Chapter Text
“Ugh, man, my hair is not cooperating today.”
“Want me to take a look?”
“Nah, I’ll figure it out.”
“If you’re sure. I’ll be in the gym if you change your mind.”
“Thanks, Lena, but I think I’m okay.”
Then, minutes later.
“Good morni-- Woah, Lúcio, what happened to you?”
“Don’t ask.”
And so on and so forth.
Zenyatta was starting to realize that the common room was, perhaps, not the best place for his morning meditation. Gibraltar was never cold, but it did get quite rainy in the winter, which left him (alongside Bastion and their other mechanical teammates) confined indoors until it cleared. (He was mostly waterproof, but his insulation was no match for the sheer volume of precipitation the island received.) He had risen first, as he usually did, and the common room had been empty when he’d started his routine. But he probably should’ve left once the rest of the base’s inhabitants began to show.
“Lúcio, seriously, do you need a hand?”
Where he was standing in front of the television, its darkened screen acting as a mirror, Lúcio let his locs fall back down to cover his shoulders and sighed. “Yeah, alright. But are you sure you know what you’re doing? My hair doesn’t work like yours, Brig.”
Brigitte in turn shrugged, rolling up her sleeves like she was about to be arm-deep in one of her usual engineering projects. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”
Zenyatta could already see this going terribly. So instead of sitting by as the disaster unfolded, he made a staticky noise in his throat that was usually interpreted to be him clearing his throat by humans. Lúcio glanced back at him in his reflection when he drifted up to hover behind him. “Why don’t you allow me?”
“Uh, no offense,” Lúcio said, cringing, “but I don’t know if... I mean--”
“My lack of hair does not mean I am unfamiliar with it,” he said, because that was definitely the source of Lúcio’s hesitation. Genji used to make fun of him for being bald. He always took the time to remind his student that most people would assume he, too, was technically bald when he was wearing his helmet. Unlike Zenyatta, where a lack of hair (or similar structures made to mimic it) was the standard for most garden variety omnics. “May I?”
Lúcio stared at him for a few moments. Then closed his eyes and shrugged. “Guess it can’t hurt.”
“Thank you. Do you have a band I may use?”
“Yeah, here,” Lúcio said, handing him the ponytail holder he’d been unsuccessfully trying to wrangle his hair into. “Try not to pull too hard.”
“Of course.” As though he had to be reminded. With familiar ease, Zenyatta swept half of his locs up in one hand, carefully pinching them tight together as he stretched the elastic around his fingers. He pulled the middle section of Lúcio’s hair through the band, then carefully hooked his thumb under it and tugged it through. Another quick gesture finished off the half-bun. He was out of practice, but it wasn’t about to fall apart anytime soon.
Lúcio whistled lowly, examining his reflection in the television again. He poked at the hairstyle, then nodded again when it held firm against his fidgeting. “Damn. Apparently you do know what you’re doing. My bad for doubting you.”
“Apology accepted,” Zenyatta replied. “It was a reasonable assumption to make. Most omnics are not well-versed with the art, unless they frequently spend time amongst humans.”
“Is that why you know how to do it?” Brigitte asked from her spot against the wall.
...Well, it couldn’t hurt to tell them just this one thing, right? He could be vague. Keep the details to a minimum. They couldn’t connect the dots if he didn’t offer them enough dots to connect. Or a pencil to connect them with. He’d barely spoken of his past at all-- a single comment would not bring everything crashing down around him. His worry was unfounded, and he knew it.
That didn’t stop him from worrying, of course. Not when it could end with Ramattra's safety on the line.
“One of my brothers in the Shambali had outfitted himself with something akin to hair. Cabling, of sorts.” Ramattra had given him some justification over the years. An attempt to differentiate himself from the rest of the Ravagers, to appeal to the side of humanity that was supposed to sympathize with things that looked like them. (If those were the only reasons, he would not have put port attachments at the ends of them. But he had never seemed willing to talk about it, so Zenyatta had never pushed him.) “It had a tendency to get in the way when we were sparring, but he always refused to put it up. So eventually I learned how to take care of it myself. Your hair functions in a similar manner.”
The amount of times Ramattra had smacked himself in the face or had his cables get in his optics mid-fight... It was a wonder it never drove him mad. Perhaps it might have, if Zenyatta had not grown tired of watching him do nothing to solve the problem and forced him to sit so he could just pull them up for him.
“What would an omnic want with hair?”
Zenyatta just shrugged. “He already had them when we met, and I never saw it as any of my business to ask. It’s not a rare modification, simply an uncommon one. I have seen others bearing something similar.”
Was giving them details about his appearance too identifying? Would they know instantly who Ramattra was if they ever caught sight of him? Perhaps clarifying that it wasn't all that unique would help. Even if it was a bit of a fib, given Zenyatta had seen few others with a modification like it.
"Well, whatever the reason, I'm definitely glad for it." Lúcio grinned at him. "You should chill with us more often. I know you're really only here for Genji's sake, but I promise we don't bite."
Perhaps it would do Zenyatta some good to interact with his teammates. He had a tendency to keep to himself-- he'd never really been a social butterfly-- but it had escalated to what could almost be called a self-imposed isolation. He'd been considering leaving the room once too many people had arrived earlier. That didn't bode well.
"I will take that under advisement," Zenyatta said simply. Let them interpret that how they would. "That being said, if you'll excuse me, I have yet to finish my morning routine. Good day to the both of you."
He could feel Lúcio and Brigitte watching him as he drifted from the room.
And then, merely a week later, another reminder;
“I just don’t understand what Null Sector is doing.”
The words from beyond the door gave Zenyatta pause. Null Sector was a complicated topic for any omnic, no matter what walk of life they came from. The Shambali had them declared terrorists back during that initial assault on London, and most people agreed they were far too radical to be worth following, but it was difficult for Zenyatta to truly hate people that wanted nothing more than to create a peaceful world for them. No matter how much harm they might have caused.
Then again, he supposed his view was a rather unique one.
Besides, technically he did condemn the group as a whole. It was just... the members of it that he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
...One member.
Okay, fine. He really, really wanted to believe Ramattra had not truly lost himself to his rage.
It was so terribly easy to see his brother in the organization he’d built. It would have been so much simpler to believe that Ramattra had somehow been corrupted by some rogue God AI determined to get its way, that in his core he had never really left them. But in every move Null Sector made, in every fight they started and in every tactic they used, Zenyatta could see familiarity. What had once been a sense of justice powered by righteous sympathy for their people’s suffering had been turned into tyranny, hate, hostility, and intolerance.
Ramattra might have been looking for cooperation, once. He might have truly believed humans and omnics could live in peace. He had believed it when he’d been with Zenyatta, or at least had been very good at pretending he did. But he’d never been willing to listen to Mondatta’s insistence that they be the ones to try for peace. That the task was to be laid on their shoulders.
The humans were the ones who refused to live in peace with them. Why should the burden to convince them be on the omnics shoulders?
It was an unfortunately reasonable belief. One Zenyatta might have agreed with in another life.
(He has to wonder, what would have happened if he’d left with Ramattra? If he’d gone after him upon learning he’d departed from the monastery? Would he have been able to keep him from turning to complete destruction when all else failed? Could he have stopped the uprising before it even started? Would he have been enough to prevent Null Sector from ever coming to form?
Or was his Ramattra’s descent into cruelty always an inevitability?
It wasn’t good to wonder about impossibilities, and he knew it. But part of him wished he might one day catch a glimpse into the world where he did follow Ramattra to the ends of the Earth.
He could never be in the right place at the right time, could he? Not when it mattered. He didn't leave with Ramattra, and he didn't stay with Mondatta, and it had ended terribly for both of them.)
“Paris, then New York, then London, and then all the way over in Los Angeles-- Aside from being populated cities, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. They just march in, scare some people, cause some property damage, then turn around and leave. They aren’t making any headway, and casualties aren’t even that high.”
The doors opened with a hiss as Zenyatta moved close enough for the motion sensors to catch sight of him. His entrance, however, was silent, and the chattering group paid him no mind as he drifted up to peer at the map laid out on the table.
Little purple markers were scattered on the map, and given the context Zenyatta could assume they were denoting all the known Null Sector attacks.
Major cities across the globe. High population density, expensive to fix. Noticeable. Defensible. Not exactly good targets for an organization attempting to take ground, but good targets for an organization that wished to do as much damage as possible. Or, perhaps, to garner enough attention as possible.
“It is a diversion,” Zenyatta murmured, more to himself than anything, but the table fell silent at his words. He could sense several pairs of eyes on him without having to look up. With a static-laden exhale, he continued; “they are attempting to strike our ire by launching head-on attacks in notable places in the hopes that we will direct our attention there and ignore everything else. Meanwhile, I suspect there is a more covert operation occurring just out of our view. Have you considered looking into any still-intact omniums?”
“We haven’t,” Lena replied, eyes going wide behind her goggles. “They’re attacking the big cities so we don’t notice them going after smaller targets. Mei, can you try and find records of all the omniums that weren’t dismantled?”
An urge to speak crossed his processor, and he canceled the alert before it could be put into action. Ramattra had told him of Anubis’s omnium in confidence. Had whispered it to him in the dead of night with the knowledge that Zenyatta would never, ever use the information against him. And he would not betray that now.
“Hold on,” Vivian said, raising a hand and giving Zenyatta a critical glare. “How do you know all this for certain?”
Again, he cut his words before they could reach his voice box, and instead shifted his direction. “I’m afraid I have no proof of my words. I must simply ask you to trust that I know what I am speaking of.”
Lena and Vivian glanced at each other. Doubt plagued their expressions.
“It’s... it’s not that we don’t trust you, Tekhartha Zenyatta, it’s just...” Lena sighed, leaning heavily on the table. “We can’t risk marching in there if we don’t know for certain that’s where they’ll be. I’m sorry. We don’t have the resources to take that kind of chance. I can ask Winston or Brigitte if we can maybe look into remote surveillance, but...”
“Of course.” It was probably for the best, anyway. Whether they turned out to be right or wrong, the danger was too great. For them and for his errant brother. He doubted Ramattra would be kind in his retaliation. “It’s possible I was mistaken. War is not my forte. You have my apologies for intruding.”
And he left the same way he’d come. He could feel Genji’s visor tracking him long after the doors slid shut behind him.
His student found him later that night, sitting a little too close to the edge of the cliffs bordering the Gibraltar base. He was trying adamantly to meditate, but discordant thoughts kept him from truly finding his center. The wobbling orbit of his energy was indication enough, only made worse by their sickly violet shade.
“Master,” Genji said, voice soft, clearly trying not to interrupt whatever inner peace Zenyatta might have realized. Unnecessary, given that the total amount of inner peace going on was absolutely zilch with how much his mind was settled comfortably into thundering turmoil. “Is everything alright? You rarely apologize for intruding-- Normally you take pride in sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. What was different about today?”
“I don’t have a nose,” he replied without looking away from the distant ocean. Genji snorted, dropping into a cross-legged pose beside him with ease. The boundary of his orbs rotation extended to allow his student in. “But, to answer your question, I suppose it is something of a personal matter.”
Far more vague than he tended to be in regards to his feelings, and Genji knew it.
A younger Genji might have pushed him for more information, tried to get him to talk, but this far more mature example of his student knew well and good that pressing for details was the fastest way to get Zenyatta to shut his metaphorical mouth. Instead he simply stayed silent, waiting patiently, and after nearly a full minute the pressure building in his chest and in his voice box found its way free.
“I am certain I was right about what Null Sector is planning,” he said in a rush. “It is a tactic I am more than familiar with.”
“How do you know?”
He trusted Genji. He really did. He’d spent long enough at his student’s side to be certain that if Zenyatta told him something confidential, he would take that secret to his grave. Not that Zenyatta had a tendency to share his secrets willingly (he was still proud of the fact that no one had yet to figure out what he’d actually been built for before the crisis, nor had they managed to figure out that he wasn’t actually built for anything at all), but the few that he had entrusted to Genji had yet to be spilled.
But this. This was so much bigger than them. Null Sector was a terrorist organization, plain and simple. People were getting hurt. They could get killed.
But then, Ramattra could get killed.
He was built to lead. He was built for war. But he was still fallible.
As Zenyatta knew quite well.
He owed Genji an answer, though. And not a half-assed, vague, deflection of an answer that he usually gave whenever his student got a little too close to the topic of his errant friend-- a real one. Stringing him along with vague implications and distracting segues would be doing him a disservice after he’d been nothing but understanding.
“Genji, before I continue, I need to make something clear. What I am going to say cannot reach the ears of our superiors.” His tone was grave. Tightly wound. “It’s important that you understand-- I am telling you this in confidence, as your teacher and not as your colleague, and trusting that it will not leave this conversation. If I find out that it has, there is a very good chance that I will take my leave without a moment’s hesitation.”
He hated to be so dour about it all, but he needed Genji to take this seriously.
It proved effective when Genji sat up a little straighter, visor brightening the slightest bit as he realized the gravity of the situation. “I understand, Master.”
No reason to delay any longer, then.
“I know the tactic Null Sector is using because I have had it used against me many times in the past,” Zenyatta admitted. “Their leader is quite fond of it. He favors logical precision over brute strength, and many of his preferred strategies involve turning his opponent’s own strength against them, or hiding his true intentions. Inflammatory comments, petty insults, attacks which seem dangerous but do minimal damage in reality, anything to make his opponent focus on what he wants them to focus on. Anything to distract them with their own anger and make them sloppy. Make them pay attention to the wrong thing. All to give him an opening to strike.”
“Like blowing up a building to hide the fact that you’re assassinating a president,” Genji said darkly, quietly.
“Perhaps a more heavy-handed metaphor than I might have used, but yes. Obfuscation tactics.” You must learn to block, brother! Come now, Zenyatta, I know you can do better than that. Is that all you’ve got? Hit me! “Before I learned to keep my composure in a fight, it was quite effective against me.”
Genji was quiet for a few moments. Then; “I don’t understand, Master. When did you fight the leader of Null Sector?”
Disbelief. Suspicion. Confusion. Because why would Zenyatta, nearly the picture of a peaceful monk, know anything about fighting the head of a terrorist organization? What would he know about conflict?
More than most thought.
He finally looked away from the water to make eye contact-- or what amounted to it, between the two of them-- with Genji. “Back when we were both living under the Shambali. When he was my brother.”
Dead silence. The vents on Genji’s shoulders hissed as they released a puff of hot air.
“He still is,” Zenyatta continued quietly. “That has not changed. Even if neither of us are a part of the Shambali anymore, even if he has done terrible things, I will not abandon the bond we had.”
“Master--”
“Did you know he nearly got me killed when we first met? We were at a protest, I had been caught up in a particularly rowdy bunch, and it turned out he was one of the people riling up the crowds. I never let him hear the end of it, no matter how much he apologized. But he always knew I was never truly mad at him.”
“Master--”
“I am not ashamed of him,” he continued, barreling through his student’s attempts to interrupt him. It was uncharacteristic of him to be so forceful with his speech. Then again, Ramattra (or the topic of him) always had a way of drawing out his... well, for lack of a better term, human side. The part of him that never cared much for the Shambali’s teachings, the part that wanted to be selfish and bitter and put an individual over the rest of the world. It was so easy to forget when it had been years since he’d even put a voice to the name. “I am ashamed of what he has done, if only because I know that he can be better than this. I simply wish the rest of the world had given him the kindness to allow it.”
“Master!” Genji put a hand on his arm. He fell silent. “I understand. Trust me. If there is one thing I can empathize with, it’s a complicated relationship with your brother.”
Right. Right. Because this was Genji, his student, and not Mondatta. Cold, furious Mondatta, who had condemned Null Sector without a second thought, as though Ramattra had not been one of their own. As though he hadn’t been Zenaytta’s better in just about every way. He loved Mondatta (and missed him, missed him like a garden would miss rain), but he could not deny that his late brother had always had a proud streak. It went part in parcel with his dedication to his work. And to have his ideology so easily dismissed... He hadn’t taken it well.
(Did Zenyatta need to clarify that his and Ramattra's relationship was decidedly not like that of Genji and Hanzo's? Ehh... Perhaps not. If only because his student probably didn't want to hear about that from his teacher.)
Genji moved his hand to thread their fingers together. “What is his name?”
There was no judgment in his student’s tone. He gave a heavy exhale. A mechanical sigh. And then-- “Ramattra,” he said, as easily as a human might breathe . “His name is Ramattra.”
The hand around his squeezed tight for a brief moment. “I hope one day I am able to meet him as you know him.”
Zenyatta bowed his head. “As do I.” He hoped Genji would one day be able to meet Ramattra as he truly was. Not this creature of war, poisoned by years of hatred and suffering. He had always been bitter about their circumstances. Had always quarreled with Mondatta about his leniency. Had always considered violence an acceptable solution. But Null Sector wasn’t him. It was what the world had made of him. What he had been forced to become by his circumstances.
Ramattra was firm, but never cruel. He was determined, but not ruthless. He was abrasive, but not a warmonger.
He was kind. He sought justice. He wanted his people to have a better life.
How could Zenyatta hate him for that?
“I won’t tell the others,” Genji murmured. “I know why you didn’t. You believed they wouldn’t get it. That they would pry, try to get you to tell them everything you know to gain the upper hand. And Master-- I am not going to tell them, but I think you should. I think they would be more understanding than you believe.”
“Perhaps.”
“No, seriously. Trust me when I tell you that I trust them. Master, these are not the same people I knew when I was a member of Blackwatch. As I have changed, so have they. Time has given them a sense of maturity and compassion that they lacked before.”
“I will take that under advisement,” he said, genuinely. He wouldn’t be telling them everything, because frankly it was none of their business, but... perhaps his insight would not go amiss.
If he ever wanted to see Ramattra again, it was likely he would need their help, anyway.
“Thank you for listening.”
“Of course. You’ve been here for me long enough-- allow me to be here for you when you need it.” He let go of Zenyatta’s hand, and Zenyatta drew his palms together again. Sometime over the course of their conversation, his chaotic thoughts had eased, and his energy now glowed its usual harmonious gold. “Would you prefer I leave you to meditate alone?”
“...Yes, I believe so,” he said. “But thank you, Genji. Please, get some rest. It’s late.”
“Only if you do too. You’re such a mother hen,” his student replied, a grin in his voice as he pushed himself to his feet and turned on a dime to leave. “Good luck, Master. May your reflection provide you the insight you need.”
As Genji’s soft footfalls went quiet, Zenyatta drew in a breath he didn’t need. On the exhale, he imagined all his cacophonous thoughts leaving with it.
His mind was clear. He was at peace.
Wherever Ramattra was, he hoped he could say the same.