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Genji opened his eyes and noticed, before anything else registered, that the display over them was missing. He tried to raise his hand to reach for it, but though a look downwards told him that his hands were at least still attached to his wrists and his arms were giving a few feeble twitches, they would not react to his exertion. His legs and core still moved, but a feeling of endless, deep exhaustion kept him from doing more than making an awkward attempt at sitting up in the bed before he fell back.
The bed. There was a thick pillow under his head, but he had no idea where he was. A fan ran in a corner of the small room, churning the thick, hot air, and the blinds were drawn, keeping bright sunlight out. It did not look like a hospital.
“Genji?”
Zenyatta’s voice came from behind him, to his side, and in the dim twilight, there was a soft blue shimmer that emerged from just there alongside a rustle of footsteps. Zenyatta came into view a moment later, stepping up next to the bed.
“You’re not floating,” Genji pointed out, as if that was important right now, but it was the first thought that came into his head; and in truth, if Zenyatta was here with him, then everything else that his brain had conjured up, trained by Blackwatch to expect the worst in any situation, could not have come to pass.
Zenyatta gave a quiet chuckle. “No,” he said. “I fear my concentration was so significantly disturbed that if I had tried, I would have fallen straight out of the air.”
The brass balls that usually accompanied him were not there, either, now that Genji checked. However, as he was glancing up now, he realised that one of the golden light sources that he had expected to be another window was, in fact, the orb of harmony floating above him.
He needed another few moments until his brain started to provide him with reasons for why he was here. They, meaning Overwatch re-imagined as well as Zenyatta, had been fighting Null Sector and Genji had scouted ahead. While the attack that had taken him off his feet seemed to have cut a few crucial seconds from his mind, he still very well remembered getting hit with a blast of something from behind before the world turned black. His last shred of memory was his fingers growing slack around the edge of a windowsill before he fell.
“What happened?” he asked.
Zenyatta sat down at the edge of the bed.
“You were hit with an electromagnetic charge from an exploding drone. It seems to have scrambled your processes.” Zenyatta gestured at the machine that was hooked up to a port in Genji’s neck with a few cables, standing just at the edge of his field of view if he craned his head. Its quiet whirr had been masked by the noise of the fan. “Reinhardt carried you back and you should currently be going through a reset. Ms. Ziegler does not think that your organic parts took any damage.”
“That would be why I can’t move my hands?” Genji guessed.
“We did not know about that detail, but yes, I would think so. The reset should take care of it.”
Genji remained silent for a moment. “I have had much worse while working for Overwatch and Blackwatch,” he said, leaving the sentence unfinished. Zenyatta could somehow always hear it when his chest grew tight and his stomach twisted, anyway.
“Yet you do sound worried. I understand, it has been quite a while since you have been put into such a position.”
“No, that’s not it,” Genji said slowly, after a moment of thought. “I’m used to danger. My life was dangerous before I even met Overwatch. They only invited me because it already used to be dangerous, after all. However, I brought you here now...”
When the sign for the recall had come, Genji had been in a small hotel by Zenyatta’s side, the first of then less than half a dozen nights they’d spent in each other’s arms. While their relationship was new and as of yet unnamed, the fact that they wanted to stay together didn’t even need to be spoken out loud and of course Zenyatta had asked to accompany him, especially since it was for a good cause. It was the one thing that had made Genji hesitate.
“I’m not the one who got hurt,” Zenyatta pointed out, placing a hand over his unmoving fingers.
“You could have just as easily been in my shoes.”
While Zenyatta was not fragile per se, his model had not been meant to withstand combat. If Genji had come to visit him at his sick-bed instead, would Zenyatta be in pieces?
“And I probably will be at some point in the future,” Zenyatta said gently. “However, I have faith that your friends will help me just as swiftly as they helped you, and that you, especially, would be there to make sure things go as well for me as they can.”
The fact that Zenyatta did not deny the obvious reality that him participating in the fights Overwatch undertook was dangerous strangely enough calmed Genji more than if he had tried to appease him with obvious lies. He took a quiet breath. They had known the risks before coming here.
“Of course I would help.” He gave a pale smile. “If I manage not to be taken out by an obvious trap next time.”
Zenyatta shook his head at him. “Don’t blame yourself. You have not fought Null Sector in a long time, it makes sense you don’t know their tactics,” he said, raising from the bed, his hand still lingering on his before he stepped away. “Can I bring you something to drink? Spain is quite hot this time of year and unlike me, you still need to hydrate.”
“Thank you,” Genji said with a nod.
If it had been any of the others, Genji would have refused. He still had internal fans to cool him and not drinking for the few hours it would likely take for the reset to finish would not kill him, even if it would have been uncomfortable. Pride – it was the one thing Zenyatta had never managed to train out of him. However, Zenyatta had seen him in much worse shape, though the pain back then had not been physical, so with him Genji did not mind to let his guard down.
Zenyatta brought a bottle of water from a small fridge cowering in a corner and held it to Genji’s mouth, allowing him to drink until his throat did not feel like sandpaper anymore. When Zenyatta pulled the bottle away and screwed it shut again, Genji kept looking at him, his small, precise movements. It was the best way to keep his peace of mind.
“What did you think of your first fight with Overwatch?”
“It was exciting to be allowed to intervene so directly against an injustice. However, I will have to get used to watching your suffering and that of the others so closely...”
“With you here, there will be less suffering.”
Zenyatta halted, growing still as he always did when he gave something thorough consideration, and eventually inclined his head. “Yes, I like that way of thinking. I should keep that in mind,” he said appreciatively. “I do think I will come to enjoy Overwatch. Your old friends are an interesting group.”
Genji snorted. “That is one way to put it. What happened after I was out, anyway?”
Sitting down by his side again, Zenyatta recounted the events and Genji felt briefly transported back to a life he had left behind, but its brighter parts, the little moments of levity and comradery that Zenyatta emphasised in his tale, and which had been so easy to lose sight of in the swirling darkness of his thoughts when Genji had last worked with Overwatch. He still worried for the future, but as long as Zenyatta and him stayed together, he could believe that it had good in store, too.