Work Text:
Cassidy had crows-feet around his eyes that crinkled when he smiled, and he was smiling at Hanzo. His eyes were muddy most of the time but now, in the sunlight, they were lighter and had flecks of gold in them.
He would have thought that such things were the result of an overactive imagination, but he could also see that one eye, the one that always glowed hellish red during Deadeye, was red and irritated. Hanzo remembered hearing Cassidy talk about it with Dr. Ziegler and Baptiste, in a strangely open conversation in the kitchen while they cooked.
“Nothing much bothers it anymore,” Cassidy had said with a little laugh. He had been cutting onions, Hanzo remembered. “Deadeye hurts more than nobody’s business; anything else don’t feel quite as painful in comparison.” He had laughed again, a sad, bitter little thing that had made what was left of Hanzo’s heart shrivel up and die. “Bet I could grind salt and ghost pepper juice in my eye and not flinch anymore.”
That wasn’t something that his imagination would come up with, right? In his imagination, everything was perfect; it was the world as he wanted to see it, not how it was.
So it must be real to see him hovering over Hanzo. Surely he wouldn’t imagine the crooked grin, the way an otherwise-invisible scar pulled against his lips, the slight gap in his teeth. They’re slightly yellow from the awful cigars he smokes, and the lingering pall of stale smoke. It must be real.
Hanzo repeated that to himself as Cassidy says, “darlin’,” and kissed him. His lips were warm, slightly chapped. Cassidy always carried lip balm but never used it and always complained that he forgot to take them out of the pockets and folds of his clothes, and always found them in the washer while doing laundry.
That wasn’t a detail in a dream, right?
Hanzo opened his eyes.
Turns out it was.
He rolled over and buried his face in the flat pillows on his flat cot in his tiny room that was little more than a repurposed closet. Afraid of dreaming again—afraid that he’d dream again and afraid that he wouldn’t—Hanzo stared at the wall and meditated.
Sleep would not come to him again that night.
He wouldn’t let it.
“Darlin’.”
Hanzo stiffened and turned. He was somehow both disappointed and relieved that Cassidy hadn’t directed that drawled “darlin’” toward him. It was spoken—crooned, really—to the ancient coffee machine.
“Aw, darlin’, don’t be like that,” Cassidy crooned again, his upper body stretched out over the counter. “Gimme some lovin’, will ya?”
“Eew,” Hana said from the table. Despite the dark shadows beneath her eyes, she seemed to be full of frenetic energy. When she got like this, high off of caffeine and the thrill of participating in a charity stream for over 24 hours, Hanzo was reminded of the stories of Aimo Koivunen.
Her streaming and military careers aside, Hanzo personally thought that she was also impressive for her accomplishments in defying medical law the way that she did.
“Aw, don’t listen to them,” Cassidy murmured, stroking the plastic face of the coffee machine. It groaned and gurgled and Hanzo quickly finished making his tea before anyone called him on the fact that he’d oversteeped it again.
Lena always insisted that he made tea wrong, but most chalked it up to her being a Brit. Genji didn’t care either way, having never cared for it and not quite having the taste buds left to distinguish good tea from bad. Only Ana could tell, but her silence could be bought with tea biscuits and embarrassing stories of two young boys in Hanamura.
Telling himself that he wasn’t running, Hanzo walked quickly out of the kitchen.
“Hanzo!”
Hanzo looked down and found Cassidy and Genji shading their eyes to look up at him. He was perched on the comm tower, making one of many repairs necessary for the base to continue working.
He blinked. How long had he been there? Mindlessly replacing wires and making notes on what other things needed to be repaired. He, Genji, and Echo were the only ones able to make it up to the top of the tower, as the ladder had long since fallen apart, rendering it impossible for anyone else to make the climb. Winston might be able to, but his weight would be more detrimental.
For the moment, the comm tower was a necessary evil, at least until it can be fixed or updated for modern equipment. Without it, they wouldn’t have any communications with the outside world or with each other during missions.
That’s what everyone told him, anyway. So he dutifully climbed up and did repairs as he was able to.
“Hanzo!” Genji yelled again, waving his other hand. “Come down!”
Why? He wanted to ask like a petulant child but he did no such thing. “I’m busy,” he said curtly, raising his voice a little to be heard over the distance.
“See?” Cassidy asked mockingly. His voice was loud enough for Hanzo to hear as well. “I told you he wouldn’t. He’s just that type.”
His words were goading. As the Americans say, Hanzo would be damned if he did and damned if he didn’t respond. He opted not to, instead returning his focus to the wires on the comm tower. Wouldn’t it just be easier to make a new tower rather than waste the effort on saving one that was clearly on borrowed time?
Hanzo glanced down at the two of them pensively. This had to be a dream, right? Cassidy was imperfect in the way he stood, and from this angle Genji didn’t look quite right, as if his brain was trying to recreate something it wasn’t familiar with. Was his mind trying to tell him that an imperfect replication of his brother’s new body was the real thing?
Or was this real?
It had to be, with the way Cassidy treated him. Cold. Standoffish.
Even colder and standoffish than he was with the rest of the team, at least. He was only pleasant to those few that he liked, those that he had good memories of. Somehow that included Genji, despite Genji admitting that there aren’t very many memories he had of the two of them that implied that they had been friends.
Hanzo was very aware that he was not one of those people. In fact, as Cassidy had said the first day he’d met Hanzo, he stood for everything that Cassidy was against, and that he was only playing nice because others asked him to. That if Hanzo so much as looked at anyone wrong, then Cassidy would be more than happy to help him along with a bullet between the eyes.
But despite the frigid way that Cassidy treated him and the carefully neutral way that everyone else did, he wasn’t lonely—he really wasn’t.
Echo was nice to him, and he was surprised at how fond of her he was in return. Ana was perfectly polite to him when it suited her (which was most of the time, much to his surprise), as was Brigitte, who was fascinated by his tech and was understanding about the times he’d told her to fuck off and had to come back and apologize. He had the three of them, so he couldn’t be lonely, and he didn’t need social interaction anyway.
He had the three of them and he had Genji, who insisted on spending time with him. They hadn’t done that since they were boys, and even then they hadn’t really been the best brothers to each other.
They hadn’t been the siblings that Cassidy, Fareeha, and Dr. Ziegler were, who were “thick as thieves” as Lena would say, and who were closer than blood. They hadn’t even really been close—Hanzo had been raised as the next heir, and Genji had been the favored child.
Where Hanzo had been taught about pain, Genji had been taught about joy.
Hanzo pulled himself from those dark thoughts and focused instead on the wires. Wires, he could do.
Wires didn’t lie.
“You ever think about how the elders turned you against each other?”
Hanzo looked at Cassidy out of the corner of his eye. He was puffing away at one of his awful cigars, but it was at least a few levels higher than the dirt-cheap stuff he usually smoked. It smelled faintly of vanilla, so Hanzo was very certain that this was a dream; he’d never remembered Cassidy smoking a flavored cigar.
Not to mention, Cassidy almost never spoke to him unprompted.
He turned. “What?”
“You ever think about how the elders turned you and Genji against each other?” Cassidy repeated and blew smoke rings toward him. They both glanced toward the smoke detector in the kitchen, holding their breath to see if the puff of smoke would set it off. When it didn’t, they breathed a sigh of relief. Cassidy tilted his head so that the next smoke ring drifted indolently out the window.
Hanzo turned away. He was making tea. It was late. He had a teabag in his hand from some cheap brand that Lena insisted was fantastic. If he didn’t like it, he chalked it up to the differences in their culture and the fact that he didn’t have much of a sense of taste anymore.
“Every day,” he admits. “I think about what else I might have done and see nothing—I was just a rat in a maze because all I knew was their manipulation. When I realized what was happening, it was too late.”
Cassidy huffed and ashed his cigar. Hanzo hoped that the wind would blow away the ash so that come morning, nobody scolded him , as if he was the only one on base that smoked. (Everyone pretended that Torbjörn didn’t smoke, except for Brigitte who constantly scolded him for it, and nobody was quite brave enough to try to go after Ana, because while they all clearly had death wishes, no one had that kind of death wish.)
“That makes it sound like I’m not taking responsibility,” Hanzo added, watching the tea leach from the bag into the water. It twisted and swirled and he found himself briefly mesmerized by it. “I am. It’s just…I don’t know.”
“It’s complicated,” Cassidy agreed. “You’re as much a victim as Genji was.”
Hanzo shook his head. “I’m not,” he insisted.
“You are,” Cassidy told him quietly. “You are.”
Gripping his mug and ignoring the way the water heated his palms, which were too callused to feel the burn, he walked out of the kitchen. He told himself that he wasn’t running, but he was never really good at lying to himself.
“Good morning, McCree!”
“It’s Cassidy .” It was only two words, but there was a novel’s worth behind it that Hanzo could hear as if Cassidy had shouted it.
Get it right.
Why do I have to keep saying this?
Why won’t you listen?
Why won’t you call me by my name?
Why can’t I leave him behind?
Hanzo glanced up. Mei looked horrified and tears were welling up in her eyes. There were dark circles under Cassidy’s eyes as if he hadn’t been sleeping; the crows feet at the corners were deeper than usual.
There was silence in the kitchen after Mei had fled. A part of Hanzo wanted to go after her, but he knew that she was upset with his presence and terrified of him so he remained in his place, even if it meant stewing in the awkward atmosphere.
Dr. Ziegler wordlessly went after Mei when no one else did and Hanzo looked down at his mug. Tea. Something that Brigitte had given him. It smelled sweet but was bitter and oversteeped. He thought it was bitter; it was hard to tell. After years of smoking, he didn’t have much of a sense of taste. Either way, he told her that it was good, that he liked it. It made Brigitte smile so he maintained the lie as well as he could. Hanzo didn’t really care either way, so it was fine.
“That’s not my name anymore,” Cassidy snarled into the silence.
It reminded Hanzo of a foggy morning. The futility of yelling into it; the echo only bounced back or felt hollow as the sound was devoured.
Or a dog barking at the end of a chain. Futile. Useless. Yelling to fill the void.
Oh, he was right. Hanzo understood. He wasn’t who he once was, and he wasn’t wrong to correct someone. But it was…complicated.
“Mei is still learning,” Fareeha scolded. “She just woke up.”
Cassidy snarled. It was yelling into the fog. A bundle of useless anger. It’s not like Hanzo was much better. “I ain’t that guy,” he snapped. “So she better learn.”
He stomped out of the kitchen. Exasperated, Fareeha chased after him.
Across from him, Ana sipped her tea as if nothing was amiss. He envied the mask she was able to put on. Once upon a time, he would be just as stony-faced as her; now he felt as if he wore his heart on his sleeve, as if the years of his grief and horror had scraped away the stone that protected it and now he was just a pile of raw nerves. He was like the delicate little ferns that people called “sleeping grass”—the slightest touch, and he’d curl up, shrivel up.
How had he fallen this far? Or was it something wrong? To want to comfort someone?
Surely this must be a dream—his dreams, lately, seem to surround Cassidy. But why would he dream about this? Watching Cassidy sharpen his tongue on poor Mei, who had only wanted to wish him a good morning? Who was always cheerful, always pleasant, but who sometimes clearly forgot that time had marched on without her? Who sometimes called for MacReady or Opara instead of Brigitte or Ana? Who sometimes stared at her phone with a perplexed look on her face as she tried to catch up with ten years of life that she missed out on while in cryostasis?
He finished his tea, washed the mug, and left. Somehow, he ended up on the roof.
“You gonna tell me I done wrong too?” Cassidy asked bitterly. More than once, Hanzo had noticed his accent changing depending on his mood. A part of it was from the many masks he had learned to wear over his time on the rone, something which Hanzo could relate to.
He wondered if some days, Cassidy woke up and didn’t know who he was anymore. Did he know who “Cole Cassidy” was? Was there ever any doubt in his mind? Did he wonder if the person he was, if the mask he wore, was really “Cole Cassidy”, or just another facet of another act he put on?
Perhaps he was looking too much into this. Who was he to think that Cassidy was as broken as Hanzo was?
It was then that Hanzo knew it must be a dream; it was the only explanation for the way the world seemed hazy. For once it seemed like it was really a dream, so he sat down nearby. “What right do I have to say that?” he asked.
From Cassidy’s scoff, he could guess where the sharpshooter was sitting, but he couldn’t make him out. He didn’t see the point in trying to get closer so he sat at the edge of the roof and looked out over the base.
“I’ve done more than enough wrong for a thousand lifetimes,” Hanzo mused quietly to himself, unsure if Cassidy could even hear him. Did it matter anymore? “How could I scold you for standing up for yourself? When I...or the person I once was...have stood aside and allowed things to happen for too long? I am just here because I understand.”
For a long moment, there was silence. “That’s fucked up,” Cassidy said. “You say that like you don’t know who you are anymore.”
Did he? Hanzo supposed he was right. No, he knew he was right—that he was lost in a sea of identity, not sure who “Hanzo” was anymore.
Shimada? Maybe only in name.
Murderer? Monster? Yes, yes definitely.
Brother? He had never been a brother to Genji. Never had been and, at this point, never will be.
Hero? Never.
Teammate? Again, only in name. People would work with him, but they wouldn’t be happy about it. They barely liked him being on base—if they could afford it, they likely would rather that he live elsewhere and only show up for missions. It’s okay; Hanzo understood—his presence, should it become public, would only serve to drag Overwatch’s name through the mud.
He really was pathetic. Not only did he not know who “Hanzo” was anymore, but he also couldn’t ever tell if he was dreaming or not. How strange was that? How pathetic was that?
Cassidy walked over and sat down near him. So this definitely was a dream, because Cassidy would never do that. He also would never offer an unlit cigar held between forefinger and thumb, a scratched metal lighter pinched between his middle and ring finger.
But this was a dream, so there was no harm in accepting. Cassidy watched him with an unreadable expression as he took the cigar and lighter. It tasted awful but the burn of the nicotine was nice.
Cassidy watched him take a long drag and then breathe out.
“I…” Cassidy trailed off, unsure. He cleared his throat. “I used to be like that, you know.”
Hanzo glanced at him. This was a dream, so he let himself look, really look. There were the crows-feet at the corners of his eyes, and the faintest hint of sun freckles, the uneven skin around scars that healed well but imperfectly. It was hard to tell the color of his eyes, because they always seemed to be colored by his mood and Hanzo’s own wishful thoughts about him. Sometimes they were honey-colored, sometimes the color of whiskey; sometimes coppery, sometimes a very normal, very human hazel. One eye was perpetually red and irritated from using his Deadeye trick too often.
He tried not to think too much about what it might mean that he imagines that they change colors.
Now Cassidy’s eyes were dark and serious and Hanzo couldn’t quite put a name to the color. He supposed that he didn’t really need to.
Cassidy looked away. “Point is, I used to be confused. I used to…I used to not know who I saw in the mirror. It was me, but who was that person? Think I must’a struggled with it for…” he hissed through his teeth. Hanzo noticed that his accent had changed again and wondered again if Cassidy ever noticed. “Hell, most’a my life. Then I thought, ‘you know, who else is gonna know me but me? So who do I want to be?’ And that’s that.”
Hanzo took another long drag of his cigar and blew out a wobbly smoke ring. He sighed and the remainder of the smoke in his mouth ruined it. They all blended together and dissipated, the only evidence of their existence being the smell still lingering in the air.
“That’s why it matters so much,” Cassidy whispered almost to himself. “That McCree…he’s a monster. He did things , Han. And it was me, but it’s not who I want to be anymore, you know? That McCree tried to do the right thing and failed, and got blamed, and got his name dragged through the mud. And he joined a gang and he killed people because he was fucking bored.”
Slowly, Hanzo took another long drag. It felt like he was smoking it too fast, but he craved the rush of nicotine, the heat of it against his lips, the burn of it in his lungs.
The thing about Dr. Ziegler’s “resurrections” was that it was almost as if he really was brought back from the dead, the way that religious texts talked about. Or as if he was born again. The first time it had happened, he’d nearly gotten himself killed again, having gone to climb a wall and overcompensating—as he had always done, as he had done for over ten years after Genji—for an old injury. All of his old aches and pains were gone; anything that had ached, no longer did.
The scars remained, though. Cassidy’s scars on his lips, his missing arm; the…the mark on Hanzo’s arm, the many, many scars on his body, his tattoos. It’s just the aches that passed. The physical aches.
The phantom pains weren’t as bad, the creak and ache in his jaw from the time it healed wrong, the wrongness in his hip from a time he had fallen badly and fucked it up somehow. Things that didn’t matter were healed, but things that mattered remained. Hanzo didn’t know what he expected.
“Hey.” Cassidy’s voice was soft and Hanzo sighed out a long breath—along with the smoke in his lungs—and turned to look at him. “You still with me?”
Hanzo blinked at him. “Was I ever?” he mused out loud. Then, like it was like the dam broke and he said, “I keep having these dreams and now I never know what’s real anymore. Am I here? With you? Or is this a dream?”
For a long moment, Cassidy stared at him, his dark eyes thoughtful. Hanzo chased the hint of his sun freckles and a part of him unspooled when he saw them. Imperfections. This couldn’t be real, this had to be a dream.
Or was it real because dreams would have no imperfections? Hanzo wasn’t sure anymore.
“What if I told you that this was real?” Cassidy asked. “What would you do?”
Hanzo laughed, a bitter, jagged thing like broken glass. “If this was real, why would you talk to me?” he asked. “If this was a dream, wouldn’t you say anything I wanted you to say?” Then he laughed again. “What is this? Am I so pathetic that I came up here to comfort you and turned everything to me?”
He turned and found Cassidy watching him with an unreadable expression on his face. “No,” Cassidy said slowly. “Not pathetic. But Han…” he trailed off as if unsure what to say.
Hanzo took another drag of the cigar and was startled to find that he was nearly done with it. The cherry end burned his fingertips. He puffed out three smoke rings and then blew out the rest of his smoke, ruining them. “I’ll go back inside,” he said and stood, extinguishing the cigar. The ash left grey and white smears over his clothes but he ignored them.
To his surprise, Cassidy stood with him. “Han…” he trailed off. “Look. If you ever need to talk…I’m here. Okay?”
This had to be a dream. There was no way that Cassidy , of all people, would speak so softly to him. As if he would break—as if he hadn’t already fallen from the mantle and shattered to a million pieces.
As if he wasn’t taped back together with—as Cassidy would say—spit and a prayer. As if he wasn’t already broken, so broken, that being dropped and ruined again wouldn’t make a difference. But this was a dream, so he said, “Okay,” and turned and left.
“God, fuck,” Cassidy said behind him and Hanzo wondered why he would curse like that. He didn’t turn around and kept walking.
He was drunk. So was Cassidy.
Somehow the dream of talking to Cassidy turned to sitting next to him while drinking and smoking, turned into joining him, turned into drinking so much that they listed against each other, turned into passing the bottle back and forth.
Careless passes had their hands lingering and at one point, Hanzo realized that their hands did more than linger, were pressed against each other on the bottle. It wasn’t that they were passing the bottle anymore, but more like holding hands under the pretense of sharing alcohol. How long had they been sitting there like that?
Was this a dream? Hanzo thought it might be. He told himself that it was a bit of the alcohol and a bit of the realization that this was a dream that had Hanzo leaning close, twisting into Cassidy’s space.
He told himself that was why he pressed his lips to Cassidy’s like he had always dreamed of doing.
Cassidy’s lips were chapped but still damp with liquor. His scruffy beard, which Genji always teased him for, rubbed against Hanzo’s lips and he hoped that they would leave marks, some kind of evidence that this had happened. But in dreams, that wouldn’t happen, though Hanzo refused to allow himself to feel disappointed.
Against his lips, Cassidy made a wounded sound that Hanzo drank down. It was something that he could get drunk off of as easily as the liquor in the bottle they’d let fall to the roof. When Hanzo pulled away, Cassidy’s eyes were dark, so dark, and he knew that if he let himself, he could lose himself in them.
They panted against each other’s mouth and Hanzo couldn’t help but laugh. Cassidy’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. He looked at Hanzo with wonder. “Han,” he breathed, then a frown crossed his face. “Han. Do you think this is a dream?”
“Are you questioning reality?” Hanzo asked around ragged breaths.
“I’m questioning your perception of it,” Cassidy said, and it wasn’t fair that his voice was so even. His eyes were so dark and his lips were so inviting but something in his expression kept Hanzo from leaning in and tasting them again. Cassidy cupped his cheek. “Han,” he breathed. “You think this is a dream,” Cassidy breathed. “If this was reality, would you want it too?”
Hanzo pulled away slightly. “Is this the most productive use of our time?” he asked.
“Humor me.”
Huffing, Hanzo closed his eyes and Cassidy’s hand came up to cover them. “This has to be a dream,” Hanzo said. “Because why else would this be happening.”
“Oh, Han,” Cassidy breathed. Then he sighed. “Take a deep breath for me, okay?” Hanzo obeyed, almost against his will. “For a ninja, you’re real unobservant. Okay.” Slowly, he took his hand away but Hanzo kept his eyes closed. “I like you, Han. But I need you to start believing in your reality, in the world around you. I need you to start believing that people might see you as more than just a weapon to be wielded or another body to fill out the roster. Okay?”
Hanzo’s breath hitched. “What?”
“It’s okay,” Cassidy whispered.
Then a voice that wasn’t Cassidy’s said, “Hanzo, open your eyes.”
Surprised, Hanzo obeyed and found that he wasn’t drinking on the rooftop with Cassidy, but on the bed in Medical, with Jean-Baptiste Augustin looking down at him with a relieved smile.
“Ah, there you are,” he said with a bright flash of a smile. He sounded so relieved that Hanzo was momentarily blindsided by it. It was hard to believe that anyone would be relieved but there was evidence right here, in the openness of Baptiste’s expression. “We were worried about you. Do you remember what happened?”
Hanzo blinked blearily at him. “What?” he asked.
“Do you remember what happened?” Baptiste repeated patiently. When Hanzo didn’t answer, Baptiste nodded. “Well, you had a bit of an accident.”
“I imagine so if I woke up here,” Hanzo said before he could stop himself.
Baptiste gave him a wry smile. “I’m glad that your humor is still intact,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Carefully, Hanzo took stock of his own body. “Dizzy,” he said carefully.
“I would expect that,” Baptiste replied. He made a quick note on his tablet. “You’ve been out for almost a day. What is the last memory you have?”
Hanzo thought and decided to respond honestly, even if Baptiste would judge him for it. “I don’t know what was a dream and what was a memory.”
Baptiste nodded. “Fair enough.” Hanzo was a little concerned about his blase attitude about that. “It’s hard to tell sometimes,” Baptiste offered. “When you’ve gone through something…” he shook his head. “But, for what it’s worth, I’m here if you want to talk.” For a long moment, Hanzo sat there and stared at him. Baptiste gave him a wry, almost sad smile. “Is it so unbelievable that people might care for you?” he asked.
It was so similar to what Cassidy had said in what he now knew was a dream that Hanzo was brought up short. “What?”
“There are people here that care about you,” Baptiste told him gently. “I imagine it might be hard to believe, but it’s true. There are people that care about you and want to see you well. I am one of them, and not just because it is in my literal job description here.” Baptiste looked at him with such a kind smile that Hanzo felt his scoff die in his throat. “Him, for example,” he added and nodded to Hanzo’s other side. “He cares for you. Very much.”
Slowly, Hanzo turned to look where Baptiste had gestured and his breath hitched. Curled up on the hospital cot nearby was Cassidy, his newest serape draped over him like a blanket. He still wore his boots but he kept the soles off the bed because he wasn’t that much of a heathen. A part of Hanzo hated that he knew that, and hated that he could hear that in Cassidy’s lazy drawl.
“Ana had to threaten to hit him with a sleep dart if he didn’t get some rest,” Baptiste said quietly. “He wouldn’t leave your side. I promised to wake him once you were up, but from my point of view, you’re not standing yet so he can sleep a little longer.”
“No,” Hanzo said softly. “Let him sleep a little longer.”
When he turned back, he found Baptiste giving him a sly, indulgent look. “Sometimes,” he said when he saw Hanzo looking. “Reality is better than dreams.”
Slowly, Hanzo turned to look back at Cassidy, who was little more than a large lump with a tuft of messy auburn hair beneath his serape. A lump with an overturned hat lying on a pillow and two boots peeking out.
“Get some rest,” Baptiste told Hanzo. “And try not to move around too much. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Hanzo nodded absently. It was just as well; he had a lot to think about.