Chapter Text
When he was a child, Hanzo’s father used to tell him stories.
His earliest memories consisted of sitting at his father’s feet, listening to stories about kitsune and kami. His mother sitting nearby, belly swollen with what would become Genji. Sojiro Shimada told his eldest son many stories in those days, in order to teach and to pass on traditions. He told stories that explained why elders must be obeyed and stories about why one mustn’t stay in the woods too late at night.
But Hanzo’s favorites were about the Dragons. Because those ones were true.
Hanzo had been born with the twin blue dragons wrapping around his arm. He knew the spirits that dwelled there on a personal level, as every Shimada heir had for thousands of years. Whenever his father began to speak of dragons, or mentioned the dragons of their ancestors, Hanzo could feel his own pair sliding beneath his skin. Hanzo would touch his fingers to the flushed skin and relish the feeling of scales moving just below his outer layer of skin.
However, there was one story in particular he would beg to hear over and over again, first clinging to his mother’s arm and then, later, to Genji’s small shoulders. The younger brother never had the same fascination with the story that Hanzo did. Genji would fidget or beg for a story with more action, as he grew old enough to talk. But Hanzo would listen every time with rapt attention, like it was the first time he’d ever heard the story of how his parents had met.
“I saw your mother across the room at a very important dinner,” Sojiro would tell his sons. “Her back was turned and all I could see was her hair, tied high on her head and her pale pink dress, the exact color of Hanamura cherry blossoms.”
At this point, Genji would inevitably start picking his nose, only to be stopped by their mother’s gentle hand. Their mother had her tattoo by then, a gray dragon curving up her spine to match her husband’s. But Mother’s dragon was different. Her dragon never came out to play.
“Slowly, I made my way through the crowd of people to get to her,” Sojiro would continue and Hanzo would imagine his father, younger and eyes full of wonder, pushing past important business contacts to meet the young woman who had captured his attention. In his mind’s eye, people parted in front of the young man, as if they couldn’t possibly stand in the way of his determination.
“I tapped her on the shoulder,” Sojiro would say, mimicking the action on his wife’s shoulder with a smile, “And she turned around to face me and in that moment, my dragon roared.”
Hanzo would wiggle happily on the floor and Genji would flop dramatically backwards in an elaborate show of boredom.
“Every dragon knows that there is one person on the planet perfectly suited for their master, a perfect complement of his or her soul. When the time comes, my sons, you will meet the women who complete your souls and your dragons will show you who they are.”
Hanzo spent long nights thinking about his future wife, his soulmate -- the person that would be his. Late at night, Hanzo would whisper to his dragons about it, ask them if they knew who his soulmate would be. But they would never whisper answers into his head. Instead they would curl around each other on the bed and inevitably forget how long they’d grown and end up tied in some sort of ridiculous knot.
Hanzo was fifteen when he realized it wouldn’t matter, because whenever his dragons roared, it would be at a man. And a man would not be able to secure the next generation of the Shimada clan. For the sake of the clan, he would never be permitted to be with his soulmate.
Hanzo wasn’t sure when his father realized his eldest son’s tendencies but when the arranged marriage to the daughter of a rival clan was suggested, Hanzo agreed immediately. She was pretty in a traditional sort of way. She had long, straight black hair and her own spirit guardian, a red and brown fox curled around her collarbone. He wondered if her fox detested him as much as his dragons loathed her.
He probably would have married her, if Sojiro hadn’t died that year.
As the new head of the clan, Hanzo put aside all thoughts of marriage and dragons. Instead, he funneled all his energy into keeping the clan strong and together. He managed it, just barely, despite his brother’s frenetic energy threatening to tear it all down around their ears.
In the end, it probably should have taken the clan elders longer to convince Hanzo to kill his brother. He was just so tired of cleaning up Genji’s messes. It wasn’t until Hanzo was washing the blood off of his blade that his hands started to shake and the reality of what he had done hit him.
So he tore it all down.
It was too late, it should have been him and Genji side by side, ruling the Shimada clan and searching the world for their other halves. Instead Hanzo finished what his brother had started and brought down the only world he’d ever known.
His dragons only tasted blood now. There was no time to consider anything else.
Not until a cyborg held a sword to his throat and he felt the dragons still beneath his skin for the first time in years. The world balanced on a knifepoint for long moments while waiting for Genji’s ghost to move the blade forward through his neck. It was a more merciful death than he deserved.
But the final blow never came. Instead, an invitation—an opportunity. A chance for redemption.
Hanzo tied up every loose end he could find and three weeks after the invitation was presented, he arrived at the dusty remains of Watchpoint: Gibraltar. The archer stepped off the transport into the dry heat of the late afternoon. As he gathered up his bag and bow case, the overexcited pilot zipped past him in a blur of blue light, followed quickly by the armored woman he had shared the last few hours with in silence.
Hanzo squinted against the too-bright light, scanning the area until his eyes settled on the lone figure left on the tarmac. A broad-brimmed hat, shaded the figure’s eyes from the sun and his thumbs stuck through his belt loops, framing a gaudy belt buckle that obnoxiously reflected the light.
“Hello there,” the man greeted, flashing a broad grin that showed off too many teeth stained by years of tobacco use. “Welcome to Overwatch, partner.”
Hanzo was utterly unprepared when his Dragons roared.