Genji frowned, sending a star sailing into the enemy agent's forehead. The enemy fell to the ground behind Lucio, who only noticed seconds after the fact - precious seconds that could have meant life or death for himself.
The cyborg ninja landed silently over the body, sure that no other enemies were around. Without warning or preamble, he whirled the field medic around to face him; one swift motion disabled both their communicators, and he held Lucio' face in his hands.
"You need to get to extraction," he stated in a tone that brooked no argument.
Lucio blinked, owlish, and frowning up at his teammate. His brown eyes right then, showed more clarity in them than the past weeks. "What are you on about?"
"You're not focused and you'll wind up dying needlessly on the field."
"But-shit!"
Genji moved far too quickly for Lucio to track, but the final step he was forced to take to the right made room for a body to clatter to the ground, motionless.
"We don't have time to discuss this here, but for the sake of your safety, you should go."
Lucio glanced at the prone body before levering his gaze to the green-lit visor before him. "But I'm the only healer here."
"At this rate you'll be the only healer that used to be here."
There were so many times Genji wanted to scout ahead but could not bring himself to leave the shadows around his significant other because of the other's current absent mindedness and sluggish movements.
"I can't just leave."
"And I can't keep looking over my shoulder thinking someone could have killed you while I went on ahead. Please," Genji added, seeing Lucio gear up to argue.
The shorter of the two operatives heaved a sigh. "I can take care of myself."
"I know you can," Genji made an abortive motion to run a hand over his face. "Just, please, go. I'm worried."
"I promise I'll be more careful, okay?" Lucio' eyes flitted around before the shorter man made quick work of Genji's visor, and stole a kiss.
Genji returned the kiss with a frown, but remained mindful of the time limit. Their conversation would have to wait until later. With that, he replaced the metallic piece and scaled the walls into the shadows of the rafters, body's lights flickering out.
"Do you ever wish you had your old body back?"
The sudden question halted Genji's steps. "It doesn't matter," he answered slowly. "I have this body now and I'm okay with it."
He regarded Lucio quietly, watching as the other's brows furrowed. "Aren't you even curious how your life would be if you even had the slightest chance?" The words sounded more of a mistaken voicing of thoughts.
"Do you-," Genji hedged around the discomfort in his chest. "Are you unsatisfied with me?"
"Of course not," the medic was quick to placate. The worrying of his bottom lip did nothing to comfort the ninja. But Lucio just looked worn. There were dark rings around his eyes, bags that were getting heavier, and the downward set of his shoulders made him seem close to collapsing on himself. "I just want to know if you're unsatisfied with yourself."
"Like I said, love," the cyborg affirmed. "I'm content with the way I am. I mean, sure it's a nice thought, but completely unnecessary."
Lucio only nodded.
Genji turned to climb into the rafter of the suspected Talon warehouse, but paused to cup Lucio's cheek in his right hand. "We're gonna have a talk when we get back to the base."
Brown eyes snapped up to search the green glow of the ninja's visor before tearing themselves away. "Yeah."
They never did get to have that talk.
The self-destruct sequence started by the security system in the warehouse began from an area closest to Genji. Lucio and Jesse were caught under the rubble. The shield generators were barely able to save the rest of the crew from the radial force belting out from the source.
Extraction was a long and delicate process, but Lucio was conscious the entire way through, only cooperating with the emergency medics on the promise of seeing Genji up close and personal for himself. He was on the cusp of awareness when he spied a stretcher carting a mangled Genji, barely registering the crew above trying to get him from under the fallen metal.
When Genji came to, it was to an overwhelmingly exhausted, heavy-breathing Lucio hovering over him. His hair was raked back and he crutched himself against an IV stand, reading the medical chart. Scratches marred the sallow skin on his face and a scar was forming from the corner of his mouth, nearly halfway to his ear. Just above the scrubs he wore, around his neck was another ugly looking mark.
Lucio finally shifted his attention to him, and the haggard face lit right up. The medic hobbled to turn and yelled, hoarse, for Mercy. The blond physician appeared in his wavering vision, expression of utter disbelief. She turned and flung her arms around Lucio, laughing and sobbing altogether. "You did it!"
Lucio seemed to be equally overjoyed, but the light in his eyes seemed to dim at a rather alarming rate before his body went limp in the doctor's arms. Genji's awareness faded, barely able to voice his own muted cry.
Genji resurfaced again with a start. The observation room was empty save for him, but his first thoughts were of Lucio. Absently, he plucked all of the wires and vital monitors off his arms, chest, and legs. For a moment, when he planted his feet on the ground, he felt phantom chills beneath his soles.
"Angie," he called out, leaving the room and rounding the corner to go where he knew her office was. On his way, he glanced at the clock that hung over one of the doorways, absently noting the late hour.
"Genji"
Genji whipped around to see an equally stunned McCree gaping at him.
"Jesse?"
"I don't believe it," the cowboy murmured, stepping closer and looking his friend from head to toe. Thick hands rose to touch Genji's face, neck and arms. "I can't fucking believe it."
Genji's eyes never left the face full of wonder, waiting until McCree caught his gaze again. "The kid actually did it."
"Who-," then he remembered. "What did he do, McCree?"
Jesse leveled him with a raised eyebrow, and forcefully turned Genji toward a darkened window. "Take a look for yourself, hero."
The flash of green in his reflection as he turned to the viewport gave him pause and he backpedaled a few steps.
He looked... human.
Whole.
True flesh with the ripple of muscle in his biceps, the chill of the metal floors beneath his feet, and the coolness across his chest.
He had his full head of hair, complete with the green dye he preferred before he died. He got his face back.
Genji fell silent, eyes widening as the one off-putting question came back to him.
"Where is he?"
Jesse's expression grew somber, eyes half-lidded and mouth curled with hesitation.
"What happened to him, McCree?"
Jesse held his tongue and the silence brought unbidden memories of what he'd seen when he first woke after the mission. The looks of exhaustion, the injuries, the collapse.
No… No, no, no.
"Jesse!"
The older man pointed toward the end of the hall and Genji left without a word, looking into each room until he found one, occupied, with a sheet pulled completely over a body.
For the first time in years, Genji felt the devastating pull of a heart to the bottom of his stomach. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, legs gaining weight with each step toward the prone, sheet-covered form. With a deep breath he knew could never prepare him, he yanked the sheet aside and his knees buckled.
It was the parts of his battered cybernetic body, arranged in anatomical order and powered down. The relief that flooded his veins left him dizzy, only his white knuckled grip on the examination table keeping him upright. Genji struggled to pull air in through his nostrils, the thumping in his chest going a mile a minute. He felt the tears before they came, blurring his vision and he violently blinked them back.
"Genji."
Before his mind could register what was happening, he turned around and stalked toward the doorway, gathering the smaller form into his arms. He relished the feeling of warmth against his own body, the roughness of the dark hair across his cheek and chill of the indrawn breath at his neck.
"You're alive," he breathed, willing his racing heart to slow down.
"Used to be if you crush me any harder, babe."
Genji pulled back as if burned, but was held in place by a hand at his back. He looked down into the shorter man's face. The cuts on the medic's cheek had healed, but the scars on his neck and face had not disappeared.
Lucio noticed the other's line of sight and guided his lover's attention to his eyes. "I'm fine, okay? The concern here, now, is you. How do you feel?"
Silence reigned between them where Genji studied Lucio' face with an intensity the medic was not used to.
"Tell me why."
Lucio pulled back, eyes furrowed. "Excuse me?"
"Why did you do it?"
"Genji-."
"I said I was fine and I didn't need another body."
"Well, you wouldn't be here if I didn't do it."
Genji paused, tilting his head in askance.
Lucio' features coiled in distress. "Angela and I couldn't do anything with your suit and we couldn't gather parts fast enough. It was either this," he made a vague gesture to Genji. "or dismantle Zen."
"Dismantle Ze-," Genji started, but Lucio was faster.
"Clearly we had a choice to make, Genji. No, we never touched him." Lucio inhaled. "But we had a choice to make. We couldn't afford to lose anyone. I couldn't lose you."
Genji pursed his lips, searching the other's distraught face. At length, the glaive asked, "How did you do it?"
The medic seemed to decide that this was better than the expected alternative, whatever that could have been.
"I'd been working on your body for months," he admitted, ghost of a smile on his lips. He took Genji by the hand and led them both to the chairs beside the examination table. The ninja noticed, with a frown, the pronounced limp his lover was sporting. "And it was a good thing I did. It wasn't a fully human body, though, and there were things that needed to be worked out but we didn't have time."
They sat facing each other, the medic taking the seat closest to the door.
"But the nerves and-," Genji made a vague hand movements.
"Angie is an unbelievably smart and scary woman, Genji," Lucio gently cut him off, but he saw the silent pride in the student doctor's eyes. "She saved you once and kept you alive and functioning." The awe was so palpable, Genji was almost jealous. "She's taught me a lot, too. So all I needed was to-."
The abrupt silence and the twitch at the corner of the younger man's lips gave an awkward pause.
"To what," Genji leaned forward curiously.
"It's not important," Lucio waved his hand in dismissal. "But Gen-."
"Babe," Genji wrestled to make eye contact. "I know you. What did you do? What sacrifice did you make?"
"Nothing big or important, trust me."
"I do trust you. I also feel this sacrifice is important. If not to you, then to me."
Lucio took his bottom lip between his teeth and looked away, as if hoping the floor he was studying would answer the question for him. The medic fidgeted with his hand before taking a small breath.
"You know we're compatible in regards to blood type," he began, barely putting up a fight when Genji took his busy hands and brought them to his lips to kiss the knuckles softly.
They still felt the same, but smoother, warm. Real. More than just pressure.
"So," a sigh. "We- I, used my blood as a sample and duplicated the cells, platelets and plasma to give you while we recreated the rest of your circulatory system. Then we swapped the rest of m-, the organs."
"The organs," Genji caught the stutter. He watched the other look skyward and work his jaw; regarded as he breathed deeply through his nose and exhaled through his mouth.
"On second thought," Lucio said, pulling his hands away. "Can we not?"
Genji edged forward instead. "You do realise you can still talk to me, even though I look different."
Lucio chuckled, soft and humorless. "I know, I just-. I don't think you should know."
"I want to know."
"And you have the right to, but…"
"But?"
Silence.
"Babe?"
No response. Soon, Lucio rose to his feet and started pacing. Back, forth, and back again.
"Lucio."
He started muttering to himself then, shaky hands running through his hair and wringing his hands.
Genji's expression darkened, muscles coiled to reach out to his distressed lover but held himself in check.
"You're starting to worry me, babe."
Lucio flicked his gaze toward him. "Which is precisely why I don't want to tell you more than I already have."
Genji reached out on his lover's next pass, firmly taking a wrist into his grip to pull attention to himself. He stole Lucio' gaze and mustered the most earnest look he possibly could.
"I'm starting to prefer your visor to your actual eyes," the medic grumbled, expression pained. He dropped his gaze to the floor and deflated. "Alright," he acquiesced. "Okay. But you won't like what you hear."
Genji nodded. "I'm prepared."
"I hope," he heard the other mutter, but let it go. Lucio forfeited pacing but refused to meet his lover's eyes. He finally began, at length. "Inside of you are pieces of me that nearly atrophied and almost cost you your life."
Lucio winced, and made an abortive move to yank his wrist out of the suddenly too-tight grip. Genji forced himself to loosen it, but didn't let go, waiting for the rest.
"Kidney," he listed cautiously eyeing the fingers around his wrist, barely above a whisper. "Part of my liver for reconstruction, pancreas, partial intestines and…"
"And," Genji prodded, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the last part.
"My heart."
In an instant, Genji was towering over the medic, nose flared, an image completely alien to the words that tumbled out of his lips a bare croak.
"You did what?" His voice was thin, eyes staring past the medic, as if focusing everything into his hearing.
"I have a mechanical replacement for each one," Lucio swallowed in feeble defense, other hand coming to cover the grip the other still had on his wrist. "The schematics are in the lab-."
"No, Lu," he balked, fingers twitching but their hold unrelenting. He was glaring down at Lucio now, eyes wild and teeth bared. "This is a joke because there's no way-. You couldn't. You-." his voice hitched. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I-," the medic about squeaked, but was fully ignored.
Genji's free, once-mechanical hand flew at the scrubs Lucio still wore, fingers fighting through and piercing the thin fabric, digging. Shredding. Desperate to deny what may lay beneath.
He fell to his knees before the mural of stitches across his lover's torso, the same forceful hand light as a feather across the ridges. He recalled the list in his head, mentally naming them as he went. They travelled up to the line that marked the point of entrance where the skin was cut to reach the heart. The skin was raised and angry, past their time for redressing.
"I had to," Lucio breathed, hunching over the strengthening grip on his wrist. "The replacements weren't agreeing with your body and we had to act fast!"
Genji's brows furrowed, jaw slack as his eyes roved, catalogued, trying to reconcile it with the memory of what it once was. "Why would you do this? You could have just let me-."
"Die?" Lucio questioned evenly and freed his bruising appendage. "Would you have let me slip through your fingers like that, Genji?"
The ninja's eyes snapped up to his, suspiciously bright, but furious. "You would have anyway if..if-."
"If I failed and died right alongside you?" Lucio leveled a wounded look at his lover, but was fairly contested by the terror-stricken counterpoise.
Genji shuddered, the stitches pulling his attention back to them, eyes flicking to and from each one. "What if it worked and you died anyway?"
"It would be worth -."
"No circumstance regarding me is worth your life." The downturn of Genji's lips nearly pulled back into a sneer as he shot to his feet and closed in on the medic. "Not a single one."
"There is, idiot!" Lucio' reproach echoed in the sterile room. "You are worth more than my life. Worth everything." He leaned into Genji's personal space, teeth gritted, exhaustion apparent. "And I would give life and limb if it meant a chance to save you."
The ninja turned away from the medic, seething. "That's the single most-."
Genji whirled and raked the beaten parts to the ground and overturned the table with a vicious snarl. He kicked what was nearest and dug his fingers into his scalp, almost sickened by the long-lost sensation of feeling in his hands. He yanked them down and stumbled back, boneless, into the chair he once occupied.
"Fuck," he breathed, leaning over and burying his hands into his hands. "Fuck…"
He ran the unsteady hands down his face. The heat of his own breath against his palms, the slight nip of the air conditioning settling over his bare shoulders; smooth skin, warmth under the flesh of his fingers and the frantic pulsations in his chest, that thudduump of a heart-Lucio's heart-behind his ribs was a kind of pain he could never shake. His stomach turned as he caught a glimpse of his new reflection in the floor and shut his eyes against it, but the image was smeared against the dark of his eyelids.
Genji curled in on himself, blood roaring in his ears.
Gentle hands unfurled him and a body squeezed itself into his space, arms surrounding him.
He flinched away from the touch. "Don't."
The body hesitated, but complied and created a safe distance. "It's okay, Genji," Lucio's voice sounded in front of him, soft and unsteady. "Please, don't cry."
As if on cue, he felt the salty droplets dive off his nose and onto the floor between them. Air stuck to his nostrils, slithering down his throat with the taste of antiseptic riding his breath, roiling in his stomach as bile. This feeling of being a living sacrifice and a walking testimony of what he stood to lose-what he could have-nearly lost...he couldn't take.
His reddened eyes found purchase in the other's gaze, overwrought and wet with fear and confusion. He watched as Lucio' face crumpled. "Do you," the medic whispered. "Do you really hate it that much?"
Genji's jaw worked, but no sound came save for a breathless laugh, high-pitched and hysteric. He found himself on his feet, heading toward the door.
"Genji?" Lucio was in front of him again, holding the torn scrub together with his hands, a bruise beginning to form on his wrist.
"I need to go," was all the operative strained, unable to hold his lover's gaze and leaving the room. Lucio merely moved with the force of being nudged aside, only able to let him by.