"My brothers, my sisters, my siblings in arms in this war! Your sacrifice will not be in vain! Although we are few, we are strong, we are united in common cause and purpose. Go now and fight!"
What are you- how can you- don't do this Zen please don't leave me- for the good of all- please- help me!
Zenyatta didn't have to breathe in the traditional human sense. This was a benefit in some circumstances, stealth being one of them. People so rarely looked above them when searching for an attacker, much to Zenyatta's benefit. But now? It hurt. His fans whirred frantically, trying to cool down his overheating body as the omnic's limbs twitched uncontrollably, sensors flashing red with warning lights, exclamation points overtaking his vision as he tried to remain calm, terror rising in his chest.
"A-a-a-a-a," Zenyatta tried to call out, voice sticking and catching, the same syllable looping like a record scratching out. His vision whited out slowly, sensors shutting down one after the other with heavy clunks that felt like death each time.
This was not the comforting blankness of the Iris, the endless expanse of tranquillity when he could be part of all things and yet alone in the nothing. This was dying as he struggled frantically to cling to life, alarms flashing in front of his eyes and yet they felt so far away. He was falling further with every second that slipped past, time stretching out like molasses. Zenyatta tried one finally time, summoning an orb into his hand, the light dull and weak, barely crackling into life before it disintegrated and Zenyatta switched off, hitting the floor with a dull thunk as alarms began to blare around his unmoving form.
Was this death? Zenyatta knew the religious text's, he was familiar with the Christian version of the afterlife, the endless cycle for the Buddhists, the weighing of the soul in the older religions. This was none of those. This wasn't the Iris. This looked like a scientific facility, comparable to the ones ran by Overwatch before they were disbanded and fell into partial ruin, or were taken over by supervillians who brought their own ideas about colour schemes to the table.
There was a hand in his, smaller, the nails biting into his skin as this unknown person tried to hang on, but Zenyatta found himself moving without his consent, prising the tiny hand away from his as he began to move down the long corridor. They screamed something at this back, the words nothing more than a howl of static. They feared for him, didn't want him to travel down this path his feet were unwittingly taking him down, unable to turn around and stop the methodical tap, tap, tap of his feet against the metal tiles.
Zenyatta has heard tell of nightmares, had held a trembling Genji in his arms, his proud student brought low by the twisting machinations of his own mind. The man has clung to him desperately as if he was at risk of drowning, sobs trembling through him leaving Zenyatta helpless to do anything more than croon comforting words into his hair and sway with the man, holding him tight and close until he drifted back off into sleep.
The omnic knew logically of the inescapable pull of nightmares, how everything morphed around the dreamer until they were forced awake screaming. It was indescribable experiencing it himself, this endless corridor, the heaviness pulling him into the floor, the muffled screams behind him that he was unable to turn around and see. The dream halted and paused in front of a large mirror, the surface rippling and twisting as he stared into it.
The face that stared back at Zenyatta was not his face.
It resembled his face in an abstract way, the same way that swirls of colour represented a flower, that squares and shapes represented a face. He could see the link, see the correspondence to his own metal face. But he was human in this dream. He was soft, breakable and fragile in an entirely new way. This did not seem like a dream, everything seemed to real, too present for this to be some strange concoction of overheated wiring or an attack by a hacker. This face, this human face, was undeniably him. This he knew. Another scream echoed down the corridor behind him, the noise more machine than man, twisted and distorted. A spike of fear shot through Zenyatta, the sensation causing his heart to slam faster and faster in his chest, breath coming shakily now. This was wrong. He shouldn't be doing this, the small one was right, this was a mistake-
Heavy hands descended on his arms, fingers squeezing hard enough to bruise his newly breakable skin. Frightened he glanced up into nothingness, a void where this man's face should be. He was going to die, trapped in this nightmare, so far away from the light of the Iris and from Genji. Zenyatta would miss Genji when he was dead. It was almost sacrilegious to admit it, a betrayal of one of the core beliefs of his order and yet… How could he not love Genji?
It was only a small thing, soft and fragile, but undeniably precious. It was the most human Zenyatta had felt, warm and happy every time Genji was with him, a thrill coursing through his wires when Genji took his arm during their walks. Genji trusted him and that was perhaps the most important part of it all, he trusted Zenyatta to see him at his most broken and vulnerable and to help put him back together again. Omnic and human relationships were more common now, but not without their taboos and with Genji's enhancements, in his mind, marring his humanity, Zenyatta hadn't wanted to broach the subject.
And now he never would.
Zenyatta reflected upon lost possibilities, the endless expanse of what might have been as the void loomed closer, wiping out thought and feeling and sensation until it was all Zenyatta could do to hold an image of Genji in his mind, the sun on his hair, head thrown back in a laugh, before the darkness took him.
Error Subject Silence Critical Failure.
Reboot Y/N?