Chapter Text
Commander Reyes found Genji in a heap on the floor in the morning, his head lying on the cold cement, eyes unfocused, staring at nothing.
He had opened the door without knocking, an irritated look on his face. “You two are late. What- Genji?” He stopped, looking at Genji’s collapsed form, confused. His eyes flicked to McCree’s empty bed. “Where’s Jesse?” he demanded. Genji closed his eyes and said nothing.
“Where is he?” the commander repeated harshly.
Genji squeezed his eyes shut tighter.
Commander Reyes pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me where he is, Genji,” he asked again, his voice softer this time.
“He left,” Genji said, keeping his eyes closed and his voice level.
“Left?” the commander asked. “You’ve gotta give me-”
“Left Blackwatch.” Genji cut him off.
The commander said nothing for a moment, and the room was silent. Genji tried to focus on the feeling of the cold floor against his face, instead of the hole in his chest he felt his heart had been torn out of.
Commander Reyes broke the silence. “What?” he said, “He left Blackwatch?”
Genji didn’t reply, and didn’t open his eyes. He felt the commander’s eyes on him for a few moments, then heard him turn and leave the room, slamming the door behind him.
Once his footsteps had faded down the hall, Genji turned slowly onto his back and opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. They were sore from crying and from lack of sleep, and he let them fall closed again after a moment.
-
Genji didn’t want to talk to anyone. He sat in Dr. Ziegler’s office for a routine checkup later that day, and stared at his feet dangling over the edge of the bench as she looked him over, refusing to catch her eye.
He could hear the worry in her voice as she tried several times to find words to comfort him. She wasn’t the comforting sort, but looking back at that day now, Genji could appreciate how much she had wanted to.
Back then though, he had ignored her, motionless and silent as she hovered around him, checking and re-checking his vents and such several more times than usual.
“Well,” she had said nervously after she could find no reason to keep him any longer, “you look… ah, your cybernetics look fine. You’ve been requested to report to Captain Amari when we were finished.”
Genji’s brow furrowed. Captain Amari? What could she possibly want with him? Was she going to try to comfort him too? He didn’t want to hear it. Instead of going to her office, he left the building and found a place to sit outside, overlooking the water. He took off his helmet and ran his left hand through his hair.
He let the sea breeze blow across his face, and began to cry again. He felt empty. It was an eerie feeling, emptiness. He hadn’t felt empty in years, not since before his cybernization. Ever since then he had always just felt angry. Angry at his brother, angry at the entire Shimada clan, angry at the physical pain that made his own body a living hell. Angry at the fact that the agony never stopped, never went away, but here he was now, numb. The pain where his cybernetics attached to what was left of his body felt duller somehow. The rage that often consumed him felt far away.
And then it hit him. Sorrow. All the sadness of the night before, without the shock that had paralyzed him then. It crashed into him and knocked the breath out of him. The salty ocean air stung his eyes, and he squeezed them closed against the wind as the tears streamed down his cheeks. He drew his knees up to his chest and pressed his face into them, struggling to draw breath between sobs. He pushed away thoughts of what would happen next, of how things would change, and just let himself cry. Genji was no stranger to pain, but that didn’t make it any less awful. It was as though his heart had been torn out of him, just like his legs and right arm. It felt wrong, wrong, wrong. His heart hurt even more than his body, shredded to pieces.
It felt like hours later that the tears finally stopped. Genji rested his chin on his knees, sniffling, and looked out over the water. The waves had been sparkling in the afternoon sunlight when he had arrived, but now clouds covered the sun, and he could see rain falling on the sea in the distance. As sad as he was, he didn’t want to get rained on. He lurched to his feet, and put his helmet back on. Now what? He could go back to his room, but… most of Jesse’s things were still there. And he didn’t feel like it. Begrudgingly, he headed for Captain Amari’s office.
As he approached her door, he heard voices coming from inside. He leaned against the wall, deciding to wait.
Commander Reyes’s voice pitched suddenly above the others. “That damn INGRATE! I fight for him, give him a chance to amount to something more, and he LEAVES?”
Captain Amari responded, but her voice was too low to make out her words.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Reyes answered her, his voice cracking.
There was a third voice, but Genji couldn’t make out who it was or what they were saying. He hesitated, then turned to walk back down the hallway again. He wasn’t about to wait some indeterminate amount of time to talk to the captain when he didn’t really want to talk to her anyway. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Instead, Genji made his way back to his room. He closed the door behind him, and his eyes fell to Jesse’s bed. The sheets were drawn up but not tucked in, as usual. Mechanically, he walked to Jesse’s wardrobe and opened the door. Most of his clothes were still there. Genji took out a sweatshirt and put it on, pulling it gently over the cables at the back of his neck. He lifted up the front of the collar and inhaled deeply. It didn’t smell like Jesse.
Further inspection revealed Jesse had only left behind clean clothes. As baffling as it was, it was true. Genji felt like crying but choked back his sobs, continuing his search for… something. His movements grew frantic as he went through Jesse’s shirts and sweaters, sniffing them all one by one. None of them smelled like him. Shaking, he rested his forehead against the door of the wardrobe for a moment. He took a deep breath, then padded over to Jesse’s bed, and picked up his pillow to press his face into it. It smelled like Jesse. Genji pulled it into a hug, and took a deep breath, crying with a bewildering mixture of relief and heartbreak.
He crawled into Jesse’s bed and burrowed under the covers. The sheets were cold, but he drew them tightly around himself. As they warmed up, Genji felt himself deflate, numbness overtaking him once again.
-
The next few months passed in a blur. It seemed like the blink of an eye between that day and the day the Swiss base had exploded. Captain Amari and Commander Reyes were dead, just like that. And the remaining members of Overwatch were scattering to all corners of the world, Genji included.
As Genji lay in his bed at the Shambali monastery, looking out at the stars through his window, the day Jesse had left didn’t seem as far away as it sometimes did. He supposed it made sense, now that he was searching in earnest for news about Jesse. Of course those memories would bubble to the surface, stinging like acid even all these years later.
Genji was a different man than he had been back then. At the monastery he had grown, become whole. But some memories still hurt. Angela might think that what he was doing was dredging them up for no reason, and the pain it was causing him was needless. But it wasn’t. He had to know. If there was any chance his and Jesse’s paths would cross again, he… damn it.
Genji had told Zenyatta that he couldn’t bear to hope he would see Jesse again until he knew it was possible. But he had already started hoping for it anyway. He buried his face in his pillow as the realization dawned on him.
If Angela thought he was setting himself up for a world of pain, she wouldn’t be wrong. But he’d come this far. He’d dredged up enough painful memories to make him cry softly into his pillow now, the better part of a decade later. He was going to go through with it. He turned his face to the side to breathe, and wiped his eyes with his left hand. This was what he needed.