Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jesse hopes this is the right place.

Well. He knows it’s the right forest, anyway. His contact had been adamant that this was where he’d find the beast.

The monster of Hanamura.

Quite a title. He had others, too, and they weren’t all condemning. Some thought the creature was simply a wild wolf that kept foolish men out of the forest. Some thought he was a spirit, there to guard the memories of those who had died too soon.

Most, however, called him an oni. A demon.

To step into the forest is to meet your death, the owner of his motel had told him, her eyes haunted, her hands ragged as she cupped one of his own between them. It is the spirit of a lord who lived here years ago. He is angry that his sons died and their bodies were never found. Do not go out there, or you will surely be consumed.

Jesse had almost considered it; the lycan wasn’t killing anyone in the town, just anyone that wandered into the woods like a fool.

But then he remembers the gold he’s getting, and the frantic scrawling of the letter he’d received.

Capture him. Alive. I will pay double your usual rate.

And now was the night of the full moon, when the beast was said to appear. The cursed night.

Werewolves weren’t as common over here in Japan. The ones that did pop up were born, not made, most of the time. Somethin’ in the blood, Jesse guessed.

He looks up at the moon now. The silver glow it casts over the ground is bright and full; Jesse barely needs the torch he’s carrying, but he keeps it with him, just in case. Always helped in picking out the flash of animal eyes.

Or not-quite-animal eyes.

Jesse sighs and starts further into the forest.

He’s been walking for a good while already. An hour, maybe two. He’s sure the lycan has scented him by now. He’s not being too careful yet, though; all evidence says that the beast is probably on his way to Jesse, anyway. All Jesse needs to do is be prepared.

And he is.

The crossbow is a steady weight on his back, comfortable and reliable. If he’s lucky, this is all he’ll need to incapacitate the monster. A few arrows in a few weak points and a well-placed net-shot was sometimes enough to bring his prey down, but he wouldn’t be alive today if that’s all he had to count on.

His pistol is loaded, clinking quietly against his side. Peacekeeper was a name she’d earned through enough battles to make a man’s knees knock. Sometimes the peace she brought was the kind of quiet at a funeral, but the things that bumped in the night quailed at the sound of her echoing demand for silence. She was lovingly polished, carefully crafted, and, at the moment, loaded with bullets dipped in silver. A beauty in every right.

McCree taps his fingers against her as he walks, more a nervous habit than anything. The weapon wouldn’t kill the lycan, just damage it enough to hopefully force it down so he could capture it.

And, of course, the silver crucifix around his neck, though McCree isn’t sure if it’s even potent enough to do anything of real use besides give him some comfort.

There is no path in these woods. Everywhere he looks, there are yawning black trees, their arms reaching up into the sky as if surrendering. He wonders if they’re warning him to stand down, to turn around and leave. Give up.

Jesse’s never been a coward, but the mystery surrounding this creature is definitely enough to keep him on his toes.

There is nothing for a long time. Jesse sees a couple of animals that he startles into running off into the woods, a few birds that peer down at him with glassy eyes and wretched sounding caw’s. Nothing here is welcoming. McCree feels almost like he’s walked into a place no man has ever been, the labyrinth of a nature god. But the ground doesn’t feel holy; more like cursed.

He pauses to examine a felled tree, noting the way the trunk seems messily destroyed rather than cut into. Claw marks, here, and here, further up.

McCree runs his fingers along the indentions, frowning when his thumb finds a place to slot into as well.

Probably a versatile walker specimen, then. Two legs when it needed to, four legs most of the time. There were different kinds of lycans; most went full wolf, some only changed mentally. But Jesse’d guess by the remaining five-digit hand and severe claw marks that this beast is something in-between. A rarity.

More wolf than man, though, he’d guess, considering the strength this would have taken. Jesse wonders what happened here, to piss off the monster so much. The scars look old; months, maybe years have passed.

How long has this thing been around?

Civilians said it’d been killing people for upwards of five years, but some ventured to say as many as ten. His contact had been strangely nondescript on the matter.

Jesse stands back up. If he looks up and squints through the darkness, he can see it at the top of the hill. The lair the beast calls home.

Shimada Castle.

No wonder the rumors about it being Lord Shimada’s spirit percolated, really. Apparently his kids had died out here in these woods. Two sons. He’d died long before they had, but the story was a good one to tell, so it got told. A vengeful father.

McCree thinks otherwise.

Some chump got chomped and had a grudge against the Shimada family; apparently, the Shimadas weren’t exactly the most innocent people themselves, but no matter. They’d decided, with their newfound powers, to take out the two youngest family members, and then picked off every remaining member of the family they could find. According to rumor, over three-quarters of the old clan was dead, and it was at this spirit’s teeth.

Now they’re just hiding out up here, living in the house of the family they’d destroyed when they weren’t transformed and killing anything that got too close in the meantime. McCree guesses they’re an adept hunter even when they’re not in their lupine form. It wasn’t mentioned often, but one or two people said the spirit also took the form of an archer, and that some of the dead had been found with arrow wounds piercing their bodies. Always clean and efficient, in these cases; one to the heart, one to the head. Ironic, but humane enough.

Jesse doesn’t know what to make of the person. Was it just someone who wanted revenge on a family of criminals, and now killed to keep people away from them? Or was it a mindless killer, slaughtering anything that stepped onto what it considered its territory?

There’s no way to know, and McCree kind of doubts he’s gonna get a straight answer out of the beast when he finds it.

Especially not tonight.

He’s moving with purpose now, marching towards the top of the hill. Whatever lives in these woods, he’s almost certain the monster won’t let him close to the castle without attacking. He’s counting on it.

Jesse walks another three steps before he sees it.

A flicker, further up the hill, almost imperceptible in the silvery lighting of the night. A shift, barely noticeable, but a shift forward. Towards him, not running away.

He pauses, and carefully pulls the crossbow from his back with one hand, his lit torch held aloft in the other.

“That you, spirit?” he calls, knowing that his voice would probably scare away any non-sentient animal. He waits, and listens. “Oni?”

There’s no sound of footsteps retreating.

Still, it might be a fox, or a deer, hoping that by not moving McCree wouldn’t see it.

He moves forward again, slower, now, his crossbow ready and poised to aim quickly. “My Japanese isn’t the best,” he continues, more quietly, but knowing that the beast will hear him if it’s listening. “So you’ll have to pardon me my manners.”

Still, nothing. The hunter wonders if he’s talking to no one.

“Koroshi...” he squints, trying to think of the phrase he’d memorized before even thinking about stepping into these woods. “... tsumori wanai.”

Not a phrase he’d had to say often; his Japanese was mostly basic stuff, so he knew how to get from place to place when he worked over here. Didn’t do a lot of talk about killing people. That usually didn’t require talk, anyway.

“I’m not here to kill you,” he says, just on principle, in case he’d butchered the Japanese and the monster could understand English. “But I’m gonna need you to come with—”

The hair on his neck stands up, and he swings around just in time to see not just a flicker of movement; now he sees mostly a blur.

The flash of reflective eyes lit up by the fire of his torch.

Not-quite-animal.

He swings his crossbow up on instinct, but before he can aim, the beast smacks him to one side with a massive paw. He loses his grip on his flame as the arrow fires, but a short growl is the only sign the lupine makes that it felt anything before McCree hits the ground.

He skids along the leaves and comes to a slow stop at the foot of a tree, shaking his head to clear his vision and get a good look at his assailant before it can make another attack.

The world slows as he takes the monster in.

Somewhere between seven and eight feet tall before him, looming on its hind legs, is perhaps the biggest werewolf he’s ever seen.

The beast is massive. White fur is sleek as snow over its entire body, only interrupted by a myriad of scars, and a strange pattern on the wolf’s left forearm. The fur on the pattern is gone, replaced by what can only be described as strange, golden swirls, like ink on the wolf’s skin. The same gold is reflected in the creature’s eyes, glossy and supernaturally bright in the wake of the moon. The fur around its jaw and mane are longer than the rest. At the last second, McCree sees a slight smear of red on the animal’s back left leg.

Jesse guesses it’s a male by the overall size and musculature of the beast, though as the wolf stoops to all fours he can’t be sure.

He aims his crossbow again. “I suppose you aren’t much for listening. Dios ten piedad.”

Like a flash, the wolf is running at him again, but this time McCree can line up his shot, and the arrow connects now, with the beast’s arm.

The wolf doesn’t stop coming, barely falters in its step, but that falter is enough to let McCree roll out of the way before it can slam down on top of him.

It snarls, twists around to follow after him, but Jesse wouldn’t be a monster hunter if he didn’t have the reflexes to be one. He jerks to the side as a paw comes down on the ground beside his head, only managing to smack his crossbow from his hand and away into the forest, and before the beast can snap its jaws around McCree’s throat he is quickly, quickly lifting his gun, firing.

The noise startles the wolf but the first bullet doesn’t connect, zooming through a tree branch above them.

It takes two steps back, still on all fours, and the skin around its mouth ripples with the sound it makes; not quite a roar, but more than a growl. Almost like a speaking voice, if the creature had the proper vocal chords.

“Felt that, did you?” McCree hisses, quickly scrambling to his feet with the gun held out in front of him. “You know I’m no hopeless wanderer in the forest now, lycan?”

The wolf looks across at him, the heft of its shoulders working in a strangely felidae motion as it bends its head low, ready to attack again, but waiting. Watching him.

“This gun is filled with silver bullets. Three in your chest will put you down like a dog. One in your head will.” He clicks back of the barrel of Peacekeeper and tilts his head, panting slightly. “I’ve been told not to kill you, but I’ll get my pay either way.”

A lie, most likely. His contact had been adamant about the beast living. But he can tell, by the curled lip of the animal, that it believes him.

“Now… I can see you’re coherent enough to hear me, still… you have more control than most of your kind.” He takes a step closer. The wolf is strangely still, eyes still locked on McCree, teeth still bared. “It’ll be easier to take a walking body back than to drag a corpse. Make this easy for me.”

The wolf watches, silent, and Jesse can almost see the gears turning in its head.

McCree doesn’t have much time. The moon is still rising; even the calmest of lycans start to lose their heads when it reaches its peak.

“Nice and easy,” he says, “we can help you.”

There is a strange, split-second flicker in the wolf’s eyes when he says that, and just as he begins to lower the gun, the monster springs into motion.

He full on slams into McCree.

Jesse was prepared for that, but it’s still a massive blow when he’s not just attacked, but tackled. It feels like getting hit by a horse at full-speed, and they both go tumbling to the ground.

McCree is quick to snap his mechanical arm over the wolf’s throat just as the wolf slams one of its paws down over the hand that’s holding McCree’s gun, pinning it to the forest floor.

The lupine lunges for his face, teeth flashing and spittle dripping down on Jesse as the hunter holds him back by the neck. The sound of its fangs gnashing and hot breath on his cheeks would be enough to make lesser men soil themselves, a loud and throaty cacophony that spoke wonders about how often this thing had felt death between its jaws.

He thinks, quickly. I’ve still got my legs. His mind whirrs as the lycan bellows directly at him, its own feet scrambling as it fights against what is no doubt a surprising amount of strength in Jesse’s arm.

White teeth, snap, snap, snap, glowing fluorescent in the silver light of the moon, closer, closer to his face, closer to his throat, kill, kill, kill.

“Tried to do this the easy way,” he grits out, and, remembering the wound on the wolf’s leg, kicks out his foot towards hopefully where it is.

The shot, finally, connects.

The werewolf’s roars spike into a sharp cry of pain as it hesitates, just for a second, to readjust its footing, regain its balance.

McCree rears back his mechanical arm, wraps his crucifix around his hand, and punches the wolf in the face, thrusting upwards with his hips to buck the beast off of him.

With a stunned snarl, probably not expecting the sting of silver, the wolf sidesteps off of him, and Jesse rolls from under the half-man. Before climbing to his feet, he lands on his back and kicks out with both legs, squarely hitting his attacker in the ribs with the heels of his boots.

The wolf doesn’t take much damage, but it’s enough of a shock that Jesse can aim his gun and fire.

Thoomp, in goes the bullet, a direct hit to the meat of its bicep, and the werewolf immediately bellows in pain, twisting in on itself to scrabble on the dirt. The silver will be burning, eating away at the wolf side of the lycan while simultaneously being healed by that same side. It’s unnatural, it hurts, it’s blindingly painful, but it’s still not enough to kill a werewolf on its own, not when it doesn’t hit a major organ.

The wolf rounds on McCree with a snarl, and Jesse feels fire lighting up under his skin.

“I can do this the hard way too,” he rumbles, and levels his gun again.

Fast as a whip, the wolf leaps towards him, and Jesse barely has the mind to duck to the side to avoid another paw swipe. His enemy gurgles a growl as he whips past, only to try to backhand McCree’s head instead. The hunter dodges that, too, and turns to slash at the beast with the knife kept strapped to his forearm. The wolf shifts just in time.

Back. Forth. Back. Forth. The wolf attacks and Jesse dodges, and vice versa, both only grazing fingertips on each other as they do the world’s least enticing dance around each other. Jesse doesn’t want to waste bullets; his partner doesn’t want to expose his vulnerable back.

For a moment, there is something like strained humor in the air between them. Neither can land a blow. They meet eyes; Jesse smirks, brandishes his knife. The wolf huffs a breath in something like acknowledgement and then takes advantage of the moment by slashing at Jesse’s face with a teeth-chattering strike.

Ouch. Admittedly, that hurt, and Jesse reels a little, taking two steps back. He can feel blood trickle down his head somewhere, but ignores it in favor of ducking down and sweeping the legs out from under the werewolf. The creature lets out a surprised noise but doesn’t tumble nearly as clumsily as he maybe should’ve, gracefully regaining his footing using his front legs and kicking out at McCree with his back ones.

And round and round they go.

It’s getting to the point where Jesse feels his muscles burning, sweat dripping down the small of his back and soaking the base of his knotted hair. The lycan looks little better, an arrow protruding from his arm and panting every time there’s a hair’s breadth of time between them trading blows.

If he wasn’t trying to be a better person, he’d almost say he was enjoying fighting someone that seemed evenly matched.

It would make the victory all the sweeter.

He has no idea how long has passed when he finally lands a blow with his knife that has the wolf stumbling backwards, and a well-placed kick on its injured leg lands it on the ground.

Surprisingly quick, and before Jesse can jump on it, the wolf lifts itself back up, giving an audible wince as it pushes off its front legs onto its back. The moon glows through an overhead cloud to cast the beast in faint shadow. Jesse is reminded of the animal’s size as it raises to its full height, its chest expanding to reveal that the golden markings up its arm extend down to its left pectoral, as well.

The hunter stares, curiosity an unbidden flame in his belly. They don’t look any other markings he’s seen on monsters. He remembers, faintly, something about tattoos that was important to this story, but it won’t come to him.

“What in the hell are you?” he mutters.

The wolf stares back, breathing heavily, bleeding from its arm, from the knife wounds and the arrow in its shoulder. It’s not just gold in its fur now, but the brown of the dirt smeared in streaks, and the red of blood both his own and Jesse’s. It bares its teeth, tongue slicking out over the sharp fangs, and something in its eyes is contemptuous and angry.

His eyes, McCree quickly confirms.

The wolf stares at him for a few moments more, angry pain written in his face, before lifting his hand, slowly. He points, with a long claw, back in the direction Jesse had come from.

Leave.

Jesse is surprised to even be given the choice, but despite the weird respect of the gesture, he can’t accept.

“I’m afraid not. You’re what’s been killing everything that comes up here. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that,” he says, still a bit out of breath, and not lowering his guard. “Normally, I’d just kill you straight out. The people in the town below would be happy to see the end of you.”

The wolf flashes his teeth in a growl.

“After everyone you’ve killed,” Jesse continues, neatly aiming the barrel of Peacekeeper at the wolf’s injured leg, “innocent people. An entire family. You must really like the castle to slaughter anyone that tried to keep you two apart.”

Now the growl sharpens into a snarl, and the wolf’s claws flex on either side of him.

Jesse guesses now that he understands English.

“People are saying you’re the Lord of the Shimadas. Sojiro,” he remembers, “come to avenge the death of his sons. But you killed them too, didn’t you?” Jesse takes a step closer, glaring up at the wolf. “You killed all of them. And all it’s made you is a monster. I just don’t understand why—”

The wolf’s eyes widen, flashing so bright it’s almost orange, and then the clouds above them part.

The moon is at its highest peak, and the beast is suddenly lit up in brilliant blue-white.

He’s like some rare thing, some priceless treasure, all gold and silver and power. The marking on the lupine’s arm and chest suddenly begins to glow, and Jesse quickly reaffirms his aim, preparing for—

Whatever he prepared for, it wasn’t this.

The wolf drops down onto all fours and throws his head back, and when he howls, it’s like the world explodes.

A shockwave of gold bursts from the demon, and throws McCree off his feet, knocking him back into a tree and throwing the wind out of him. He ricochets onto the ground, bouncing once before rolling onto his stomach and covering his head with his hands, smushing his hat down flat. He peers up through the violent blast of air the wolf is emitting, and sees his eyes glowing completely golden, pupils vanished into white slits, all the hair on his body stood on end.

He looks massive, bigger than anything Jesse can comprehend.

The wolf looks over at him, swirling yellow eyes like a vortex.

Jesse can see that he’s shaking, his mouth open. The wind swirling around them stutters and the wolf takes a step forward, two, and then falters, snarling at Jesse, lips curled back and teeth bared. Whatever he just did, whatever damage it did to Jesse, it’s eating the wolf, too.

Any humor between them is gone. Jesse has said something wrong, combined with the moon-craze—

It’s time to end this dance.

He lifts his gun.

BANG.

The lycan lows, stumbling another step as the bullet lodges itself in the meat of his shoulder, but then he’s moving. He’s coming, faster now, almost half falling in his attempt to get to McCree. Murderous intent vibrates in his wordless voice as he tries and fails to rise to two feet again.

Jesse grits his teeth, trying to climb to his feet again, too, but he’s winded, and the air is hard to breathe, and the wolf is ten feet away, five, lunging.

He shoots again, frantic now, uncoordinated.

It hits the wolf in the glowing golden chest, and with a noise not unlike a kicked dog, the wolf falls, stumbling forward and collapsing on top of McCree.

The wind stops immediately. The glow fades from the beast, like a dying star, and it’s like someone has drained all the strength from him.

He hisses in a manner a canine should not be able to, feet kicking, wicked teeth trying to get purchase and closing again and again on Jesse’s metal forearm. The noises are a mixture of cries and rage, both arms now marked with bullet wounds, an injured leg, clearly weakened by whatever the hell that golden flare was… but still fighting. Still trying to kill him.

Jesse rips his arm from the wolf’s mouth.

He whips his head around to clamp down on Jesse’s throat instead, but is stopped when Jesse pushes the barrel of his gun against his head.

The beast meets eyes with him, and in them, Jesse sees a myriad of emotions. Fear, and then anger, and then, almost eerie, acceptance. Noiselessly, the wolf closes his eyes.

He goes down, soundless, as Jesse punches him one more time to knock him out.

And now there’s a 300 pound giant wolf-man on top of him. Jesse winces and drags himself out from under the monster, climbing shakily to his feet and bending low over his knees, trying to catch his breath.

A glance around the premises shows that he wasn’t the only one affected by the blowback of the wolf’s strange ability. Trees are missing leaves and small branches, bent slightly backwards in a strange circle. Under his own breathing, he nears nothing else; no hooting owls, no crying foxes.

The wolf has scared them all away.

Jesse winces as the sting of a cut on his head is aggravated by his sweat dripping into it, and reaches up to take off his hat and wipe at the cut on his scalp.

The blood loss from his wounds is starting to catch up to him, but there’s no time to fix himself, and not the right place, either.

The hunter looks down at the wolf and gives him a soft kick with his boot. He doesn’t react, dead to the world, at least for a little while.

He doesn’t know why he didn’t pull the trigger. Curiosity? Compassion? The pay?

The odd look in the wolf’s eyes that implied he wanted it?

Jesse sighs and shakes his head.

Nah, it was definitely the pay.

Now’s not the time for thinking, anyway. He bends over, grabs the wolf by the wrists, and gives a heft.

Ol’ Blackwatch is waiting for him at the base of the hill, and he just knows the mare is gonna love this.

Chapter Text

Pain.

Hanzo feels… blurry. Watercolor smears shift around behind his eyelids as he rises slowly into consciousness.

A groan slips from his throat as his temple gives a pulse that seems to rock throughout his entire body.

This isn’t terribly unusual. He is used to waking up a bit confused, hurting, and disoriented, though this level of pain is a rare circumstance. He must’ve injured himself while running amok.

“Hm. You’re awake.”

Now that… that was unusual.

Hanzo jerks, immediately snapping from his brief stint of haziness to try and pull himself into a sitting position.

A searing pain rips up his side, shocks down from his shoulder into his arms. He bites back a shout out of instinct but quickly opens his eyes, managing to scramble a few inches backwards in what he realizes is a bed. A quick glance and inhale tell him that it isn’t his own.

The motion of shifting brings with it a nauseating pain. Hanzo nearly groans again, but restrains himself as he levels stinging eyes in the direction of the voice.

As he meets gazes with his guest, everything comes swimming back, though not quickly enough for Hanzo’s liking.

The hunter.

His kidnapper is leaning against a doorframe, watching him.

A quick glance around shows that they are in a small room, with wooden walls and wooden floors. No decoration. Perhaps a cabin, perhaps an inn. Hanzo wonders what establishment would let a man as bedraggled and bloodied as this man had been last night under their service, but it’s not important.

He glares through a swimming mind, not trusting himself to speak. He does not know what the man wants, but he will not accidentally give it to him.

Instead, he silently inspects the man who is silently inspecting him in return.

The hunter is a rugged sort. A scruffy beard clings to a well-defined jaw, and brown hair is looped in a loose knot at the base of his hairy neck. He looks around Hanzo’s age; late thirties, early forties, if the lines around his eyes are any indication. There is a hat on his head that casts his eyes in shadow, but Hanzo can still tell that they are narrow and a light shade of brown. He is dressed all in dark fabric; blacks and dark browns and silvers. The only splash of color on the man is a red neckerchief, tied loosely around his throat and torn in a couple of places.

At the moment, the man is wiping down his weapon; Hanzo eyeballs the gun and recognizes the unspoken threat.

He will need to tread carefully.

This man had taken him down while he was in his bestial form. While he may look like every other hunter Hanzo had encountered, this man was clearly more capable than the rest of his kind.

He is definitely not Japanese; the lilting tone of his voice places him somewhere much further west.

The man opts to speak first, obviously taking the hint that Hanzo will not be doing so.

“The name’s McCree. You put up a hell of a fight. Do you remember anything?”

English. Right. If Hanzo is remembering correctly, the man speaks it primarily. He almost wishes he didn’t understand it in this moment, but there’s nothing for it now.

Hanzo narrows his eyes and says nothing, turning his attention to his hands, which he finds bound in rope on his lap. Typical. He hadn’t noticed before, as the rope gives him enough room to place his elbows on either side of his waist, but no more. The knot is surprisingly well-done. Hanzo frowns down at it, already wondering if he could use it to wrap around this hunter’s throat and escape, but—

The other man is snapping his fingers.

He sneers, not appreciating being beckoned like a dog, but the incessant noise sends his already pounding head ablaze.

This McCree is watching him passively, his gun now lazily hanging from the fingers of one hand. “I figure you’d be much more bewildered if you didn’t remember anything. But who knows. Perhaps you’re just a taciturn sort.” McCree moves closer, prowling like a cat. Hanzo watches him, sees the easy laziness he seems to carry, and wonders if perhaps his eyes are tricking him. Surely, this cannot be the man that punched a beast 2 feet taller than him in the face. Twice, Hanzo’s stinging jaw reminds him.

But the proof is in the weaponry, and the attire.

And the eyes.

Hanzo cannot forget the way they looked, even if the rest of the evening is blurry. The eyes as he looked up at Hanzo, wondering at what he was, at what he was capable of.

What in the hell are you?

The color of copper, the strength of steel.

Hanzo continues saying nothing as McCree grabs a chair placed against the wall and drags it closer to Hanzo’s bed. He drops it unceremoniously a foot or two away and slithers into it. Hanzo supposes he can see grace in his easiness, and it irritates him.

“So here’s the situation,” McCree says, his gun still hanging lazily from his hand, index finger twirling against the trigger, “someone really wants you alive.”

He reaches up and pushes his hat further away from his face. Hanzo notes the myriad of white scars lining it. Experience.

“I wasn’t given a name, just a place.” Of course. “And it’s a far one, but the pay’s too good to not make the journey, and you put up way too much of a fight to let you go again. Something about you…”

McCree taps his chin with the barrel of his gun. Hanzo feels a vein behind his eye twitch.

“... you aren’t a normal lycan. Biggest one I’ve ever seen, but… more than that. Somethin’ about the ink on your skin. Your little… display. Last night.”

Hanzo feels ice in his veins in an instant. The skin under the whorling yellow marks on his left arm sizzles faintly as he looks down at it. A bandage covering one of the bullet wounds obscures it partially, but Hanzo does not need to see it to know what it is; a constant reminder of what he had done. What he had lost. Mocking him. He works his jaw noiselessly and meets slow, cold eyes with the hunter.

McCree’s eyebrows lift. “Hell, you looked mean before, but that just put something wicked in you. I’ll assume you don’t wanna talk about it, then.”

As if I’d speak to you willingly at all, Hanzo doesn’t say, and watches as McCree looks at him for another minute before rising from his chair and turning away. He finally tucks his gun into its holster, freeing his hands to remove one of his gloves. He drops the glove on what appears to be a writing desk in the corner.

Hanzo begins to plot leaping up behind him and strangling him with the rope around his wrists, but then he sees a glint in the skin the man has revealed.

No… not skin at all.

Metal.

Hanzo leans further from his bed in spite of himself, curiosity briefly outweighing anything else.

There is a glowing in the arm; faint, in the weakly sunlit area of this room, but undeniable. It’s like he carries fire under the metal, as if it’s being constantly heated… or magicked. The arm itself is a gleaming black, and tipped with what appear to be claws. Hanzo realizes what he thought was armor on his upper forearm is actually just what the glove and sleeve could not cover; sharp spikes, presumably for jabbing into the heads of his prey.

McCree is turned a bit away from him, but Hanzo sees him turn his hand up and inspect the glowing palm as he, once more, speaks up. “So we’re gonna be traveling together, you and I. The journey will take a few weeks if we’re lucky and you’re cooperative. Longer, if we aren’t and you’re not.” He turns, and Hanzo shifts his eyes from his arm to his face, smoothing out any interest he might’ve held. “We can do that the easy way or the hard way. I don’t think you like my hard way.”

As if in response to the words, Hanzo feels a pulse in his chest that reverberates up into his arms again. He cannot hold back a short grunt at the spike of pain, and clenches his fists in his lap. Yes, he remembers now. The hunter had shot him with those bullets. One in the arm, one in the shoulder… and one in the chest. He carefully pulls back the ragged pink blanket to inspect the wound there, and finds bandages.

He frowns.

McCree, who is still turned to him, hums. “I patched you up. An olive branch, if you’ll take it.” He wipes something in a little tin on the desk on a cloth that he pulls from his pocket, and begins rubbing it against his metal thumb. He smooths it over the sharp-tipped end, subtle but effective emphasis. “I know how to kill your kind. That means I know how to make sure you don’t die, too.”

Hanzo works his jaw some more and lifts the blanket to find he is covered from the waist down. Not his own clothing, of course. The trousers are clearly not Japanese. The hunter’s, then. In any case, they’re ill-fitting. The pants are loose around his waist, and the fabric is pulled up over the leg he had injured the night before.

That, too, is bandaged and splinted.

The emotion he experiences is unusual. He has not had someone assist him in amending his injuries in years. He’s never been the most medically adept person, but he’d made do with what he had.

It’s clear, in contrast, that McCree had been trained, at least a little. The bandages are firm and dry. It’s by no means professional, but it’s better than anything Hanzo would’ve been able to do himself.

Annoying. Unnecessary, especially from the person who had injured him in the first place. Still, underneath his justified irritation, he cannot help but be somewhat grateful.

Perhaps he will memorize how these bandages were made and then remember McCree in some years when he is forced to repeat the process alone.

Long after he has killed the man.

When his words get no response yet again, McCree makes a face and snorts. “You’re welcome, by the way.” The hunter wipes the cloth a few more times on his hand before tossing it on the desk. He moves closer yet again, hands finding purchase on the back of the chair he’d been seated in earlier. Hanzo meets eyes with him, determined to save face.

He notes with some satisfaction that his claws did indeed leave a new mark on McCree; an ugly three-fingered slice grazes from somewhere behind the hunter’s ear to part of the way down his neck. It’s clearly been treated, and sewn up, but Hanzo knows it will scar.

McCree seems to notice him looking and scowls. “I’m not foolish enough to believe you’re just gonna tag along with your tail wagging. I can tell from the glint in your eye. You still wanna kill me, you plan on doing it.” He leans back off the chair and chuckles in an irritatingly knowing way. “This isn’t my first time, wolf, and it won’t be my last. You know I can take you on when the moon’s up. I’ve no doubt you’re a capable fighter without the fur, but…” The toothy smirk that McCree gives him makes Hanzo want to leap from the bed and forego the rope altogether; he can use his teeth, as well. “... I’m better.”

Hanzo gives him the most unimpressed stare he can manage.

McCree continues smiling. “If you disagree, you can just say so.”

Hanzo purses his lips and says nothing.

The hunter sighs, seeming disappointed. “Look, I don’t care if you’re mute or you just don’t like talkin’, but I can’t go calling you wolf in public. I don’t think you want the people in this town suspectin’ anything about you.”

Hanzo lifts his brows. They’re going into town, then. Something unpleasant flips in his stomach.

McCree wets his lips and eyeballs him for a moment before scratching his chin; all movement, never ceasing. “People thought you were the spirit of Sojiro. Maybe I’ll call you that. Jiro.”

Hanzo feels such self-revulsion rise in him at the idea of being called by his father’s name that he hisses through his teeth, jerking as he immediately makes to leap from the bed, instinct driving him to attack.

Pain blooms behind his eyes as he slams the foot of his injured leg onto the floor too hard, and his hiss turns into a growl of pain. Nonetheless, he digs his nails into the bedding and glares up at McCree as ferociously as he can.

“No,” he snarls. The word comes out like glass against stone. He has not spoken to another person in so long… his voice is a grating thing.

The hunter doesn’t jump back, but he does retreat a step and reminds Hanzo of the gun on his hip as he lays his metal palm atop it.

“Ah, right,” McCree says, and there is an undertone to his voice that makes Hanzo abruptly remember that the man is smarter than he appears. “You aren’t an admirer of the Shimada family, are you?”

Hanzo grits his teeth, feeling tricked, but says nothing, thinking fast.

He is clever, too, and formulates his own trick; the hunter doesn’t know that he is a Shimada. His kidnapper is not aware that he has the firstborn son of the Shimada Clan here with him, right under his nose. What was it that he’d assumed? From his words, he seems to think that Hanzo was some stranger who had gone after the Clan of his own volition.

Ha. The irony is like ash in Hanzo’s mouth.

Still, if this is what McCree assumes, it is also what most of the town probably assumes as well.

That is better than he’d feared.

“You don’t like Sojiro, you can’t use wolf. What do you want me to call you then, sunshine?”

Hanzo feels his nose wrinkle at the nickname, baring his teeth in another growl.

“If you don’t answer me you’re gonna force me to just use that,” McCree singsongs, and Hanzo really, truly would kill him if his body permitted it.

No matter. He’ll gather his strength, and then return to where he belongs.

“Sunshine?” McCree croons, and Hanzo licks his teeth to keep himself from using them.

He struggles with himself for a moment, but he knows he will have to spend more time with this man before he gathers the strength he needs to escape. He thinks about being called some inane not-name for however long that is.

It won’t be too long. His… condition grants him accelerated healing.

It would be manageable. He could handle it.

“Soji—“

“Uda,” Hanzo bites out, grabbing the first name out of the air he can think of. “Just Uda.”

“Uda,” McCree repeats, wrapping his mouth around the strong vowels of the word. “Well. I’d say it was nice to meet you… but it wasn’t.” The man looks far too pleased.

Hanzo is partially frustrated with himself for snapping so easily, but… something about this man gets under his skin. He hasn’t had to deal with interacting with people for a long time, and this McCree in particular seems to be no easy man to get along with. Which he supposes is understandable, considering what they are. Monster. Hunter.

In any case, if he is to spend any amount of extended time with the man, he would prefer not to be called by the name of his dead father.

Hopefully, he will be fully healed in a few days’ time. And then, after everything… he will simply have to live with the fact that the people of Hanamura believe that he is a protective spirit. Someone good, with his father’s name.

He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and then opens them again.

McCree is still looking at him, but with a thoughtful frown on his face. It clears away when he sees Hanzo looking at him, though, melting back into cocky self-assurance.

“So. ‘Uda’.” They both know the name is fake. The hunter just doesn’t know how incorrect he is. “If you’re careful, you can probably walk. Now that you’re awake, we need to gather supplies and head out.” He turns, grabbing the things he’d left on the desk and tucking them all, sans the glove, into a bag that Hanzo notices on the floor, now. “Sure as hell wasn’t gonna go do it when you were unconscious.”

You could have tied me to the bed, Hanzo thinks, as he makes to slowly lift onto his feet. The pain is there, but manageable; his leg was injured before he shifted. It will heal faster than the rest of him, especially as it was not affected by the silver. Still, he knows better than to try anything risky like running on it. While he could probably get pretty far, a man uninjured will always catch an injured one.

Patience.

“I coulda tied you to the bed,” McCree murmurs, and Hanzo jerks his head from his thoughts to watch him. The hunter isn’t looking, still digging in his bag. He lifts up only after procuring what looks like a coin purse, and giving it a heft or two in his metal hand. “But then you might have started to shout and scream. The innkeeper seemed like a nice lady, but…” He turns, gives Hanzo a sweeping look. “Didn’t want her to have the wrong idea about what we’d been up to if she came barging in here to see… that.”

Hanzo feels a flush of heat rise up from his chest into his face and glares at the man, clenching his fists. The comment was unwarranted, the look doubly so. Irritating, his mind hisses, this man is a delinquent.

McCree just watches him, eventually letting a smirk tip up one side of his mouth. Hanzo gets the distinct feeling he is being mocked again as McCree lifts an eyebrow at him. He works his jaw, staring back, hoping his question is obvious.

Of course, the hunter does not want anything to be simple.

“Clothing,” Hanzo eventually snaps, not a question. A demand.

McCree’s smirk flicks into one that shows teeth. “Of course.” He bends and digs in his bag a little more before holding out what, admittedly, seems to be a set of recognizable clothing. Linen in brown and tan, mostly. Not of the same quality that Hanzo had worn in his youth, of course, but he supposes the westerner would not want to purchase anything besides peasant clothing for what amounted to his prisoner. “I had the innkeeper help me out with that. I know the basics, but…”

Hanzo levels a look at him before moving closer and reaching to take the clothes. They’re soft on his palm.

He can’t do this. He can’t deal with the smugness. He can’t deal with the idea that this man thinks he is stronger than Hanzo.

If the hunter didn’t have his fancy silver weaponry, if they fought man to man, last night would not have happened. McCree would be dead on the forest floor.

Hanzo stares at him, grits his teeth, and then holds his wrists out.

“I can’t put these on with bound hands.”

The hunter hums under his breath. “S’pose you can’t.” He pulls a knife from a holster on his side. Hanzo wonders if it’s the same one used to attack him last night, and feels his anger all over again.

McCree slides the knife between them.

Quick as a flash, Hanzo throws the clothing up into McCree’s face. The hunter makes a noise and Hanzo twists his hands around to wrap his rope around the knife. He yanks with his palms, jerking the knife from McCree’s hand and onto the floor. Before the hunter can react, Hanzo snaps down and grabs the weapon, slicing out at McCree’s legs as quickly as he can. The rope jerks and prevents him from getting a good shot in, but he gets the knife part of the way in McCree’s leg and leaps back to his feet as the other man yells.

He leaps back, and hisses as his wounds smart, but doesn’t crumple. McCree has dislodged the blinding clothing, and moves towards him so quickly, too quickly. “You hellbeast—”

Hanzo is suddenly shoved against the wall of the room, McCree’s arm pressed against his chest. Hanzo kicks his uninjured foot up and presses it into McCree’s stomach, his hands grabbing hold of the hunter’s arm to hold himself up.

The two of them stare into each other’s eyes. Hanzo doesn’t struggle; he knew he wouldn’t win a fight right now. He just needed to prove a point, and it appears as though he has.

Despite himself, Hanzo feels impressed anger burn in his veins at the strength of the hunter. He could probably struggle his way out of this hold if he really tried, but the pressure is just this side of painful. The spikes on McCree’s arm gleam menacingly close to Hanzo’s cheek. If he’s not mistaken he sees the same reluctant awe in McCree’s expression, though the rage is overlaid with pain at the knife wound.

No matter. Hanzo sneers in his face.

“You may have defeated me,” he snarls, leaning over McCree’s arm to get closer to him, “but you did not best me. You believe I am weaker when I am not the wolf. You are wrong. I do not need the moon. I will kill you without it.” The promise burns in the air between them, and McCree’s eyes flicker with something that Hanzo can’t identify.

And then the hunter laughs.

Hanzo feels the ropes around his wrist slacken as McCree cuts the rope in two with one twist of the blade.

He drops Hanzo back onto the floor and takes a few steps back, his laughter loud in the small area of the room. Hanzo watches him carefully, but it seems as though his temper has evaporated. Strange.

“You ain’t the first wolf to promise to kill me, Uda,” McCree says, after his outburst has subsided. He looks up and meets Hanzo’s eyes again; infuriatingly, the smirk is back, but there is something different in it now. “But you are, perhaps, the first one I actually believe could do it.”

Hanzo glares at him, breathing a touch heavier after the exertion, confused and on guard. McCree looks at him for another long moment, eyes sweeping, before turning back around and plunking himself into the chair again, rolling up his pant leg.

“Get dressed,” the man says, “and if you try to run while we’re out there, I won’t be so nice.”

The trip into the market is a hasty one.

After McCree patched up his leg and Hanzo put his clothes on, it’d been a quick affair leaving what did turn out to be a fairly nice inn. McCree had given the innkeeper more money than what usually constituted a night of sleep, and Hanzo wonders just how rich the man is.

He must do his job well, and often.

Hanzo is uncomfortable in the winding areas of Hanamura. He had been raised just up the mountain, and so visited this place many times in his youth, but… he cannot help but feel the place is a stranger’s land.

The last time he’d come here, his face had been shaven. It seems an odd detail to fixate on, but Hanzo finds himself clinging to the fact when irrational thought leads him to wonder if anyone here would recognize him. It’s been almost ten years, he tells himself, no one will know who you are. They all think you’re dead. You have a beard. Everything is fine.

McCree seems at ease, in contrast. After insisting that Hanzo walk in the front — because of course — he doesn’t look lost at all. He quietly directs Hanzo on where they’re going next, and Hanzo doesn’t need to give directions. Of course, it’s not as if he’d know, really. The town has changed in the years he’s been gone. Despite recognizing a few places here and there, most people have changed. Hanzo supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he cannot help the strange pang he feels.

In any case, McCree converses with the shopkeeps in conversational Japanese, easily conveying what he needs and paying the correct amounts. He’s by no means an expert in the language, and everyone can tell that he doesn’t live there, but he is friendly and polite and so they are friendly and polite in return. Sometimes they look at Hanzo with curiosity; Hanzo must fight down panic every time. McCree says he is a traveling companion whenever he is asked about Hanzo, as Hanzo refuses to speak himself, and the lycan sees no suspicion in their eyes.

McCree seems to have a way with people. Somehow, Hanzo is annoyed, but not surprised.

At one point, they pass a man selling weaponry. Hanzo thinks of his bow, lost in the woods of Hanamura, and lingers for a moment too long in front of the merchant. He feels a pang he did not think he would. He’d cared for his bow for ten years, through storm and through hunting and from his youth to his adulthood.

“Would you like something?” the merchant asks, obviously trying to get him to come inside.

Before he can even think to formulate a response, McCree is there, a hand laying comfortably on Hanzo’s shoulder. Hanzo fights down the urge to throw him over his shoulder as the hunter replies with a polite dismissal. “Come on, Uda. Just the stables, now.”

The shopkeep lifts his eyebrows at what he perceives as familiarity, not the threat that it is. Hanzo grits his teeth, swallowing whatever feeling he just had and beginning to walk again.

After purchasing food, clothing, and McCree pausing at one or two places to exchange things in small bags that Hanzo can’t see, the pair of them do indeed arrive at the stables.

McCree speaks to the stablekeep, and after a moment, a large black mare is brought from inside, saddled and reined. She flicks her ears up when he sees McCree and pushes her nose into his hand as the hunter coos at her. Hanzo watches the stablekeep return inside when McCree nods at him, and then blinks as the hunter turns to look at him.

“This is Blackwatch,” McCree says, shifting from Japanese back to English, and pats the mare’s nose. The horse turns her head as if to assess Hanzo, a big brown eye inspecting him with far too much intelligence. After a moment, she blows air from between her lips and tosses her head. Unimpressed. Hanzo narrows his eyes, strangely insulted, and thinks privately that her name is stupid. “Fastest mare in the world. She can catch anything on four legs, two legs, or wings.”

The implication is clear, but Hanzo frowns with faint confusion.

“Are we both riding on her?” he mutters, having had to give up his silence pact after realizing he would receive no answers if he asked no questions. McCree spoke often, but never said the important things. Just as irritating a trait as the rest of him. Still, the mare looks large enough for the both of them, and Hanzo can’t deny that having him on the same horse would make escaping that much harder.

However, his fears are unfounded.

McCree laughs again. “Ha! Oh, sunshine, no.” He turns just in time for the stablekeep to return with another animal trailing behind him on a rope.

Hanzo feels a sinking in his stomach. Different fears are planted instead.

What stands before him is no horse.

It’s a mule. Smaller than Blackwatch, certainly, though not to the point where it’s unrideable. It’s actually rather large, for a mule, Hanzo supposes, though it does nothing to alleviate the anger in his stomach. It’s clearly meant as an insult, when compared with the altogether impressive steed that is McCree’s own powerful black mare.

The mule looks at him with mismatched brown-and-blue eyes and flaps one long ear.

“You can name him whatever you want!” McCree says cheerily in Japanese, and the stablekeep smiles at Hanzo. Hanzo suspects McCree told him that this was a gift. Perhaps he thinks Hanzo is a farmer. It would make sense, with this outfit, and his bedraggled appearance. Hanzo fumes.

Nonetheless, he bites down on angry words. At least he has his own mount.

He nods, not trusting himself with speaking, and approaches the mule.

The animal watches him calmly, and when Hanzo lifts a hand to touch its nose, it doesn’t balk away. Hanzo’s experience with most animals post-wolf is not a good one; most are afraid of him, or attack when they get close enough to smell him. The mule, however, is either too dumb or doesn’t care, and lets Hanzo give him a few pats.

Hanzo decides he doesn’t altogether hate the mule.

“If that’s all, we’re ready to go,” McCree says, after watching for a moment and turning to pay the stablekeep. “I needed a mule anyway. Better for carrying all the stuff that’d weigh my girl down.” He reaches up to pat Blackwatch’s neck. Hanzo takes the subtle insult as more fodder to kill him later.

And then… they mount. Hanzo’s mule is tied loosely to Blackwatch, McCree riding close beside him to continue giving instructions. They are heading west, appropriately.

The sun rises slowly into the sky as the pair of them set off on their journey, bathing them both in pale gray light. Hanzo feels the warmth on his face and tests his muscles against his reins.

Soon.

“My contact says they’re in Yamamoie,” McCree says, and Hanzo nods silently. He knows the name, though not of anyone who would know about him there. “Like I said. A few week’s time and you’ll never have to see my face again.”

If I have my way, Hanzo thinks, watching as the hunter lifts a cigar to his mouth and begins to light it, it will be sooner than that.

In the tavern of Hanamura, a cloaked figure watches the two depart from the window.

“Give them a few hours,” says the woman behind him, nothing but confidence in her voice. “They’re both more perceptive than anyone gives them credit for. If we chase too early, they will suspect us.”

The cloaked man exhales slowly. His eyes linger on the back of the retreating hunter. “You know he won’t join us, right? He’s been touched by the alchemist’s magic. She’s got him under her thumb.” His voice drips with loathing, but the woman just chuckles softly under her breath.

“That’s why he’s just the delivery boy,” she responds. “The real prize is the wolf.”

“Yes,” he agrees, “I know.”

But even as he shifts his gaze to the scowling lycan on the mule, his mind stays with the hunter.

If there’s even a chance, he needs to take it.

“Are the horses ready?”

“Yes,” she replies, a touch of annoyance dripping into her voice. “Come sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

He snorts. “You’re not capable of nerves.”

“All the more reason to sit.”

The figure sighs, but turns from the window to join his companion at the table.

Everything will fall into place.

He just needs to be patient.

Chapter Text

The sun is high in the sky by the time they really make it completely away from Hanamura.

Jesse can tell that Uda is silently fuming over the mule thing, which was kind of his plan in the first place, of course. Still, every time he glances over and sees the lycan staring sullenly ahead, he can’t decide if he’s more amused or pitying.

Admittedly, it might’ve been smarter to just have Uda ride Blackwatch with him. Giving the man his own steed gives him another potential escape route. At the same time, having someone who very definitely wanted to kill him riding in front of him in the saddle posed too big of a risk. Blackwatch could definitely catch the mule if Uda decided to make a break for it. She’d been with him on enough werewolf hunts that she knows how to follow him on foot, too, if he made to run into the woods or something.

So he’s pretty okay with the arrangements.

Besides, having an ass riding an ass was too good an inward joke for Jesse to pass up.

Uda has his own canteen of water, which he pulls out now to take a pull from. Jesse has all the food, of course; practicality. But water was something it’d be a pain in the ass to stop to give Uda every hour or so if he wanted it, so. Jesse watches the lycan tip his head back and drink, two swallows. The muscles in his throat work as he does so, and Jesse notes scrapes and cuts along his neck; just stuff from their scrabble in the woods. Knowing how wolves healed, it’d probably be gone by tomorrow. The man finishes drinking and caps his canteen, before cutting his eyes over at Jesse. His gaze narrows, clearly knowing Jesse had been watching. With a hum, Jesse averts his eyes, slow and lazy.

Uda rides like he’s done it all his life, which is admittedly surprising for the hunter. Apparently the man had been living in Hanamura’s woods for god knew how long, and lycans were notorious for getting most human-raised animals riled up somethin’ fierce. But Uda sways alongside the mule’s movements without even the slightest bit of hesitance; when they pick up the pace or have to ride uphill and are sent into a trot, Uda leans into it and doesn’t falter.

Jesse feels more and more like this might be the most interesting hunt of his life. Something about this man is squirrely, and it’s not just the fake name.

He finds himself watching the other man again, looking him over.

Uda had definitely… surprised him, when he’d changed back into a human the night before.

He was short. Well, Jesse supposes, watching Uda replace the canteen on the saddlebag with practiced ease, not really short. Just short-er, when compared to the seven-foot-tall behemoth he’d become when he shifted. Most wolves reflected their human selves, in a way. Small men made small wolves, men with black hair usually had black fur, the eye color was the same, etcetera.

Which was another thing about Uda. He’d gotten pretty up close and personal with the lycan when he’d dragged him all the way back to the inn last night. After a little extra dough and the excuse that Uda had gotten into a really nasty barfight, he’d cleaned the fellow up and tried to stitch up the wounds he had. And… Uda definitely didn’t sport the white hair that should’ve accompanied the white wolf. His hair was shoulder-length and pitch black, barring the silvery temples that belied his age. The man’s eyes were a shade of gray-brown that definitely didn’t compare to the fiery gold gaze the beast he’d fought had possessed.

It was all strange. The only thing the two forms seemed to have in common was that swirling yellow tattoo.

It’s harder to see against the brown of Uda’s skin than it was with the white fur, but it’s definitely there. Jesse spies it peeking out from the sleeve of his captive’s robe, spanning in a small circle over the back of his hand. It seems now less like a tattoo and more like a birthmark of some kind, but it of course had to be ink. Jesse’s seen a lot of weird shit in his day, but nothing in his expansive knowledge could come up with anything else the marking could be.

If he could touch it, maybe he’d be able to tell a little better, but he hadn’t really been thinking about it last night, and he has the feeling if he breathed too hard on Uda the man would immediately try another assassination attempt.

So maybe not now, then.

“Stop staring at me,” Uda says, suddenly, and Jesse snaps his eyes up from Uda’s hand. Uda isn’t looking at him, but straight ahead with narrowed eyes. Jesse notes the tenseness in his jaw, and can’t help the smirk that glides over his face.

“I’m sorry, am I makin’ you uncomfortable?” He nudges Blackwatch so she moves a little closer to Uda’s mule. The man immediately tenses all over, and now he makes eye contact, glaring up at Jesse from his considerably lower vantage point.

“I am complying with your demands,” Uda grits.

Jesse snorts and moves Blackwatch back again. The mare tosses her head as the mule huffs a little noise beside her. “I’d say I was sorry, but I ain’t. You’re a very interesting lookin’ person. And so funny, on your noble steed.”

Uda’s nostrils flare, but he says nothing, only averting his eyes again to the path ahead and nudging the mule to go a touch faster. Jesse laughs aloud at him, easily keeping up.

The path is a beautiful one so far, if Jesse’s being honest. He’s never had real need to travel this part of the country. He’s been to Japan a few times, but never specifically Hanamura or Yamamoie or anywhere between them.

The air smells like flowers and the leaves that crunch under their steeds’ hooves are colorful and bright. It will be winter soon, and Jesse can feel that in the breeze, the brisk chill that comes every time you inhale. He’s never spent winter in Japan, but maybe after this job he’ll stick around for a little while. Ana’ll understand.

They ride for a few more minutes in silence before Jesse can’t help himself from speaking again. “You named him yet, by the way?” He tips his head toward the mule, even though Uda isn’t looking. “If you get real attached I’ll ask the fellow I’m dropping you off with you can keep him. Least I can do.”

Uda, predictably, is silent.

“So mysterious, wolf-man,” Jesse sighs melodramatically, sitting back in his saddle lazily. “You know, sugar catches more flies than vinegar, sunshine. Actin’ all mean isn’t gonna make this trip any more pleasant.”

“Stop calling me inane things. I gave you a name to call me,” Uda mutters.

Jesse sighs again, less playfully now. “You see, this is exactly what I mean. If you’re gonna be this way the whole trip it’s gonna be an awful one.”

Now, Uda sneers, turning to face Jesse for the first time without any real reason to. “Good.” His gaze is fierce, teeth sharp beneath his meanly-curled lip. “I hope it is miserable for you.”

Jesse stares back, unimpressed. “You really don’t wanna make a trip this long with me in a bad mood, sunshine, I promise you that.”

“Stop calling me that, you incessant—” Uda snarls before biting down on it and turning away again, hands fisted tightly around the mule’s reins. His steed makes a couple of nervous ear flicks and shimmies in his steps, and Jesse rolls his eyes.

“You’re makin’ the little guy nervous. Fine. If I stop calling you my very funny nickname, will you be a little nicer?”

Uda doesn’t reply, but the set of his shoulders relaxes minutely. After a moment, he growls out a “it doesn’t even make sense.”

“It’s ironic,” Jesse replies, seeing Uda watching him out of the corner of his eye, now. “Because—”

He stops.

Abruptly, the air shifts, and he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Something was watching them.

Beside him, Uda glances over when Jesse quiets, and the derisive look he had on his face shifts into suspicion.

“What,” he says, and Jesse lifts a hand to quiet him.

The animals come to a stop in tandem, and Jesse turns slightly in his saddle, looking behind them and trying to pick out where the feeling is coming from. The path they’ve traveled carries only their own hoofprints, and there’s nothing visible further down the way, even as far as Jesse can see. He scans the trees that surrounded the path on either side, but there’s nothing there, either.

The feeling is sending shivers up and down his spine, though. Something about the weight is clinging to him, like wet clothing, sucking to his skin.

“... I dunno,” Jesse responds quietly, now, and flicks his eyes to Uda.

The other man looks like he’s wondering about the sanity of Jesse’s mind, or whether Jesse is deliberately bullshitting him. Distrust laces his features.

“... Then let us focus on the task at hand,” he finally replies, and nudges his mule into nervous movement again. To his merit, he does flick a speculative look back, but ultimately doesn’t seem very concerned.

Jesse watches him take off a few paces and glances behind them again.

The feeling of being watched slowly fades. It feels like the fingers of a silk glove slipping from his skin, and Jesse can’t suppress a shiver at the gooseflesh that rises on his spine.

Being followed isn’t exactly something he has little experience in, but the timing is suspicious.

Maybe just a couple of innocent game hunters, says the part of his mind that has somehow managed to remain optimistic throughout all the shit it’s seen.

We only left Hanamura this morning, says the other, much larger part of his brain, and his eyes fall on Uda again as he gently nudges Blackwatch back into motion. He glances at the sky. It’s been a good few hours, at least. It must be somewhere around 3pm now. Someone maybe let us get a head start but caught up too quick. Maybe someone recognized Uda.

Unlikely, but possible. Uda apparently wasn’t much of a townsperson, and Jesse had kept a considerably close eye on him, but… there was no telling if Uda had made some hand motion, some shift of the eye… something to let someone know who he was. Maybe he had contacts in Hanamura; there was just no way to know. He barely knew the lycan apart from myth, and it seems… farfetched.

But Uda ain’t like most lycans.

The men following them (if there are men following them) might be working for Uda. They might not. Hell, they might’ve just seen two fellows leaving the town and figured they’d make for easy robbing.

There was no way to tell.

Jesse could handle whatever it was when it came, he supposes. No reason to let Uda know he was paranoid. All kindsa ways to take advantage of somethin’ like that.

He nudges Blackwatch to follow after the mule, eyes slowly shifting to the path in front of them as he subtly quickens their pace.

Uda clearly notices the change in haste, but he says nothing.

For once, Jesse is glad.

The ride is mostly a quiet one. Jesse watches the sun slowly sink back down the sky, watches the sky turn from cerulean to violet. Glancing down at the map he has on his lap, he notes that riding their way into another town isn’t an option. Looks like it’s gonna be a night to camp.

There won’t be a lot of these, lord willin’. Hanamura was a fairly large town, but that just meant that once you got outside its immediate area, the places of civility were further and farther between. But as they got closer and closer to their destination, the little rest stops would pick back up again.

Jesse has mostly shaken off the paranoia from earlier. He hadn’t felt the eyes on him again since they’d left. It probably was just a couple of hunters watching them leave, or robbers that didn’t feel like chasing them all the way out.

Still, he doesn’t really have a choice beyond keeping a watch out tonight. He can sleep better when they reach an inn.

Jesse finds a small area in a field about a mile into the thick of the woods that he decides is a fine enough place to camp.

They dismount quietly, both of them clearly tired from the long ride. Jesse watches covertly as Uda grits his teeth against a hiss as his feet touch the ground. He can’t hide his smirk as the other man immediately stiffens as he begins to walk, and lets out a little grunt that tells Jesse he’s feeling saddlesore.

Uda could have all the experience he wanted, but if you didn’t ride regularly, you weren’t gonna be used to the pain just sitting on a moving animal all day could bring.

Uda turns suddenly to see him looking and sneers, straightening and resolutely walking in a circle with as much grace as he can muster. Jesse snorts a laugh.

After a little more movement, the hunter groans, pressing his palms to the small of his back in a stretch. “Help me get firewood. It’ll help you walk off the stiffness.”

Uda turns from where he’d been unsaddling his mule and glares as he drops the riding equipment to the ground. “No.”

God, this man had to be difficult at every turn, didn’t he? Jesse sighs and folds his arms, letting his finger curl over the sharp spikes jutting from his metal forearm. Uda watches the movement with unimpressed eyes. “You really gonna make me threaten you to get something we’re both gonna need to stay warm tonight? Did you forget you ain’t wearing your fur right now, or somethin’?”

Uda stares, his eyes falling into half-lidded annoyance.

Jesse grins at him. “We could always cuddle if you wanted,” he says, lacing his words with sarcasm, and Uda rolls his eyes.

“A fate worse than death,” he mutters, moving closer and then past him as he heads towards the woods.

Jesse can’t help laughing again. He turns and walks after the lycan, eyes sharp as they scan the woods. “Man, you are mean.”

Uda, predictably, doesn’t respond. Jesse didn’t expect him to.

They gather sticks in relative silence. Jesse listens to the birds chirping stories to each other in the trees around them, winding down for the night. There’s a kind of peace in traveling like this. At least, there is to Jesse. He figures he couldn’t do this job if he didn’t like feeling like this; kinda like he and his traveling companion were the only humans in the world.

He blinks as he thinks about the irony of the statement, looking down at his metal arm and then across at the lycan who is gathering way too much firewood for a normal person to lift.

Maybe human was the wrong word for them.

But the point stood.

Uda pauses, once, with a massive bundle of sticks in his arms. Jesse silently watches him as he tips his head up to the sky and closes his eyes. He can see the man inhale, exhale. He watches the way Uda’s shoulders lift and then relax, the muscles in his back shifting under the robe, before he studiously continues to gather wood.

Jesse finds himself once again wondering about this man. This feared beast that prowled in the dark for a decade, now dumping a bunch of sticks into a pile and frowning down at the sap that clung to his front.

Most wolves Jesse didn’t just immediately kill that had lived alone for so long were… well… different. Uda carries himself like he has a pride in him still, and not the almost animalistic pride that a lot of lycans had. No, something else; something in the way he tips his head back and manages to look down at Jesse despite being several inches shorter. Something about the practiced way he undoes his short ponytail and redoes it without ever letting a strand escape his fingers. His haughty, frowning resting expression. The clear distaste he has for the plain clothes he was wearing.

A lot of his kind lived among people as often as they could. Didn’t want to accept what they were. Just locked themselves away in a room when the change came, or… moved from town to town, only leaving when their misconstrued need for society led to them accidentally killing a lot of townspeople.

But Uda’s not a wild animal, and he’s not a city man, either. He took care of himself in a way that didn’t fit a man who chose to spend his time away from people in a self-induced exile.

Weird. Something about him doesn’t add up.

It’s not really Jesse’s job to care. And he doesn’t, really. But he can’t help his curiosity, nonetheless.

He gathers a few more easily-flammable pieces of wood and leaves and dumps them into the pile as well before grabbing his flint from his bag.

As he sets to work starting the fire, he can feel Uda watching him from directly across the little bundle. Jesse doesn’t look up, not yet, letting the observation happen as he gathers the sticks together in a small teepee and then strikes the flint. Once, twice, three times.

The way Uda is staring him down is almost unnerving enough to make his fingers slip, to make embarrassment flood him when it takes a couple more tries for him to get the fire to actually start. Still, when he does finally look up, the expression on Uda’s face isn’t mocking so much as thoughtful. And, for once, Uda doesn’t pretend he wasn’t watching. He levels his eyes with Jesse’s, then bends to his knees, seating himself in a much more sophisticated manner than Jesse himself is sprawled.

Stranger and stranger.

Uda’s hands land on his lap, and he continues looking at Jesse. In the slowly growing firelight, he looks more like the animal he can change into; his gray eyes flicker with the ability to change into the gold reflected in them by the flame. The angles of his face are sharp and cutting, casting dark shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and the sunken pits of his eye sockets. Everything about him seems sharp, now that Jesse is looking at him. There is no softness in anything he can see, despite the comfortable-looking clothing he wears and the length of his dark eyelashes. He looks like a weapon made into a man. Had Jesse met the lycan in a bar instead of as a giant beast, he thinks he would have perhaps been the same amount of intimidated.

Somehow, it’s more unsettling when Uda isn’t outright snarling or sneering at him, only watching with a faint frown curving his thin lips.

“Where are we going?” he says, after a moment, and Jesse is startled from his staring with a blink.

He’d been expecting this question, and many more, throughout the journey. Possibly before they even left. But Uda was a taciturn man. Didn’t seem to want to ask things unless he absolutely had to. Which was fine with Jesse, who didn’t much like answering questions anyway, especially not with people he was basically holding captive.

Still, the question is an odd one. Uda may be the quiet type, but he isn’t dumb.

“Yamamoie,” Jesse responds.

Uda’s eyes narrow. “To whom?”

Jesse shrugs, digging in his bag now that the fire is beginning to actually grow. “I’m not sure. Someone who wants you there and not in Hanamura.”

Jesse doesn’t so much see as hear the silence of Uda rolling his eyes. “So you are simply taking a man from his home on the promise of money. How do you know that he does not simply want to kill me himself?”

The hunter shrugs again, putting his bag behind his back and leaning against it to get cozy. “Not my business what happens to you when we get there. After I get paid, I’m washin’ my hands of you. Ain’t that what you wanted, anyway?”

Uda’s face does change into a condescending one now. “Were I not injured I’d kill you now so I did not have to spend any more time in your company.”

The threat is so casual as to almost be funny, but Jesse can hear the intent behind the lycan’s words. Uda turns his head, then, looking into the fire and letting his eyelashes flit halfway.

“I just wondered if you knew what you were doing. Taking me from my home just because someone was paying you, not asking for a reason.”

Jesse frowns now, sitting up a little more. “If you’re tryin’ to play the sympathy card, you might be forgetting that I deal with your kind all the time. And I know full well you killed your fair share of innocent people that wandered into those woods. So don’t try to make it seem like I’m takin’ a poor little wolf man who never did no harm away to his doom.”

He watches the way Uda’s face shifts into something strange; angry, of course, but more than that, insulted. “You know nothing of why I did what I did. You are thoughtless and small-minded, to simply make assumptions based on hearsay and the words of a man with money.”

A laugh pushes callously out of Jesse before he can stop it. “I’m not thoughtless, sunshine. I just don’t care. All I know is you killed anyone who went a little too far into your territory. Like a rabied dog. Like half the other beasts I bring to meet their maker. You can make whatever lil excuses you want; that don’t change the blood on your hands.”

Something odd happens to Uda’s expression, then. The anger is still there, burning like a flame in his eyes, but he also looks sorta like Jesse just slapped him across the face. There is a split second of hesitancy in Jesse’s stomach, flicking over the words he just said in his head, but before he can say anything else, Uda shutters his face, closing all expression off of it and looking back into the fire.

Jesse tries making a little more light conversation before they completely wind down, feeling strange, but Uda has gone back to being completely unresponsive. He doesn’t react to the blanket and jerky passed his way.

A few hours later, as Jesse continues his not-quite-asleep watch on the camp, Uda turns his back to the fire and lays down, the food and comfort ignored. Jesse can’t exactly say he was expecting both to be eagerly accepted, but he thought at least the man would begrudgingly eat. He’s going to need to, if he’s going to travel again in the early morning. Riding is work; without food, he’s going to be worthless on the mule. Jesse might end up having to carry him on Blackwatch after all.

He can’t believe the man is pouting. How petty.

Still, watching the firelight glow where it touches Uda’s golden tattoo, Jesse wonders if he should’ve reassured the other man that the person that had sent him the letter seemed genuinely concerned about Uda’s wellbeing.

Capture him. Alive. Jesse remembers the oddity of no name or relation being given for the beast in the woods, only where he was located, when he’d be shifted (and therefore when the silver bullets would have the most effect), and the importance of him being taken alive. If he is injured beyond what it took to capture and subdue him when you arrive, I won’t give you full payment, the neat lettering had told him. Please. It’s very important to me. He is someone I have wanted to see for a very long time.

There’s genuine affection in the letter, if Jesse had read it the right way. Or, at least, genuine conviction. The letter told him where to find him in Yamamoie; a small temple, near the outside of town, so as not to be seen by any of the actual townsfolk.

Jesse remembers the raven’s intelligent eyes watching him as he’d read his employer’s letter from outside the bar he’d been spending his evening in. Untying the small bag of gemstones attached to its leg; obviously a token of honesty. Whoever this person was, he was clearly wealthy enough to make good on his word. Jesse still has the small pouch in his bag somewhere… only one gem lighter to buy drinks for everyone in the bar. He remembers Ana’s watchful eye, so similar to the raven, as he’d returned to the table proclaiming his new job.

Her voice, soft and intent, telling him she could help him get where he needed to go. The sadness there as she touched his metal forearm and spoke into his ear over the cheers of the bar patrons.

Jesse sighs, now, pulling a cigarillo from his bag and quickly leaning in and back out to use the campfire to light it. He puffs on it a couple of times, breathes in the smoke so it burns around his lungs, lets it out again. He levels his eyes with the man sleeping — or pretending to sleep — across the fire from him.

He sees Uda shift minutely against the ground and rolls his eyes at his own curiosity.

He remembers seeing him for the first time, the massiveness of him, the blast of power that came from him like the wave of a hurricane.

What in the hell are you? he’d asked then, and he doesn’t have any more answers on that.

Unfortunately, he can feel himself becoming curious about the who, too.

He sighs, pulls another drag from his cigar, and scoots backwards from the fire until he’s leaning against the closest tree to the area.

He won’t sleep, not really, but if he doesn’t at least doze a little, he’s gonna be worthless tomorrow.

Pulling his hat low over his brow, and making sure Uda is well within his view, he closes his eyes.

When the sun comes up the next morning, the blanket is still not touched, but the jerky is gone.

Chapter Text

It is early morning when Hanzo pulls himself from slumber.

The ground is damp with dew, chilling him enough to rouse him from his dreamless sleep. For a moment, he doesn’t open his eyes, allowing himself to pretend that he is still in the forest of Hanamura for a moment more.

There were many mornings when he woke up in the cold, injured, and alone. It was nothing new for him; some things were just not under his own control when the moon sickness took him over. He was lucky he had it in him to keep himself contained to the forest; anything more than that was a struggle to maintain, most times. It wasn’t exactly that he was out of his mind when he was an animal… more like… uninhibited, and emotional to the point of danger. It was difficult to explain.

Hanzo lets himself live in the illusion for a moment longer. That he will open his eyes, and be greeted with the familiar tall, empty-branched trees of his home. That he will pick himself up and move back towards the castle he inhabits when he is in his right mind, and redress, and then spend his time patrolling the forest as he always has.

But the warmth of the last remaining embers from their campfire is enough to remind him of where he really is. Of course, that is hardly the biggest clue.

“Up and at ‘em, wolfman.” Something heavy lands with a thud behind his head. Hanzo very nearly leaps to his feet at the sound, but restrains himself; if McCree had been trying to hit him with something, he was close enough to have landed the shot.

He lays there for another moment before pushing himself onto his knees with a sigh. He reaches up methodically to redo the hair he’d left tied up throughout the night, quickly redrawing the mussed locks back into smoothness and retying his topknot. Only then does he turn to glance down at what was thrown at him. It’s his own canteen, gleaming around the rim. Freshly filled.

McCree grunts his approval as Hanzo picks the canteen up. Hanzo listens, eyes half-lidded against the pale light filtering down around them, as he continues. “Get a good drink in. We’re gonna get a long way today. If we travel far enough, we can probably reach another town by tomorrow.”

Hanzo bites back a sigh and subtly flexes his injured leg. It is better today, but not completely healed yet, either.

Not yet. Hanzo predicts three days. Perhaps four.

The wounds on his chest and arm will actually take longer to heal, thanks to the silver, but at least he can escape with those not completely healed if he needs to. Though, as Hanzo climbs to his feet and feels the aching that immediately overtakes his body, he frowns to himself. He is not used to the constant, specific laborious activity that is riding for a day. He’s obviously physically in shape, and he’d ridden many horses in his youth, but as he looks at the mule grazing steadily nearby he can feel his muscles ache with pain.

Perhaps this will be more difficult than he thought.

He drinks from the canteen and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I need more food.”

McCree turns from where he is saddling up Blackwatch and lifts a brow. “You didn’t seem too keen last night.”

“I am healing. I need the energy to do so properly. Especially if you are also going to force me to ride on that beast all day.” Hanzo’s eyes fall on the mule again. It lifts its head as if it knows its being spoken about and snorts.

The hunter rolls his eyes in the meantime. “You gonna be this contrary the whole time?” He shakes his head, not giving Hanzo the opportunity to answer. “Who am I kidding. Of course you are.” He reaches into his bag and grabs a few more pieces of jerky, holding them out to Hanzo. “Here.”

Hanzo takes it before speaking, glaring up at the other man. “I will need more than this.”

“We’ll go fishing later today.” McCree’s voice brooks no argument. “And hey, you’re mister wild game hunter, ain’tcha? Go catch somethin’.”

Hanzo’s scowl darkens. “With what weaponry?”

The hunter grins sunnily at him. “Oh, right. You don’t have your fancy bow.” He pats Blackwatch on the rump before turning fully to Hanzo, folding his arms. “So you’re just gonna have to rely on good ol’ McCree. Now. You need help tacking up, or what?”

Hanzo bristles. The man is deliberately goading him. Soundless, he shoves the jerky in his mouth and turns to march towards the mule, hefting the saddle for it as he passes. The mule lifts its head again and shakes its mane, trotting a bit away from Hanzo as he approaches.

Ugh. “Come here,” Hanzo demands.

His stallion back in the day would have immediately trotted up to him, if he had needed to be called at all.

The mule swishes its tail and goes back to eating grass.

Hanzo approaches again. The mule trots further. Hanzo slows down, shushing the mule quietly and getting within a foot or so before the mule brays and hoofs it back around, closer to Blackwatch.

Frustration boils under Hanzo’s skin and he growls quietly to himself. His ears burn as, distinctly, he hears McCree snort a laugh behind him.

“He knows you haven’t named him,” the hunter says, voice surprisingly solemn, though Hanzo can hear the wobbly amusement in it. “How can he trust someone who won’t give him a name? Just cruel, really.”

Hanzo whips around to him, hefting the saddle higher and holding back a flinch as it aggravates his chest wound. “Can you be anything but inane?”

McCree smiles back. Inanely. “Just sayin’. That mule’s smarter than you think. He knows you don’t like him.”

Hanzo sneers as he turns back to the mule, and makes an effort to relax his body language. He moves closer. The mule watches him from the corner of its eye, then buffets a breath through its lips. It turns its hindquarters toward Hanzo, and Hanzo freezes, uncertain if he’s about to get kicked.

McCree seems like-minded. “Woah, woah, woah.” The hunter comes up beside Hanzo and takes the saddle from him, giving him a stern look under his hat. “Come on. You gotta make friends or you’re gonna be riding with me.” He starts circling to the other side of the mule, and Hanzo follows him, scowling to himself over being talked to like a child but also really not wanting to be kicked.

The hunter moves closer to the mule, and the mule looks over at him. It eyes Hanzo warily, but allows McCree to come to its side. McCree lays a gloved hand on the animal’s side and pets it gently, shushing it with nonsense words before turning to Hanzo again. “I’m serious. Naming him will make you more attached to him. Riding animals can sense your emotions. He knows you’re all squirrely about him, and that’s partially my fault, but it ain’t his.”

Hanzo flashes his teeth at the hunter, but looks over at the mule once more.

This is stupid, he thinks, but the uncertainty in his mind wins over. His horses had always known how he was feeling when he’d ridden them before. He sighs to himself.

You are Matsukaze.

There is no great rush of affection for the animal. Hanzo’s name for the mule was mostly a joke, anyway, but according to the hunter, this should work. He looks over at the man clad in black, and blinks as he sees him tacking up the mule, easily slipping the saddle on and tucking the bridle over his head. He does it with practiced ease, clearly having done this a million times before, and Matsukaze does not even blink, flipping an ear and snorting when McCree rubs its nose.

Hanzo feels a strange prick of jealousy, but only scowls when McCree looks at him as if expecting thanks.

He receives none.

The hunter huffs. “You’re welcome. Now let’s get moving.”

Hanzo eyes Matsukaze cautiously, but the mule seems tired of its game, and simply peers at him with his bright mismatched eyes.

“Must you make me look like a fool in front of him?” Hanzo mutters to him, and Matsukaze flaps one long ear and licks his own nostril. He looks strangely pleased with himself, and Hanzo frowns. “Eloquent.”

Still, with McCree waiting, Hanzo climbs up onto the mule, gently nudging the animal forward after Blackwatch’s waiting haunches. His body begins to ache instantly, and Hanzo sighs.

It is going to be a long day.

They are riding for some time before they run into their first obstacle.

McCree has begun attempting to pepper their travel with conversation. Nothing is too boring for him to discuss, apparently; Hanzo suspects the man is used to traveling by himself, and having another person around seems to open the door for him to let out the flow of words that must constantly run through his head, even if that person clearly wants nothing to do with him on a personal level.

Hanzo stares tiredly at the road ahead of him as McCree’s voice somehow finds its way back through the subconscious wall he’d built up between them. “So I went back for the hat, of course. What kind of hunter would I be without my hat? A damn sad one, that’s what. So I start rushing back, and,” McCree pauses, then continues with somehow more enthusiasm, “Then suddenly fire starts rainin’ from the sky. God Himself comes down and grabs me by the shoulders and says ‘Jesse McCree, you are an angel walkin’ earth! Only you can protect humanity from hell-beasts and monster-men! And I’m in love with you!’”

Hanzo, despite himself, snorts derisively. First of all, at his name — Jesse, it sounded like a commoner’s name — and then at his absolutely blatant lying. Absolutely not because he derived any humor from the man.

Unfortunately, though he’s said nothing, McCree seems to take this as encouragement. “Ah, so you are listening to me!”

Hanzo turns his head to sneer at him. “Your voice is grating enough to wake bears, in hibernation, across the country. I am unlucky enough to be traveling directly at your side.”

McCree, infuriatingly, only seems amused by his ire, as ever. Hanzo’s insults seem to be less and less effective without brute force, and even in the cabin McCree had laughed at him. He is confounding and strange, but Hanzo supposes it does exactly what it’s meant to; annoy him.

“So what, you’re really just not gonna say a word unless it's insulting me or asking questions you already know the answer to?” McCree’s voice is familiar in a way that makes Hanzo’s temper rub wrong, as if they are companions traveling together rather than prisoner and captor. Why does he seem so intent on making the trip pleasurable when Hanzo is practically riding to his doom?

Hanzo frowns at him and says nothing.

McCree lifts his brows. “Right, right, gotta maintain that air of mystery. You know, that’s only attractive to people for a little while, and then you just become unsociable. Granted, you lived in a forest for ten years, what do you know about socializin’?”

Always assuming he is correct in everything he says, Hanzo thinks, smoothing his tongue silently over his sharp canines to prevent himself from snapping at him. I have never met a more annoying, obnoxious man.

McCree continues, leaning back in his saddle with all the practiced grace of someone who wants very badly to be seen as casual and impressive. Hanzo narrows his eyes. “Look, I’m not sayin’ we have to be best friends, Uda, but— ah, look.”

Hanzo follows the man’s eyes until they land on what was apparently worth interrupting himself: a river. Immediately, he remembers the promise from earlier about fishing; his stomach rumbles hungrily. He flicks his eyes back to McCree, who is looking back at him with his brows lifted.

He knows the other man wants him to ask if they’re going to stop. Hanzo clamps his jaws closed.

McCree shrugs and begins to guide Blackwatch further down the river, obviously looking for a place to cross, and Hanzo gives a frustrated sigh as his gut wins over his pride.

“Fish. You said we would stop.”

McCree halts Blackwatch again and gives him a winning smile. “Well, now that you mention it.”

Rolling his eyes, Hanzo silently follows McCree’s lead as he hops off his mare and lets her graze nearby after pulling his fishing gear from her back. Hanzo lets Matsukaze follow her lead, and the mule trots off after Blackwatch, ridiculous ears high.

The archer turns and follows McCree, then, knowing he is imitating his steed and silently hating it.

McCree turns to him as they make it to the river’s side, to an area that seems deeper than the rest of the shallow bed; fish are likely to hide here. He gestures with his pole. “I got this. You gonna fish?”

Hanzo sneers at him, baring said teeth in a growl. “Do you see me holding a rod?”

The hunter shrugs, turning away before Hanzo can meet his eyes. “I’ve seen it done before, s’all. Some kinds of lycans, especially kinds like you, can elongate their fangs and claws at will.” He peeks at Hanzo from the corner of his eye, smirking again. “Though mostly I just like seein’ you puff up like a cat.”

Hanzo sighs again, folding his arms and looking out into the water. “You have made that abundantly clear. I am not going to dive into the water like an animal and catch fish with my teeth. Whatever lycan you have seen do that before clearly had no respect for himself.”

McCree gives him a look, nose screwed up slightly, before he shrugs noncommittally as he moves away to scrounge around for something to put on his hook (a worm), and then tosses it into the water.

There is a silence between them for a few minutes as Hanzo stands at McCree’s side with his arms folded and McCree holds onto his fishing pole. After a minute, McCree grunts as he seats himself on the bank. Hanzo stares down at him and remains standing, frowning down at the river.

“Not gonna let you wander off,” McCree says after a moment, adjusting the rod so it winds up between his legs. “You might as well get comfortable.”

“I am fine,” Hanzo replies stiffly, tightening his arms across his chest.

McCree hums. “Suit yourself.”

Unfortunately, Hanzo had forgotten just how long fishing seemed to take. It was not his usual mode of hunting, and while stalking animals through the woods tended to take time, this was different. He was just expected to stand there. McCree has chosen the correct spot: in low current water, near where the water shifted into high current. But fish had to be lured, and as the sun shines down on them on its descent toward evening, Hanzo’s stomach grows increasingly loud.

It is on one of these particularly obnoxious growls that McCree begins to chuckle. Hanzo, screwing up his face to hide his embarrassment, glares down at him as the hunter peeks up from beneath his hat.

“You’re gonna scare away the fish,” McCree says, eyes gleaming, and Hanzo scowls.

“No, I will not,” he snips back, subtly pulling his arms down over his own gut and pressing as if that will silence the noises.

McCree props one elbow on his knee and rests his chin on his hand, peering up at him with that strange little grin on his face. His other hand holds the rod loosely; clearly he is also getting bored. “What do you normally eat?”

Hanzo flashes his teeth. “You are the one speaking, you are going to be the one to scare the fish.”

McCree waves a hand. “They ain’t payin’ attention, I was kidding.” He looks up at Hanzo expectantly, and Hanzo glares back, digging his nails into his elbows.

“I hunted,” he replies shortly, after the silence clearly isn’t enough to dissuade the hunter. “With my bow. Deer. Birds. Occasionally bears.”

“Bears?” McCree looks mildly impressed; Hanzo takes the opportunity to feel smug about himself. “You took down bears with a bow?”

Hanzo shifts his feet. “I was very skilled with it,” he says, peering down at the hunter from the corner of his eye. “I am not a savage. I am a proficient hunter, when given the tools I need.”

McCree seems to consider this, eyeing him, before rising to his feet again. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with the fishing,” he concludes, and holds out the pole for Hanzo to take.

A… strange offer. Hanzo glances at McCree’s face; he can tell that this is, again, some bizarre kind of peace extension. What had he called it… an olive branch.

He narrows his eyes. Odd. His mind works, piecing through what might’ve led to this. Perhaps this is a reward for him responding to McCree’s question. Hanzo does not like the implication that he is being treated for talking, nor the idea of actually taking him up on it, and—

McCree lets out a slightly exasperated sound. “Your mind never stops, huh? I’m just tryin’ to be nice.”

Ha. “No one is ever just trying to be nice,” Hanzo snipes back, giving him a once over before reaching out and wrapping his hand around the pole. It’s not as if he could actually kill McCree with it (well, he could, but not before the hunter’s faster reflexes reacted in time to stop him, most likely), and he can see the other man’s clever brown eyes watching him as he makes to take the rod.

At that moment, something hefty on the line yanks hard.

McCree, who had not yet released the pole, jerks forward with the weight of whatever it is, and stops.

Unfortunately, Hanzo, who was just that much closer to the water, stumbles a step forward. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but his sandal skids on the wet mud on the river’s bank and suddenly he is slipping.

Absolutely not, Hanzo thinks, but no amount of angry flailing helps him as his body falls. Only at the last moment does he desperately get a grip on McCree’s jacket, yanking hard to attempt to right his footing.

Instead of steadying him, McCree seems surprised by his strength, and gives a short shout before the both of them go tumbling into the water.

Cold ice grips Hanzo’s muscles briefly before the lycan can shake himself from the shock. Hanzo’s eyes blink open beneath the current, blurrily sloshing around as he attempts to right himself. Beside him, he sees McCree doing the same, scrambling to get his bearings and immediately breaking way for air. Hanzo swishes around under the water, glancing up and seeing McCree’s rod skimming along the surface of the waves. He quickly tracks the fishing line; despite himself, he’s still hungry, and he isn’t about to let the fish get away.

He pops his head briefly out of the water to grab a breath of air and then dives back under, quickly following the fishing line to the huge fish at the end of it. It looks to be a salmon, and Hanzo’s stomach rumbles as he thrusts himself through the water, blowing air from his nose and using one hand to snatch the fishing line. The salmon, quickly trying to escape, is caught short by the hook just enough for Hanzo to get his hands on it. It is only his chest injury that stops him from being fast enough to do so without trickery, but it will do for now.

He quickly extends his nails, digging them into the salmon’s sides to kill it quickly, then kicks up, and chucks the fish onto the shore of the river. He grabs a few lungfuls of air and then glances around for his companion.

McCree, a few feet away, stares at him. The man is absolutely drenched; his hair has fallen out of its knot, and water drips off the edges of his dark eyelashes down into his soaked red kerchief. His hat is missing; Hanzo spots it drifting down the river toward himself. Hanzo knows he must not look much better himself, especially with the claws, and especially especially because of the ugly clothing, but he gazes back at McCree all the same.

He looks angry, for a moment, upset that Hanzo had dragged him into the water. Hanzo stares in return, listening to the sounds of the salmon flopping around on the shore as it dies, and cocks a brow.

But then abruptly, the hunter starts laughing. “Did you just fucking throw that fish?”

And, for the first time, Hanzo feels the beginnings of a smirk crossing his own mouth. It’s a combination of how miserably wet McCree is and the ridiculousness of the situation, but Hanzo stifles a puff of amused breath as best he can, chuckling quietly and reaching out to grab the hat as it passes.

He sloshes through the water toward McCree and slams the hat on the man’s head with perhaps a little more force than he needs to. “You look like a soaked dog. Pathetic,” he adds, sneering up at him to try and disguise the fact that he’s genuinely amused.

McCree is having none of it. “Really? You wanna call me a dog? Didn’t take you for a hypocrite, Uda.”

Hanzo grins a mean grin, disliking the dog comparison, but knowing he had it coming. “That was your mistake,” he replies, and makes way for the shore, aiming to completely kill the fish and perhaps eat it raw if he needs to.

But suddenly McCree grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him back towards him.

Hanzo’s good humor evaporates in an instant. He turns with a snarl, claws immediately coming back out, and aims a backhand at McCree’s face.

The hunter stops him, grabbing his forearm and locking eyes with him. “Shh. Shhhh,” he hisses with more vigor when Hanzo attempts to jerk himself away. Hanzo pauses, seeing the urgency in his face, and then swivels his head immediately toward the noise he suddenly hears.

Someone coming up the path. He listens - two people, on horseback. Very quickly.

McCree stares at him for a breath-length. Hanzo stares back. In unison, they take deep breaths and dip under the water, pushing themselves deep enough that a passerby wouldn’t be able to see them in the rushing water. Hanzo is briefly thankful that his clothes are plain and brown — paired with McCree’s black outfit, they blend seamlessly.

He listens, alert, as the two people speak indecipherably amongst themselves as they pause at the water’s edge; one low and throaty, the other higher. McCree squints at him beneath the surface, and Hanzo blinks back, eyes narrow. It’s hard to see the other man under the water, but its just clear enough to make out his face, close as they are. McCree still has his forearm; Hanzo belatedly notices its the metal hand grabbing him. The hold is delicate, for such an imposing thing.

Interesting.

It is almost beginning to hurt his lungs before the two people seem to decide what to do and take off down the river; Hanzo assumes they’re looking for a place to cross. He waits until he can no longer hear them before pushing back up, gasping for air and splashing to a part of the river he can touch his feet down in. McCree is close behind him, also panting a little, though he can stand more quickly than Hanzo can; he’s taller.

The two of them look at each other. Hanzo suddenly realizes that both of their first instincts were to hide when almost spotted. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, as they both have… well, occupations was the wrong word, but they both spent much time being chased down and fought. He isn’t sure how to feel about having something in common with the man.

“How’d they not see the fish?” McCree ponders after a moment, shucking water from his hair with an uncomfortable twinge in his face.

“Why did we hide?” Hanzo asks instead, catching his breath.

McCree blinks. “... Felt like the right thing to do,” he replies, and then takes off his hat, shaking water out of it. “Dunno ‘bout you, Uda, but I’m a paranoid son of a gun. And between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were bein’ followed.”

Hanzo begins sloshing out of the water now, walking carefully on the muddy bank — not slipping, no matter what certain hunters snorted about — and squeezing water from his clothes.

He untucks the shirt from his pants, holding it away from his body, then glances at McCree.

The man is busying himself dumping water out of pockets here and there.

Hanzo considers for another moment before internally shrugging. McCree had dressed him while he was unconscious, and wanted him alive, for now. He wouldn’t attack Hanzo, even if he thought Hanzo’s guard was down. He pulls the shirt off and then twists it, watching the water splatter out, though he does keep his back to the other man. He is less shy about his body and more unnerved at the hunter looking too closely at his marking, though the part on his chest is covered by (now soaked through) bandages.

“Who do you think is following us? Why?”

McCree squelches behind him. “I don’t make a lot of friends doin’ what I do. Could be any number of people. But if they got any idea who I’m haulin’, then that makes things even more complicated.”

Hanzo turns sharply, though makes sure it’s over the unmarked shoulder. “Why would they know who I am?”

McCree is down to just his undershirt, a flimsy white thing with a drawstring loose around his collar. Hanzo keeps his eyes firmly above the hunter’s neck after a quick glance reveals little to the imagination, ignoring the prick of intrigue his hindbrain purrs to him. He ignores it more when McCree removes that shirt, as well, while speaking, apparently much less reserved about Hanzo seeing him. “You’re a ghost story. People outside of Hanamura know about you, Uda.” Jesse tugs the shirt completely away and starts wringing it out, not paying full attention. “You didn’t kill enough to have people wondering why it suddenly stopped, or nothin’, but people are smart. ‘Specially people like me, who know the signs to look for.”

Hanzo’s perpetual bad mood begins to return. “So you are telling me… not only have I been captured by a hunter who wants to sell me for bullet money or… boot polish… but I might also have to encounter more people attempting to catch me all because you could not just leave me alone in the forest?”

McCree looks up at him, then, and pauses for just a moment.

Hanzo stares silently back, his eyes going half-lidded with mild irritation as he sees the hunter’s gaze skitter down his spine and then across to the arm where his marking is. Hanzo pulls it pointedly closer to himself, and McCree’s eyes snap back to his own.

The other man doesn’t hide his interest (in both Hanzo’s body and in his marking) very well, and Hanzo silently puts that information away for later.

Still, McCree speaks without bringing it up. “That sounds… about right. I don’t need boot polish, though. Got plenty of that.”

Hanzo sneers. “Cute.”

The hunter holds his hands up, and Hanzo turns his face away so he doesn’t have to keep averting his eyes from the man’s muscles moving under his dark skin. “Come on, I’m the best in the business, darlin’! Ain’t no one gonna be able to grab you out from under me.”

“I am not frightened, you imbecile,” Hanzo snarls, “I am annoyed. No one who approaches me will be able to take me. You seem to forget I am far more powerful than everyone that has ever attacked me. You also seem to forget that I will not be under your care for much longer. I still fully intend to kill you, given my first opportunity.” The lycan undoes his hair, bending to let it drip without it touching his body and he pushes water from it.

McCree looks at him, something changing in his demeanor, and he huffs. The amused noise sounds different, now that Hanzo has heard him laugh so raucously in the river. “I’m tryin’ to make this trip easy,” he mutters, and Hanzo glares at him over his shoulder, pushing his hair back with one hand.

“Thank you for making my execution march pleasant, hunter,” Hanzo replies, turning militantly and bowing, his posture mockingly submissive. He looks up at McCree, baring his teeth, letting them sharpen in the hunter’s vision. “I will remember your kindness when I am murdered for being what I am.”

McCree’s eyes flash, and he takes a step forward, his shirt gripped tight in his hand, before suddenly sighing and retreating again. He looks down at the ground, then shakes his head, once, before looking up again. “I get paid less if you’re injured. You need your bandages redone.”

Hanzo licks his canines, wondering if he’s willing to heal more slowly just to spite him, but decides he isn’t. “I will do it myself.”

There is silence between them as McCree goes and grabs the replacements from Blackwatch, blessedly hidden away in a field further in the surrounding forest, and Hanzo goes to the salmon on the riverbank, now long dead. He looks down at it, hefty, certainly enough to feed them both, though Hanzo could eat the entire thing himself if he allowed himself.

With a sigh, the lycan picks up the fish and rinses it off in the river. He trades the fish for the bandages when McCree returns, neither man making eye contact, and the two of them seperate to tend to things.

Hanzo redoes the wrapping with less grace than McCree had, as he knew he would. McCree does not struggle to light the small fire he needs to to cook the fish, apparently less unnerved when he isn’t being watched.

This silence is because of Hanzo, and he knows it. And he’s glad. He did not want this to be some kind of… strange travel trip where Hanzo lets his guard down around the person marching him to his death.

Still. It is… an unpleasant silence. Not like home, where he would spend weeks on end without ever making a noise. Here, there is a heaviness in the air, something that settles on Hanzo’s shoulders and weighs him down.

He looks across at McCree as he clumsily finishes off his bandaging. The hunter is diligently cleaning the fish with his own knife while the fire grows, skilled hands moving endlessly, biceps working, shoulders broad. Now that he can see him, fully, Hanzo can admit the man is… physically appealing. Toned, obviously world-worn, with a wide back, scattered with freckles and hair.

He has several, several scars lining his body, but more intriguing is the unwieldy place where his metal forearm joins flesh at the elbow of his left arm. From this distance and angle, Hanzo can’t see it very well, but the meeting point is twisted with black, vine-like tendrils, escaping part-way up the hunter’s bicep before disappearing into smooth skin. It almost looks like it follows the path of his veins.

Magic. Blood magic. Hanzo suspected before, but it is practically written out for him, now. What could he be using blood magic for?

“Impolite to stare,” McCree says without looking, and Hanzo turns his face away, tightening his jaw further. He hisses softly under his breath and begins rewrapping the wound in his shoulder, gritting his teeth around the sting that the silver left behind.

He thinks back to McCree’s clear interest in his body. Quietly, gears begin turning in his head, but the lycan says nothing, and when they come together once more to eat, no more words are exchanged between them.

Even when they mount again, McCree is uncharacteristically subdued.

Hanzo is glad.

Really.

Chapter Text

Things are strained in a new kind of way the next day.

Jesse reckons they’re gonna be getting somewhere they can stop by the end of travel today, if they don’t make too many stops. He thinks that’ll make Uda less prone to bein’ hateful.

Despite the fact that the man had spent most of his time in the woods, Jesse had it pretty pinned that the man had slept in the castle itself up on that hill, so he was probably used to a bed. Why sleep on the ground if you got somethin’ soft?

They don’t talk much. Jesse’s feeling subdued since the day before, in a way he doesn’t really understand; it’s not like Uda was his friend by any stretch of the imagination, so it shouldn’t matter that he didn’t consider them anything beyond a captive and a captor. That is, technically, what they were. And not just technically; that was the general vibe between them, anyway, just in all their interactions. Jesse had the power, despite not being the one that shifted into a 7-foot white wolf, and both of them knew it.

Still, he didn’t like the way Uda didn’t even respond to his barely there presses for conversation. Didn’t snipe back or anything, just ignored him.

So they rode and it was quiet.

Jesse let himself settle into the silence, used to it, though usually when things are this hard-line quiet it’s because he’s alone. He lets himself get lullabied by the sound of Blackwatch’s hooves beating a rhythm opposite of Uda’s mule. The heavy footsteps against the mud are only punctuated by the occasional cry of a bird in the surrounding forest, and Jesse slumps in his saddle, leaning back in it and blowing a bored breath from between his lips.

Uda twitches minisculely, but otherwise doesn’t react. Jesse sighs again and fiddles with the hilt of his gun as they ride.

The day is long and boring, and Uda doesn’t even complain about getting hungry this time, though Jesse knows that his stomach is gnawing at him, being a lycan and healing silver wounds. They stop twice to exchange food, stretch, and not say anything to each other.

At their last stop, Jesse ties Uda’s wrists together; enough slack to drink his water and hold his reins, but tight enough to restrict much movement beyond that. Uda glares at Jesse’s chest and doesn’t ask why, and, feeling petty, McCree doesn’t offer the information in response. He doesn’t help Uda onto his mule, either, and Uda grits his sharp canines with the effort it takes him, but still says nothing. Jesse watches him, eyes narrow.

If that’s how it’s gotta be.

They ride for another couple of hours, and Jesse is contemplating throwing some string of words at Uda until it sticks and makes him react. A compliment, or a flirtation, or anything (however false or honest it was) to get him to soften up a little, though nothing had really worked before.

Of course, it’s at this moment that Uda, his mule, and Blackwatch all collectively stiffen up. Jesse blinks, feeling his mare shift uneasily under him even as she continues walking, but the other man pulls his mule to a stop, his head lifted and dark eyes narrowed. Jesse obligingly guides Blackwatch to halt, as well, frowning at Uda curiously.

Jesse watches his jaw clench and tighten, working like he’s grinding his teeth. The hunter clears his throat, figuring speaking would break the careful truce they’ve been holding. Uda glances at him for the first time all day, nostrils flaring a little as he inhales.

“Smoke,” he growls after a moment, looking irritated that he even has to say anything. Jesse’s frown deepens.

“Could just be a campsite up ahead,” Jesse says, though his heart sinks with the news. He’s already got a bad feeling about this.

Uda shakes his head, head tipping down now, and his eyes dark in the late afternoon sun. “No. I smell a great deal of wood.” He wrinkles his nose, and Jesse watches as creases spread out across his face like a ripple effect, under his eyes, between his brows, drawing his crow’s feet tight. “And flesh. The flames are still roaring, as well. I can hear them.” His countenance is grim, all the angles of his face caught in shadow. “And not much else.”

“Shit,” Jesse breathes, shifting in his saddle and fiddling with the reins. “Shit.”

Uda’s eyes are on him. “A village. We were going to stop there. That is why you tied my wrists.”

Jesse clamps his teeth together and doesn’t respond to what really isn’t a question, feeling his hopes for a soft bed and good food slipping out of his hands real quick.

Now the dilemma was whether or not to risk heading that way and potentially meeting trouble, or to find a different path. He wets his lips, frowning into space. Their food stores are running somewhat low; he was counting on this village for a restock of supplies. Jesse eats a lot, and Uda eats just as much if not more; Jesse isn’t much for starving people he’s transporting, though that’s gotten him into trouble a couple of times.

Fishing is good in a pinch, but stopping to fish every time they got hungry was impractical and wasted a ton of time, especially if Uda couldn’t help, which… well. He couldn’t. Traveling with a companion makes life easier; traveling with a prisoner makes life a lot harder. This job’d be a lot easier if Uda wanted to go see who this mysterious person was.

Food and potential trouble, or avoiding it and having to delay this trip further, giving Uda more time to kill him?

He looks at Uda, who is staring back at him with that haughty, half-annoyed-half-arrogant expression he always carries. The man impossibly amplifies the look twice over by lifting an eyebrow. “Well?”

“This is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation,” Jesse mutters to himself, rubbing his temple with two fingers and sighing. “Do you hear anything else? Does it sound like whatever happened is still happening?”

Uda sneers. “No. But that does not mean anything.”

“Have I ever mentioned how helpful you are? Because really, you’re a peach,” Jesse snaps, and nudges Blackwatch forward, working his shoulders as the weight of the situation settles there. He can feel Uda staring at his back as he does so, probably glaring. The heat of it sears up Jesse’s back, and he determinedly doesn’t look back, feeling hot in the ears.

“Stop… calling me things,” Uda hisses under his breath, a moment later, and begins walking, too, keeping just ahead of Jesse and facing forward again. Jesse ignores him.

“We’re gonna go check out what happened, see if they were attacked or if it was just… a freak accident. Maybe if we’re lucky, I can… fix the damage and we can keep movin’ with a new village of friends. And if not… well… not like corpses need food and beds.” He lifts a shoulder, shrugging to himself.

Uda peeks at him from his peripherals and says nothing, but Jesse has to wonder if he saw something besides irritation there for a second.

The ride doesn’t go on for much longer before Jesse can smell the smoke, too. He hears the flames soon after, and true to Uda’s word, not much else. It makes him sigh, but nudge Blackwatch forward all the same. He isn’t the type to revel in this kind of thing, but he is an opportunist. Unlucky for the townsfolk; lucky for McCree. Not nothin’ he could do for these people when they’re already dead.

He crests the hill hiding the village from his sight and pauses at the apex, looking down into the valley at the buildings below.

The place is up in flames, as expected. Jesse flicks his eyes across the blaze, squinting through the dark smoke rising up from it. Most of the buildings are burned up, though it doesn’t look like it’s spread through the entire town yet, and maybe like it’s beginning to die down. A quick line with his eyes seems like the source of the fire was a tavern near the center of the village. McCree hisses under his breath; that was probably, at the very least, going to put them in the dirt instead of in beds tonight, unless there’s another hostel or… well. A house they could squat in. He nods to himself, then glances over at Uda as the man trots up beside him. The lycan looks predictably unimpressed with the fire.

“Looks deserted,” McCree says. “Don’t know what coulda done it, though. Coulda been a freak accident, but,” he nods to the tavern, “that’s probably where a lot of the people in town were. If someone was gonna shoot the place up, that’d be where to start.”

Uda looks back at him, and lifts a brow. “Do you have a point with your chatter, or is it as meaningless as everything else that comes out of your mouth?”

Jesse can’t help the smirk that wryly spreads across his lips; most people would have at least attempted to look sad for the clear devastation the place had gone through. Not Uda, though. Of course not. McCree spares a thought at how they’d get along if they weren’t in the situation they were in; probably still not well, but Uda’s coldness was… darkly amusing, if nothing else. Reminds him of someone. “Means that whoever’s might’ve attacked the town might still be here, honey.”

Uda sneers, distaste curling his lip, though he doesn’t even bother correcting Jesse’s pet name. “Ah. A warning. I will be sure to keep an eye out for more guns pointed at me, as opposed to the one gun I always have pointed at me. Perhaps you can have a competition over who can shoot me first.” He bumps his heels into his mule’s sides and starts down the hill, the dark wisps of hair that have managed to escape his topknot trailing behind him.

Goddamn mean ass. Jesse rolls his eyes as he walks Blackwatch up behind him, letting his voice carry down to the other man. “Only get shot if you try to run.”

Uda doesn’t respond, only flexing the ropes around his wrists like he’s testing them. Jesse wonders if he’ll have to make good on that promise.

They ride to the entrance of town before slowing to a trot and then a walk. A sign near the side of the road is dilapidated and kicked over, but a quick (okay, maybe a little longer than quick - this isn’t Jesse’s first language, alright) glance at it announces the village’s name as Risuna. He thinks.

He lets his eyes go back to the path ahead of them, where Uda has stopped and is looking around the town, frowning quietly. These buildings seem somewhat undamaged by the assault, though as they ride past them, no one comes out. Jesse is almost certain he sees a curtain twitch in the corner of his eye, but nothing emerges, and he hums quietly to himself, pausing at Uda’s side once more.

“There are people here,” Uda murmurs, unprompted, to Jesse’s surprise. “Most of them are hiding, but…” He narrows his eyes, then turns his head to look down an alleyway, his head lifting again in the way it does when he smells something. Jesse absolutely doesn’t think it’s kind of funny or endearing in any way to see him so concentrated on sniffing. “Perhaps you were not incorrect in your assumption of an attack. I smell fear. Coming from the center of town… your tavern.”

Jesse inhales, trying to catch the tail end of something like what Uda is smelling, but it’s lost on him. The man clenches his metal hand and nods to himself, frowning down at his saddle horn in contemplation.

He flicks his eyes up and around at their surroundings. A tack shop up on their right, with a place to tie up your steeds, and a water trough, half full. Across from that, there’s a marketplace area; Jesse sees fruit, sacks of rice, fish and dried meat on display, though the shops are abandoned, wares left out in the open and free for the taking while the townsfolk were hiding.

What coulda happened that made everyone so panicky and afraid? What had torn through here?

“Maybe it’ll be best if we grab whatever food we can and bail out before we run into trouble,” he says.

Uda cocks a brow at him. “Oh?” There a mocking in his tone that makes Jesse lift his head and meet eyes with him. “For a man so bound to the good of humankind as to thieve a man from his home to protect ‘innocent’ people, you are quite willing to steal from what are decidedly not corpses. And with so much money on your belt.” Uda tips his head to one side, a loose lock of hair near the front brushing his cheekbone in what is a deceptively innocent looking expression.

McCree stares at him, admittedly a little stricken, though he tries to cover it up with a snort. “Sometimes people ain’t so black and white, sweetheart. Sometimes we gotta do things that ain’t nice.”

Uda’s eyes go from doe-eyed to blazing in an instant. “Oh, so your actions are alright because they are justified, from your point of view. What an interesting opinion to hold.” The imperious tone in his voice broadcasts exactly what he’s implying. You didn’t extend it to me.

Jesse glares into the mean, shark-toothed grin Uda throws him, and tries to get his temper under control. “You wanna eat or not?”

Uda huffs, snapping his eyes away, but the angry smile remaining. “Did not take you for a hypocrite, hunter,” he says, parroting the lighthearted jab Jesse had given him back in the river with a hot glint in his eye.

Jesse stares at him, jaw working as his pride wages war with his right mind in his chest, simmering. Uda isn’t looking at him, his face falling back into that mask of blankness he’d had beside the fire their first night out together. Like he doesn’t care, even if he is asking questions. Like it doesn’t matter what the response is. Jesse doesn’t like the look; it was almost better when he was sneering and snarling. At least then Uda is giving him something.

He’s plotting somethin’, the smart part of McCree’s mind tells him. He’s looking to distract you. You know that.

Jesse scowls. “Maybe you don’t know me that well, then, Uda.”

The other man turns back to give him a once-over, curling his lip. Jesse stiffens under the inspection. “Clearly.”

Ugh. Jesse climbs off the horse and lets her reins fall; Blackwatch trots over to the trough of water in a blink. He immediately walks over to Uda, grabbing his mule’s reins before the other man can think to bolt. “Off.”

Uda sneers but obligingly climbs off, thumping down beside McCree with a grunt and glaring up at him. “Planning on making me steal with you?”

“Yep,” McCree replies. He guides the mule over to Blackwatch and lets him begin drinking as well. Then he turns and pulls Uda toward the marketplace by the rope between his wrists, his eyes narrowed. “You’re on perishable duty. Pick out whatever you like.”

Uda pulls to an instant stop; Jesse is forced to stop short as well, slapped with the reminder that Uda was mostly only humoring him when it came to being forced into any one direction. Humoring him, or, well. Obliging him, more like. The man was solid as a building; McCree couldn’t force him anywhere physically.

Something about that sends Jesse’s fingers tingling, but he clamps down on it with a rise of annoyance as Uda gives him an incredulous look, brows lifting. “You are letting me pick out… whichever fruit… I want?” He stares for a moment. Jesse blinks, a little offput by the sudden sincere shining in Uda’s brown eyes.

Then Uda bows, his dark bangs falling into his face, sweeping his arms out exaggeratedly and pitching his voice up. “You honor me. How will I ever repay you for this kindness… my firstborn son? Will that do?”

Jesse wants to be mad, and he kind of is, but at this point Uda being a loudmouthed ass all the time is kind of becoming helplessly hilarious, in the way spending enough time around a cat becomes hilarious. There’s no pleasing him. He’s annoying as hell and mean-spirited and doesn’t wanna take any kindness as kindness. Jesse wants to throttle him and poke fun at him to make him puff up more at the same time. “You are such a fuckin’ asshole,” he says, but it comes out sounding more amused than he means for it to. Uda bristles under the insult and raises from his bow. Somehow, it looks like his eyebrows are bushing up with indignation, and Jesse snickers aloud at him now; there’s the mean creeping in. “Just pick up some food, wolf. Pick out the shit you don’t like, for all I care.”

Uda glares at him for another few moments before jerking his wrist-rope out of McCree’s hands. He doesn’t make eye contact before marching over to the food, snatching up a bag of rice. Jesse watches him a minute longer than he needs to as he himself heads toward the meat and hardtack.

Uda hesitates with the bag, putting a few persimmons and pears inside on top of the rice. Jesse makes sure to look like he isn’t paying attention as he catches Uda flash him a glance. When he sees Jesse (presumably) isn’t looking, he continues walking through the fruit. After a moment of contemplation, Uda proceeds to put his hand on a peach. He then uses that peach to push an entire row of what must be 20 peaches into the bag. Then he puts that peach back on the shelf. A self-satisfied expression gently curls his mouth.

Jesse feels his eyes bulge and quickly snaps his head away, ill-timed laughter and warmth bubbling up in his chest before he chokes it down.

So much for his noble ideals about stealing.

Jesse is so focused on struggling not to laugh at him he almost doesn’t notice when there are suddenly footsteps coming down the alleyway Uda had pointed out earlier.

But he does, jamming the dried meat into his own rice-bag and and turning quickly with it behind his back. Uda immediately drops his own food and any emotion that was on his face disappears in an instant as he comes over to Jesse, hunching, eyes down. The hunter cocks a brow at the behavior; Uda acts like he’s scared, but Jesse’s not an idiot.

He squints, but doesn’t have the time to think about it when the footsteps make themselves more apparent on the dirt path between the shop and the home beside it, resulting in what looks like a young man and an older woman bursting into the street he and Uda are on.

They are speaking too quickly for Jesse to follow it much. He hears and understands the basic words for enemies (to be fair, he’s heard that one a lot), fire, escape. Otherwise he can’t really track it, and he takes a step back, trying to fade into the marketplace and disappear from view.

But before he can, Uda steps forward, two steps, then four, slipping from Jesse’s snatching hand easily, his sandals slapping too-loud on the dirt as he approaches them. He keeps his hunched posture, moving quickly, and the two people immediately notice him and cry out.

Uda says something to them frantically, turning back Jesse’s way and gesturing as expansively as his confines allow. He speaks, wild, echoing in the relative quiet of the city, and steps closer even as the man quickly guides the woman behind him, defensiveness in his posture. The man is bleeding from the side of his neck, his dark eyes flicking between Uda’s before looking up and past him to where Jesse has given up hiding.

Gritting his teeth, Jesse’s mind immediately picks up on what Uda’s doing, and he comes after the lycan quickly, but too late, of course.

The man barks at him, stop, an easy translation, and Jesse halts his approach. Frustration boils in his blood as Uda tries to step closer to the man, but he snaps the same command at Uda, too, looking between them with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“Kare ga anata o yūkai shita to iimasu ka?” The man asks Uda, who clutches at his own side (where there is emphatically no wound) and replies with a soft hai. The man works his jaw, looking McCree up and down as the hunter desperately tries to piece together what he said. “Kare wa hantā no gurūpu ni iru no?”

“Hantā?” Uda repeats, his eyes widening.

Now that word sounds familiar. Jesse takes another step and then freezes as the man immediately shouts at him again. “Er… Sumimasen, I think there’s just been a misunderstanding,” he tries, lifting his hands and trying on his best polite voice.

But before anyone can say anything else, the woman squeaks out something behind the two Japanese men, pointing at Uda’s hand and then to his face. She grabs her companion’s shoulder and gives him a small shake. “Mākingu.” Jesse blinks. Marking.

Uda immediately draws up, stepping back once. He widens his eyes more, imploring in a way Jesse’s never seen him, and lifts his hands up in surrender and pleading. “Tada no irezumi,” he replies, voice strained at once, and then, “Please. Help me,” a phrase Jesse has heard far too many times to not know right off the bat.

But all Uda’s movements serve to do is make his sleeves fall lower down his arm, revealing the full expanse of the swirling golden marking that twists and turns its way down his forearm. Uda quickly readjusts with a hiss, stepping back again and jerking his sleeves up, but it’s too late.

The man stares at him, gaze tracking the golden swoops Uda has under his eyes, before shielding the woman with him and pressing them both backward. Back into the alley. He flicks his eyes to Jesse again, and then back to Uda, his face hard as any sympathy for Uda quickly shutters away. “No. You are what they were looking for. Demon.”

Jesse blinks at the slapped expression Uda briefly sports. Something about him seems to recoil, his nails biting into his palms as he takes another step backwards.

Then, abruptly, his face sharpens, the shadows deepening as Uda bends his head. All innocence falls off of him like an ill-fitting cape of glass, tumbling to the ground and shattering as he draws himself to his full height and, impossibly, seems to grow even beyond that. “You dare,” he hisses, in a voice impossibly deep, the words easily recognizable once more, “call me such a thing?”

Jesse watches, alarm building in his chest, as all at once the man’s marking seems to gleam, light billowing under the skin like smoke, fanning into the dim gold and getting hotter, whiter. Uda’s body visibly flexes, jaw gritted tight and lips curling back to reveal sharp teeth. The hunter immediately runs forward toward him, drawing his pistol even as his mind whirls. This shouldn’t be possible. He can’t change unless it’s the full moon, otherwise he would’ve already.

Uda’s eyes flicker into life, a glow of molten gold in the brown, harking back to a quiet offer to let Jesse go underneath the moon. He snarls, takes a step forward.

He lifts the rope holding his wrists together and bites into it, snapping it in half with a quick flex of his arms. Jesse gapes.

The man and woman immediately begin backing down the alley the way they’d come, the man speaking in hushed, frantic words and the woman noiselessly staring at Uda over her companion’s shoulder. Before Jesse can reach him, the lycan moves forward, starting after them, and the woman lets out a shriek before turning fully around and bolting.

Uda begins to snarl again, watching as the man pulls out a small dagger from his belt as if to ward him off. He moves like a sick man, lurching and hunched, rumbling, and he reaches out and effortlessly slaps the knife from the man’s hand.

Then he stumbles, losing his balance and banging into the shop making up the left side of the alleyway. A low noise comes out of him, like pain, as he attempts to right himself again.

The man gives him another look before turning and running after the woman, yelling something about the tavern that Jesse doesn’t take the time to translate because he is currently tackling Uda to the ground.

The lycan twists and hisses under him, but something is wrong. When McCree manages to pin the other man’s wrists down and try to get a grab on his gun to make a threat, Uda goes limp underneath him, panting quietly and closing his eyes. Jesse pauses, gun still lowered, staring down at him as his anger simmers down into confusion.

The marking flickers out like a flame under a boot. The fangs of his canines recede to smaller points. He turns his head to hack, the way someone does when their throat is clogged; it sounds wet, and painful. When he opens his eyes to glare up at McCree again, the gold has melted back into a ring around his iris. After a moment, that, too, disappears.

And just the man remains.

Uda gives a soft huff as he catches his breath again; Jesse looks down into contracted, almost cat-like pupils that slowly dilate back to normal. The two of them look at each other. Uda continues not fighting him, but does tip his head down a little, staring up at Jesse from beneath his dark eyelashes, expression abruptly exhausted. He flicks his eyes to where Peacekeeper is within easy reach for the hunter at Uda’s hip, then looks back up at him, eyes half-lidded and panting slowing down.

There is a breath when they both seem to realize the position they’re in.

In a rare turn of events, Uda is the one to break the silence.

“Remove yourself.”

Jesse snaps back to himself. “What the hell was that?”

Uda’s tired expression grows more weary and more annoyed at the same time. “Get off of me.”

“Not until you explain what the fuck that just was,” Jesse snarls back, the anger and alarm he’d felt before rising back up fast now that Uda is apparently fine enough to be angry in return. “You know, I was already pissed you were gonna try to pawn me off as some degenerate who snatches random people off the road, but then you try to kill the guy—”

“Every time you speak you grow more insufferable,” Uda interrupts, his voice rasping in a way it normally doesn’t. “I was not going to kill anyone!”

“It sure as fuck looked like it!” McCree snaps back, squeezing Uda’s wrists just enough to make him growl. “What was that? How were you able to— the type-a lycan you are shouldn’t be able to shift like that, even partially.”

Uda looks up at him, and then smiles, something different than the mean smile he’s been giving McCree this entire time. It ain’t friendly, but there’s something to it that sends shivers up Jesse’s spine. Like watching something hateful prove why it continues to survive. “You have never met anything like me. You cannot make predictions about me and you should stop trying. Whatever little code you keep in your head…” He leans up, as close to Jesse’s face as he can get with Jesse still pinning him down. For just a moment, there is a spark of white gold ringing his irises, like a solar eclipse. “I am beyond it.”

Jesse stares down at him, feeling his heartrate spike. He swallows, mind racing as he tries to make logic of the situation. It didn’t make sense. Jesse was an expert in werewolves; he’d had to be, once upon a time. There were all types, but everything pointed to Uda being a moonshifter. If he’d been one of the kinds that could change whenever they wanted, he’d have been a hell of a lot more of a hassle to capture, and also Jesse would’ve been a hell of a lot more dead. Uda would’ve killed him in that inn room.

Uda slumps back down to the ground with a soft groan and bucks his hips a little, growling. “Now get off of me. I have no doubt you will continue to lecture me later. We need to get out of here.”

Jesse blinks, pulled from his thoughts. “You eager to leave with me?”

Uda deadpans. “Did you not hear the peasant? There are, or were, other hunters here. They are looking for me, as you predicted. I suppose congratulations are in order. You were right about being a larger nuisance in my life than you initially told me.”

A sigh slips from McCree’s mouth as he finally leans back and lets Uda’s wrists go, scowling down at him for a moment more. “Don’t think I won’t remember the shit you just tried to pull. Next time I’m tying you to the horse.”

Uda scoffs. “I will at least be in better company, then.”

After another moment, Jesse finally climbs off. Uda watches him do so before turning onto all fours and pushing himself off the ground, using the wall to gain his footing. For all his bolster and anger, whatever he’d done had knocked the wind out of him a little. Jesse inspects him silently, but the man doesn’t hesitate in meeting his eyes when he turns again, narrowed and defiant, daring him to say something.

Then his eyes flick past McCree, widen. His mouth opens.

And it’s at that moment that a shadow falls over the both of them.

Jesse twists quick, his gun out in an instant, but before he can even breathe there’s a blade at his throat. He freezes, quickly tilting his head back and away, but the blade presses close to his skin, just shy of cutting, and he stops moving real quick after that.

Uda lets out a sound of alarm as it happens, but quickly freezes as well as something clicks in the air; the sound of a gun being cocked.

“Hands off the gun,” purrs a feminine, definitely-not-Japanese voice, the one holding the blade.

Jesse hisses, and lifts his hands, clearing his throat as he peers down his nose at his attacker.

The woman is small, dark-haired and brown-skinned. Her odd-colored eyes are rimmed in kohl. Her expression is one of smug boredness, like attacking world-class hunters in dark alleyways is something she does all the time. She inspects her long, sharp nails while holding the dagger against his neck.

“Good boy,” she praises, after a moment of pretending not to notice him following her instructions. “Clever and smart. We should teach him some tricks.”

And then, from behind him and directly behind Hanzo comes a slow, throaty voice that has McCree biting back a sigh.

“Be nice, Sombra,” says Gabriel, his voice just light enough that Jesse can tell he’s enjoying himself far too much. “We’re just here to talk.”

“Clearly,” Jesse spits back, turning slightly and wincing as Sombra follows him with her weapon as he does so. He gets all the way around, though, and looks into the face of the man that had been a constant shadow on his back since he was seventeen years old. He smirks, narrowing his eyes at him. “You look like shit, Gabe.”

Gabe smiles back at him, all pleasant, though the dried blood still hanging around in his goatee kind of offsets the effect. His black-and-red longcoat and high collar just scream danger. Like lookin’ at a snake on legs. The fangs he’s sporting are put on display on purpose, though McCree had long gotten used to the shock factor they held for lots of people. “I’m not the one carting around a stray, Jesse.”

Jesse cocks a brow. “Really? Who’s this? My replacement?” He tips his head just enough to gesture to Sombra, who snorts beside him.

“Replacement implies I’m a quick fix. I’m an improvement, Jesse,” and the cutesy way he says his name rubs him wrong. No one had called him Jesse besides Ana in what must’ve been a decade.

He grits his teeth and flicks his eyes to Uda, who is stock still, glaring over at McCree with the universal expression of this is all your fault.

Gabe waves one of his blunderbusses in a careless kind of gesture, though the other is carefully held on Uda’s back. “You mistake strays for associates. And from what I’ve seen, the two of you are far from associates. Right, wolfboy?” He nudges Uda with the gun; Uda immediately responds with a snarl, but doesn’t retaliate, obviously having felt the edge of the gun. If he was anything like McCree, even if he couldn’t tell what kind of gun it was, nothing with a barrel that big was gonna feel friendly in the back. The stare he’s giving McCree intensifies as Gabe lets out a chuckle that carries into his words.

“Though with you on top of him here in this alleyway, I almost had to double check.”

Uda snorts, though what he finds amusing could be anything. Jesse just feels a stab of annoyance.

“What do you want, Gabe? Surely not to sit here and make nice and pretend you’re just stoppin’ to say hello when you’ve got a knife at my throat. Didn’t think even you were that dramatic.”

“You underestimate me,” Gabe replies easily, though his smile does fade away into his resting intimidation face. “But alright, fine. You don’t wanna catch up. We just like your guy here and were wondering how much you’d take for him.”

Jesse hardens his jaw, narrowing his eyes as his mind races. “Why?” He determinedly does not look at Uda, though he can feel the lycan’s gaze on him like a brand being burned between his eyes. Don’t worry, sunshine, he wants to say, but that’d probably get him killed faster by the wolf than by the knife.

Gabe’s brow cocks. “... Really? Why?” He tips his head to one side; Sombra shifts on his left. “Does it really matter why? We see he’s being a pain in your ass… we think we could use him in a way we couldn’t use him if you cart him off and make him into a corpse.”

Mhm. Jesse sneers. “Yeah, that sounds like you. Doin’ something just out of the kindness of your heart. Save a man from death from the big bad hunter. Startin’ to think you have a complex, Gabe.” Something in Gabe’s face darkens then, but Jesse doesn’t relent. “Do you expect me to believe that horse shit? Me, of all people?”

Gabe laughs again, though it’s not a happy sound. Like stone falling off a cliff face. “We’re just trying to get to a place where we both leave here happy, Jesse. You’re a lot richer and we get a potential recruit.” His eyes fall to Uda’s back and hover, distant and searching for a moment. “He’s worth more than a death on his knees.”

Uda stiffens, turning his head to glare at Gabe, curling his lip back. Jesse leaps on it.

“Worth more?”

Gabe looks up at him again, the red hint behind his eyes more prominent in the darkness of the alley. “How much are they paying you?”

Jesse purses his lips. “I’m not selling him to you.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll double it. No questions asked.”

Jesse blinks. Gabe is dead serious, and that makes unease trickle down Jesse’s spine like an icicle melting.

Who is this lycan? How could he possibly be worth this much money to a man like Reyes?

“He’s not your typical lycan,” Jesse says, trying to dig out more information, trying to pull something from his former mentor, desperate for any kind of answers regarding Uda that he doesn’t know, which is… a lot. “He’s special. You think I’m the kind of man that would mindlessly cart a creature off to get slaughtered if I wasn’t absolutely sure he deserved it?” He lets his eyes fall from Gabe’s to Uda’s. The man has turned back and is staring at him intently, blazing, golden as the sun. “... I’m not takin’ him to be killed. I’ve never met anything like him.”

Uda blinks, drawing up a little, his face smoothing over.

Jesse looks back up at Gabe. “He’s beyond whatever price you’re offering. I wouldn’t sell him to you for my arm back.”

It’s Sombra that speaks. “Yeesh, I get that a ‘Shimada’ is special and all, but is this really—”

In an instant, Uda is on the ground, and in one smooth motion, he pulls a dagger from his robes and jams it into Gabe, in the soft bit of cloth exposed just on his inner thigh. Jesse, in a wild moment of slow motion realization, notices that it’s the same knife Uda had slapped out of the man’s hand from earlier. He must’ve picked it up when he was tackled without me noticing. Hysterically, Jesse can’t help but be absolutely impressed, even as he instantly leans back out of the knifeblade’s range as quickly as he can. The blade slides down the side of his neck instead, but not across the front, and he hisses through the firebrand as he uses his metal arm to slam into Sombra’s chest and drive her back.

Gabe lets out a roar as he briefly falters from the pain, but swings up his guns again to fire at Uda’s back. Uda is quick, though, so quick, and in the brief glimpses Jesse gets of him as he fights off Sombra, he can see he’s using that glowing golden energy once more to move faster than a man should be able to, dodging around Gabe’s firing until he can knock one of the guns from Gabe’s arms and send it skittering across the ground.

Just like that, Uda is bursting past him, scampering to Jesse’s end of the alley. He snatches the blunderbuss up and keeps running. Jesse lands one more solid blow to Sombra’s gut that knocks the air from her and sends her to the ground, and then he’s turning and running after Uda, bolting for their steeds.

Jesse makes a split second decision and beelines for the marketplace first, snatching up the closer bag of food they’d managed to gather; Uda’s.

Gabe is already coming out of the alleyway after them, his one blunderbuss lifted and obviously aiming to fire at one of their animals.

Jesse sees Uda desperately trying to climb onto his mule, but all at once it seems he is clumsy and jittery, trying to hold the gun and mount at the same time. He is shaking.

There’s no time for this. He runs over and hefts Uda up onto the mule, lets him keep the gun. The man slumps in his saddle, but he does have the sense of mind to dig his heels into the mule’s sides, and with a hard slap by Jesse’s metal hand, the mule takes off down the street out of town, braying angrily.

Jesse hefts himself up onto Blackwatch and slings the food into her saddlebag, lifting his own reins to beat a hasty retreat.

And then there is a burning, stinging pain in the right part of his chest. Jesse lets out a shout, eyes buzzing with the sudden jolt of fire, and when he looks down, there’s an arrow pushing through just under his collarbone. A sniper.

But there’s no time, there’s no time. He slaps Blackwatch’s reins down and gallops after Uda, his brain screaming with both the knife wound in his neck and now this, now this, it’s almost laughable. He’s beginning to regret taking this job.

He laughs, hears an arrow whizz past his ear, and laughs some more, bending low over his mare’s back and running and running and running until he’s running with Uda, until he’s running further, until it feels like he’ll never stop running, just him, and the wind, and this wolf at his back.

And not just any wolf.

A Shimada wolf.

Chapter Text

Hanzo is not certain how much time passes before he is able to consider himself 100% coherent.

He just rides, rides as fast and as far as he can, twisting down the path away from Risuna and leaning low over Matsukaze’s spotted back. His vision is blurry and his grip is too shaky to probably be comfortable to his steed, but he cannot bring himself to care in this moment. The mule makes no outward signs of anything showing its in pain, just keeps running, blissfully listening to Hanzo as he mindlessly directs him down any particular path when they reach a fork in the road.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he realizes he hears another set of hooves following him; a blurry look back reveals a large, dark blur, only distinctive from the whites of her eyes. Blackwatch. McCree is slumped over her back, face not visible, and appears to be holding on purely by instinct. Hanzo would perhaps spare a thought for him if he could think. As it is, he simply turns back around and concentrates on not vomiting.

Trees fly by in whorls of green and yellow and pink. It is like being thrown from the top of some high place, only he never stops falling. It’s disorienting, and he closes his eyes for a long while, losing himself in the sound of hooves hitting the ground and the rush of wind in his hair. He is so exhausted.

When he finally stops galloping, it is only because Matsukaze has started to heave, and he cannot calm himself down properly while riding on a panicking animal, and because his frantic, directionless path has led them to a small lake, surrounded by trees.

The mule slows to a canter, and then to a bone-shaking trot that very nearly makes Hanzo reconsider spilling his innards all over the ground, before stopping completely. Hanzo tips sideways and trips, collapsing to the ground with a groan. The blunderbuss, forgotten, clatters beside him.

Matsukaze abandons him for the water, his flanks shaking with exertion, and Hanzo watches him go from the dirt. He tries to compose himself, string together any kind of feeling besides trepidity.

Close behind, Blackwatch remains, and she gallops up close before rattling to a slightly less graceful stop. The hunter astride her does not so much dismount as slip off, and he falls from Blackwatch without even catching himself as Hanzo had. Instead he lands hard on his side and groans, attempting to roll on his back before catching himself with a gasp.

After a moment of mindless staring, Hanzo finally blinks and realizes what is wrong.

There is an arrow in McCree’s chest. Hanzo blankly looks at the arrowhead gleaming in the pale autumn sunlight.

He was shot from behind. A final parting gift from their attackers.

McCree’s face is desaturated and grey, the color sucked from his brown skin. He is gasping around shuddering breaths, eyes squinched tight.

Hanzo pushes himself to his hands and knees after a moment. He looks across at McCree for another moment, his new angle showing that McCree’s head is halfway in mud (drenching that side of his beard) and halfway cradled on his smashed hat. He looks bad. The front of his leather longcoat is slick with blood.

Hanzo swallows and reaches across the dirt.

He grabs the blunderbuss and drags it toward him. With a great amount of willpower, he pulls himself to his feet, stumbling only once as he moves over to McCree.

The hunter’s eyes are still squeezed shut, but as Hanzo’s shadow passes over his face, he opens one up to peer up at him, some kind of exasperated expression flitting over his moue. Hanzo stares down coldly, then levels the blunderbuss, aiming it directly at the scowl.

“In thanks… for healing my wounds… I will make your death swift,” Hanzo manages, his throat rasping like stone on metal. He has spoken more in the past two days than he had in the 5 years prior to meeting McCree, it seems. His voice still has not caught up; thankfully, it will not need to for much longer.

Something rusty crawls from McCree’s throat; after a moment of nauseated confusion, Hanzo recognizes it as a laugh. If one could call it that.

“Ah, shit,” gasps McCree, and closes his eye again, letting his head slump further onto the hat. “And it ain’t— it ain’t even your arrow, huh, Uda? Bet you’re—” he groans, “— right mad about that.” He rattles a breath, then opens his eye again, peering up at him once more. “Or should I— should I call you Shimada?”

Hanzo’s teeth grit, and he forces the blunderbuss closer, anger giving him the adrenaline he needs to not shake too badly from exhaustion. “Those are poor last words,” he snarls.

“Mmm,” the hunter replies, and shakily looks up to meet his gaze. He turns his head so he can open both eyes, a lighter brown than Hanzo realized. Paler when not hidden under the brim of his hat. Clouds are rolling in overhead, casting the area around them in a soft shadow.

There is no light to impede McCree’s stare. Hanzo stills in the intensity of it, from this dying man. Nothing but a nuisance, an irritant. He looks small in a way he has not before, but he somehow still draws the eye. He is dying, but not dead. Hanzo curls his lip.

McCree gives another heaving breath and reaches up to touch the arrow poking from his body. He winces; Hanzo’s teeth flash in disgust at his idiocy. Of course it would hurt if you touched it. Still, McCree doesn’t move his hand, simply pressing his fingers into the space around the jutting shaft of the arrow with a trembling hand, the stretched before collapsing back into the dirt. “If it’d been you, you woulda killed me faster. ‘Cording to the sources… you killed people quick. Only one arrow… two at most… real efficient…” His chest moves painfully under his attire, and now Hanzo notices the undershirt, yellowed from use, is now blooming red underneath his waistcoat, up toward his throat.

Hanzo frowns at him, and McCree sighs, closes his eyes. “If it’s gotta be someone… might as well be you. Better’n Reyes.” His words are becoming more slurred, harder to distinguish. “Figures it’d be you.”

Hanzo’s mind races as he looks down at the hunter. So easy to kill. He just had to pull the trigger.

Only now, in his blurry mind, does the concept of curiosity curl around his brain like a forgotten friend. It stumbles in and forces its way into the doorframe in a manner disturbingly similar to how he’d imagine the hunter might stumble into a place; loud, announcing its presence, impossible to ignore. Who wanted me, and why?

It’s not exactly the first time he’d considered the questions, but before, he’d been so focused on simply getting away from the hunter that they’d been more minor concerns. It didn’t matter who or what, just that they wanted him dead, certainly. Wanted him away from the castle, away from his home, away from his self-imposed prison.

But he holds the power now, suddenly. Not his arrow, not his shot, but he’s the one with the gun that can actually aim right now. He grinds his teeth together angrily as choices battle in his head. He knows where to go. He could go himself. But what would await him there? And why?

He remembers the man’s flippant responses and easy answers from beside the campfire only nights before. He must know more. He must.

“Who is waiting for me in Yamamoie?” he snarls, pressing the barrel of the gun into the hunter’s chest. “Tell me what you know!”

McCree blinks blurrily up at him, his breaths getting more shallow. It seems, somehow, the blood loss is getting worse now that they have stopped moving. Hanzo can see a small smear of it get rubbed across the dirt as the hunter pulls his elbow through it, writhing in pain on the ground. Weaker and weaker.

And still. “Dunno,” says the man, slurring. Impudent until the very end, it seemed. He blinks a few more times, finds it in him to focus briefly on Hanzo’s face. The wolf glares down into swimming eyes. “Didn’t lie to you.”

Hanzo refuses to believe that. “You know more than you are saying!”

The hunter’s eyes close again and he makes a soft noise of affirmation. Hanzo waits, but he says nothing else.

Rage builds to a choking point in Hanzo’s throat. “Speak!”

A rumbling noise, another could-be-laugh if you asked a corpse. “Woof.”

Hanzo could roar. How was he being inconvenient even on the brink of death? He wants to press his fangs against the hunter’s throat, remind him that he should be frightened instead of laughing in the face of a man like him. But he is too exhausted to pull at the dregs of his power any more today. Perhaps any more for some time.

He is too tired to even attempt it, and that is frightening.

He flicks his eyes up and away from the hunter, glancing around and flexing his hand over the barrel of the blunderbuss. What had the hunter called him? Gabe.

A name that was so blatantly a story. His birthname wasn’t Gabe, surely, but that was the name McCree had given him. It’s easy to latch onto this for a minute, give his mind something to focus on while his hindbrain struggles with what to do in the moment. McCree knew that man, knew what he was capable of, and he had run away rather than stay and fight.

He flexes around the gun again and looks down at the hunter on the ground. McCree isn’t moving now, just tiny butterfly-flutters of his chest, weak, failing. This man had kidnapped him from his home, marched him on his merry way to be slaughtered. Laughed at him, mocked him, made him ride with his hands bound.

He lifts the blunderbuss, aims it at McCree’s head.

I’m not takin’ him to be killed. I’ve never met anything like him.

Hesitates over words that could so easily be lies but that, deep down, some part of him prays are not.

Hesitates over, logistically, nothing.

Enough. He slips his finger onto the trigger, thinking again of every wrong McCree has done to him. No more. I will return home.

Above, the sky opens up.

One moment, there is only the rustling of the trees in the wind overhead. In the next breath, rain is pouring down in droves. Hanzo flinches under the icy, stinging rush of water and steps back, hissing quietly to himself as his hands tighten over his weapon.

McCree’s face twitches under the sudden onslaught. Otherwise, he doesn’t react.

The rain serves as a wash of cold logic. Hanzo closes his eyes under the shower, feeling his rage cool beneath it like steam curling off a hot stone. Think. Use your head.

It would be so simple, to leave this man to die here in the mud. It wouldn’t even be his fault; no guilt would lay on his conscious for this. He had not been the one to loose the arrow, had not been the one to take up this mission in the first place. It would be the easy choice, to take his angry little mule and turn and go back to Hanamura.

He thinks of the hunters. ‘Gabe’ and Sombra. They clearly knew of him, knew what he was. Who he was. More than McCree did. That made them more dangerous. He and McCree had fought the hunters off, but in the state he is in, he isn’t sure if he could fight them off on his own should they intercept him on his return to the forest. He does not want to be the pawn of some shady organization, trapped for even longer until he found the opportunity to escape.

And what could he do, until those threats were eliminated? While he was weak, and pursued by these people who wanted to use him for unknown purposes?

What was the alternative?

To go with McCree, and see who awaited him at the end of this road?

Hanzo grits his jaw, watching McCree’s faltering chest movements.

The devil you know, or the devil you don’t.

He thinks of the peaches McCree had grabbed on his escape from Risuna. How, potentially, that had been the reason he had been caught by the arrow. Selfish, perhaps. He didn’t want to starve, either.

He thinks of the bandages, snug and tight around his chest. He gave me those wounds in the first place. His leg. He used that wound to his advantage.

He thinks of the gentle touch of that metal hand, grasping him under the water as they hid together. The way he’d allowed Hanzo his space after that, cleaning the fish that would feed them that night. Little nothings, hardly enough to warrant the way he’d ripped Hanzo from his home.

And yet.

He will not acknowledge the thud in his chest, the drumbeat of something he’d forgotten he could feel. Comfort has no place here. Familiarity is a facade.

And yet.

After a long moment, Hanzo reaches down and grabs McCree by the front of his leather jacket with his free hand. The hunter grunts, not conscious but seemingly vaguely aware, and Hanzo ignores him.

There is a small divot in one of the large dirt embankments out by the side of the lake. Hanzo pulls McCree toward it, ripping at the dregs of his strength as he plops the hunter down against the hill. With a huff, he crouches, looking into the dark cave beneath.

An abandoned den of some kind. Roots hang over the hole, concealing it from a cursory glance, but Hanzo had lived in such places like this before. Silent nights under the stars, guilt gnawing at him as he refused himself a night of good rest in the bed of his long-dead family. If anyone had a knack for finding places to hide away in the wilderness, it was he.

He sneers penuriously to himself; how lucky for McCree, to have captured a beast so unique as to have this skill.

He drags the man inside, pulling him out of the rain. After a moment of letting himself adjust in the dark, Hanzo can see the inside of the cave perfectly. The pale light coming in from the entrance is enough to show his eyes that the area is broad enough for the both of them, if a little low-hanging. Cozy, if he were feeling generous, which he was not.

He returns his attention to the hunter, scowling.

Remove the arrow.

Hanzo’s eyes fall to the arrowhead poking from McCree’s shoulder. He sighs, trying to allow the calmness of the rain to soothe him from his anger once more, focusing on the droning noise of it beating against the outside of the shelter.

At least it went all the way through. If it had not, there would not be much Hanzo could do for the man that could not also potentially kill him more quickly. He’s had to deal with such wounds on himself… they were… excruciating.

As it is, Hanzo grabs McCree’s arm and reaches into his sleeve, searching for the knife he remembers the man kept strapped there. True to form, there’s the blade — the same one used to attack him on their first night. The wolf looks down at it for a moment, reminiscing darkly, before glancing up at the hunter’s face.

McCree doesn’t react. That, more than anything, tells Hanzo how injured he really is. He would never have allowed Hanzo to take a weapon from him unless he was truly incapable of stopping him.

The idea of how easy it would be to kill him flashes in Hanzo’s mind again. Right across the throat. Hanzo eyes his scruffy neck, the bristles of brown stubble. The scar that he himself had left there flitting down the side, dipping into his collar.

He looks so fragile, now. He is fragile. Just a man.

Hanzo pushes it away, instead pressing the edge of the blade against the wooden shaft of the arrow and pressing his thumb to the other side. After a moment of pressure, the blade cuts through — though not without also slicing Hanzo’s thumb in the process.

The minor wound is nothing. He’s done it so many times before, the sting is barely present, only enough to make him stick the thumb in his mouth for a moment as he inspects the cut and sets aside the arrowhead. Messy, splintered wood stares back at him.

Hanzo dutifully carves into the arrow until the tip is blunted, as smooth as he can make it.

There is a brief trip back into the rain as Hanzo searches out Blackwatch, finding her standing in the shelter of a dying tree near the lake. Matsukaze stands beside her, his ears down and eyes heavy with exhaustion.

Hanzo quietly shushes the animal as he passes, instead reaching up into Blackwatch’s saddlebag and digging around. The mare seems so tired she doesn’t even fight with him over it; the most he gets from her is a side-eye and a blow of the nostrils before being abruptly ignored.

Hanzo can respect that.

He finally gathers the materials he needs and pulls them into his robe in an attempt to keep them dry. After a moment, he sees something else, and snags it too in a fit of petty revenge.

Then the trek back. Hanzo slips back into the den and up alongside McCree again. The hunter is quiet and near motionless.

He pulls out his things - bandages, food, flint. Shoving a piece of jerky in his mouth, Hanzo chews as he carefully begins peeling as much of McCree’s clothing away as he can. The jacket is punctured, but another slice of the knife has it falling away from the hole. He is wearing a surprising amount of layers — the jacket, the vest, the vest beneath that vest, and finally the white shirt that he’d been reduced to after their fall in the river.

Hanzo can get the first three out of the way with a little work, not even having to cut through most of them. But the shirt clings to McCree’s chest, sticky with blood. In the clearer view, though, Hanzo can see it didn’t puncture his heart, and probably not his lungs, either, or he’d be long dead by now. Good.

The blood loss wasn’t as overbearing as it had appeared. Such was the case with arrow wounds — if you were extremely lucky, and the tip did not pierce your lungs, heart, or any other organs, the arrow itself would make it so the wound did not bleed that egregiously. McCree is most certainly not okay, but he is less not-okay than Hanzo had believed might be the case. If left alone for much longer, McCree would die, but Hanzo had a little time before that.

Relaxing slightly, the wolf places his hand near the edge of the puncture, slipping his thumb into the small hole in McCree’s shirt so he can see where the skin rends. To many, it would be disgusting, but Hanzo has seen it so many times before he only notes the cleanliness of the shot. More than an inch to the right and that would have been it for the hunter.

It’s almost strange, but this is not the time to consider it.

He pulls McCree a little more up and into his lap, grimacing slightly as the action suddenly causes the hunter’s breath to hitch and a grunt to press out of him. Ignoring him as best he can, Hanzo wraps an arm around the man’s torso, using the other to reach back and delicately place his fingers around the shaft of the arrow on the other side. The fletching is meticulous, and black-feathered, with a glossy blue sheen that Hanzo can only see because he’s not entirely human.

He focuses on this as he tightens his grip on the arrow and, in as smooth a motion as he can manage, pulls it out from the back.

McCree’s reaction is instantaneous, immediately flinching and gurgling up a pained roar, and Hanzo tightens his grip into a deadlock. The hunter is conscious again, but incoherent, and makes sounds that could almost count as curses if he was actually saying anything.

Hanzo, deep in his gut, feels a small amount of empathy. The feeling of reopening a partially sealed wound with a rip never felt particularly pleasant. “Shh,” is all he can manage, though, gripping him tightly until his growling is reduced to panting.

He reaches back for the bandages once McCree calms.

Arrow removed. Clean the wound.

The commentary in his head is detached, cursory and quiet. He has not ever treated such a wound on anyone besides—

Trying not to think about it, Hanzo slips his hands down to pull off the man’s shirt completely, now that the arrow is out of the way. To his credit, the hunter is obliging, though it’s probably just instinct at this point. The shirt is discarded with a wet plop.

The wound begins bleeding again, more seriously now. Hanzo turns and grabs the bandages with methodical hands, quickly moving to the entrance of the den and reaching out a small wad until the rain wets it. He returns, pressing against the exit wound and ignoring McCree’s continued whimpers as he wipes blood as best he can. There is little for it, and after a few more moments of his best attempts at cleaning out any lingering pieces of wood or impacted flesh, he drops the wet bundle and presses clean, dry bandages against both entrance and exit wounds.

Only now does he hesitate, frowning to himself. He looks up at McCree’s face, intent on asking if he’s coherent enough to hold the bandages in place while Hanzo wraps him up.

What he finds is the hunter watching him.

Exhausted, burned out brown eyes are leveled half-lidded at Hanzo’s face, flitting with the effort of staying awake, and dazed with the grogginess of pain. His expression is hard to see in the dark, but is oddly vulnerable out from underneath the dark shadow of his hat brim. Maybe he thinks Hanzo cannot see his face, or maybe he is too tired to care, but Hanzo cannot recall ever seeing such… a strange mixture of emotions on him before.

Curiosity. Confusion. Mistrust, somehow paired with the complete reliance that must be given when one is weak.

The effect is disconcerting, and Hanzo stares back, feeling suddenly like he’s on the other side of a gun barrel.

They stare for a moment.

“Your eyes are glowin’,” McCree rasps.

Blinking, Hanzo returns to himself, and scowls.

Wrap the wound.

He reaches down, grabbing McCree’s human arm and hoists it up to cross over his chest. “Hold this in place,” he orders, putting the hunter’s palm over the bandage with a firm push. His fellow silently complies, though his grasp is reedy at best. It doesn’t matter. With a hand free, Hanzo can reach back and grab the remainder of the bandages, silently beginning to wrap McCree up.

Round and round the bandages go, starting at his armpit and going from the cusp of his shoulder up to his neck. He eventually pulls McCree’s hand away from his injury when the hunter shows no signs of letting go once Hanzo reaches it. He has closed his eyes again, lapsing back into silence. That suits Hanzo.

The finished result is far from polished — Hanzo had never been good at wrapping injuries, having only had himself to practice on, and it was strangely more difficult doing it to someone else — but it will do, for now.

Satisfied with his work, Hanzo sits back, resolutely not looking at McCree’s face as he rises and goes back to the entrance of the cave. Practiced hands reach out to the rain, and he scrubs the blood from his palms as best he can, not taking the time to dig under his nails like he’d prefer to.

We will need warmth.

Accomplished as he is, he is not finished yet.

He dries his hands on his obi after a moment’s hesitation. He’s not eager to dirty the clothing he has, no matter how plain it was, but he has little choice.

After another small moment to question his choices and his sanity at the mouth of their hideout, Hanzo turns back and slips inside once more.

He gathers as much of the dried leaves, abandoned branches and scraps of wood as he can from inside the den. Putting them together leaves a small, good-enough pile to burn. Hanzo takes the flint he’d grabbed from McCree’s bag and sets about making a fire.

If he spares a quick, petty thought toward how much more efficient he is at this than the hunter, then no one sees it besides himself.

Fire closer to the entrance, to let the smoke out. Rain covers the majority of the smoke, hiding their location should anyone come searching. Warmth attained.

Hanzo lets out a long, slow breath as he finally eases himself down into a sitting position near the fire.

His muscles thrum under his skin, pounding with overexertion, and there is a comfort in that. A brief catch of memory, of pushing himself to the absolute limit over and over again in his youth. An unwelcome addition in the remembrance of bright brown eyes and a laughing smile, crowing at him from the high branch of a tree he cannot reach himself. Competition had always been something he’d enjoyed, before. The urge to prove himself the victor.

But victory is like ash in his mouth, now. A reminder of his arrogance; a brand on his skin.

Hanzo silently wraps his hand around the yellow marking that winds and twirls up his other arm, and closes his eyes, leaning back against the cave wall.

He cannot sleep. He must be awake for when McCree is coherent enough to respond to his demands.

But he is exhausted. After giving himself one more moment of resting his eyes, he opens them again, looking sideways at the man that now owes him his life.

The hunter has not moved from his slumped resting position. He has his metal arm cradled in his human one, held in his lap, swaddled. His head is tipped down — Hanzo takes another moment to privately ponder how much more vulnerable he looks without his hat — and his cheek is pressed into his uninjured shoulder. His beard is still caked with dirt on one side, and blood has already left its mark on the new bandages, a blotchy spot where the wound is. Blood also smears up along his collarbone and throat, and only now does Hanzo realize he still has his red neckerchief on; loosely held together by a ragged knot, and flipped around backwards, but still on. Hanzo hadn’t realized it was there when he was cleaning the laceration.

The effect looks almost like McCree is wearing a collar. Hanzo lets his eyes linger for a long moment, unsure why the imagery catches his attention so.

But this is the first time he’s really been able to get a good look at the man without the chance of being caught staring.

So he allows it. A learning opportunity.

McCree is a broad, muscular man. A wide chest that slendered into a not-untrim waist, muscular thighs, broad biceps. He is clearly constantly moving, lifting, pulling, riding. The hindbrain in him gives another noise of interest, but Hanzo tightens his jaw and ignores it once more. Freckles line the wide swaths of his body; the expanse of his shoulders, the sides of his neck. He looks like he was a hirsute man, but then his work had left him with injuries that irreparably left him with damaged follicles. There are lines of bare skin through much of the hair, like someone had traced their fingers through it and left nothing behind. There is an urge to fill the empty spaces with his own fingers, but it is a mild one, easily pushed away.

Hanzo can see the marks of his occupation all over his body — scars line almost every inch of his skin. Long, straight lines that could only be knife wounds. Jagged, lopsided red lightning bolts that could not possibly be knife wounds. Burns, an especially prominent one on his ribcage. Strange, twisting injuries that Hanzo cannot decipher the source of.

And of course, the arm.

Hanzo lets his eyes move to the metal contraption once again. In their inn room, the orange glow beneath the black metal had been bright, hard to contain, like it carried fire in it. Now, Hanzo can only see a pulse of auburn, its lambency dulled like he is holding a candle inside rather than a sun. The arm’s connection to the muscle in McCree’s bicep is still strange, unnatural. It seems an odd combination of organic and inorganic, like a knife attached to a tree trunk. The metal stops short where it should, but the odd black veins that crawl up into his skin from the forearm send a sickly intrigued twist down Hanzo’s spine.

Up close, there is nearly no denying the blood magic. It’s almost close enough to smell, to taste — Hanzo can feel it when he looks at it, like little lightning shocks in the air. Whatever magic it was, Hanzo didn’t think he’d ever seen anything quite so potent.

McCree must know very powerful people, indeed.

Despite himself, Hanzo moves closer, casting a quick look up at the hunter’s face.

He is still, eyes closed, breathing unchanged.

Hanzo pauses for another moment before reaching out, putting a hand on the place where metal meets skin.

There is something underneath. Hanzo’s fingers curl around the bicep as he leans closer, trying to understand what he is feeling. A thrum, along the black veins, like a heartbeat, but not. He swallows, a sudden unnerved sweat breaking out on his temple, and lets his grip go lighter. He traces his fingers delicately along the leaf-like threads of magic, feeling them pulse against his fingertips in a steady rhythm, ba-bump, ba-bump.

He lets his fingers carry their way up along the black channels until they meet with the bandages Hanzo himself had just applied.

Clearly there had to be something mighty here, to allow McCree to use this hand as he would a normal hand. Hanzo has seen it in action; he lets his fingers trace back down to the arm itself, careful to avoid the human hand that cradles it as he analytically attempts to touch the spaces between the metal, where the orange was usually bright. It’s warm, warm as skin. The fingers moved just like normal, grabbed and clawed and effortlessly wielded a knife and the reins of a horse.

Hanzo had never seen anything like it. He has seen magic, but nothing like this. Wherever McCree had come from, whoever had given him this… they were like nothing Hanzo had encountered. He lets his fingers trace down to the tips of McCree’s claws, seeing dried blood on the ends now that the fire is giving him more ample light. He used this hand like a tool, not just an appendage. He used it to attack. He must’ve used it against the hunters.

So lost in fascination and curiosity is he that he doesn’t realize McCree’s breath has stopped its steadiness until he is leaned in so close he can feel the heat of McCree’s body.

He freezes, his other senses opening at once in stricken guilt. This close, he can smell the wound, and the grime on the hunter, but more than that, thanks to what he is, he can smell the smoke in his hair from the fire in the city, the faint scent of cloves from his cigar. The wet fabric of his pants. The human blood pulsing at his trachea. Something else.

He can see the scar he left on McCree’s neck, curling up behind his ear and into his long, knotted hair. Healing impressively fast. A birthmark the size of a flower petal.

Gathering the dignity he can manage into a pile, he silently pulls back and retracts his hand before looking up into McCree’s face.

The hunter’s eyes are open again, and wide, now. He looks startled, and Hanzo thinks quickly, trying to find some way to justify himself and coming up with nothing. Nothing he said would explain his curiosity about the arm in any way that wouldn’t lower him in McCree’s eyes, or make him a point of mockery.

He scowls, instead, and turns his back to hide the flush of confused embarrassment that runs up his body. Busying himself with the things he’d grabbed from the saddlebag, he grabs one of the peaches they’d stolen and turns back around, meeting McCree’s eyes as coldly as he can manage before shoving it into his lap.

“Eat,” he snarls.

McCree blinks at him, at the expression on his face, and picks the peach up, bringing it to his mouth with a shaking human hand. Hanzo feels a stab of relief when the hunter obligingly chews his way through the peach, giving him a moment to compose himself as he grabs a fruit for himself, as well.

They are silent, sitting across from each other and lit up in golden firelight. Thunder rumbles outside the den; Hanzo’s pulse attempts to align itself with the storm in a harried bid to return to normalcy.

The devil you know, he reminds himself, staring at McCree. The hunter tosses the pit of his peach into the fire with all the grace of a newborn fawn before slumping back further against the cave wall. The devil you barely know.

After another long moment, McCree’s hazy eyes level up at him again. Hanzo stiffens under the inspection, ready for mocking, for a sneer.

Instead, the hunter’s low voice is considering. “Why ain’t I dead?”

Hanzo blinks, not having expected the immediate question. In a flash, he bristles slightly, provoked into defensiveness. “Would you rather be out in the rain?”

“No,” McCree replies, and the exhaustion in his voice only emphasizes his exasperation.

Battling with his temper, Hanzo takes a deep breath before staring cooly at him. “The arrow injury would have killed you slowly and painfully,” he replies, dodging a little as his mind works.

An apprehensive hum. “Wasn’t the arrow injury I was worried about.”

Hands clench around nothing as he works his jaw, inspecting the hunter’s guarded, uncertain expression. McCree is not an idiot; he knows there will be a price to pay for Hanzo’s kindness. He is waiting. Hanzo holds the gun.

“Who is waiting for me in Yamamoie,” he says, and it isn’t a question.

McCree looks steadily back at him. Hanzo watches his throat work. “I don’t know.”

The wolf picks the knife he’d used to cut the arrow off back up, and stabs it into the ground near his hip, digging his nails into the hilt. “Then tell me what you do know.”

McCree huffs slightly. “You gonna kill me after saving my life, wolf?”

Hanzo flashes his teeth in response, knowing the glow of his eyes paired with it is no small sight. “Your life is not out of the balance yet. If you anger me, I can make your death much slower.” He twists the blade in the dirt. “And more painful.”

There’s another swallow, and McCree lets out a sigh, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall. “Someone who wants you alive. Someone who seemed to care about you getting there safely. They didn't give me a name, Shimada.” And oh, yes. That. The sting of his family’s name. Hanzo lets out a low growl that McCree seems to ignore. “They don’t want you dead. I wasn’t lying. Whoever it is wants you alive.”

“So you really are so willing to go on missions with such little information,” Hanzo snaps, narrowing his eyes in disbelief. “You will just go capture a beast and transport it for unknown purposes.”

McCree pants a wheezy noise. “That’s why I’m the best, sunshine. I don’t ask questions. Though I’m beginnin’ to reconsider my life choices, thanks to you.”

He squints open his eyes, peers across at Hanzo. “I ain’t a monster.” Conviction thrums, surprisingly hard, in his voice. “I’ve made mistakes, in the past. But if I find out I’m wrong, I fix it. You don’t know who I am, not by a long shot. And I don’t know you. You ain’t given me any reason to think you aren’t what they all say about you. You act like I got it all twisted, but…” He closes his eyes again, exhales heavy. “... What do you want, Shimada?”

The words are sobering. Hanzo stares across at the man, trying to puzzle together how his mind is working. He flicks back through their interactions, staring into space as he considers his options.

He could not trust McCree. He is a master hunter; he has been doing this for decades. He could say anything he wanted, and Hanzo could wonder how many other beasts he had said it to before. A man who seemed to think himself the judgement on everyone he captured. How could such a man be believed?

And yet.

And yet.

Irritatingly, his words ring true. Hanzo has given him no reason to believe that he is anything besides the rumors. Conflicting desires pull at him. The safety that was brought when everyone believed he was just a random wolf that had killed the Shimada family. The guilt that accompanied that safety. The people believing he had died noble and good, and had not been twisted into what he had become.

Surprisingly, there is an ache in the pit of his chest. A loneliness he had long thought suppressed beyond rebirth, and yet here it was. No one knew the real story of what had happened. No one besides himself.

So why did someone want him, specifically? Was there some Shimada survivor, who wanted the man that had killed their entire family, to keep him alive to torture him until his dying days? Brief, animal rage rises in him at the thought that someone had escaped, and the bloodlust is only an indicator of how he perhaps deserves such a punishment.

He is a monster. He had chosen his exile because it was all he had deserved. But now, there is no returning to it. Not until these other problems have been dealt with.

Could he deal with the other hunters on his own once he was fully healed?

A gamble. No. They had to be eliminated.

Taking a breath, Hanzo grabs another peach and begins working his way through it. “You have done nothing but throw my life into upheaval,” he growls, pressing his back into the cave wall and looking into his meal. “You have taken me from the home I know and the territory I could defend myself from. I lived in Hanamura’s woods for so many years. Now, there are hunters that know where I live, and that I am injured. They are pursuing me, now. If I attempt to return to Hanamura, they will give chase. I am not fond of you, and you have given me little reason to trust you. However… you have been the only hunter capable of bringing me down, even in my weakened state. And your….” He flashes McCree a side glance. “... relationship with the other hunters seemed to give them pause.”

This is a bitter pill. For all his talk of killing McCree as soon as he had the chance, the introduction of this new threat threw his entire plan out the window. He grits his teeth.

“You told them you would not kill me,” he says carefully, his voice low under the drum of rain. “Easily a lie. But I hold the power now. And you know that.” He meets eyes with McCree — the man is watching him intently. “I could kill you with your own weapon. It would be nothing. I could have let you die without any guilt. Instead, I have chosen to allow you to keep your life. Here is my payment.” He wets his lips, scarcely believes he is about to say what he is saying. “We will continue to Yamamoie, to see what awaits me there. I am no longer your prisoner. No more ropes. I will accompany you everywhere you go; every building, every tavern, every room.” He leans in, dropping his voice with intimidation. “I will be kept safe. You are no longer my captor, but my bodyguard.”

Something in McCree’s eyes flickers there, but he says nothing as Hanzo continues.

“If whoever awaits me in Yamamoie poses a threat, I will respond accordingly. You will get paid for delivering me.” He grinds his teeth, eyes dark. “And then we will deal with the other hunters.”

McCree blinks, clearly surprised at that, and Hanzo bullrushes on.

“I am returning to Hanamura at the end of this. It is where I belong. But I cannot do that while I have hounds at my heels. As repayment for keeping you alive, you will help me make it so they never come after me again. One way or another.”

He puts the peach pit into the fire alongside McCree’s, staring down into the flames. “Then we will part ways. You will never return here. You get paid, I get to return to my life.” He believes it sounds reasonable. Nodding quietly to himself, he looks up into McCree’s eyes once again, gold on brown. “Do we have an agreement?”

McCree looks across at him, his arms held close to his body, his face in stark light out from under his deceptive hat. There is something in his posture; an uncertainty, a mistrust that Hanzo cannot truly fault him for. “Why do you wanna go back to Hanamura so bad?”

Hanzo grits his teeth around a snarling response. If this is going to work, he will have to be more lenient. “... It is my home. I…” Mindlessly, his hand finds his marking again, before he pulls it away immediately upon realizing. “I am a guardian. I did not attack the people in the woods for sport. Someone must watch over the castle, and it must be me.”

“Why?” McCree presses, leaning in, frowning. His eyes had snapped immediately to Hanzo’s movement; he is frustratingly perceptive.

“Because,” Hanzo snaps, ice breaking into his voice, “I am the only one left. It must be me.”

A moment of silence passes between them, and McCree leans back again, dark lashes low over his eyes. “You’re the last Shimada left. It got anything to do with that marking on your skin?”

Hanzo glares at him, hating the flush that creeps up his neck as the hunter’s eyes sweep across the gold he has high on his cheekbones. Not many had ever seen his marking in the state it was in now. Everyone else who had was dead. The exchange is strangely intimate. “Do we have an agreement, hunter?”

The man’s eyes snap back up to his own. He lets out a long, slow exhale, and then holds up two fingers.

“Two conditions.”

Hanzo sneers. “Oh?”

“One. You go get my hat from where I left it.”

Hanzo blinks at him, caught off guard, and especially so when the other man’s mouth twitches into a smirk. He expects a joke, or a followup, but McCree just keeps smiling.

“I mean it.”

After a minute of confusion, Hanzo’s sneer intensifies, but he rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet. “Fine.” Quickly leaving the den, Hanzo ducks his head to avoid the rain, grabbing the hat from the mud outside in a hasty scoop. He doesn’t bother shaking the mud out.

It’s plopped inelegantly on McCree’s lap. The hunter picks it up neatly and sets it closer to the fire, smiling down at it with a disproportionate amount of fondness.

McCree was exceedingly strange.

After giving the hat a little pat, McCree sits back against the cave wall again and holds up his second finger. “Alright. Two. Next time you decide to undress a man, maybe give him a little warning before you crawl in his lap and hold his hand.”

Hanzo stiffens, rage sparking hot under his skin as he immediately whips around on the hunter. “I was not—”

“Call it what you want, sunshine, but you definitely were very much—” he gestures to the area immediately in front of him, “on me. You’re real fascinated by my fancy arm, hm?”

Hanzo’s face feels like it’s on fire. “I could still kill you. I will leave you in this cave to starve and go to Yamamoie on my own. And I am not the only one fascinated.” He twists it around, rising up on his knees to look down at McCree. “As if I have not caught you staring every time you think I am not paying attention. I thought you called yourself a professional, but your interest is anything but analytical, if my instincts are correct.” He leans closer, baring his teeth to show his fangs. “And I have very good instincts.”

Looking very caught off guard, McCree stares up at him, holding his metal arm close to his stomach. Hanzo takes minute satisfaction in the absolutely guilty expression McCree sports before he can cover it up with bluster. Helpless to deny it, Hanzo lets out a huff of laughter, grinning down at him with a mean snarl.

“Hide beneath your hat, hunter, and do not disregard my kindness again,” Hanzo sniffs, turning his back and pulling himself closer to the fire with a huff.

There is another moment of silence before McCree responds, clearing his throat and sniffing his own. “Trust me, I ain’t disregarding nothing,” he murmurs.

Hanzo closes his eyes, ready to doze as best he can while sitting up.

“... Thank you.”

A beat. The wolf blinks open his eyes in surprise, turning his head to look at McCree once more. Only now McCree is the one with his eyes closed, determinedly looking down and away from him.

Deliberation considers making its way into Hanzo’s mind, ready to analyze everything, down to the way he said it.

But exhaustion, for once, wins.

“You are welcome.”

Chapter Text

“Just hold still.”

Jesse whimpers under the hold of the black-cloaked man, struggling to obey even as every instinct he has tells him to lunge. To flee. His body jerks under the tight hold of powerful arms. He feels hatred that doesn’t taste like his own as he looks up at his assailant slash rescuer, trying to piece together what he sees but it’s too dark, it’s so dark. His vision swims with black as he struggles to stay conscious. The man’s eyes glow red.

Blood pools under his arm, ripped open and flayed apart. He can feel the heat leaving him from there; it feels like someone is pulling the life out of him with a rope, shoving something in its place that makes his heart stutter and his head burn. It feels like someone is pouring lava in the place of his bones.

“There’s no guarantee that this will work,” says a second shadow, hovering over the man’s shoulder, a distinctly feminine voice that’s hard with something like resignation. “We have no idea if this is even possible.”

The first voice growls in response, not even flinching when Jesse twists beneath it. “If we do nothing, we’re sentencing him to die. He’s just a kid, Ana.”

Ana’s face is masked in shadow when she replies. “We may be sentencing him to far worse, Gabriel.”

The next few days are an exercise in patience, but the first day is the hardest.

Shimada has inadvertently taken them to a spot that’s secluded and safe, even by McCree’s standards. There’s a small freshwater lake nearby, they have sufficient shelter to stay out of the rain, and they’re far enough off the path to not just get wandered up on. As much as it mildly begrudges him to admit it, Shimada had probably found a better place than Jesse’d have been able to. At least in the state he’d been in.

It looks like even if he hadn’t liked it, though, they’d found their temporary home.

“We will stay here until you can move without injury, and then go to the nearest city,” Shimada tells him; the immediate first response, apparently, upon seeing Jesse jerk awake. Daylight filters in grey through the cave entrance, and Jesse can’t hear rain anymore. Despite the light, though, Shimada’s eyes are still a low-burning gold under the shadow of his eyebrows. Jesse wonders if he’d slept at all. “How long will you take to be mobile?”

The hunter lifts his brows, blinking sleep out of his eyes.

The images from his dream play out behind his gaze, and he has to take a brief moment to wipe them away with his fingers. Gabriel smears away into black streaks behind his eyelids. Shimada doesn’t say anything, and Jesse thanks his lucky stars that the man is taciturn at the best of times.

“What, you never saw a man heal from an arrow wound before? Color me surprised.” He tries to add some levity to his voice; it comes, but it’s weak.

Shimada sneers. He doesn’t comment on the strangeness in Jesse’s voice. Maybe he, too, was suddenly remembering how they were on the same team now, remembering that lashing out wasn’t necessary. “I have never seen you heal from an arrow wound.” The wolf eyes him sideways as he works with something in front of him that Jesse can’t really see behind the remains of the fire. He looks like he wants to ask something, but instead just shrugs. “You are… no mere man. So.”

Jesse huffs, but Shimada’s got a point. “... Four days, maybe three if we’re lucky.”

Shimada narrows his eyes. “To heal completely?”

“To heal enough.”

A disbelieving look is cast his way before Shimada returns to his little project, and Jesse leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse. Before he can, though, pain shoots through his shoulder, and he leans back against the wall with a grunt that draws a quick, mostly uninterested glance.

“If you had not been wounded, we could be moving on with our journey,” Shimada grouses after a moment.

Jesse puffs, reaching up for his hat to push it down over his face. “Real sorry. I’ll try my damnedest to make sure I don’t get shot again. Wouldn’t wanna inconvenience you, or nothin’.”

“See that you do,” Shimada replies.

When Jesse gives him the most incredulous look he can manage from his spot on the cave floor, the quirk in Shimada’s mouth is either humor or annoyance. There’s just no way to tell.

After a few moments of silence, Shimada hums in a way that’s almost approving, and leans back, hefting something in his hand. It takes Jesse a second to recognize it.

“Hey. That’s mine.”

The wolf gives him a mild look before wiggling Jesse’s crossbow in a way that’s just this side of dangerous. “You will not need it. You have your gun.” There’s a gleam of teeth in the light that filters in on them, outlining the pointed canine that reveals itself in Shimada’s smirk. “I will return it once I have a proper weapon once again.”

Jesse scowls at him, curling his lip. “Not polite to take things that aren’t yours.”

Shimada’s smirk, impossibly, widens. “I am not polite.”

He doesn’t even stop smirking when Jesse’s surprised into a snort. “... What do you need it for, anyway?”

Now the smirk drops, though Shimada’s face settles back into thoughtfulness rather than anger. “We can survive on peaches and rice for some time, but it is not my preference to go through my stores when I can simply get us… fresh food. I… get hungry easily. Little sates it besides meat.” He frowns a little, almost looking mildly ashamed, though for what Jesse can’t fathom. “This weapon is not my preference, either, but it will be enough to take down what I need.”

Jesse makes a face. “If you’re not going to appreciate her, you can give her back.”

A snort. “No. I am keeping it until I have something better. Even if crossbows are children’s toys.” Shimada fingers the wooden stock as he leans back and tilts the crossbow into the daylight, peering down at it.

Jesse wishes the complaints didn’t die on his tongue watching the wolf slide his thumb across the cocking ring, but there’s a little something about how he cradles the weapon that makes Jesse not mind seeing him holding it. For all his ugly words about it, Shimada knew the importance of weaponry.

“... What if you get caught snoopin’ around?”

Shimada makes an indelicate noise, like he’s insulted at the very question. “The hunters that pursued us have had plenty of opportunity to catch up. I am not worried about them.”

Jesse inspects him for a moment, dragging his eyes from the way Shimada is testing the weight of his crossbow down to his own wounded arm. The black metal gleams menacingly at him from under the faded bandage.

Jesse brings his other hand over to curl around the forearm, feeling the heat pulse back at him from the magic underneath the artificial skin. “I’m just saying… you were… hurt, yesterday. Not the same way I was, but… all weak. Could barely get you on the mule you were shakin’ so bad.”

Shimada pauses. Tellingly, he doesn’t turn to meet eyes. “Yes.”

“... What was that about?” Jesse presses, though he feels like he might have an inkling.

Shimada is silent, though his hands have stopped moving on the crossbow. He is simply looking down at it now, when Jesse dares to peek. His dark hair is carefully hiding his expression, tilted away from Jesse and pointedly facing out into the gray daylight.

Jesse lets out a soft sigh. “How about this. For every answer you give me, I’ll let you ask a question, too. Fair’s fair.”

Shimada half-turns closer, giving Jesse the glimpse of one brown eye, half cast in gold the instant it hits the darkness of the cave. His face is impassive. “You could easily lie. Just as I could.”

“Yeah, that’s kinda the point. Me sayin’ I won’t. We gotta build up a trust here, Shimada. Or do you want someone you can’t trust watchin’ your back?” Jesse frowns at the other man, who glares silently back at him for a moment before snorting and turning away again.

“Pff. Trust. Orokana otoko.” He frowns down into the crossbow, dark brows drawn low.

Jesse feels a stab of disappointment, but before he can say ‘fuck it’ Shimada continues, almost stern enough to make Jesse reconsider talking to him. “... I will not answer everything you ask me.”

“... Yeah, me neither,” Jesse accepts, lifting up his good hand in a show of solidarity.

Shimada almost seems amused by this; he at least stops completely turning his body away, turning back to Jesse with a put-upon sigh. “... I simply overexerted my abilities, if you must know. I am not able to… transform, completely, anymore… unless the moon is full. But I am still connected to the moon. I…” Here he hesitates, and Jesse watches him shift, seemingly subconsciously, to hide his tattooed side, despite it being completely concealed under his clothing. “... I suppose I forget, sometimes, that I… must take precautions. It just takes time for the pressure I put on my body to wear off. I slept, and ate, so I will be fine to hunt.”

Jesse squints at him as he fiddles with the crossbow, careful to keep his fingers on the wooden parts of the stock; he must’ve already realized the metal had silver in it. It wouldn’t really hurt, per se, but the tingling didn’t feel good on bare skin, for werewolves. “... So you could change forms at will, once. But now you can’t?” He cocks a brow. Werewolves didn’t just change their stripes, so to speak. He’d never heard of a wolf that outright seemed to shift species like that; you were born, or made, and then you stayed that way. ‘Losing abilities’ didn’t make sense. “Why not?”

Shimada looks across the cave at him with half-lidded eyes. “It is my turn to ask a question.”

Jesse doesn’t miss the clear misdirect, but he knows better than to go back on his promise. “Okay,” he says amiably, and Shimada looks briefly surprised; he expected backtalk.

“Hm. Your arm. It uses blood magic, doesn’t it?” Shimada’s eyes are trained on the glowing orange appendage, and Jesse holds it up for inspection, wincing a little as the motion tugs on his bandages.

“Yep,” he replies around a grunt, wiggling the fingers a little. “Kind of a weak first question, though. You already knew that from smellin’ it, didn’t you?”

Shimada’s eyes narrow as they meet his. He looks unimpressed. “Blood magic is a taboo. I have known men to be punished for it by death… torture. Unless wherever you come from is a lawless wasteland, you are either bold or very foolish, to use it so openly.”

Jesse chuckles a little, letting his arm sink back down to his lap. “What, is that you sayin’ you don’t think of me as a big fool anyway?”

The wolf huffs in the quiet of the cave. “Do not flatter yourself. It was merely an observation.”

“And a dig for more information without directly askin’ me,” Jesse chirps back. Shimada stiffens a little. The sound of the hunter’s snickering has Shimada pursing his lips, turning away again and reaffirming his grip on the crossbow. “I don’t come from a lawless wasteland. I just don’t associate with the common folk much, and when I do… they usually know better’n to ask questions about my arm.”

Shimada gives him a considering look, brown-gold eyes moving slowly over his body. Jesse abruptly remembers he still doesn’t have anything on over his chest. “I see.”

“You don’t see. You smell. That’s the trick.” The joke falls a little flat, probably mostly due to the weird, embarrassed swell in Jesse’s throat, but Shimada rolls his eyes with a muttered curse that Jesse can’t understand. That’s a win enough, he guesses.

With that, the man lifts to the balls of his feet, crouched in the cave and peering over at Jesse with an air of finality about him. “Stay in here. I will go get us something to eat.”

Uh, no. A brief swell of pride and uselessness as one rise in the hunter’s chest. Jesse frowns immediately and shifts where he sits, pulling himself up as straight as he can without wincing. “I am not staying in this cave all day.”

Shimada, who is already halfway out of the overhang, does not turn to acknowledge him as he begins to scoot out. “It will not be all day. Just until I am back.”

“Uh huh. And how long’s that gonna be?”

Shimada does turn now, a quirk in his mouth. “Not all day.”

Jesse doesn’t have a chance to protest before Shimada climbs the rest of the way out of the cave.

By the time he gets himself painstakingly over to the entrance to yell out after him, the wolf is gone.

It’s actually kind of strange, realizing that he essentially just let his job go without much of a fight.

Jesse makes his way out of the shelter, eventually, but only really has the strength to climb to the little mound of ground the cave is hidden in and lean up against it. He’s still in the sun, though, and the dirt isn’t too damp where he puts his ass, so it’ll do, he guesses.

The hunter leans against the cave and watches his mare graze.

He took off, says the paranoid, much smarter part of his brain. Just lured me into thinkin’ we’d team up and then took off into the woods. I’ll never see his wolf ass again. Pretty fuckin’ smart. He’ll have a head start this way.

The thought trades places with ‘But then why patch me up?’ every 20 minutes or so. They dance around in his head, dosey-doing into the occasional daydream.

He lets his mind wander to the image of Shimada returning with a huge buck draped over his shoulders, carrying it like it was nothing. His hair glowing in the yellow light that would appear when he showed up. With his top open… or maybe just completely off.

Jesse gingerly scratches his own chest, tucking the edges of his nails under the bandages that wrap around his left pectoral. Topless, he allows himself, and all messed up from hunting all day. Hair all over the place. All red-faced ‘cause he’s mad. He smirks at no one, closing his eyes into the sunlight and humming a breath. He must be so pissed off. Wantin’ me dead and now having to make sure I don’t keel over.

If he isn’t halfway back to Hanamura by now.

With a yawn, Jesse rubs his human hand down across his face and sits up a little better. “There’s gotta be something productive I can do,” he murmurs aloud.

He is wrong.

Standing up and walking around is out of the question, at least for right now. Maybe once he gets some protein in him, he’ll feel a little better, but for now the blood loss combined with the nutritional value of two peaches — three, after he manages to dig another one out of the bag — isn’t doing much for him. Walking makes his head spin, colors swim behind his eyes. He nearly trips over a piece of wood just laying on the ground.

Shimada’s right; they need meat. Some baser instinct in him that he thought he’d left behind is growling for it low in his gut. He just has to pray Shimada actually does come back.

So. No to walking. Jesse can stand up, with no small amount of grunting and shimmying and cussing, but there’s no point if he isn’t moving.

Eventually, he just sits his ass down where he’d originated and picks up the piece of wood that’d tripped him. After inspecting it for a moment, he winces and bends to grab the knife out of his boot, and lackadaisically brings it up to the hunk of branch.

The day is unendingly boring. Jesse alternates between whittling, cleaning Peacekeeper, dozing, and being pestered by Blackwatch and the (still unnamed, poor fella) mule. At the end of the afternoon, his gun is gleaming and he smells like oil and sap. None of these things are particularly productive; he’ll just have to make it up to Shimada down the road, he guesses.

Everyone always thinks a life of travel is a constant adventure; the truth of the matter is that there are days on end where nothing fucking happens. Especially when you went and got yourself shot.

By the time he hears footsteps, the sun is halfway down the sky, and Jesse’s whittled about six carefully detailed little horses and one slightly misshapen wolf. They all sit beside him now, none of them good enough to stand up on their own and so scattered around him in various pairs. He’s been blinking spots out of his eyes for the past couple hours or so; hunger gnaws at his stomach, but he hadn’t wanted to go digging in their food stores when it was clear that’s exactly what Shimada had been trying to avoid.

They’re… not partners, really, but something, now. Where before, he might’ve eaten more just to maybe see Shimada pissed off… well. Things changed. Some days, you hunted a werewolf; other days, you thought it was kinda weirdly charming that the deadly monster’s favorite fruit was sweet white peaches. C’est la vie, purrs a voice in his head.

He hears the heavy fall of feet and moves, instinct making him grab Peacekeeper and lift her before he can even fully blink his eyes open. Hair trigger, prone to knowing a dangerous thing just from the buzz in his gut, and the sight that greets him proves he’s still got it.

Shimada pauses in front of him, drawing his head back archly, and Jesse gets a good look.

He isn’t exactly topless, but the blood smeared up the side of his tunic makes the thing cling to him in a way that tells the story of the body underneath, anyway. All muscle, but Jesse already knew that. He’s a forsaken mess, with sweat and blood shining on his exposed throat, dark hair sticking to the skin in small loops and strands. He looks like somethin’ out of Revelations, backlit by the fading sun and holding an offering to a metal-armed God.

Jesse feels like he’d maybe appreciate it more if it weren’t for the fat, hairy goat-looking thing he has held tight against him. It’s covered in tawny white hair, sporting a pair of short horns and cloven hooves. Not quite a goat, but not quite a deer, neither.

The other hand hangs loose, the crossbow held in broad fingers; despite himself, Jesse is impressed by the power Shimada has about him. His biceps shift under his loose clothing as he flexes around his bounty. Not straining, not even a little bit.

Jesse swallows, flicks his eyes back up to Shimada’s face. He expects annoyance at being observed, or disgust at the clear evidence that Jesse had done nothing all day. What he gets is triumph, a smile that is all sharp teeth and eyes that are glowing with something that sends a shiver down his spine. He can’t read it, but it feels accusatory and expectant at the same time. Like he’s wanting something.

“A fine kill,” the wolf purrs. There’s a rasp in his voice, making the man’s normally deep tone downright gravely. He hardly seems to notice the gun pointed his way, or at least is so unconcerned as to ignore it. “He put up quite the fight. Quick, agile… but not fast enough to outrun me. I was too much to escape.” There is something different in the way Shimada is holding himself. For just a moment, there’s a fluidity to his minute movements — the feather-light shifting on the balls of his feet, the low sway of his shoulders that brings attention to the mussed hair that is only really barely held up at this point — that speaks to who he is. What he is.

He looks like he’s waiting for a response.

Jesse doesn’t know whether to be unnerved. He opens his mouth anyway. “Okay, show-off. That actually didn’t take as long as I thought. The sun’s still up, anyway. Maybe you really are the infamous bear killer you claim you are.”

Shimada grunts, and drops the goat, ignoring the light attempt at banter. The way he doesn’t take his eyes off Jesse, not even to blink, makes him want to sink a little further into his bandages.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the lycan was trying to say something. Shimada is bowed up, shoulders open and chest expanding, but his chin is lowered enough to light up the angles in his face. He is peering up at the hunter from under the ridge of his dark brow. His lips are parted just enough to show the lupine points of his teeth.

Jesse is suddenly, and strangely, very aware that he’s practically laying on the ground in front of him, sans his armor and any sort of physical protection. The emotion this produces is not the one it should.

“Of course I am,” comes the wolf’s answer, too late to be natural. “Why would I lie about that?”

Despite himself and the unerringly immovable stare, Jesse tries for a smirk. “To impress me? I don’t know what goes on in your head.”

Shimada’s eyes flicker in the failing day; a switch seems to flip. All at once he’s moving closer, casting a shadow over Jesse’s body and blocking out the paltry yellow sunlight. Something jumps in McCree’s stomach; he freezes at the sudden proximity, staring up at as the man looms over him. Shimada stands at his feet for a moment, and for a split second, Jesse wonders if he’s going to lunge. The base of his spine lights up quick as a match, and he feels his breath catch as abruptly Shimada drops into a crouch.

The wolf lifts a hand, stained red with his prey’s blood.

His sharp-nailed fingers land on the barrel of Peacekeeper, still bafflingly lifted. Jesse’d forgotten he had it up.

With all the mildly amused grace of a tiger in the face of a housecat, Shimada pushes the gun down until Jesse’s unresistant knuckles hit the dirt. He hums, reaching across Jesse to plant his free hand in the ground at the side of the hunter’s hip. The movement brings his body closer, a wave of body warmth washing over Jesse like a dip in hot water in the cool autumn afternoon.

Heat and confusion war in his gut as Shimada peers into his eyes, black oil on brown earth, and with the same amount of depth. “Oh?” the wolf says, and the low thrum of his voice continues setting Jesse’s natural instincts off: to run — there was a more powerful animal here, asserting its dominance — and, well, his more human instincts to definitely not run.

He doesn’t have the chance to do either, really. Shimada carefully leans back and holds up Jesse’s knife, twirling it neatly in his dirty palm so the leather-bound hilt lays flat.

Ah. Grabbed from where Jesse had left it by his side after whittling for hours. Embarrassment at the truth makes his face go warm as his barely-formed fantasies are once again laughed at. His fingers are tingling, like Shimada’s touch on the gun was working its way through his body.

“Perhaps if I needed to lie to do so,” Shimada murmurs, a supercilious smirk twisting up one side of his broad mouth. The end of a pointed tooth peeks from his lip.

With that, he straightens again, pushing off his knees and turning away to the goat as if the staring match didn’t matter to him in the first place.

Jesse tries to keep his heart from outright crawling out of his throat and hightailing it all the way back home. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, but when Shimada pulls back it all plooms out of him in a near-silent rush. His chest expands and he slumps a little back against the mound of dirt, lashes fluttering as the world spins a little and goes fuzzy at the edges.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Shimada gives him the dignity of ignoring him again. He takes the blade that is quickly becoming ‘the knife we use to do everything’, and methodically begins skinning his prey.

It’s not exactly the most pleasant process, but Shimada makes it look easy, working through the goat like he’d been doing it his entire life. He very well may have, and the fact isn’t really a surprise now that Jesse thinks about it. He lived in a forest for ten years.

Jesse wasn’t really a hunter in the way Shimada clearly was. Most of the time during his travels, he just stocked enough food to keep himself well-fed, and jobs were easy enough that he rarely had to worry about keeping it up. This was his first time doing a long hunt in Japan, and he hadn’t been expecting the spaced out towns… nor the full capacity of the unfriendly competition, it seemed. He could track a monster across the country, tell a vampire from a skinwalker at a hundred paces, and knew from the smell of abandoned fur whether a lycan had transformed recently, but when it came to hunting wild animals… while he’d done it a few times out of necessity, he preferred to let other people do the hunting.

It brought up a few too many bad memories, killing things like that. Even animals that he needed to kill to survive, he supposed. He’d turned over a new leaf for a reason.

He doesn’t begrudge Shimada for it, though, and is grateful for it here; despite the bloody process, the pangs of hunger haven’t gone away. In fact, in the face of the fresh meat, he feels something ancient growl in his gut, licking its chops and rumbling at the flavor of blood in the air. He finds himself watching in eerie fascination as Shimada works with no hesitation, hands clever and unerring, face set in an almost bored expression.

Whatever wildness had seized the wolf upon returning with the hunt, it’s gone. For now.

McCree eyes him, still all mussed and now with dried blood up to his elbows. More is smeared around his shoulder and down his chest, the tunic he’d been wearing going stiff with it and falling open more than it normally did. Shimada is unconcerned, seeming focused on his task, though there’s a slight hesitation in his movement for just a moment when he catches Jesse’s eye in his peripheral. The two watch each other briefly, but Shimada seems uninterested in calling him out for staring again, and seamlessly continues in his work with a huff.

“... Thanks for hunting. I, uh… maybe need more protein than the average fella, too. We can eat on this for a good long while.” He almost says thanks for coming back, but bites it back, hearing the quiet desperation in that and feeling vulnerable enough in his current state.

Shimada slices off something from the goat’s haunch; despite his serious face, a small spark seems to appear in his eye. “You are welcome. I am experienced in such things.” The pretty picture of satisfaction turns almost morbid when a streak of blood is smeared along the golden tattoo under his eye as the wolf rubs his cheek with the back of his hand. “Stop scratching your wound.”

Oop. Jesse blinks, not having realized he’d been doing it. He removes his hand. “Yessir.”

A flat glance. Shimada seems finished piecing the meat, and leans back on his haunches, taking a breath. After a moment, he looks down at himself, and then shucks the blood elegantly from his exposed forearms using his hands. The movement should not look so formal and practiced, and yet.

Jesse catches the peek of golden ink through the sheer veneer of red as the wolf either forgets that he’d been keeping the tattoo hidden or doesn’t notice it’s exposed. Again, he wonders about the history of this man. Now that he knew he was a Shimada, that potentially explained the way he held himself… kinda. But not the marking.

Still, Jesse doesn’t really feel like asking about the tattoo when Shimada is holding a knife and covered in the blood of the animal he’d killed to feed them. Instead, he shifts his scratching to his chin and leans more comfortably against their makeshift house.

“So… did you go into the market a lot when you were livin’ in the forest?”

Shimada doesn’t look at him. “No.”

Jesse cocks a brow, mildly surprised. “But sometimes, though, right?”

No response. The way he pushes his sleeves up to his biceps is, oddly, telling enough.

“You really just lived off what you could hunt?” Jesse folds his arms carefully, frowning at the other man in faint disbelief. “Lycans need a lot more than the average man to be sated. You’d’ve had to have starved yourself or risk wiping out the entire forest.”

Shimada neatly places the bloody knife down on his lap and levels Jesse with a stare. “I lived there for nine years. Do you believe I am so bloodthirsty as to wipe out an entire ecosystem, hunter? Do you think I am a mindless animal that does not know how to control itself?” His voice is quiet, almost curious. He doesn’t move, all poise, but Jesse feels the faint impression of fangs at his throat, waiting for the wrong response.

Jesse smiles as harmlessly as he can, though even he can admit it’s probably strained. “You know I think you’re sweet as pie.”

Shimada doesn’t look amused, but the sudden deadliness slinks out of him; Jesse watches the predator descend back into the man. “Your continued survival baffles me.” Derogatory Japanese muttering follows it, but Jesse just counts his lucky stars that he hadn’t been lunged at.

After giving it a moment, Jesse presses his luck once more, unable to help himself. “So… starvin’ yourself?”

Shimada’s head snaps back up and he bares his teeth, flashing fangs that never really seemed to go away as he narrows his eyes. “Taegatai jakkaru. You simply cannot keep your mouth closed, can you? I ate what I needed, and stored what I did not eat. When you live in one place, you can do such things. I had a garden.” He stills, lashes fluttering for a brief moment before he pulls away again, clenching his fists and hissing under his breath. “So no. I did not starve beyond what I had to endure to learn.”

Jesse looks at him, processing the words. Shimada doesn’t look back.

After a moment of silence, Shimada draws his tongue over his canine. “Do you make a habit of speaking so incessantly to all of the creatures you hunt?”

“Ha.” Jesse tosses him a smirk, watching him lazily and letting his metal claws drag gently over the top of his bandages. The glare he receives doesn’t deter him. “Not always. Only a few times I ever did a job this involved, and less times than that I had to spend a long period of time with the target.” He closes his eyes and tips his head back. “You’re still special though, peach, don’t you worry.”

Shimada snorts, but when Jesse cracks an eye to look at him, the lycan has redirected his attention to preparing the food.

After that, there isn’t much to do except wait. Shimada is efficient as always, hanging the pelt up on a nearby tree and setting about half of the cleaned meat aside. The rest he sticks over the fire after building a little makeshift fire pit, hanging the goat over the top and rotating it on broad, sharp sticks. He also grabs the cast-iron pan hanging from Blackwatch’s saddlebag and dumps water and rice inside.

So, rice and goat-deer-thing meat. Shimada looks pleased with himself, continuously checking on the rice until it is cooked and then setting it to the side. He takes a bite of it when he thinks Jesse isn’t looking, and licks a stray grain off his lip. There’s a contented expression on his slightly bloody face.

While the meat cooks, Shimada rises to his feet and stretches, looking out into the sky for a moment.

Jesse follows his eyes. The moon is up now. A claw of black carves through the silver now; a reminder of the passage of time.

They’ve been traveling for a little under a week now. Six days, by Jesse’s approximation, though things had gotten a little fuzzy for him after getting injured. The realization is surprising, almost; it feels like they’ve been on the road longer.

He wonders if Shimada is thinking the same thing as the lycan gazes up at the moon. His eyes glint reflective in the silvery light, half-lidded and intense as he seems to puzzle something over.

As Jesse watches, he looks down at himself again, and in a smooth movement peels off his tunic. The hunter blinks, but then spots the blood that has seeped through the fabric and stained the skin and Shimada’s own bandages beneath.

He’d forgotten that the wolf was injured, too. By his own gun. A pang of guilt hits him, but he has to allow himself the benefit of getting shot making him a little forgetful.

He watches quietly as Shimada lifts a hand and begins unpeeling the bandages, unwrapping the sloppy work and then tossing the bloody remains on the ground. Shimada doesn’t seem to notice Jesse looking, instead carefully flexing his arm, bending it neatly at the elbow and opening and closing his fingers. The effect is transfixing; shame forgets itself as Jesse watches the way the muscles in his arm move under the golden-streaked skin. His eyes are careful as he searches out the wounds he’d received during their fight, but it’s hard to tell under the blood.

With an exhale, Shimada seems to come to the same conclusion. “Watch the fire,” he murmurs, and turns, heading toward the lake that’s within view a few dozen yards away.

Jesse isn’t sure how he was ever expected to obey that.

He doesn’t watch the fire. Jesse instead keeps his eyes on the lycan as he reaches the edge of the lake.

The darkness would normally make him invisible, but the moonlight gleaming off the lake paired with Jesse’s… not entirely normal eyesight makes the image more like a backlit puppet show on the sheet that is the water’s surface.

He can’t see much, not really. The color of his dark skin is lit up silver, but anything he didn’t get a look at on a daily basis is still hidden from the shadows cast by his body.

But he can see it when Shimada peels the remainder of his clothing off, dropping the pants and undergarments to the side of the water. After a moment, he watches as Shimada looses his hair, as well, shaking it out and dropping the small tie down on his clothing. Jesse can’t tell how long it is; it disappears behind the shadow of his shoulders, though, so it must be longer than that.

The image that plays out in Jesse’s mind makes his jaw work; in no world would the hair be smooth, silky, like ink, but that’s… not a bad thing. Shimada is not a man of curves and valleys; he is all sharp edges, all hair mussed from wildness. Even now, he can see the way his hair is flattened by blood, tangled from being in its ponytail for so long.

Shimada sinks into the lake in a graceful couple of steps, natural and unhurried. He is partially blocked out from the trees that surround the lake, and from the grassy bank, but not entirely. Jesse wonders if he thinks he can’t be seen.

Or worse, if he thinks he can be.

That’s unlikely, and makes Jesse watching feel a little skeevy. He grits his teeth and tries to put his eyes firmly on the fire. The flicker of water at the edge of his ears pulls his gaze back almost helplessly.

Shimada’s shadowed form is shoulder deep, now, at least. He tips his head back, hair unspooling across the water’s surface. Jesse feels his mouth go dry as he dips his face under the water, disappearing entirely from his view. After a worryingly long second, he re-emerges, scrubbing his hands under the water and then dragging them through his hair. He pulls the hair over his shoulder and bends his face, cupping water in his hands and washing his face soundlessly.

In a strange moment that feels like somethin’ out of a book, Shimada tips his head back again and inhales, long and deep, exhales. His eyes are closed for a long moment. When they open, they glint like ice, bright even to Jesse as far away as he is. Twin mirrors, flickering between yellow and blue, as he tilts his head enough in Jesse’s direction for him to see them clearly. There’s no way to tell if Shimada is actually looking at him; he seems to be scrubbing the blood that’s managed to smear up his neck. Long, broad fingers move unerringly over the skin, leaving streams of water in their wake, barely discernible in the dark.

The streaks under his eyes and atop his shoulder glow under the light, like he’s caught an ember beneath the ink. They look like stripes from this far out; like the tiger he’d seen in India during that dragon-hunting bounty, only inverted, pale stripes on dark skin. As the blood is washed from them, they light up brighter, reminiscent of that first night together; the thrum of something powerful hidden underneath what, in the daylight, seemed like an innocent enough tattoo.

It was clearly more than that.

The tattoo is the answer, or at least a huge part of it. If it’s a tattoo at all; Jesse still can’t figure out if the swirling, stencil-like yellow smears are inorganic or not. Looking at them here, under the moon, makes them look like he was born with them. Like it were as much a part of him as his blood, as the gleaming eyes, as the skin it was laid across. Jesse imagines running his hands across it, trying to puzzle out if he could feel the difference between ink and flesh.

Shimada rises part of the way out of the water, exposing the entire expanse of the marking. How it swirls down across his chest, down to the back of his hand as he pulls it through his hair.

Illusion from the open, clear sky paints the whole scene in greyscale. For a moment, Shimada’s hair looks like it’s the color of snow. Leaves from the tree above him dapple him like a leopard, black and white, and gold. Always gold.

Jesse manages to firmly rip his eyes away after that, but the damage is done.

He’d hunted all kinds of creatures all over the globe. Traveling is easy with a little bit of Ana’s alchemy and a little bit of ingenuity; there are few monsters he hasn’t fought, fewer he hasn’t at least heard of. Several of these creatures relied on seduction to destroy their victims, were built for making him look and stare and want. None had managed to do the job entirely.

Shimada wasn’t built for any of that. Any normal man would crave for the mermaids that giggled and twirled their hair, the fae that laughed at his jokes instead of sneering at them, the incubus who promised to make all your dreams come true for just one kiss.

But he’s never been the most normal fella. That’s what made him good. He didn’t fall for the tricks, or the hypnotic eyes, or the laugh like bells.

As Shimada lets out a soft sigh, only audible because Jesse’s got ears unlike any man on the planet, Jesse wets his lips and looks down at the little wolf he’d carved earlier in the day. Jesse picks up the misshapen wood and sets it on his lap, tapping his metal claw against the tip of the wolf’s nose.

The lycan was a whole hell of a mess, a bundle of mystery and distrust and arrogance and power.

He can’t deny the attraction to that kinda danger. Part of why he took this job; he loved the thrill of the unknown, of facing up against somethin’ he didn’t know how to take down until he did. Shimada ain’t a man he could trust, but he’s undeniably a man he wants.

Some part of him rebels at that, at how typical it was. Of course it’d be a lycan. Gabe’d be laughing his ass off if he could see the running thread of thoughts going through his head. Just needed to go sniffin’ after the right freak, huh, Jess? He can see it now; the concerned expression twisting Ana’s face, the shame burning in him over instincts he’d thought had been chopped outta him rising to the surface.

But it isn’t that. At least, he doesn’t think so. It had nothing to do with his arm, or the itch he feels even now as he glances up at the moon.

Nah. Shimada’s just pushing all his buttons, even if he’s one of the most annoying hunts he’s done since officially labeling himself as a professional. He’d always had a bit of a thing for cool, collected characters that puffed up all huge when they got angry. He just hadn’t expected that kind of exact person to show up in one of the most interesting bounties he’d been hired for. He definitely hadn’t expected it to be literal.

But of course he had.

That was just Jesse’s luck.

He keeps his eyes away from the lake determinedly after that, shifting a little to grab the knife Shimada had cleaned back. He tries to tidy up the admittedly badly-made wolf in his hand, and almost doesn’t realize it when he hears sandals crunching on the ground, approaching slowly. Remembering Shimada’s soiled clothes, he glances up, uncertain as to what he’ll see.

It is not a nude man glowing in the moonlight; it is instead a wet, but clean, werewolf with his sopping clothes strategically wrapped around his waist. It’s clear an effort has been made to wash them, though with little effect. “Where is the spare clothing,” he asks, but it isn’t really a question. It’s a demand. If Jesse didn’t know better, he’d say the lycan was embarrassed.

Jesse keeps his eyes above Shimada’s neck, but it’s a mighty effort. “There’s some in Blackwatch’s saddlebag. I, uh… it might not… quite fit you right. Didn’t really think you’d get all covered in blood before we reached the next town, so… it’s mostly stuff for me.”

Shimada’s expression is unamused. “Moichiron,” he mutters, and, instead of turning, backs away from the hunter.

Jesse returns his attention to the wooden wolf, though the back of his neck burns when he hears the telltale plop of wet clothing hitting the grass.

When Shimada reappears, he’s got the same sandals, but everything else is undeniably Jesse’s.

The effect is strange. Shimada has chosen to wear the cream-white undershirt and brown pants, though from his expression it’s clear he’d rather be wearing almost anything else. His skin is still a little wet; the shirt clings to his shoulder blades and throat, making the already weird effect that much stranger. Jesse hides his smirk as best he can behind the hand holding the knife.

The lycan catches Jesse’s eye as he returns to the fire and scowls, kneeling down to check on the meat with a frown. “Once my clothing is dry, I will be changing back,” he snips, turning the slabs of meat before glaring at Jesse over the fire. “You can bathe after we eat. I do not intend to sleep in the same cave with a stinking man again. And it seems as if you’ve packed enough clothing for yourself to have a spare set.”

Amendable enough. The hunter makes a face at the insult but nods; he knew he had to be smelling a little ripe, and doubly so to the lycan’s advanced senses. Instead of complaining, he watches as Shimada procures the bowls he must’ve also found in Jesse’s bags and begins scooping rice into them. He looks over at Jesse for a moment, looking as if he is debating speaking, before apparently giving in.

“Why do you have two?”

Jesse hums, his attention more on the smell of food than anything else, if he’s being honest. “Never know when you’re gonna need two.”

Shimada’s brow quirks; for an instant, he looks amused. “Hm. A life motto suiting a greedy hunter.”

Jesse flicks his eyes back up at him and barks a laugh, squinting and pointing a metal finger. “I resent that. Maybe I just like keepin’ my traveling companions well taken care of.”

“Funny, when I am the one that brought home the food.”

The sputtering this produces brings Shimada’s amused expression higher; still a mean-spirited grin, but there’s actually a touch of humor there, too, for the first time.

Jesse doesn’t get the chance to respond before he’s handed the bowl of rice and meat, and he very quickly doesn’t really care about being insulted anymore when the beginnings of a real, filling meal hit his stomach. He groans and shovels down the bowl, unknowingly mirroring the lycan across the fire from him.

In the end, they eat the entirety of the rice and a frankly unbelievable amount of the goat. Shimada was clearly as famished as Jesse was; several times he pulls meat off the bone with his teeth, chewing quietly but quickly.

They only catch each other’s eyes once; Jesse with rice littering his beard, Shimada with a large scrap of meat hanging halfway out of his mouth. They don’t smile, but Jesse feels a tinge of understanding light between them. At least they ate the same.

By the time Jesse is licking his bowl clean with all the elegance of a bear, Shimada has set his bowl down, perfectly clean. He looks content, making a noise so soft but so recognizably registered as ‘happily full’ that Jesse almost laughs again.

After a minute, Shimada grunts, and Jesse pulls the bowl away from his face to see what he wants.

The lycan is staring down at the little carved wolf by Jesse’s hip. He is frowning seriously.

Despite the expression, Jesse gets a strange, not-entirely-unpleasant swooping feeling in his gut; he feels suddenly nervous, setting the bowl aside to pick up the little wolf instead. Shimada’s eyes follow the figure.

“Just… made it while I was sittin’ around. I used to carve a lot in my spare time… not too hard to do while you’re riding if you’re moving slow…” The explanation rises out of him without him meaning for it to, but it stops short when Shimada’s eyes flick up and meet his own.

“... Interesting,” is all he says, and Jesse hates that every time Shimada says something not-hateful that his tongue swells up like this.

He grits his teeth and leans closer, holding the wolf out. “Here. You can have it.”

Shimada looks at him, frown still present. “Why.”

Jesse sighs, slumping a little where he’s sitting. “Dammit, Shimada, just take the stupid wolf. I want you to have it. If I keep it it’ll get lost somewhere.”

Shimada’s frown deepens, and he almost looks like he’s going to snap at him. Then, with a sigh as if put-upon, he reaches out and takes the wolf, setting it in his lap and looking like he isn’t sure how to respond. “... Very well.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jesse leans back against the cave and grunts as he attempts to push himself to his feet. “Well. Time for my bath.”

Shimada eyes him warily, the wolf still held in his hand like he thinks it might snap. “Do you… require assistance?”

Heat burns across Jesse’s body at the very thought, but he uses his brain for one second and shakes his head. “Nah. I think now that I ain’t starvin’ I can manage.”

Shimada nods. “Yes. Good.” He looks down at the figure in his lap when Jesse passes by; it’s only because he glances back that he sees it at all. “Do not come into the cave until you are clean.”

Despite himself, Jesse smirks. “Yes sir.”

Even as he walks away, Shimada doesn’t look up from his lap. If his eyes don’t deceive him, Shimada even picks the thing up to inspect it more closely in the fire. Jesse suddenly wishes he’d made it look a little nicer.

Still. He seems to like it.

Maybe carving the wolf hadn’t been so unproductive after all.