Lunch was a boring affair. As difficult as it was to eat while being stared at by 90% of the people in the room, it would have been even harder not to eat with the sudden realization of the hunger working its way through his body. The food, some german dish made of some kind of thick noodle covered in butter and herbs, tasted good enough and distracted Hanzo enough to let him get through the meal.
Conversation was low and limited, the members of Overwatch wary of his presence at the table. Hanzo had been told to sit next to Agent at the end of the table, as far away from the other members as possible. Eventually the team seemed to realize that his mind was wondering, and conversation picked up outside of pleasantries.
"I heard a rumor today about the Reaper," McCree murmured, poking at his butter noodles absently.
Hanzo slowly zoned back into the conversation at the mention of that name. It was a name he heard often in the darker corners of the earth. He was an assassin, and like Hanzo he was good, but much sloppier. When Hanzo took hits he left only one body, one arrow, one person's blood. The Reaper left endless gore, blood spattered walls, and masses of bodies. Recently the amount of requests asking for someone of the Reapers caliber were decreasing. There had been no reports of his attacks for months, leaving many to think he had finally met someone better.
"Said he'd been pokin' around out by San Jose. Found a whole gas station ruined. Poor soul who was workin' the counter got turned damn near inside out." McCree continued while the others around the table grumbled and shifted warily. "Thing is, they can't find one a' the other bodies. Security shows a whole lotta people in that station, ya know? Cops found a whole lotta blood, whole lotta people, but not everyone. This little girl, Sofía Rivera, ran away from home a few months ago. Whole lotta kids do, roun' those parts. Th' footage caught her right in that little gas station. Wrong place, wrong time I suppose. But they can't find that little girls body." McCree tightened his grip on his fork, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Shadows fell over his face from his hair and hat, and the table fell into silence. A few of the members were looking at their food, their laps, or glancing at each other.
Agent stood and placed her dish in the sink, leaving promptly. Hanzo looked up at that, shifting uncomfortably after realizing his 'guard' had just left him. Doctor Ziegler was the first to speak as other members slowly followed Agent out.
"Jesse, we can't be certain these disappearances are related," She began, her voice gentle and her words halting as if carefully chosen.
"They are, Angie. I know they are. Ya can't say they aren't." McCree's voice slowly got angrier the more he rambled on, his grip on his fork tightening until his knuckles went white.
"We don't have the manpower for a mission of that caliber yet, Jesse! You-" Doctor Ziegler tried again to calm McCree.
"It don't matter! There are children out there and they're gone! It don't matter how many people are here, Angie! We got to help-" McCree's voice rose before he seemed to remember Hanzo's presence in the room. He huffed loudly, standing roughly and taking his and Hanzo's dishes to the sink before stalking out, grabbing Hanzo by his arm and pulling him along with him.
Hanzo stumbled out of his chair and had to jog to keep up, the grip on his arm bruising. McCree brought him straight to his room, shoving him inside and then closing the door behind him. Hanzo could hear the man punch the wall across the hall several times.
Remembering the events previous his trip to lunch, Hanzo warily looked around his room. Nothing seemed out of place. Even the dust that covered the room seemed undisturbed. He stepped backwards slowly until his knees hit his bed and he sat.
Mulling over the conversation in the kitchen brought troubling thoughts to Hanzo. It pushed away his worries of the dragons for a moment. Apparently the Reaper had been in San Jose, New Mexico this whole time. Hanzo was almost glad he wasn't dead. More supply meant that his absence from his previous profession would be noticed less, and less people would come looking.
He regretted these thoughts almost immediately when he remembered the missing children Agent McCree had mentioned. It was uncommon for agents such as the Reaper or Hanzo to sign with any one organization. Uncommon, but not unheard of. The thought of such a reckless, bloodthirsty creature rounding up children for some unknown purpose sent shivers down Hanzo's spine.
A harsh, low laugh curled through Hanzo's thoughts, filling the silence of his room and covering McCree's muffled anger outside his door. Snapping his spine straight and leaping to his feet, Hanzo had stormbow in his hands in less than a second. No one was in his room. Eyes flicking wildly back and forth, Hanzo circled silently, looking for the source of the laugh. There was nothing but dust and shadows cast by the ever lowering sun.
The room was humid, Hanzo noticed. Slightly more humid than when he had entered the room. Slowly, Hanzo raised his eyes to the window nestled in the corner of his room above his bed. It was open ever so slightly, just a sliver. It hadn't been open at all when he had been shoved into the room by Agent McCree. Adrenaline pulsed inside of Hanzo's veins. The laugh returned, slightly louder. It surrounded him. His vision was starting to dim and he tensed his fingers on his bowstring. Hanzo didn't feel sick, he didn't feel like he had a fever or overwhelmed, so why was his vision so dark? The laughter grew and grew, louder and louder until it was all Hanzo could hear, filling every sense as the darkness multiplied until it was the deepest color Hanzo had ever seen, and the world swirled into nothingness all at once and Hanzo felt his stance stagger.
The door wished open. The world was light again. The window snapped shut across the room. McCree's hand was back on his arm, the man not looking at Hanzo, not noticing the smaller mans disorientation or the bow held so tightly, nocked and drawn, in his hands. Stormbow clattered to the ground, loud in the sudden silence.
"I'm goin' to the range, and yer gonna come cuz ya gotta," McCree rumbled, pulling Hanzo along behind him. Hanzo stared back into his room as he was dragged along, an empty, dusty, shadowy room. The door slipped shut with a sharp click behind them.
…
Sitting in the corner of the practice range, staring at Agent McCree as he fired round after round into the practice bots. The jarring change from his own descent into apparent insanity to such a normal, repetitive activity left Hanzo feeling hollow. Perhaps he was wrong about the dragons being the only supernatural force. He had never believed in ghosts before, per say, he knew there were spirits and he knew they could be extremely powerful, but he had never really believed they remained after death. Still, the rapid appearance and disappearance of a presence apparently through a tiny sliver of open window left little room for doubt in the paranormal forces.
The pop of Agent McCree's gun ripped Hanzo from his spiralling thoughts. Without his dragons to guide him in his thoughts was a noticeable loss. Hanzo was unused to becoming so wrapped up in his own mind alone. The gun barked again and again, sending the omnic bots spiralling and sparking. For an organization attempting so hard to spread omnic positivity, they sure did enslave a lot.
At first McCree's aim had been laughably bad, but as the man had calmed down it became better and better until he only missed by hair lengths at a time. The more time that went on, the more Hanzo questioned the events in his room really happened, and the more his hands itched for a bow to practice himself.
The steady, rhythmic blasts from McCree's guns slowed to a halt, and Hanzo looked over the the man to see him staring over at him. The cowboy turned and walked directly into a wall. The wall opened, though. McCree emerged from the wall a few seconds later, letting the hidden door slide shut behind him. The automatic doors in this base were going to give Hanzo a heart attack one day.
McCree threw something at Hanzo and he caught it deftly, feeling the familiar weight of a training bow. A quiver of arrows followed, the arrows pointed with weights and holographic heads, so as to give the illusion of power.
"I need to practice on something that moves like a real human being," McCree muttered, fiddling with a control panel on the wall. Hanzo stood, his fingers flexing on the grip of the metal bow. A small smile crawled across his face. Finally, something to distract him from his thoughts.
"It won't be practice, Agent McCree. It'll be training." Hanzo responded, his voice strong and deep, surprising himself. "There is a difference."
McCree turned, his own wolfish smile plastered over his face. The room started to melt behind him, the hologram of a snowy watchpoint covering over the training room like a second skin.
"Battle. Agent McCree v.s.." Athena's professional voice echoed through the arctic air, pausing before addressing Hanzo. "...Guest Shimada." Hanzo stared at the doors that had formed before him, rolling his shoulders in the simulated cold. His breath puffed in frozen clouds before his face, his metal feet flexing in creaking snow. "Athena's voice echoed once more. The doors opened.
…
His skin was stinging from the frigid air. Hanzo had forgotten what it was like for the air to hurt. It reminded him of his first trip to Hokkaido as a child under his father's guidance. It had been a short adventure, a 3 hour plane ride and a short drive through the countryside to a remote warehouse to oversee the production of Talimogene Laherparepvec. It was a drug formerly thought of as the cure to melanoma, but slowly degraded into a psychedelic that left the user elated and drooling for days. The warehouse had been unheated, yet his father had insisted on wearing their traditional clothing, as lightweight as it was. Wind had blown right through Hanzo's layers and left him shivering lightly. His father had not been impressed.
"You must never show such weakness, Hanzo. A dragon is never swayed by the wind, he must command it." His father had said, his voice emotionless and stiff. Sojiro talked almost akin to a low grade omnic: stilted, loud, and flat. His face followed the same path. He betrayed nothing, even as he cut down his enemies. The deadness of his eyes was disconcerting even to Hanzo, who had stared up into those eyes in wonder for his entire life. Hanzo had hung off of every word his father offered him, and year after year he too lost his humanity.
Hanzo did not shiver. He let out a slow breath, watching the frozen cloud dissipate into the snow filled world beyond. Crouching atop a thick beam on the signal tower, he studied the ground below. A slip of red in the corner of his eye distracted him from his memories as he snapped his head to zero in on the already gone flicker of color. He knocked an arrow, the tip fat and cold to mimic his sonic arrows. After a few rounds Athena had reprogrammed a few settings on the arrows to create the illusion of those he made. Aiming slowly as to not make any noise, an idea betrayed by the quiet creaking of the bow string, he released the arrow into the wall the color had disappeared behind. His eyes twitched and cramped painfully for a moment while the arrow connected with the implants that let him observe heat signatures detected by the arrow. Agent McCree was crouching against the wall, moving slowly towards the other exit. Hanzo knocked another arrow.
Agent McCree burst out of the opening already aiming for Hanzo. Hanzo had already fired the shot. McCree rolled. Hanzo's shot landed squarely between his shoulder blades. McCree's gun had gone off a moment after he revealed himself, barking loudly in the swallowing cold. He felt it hit his gut as real as an actual shot, and shot himself off the signal tower immediately. Located McCree again was easy, the man had righted himself but not retreated, his gun tracking Hanzo a fraction of a second behind. The shot wasn't right. Calling for the dragons was habitual, the small use of their power to fire off rapid shots fast as light. The dragons did not answer him. He loosed his shot anyway. They had refused to answer him the entire training time, a mildly concerning thought pushed down by his lazer focus on his target. McCree had rolled again, catching this arrow in his leg and missing his own shot. Hanzo was off again to higher ground, climbing up sheer metal, his prosthetics digging into the surface easily and propelling him upwards. Jumping off the wall and pulling his bowstring tight, he felt the arrows cheap plastic feathers glancing his cheek. Messy. The shot fired directly into McCree's head. McCree's shot landed directly between Hanzo's eyes. They felt nothing but frustration.
With a glowing fade, the simulation melted away, leaving Hanzo with his slightly modified arrows and McCree with his revolver standing feet away from each other and panting. Warm air filtered between them, a sharp contrast to their red noses, fingers, and in Hanzo's case, extremely hard nipple. The men said nothing for a while, both content to come back down to the real world at their own pace. Hanzo felt the world slowly break through the fog in his mind, the focus beat into him from years of harsh training fracturing and leaving him with a vague sense of paranoia and uncomfortableness.
"You fought well," Hanzo began, smirking when he saw Agent McCree's eyebrows raise slightly. "But not well enough."
The cowboy spluttered, his cheeks turning red at the insult. He reached to punch at Hanzo's shoulder casually, like it was a habit, a gesture he used with friends often. Hanzo did not respond casually, like it was a habit, or a gesture he used with friends. Hanzo flinched, visibly. The fist made in jest stopped short of his skin and hung there, suspended by a string of remembrance of place. Agent McCree seemed to come back into the situation all at once, stepping away from the kinkiller quickly and looking away. Hanzo felt shame boil deep in his gut, frothing up to set his face on fire. Turning away, McCree lowered his head and started walking towards yet another hidden, sliding door.
"I'm sweatin' like a pig. Better hit the showers before supper's ready, so c'mon." The man said in a quiet voice, not looking back at Hanzo as he lead the way to the training rooms men's showers.
The showers were old and rusted, with only a few still working with plumbing. Hanzo chose the one farthest away from the cowboy and tensely showered. He could swear he felt eyes burning into the back of his skull at times. At one point he glanced back and caught Agent McCree outright staring at him.
"How the fuck'd you lose your legs?" Was a question Hanzo was not prepared for. He tensed momentarily before forcing himself to relax, aware the cowboy could see his every muscle as they were very, very naked. All at once he was aware of the thick, corded scars that wrapped around where his knees should be but weren't. He felt the ragged scars that crossed further up, revealing some of the inner mechanics and where his prosthetics melded into skin and bone. "Must've been pretty bad, 'siderin' they ended up like that," McCree continued, oblivious to Hanzo's spiralling thoughts. "I lost my arm in a 'splosion, the one back at the old headquarters."
Hanzo pulled his thoughts back from his hideous legs to focus on answering Agent McCree. A truth, supported and diluted by a few lies, should be enough to dissuade the proddings of the curious cowboy.
"They were removed to make room for better models," Hanzo said simply, trying to keep images of his father and uncle, unmoving and emotionless, restraining and cutting, slashing and correcting, out of his head. "I put up a fight, at first. That's 'how the fuck I lost my legs.'"
His tone must have put Agent McCree off, as he shut up and turned around. Not long after they concluded their border-line cold showers and continued off to redress and then attend dinner. Dinner was another boring affair with only snippets of conversation. Nothing was as interesting as the conversation that ended lunch, and Hanzo found himself zoning out more than he listened in. When dinner concluded so did his tense, half-friendly half-enemy time with Agent McCree. His next guard stuck with him was not Genji, much to Hanzo's surprise. In fact, Hanzo hadn't seen Genji all day. Instead Hanzo was stuck with a loud, overbearing, slightly angry seeming german man. Who was also huge.
Hanzo recognized him from old overwatch posters, he looked the same, if much older. He talked a lot. That was how Hanzo learned where Genji was. He was, apparently, out on a short-staffed mission to go collect new recruits and bring them back to the base. One of the said new members was, as Agent Reinhardt said, Genji's new boyfriend. Hanzo started zoning the large man out at the mention of Genji and his love life. It reminded him of days gone by, years of collecting Genji from strangers houses and beds, cleaning the cum off his lips and legs when he was too drunk or drugged to do so himself. It was not a fun task. Hanzo had always been the one to take the punishment for Genji's antics. Genji was his ward, afterall. Hanzo was ultimately responsible for whatever, or whoever, he got into.
The time for sleep came soon enough, and Hanzo was escorted back to his borrowed quarters. It brought crashing back the events of that afternoon, of the swirling blackness and haunting, deep, scratching laughter. Thinking back on it he began to doubt it's realness. Hanzo had sat down, afterall, it could very likely have been a dream. Through internalized reassurances and the knowledge of a very, very, very buff man just outside his door convinced him eventually to calm down and enter the room normally. The door slid shut behind him with a hiss of air, leaving him alone in the shadows cast by the moon through his closed window.
