Chapter Text
Hanzo isn’t used to the sound of the ocean. As a child, he never travelled much - training and family matters kept him close to home, close to Hanamura. He used to wake up to the sounds of birds singing in the ever-blossoming cherry trees outside the castle, to the reliable sound of the shishi-odoshi on the yard, and the wind up high on the hilltop looking over the city at its foot. He has very few fond memories relating to waking up, but those memories now rush through his fever-ridden mind regardless: moments of sliding off his futon, pushing his feet inside his small slippers, pulling on a yukata, or a simple shirt and a hakama back when he was very young and didn’t have to always keep up the impression of importance. Some other moments surface along these ones: memories of lost sleep, of watching the sun rising and painting the skyline blood red. The sensation of a blanket tied up around his crossed legs, of a digital notebook resting on his lap. The fleeting image of a smiling girl, partially hidden in the shadow of the window’s frame, flashes in front of his eyes before fading into black.
Something’s beeping.
The first thing Hanzo sees when he opens his eyes is a ridged metal ceiling. He blinks slowly before he can focus on it, his eyes sore and swollen, and even then it’s only after a silent struggle that his vision finally obeys his command. He doesn’t know this ceiling. It’s neither Hanamura nor any of the thousand apartments, inns and hotels he’s slept in since. He’s never seen it before. Briefly, he wonders if it’s the cover of his tomb where his enemies have buried him alive, six feet under and sealed in by concrete and steel, but he can breathe and, he assumes, move - he perceives space surrounding him, even if not a single part of his body answers when he calls it to search that space. His hands weight hundreds of kilograms. His torso is a shapeless mass of heat, of raw flesh like a spitroasted pig. His legs burn with the fire that’s set underneath him.
He closes his eyes again, his mind too heavy to answer the thousand questions that press at him.
”Good morning, Genji.”
Angela’s voice is pleasant, like a songbird landing on a branch to greet the rising sun. Genji nods at her and lifts his cup of steaming tea in greeting. His legs hang down from the walkway, and past the empty structure meant to support a rocket launch, he can see Morocco’s rocky shoreline across the ocean. Angela sits down beside him. Her long legs slip over the edge and dangle beside Genji’s, but they don’t reflect the early sunlight like Genji’s do. Instead, they’re covered by white leggings that disappear into shoes perfectly shaped for her small feet, and she almost looks like a fairy of some kind in her loosely fitting summer shirt and the worn denim shorts that hug her upper thighs and hips. She doesn’t look like she’s on duty: she came here this way, as if only visiting old memories. Genji suspects it’s due to denial - with an upstanding moral code such as which Angela Ziegler embodies, breaking the law doesn’t come easy. For him, it wasn’t much of a question - especially considering the circumstances that finally brought him here after the recall.
”Good morning, Doctor Ziegler,” Genji replies to her with tease in his voice, ”How are you?”
”I’d be better if you didn’t call me ’Doctor Ziegler’, Shimada-san.”
A shudder runs through Genji’s metal-reinforced spine.
”Fine,” he chuckles, ”You win.”
They’re quiet for a moment’s time, both looking out to the ocean. In her other hand, Angela holds a travel mug; the screen on its side indicates that the contents are still hot. She lifts it up to her lips and Genji smiles at her, bringing his own simple earless porcelain mug between them; Angela’s eyes turn towards it and she removes the cup from her lips, joining his toast.
”Another beautiful day,” she says in an absent voice after downing a mouthful of coffee, ”I wonder what that means for our guest.”
”I visited him when I woke up,” Genji says, ”It was not very educational. I still understand very little of your machines and what their readings mean, even though I studied to my best ability while I was still bound to them myself.”
A small smile plays on Angela’s lips.
”I’ve been waking up every few hours myself to make sure that his condition is stable. I would prefer having at least a nurse working with me on this patient, but as we are... in the situation that we are in, I suppose I will have to do with very little sleep instead.”
”Don’t tell me you’re not used to such conditions.”
”I’m not used to sneaking around. I may be a field medic and used to working to my best ability in states of chaos, but I’m not used to looking after a critically injured patient in a military bedroom while avoiding the attention of both the government and the United Nations.”
”Do I sense disapproval in your voice?” Genji asks her, still smiling underneath the plates covering his face, his enhanced and partially machine-produced voice rippling with pleasure.
Angela gives him a short look and then drowns him in silence, but her legs are gently swaying in the air, and as Genji watches her, she fights to kill a smile trying to crawl up on her lips.
”You are a bad influence,” Angela tells him shortly after a long silence.
She picks herself up from the walkway and stretches her limbs, then looks down at him and clears her throat.
”You know where to find me, should you have something important to tell me. But don’t disturb me for no reason, I will be working on the prostheses today. I don’t need you distracting me.”
”I will come find you,” Genji tells her, ”to remind you to eat, if not for anything else. Angela - let me know if anything changes.”
Angela’s features soften at the request. She nods.
”I will,” she says before turning.
Genji watches her leave with mixed feelings.
For the next hours, Hanzo keeps surfacing to strange visions. The first begins with a sound - an angry voice - and when he opens his eyes, he sees a distantly familiar-looking woman with golden hair chasing a medium-sized, dust-coloured monkey through what appears to be a makeshift hospital room. The pain in his neck as he turns his head to watch the scene unfold soon wins over him, however, and he goes under again. The next vision is silent, if not for that same woman’s quiet humming; she holds a knee-high combat boot in her hands, and from that boot, tens of small cables connect to a laptop on a medical cart next to her. It consists of multiple interlocking metal parts and looks secure enough to cancel out fall damage from a long drop, but that’s about as much as Hanzo can make of it before a silent gasp leaves his lips and darkness takes over him again.
Where is he?
He feels a wet rag drag over his lips, and despite feeling no thirst, only an all-consuming throbbing weariness in all of his body, he licks his lips after it passes.
”You’re not supposed to be waking up yet,” a female voice mutters, not to him but to herself, a private little thought escaping out loud where she expects no one else to hear it, ”You must be fighting the anesthesia hard. That’s not good.”
Something tugs at his inner elbow, as if attached beneath his skin. An IV tube, he realises, and tries to reach for it to pull it out.
”Stop that,” the female voice tells him strictly, and something slaps at his hand, ”I don’t want to use the rest of my afternoon cleaning up blood from the ceiling, I’ve got better things to do.”
”What... things?”
”You should be sleeping. I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to the medication. A man your size should be under for at least three hours more on this dosage, but here we are.”
A silence. The IV keeps tugging at Hanzo’s arm for a moment, but eventually the sensation stops and he can barely feel the needle anymore. The woman near him sighs pleasedly and settles back down into a chair, at least based on the creak the surface lets out when she leans her weight into it.
”There. Not much else I can do for you yet, so this will have to do.”
He’s drifting out quickly again.
”Let your body rest.”
He complies.
Winston sits beside the table with his finger deep inside what must be his third jar of peanut butter that day. Genji examines him curiously, but the gorilla doesn’t seem to pay attention to him. His clean hand, the one that occasionally holds the jar to keep it steady as he cleans out the insides, now turns the page of a notebook full of complicated blueprints and calculations. Genji can’t say he understands much of it. He’s never been one for schematics.
They both lift their heads when Angela enters, however. She looks pale despite the overpowering sunlight of Europe’s southernmost point, and Genji makes a note to himself to drag her out of her chambers more often when his brother’s condition stabilizes. There’s a streak of grease over her cheek, but her hands look flawless: she wears gloves when working with the prostheses, and another set when treating Hanzo’s injuries, all in the name of cleanliness, yet her workshop is set right beside her patient’s sickbed. Perhaps she’s set it up to give her direct access to Hanzo whenever needed, or perhaps, Genji thinks, because Angela needs to take a damn break.
”Your brother is giving me a headache, Genji,” she greets them, falling down into a chair so that it bounces up on two legs from impact.
She lands it gracefully, however; Genji’s never seen Angela fall, not once.
Winston adjusts his glasses and screws the jar closed. He pushes it aside, leans forwards and against the table, and reaches out to put his large finger underneath Angela’s chin. He lifts it up and smiles at her.
”You know we’re here to help you out,” he tells her gently, pulling his hand back against his pudgy belly, ”You just need to ask.”
”I’m afraid there’s nothing more that you can do, Winston. You’ve given me enough of a headstart with the prostheses, and they’re not the cause of my concerns.”
”Is he getting worse?” Genji asks, trying to make his voice sound interested rather than concerned.
In truth, he’s not certain what he feels. Things are never quite that simple with Hanzo. For some reason, however, concern is the last emotion he wants to express in company. Caution is better. Mild curiosity is fine. Indifference is ideal. Over the years he spent following Zenyatta’s guidance, he never managed to fully sort out his thoughts regarding his brother. He learned to forgive him, and even gathered the courage to face him, but the path is longer than the gate a man must walk through to begin it, and Genji’s barely begun walking.
When Angela shakes her head, Genji suppresses the spark of emotion within him. He’s not ready yet to find out what it would have been, should he have let it blossom.
”He’s making steady progress. His fever’s going down and his vitals have stayed stable since the other night’s collapse, but he’s resisting the anesthesia. I can’t let him wake up yet, his body’s not strong enough.”
”Ah,” Genji speaks in a much sadder voice than he intended, ”Hanzo’s restless mind would resist any solace offered. Don’t blame your medication for his stubborness, it’s his soul that refuses to sleep, not his body.”
Angela looks at him for a while, clearly not knowing what to make of this advice. For all the good she does, the matters of the mind are not her best field. She understands the complexities of PTSD, the night terrors, the flashbacks and the depression that follows them, but the workings of a troubled soul in search for spiritual calm often escape her.
”Well, as long as his soul is still connected to his body,” Angela tells him while Winston watches them carefully, ”it should succumb to the same medication as the body does. And it’s not doing so, which is why I’ve increased the dosage for now. He’s guaranteed to be under for an hour more, but I have to go back to watch him when that time is up. Until then, I thought I would get something to eat.”
And just like that, Winston’s up. He makes his way swiftly to the fridge and pulls out a couple peanut butter sandwiches, which he brings back and gently lays in front of Angela on the table. He smiles.
”I was expecting you’d come back hungry,” he says in a compassionate tone, ”So I made you something to boost up those energy levels quickly.”
Angela’s smile is genuine. She reaches out and touches the gorilla’s massive hand with her fingertips, trailing them down his thick black knuckles before retreating and grabbing one of the sandwiches instead.
”Thank you, Winston,” she tells him as Genji leans back in his chair with a sigh.
”When do you plan on waking him up?” he asks, his eyes moving over the ceiling.
When he swallows, he can feel the artificial cartilage in his throat against the nerves of his remaining flesh. With a twitch of discomfort, he lowers his head back and faces Angela instead.
”After I’ve made sure he isn’t going to collapse again,” Angela tells him, her mouth partially filled with peanut butter sandwich, ”At earliest, I’d say tomorrow, but the more he fights the medication, the harder recovery will be for him, so I’d rather do it the day after. Regadless, I can’t keep him under forever, so it’ll have to be one or the other.”
Genji nods. A whole new discomfort floods into him, and whichever part of him can still experience the sensation of blood flowing out of his extremities does exactly that. He’s waited for this, but he’s not ready yet; the thought terrifies him.
”After that,” he says, disregarding the adrenaline in his bloodstream, ”I recommend that you sleep, Angela.”
The doctor laughs.
”That, my friend, I will do.”
Genji sits beside his brother’s bed. So many drips connect to his body, and his tattooed chest is spotted with all sorts of micromachines tracking his vitals and everything going on within him. Around him sit screens that display that information and more: one screen is filled with data received directly from his blood, including his blood type, white and red blood cell counts, the amount of nutrients in his body, and his hormone levels. Genji watches that screen and reflects on just how little all that information tells him of his brother, this... this stranger who shared the same womb with him before he was more than a figure drawn into the great plans of the alpha pair in a clan of murderers. They’ve never been close, and so, Genji has never known much about Hanzo. As a child, he wanted to be like him anyway - wanted to know what made him so tall and strong, so good at everything he did, so precise with his blade and so unforgiving with his bow. He always felt like he was stumbling on a path paved by this giant before him, just a plump little kid trying not to fall into the deep footprints ahead of him while fitting his own small feet into them, wondering why they weren’t the same. Their father often told them that their blood was liquid iron running in their veins, and scientifically, he was partially right. In the philosophical sense, he was as dead-on as Hanzo’s arrows. There was little warmth in their family. They lived and died following a code, and that code allowed no misconduct or room for sentimentality. Honour, not love, bound their family together. In that world, Hanzo’s sole purpose was to grow up a man greater than the men who followed him, to take the mantle and rule with an iron fist. He was to become like the mountain by which their city had grown, and which gave life to the earth surrounding it but only at its will, and which never let its people forget that if it willed so, it could lay destruction over them and take away all that it had given without mercy. Genji’s role had been set in stone before his birth just like Hanzo’s; he was to be his brother’s most steadfast supporter, his blade and the foundations on which he could base his rule so that he’d never have to rely upon a stranger not bound to him by blood. Of course, while in their clan their family was like royalty, there were other men who could have been like Genji; their father had adopted many of them to be his sons, too, although it wasn’t in the familial sense but rather a means to reinforce the family’s power and the loyalty of these few select men who would rise in power but in return be so deeply bound by honour and obligation that they would never leave the family’s side. Amongst them, Genji was simply the one who had been chosen, who had been conceived for the purpose of being Hanzo’s right hand.
Oh, had they only had a son who would have been content with that life, and the empire would still stand. But Genji had never been that son. From the very first years of his life, he’d been the cause of headache for his mother and the pain that sometimes crippled his father after nights of drinking. Although he loved few things better than his education, he’d skipped training in favour of climbing the hills, the rooftops and the trees anyway; he’d learned to hide like the assassin he was meant to become, surely enough, but he’d hid from his parents and his teachers, not from his enemies. He’d stolen coins to run off to the arcade, and had been dragged out of there by Hanzo or his father’s most trusted men more often than he could count - he’d made the whole clan his babysitters, and then he’d escaped them all anyway. In spite of this, not even Genji could escape his fate: he’d become a warrior like Hanzo had, but he’d never felt at ease in his role. Violence was not what bothered him, it was the purposelessness, the senselessness of it all. He didn’t care for the bickerings of the underworld’s rulers, nor did he care for the power or obligation that bound him to that world. He wasn’t enamoured with the tales of ancient honour, and although honour was part of him like it was part of every living soul who’d grown from the same roots as him, he found it in things different from those that his family forced upon him.
All of this undermined Hanzo’s power. Genji hadn’t seen it at first. He’d never meant to hurt his brother, who was Shimada-clan’s spirit embodied. He’d never intended the whispers in the dark that spoke of them both as the weak links in the steel chain of their history and bloodline, as if his lack of interest towards his family’s way of life was Hanzo’s lack of interest just the same, and as if his adventures and misadventures away from the family’s suffocating demands were Hanzo’s as well. He’d been blind to these things because he loved and respected his brother who was and had always been everything that Genji would never become, and submerged in his subjective reverence, he hadn’t realised that not everyone felt the same. Others did not see Hanzo the way he saw him, as the dragon spirit incarnate, as the bedrock beneath the foundations of their house and home. When others looked at his brother, they saw not only Hanzo, but Genji as well; they saw that Hanzo could not keep his blood brother by his side, and doubted whether he’d be able to do any better by his empire.
Hanzo, of course, saw this all painfully clearly, and so had their father. And their father - he had his fingers laid carefully around Hanzo’s neck, ever present so that he’d never forget their power to snap it should he fail to be the man his father had raised. Hanzo was not yet the mountain with fire in his belly, and the mountain had its eyes on him. However, the mountain had been very fond of Genji. Despite his shortcomings, despite his rebellious nature, Genji had always held a special place within his father’s heart. It hadn’t been obvious to him - more than not, Genji had been better aware of the disappointments he’d put his father through. There had always been a distance between them, but behind the scenes, the head of the Shimada-clan had always made sure that Genji, like Hanzo, was met with the respect he by birthright and standing was owed. But unlike the peak that ruled over Hanamura, the clan leader, in all his power and honour, was not eternal. After him, the pressure and discontent that had previously been laid on his strong, calloused shoulders now rested on Hanzo instead.
And so, driven by what he’d perceived to be necessary, he had done what he’d had to.
Genji shifts in his seat. His eyes view Hanzo’s features with sharpness; he’s white as a sheet with dark rings around his eyes, like he’s all but dead already. Genji wonders if he’d looked the same as his brother now when he’d been in Angela’s care. His resurrection is a painful memory to him - while his body had held onto the last shreds of life still present within its mangled shape, his spirit had already passed somewhere else. For days, Genji had felt the void. It had been a home to him, peace like he’d never known before, and it had left him hungry and aching once he’d been torn from it. Zenyatta had helped him connect with that void again, and he’d explained to Genji that the blissful emptiness he felt was not truly empty at all, but that in death and now in life again, he had experienced connection with the universe, with everything that was. With his brother, too, he’d said, and Genji had felt anger towards him. Hurt. How did he dare suggest that anything in Genji was still connected to the brother that had betrayed him for an ideal and the respect of men who shared no blood with him, who had not only tried to murder him, but had done so with such imperfection that it had left his body unrecognisable, despite his ability to strike a man dead in one blow or less? How did that omnic monk, who, Genji had thought, had never felt true brotherhood, and who, with his metallic frame and guts of spun wire had never experienced the pain and suffering that Genji had, dare tell him that even in the euphoria he felt now that he was finally free, he would have to carry his brother with him? All Genji had wanted was to forget - and Zenyatta, who had offered him release from all the other bounds that had held him down, refused to let him free of the chain around his neck.
A shudder runs through Genji’s frame, and he stands up so quickly that the chair behind him bounces. Angela looks at him, her gloved fingertips black with oil, and adjusts the safety goggles on her eyes. Genji gives her a look but can’t find the words, so he simply shrugs and leaves the room. He picks up his pace when he enters the hall, and jogs with his head bent down until he can feel the sun’s warmth over his features again. He closes the door behind him, grabs the seams in the wall and starts climbing, and he climbs over onto the roof, and from the roof, he jumps back down onto the walkway he started the day on. He’s still shaking when he sees Angela follow after him: she shades her eyes with her hand as she peers up onto the bridge, with her other hand sternly on her hips.
”I think we should talk,” she calls out over the wind blowing from the sea.
Genji holds his breath for a moment, then lets it out. He nods, unsure and uncaring whether Angela can see him do so, and waits for her to take the stairs up. She’s not wearing her gloves anymore, but there’s oil on her summer shirt and her cheek as she sits down beside him. She lowers her legs down from the bridge again, but Genji holds his crossed underneath him, too tense to let them dangle freely.
”So,” she says, her eyes upon the empty launching pad, ”Talk.”
”You said ’we’ should talk, not that ’I’ should talk,” Genji tells her shortly, and she smiles.
”Does it make it easier for you if I begin?” she asks.
Genji shrugs. For a moment, neither of them speaks, but all that time Genji can feel the pressure inside him building up and crawling up his throat, and eventually it comes out, regardless of how he feels about it.
”How am I to look at him? How am I to think, this is my brother, I should wish the best for him, when I carry all these memories with me?”
”I ask these same questions from myself,” Angela tells him in a thoughtful voice, ”How can I provide the best care for this man, when I know what he’s done to my friend? How can I detach myself from the anger and fear I feel at the sight of him, when I have to treat him according to my oath?”
Something in Genji feels soothed by the realisation that he shares these feelings with someone. Yes, Angela was there; while Genji wasn’t, not really, it was Angela who dealt with the mess that Hanzo had left behind - the mess he’d made of Genji. Angela alone would know exactly the extent of damage and just how much of it had been unnecessary, how prolonged Genji’s suffering had been, the way that Genji himself knows it. She, while still in her own body that lacked no part and had in every other way also stayed flawless thanks to her knowledge and skill in medicine, still knew the myriad of ways Genji had had to start from the bottom when he’d finally woken up, most of his body replaced by or encased in metal to keep him alive. Then, against his wishes, he feels another surge of shock and anger - Angela isn’t just an innocent bystander, either. It was her who had shaped him not into a man, fit to live as he pleased, but into a weapon instead. Ignited with renewed rage, Genji jumps up from the bridge and paces it back and forth until he can look at her again. Then, taking a deep breath, he forces out a bitter laughter.
”I seem to harbour many more resentments than I initially thought,” he confesses.
Angela watches him keenly.
”What did your mentor teach you?” she asks him calmly.
”That I accept these feelings,” he huffs, his limbs shaking from adrenaline, ”and allow them to pass, as they are inevitable, as most other things in life.”
His friend nods and turns away. She trusts him. Right now, he wishes he could trust himself, too. Finally, he manages to sit back down.
”I’m still hurt,” he admits in a growl, ”I wish I could let go of my past but now that I am facing it again, it’s no longer that simple.”
”I’m not a monk,” Angela states the obvious, ”but as a doctor, I can tell you that what you’re going through is normal, Genji. It’s always easier to forgive when forgiveness alone doesn’t mean you have to go back to the person who hurt you. In truth, I’ve always admired you for coming as far as you have. You’ve gone well past what many others would have been capable of. Still, I struggle with thinking that he even deserves your forgiveness.”
”You’re supposed to be helping me,” Genji tells her, sounding a little betrayed.
”I’m not going to pretend that I like your brother, Genji. It’d be against my conscience to tell you that you have to forgive him. I don’t trust him, and I think it’d be unwise for you to trust him, either.”
”I do trust him. I suppose that is my biggest downfall - I have always believed in Hanzo.”
Angela lets out a small, sad chuckle.
”Family,” she sighs, crossing her legs.
Genji nods, and once more, a silence falls over them.