Chapter Text
Sleep eluded him.
He laid awake for over an hour now, staring at the back of his eyelids and the ceiling when all else failed, trying desperately to clear his mind of the day. He did not wish to think of his studies or the appointments he would have to attend in just a handful of hours with his father. All of that could wait until morning.
At the moment, all Hanzo craved was sleep and rest, and yet it would be another hour or so before he finally drifted off.
His dreams were void of color and hardly filled with anything worth noting. Most were just flashes of school, the view from his father’s office window while it rained, the finely sculpted sand in the garden on their property, and other scenery he had encountered in the last few weeks. All of it mixed together in a short monochrome student film that he would have given two out of five stars. Boring, repetitive, and stress inducing if he allowed himself to dwell too long in the dreams of school and business grooming.
It was only the momentary glimpses of his mother and occasional memories of when him and his brother were younger that flickers of color came to him. These dreams he dared to linger in, clinging to his mother’s blue and yellow robes while she hummed a tune he had long since forgotten. Memories of him and his brother, who’s hair was a vibrant green and spiky, blatantly disobeyed their father by skipping out of training, even if it meant their punishment would be heavy words and disappointed glances.
Those dreams too faded in the short amount of time allotted to them, moving on to more that were either brief or happened so fast Hanzo could only make out static as if the channel had been changed.
The scene before him shifted once more, the backdrop unfamiliar and out of place with a bright blue sky and terracotta mountains lining his vision in full technicolor.
It was a desert and the heat of it came washing over him. Instantly craving a glass of water, Hanzo reached for the hair tie on his wrist to get the long black strands off his neck and back before they could attract more sunlight. Fanning himself, Hanzo tried to figure out what direction he was facing, hand up to catch the glare of the sun which seemed to be right over him with hardly a shadow under him.
Momentarily blinded by the sun he did not notice the tumbleweed rolling by or the figure that hadn’t been there seconds before.
“Draw!” called a voice quickly followed by the firing of a gun.
Hanzo shot up in bed, panting and heart racing with hair matted to his forehead and neck. Instinctively he slapped the alarm clock next to him to silence it, but it had not gone off yet. He still had a little while before the alarm, and yet there he sat awake and trying to come down from a dream that made no sense.
As quickly as the desert flashed in his mind, it faded and he threw off the blankets to ready himself for the day of travel with his father.