THE PROLOGUE IS FINALLY OVER! From now on starts the real story. The chapters from now on will be in present, not past, tense.


She's locked outside again. Leaning against the familiar grooves of the brick white wall. There's raucous talking emanating from the door, the clinking of glasses, the stomping of feet. It's okay, they can be as loud as they want- the neighbors do not dare confront the Ssang Kal, especially when they live in Ssang Kal territory.

Red steadily creeps up Hana's toes- it's winter, and she knows she should've brought socks, but in her hurry to leave the apartment she'd totally forgotten. She rubs her hands together in a weak attempt at staying warm, ignores the strange look a man shoots her as he passes the apartment complex, three floors below her. No doubt he wonders why she is there.

She wonders, too.

The doors opens to the left of her, and she jumps out of her skin, scrambles backwards as Ms. Song takes a step from the doorframe. Her mother doesn't explain what's going on, just grabs her shoulder with that disgusting hand and drags her inside. Hana twists, turns, seeking a way out of the situation. "Don't touch me!"

The gangsters catch sight of her, struggling helplessly, and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

"Pretty little kitty," one of them purrs. Hana fights the urge to gag.

Ms. Song lets go of Hana at the center of the room, where she kneels, panting, red in the face. She looks up, dreading who she is about to see.

Her worst fears are confirmed; it's Mr. Seon, sitting on the couch, all wicked grins, surrounded by other men that she doesn't recognize. The coffee table is covered in shot glasses. Most of them are empty. The smell of alcohol is stifling. They've done their drinking, and now they need entertainment… courtesy of Hana.

Seon's slightly flushed, which means he's only partly drunk, fortunately. Hana scratches at her head, looks down. The last time that she'd been allowed inside during a Ssang Kal gathering was when they had wanted her to fetch some more liquor from the store. What does he want from me this time?

"How old are you know, Hana?" Mr. Seon's voice is taunting, although there is nothing taunting about his question. Hana squirms with discomfort.

"I'm nine," she says, quietly. Some of the men in the room snicker; Hana can't figure out what is so hilarious.

"Tell me, Hana." Mr. Seon's pouring himself another glass of soju, and he's amused all of a sudden. "You dropped out of school, didn't you?"

Hana stares intently at the floor, trying to work out the right answer. She hasn't dropped out of school, but that's obviously not the reply Mr. Seon is looking for.

"School isn't very fun," she mumbles, heart hammering in her chest. Mr. Seon gulps down his soju and slams the glass back onto the table. He's obviously displeased with her reply.

"Then drop out," he snaps. "I heard you're into those computer games."

StarCraft, she corrects him mentally. She grits her teeth.

"If you play them instead of going to that useless school, you'll make more money." A pause. "You do make money off of them, eh?"

Hana's head snaps up. So that's what all this is about. She's angry, and she's afraid, and she doesn't want him to take her money because it's hers. If she lies, maybe-

Her attention wanders to Mr. Seon's knife, lying on the table like an undelivered threat.

"Yes, sir," she says tightly. "I… I made a little money."

"100,000 won in a month. Pocket change for us, maybe, but that's a bit much for a little girl." He's leering at her, now, threatening. "Too much for a little girl."

The rest of the men are watching silently. Hana's mother fidgets from Mr. Seon's side. Seon uses these moments with Hana as opportunities to further his power- to show how intimidating he can be.

It's disgusting, because he's trying to scare a little girl. Her lip curls in contempt, which she hides by ducking her head, her fringe covering her face.

"It helps pay the bills," Hana says, and her voice is barely a whisper. She doesn't want to give in, because the money is rightfully hers. She'd streamed for eight hours a day for the past month just to accumulate that much. It's not fair!

But Mr. Seon doesn't care, because nobody cares what Hana Song thinks.

"Where's the money?" Definitely a threat.

"You don't need 100,000 won- you said it yourself, it's just pocket change," she shoots back before she can stop herself.

The consequences are as immediate as they are disastrous. Mr. Seon's on his feet, skin scarlet from anger or alcohol, probably both. He storms around the coffee table to where she sits, and Hana's on her feet, darting to the door, because if she doesn't get out-

The door is blocked by Ms. Song. Hana screams and pelts her mother with her fists, powerless fists, while the woman stares impassively down. She's hysterical, she can hear Mr. Seon approaching, she's about to die. Her throat is ragged from the screaming.

"LET ME OUT! Let me out let me out let me out let m-"

There's a flash of pain, and then everything is black.

The floor is cold against Hana's flimsy t-shirt.

Her head's throbbing, and her eye- she can't open her eye. There's noise coming from the kitchen, and she catches her name tossed around, once.

"Hana, that little shit, yelling her goddamn head off. You don't think the neighbors called the police, right?"

Everything hurts.

Hana braces herself against the floor. She can't seem to get herself upright. Pain lances through her face, through her eye. It's swollen shut. Gingerly, she touches the bruise. The third black eye this month.

Mr. Seon's voice is confident. "They knew we were in here. If they did call the police, we'll just pay them a visit. The only thing is… Nara, you-"

"I won't tell anyone," Hana hears her mother finish, and she's oozing with adoration. Positively melting at the opportunity to prove herself somewhat useful to the Ssang Kal. "Even if my daught- even if Hana died, I wouldn't tell anyone."

It's like a physical blow to Hana's chest. She chokes, braces herself against the ground, and she'd known for a while that her mother was not the same woman she'd been before, but… A strange image flashes in Hana's mind. Her gravestone, covered in weeds and unattended in the rain.

Nobody cares if I live or die.

"Not as dumb as you look, then," grunts out Mr. Seon. There's a rustle of fabric as he pulls on his jacket. "Take care of the mess. We're leaving."

There's the thump of boots as the Ssang Kal leave the apartment, rattling the floor.

Hana raises herself to a sitting position on trembling arms just as her mother steps into the living room. She can feel the accursed woman's appraising stare on her face, her body.

"You're not going to school tomorrow," the woman declares. "Not with those bruises."

Because then they'll call child protective services, Hana thinks bitterly.

There are tears seeping out from under her swollen eyelid, and they're more tears of anger than sadness. Hana's never felt so defeated before. If she ran away… but no, she can't escape, the Ssang Kal would track her down, and then- and then-

The Ssang Kal gets rid of all loose ends one way or another, whispers the voice of reason in her head.

Satisfied, Ms. Song vanishes into the kitchen, most likely to call up one of her lovers. Tears spatter onto the floor, and Hana's vaguely surprised to see them mixed with blood.

She's feeling weak. Defeated. She wonders when Father will come back home, and save her from this mess. It feels like forever since she's talked to him, and she wonders how long it's actually been. Time has twisted and turned and flipped onto itself and she's no longer sure if it's been a year or a month since he's left.

A hand on her shoulder. Her stomach drops.

She jumps, spins, smashes her elbow into Mr. Seon's face-

-only to have her elbow burn with pain as it smashed into something hard.

Genji stumbles back from the couch with a hurried curse, hand clutching at his visor. Hana leaps to her feet, eyes wide, but it's impossible to see anything in the darkness, except the glow of Genji's green armor ports.

He's startled. "Han-"

"I'm so sorry," Hana sputters, and she's glad that it's dark so that Genji can't see her turn red. "I didn't know it was you. Otherwise, I wouldn't have… have hit you." She teeters off, uncertain, bathed in the glow of Genji, the living nightlight.

He regains his balance, his gunmetal form steadying on its feet. "I'd hope not," says Genji seriously. Hana feels a smile flicker over her face.

It only takes her a moment to adjust to her surroundings. They're at the motel, and if the digital clock hanging off the wall is anything to go by, it's an hour past midnight. She's with Genji. Hana lets out a quiet exhalation of breath.

This isn't home. This is somewhere safe. She's still jittery with fear and adrenaline, and it's not helping that Genji is eyeing her with obvious concern, perhaps debating whether or not to ask her what the elbowing was all about.

It's been three days since she'd left behind that accursed apartment, having been plucked from the place by the newly reformed Overwatch- or more specifically, by Genji. Now that she's staying with him, the Ssang Kal can't hurt her anymore... not during the day, at least. At night she can still feel hear them whispering in the dark.

The past few days had been like a dream- walking around the beach, exploring the market, trying to get squirrels to feed from their hands with panko breadcrumbs. Life was such a departure from her formerly-nightmarish reality (she recalled, with a wince, the pain in her left eye) that sometimes she'd go to sleep, thinking that maybe when she woke up, she'd be back at the apartment, where an angry Mr. Seon awaited with his knife.

For that very reason, she'd refused to sleep for the first two nights out of fear of breaking this fragile illusion. Genji would have to talk to her, and they'd talk and talk and talk through the night about the most mundane things, each carefully avoiding the details of their pasts, and then she'd wake up nestled against his armored shoulder on the couch, dark circles under her eyes but a warm feeling in her chest.

It hadn't taken long for Hana to get used to the cyborg, despite knowing almost nothing about him. For all his intimidating military fanfare, at heart, Genji was a lighthearted man with a strange addiction to arcade games. They'd spent nearly twenty dollars on one particular Pac-Man machine, eventually filling all top ten score brackets with 'HANA:)'s and 'CYBORGNINJADUDE's.

He was also her first-ever friend. The type that she had always read about in books- the ones that would fetch your forgotten umbrella for you, lend you money, or escort you to Overwatch headquarters. If Hana was a boat in a storm, Genji was her anchor, the one who kept her in the present.

She'd even accidentally referred to him as oppa- the Korean word for 'older brother'; a term of endearment that, much to her humiliation, Genji had caught her calling him before. She had refused to explain the word's meaning to the mystified man, going painfully red with embarrassment, on more than one occasion.

Which is why it surprises Hana when his voice comes out more sharp and more serious than it's ever been before, and all of a sudden it's like he's not even the same lighthearted cyborg she'd grown to love like family. More than family.

"We need to leave, now," he says, and there's a definite edge to his modulated voice. Genuine urgency masked under the pretense of calmness.

Hana sticks her head out from the door. Outside, the wind is bitingly cold and humid, carrying the scent of the sea in its grasp. There's not a soul in sight, and the indigo world is silent, except from the rustling of the trees. It's the very picture of peace.

"Why?" So far her stay at the motel has only been disturbed only by her restless nightmares in the dark. There's no obvious threat to their safety, as far as she can see, but Genji apparently thinks different.

"I was patrolling and I ran across… well, Talon's found out about us."

He says this like it's a death sentence. Hana just squints at him in confusion.

"Who's Talon? Someone you know?"

If it was someone that Genji knew, Hana wouldn't be surprised to have never heard of them before. In the rare moments that Genji spoke of his past (which he never elaborated on, despite Hana's relentless coaxing), all of the names he spoke of were confusing and unfamiliar. Names like Gabe, Jesse, Vaswani and Ilios- in the end, he always refused to explain who or what or where they were.

But this time, Hana can tell that it's different from his usually cryptic name-calling. Genji's already on the move, picking up his impressive array of weapons and what appears to be a duffel bag, before exiting the house. Hana quickly follows suit, pulling on her boots and grabbing her black raincoat. The ocean wind batters her mercilessly; besides her jacket, she's only really wearing pajamas, which provide little shelter from the cold.

"Talon is… a terrorist organization. They've caused almost half of the really bad stuff that's in the news, Hana. " Genji laughs, but it's a humorless sound. "I keep forgetting that it's not common knowledge. You'd think with all the press outlets and reporters scrambling to figure out who's behind it all, someone would've figured it out eventually."

He sounds almost disappointed, as if he thinks that the world's observational skills aren't quite up to snuff. Hana snorts, and then remembers the mug that that unknown fan had gifted her, as well as the bright green scarf she'd bought Genji two days previous. She frowns and turns to go back to the house, but Genji catches her by the shoulder.

"We need to leave everything behind," he says, and he still sounds urgent but his voice has gotten gentler. Hana narrows her eyes- it's hard to read Genji's emotions when all she has to go off of is his voice- but she can definitely tell that the man is more worried than he's letting on.

I… trust his judgement. The thought comes as a bit of a surprise. She shrugs indifferently, pretending that the loss doesn't bother her at all.

They're half-walking, half-jogging along the woods instead of just cutting across the beach- Genji hurriedly explains that 'the trees provide cover', as if they're about to be jumped by gun-toting maniacs or something, to which Hana sarcastically responds with a "good advice, James Bond"-

- when they're jumped by gun-toting maniacs.

RAT-A-TAT-A-RAT-A-TAT! The booming sound splits the silent air like Moses with his Red Sea, and Hana jumps and curses and she's mentally flailing when Genji tugs her behind a thin tree. She presses up against the slimy bark, heart thundering in her ears, the rabbit bracelet tangled around her hand. Genji's right beside her, and he's cursing too, but decidedly quieter.

"What's going on?" demands Hana in a hushed voice. The gunshots have faded away, only to be replaced by an eerie silence. She's spooked as hell and she knows that questions are just going to get in the way, but facing an unknown threat is so much worse than she'd expected it to be.

"I was fucking right. Talon's found us." Genji's hand flexes, and three green-tinted shurikens appear, gleaming, between his fingers, like a dangerous magic trick. "They've always been, ah, slightly opposed to Overwatch. I didn't-" He sounds frustrated with himself, which scares Hana more than anything, because Genji always seemed to be so calm and in control.

He lets out a deep breath, as if he's taking a split second to meditate. His voice comes out deeper, slower. "I didn't expect them to find our location. I don't know exactly how they found out about this mission, but- no need to panic. We'll just be getting on that subway to Seoul a little earlier than planned." Another huff of breath. "We're going to go to Juseong," (Hana recalls the small town they'd played Pac-Man in), "and then we're driving from there to Busan. Then we'll go to the subway station and meet our contacts in Seoul." He stands, and helps Hana to her feet. "Let's move."

This time, they dart in and out of the thin trees as they make their way towards the nearest town. Hana's jumpier than a cat- she keeps expecting a loud shot to rattle the air again, to maybe even get hit by a bullet- but there's nothing but oppressive silence until they're well within sight of the village.

Then there's a small flare from behind them. Hana notices it, as does Genji, and as she's turning, she's half expecting some sort of thug with a flamethrower to be there.

What she's not expecting is for the motel to be on fire. They've put quite a bit of distance between themselves and the house, but the sky is still dark and so it's easy to make out jumping flames in the distance.

"Well, damn," says Hana dryly. She marvels at how calm she sounds, when in reality she's trying not to be overcome by the situation that's slowly sinking into her skull:

I'm on the run from a terrorist organization, guided by a strange robot-man with a katana.

An even stranger thought: It's already been three days since I left the house, but it feels like it's only been an instant. Whatever remained of those days are now being devoured in flames.

Genji's on the move again, so Hana follows, slower this time. She can't help but look back every now and then, at the flickering flames slowly dissolving into a single, orange dot on the horizon. "Why the hell did they have to set everything on fire like that?" There's a healthy dose of anger in her voice.

"They probably searched it through, found nothing, and set it ablaze so that we have nothing to return to," Genji says matter-of-factly. The cyborg ducks into a small warehouse, which smells of damp, rotting wood. Hana wrinkles her nose as she steps in behind him.

"Lucky for us, I have a backup!" He makes jazz hands at the tarp-covered lump that rests on top of the molding hay, his voice unexpectantly triumphant.

Hana places her hands on her hips, breathing heavily; having not done a single sport her entire life, she's slightly winded from the jog from the motel to the town. She cocks an eyebrow, pretends not to be tired.

"Oppa- er, Genji- the hell is that?"

"It's our getaway vehicle, kid." She makes a protesting noise at the nickname, which he ignores (and Hana imagines a shit-eating grin under that mask.) "You don't think I stationed us in such a remote place and didn't secure an escape route, didja?"

He pulls the tarp away with dramatic flourish, and Hana's cranes her neck to look for something ridiculously sci-fi, like a rocket suit or a teleporter.

Underneath the tarp lies a nondescript gray sedan. Hana checks to see if it has warp-drive or something, but no, it's just standard hover-wheels.

Genji jingles the keys in one hand, and Hana can tell he's still grinning. "The Hana-mobile. Catchy name, right? Thought of it myself."

She frowns, arms crossed, at the dingy vehicle.

"Genji-mobile suits it better. It certainly resembles you," Hana sniffs with a smirk, and she's relieved to feel the tension draining away from the room. Genji definitely seems more relaxed now. He's back to his totally-zen, dramatically-gesturing, bad-jokes-making self. Maybe he'd been caught off-guard at first, but now he has everything under control.

Everything is under control.

She takes a deep breath as she straps herself into the leathery depths of the sedan. Genji's humming the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song as he takes up the driver seat right beside her, as if he hadn't a care in the world. His metallic hand thumbs the drive.

The car starts with a throaty rumble. Hay goes everywhere as it backs out of the hole in the collapsing warehouse. Through the grimy window, Hana spots a couple of figures in the distance, going the same way she and Genji had been walking just a few minutes previous. They're clothed entirely in shades of gray and black, and they're each holding something long and thin in their hands. A thrill of fear runs up her back. Guns. Those are fucking guns. Which are difficult to get ahold of, what with Korea's strict gun-control restrictions.

The rattling of gunfire starts, and Genji's revving up the engine, and Hana's hands are clenched in her lap as the little seaside town dissolves into a blur around them, the first rays of the blazing sun peeking from the horizon, staining the sky a bloody scarlet.

Bullets clatter off the sedan. Apparently the car's been reinforced to hold off against the shots. Hana's holding onto her seatbelt like a lifeline, knuckles slowly going white from the pressure she's exerting. They're probably breaking a million speed restrictions, and Genji's little tune from SpongeBob Squarepants has somehow evolved into ACDC's Highway to Hell.

Hana thinks, Genji has this under control.

"Genji, watch out!" she yelps as he swerves to avoid hitting an old lady carrying a basket of what appears to be fish. He yells out something in Japanese, probably an apology, out the open window. The old lady (whom Hana recognizes to be the one who sold them her bracelet at the market) curses them until she's out of sight, just another blur in the backdrop.

DVA thinks, I have this under control.

A bullet cracks off the window, and she throws herself down low into her seat. Genji pushes the gas and they're soaring to new speeds; Genji whoops and Hana screams.

Somewhere inside of her, a repressed, rebellious fifteen-year-old girl yells,

Nobody has ANYTHING under control, dammit, and that's just the way I like it.

When Genji checks on Hana to see how she's holding up, he's mildly amused to see her crouching in her seat, a terrified smile on her face.


Notes:

Ssang Kal: a prominent Korean gang; name literally means 'Twin Knives.'

Oppa- an endearing term used by women to refer to an older male literally means 'older brother.' When men refer to an older male in the same manner, they use the word 'hyung'.

Is Hana an adrenaline junkie? Yes. Yes, I suppose she is.