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Ana Amari stumbled over a body half-buried in snow in the alley. She dropped her small bagged package with a muffled curse. There was a soft grunt of pain, muffled by a blanket just too shabby, by a coat just too thin. She squinted through the gloom and carefully extracted her ankle from where it had gotten wrapped up in the small pile of snow and cloth and man.
It was snowing in Kings Row. Once upon a time this would have been an odd occurrence, long ago, before pollution got so bad and changed the tides, melted the ice caps, changed the world. It wasn’t quite below freezing, but it was cold enough to freeze skin and bring that now familiar ache of age settling into her bones. She could see her breath when she pulled down her hood, and that was cold enough for her, that was cold enough for everyone. She reached down to push the man in the shoulder.
Ana Amari squinted at the man -- not too young, not too old like her, but old enough to pull at her heartstrings and remind her for one heart-stopping moment of a fool with a hat and a slow, drawling accent. She scoffed at herself for sentiment.
“You have a name?” She asked, watching the man shake himself awake, note the way he instantly came alert, tense and wary. She tilted her head, smiled that small unassuming smile. He was looking her over carefully, tracing the lines of her face and the mark on her skin, the patch of her eye and more carefully, canvassing for weapons a cursory glance couldn’t reveal.
“Hanzo,” he answered her quietly, after a moment. She tipped her head, taking in his eyes, his voice, his age. It was possible that anyone could be called Hanzo, but she’d been around for a very long time. Coincidence? Improbable.
“Hm. I’m Shrike. Come along then.”
She dropped her burden on his chest without delay and continued down the alley. She walked slowly at first, listening for him to follow, and stifled a smile when she heard him shuffling up behind her. He was still half buried in his blanket, but he held her package in one hand. He followed her all the way up to her small safehouse of an apartment. It was small, just a bolthole she was occupying while keeping an eye out for the Talon forces reported in the area, but small was all she needed.
A bed tucked into the corner where the roof slanted down, shuttered windows to keep out the light and prying eyes of peek-a-boo bots, a small kitchenette, a couch, a chair, and she had enough. There were books stacked on an end table, a mug she’d left out on the counter. But what she knew would draw his eye first was the scope by the window, set up for surveillance.
Her rifle, of course, was nowhere in sight. She was only a small, unassuming woman.
She waved a hand around, gesturing to the half-open bathroom door. “If you’d like to shower.” She snatched his bag from his frigid fingers and practically yanked his blanket off him. “Don’t stay in wet things.” She tutted and looked at him, really, for the first time.
His eyes were very similar to one Genji Shimada, although it had been quite a few years since she’d seen that boy. He caught her eye though, all cheekbones and sour expression. She’d say it was haughty but he had no heat to him.
“Why?” He asked, frowning. He hadn’t moved from the threshold, though he had shut the door for her. He’d even locked it.
Ana moved towards the kitchen in three strides and turned the kettle on for tea immediately. She waved a hand at the window as she rustled her tea and spice tins from the cabinet.
“No one should be out in that weather.” She turned and leveled him with her best Motherly stare. “Fall asleep in cold and you don’t wake up. Even a fool would know that.”
He flushed and dropped his gaze to the floor. He took his boots off and lined them carefully up at the foyer, then he finally dropped the backpack and the longer, more suspicious bag he carried and rested both against the wall by his boots. He was precise and careful and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was wary, polite, or cold.
She pointed him towards the bathroom and unwrapped her groceries from the bundle she’d made him carry home for her. After a moment she heard the bathroom door close and the water begin to run. She set about preparing dinner, cutting up the peppers and onions, adding spices and mushrooms, and grilling them together. It was simple but it was warm, and her stiff fingers thawed quickly.
By the time Hanzo finished showering she’d set aside two plates of warm, toasted bread and stir fry. He looked a little dazed. His hair was down from the topknot, black falling down around the silver. He’d taken out the nose-piercings and had changed into a sweater and a pair of baggy pants that kids used to wear. It was an odd look to his regal bearing, as though he tried to hide himself and came up abruptly short when he realized he knew nothing of how to blend in. Gabriel would have had his head. But he looked better than a corpse now. His skin had been too pale before; seeing the rosy tint to his cheeks was a good look. She handed him a cup of tea and the larger of the two plates without delay, pressing him down into the chair with a firm hand on his shoulder.
Ana had gotten far without having to say much. Especially the last decade. Words weren’t always necessary. She and Jack had passed many a day without saying even a word, even when they’d been bunked up in the same bolt-hole in that temple in Egypt. She didn’t need words to feed a boy, to take him off the streets. She only ever needed the boy to follow her, and so far, he had.
He was watching her through wary, suspicious eyes. This was a man who hadn’t had kindness. Or, if he had, didn’t expect to deserve it. Wasn’t that what Genji had said? When she’d met with him and his monk. How he’d met with his brother, how he’d urged him to pick a side, to redeem himself.
This was a man who didn’t believe he deserved much, and that, that Ana knew a bit of. She ate first, and he followed suit. He handled the fork in his hand with a forced care, as though if he ate too quickly she’d see that he was starving. It was hard not to notice. The way he savored his food, the way he took slightly too big of bites that wavered. He ate like a man afraid it was going to disappear, and that made her crusty old heartache.
It was when dinner was done and both were nursing their tea that he finally spoke.
“Who are you really?” He asked, tipping his teacup from side to side, watching the dark liquid tip precariously from rim to rim.
Ana sat back against the couch, smiling down at the dregs of her tea. “I’m a ghost, child,” she sighed, setting aside her cup and lacing her fingers together. “Though I suppose you could call me Ana, if Shrike truly doesn’t suit.”
Hanzo’s lips twisted into something he must have thought was a smirk. It came out as a grimace. “Shrike is no name, and I have given you mine.”
“So you have. Do you regret it?”
He blinked up at her, eyebrows creasing together as he tried again to puzzle her out. “No, it’s all I have left.”
“Is it?”
He unconsciously clenched his left wrist. “No, I suppose not all.”
She tilted her head, silver hair falling over her cheek and tickling her nose. “Well then, I guess you haven’t much to lose do you?”
He scoffed, though it was more towards himself than her. He bit his bottom lip. When he closed his eyes it let Ana see just how tired he was. The bags under his eyes, the dark smudges of lack of sleep. This boy had not been taking care of himself. This was a man who had struck down his brother for honor, who had thrown that honor away afterward. Who had wandered, who had killed. Whatever he’d been fighting for, it did not look much like he fought for it now.
“Why are you here?” She asked. His eyes opened and he leveled her a sardonic look.
“You told me to come with you.”
Ana nodded, as though that were reasonable. “And you always listen to your elders?”
He flinched as though she’d shot him straight through the heart. She kept a smile on her face. It was a frigid, unreadable smile. Her head was tilted just the right way, her eyebrow raised. He gaped at her for only a moment, but then that moment passed and he swallowed.
“Not so much, anymore.”
“And yet, here you are.” She spread her hands. “What a conundrum.”
“Is there something you want of me?” His voice was cold as the wind howling outside her window.
She shot him a very tender smile. “All I want is for little foolish boys to be warm tonight.”
“I am not a boy,” he started, cheeks flushing.
“No, you’re not.” She stood, took his plate. “But I am an old lady, and you all look the same to me.”
She shuffled to the sink to wash their dishes, feeling the weight of his eyes digging into her back. There was a cloud in the room, a heavy miasma. She broke through it by pulling out the final part of her bundle.
It was a small chocolate and strawberry cake. She didn’t look up as she pulled it out of the casing but could feel the man start, feel his eyes on it, flicking from her to it and back again.
“You like strawberry chocolate, yes?” She had already sliced it in pieces, had already designated the larger piece to him. She licked the knife and flicked it into the sink with a clatter, and handed him his plate.
“How--” He forced himself to stop asking as Ana sat with a thump, breaking her cake into pieces. He could practically feel his gaze flick to the window, to the surveillance equipment.
“Isn’t it Christmas?” She asked, tipping her head. She thought of herself as an owl for a brief moment. “No one should be alone.” She winked at him with her one eye and was delighted when he broke off into the smallest chuckle. “I come in peace, Hanzo Shimada.”
“That is no longer my name.” His voice was stern, haughty. She had breathed a bit of life back into the corpse.
She laughed. “I too, am nobody now.” Her smile wavered to think of Fareeha, her little girl. Pain lanced through her hot and jagged. It was gone in a moment. Her hand hadn’t trembled. “Perhaps I simply hoped to find a friend tonight.”
Hanzo scoffed into his cake. As though the idea of him having a friend or being a friend was such an odd one, so inconceivable, that even as he sat here eating cake with her, breaking bread with her, drinking her tea and sitting in her chair, she would toss him onto the street once she’d told him what she wanted from him.
“I’m tired,” she sighed dramatically and held her plate out towards him. “Wash the dishes and turn out the lights when you go to bed.”
She stood, sliding her cloak off her shoulders and draping it over the back of his chair. “There are blankets in the closet beside the bathroom.” She placed her hand on the top of his head. “Rest, child.”
She curled in her little cot of a bed, back to the world and facing the wall. She watched the shadows, listened to the water running in the sink as he did the dishes. For one long moment that transcended time, she thought he’d slip out without her knowing, that she’d have to chase him down again and drag him back by the ear. But then she heard the closet door creak. The light clicked off. Her couch springs sang a small melody of squeaks as he shuffled into a comfortable position.
Ana smiled into her pillow. She listened until his breathing evened out to the relaxed pace of slumber and let it lull her to her dreams.