Chapter Text
“I do not need a bodyguard,” Hanzo was arguing. “You know I am fully capable of taking care of myself, you made sure I was!”
Sojiro sighed, not looking up from the document he was reading. “It’s just an extra precaution, not a personal attack on your skills, Hanzo.”
“Father, please. Having a babysitter will just slow me down-”
“I chose one of the best, he will have no problem keeping up with you.”
“It will make the Shimada family look weak and incapabl-”
“Most of the other families have personal bodyguards, it’s a norm.”
“But I do not-”
“Hanzo,” Sojiro said sharply, finally putting down the document to stare at his son sternly. “You will have a bodyguard until we have determined that there is no imminent threat. This is not a discussion.”
Hanzo fought back a glare, staring impassively at the wall instead as he willed his blood to cool.
“I know the situation is not ideal,” Sojiro said in a gentler tone. Hanzo resisted the urge to snort - ‘not ideal’ was one way of putting it. “But I cannot lose you like I lost my mother.”
And so the matter was settled. Both Hanzo and Genji were to have bodyguards that would follow their every step. Hanzo sighed as he left his father’s study - Genji wasn’t going to be happy about this.
“What do you mean, personal bodyguards?” Genji yelled.
“Calm down, brother,” Hanzo said, but the sound of porcelain shattering swallowed his words. Genji threw a second plate across the room, dangerously close to where Hanzo was standing.
“What are they going to do next? Huh? Have someone wipe my ass for me in case I hurt my wrist?”
Was this how his father felt when Hanzo refused the bodyguards earlier? Hanzo felt a sudden, profound sympathy for his father. The assassination of his elderly mother must have been hard enough to deal with, and his two sons throwing tantrums surely did not make that any easier.
“It is only temporary. Just until they figure out what happened,” Hanzo said, but his brother was not appeased. Another plate hit the floor, and its shattered pieces joined the remains of the other plates. “Why do you have so many plates in your room?”
“Mind your business, brother,” Genji snapped. “Ugh. This sucks.”
Hanzo watched Genji throw himself onto his bed, burying his face into the pillow. As childish as he was acting, Hanzo knew how he felt. It was difficult enough to find privacy in their life, and personal bodyguards would only take away what little they had. That, and Hanzo genuinely wasn’t sure if Genji would survive more than a week without a one night stand.
“It does suck,” Hanzo agreed. “But we have to do this for father.”
Genji didn’t respond. For a while, the only sounds in the room were the distant beat of whatever music Genji had been listening to on his phone, just barely audible through his earphones. When his brother said nothing, Hanzo left.
It was an unfortunate situation, but they would make do. They always did.
It was the first time Hanzo had met the Talon leaders face to face, and frankly, he hadn’t expected them to be so… attractive. He had assumed they would all be old, balding white men, not… this. The red-haired white woman and the black man with two white stripes across his face were particularly attractive. He wondered where Talon found people with both undeniable competence and good looks, whereas Hanzo was always stuck with mediocrity in both talents and appearance. Hanzo took his seat at the rounded table next to his father, pushing away his surprise.
“Moira O’Deorain. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Master Shimada,” one woman said. “We have heard much about you.”
“Thank you, Miss O’Deorain. It’s a pleasure to meet you too.”
“Let’s get started,” a man said curtly, his face masked by a strange skull mask. “Mister Shimada, we know who killed your mother.”
To a foreign eye, it would appear that Sojiro remained impassive, but Hanzo could see his pinky finger twitch under the table. “Is that so?”
“I understand that you suspected a rival family, but we considered it necessary to investigate your allies too. It was one of your household staff.”
The idea was unthinkable. Household staff were thoroughly screened, both before hiring and continuously throughout their employment. To think that someone had murdered his grandmother and then washed their dishes the next morning… Hanzo felt indescribable anger.
“Which one?” Sojiro asked, looking far more collected than Hanzo felt.
“A man named Tomoko Hayashi. At first, we thought he was acting alone, but he appears to be getting his orders elsewhere.”
Everyone looked so… calm. As if this was just another political matter. He could not see the face of the man talking, but everyone else looked impassive. The omnic next to the masked man, Miss O’Deorain, the two men sitting beside her and even his father all looked blank. Hanzo thought of his grandmother, her smile, her warm wrinkled hands and the yakitori she used to make.
“If you will excuse me,” Hanzo said, his voice managing to be steady despite feeling close to fainting. “May I use your restroom?”
The skull masked man nodded. “Through that door, second on the left.”
“Thank you,” Hanzo said, bowing briefly before leaving the meeting room as quickly as he could without belying his sudden nausea.
The guards standing outside the door nodded at him but he ignored them, making his way to the restroom with brisk steps. He wondered if they could tell he wasn’t as composed as he was pretending to be. God, he couldn’t breathe, he felt like there was a fist wrapped around his throat, he could feel his heart beating impossibly loud and he felt like he was going to die, oh god was he dying, his chest hurt and the ground was refusing to stay still and he was dying, he was sure of it, he was dying, he was dying, he was-
“Hey, I need you to put your hands down.”
Where was that voice coming from? Hanzo glanced around wildly and realised he was in the restroom, and one of the men from the meeting was stood in front of him. When had he gotten there?
“I’m going to take your hands, okay?”
Hanzo realised belatedly that he was clawing at his own throat. The man took both of his hands into his own, pulling them away from his throat. The short, jagged breaths he took made his chest hurt, like broken pieces of porcelain were stuck in his airways.
“Can you take a deep breath in?”
He couldn’t. He wanted to but he couldn’t, he couldn’t breathe, there wasn’t enough air, he couldn’t brea-
“Hold your breath for a moment.”
Hold his breath? He couldn’t get enough oxygen into his lungs and this man wanted him to stop breathing completely? Hanzo could feel his fingers itching to dig into his neck again, but the man’s grip was stronger than his, and he felt far too dizzy to fight him.
“Hold your breath, just for two seconds.”
Hanzo breathed in a shallow breath and held it for two beats. When he opened his mouth again, he felt his breathing slow into a more natural pattern, and the room didn’t feel like it was spinning anymore.
“What are you doing here?” Hanzo asked, perhaps more brusquely than he should have. The man did not seem to take offence at his tone and merely smiled.
“Ah, I forgot you have not been told yet. I will be your new bodyguard.”
Hanzo did not, generally speaking, support mindless murder, but he wondered if it was time to rethink his stance on that.