Genji became even more careful walking around the Watchpoint. He'd already been careful before – he didn't eat the way others did, so could avoid the corridors around communal meal times. When his time was his own, he structured his day to fit around when the gym, the showers, the shooting range, and the sparring rooms were not being used. Previously, that had meant a very nocturnal lifestyle. That all changed now that Hanzo was somewhere on the base. He knew that his brother valued privacy and would likely adopt a more nocturnal pattern himself. If Genji planned to avoid him above all, he was going to have to start seeing a lot more of other people. Perhaps that was no bad thing, he reasoned, if others were around then if Hanzo saw him and got any urges to finish where they'd left off… Genji pushed that thought away. He'd taken to wearing a large baggy sweater to hide the scarring on his arm and what was visible of his face. With any luck, even if he ended up in the same room as his brother, he wouldn't be recognised. It also made him feel less visible in a room where people had flesh instead of steel.
Genji walked into the lunch hall at lunch time, the one place he definitely wasn't going to find Hanzo. He found himself immediately in a queue for a canteen. He looked around at the tables but didn't see anyone he knew. He stayed in line to buy himself some time. He picked up a tray when he got the part of the queue picking up trays. Then there were colours and lights and bright foods behind glass in front of them. He could even faintly smell them. He kept his hoodie pulled low and reached with his human hand for a yoghurt. It seemed like the easiest thing to pick up and not eat. He took his tray with its lone yogurt and found an empty table near the back of the hall. He sat down and looked at the yoghurt. He felt stupid.
He picked up the pot and turned it over in his hand. He set it back down again. The rest of the hall was lined with long tables, filled with people chatting, laughing, locked in conversations and absorbed in their own microcosms. Not so long ago, he hadn't been so different. He wondered if there had been people in the periphery of his old life who went unnoticed whilst he was intent on his own self-fulfilment.
"Genji? That you?"
Genji started, the Strike Commander was before him all dressed in his brilliant sky blue uniform, and holding a full healthy tray of food. Genji stood quickly.
"Please don't get up." Jack smiled.
Genji sat back down, unsure what to do with himself.
"Things going ok for you?" The Strike Commander asked. Genji nodded. "Sorry about the… situation I've put you in." Jack tried to catch his eye, but the cyborg retreated under his hood and said nothing. Jack nodded, still holding his lunch tray. "So… I don't think I've seen you in the canteen before." Jack tried changing tack.
Genji picked up his yoghurt,
"I don't… really eat." Genji said, "I was just picking this up… for McCree."
"Oh… To add to the pile?" Jack grinned then nodded over his shoulder to where Jesse was tottering towards a table with a stack of yogurts on his tray piled up next to his meal. Genji leapt up.
"Yes." He said curtly. Gave a small bow and sprang in Jesse's direction.
"Sit with me." Genji hissed, balancing his yoghurt on McCree's pile and steering him by his elbow.
"Woah watch it, this is a delicate operation!"
"The Strike Commander is trying to talk to me." Genji whispered.
"No fraternising with the enemy remember," Jesse winked, but Genji wasn't entirely sure he was joking. They sat down far away from the Strike Commander. He gave them a smile that Jesse returned vaguely, then went off to join a table where Reinhardt's bulk could be seen towering above all others, guffawing with laughter at some joke. "All clear." Jesse unwrapped his cutlery from a serviette. "What are you even doing here, you don't eat."
"I do." Genji said sullenly.
"What does the Doc even feed you. Is it just soup? A man can't live off soup alone."
"It's not just soup." Genji gave him a bored look, "It's whatever is needed." McCree pulled a face. "It's not like I taste it," Genji said, a little bitterness creeping into his voice, "It goes somewhere else. Not my throat." He shrugged.
"Please! I'm tryna eat here. You're pulverised soup chat is turnin' m'stomach."
Genji liked that McCree never pitied him, or tried to walk on eggshells over the topic of his injuries, even if his blunt honesty would have horrified the Shimada clan back home with his complete disregard of courtesy.
"So," A piece of broccoli waggled on a fork as McCree spoke, "You really don't taste anything?"
"Sometimes, if I'm close enough, I can still smell things. That's a little like taste."
"Aw shoot. I think Moira ain't wrong that you should maybe ask the Doc to look into that."
"Dr Ziegler has done enough." Genji didn't mean that to come out so accusatory, "I mean she's done a lot for me already. Being alive and functioning is good enough for me." He added quickly.
"Sure." McCree said a little uncertainly. "So… the boss found anything for you yet? I know you're keen on getting out of here."
Genji pulled the strings on his hoodie so that his face was a little more hidden.
"He said he'd find me another recon mission. He's going through the files seeing who he wants to illegally spy on."
Jesse choked on a glass of water he was sipping.
"He said it like that? Damn, he's not even trying to hide it any more. One of these days him and Morrison are going to fall out so bad…"
Genji nodded. It was easier to talk just him and McCree.
"Seems like they really hate each other."
Jesse pulled a face,
"It's complicated. Maybe they do hate each other, I dunno any more. But it wasn't always that way. They were tight as hell back in the day. Some folks say maybe even more than friends."
Genji's eyebrows raised,
"The commander and…?" He glanced over at Jack Morrison, smiling with his soldiers, encouraging them, and all sunshine and radiating enthusiasm for those around him. People nearby seemed lit up just by his presence.
"Unlikely yeah, I know."
"The commander is so… not like Jack Morrison." Genji finished poorly.
Jesse chewed a carrot, he pointed his fork as he talked,
"True, but back when I first met the boss, and we're talking when I was about yea high, he wasn't so… doom 'n' gloom. And it always used to be if he was in a bad mood, you could pray the Strike Commander would stop by 'cause the boss's mood would go from black to like-… This brightness. You could see the hardness just melting away." He shook his head, "He was a different man when Jack Morrison was about."
Genji pondered this for a moment.
"To me it seems he gets angrier when the Strike Commander is near by. His temper is shorter. It is harder do things the way he wishes."
"That's the way of it now." McCree finished eating in silence. When he was done, he stretched out his serape and swiped all the yogurts into it. He bundled them all up and held them do him. "Time to make a break for it." A yoghurt threatened to tumble out of his bundle. "Here, hide this." He thrust it into Genji's hand.
"I don't want this." Genji stuffed the yoghurt and his hands into his hoodie jumper. "Stop stealing stuff – why do you even need all these?"
"Young man's gotta grow. Besides, old habits die hard."
They brought their lifted goods to the Blackwatch commonroom and piled them all into the refrigerator. The room was low key and usually empty. It had a long panel window that, though not large, still gave them reprieve from the blank watchpoint corridors, and a view down onto the black cliffs. Rain had just started to spatter against the glass. A dark weatherfront was rolling in, stirring up the grey waves and muting the commonroom in monochrome colours.
Genji shook his head free of his hood and curled into the corner of a couch.
"How come you're joining in for the meal times now?" McCree said as he tried to close the fridge door. He had to lean all his weight against it to try and get the door closed.
Genji shrugged non-committally. He moved his mechanical fingers, twitching them so that they loaded shuriken between his fingers. He tested one experimentally at the dartboard. It hit the green inner circle but missed the bullseye. He blinked, refocussing his vision and letting the more robotic parts of his system adjust to the specifics he needed. His next throw was perfect. He span his last shuriken between his fingers, watching it blur to a wheel between his fingers.
"Okay." McCree came and sat himself on the back of the couch, nearly tipping the whole thing over, "So I'm guessing you're there, because your brother won't be. Which means other Shimada brother is … even more antisocial than this one?"
A bitter laugh escaped Genji,
"You have no idea." He leaned forward and tapped McCree on the knee with his shuriken, "I'm the sociable one."
"Coulda fooled me." McCree muttered.
Genji's face was strained for a moment, then he sat up straighter,
"People change. Like how you say the commander did. Lighting up for Jack Morrison. Once Shimada Genji lit up too. For all life, for any opportunity, for danger seeking, for fun, for reckless idiocies. But that got him killed. So now he is not so bright." Genji stood. He flung his hood back up, put his hands in his pockets, and left.
McCree watched the empty place where Genji had sat. The rain sounded heavy and constant on the window.
Genji stood straight with his hands behind his back. His family had spent a life time trying to get him to pay attention, hold himself properly, and to take life seriously. He found it ironic that it was only once they'd washed their hands of him that he finally met that mark.
"As promised." Reyes slid a file across a coffee table. "Take a look."
Genji took the file gingerly. Knowing the Commander, the mission might be anywhere and involve any number of suspect activities.
"I do not know where this place is." He said, after glancing at the file.
"Scotland." Reyes felt around on the lower shelf of the coffee table and pulled out a box of cigars. He rattled them and one fell out. He gave it a folorn look before shrugging, clipping its end, lighting it up, and leaning back as he took a long pull from it. He breathed smoke slowly into the room. "Never heard of Scotland?"
"I have." Genji frowned at the page before him, "But not Glass-… glass-"
"Glasgow. No, well. Hardly at the forefront of the Omnic wars, but there's a new shipyard opened up there. Someone's getting the old docks up and running again after they've been silent for over a hundred years. Got a tip that a Titan might be involved."
"Might be? Commander, you can't hide a Titan."
"Guessing you haven't seen a Glasgow shipyard. Go chat to Moira, this is more her neck of the woods. But Genji," Reyes tipped his cigar in the cyborg's direction, "This is infiltration and observation only, okay? So long as this stays silent, it can stay off the books. Otherwise it has to go through Jack, and going through Jack means going through the UN, and that means its six months tops before this mission goes back on the table. And what does baby Shimada not want?"
"To be stuck on this base during the next six months." Genji said dully.
"Right you are. Go read your homework."
An hour later Genji was swinging his feet as he sat on a unit in Moira's lab flicking through the file.
"Now repeat that back to me," Moira said as she swirled a flask and dropped a slip of litmus paper in.
"If someone insults me, its a form of endearment." He let his steel heels dent the wooden cupboard door below him, and took small vindictive delight in the irritated look Moira gave him. "But how will I know if someone's angry with me?"
"Oh, you'll know." She lifted the paper back out and waved it a little. She sighed on seeing it was red. "Look at this," She said, "Fecking useless."
"Does Overwatch have permission to operate in England?" Genji watched her experiments with a reserved distance. He always felt like there was a fine line between himself and the things Moira tampered with.
"The United Kingdom," She corrected, "And no, the UK is off limits. Which is why I suggested the commander have you flown into Ireland. You're to casually go visiting Scotland. On a private jet that'll pick you up once you get off your commercial flight."
"You seem to know more about this mission than I do."
"Wrote half that file you've got in your hand."
Genji looked at the file with renewed interest.
Moira set down her work and turned to him. She place one hand on her hip.
"So."
Genji immediately felt uneasy.
"I've been thinking about your dilemma-" She gestured to Genji's external wires and tubing.
"It's not a dilemma," He said curtly, "It's under control."
"It's a half finished job is what it is. I've got plans. Between Angela and I, I think we can reconstruct your oesophagus and trachea. You'd be able to feed yourself-"
"I can feed myself already."
"Solid food. Should be able to get that jaw doing some real work for you."
Genji hesitated. He hated the idea of going back to the operating table, but… His thoughts went to the communal lunch hall and how everyone sat about laughing and sharing things. Even the commander and Moira and Jesse had recreation time structured around eating and drinking. He felt even more the outsider when he had to sit and not take part. Perhaps it would give him back something important if he could join in with that. A picture jumped suddenly to mind – two boys running down a hall, sliding to a kneel at the dinner table, wolfing down their dinner whilst being lightly scolded for eating too quickly. Hanzo finished first and got up from the table, vanishing round the door. Genji had to hurry to keep pace with him, always just in Hanzo's shadow even as they ran to play. He shook his head.
"If Doctor Ziegler agrees, then I'm willing to give it a go."
"Yes…" Said Moira slowly, "About that…"
Genji looked up sharply,
"What are you hiding? I don't want you experimenting on me like some lab rat."
"Please." Moira scoffed at him, "Have some grace. I treat my rats very well. And I'll not hear anything to the contrary."
Genji jumped down off the unit, he pointed a mechanical finger at her,
"You scare me. I trust Doctor Ziegler. Talk to her about it. I don't care what happens as long as I come out of it not looking like more of a freak that I already do."
Two days later he was walking off a commercial flight into Dublin. He was wearing the largest serape in McCree's collection and had wrapped most of his face in a scarf. He'd nearly missed his flight after being forced to wait forty minutes at security for setting off every metal detector in sight and being forced to buy a more expensive ticket as an Omnic-class citizen. He started up his receiver as soon as he was off the plane. There was a faint buzzing. He tapped his head and the feed settled.
"There you are." The commander's voice sounded in his head, an unnerving experience, but Genji was starting to get used to the internal receiver. It was certainly better than having to mask the sounds of the commander ranting in his ear during a mission.
"Please don't talk too much, Commander. I'm in a public place. I don't need to draw any more attention by talking to myself."
"I haven't got a feed up and running. Where's my camera?"
Genji balked,
"They didn't-! Did they install-?!"
"Haha, just kiddin'. I did want live feed through your eyes, but Angela flagged it as a breach of privacy and Jack wouldn't sign off on it."
"Good!" Genji ducked deeper into his headscarf as people near by turned their heads his way, muttering as they passed him.
The private jet they'd hired had been through one of Moira's contacts, and had a big corporate logo down one side of it and tagline of dubious morals emblazoned beneath. Genji was chaperoned aboard as an honoured guest, but felt distinctly as though everyone was only tolerating him as a favour. He had the whole body of the aircraft to himself, with luxury seating, mini-fridges, and televisions, but sat himself at the back curled his legs up to his chest and stared out the window. The runway was a gloomy grey after the azure blues of Gibraltar. It reminded him of his home in winter. The way the cherry trees would drop their leaves in flurries of auburn, red, and gold, and the streets would slowly grey to charcoal sketches, muted in soft rain. Then the colder weather would come, and the snow would fall, and the arcades beyond the castle would light up neon in the grey world, all shining with allure after the stiff tradition and schooling of the family residence. He pulled his knees tighter against his chest, wondering not for the first time, if he'd just paid a little more attention in those lessons, if he'd just gone a few less times to the arcades and bright lights and the city beyond, if he'd just been a little more like his brother, perhaps it wouldn't have come to this. Perhaps his family would never have given the order, perhaps Hanzo would never have gone through with it. He bowed his head to his knees and closed his eyes.
"You on that jet yet?"
Genji jumped, worried someone might have seen that vulnerability. When he realised it was just the commander over his radio, he relaxed a little. It was even a fraction reassuring to have the commander's voice nearby.
"Yes, sir. Just getting ready to leave Dublin."
"Did you see Siobhan Brown, the leading experimental biochemist? She arranged that jet so if you catch her, tell her to drop me a line." That was definitely not the commander.
"Is Moira there too?" Genji asked with irritation.
"She's beautiful. Her research, I mean. Well, I suppose she'd a bit of a looker herself. Ah if I could have just popped by her lab..."
Genji heard the commander shooing Moira away from the comms.
"No trouble so far, kid?" He heard Reyes voice again.
He thought about mentioning the trouble at the airport to the commander, but that would achieve nothing at best, and some international scandal if the commander actually got involved on his behalf.
"No trouble, Commander. The plane will leave soon, so I have to switch my radio off."
"Sure. Update me when you've reached your destination."
Genji switched his comms off with a thought. The cabin was quiet. Genji wasn't sure that was an improvement. The smooth start of the engine was almost imperceptible over the sound of rain on concrete outside. Soon the world was tilting and went thicker slate greys and the black of thunder clouds. Genji wondered what his mother would think if she knew her youngest son lived, and was half way around the world on a private jet in the pouring rain working for some shady unknown wing of Overwatch.
It was raining in Glasgow too. Genji could feel goosebumps crawl up his skin, and irritations start at the places where steel bonded to his flesh. Rain always made his prosthetics ache. He cursed and ignored the corporate busybodies trying to wish him a pleasant trip. By the time he reached the city centre he was soaked and it was beginning to hurt to walk. He would definitely have to talk to Angela about sealing over the joins between his body and his mechanical parts.
He stopped beneath the glowing doors of the hotel he'd been booked into. It looked warm and inviting. Inside he could see people – humans, checking in, sitting in the lobby, ordering coffee, leaning over maps, or rooting inside handbags. He walked on up the street. He hadn't turned his radio back on. He'd have to soon or the commander would wonder where he'd meandered off to.
He found a series of arches all tunnelled beneath a viaduct, and took shelter in one with a working lightbulb. The walls were full of half peeled signs for old art exhibitions and live music concerts. He turned his own lights on and bathed the tunnel in red light, forgetting some of his discomfort as he read strange signs for a long gone gallery. He only remembered after twenty minutes or so to turn his radio back on.
"Boss, boss, Genji's back online!" He heard McCree in his head this time.
"Out of my way." The familiar snap of Commander Reyes rolled gradually closer as he stalked towards the comms.
"I said update me when you reach your destination, Shimada. What have you been doing, frying Marsbars?"
Genji wasn't sure what a Marsbar was.
"Got a little lost." He gave lamely, "All fine now."
"All fine except you're the wrong side of the Clyde. I've got your GPS here, dumbass. Now get yourself checked in to the hotel and-"
"Commander." Genji broke in. Reyes stopped at the sharp sound in Genji's voice, "I know this trade. And a half-machine in a hotel is not low key. Let me do this my way. I'll contact you if I need you."
There was silence. It could have gone either way, and Genji winced slightly at the thought having to face the commander's temper when he got back.
"Alright." Reyes said after a bit, "Do as you wish. But keep a low profile, and look after yourself. It says here there's ninety-six percent humidity in Glasgow – don't take any chances if that tech is playing up on you. You know how it gets."
Even from three thousand miles away Reyes still seemed to know what was bothering him.
"Yes, Commander."
Reyes signed off, and left Genji in the quiet again. He sat in the softly illumined red arch, looking up at the relics from older times about him. He powered down just before midnight and slid into the first peaceful sleep he'd had since Hanzo arrived at Watchpoint Gibraltar.
Author Note: Can't stop writing this thing. Got a backlog of 12 chapters atm. So in answer to the question will there be more- Yes. Lots more ;)
