indicating that it was on its way to complete her request.
"Is there anything else we can do for you?" The paramedic inquired as she and Mercy carefully unraveled Genji's bandages, revealing open, dark red flesh. "Any back-up doctors, nurses…anything?"
"No, thank you. They should be taking care of the other patients, and they would agree that I would be the best person to do this. The robots will do." She grinned, as much as it did not reflect how she truly felt. "Just let the others know that I'll be performing for…well, an indefinite amount of time."
In reality, she could have received aid from fellow human doctors. Actually, they would have helped her immensely with the procedure by providing different options, recommendations, and insights. But once again, her stubbornness told her that this was going to be her battle alone, and that this was her punishment for her previous mistakes. Though she did have robotic assistants, they lacked the emotion and sentiments that omnics had. In Mercy's eyes, she could consider this as a single woman operation and receive the alone time she desired to battle with herself.
21 hours had passed since she began treating Genji. She had managed to stabilize his vitals for now, but of course, she knew he had to recover more. Early on, Mercy detected intracranial hemorrhage from a severe skull fracture - and although science as progressed enough to successfully drain the blood and repair the brain damage to an extent, she would need to build a new skull for him. Additionally, the man was surely a candidate for right arm amputation, so Mercy suspected that at least one prosthetic was to be given as well. His skin was hardly even visible anymore, even after clean-up. This was only several of many acute, major issues he had.
In fact, this Genji essentially needed his entire body replaced. The caller on the day of admission wasn't kidding about a complete cyberization.
And if she didn't do so soon, he would die. She already received approval for any sort of experimentation since he was such a complicated case, as long as it was within her professional judgment; her higher ups luckily trusted her enough for that, though she knew they'd have an extra eye on her. The biggest problem for Mercy now was how she would go about replacing organic matter with metal while maintaining all human function. How would she rewire all of his nerves, including the smaller ones? What about his veins and arteries, without decompensating his blood flow? His muscles, to the point where he could walk on his own?
She fell back into her mental pit. All of that seemed impossible. Mercy remembered having that same train of thought before. Memories of an explosion, memories of two men, flashed in her mind. She couldn't save them.
But do you want to repeat that so easily, just by giving up?
"Verdammt." Mercy rubbed her eyes after intense contemplation, shoved aside her emotions, and picked up a pen and paper after sipping from her third cup of black coffee. If she were to do this, she would have to start with designing a mechanical body.
5 days later, during which she lost track of time, her coffee consumption, and sense of reality, Mercy was still working on what felt like bringing Genji back to life.
The vitals monitor beeping rhythmically in the background had been filtered from her ears long ago. The tension between her and successfully treating her patient drowned out everything around her. Only when the machine sounded with panic did she notice it and resolved whatever arose. She continued to refuse calling for help from doctors, and even when they visited her during their breaks just to ask if she wanted another hand, she insisted that she had a lead, she was fine, and she wanted to no one but her, her patient, and her portable robots in the room. Her head was throbbing from the nonstop flow of thoughts, lack of sleep, and excessive caffeine intake over the duration of the procedure thus far. Mercy had not showered nor slept at all, her eyes transforming into the appearance of a panda's.
But she somehow kept herself in tune, building various metal parts that she hesitantly but carefully assembled onto Genji after prying off the rotting tissue from his body. Mercy designed his body in about 10 hours. This was not an entirely new process for her - she did create her valkyrie suit on her own, after all - but this was fundamentally different because these pieces would be a part of him for the rest of his life.
Mercy wondered if Genji knew that his body would be completely revamped. What if he thought that he would be receiving traditional treatment? When he wakes up - if he wakes up - he would see himself in this foreign body. Would he accept that?
She looked down at Genji, observing the unconscious face she had become all too familiar with. While it was no longer scrunched up in pain, it was also still in tact (with many scars) and was really the only human side left of him. At this point, his robotic arms and legs have been placed along with a new pair of rib cages. Mercy had to sacrifice most of his peripheral nervous system, but she was fortunate enough to scheme up an alternative plan to ensure his muscles worked correctly. His new skull was in progress, but not yet complete. Really, only his head and spine remained before he was going to become a full cyborg. Nonetheless, he was more stable now than when he was admitted, providing her more time to think things through - one thing being his acceptance of his new body.
"You're doing well, Genji," she murmured, believing that he could hear her, "though I have given you a new body. It might not be what you prefer, but I'm doing whatever it takes for you to live."
Of course, there was no response, and Mercy moved on.
After some time, Mercy found herself digging through a bit more of Genji's history. She figured that, if she was ordered to make a body capable of fighting, she would need to know what he excelled at - Mercy would just attempt to bring him to his full potential.
He enjoys ninja training, she once read. With that in mind, she added a shuriken component with the capability to reload to his right arm, which she saw was the easiest place to make such an enhancement. There were also some sort of swords involved, she supposed, but Mercy decided that implementing that as a part of his body was unnecessary. Upon further investigation, Mercy came across someone describing him as a playboy and made a mental note that he would probably like to have his libido when he so pleases.
"I wasn't going to even bother, but if he wants to return to that lifestyle, let boys be boys," she quietly muttered.
Day 8: Mercy knew that she would be finishing today. It was 4:07am. 8 days of agonizing work with a new onset of hand tremor, she was about to finish a project that she had put so much of her mind and soul into. She must smell since she hasn't bathed at all, but it didn't matter - no one else was here, and she didn't want to leave her patient's side. Finally, her lack of sleep was catching onto her - there would be hours worth of time that she'd catch herself nodding off every minute while thinking about what to work on next, and other times she had to withdraw and nap for 10 minutes. Even with some sleep, her tremor remained. Mercy knew that it wasn't from the coffee, but rather from her nervousness.
Genji was to wake up soon, after she had checked if his mask could be detached and reattached readily. His face healed properly, and she thought it would be his best interest to keep it and be able to remind himself that he was still human. Everything else had gone much better than she expected. It was a simple task and, after removing the sedatives, it would end the procedure. But Mercy was trembling and anxious.
Only now did she notice that she had created a weapon. This, along with the thought that he may reject his body, made her fear that Overwatch's decision to take him in and recreate him may backfire. What if he takes down Overwatch instead? Even more crucial - did she succeed? Or would she find out that she had failed yet again, and what she devised was incapable of thriving on its own?
Mercy looked at his vitals one last time. The machine had been beeping for so long that it seemed so fake now. It was hard to believe he was still alive and breathing. She already triple checked every part of his body to reassure herself that everything was connected and functional. What else was there to do, other than waste time?
Mercy could taste the success, the light at the end of the tunnel, but her doubts always diffused back into her mind. Even then, it had been such a long operation without any break for her that she was about to give in. Coffee wasn't going to cut it for her anymore. All she wanted now was sleep, and that alone overwhelmed the darkness inside of her.
Mindlessly, she put his mask back on, ceased all supportive care and monitoring, and waited for the sedative to wear off. Mercy could not avert her blue-eyed gaze from his dimmed visor, and if anything, this wait felt far longer than the procedure itself.
Please, wake up.
Another 10 minutes passed by without a sound. The absence of noise from the vitals monitor, her idle robot assistants, supportive care turned off - all of these made her personal void even bigger.
But sudden whirring and mechanical noises sounded off, as if a computer system had awakened, causing Mercy to jolt up in surprise - as quiet as they were. Neon green lights lit up on Genji's body and his fingers twitched. Gradually, his feet began moving, and although there was some trouble at first, the cyborg managed to bend his left knee up and lift his right arm, flexing his fingers while turning his head slowly to observe them.
Mercy held her breath the entire time, her heart pounding furiously and blood pressure escalating to what felt like beyond a hypertensive emergency. She collected the courage to part her lips slightly, then announced in a confident but enervated voice:
"Good morning. Your procedure has finished."
