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Cassidy found God.
After months of searching depleting liquor bottles, hiking mountains and crashing beneath willow trees, mouth gaped as drool streamed down his chin; he completed the voyage, at last. Perilous moments had brought him here, memories of deceased people and wishes, coalesced with grief and exhaustion. Now, canopied by the universe, he let out a heavy shudder.
Nightfall sequestered colour from his surroundings but he saw enough, more than he thought he deserved. Stars scintillated, a waning moon stared down at him in inevitable judgement. Like those that came before him and those that were destined to follow, Cassidy was measured on the scales of justice and weighed wanting. Waiting.
A chill breeze cupped the boat, entangled with its rotten beams teasing it into a gentle oscillation. Before he set forth, a young man working on the docks warned him not to, “there's a storm brewing,” he explained. “We've had boats return all evening.”
Cassidy could only tip his hat at him, assuring, “just teasing the ocean, not gonna go too far. I'll be alright.”
The paddle boat with rotting oars raised an eyebrow from the shore. He had purchased them for next to nothing, their owner desperate to dispose of poor stock. Armed with his gun, a bottle of whiskey, and peace he hadn't felt for a long time, Cole traversed the sea.
He was far from land now, it bled in the distance like smudged paint, buildings and ships indecipherable. Throwing the oars into the water, he let the gentle waves rock them away until they disappeared into the darkness, a wet casket cradling them. Grabbing his bottle, he took a large swig.
For the occasion he had dressed in his best clothes; polishing his armor and belt buckle, cleaning the dry mud from his spurs, oiling his prosthetic so it didn't droop in weary fatigue. Stitching it all together was his outfit, a gift from Amari, something to celebrate his birthday; a purple serape that draped across his chest, veiling his prosthetic.
White tassels decorated his shoulder blades, emerging from gold plated padding. The embroidery and buttons were painted golden. The garment was a product of affluence and he didn't know how Amari could afford it. She waved off his query when asked, encouraging him to try it on instead.
With excitement he hadn't felt since, he had.
“Handsome,” she commented, looking him up and down appraisingly. “You look beautiful, habibi.”
Grinning, he shrugged, saying, “It's all in the face, I'm tellin’ ya. Could make an angel weep.”
Behind her, shoulder to shoulder with Morrison, Reyes rolled his eyes. “I told you not to buy it for him, Amari, should have got the fool a dictionary instead.”
“Hush,” she tsked, fixing the tassels as they clumped on his shoulders. “That's already in his room.”
Reyes barked a laugh and Morrison's lips quivered in amusement. Looking over at them, Cassidy chuckled despite himself. “Should probably get you some botox too then, huh? Even it all out?”
Glancing at the man beside him, Morrison shook his head. “Don't think you can fix these wrinkles,” he confessed, “Bastard’s been frowning since I met him.”
As expected, Reyes' face crumpled in irritation. “If I didn't have to babysit the ingrate-”
“Hey now,” Cassidy interrupted, “That's not-”
“-then maybe I wouldn't look so old,” he finished, glaring at him. “Won't even let me speak without breaking a sweat.”
Shoulders shaking, he winked at him and explained, “All in a day's work, boss. Just doing what I gotta do.”
“Pendejo-”
Amari took a step back, lingering between him and the supersoldiers. Inspecting every inch of his person, she nodded to herself. “I have good taste. You look wonderful.”
“The best,” he agreed.
That had been a year ago and much changed since then, splintered like shattered glass on the walkway that Cassidy had to trudge through, barefoot. He couldn't remember most of it - trauma, the doctor explained - but he went on a mission with a promise to bring Reyes a bidet because he was full of shit, and woke to the news relaying an explosion in Sweden, costing the lives of everyone he had ever loved.
With a mind too terrified to accept reality coupled with loathing that refused to let him forget, Cassidy had stared at the TV screen blankly. Slowly, people he once called friends shuffled in and watched, their silence wet with grief. In his hand, the strap to his duffle crinkled, its contents heavy.
Three souvenirs returned from his mission with him, and they now hid before three headstones, charged with guarding their graves. A postcard for Morrison, a skull earring for Reyes, and a penny for Amari who collected coins from every country.
They were dead, he reasoned when he left them there, it wasn't like he needed them anymore. He supposed the tokens were now as meaningless as his existence, and as empty as their graves. Holding onto them only bittered his emotions.
He didn't attend their memorial service or watch the coffins lower into the ground. Faces of executives and CEOs littered the graveyard, obscured in his eyes by their insignificance; the grief on his friends' faces was too difficult to comprehend. Or accept.
He didn't want to believe they were dead. They couldn’t be. But they were.
Breathing deeply, Cassidy drank some more of his whiskey, his chest hollow and eyes abandoned by the soul that was supposed to be in his chest. Everyone left, eventually. Inevitably. Didn't matter how or why, he was all alone once more, with nothing but the sky to witness the harrowing anguish as it proliferated.
It chittered in his ears like locusts, swarming him as they drew in from the horizon where his past lingered like sundew. Chagrined, static muted the thoughts as best it could but nothing could silence the wails of the dead which encompassed him. Embraced him into a cocoon, where nothing living could survive without suffocating to death, where he found himself suffering the same fate.
Had been suffering the same fate. Not anymore.
There was one bullet in his gun's chamber, and this one had his name on it. With the stars and moon to bear witness, as they had when he first left home to join Deadlock, as they had when Reyes plucked him from the sandy plains of Santa Fe, as they had when he left Overwatch.
They would watch one more time.
He could feel the drink tease his grip on sobriety, a suffocatingly pleasant haze dousing his body. Listening to waves caress the side of the boat, everything felt still. Felt awfully quiet and stagnant, as though they had drifted into melancholy - stumbled into sadness spread across eons.
Sighing, he gazed at the ocean, watching the tender sea weave waves into one, conjoining the water like star crossed lovers. Reunited only to secede in the next breath, it was this destiny that governed these waters.
Swallowing more whiskey as the night continued, melancholy inflamed around him.
But it was during this crucial moment he heard something. A sound, musical and mystifying, reaching out to him. It emerged from the depths of silence with ease and grace, carried in the air like dandelions on a summer’s day. A hum, low and eerie and so undeniably forlorn. Piercing the quiet solitude of night with its ethereal murmur.
There was someone calling him. Someone who sought him in these perilous waters.
They had subdued the sea, tamed the imminent monstrous waves for him, and now they urged him to come. Follow their voice to feel the touch of something so sublime.
Eyes wide and mouth gaping, he stumbled on his seat as he lurched forward, arm outstretched as he tried to capture the notes in his palm. It was enchanting, mesmerising, doused him in helplessness so he had no choice but to follow - to find the source.
Whoever was responsible for the captivating drones wanted him, and they were close. There in the ocean, where darkness reigned and not even moonlight could penetrate the abyss, they waited for him. Wanted him to find them and take his claim.
Swallowing, his body weightless and limbs working on their own accord, he felt the water smothering the boat's walls rock him back and forth. Gently, leisurely and kindly, until he felt himself tip. Tumble over the edge and fall into the embrace of darkness.
Water consumed him, the sound so loud now he was in its grasp, and he looked around feverishly. Desperate to locate where the hum was coming from. Something - no, someone - grabbed his ankle and pulled, tethered him like an anchor. He was disappearing, swallowed by the deep as his lungs grew heavy.
He was dying, he realised far too late. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the world that could keep him in these depths, and the current felt strong here. Merciless as it slithered past him carrying debris foraged from miles away.
But he didn’t protest, not when it was taking him to them. The bearer of the angelic, crestfallen voice.
Light dimmed in his chest, the icy hand on his ankle squeezed and tugged. Death was near, but the haunting beauty of the music was palpable. He was so close. He could touch it. If he only held on, he could positively breathe it in and that would be all he needed to survive, the air he needed to live.
But as the skyline vanished from his view and black spots dripped onto his iris, he realised he was too late. Hands touched his body, patted his serape and ripped the floating fabric like it was a cage.
Before he could indulge in one look at the face of the voice, his eyelids fluttered shut and refused to open. Death came far too swiftly.
Or he wished it did, but death spat him out after the first bite. His body broke the surface of the ocean, and when air teased his lips his mouth opened to inhale as much as it could. He felt possessive of it, scrambling through the haziness to gather his bearings.
In an impressive heave, he grabbed the edge of the boat and lifted himself into it, sense returning now the melody deserted him. Hands cupped his thighs and pushed, aiding his lift, and he tumbled onto the seats, coughing.
Water spluttered out of his mouth, sprinkling on his armour and it felt too heavy - constricting, with the water retained in its gaps. Pulling it off, he threw it onto the floor and hauled himself upright, hands gripping the wood beneath him and just breathed.
Lungs burning, heart racing, a painful stitch throbbed with every breath. He’d almost died. His wet hair dangled in front of his eyes, water dripping from the amalgamated strands. He’d almost fucking died.
Why didn’t he?
Disturbing his thoughts, his serape tossed to his feet, the purple fabric laden with water. His large eyes darted to it, shivering now that the cold had infiltrated his body, then looked in the direction it came from.
Breath hitching, he thought Reyes gambled with his reality from the grave because in front of him, very much alive and inquisitive, was a siren. A creature he knew to be mythical, notorious for leading sailors to an untimely demise. Yet it let him go.
Of all people, it had to let him go.
“You're real,” he breathed, voice painfully croaky. “You're real and you…you let me fuckin’ go. Why?”
The siren's eyes were wide, almost painfully bulbous. But they were considerate, unflinching as they assessed him. He wondered if that was how they always appeared.
Long silky hair waterfalled onto their chest, disappearing out of Cassidy’s view. Their skin was grey and pale with strokes of blue, composing a stormy palette yet one that was twice beautiful. From their bulging biceps, to their wide and chiseled waist, the siren's body was carved by strength. Scars littered their skin, affirming it, anecdotes of fights they’d won.
But their face was memorising, as enticing as dreams that Cassidy wished he never woke from. With cheekbones and jawline sculpted from marble, they looked severe, shadowed by nightfall. The most unearthly thing about them were their eyes, yet he found that despite their hallowed gaze, they were just as beautiful.
But beauty could not forgive their misgivings.
“Yes,” they whispered, voice quiet and gravelly. “I did.”
Wiping the water from his face, Cassidy glared at them. His lips curled in a snarl, frustration simmering uncontrollably inside him. “I’m asking you why,” he demanded, vaguely emotional. “I’ve heard about you and you don't - you never do. So, why me? Huh? Why me?! ”
His voice started rising in the last words, anger multiplying in his weak cells, charging them with energy he knew would soon perish. But he needed to know, couldn't fathom an acceptable answer even though he needed one. Heaving, he watched the siren as they rose higher, chest gleaming under the moonlight.
“I deserve a choice too, do I not?” they asked, voice numb with what he thought was indifference.
Cassidy shook his head, wet hair plastering across his skin. He shivered but not from the cold. “No. No, you don't. You had a fuckin’ job-”
“So did you.” The siren smiled, but it was just as empty as the rest of what they did. “We both did. Yet here we are; failures, but better for it.”
Trembling now, the cool air slithered across Cassidy’s skin and goosebumps arose. He was cold, he was desolate, he was wanting and deprived. He was judged and found guilty. Where was his guillotine - where? Cassidy could hardly smother the sob pulsating in his throat.
“That's not a decision you get to fuckin’ make,” he hissed.
The siren hummed. “Humans,” they said, “Have always been so incorrigibly selfish. Tell me, why should I respect your wish and let you die when you cannot respect mine?”
“Because it ain't the same!” he yelled through gritted teeth.
“It never is for your kind, but somehow, it always is for mine.”
That may have been the first time Cassidy recognised any emotion from the creature, their words forlorn, their despair palpable. They looked away, large eyes gazing into the distance indecipherably.
“If you desire death then it will not be from me, nor in the waters I call home. Go back to land, human. Find what you seek there - it is where you belong.”
“You think you own these waters?” he questioned, rumbling with ire. “Tellin’ me where to go n’ what to do?”
“Yes.” Their eyes returned to his and stared. Cassidy wouldn’t look away, he would not be the first to lie down. “These waters are mine. I care for them, and they have seen enough. They do not need to coddle you too.”
Furious at the implication, he tried to conjure his legs to move, to get off the wood digging into his bones and do exactly what the siren said not to. But he was exhausted; his muscles were depleted and thoughts defeated. If there was a fight, he could not win it.
He was crushed by his ineptitude and there was nowhere to go. No home, no ocean, no land or sky. The world was around him, God in His truest form, but Cassidy found he could not be further from divinity even if he tried.
Cassidy huffed a laugh, dropping onto the seat behind him painfully, the wood cracking under his weight. “I don't belong anywhere, partner. Ain't got nowhere to go, no one to be. Just.” Sighing, Cassidy covered his eyes with a hand colder than ice and tried to regulate his breaths. “'m sorry. Was mad and it turned me into a right old bastard. You shouldn't have to do anything you don't want to.”
There was silence in response to his apology; whether the siren was there or had left him hostage to the mounting despair, he didn't know. Whatever they decided, he couldn't say it was undeserved.
“It’s just. I'm tired. I'm really, really tired.”
Waves swayed the boat slowly, almost a rocking embrace that he thought he may have experienced from his mother. He wondered where she was, if hell or heaven had claimed her soul, if he would ever see her body without alcohol tarnishing it.
“Lost everyone I ever cared for, lost myself in the process. I don't know what's left. I don't know if I have the energy to live through whatever is. I'm so fucking. Tired .”
“Then rest.” A cold hand moved his fingers away and his eyes fluttered open, the siren's beautiful face eclipsing the sky. Their hair draped around him like a curtain and this close, he could see their veins, realising that was where the blue hue in their skin emerged from. “There is no one here, no one to be. Rest.”
The corner of his lip quirked. “You’ll finish the job?”
“No.” Just like their body, the siren’s voice was sturdy and strong, its depth poignant. When they spoke the air dissolved and their voice became the lifeline Cassidy had to hold onto. “Not again.”
Closing his eyes again, he reached blindly for the bottle somewhere by his legs. “Was kinda hoping you’d change your mind. Guess it’s just my shit luck you didn’t. What kinda siren are you anyway? Isn't that what you do? Lure ‘em in and drown ‘em?”
The bottle’s neck protruded high enough for his wandering fingers and he clutched it, bringing the rim close to his lips and drinking as much as he could. As it settled in his stomach, he felt its effect strengthen.
“We, like humans, are slaves to our vices, but that does not mean we lack conscience. I have killed plenty, will kill more when the moment arises.Their bodies will rest in the deep end of the sea, forgotten until they waste away.”
“So, why not me then? What made me different?” he murmured.
The boat rocked, waves splashing around it. Cassidy felt water splatter across his cheek.
“I did something unspeakable,” they confessed, “My punishment was exile. I do not seek forgiveness but to atone for my misgivings, even though it is too late.”
Opening his eyes, Cassidy gazed at the creature through squinting lids. “Is this atonement?”
Their crystal skin glittered, aura luminous. Facing him, they put both arms on the side of the boat, leaning comfortably against the bruised wooden beams. Tilting their head, their black eyes betrayed no emotion.
“No. This is having a choice.”
He sighed. “Don’t like to hear that if I’m rightly honest, but you deserve it as much as the next person.”
“They say there is more to us than the hooks commanding our limbs. If that is true, then there must be something worth living for.”
Cassidy shook his head, swallowing more liquor than he could handle. Above him, the stars were incandescent, lightyears away but so close he could feel the heat in their molten cores. If he got too close they would burn, or maybe they would suffocate him until his eyes blackened and limbs relaxed.
Powerful and radiant, they could only be observed. There was a curse nestled in his fingertips, a scythe that stole the lives of everything he touched. Was he damned enough to murder even them? He didn’t want to get close enough to find out.
“There’s nothing,” he whispered, eventually. “Absolutely nothing.”
His partner listened to his grief stricken words, ignoring or unable to perceive the heaviness in his voice.
“I searched everywhere. I went to the tallest peaks, down to the deepest caves - nothing. There’s nowhere you can go where it can’t find you. Once you’re a puppet, you’re always a puppet. Only way to free yourself is by cuttin’ off the strings and what then? You’re lifeless, anyway.”
Glancing at the abyss surrounding him, dark waters subdued by nightfall, he shook his head, feeling the drunkenness in full force.
“It’s always best to just cut your losses and know when to move on.”
Voice soft and melodic, the siren asked, “And where is it that you would like to move on?”
Clumsily, his feet kicked his revolver that sprawled on the floor. He was grateful that when he jumped, he hadn’t taken it with him.
“She’ll do me right.” He heard the siren clasp his gun, feet nudging their arm. “She’ll take me wherever it is I need to go.”
“No,” they murmured, “She cannot.”
Cassidy huffed. “Guess I’m just fucked then, aren’t I?”
“The ocean is not as forgiving as the land you left behind,” they explained, “If you thought you could take without sacrifice, then you would be mistaken.”
Cole moved his head to the left, away from the deepening abyss creeping in from the right, and stared at the siren. They were close, so close he could touch them if he reached out. Their arms were crossed on his boat and their head rested against them.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
Their head rose, chin digging into their arm. They seemed impossibly close - a pipe dream that wasn’t so far. Attainable, just like the postcards and earrings, the metal coins rusting in soil. Watching him, their hair smothered their skin, making them look as beautiful as the stories once proclaimed.
Content to look, Cassidy was unashamed as he stared.
“You are not the first to come with the intention of dying, there were those before you. Their eyes were drowning before they could be lulled to the sea, and when they saw what awaited them they dove further to their demise. They sought solace from the ocean, and the ocean demanded they pay.”
“How? You kill yourself here but don’t die? Or you kill yourself here and go to hell?”
The siren smiled, their expression eerie. “Would you care to find out?”
Barking a laugh, Cassidy said, “I tried but you wouldn’t let me.” Smiling to himself, he lost the last clutch on sobriety and continued, “Wanna go again? I’ll put up a fight this time, if it helps.”
“What are you running from?” the siren asked, curious. They moved closer, their torso glinting in the moonlight as water pebbled down their muscles. “Why do you think you can find it here?”
Slowly, his smile dropped, reduced to ash as reality returned. “I lost someone.” Their faces were inescapable, even now when he was the furthest he had ever been from them. “And I couldn’t handle it. So, I ran. Tried to find peace everywhere on this earth, but peace doesn’t want me.”
Sighing, he felt his soul despair in his watery chest, wondering if he was drowning from the inside out. They said it would get easier with time but it didn’t. Cassidy couldn’t even say their names in fear of awakening memories he would never relive. Their souls may have been taken by death but he didn’t think anyone understood that his was stolen too.
Existing in a perilous loop of the news broadcast that morning, the reporter's words etched onto his tongue, there wasn’t a part of him that felt like his anymore. It was all theirs, so, inevitably, it was all deaths.
“You ever lost someone?” he asked, swallowing thickly.
“Yes.” Their voice was quiet, it was carried by a wind composed of sorrow. Holding his gaze, they said, “I killed him. He was my brother.”
“Oh.”
Their expression was tight, black eyes gazing at Cassidy but he suspected they were unseeing, so far from the boat that they drifted in memories. Maybe it was the drink, but he yearned to touch them, to see if their body was colder than their slaughter.
“Is that why you were exiled?”
He saw them yield to the present, leaving the past in their heart. Staring at him, they were alive with what he guessed was guilt.
“To an extent. My actions pained me, the deceit felt unbearable. There is nowhere you can go to escape memories of someone who was forged by the earth, he was everywhere I looked. In the trees, in the mountains, in the sky, and in my home. So, I ran.”
One of their hands dipped into the water, cupping it into outspread fingers. It fell through the cracks, dripping.
“The ocean welcomed me as I took my last breath,” they explained, “And it wouldn’t let me go when I took my first.”
Cassidy couldn’t suppress the surprise in his voice. “You were human once?”
Nodding, they shared, “Most of us were. We sought the sea for reprieve and it was given, but not how we wanted it. Not how it is expected.”
Cassidy understood what they meant. “So if I-?”
“Yes. You will be reborn too. Is that what you would like? To be condemned to a life that feeds on the essence of dying souls? To remember what you left behind?”
“No,” he confessed, “No, I don’t think I do. Guess I understand what you mean now. You don't get much of a choice, killing. Does that bother you?”
“Once. Now, it is nourishment to me and little else.” With heaviness Cassidy could now recognise - similar to the one he felt in his own chest - the siren said, “That does not mean I like to do it.”
Sighing, he knew he was at a crossroads. If he couldn’t go down, the only way left was up, but there was a worry that had not plagued him before, would the stars even want him? Were there stipulations to his surrender, a lifetime of agony he would unknowingly accept?
Cassidy had ventured so far from land, to the place where the sky met the sea looking for God and where he once thought he had, he realised now that he hadn’t. With newfound exhaustion and dejection, he held the life he was supposed to end in his palm and thought: what could he do now?
If there was no solace to find here then where could he go, in what realm or dimension would he be free?
As if they understood, the siren said, “You are upset.”
Shrugging, his back and shoulders scraped against the prickly wood he was laying on, he turned to his side, clumsy. “There’s nothing left for me to say. There’s nowhere to go from here.”
Gently, the siren moved the stray hairs which covered his face behind his ear. Their fingers were thick, shorter than he expected but strong, he felt the muscles inside them tense when they touched him. It was disconcerting to be touched so tenderly, even if it was out of pity.
Cassidy seized their hand and held onto it, hoping it would keep him tethered as his mind unspooled in terror. The reality which awaited him was not the one he longed for; he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
“You could stay here, with me,” they suggested, and whilst their voice was melodic Cassidy felt none of the binds he had earlier. No, this was just his mind, and he didn’t know if that was worse. “We could see the world with new eyes, maybe there is something waiting for you.”
Grinning in joy he did not feel, Cassidy said, “Darlin’, there ain’t nothin’ but misery where I go.”
“Perfect, I will not feel far from home.”
It was a jest but Cassidy suspected there was some truth in it, something he found he could sympathise with. They were alike, him and the siren, far more alike than different. It was comforting to be known even if he could not be understood - being seen was enough.
Timidly, bravado obsolete, he inquired, “You serious? Wanna travel the world some, see if we find anything?”
In a display of happiness, a soft smile expressed on their face. “I would not have offered if I was not.”
Nodding, Cassidy cleared his throat. “Good, good. I think I’d like that. We both have nothin’ left to lose, right?”
“Yes,” they agreed, “The opportunity to find something starts now.”
It was daunting, finding a reason in the wasteland he once knew as home, hoping it would compel him to stay. Or, if nothing more, convince him to wait a little longer before death beckoned his soul.
Pushing himself upright, the world around him spinning like his thoughts, he offered a hand in the siren’s direction. “Guess introductions are in order. The name’s Cassidy. Or Cole, if you’d prefer.”
Accepting the gesture, he felt their hand engulf his own. Cole was expecting the siren’s blood to run cold, after all, in depths of the ocean, where would they find heat? But their skin, soft and tender, much like his own, was something he did not.
“Hanzo,” they said, “My name is Hanzo.”
Smiling, he found it as beautiful as the being it belonged to. Clenching his fingers in their shared embrace, he thought of forever, if a place could ever exist.
“Pleasure to meet you, Hanzo.”
Nothing left to lose, he said. Seeing them smile, he knew there was a chance he would come to regret those words, if not now then later. But the longer he looked, the more he found himself willing to take the risk.
Some things, his thoughts returned to Amari, Morrison, and Reyes, were precious enough to be worth the pain of losing. Hanzo, he found, could turn into one of them in time. With the dangerous glint in their eye that spoke of excitement, Cassidy knew this endearment would be the death of him.
But what a wonderful way to go.