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Chapter Text

He’d set out for Bavarian cream, and while this situation might’ve been dessert for someone, it wasn’t for him. A chewed-up body on the cobbles, already cooling, sticky fluids down its sides. McCree bent and placed two fingers to its waist. Retracting them -- blood, of course. Nothing more helpful. Dang. “Dang.”

Welcome to Munich.

“Dang is a word.” Reinhardt folded his arms and shifted his shoulders until they clicked. “Pray we have more for Jeremias.”

“Thought this’d be too urban for the bigger beasties,” McCree said, wiping the blood on his chaps. Quiet night in an old suburb, on a dim alley with a sharp corner either end. Scream had been recent, no footsteps to follow it, and this place echoed as bad as an empty church. They weren’t going to find a witness.

“ Ja , hence us coming.” Next he cracked his neck. “Or were you expecting a vacation? Sweets at the circus?”

McCree huffed, sweeping his sarape into place again. “Somethin’ like that.”

“When we’re done,” Reinhardt said, at last reaching for his phone and pressing for the ambulance, “I will take you somewhere good.”

“Decent nightlife here?” The others were in Seoul handling a major omnic incident. This wasn’t worth more than a few hours. Overwatch didn’t have the resources to dabble in pest control. The favours they did for old friends...

“Decent?” Reinhardt’s phone chirped, and a woman’s voice lurched into a greeting script. “The best.”

XXX

The Inn von der Isar had a cosy reception, and its owner half-filled it. Jeremias Bachmeier, former Crusader, had lost little mass in the years since the first crisis. Swapping his legs for cybernetic replacements took much of the work from exercise, to be fair, but his arms and torso retained impressive bulk nonetheless. A vast set of weights in the adjoining gym explained this in part, his stern face the rest. “Another?”

McCree and Reinhardt nodded in unison.

“Please. Tell me it gave you a lead.”

McCree stepped back the necessary meter to reach the armchair for waiting guests, and lowered himself in. Crossing his legs, left foot on right knee, he tried to match Jeremias’ expression. “Without Angela here to --”

Jeremias shook his head and turned to the key rack, placing a recent check-out on its hook.

Reinhardt gave McCree a warning look, then took a step closer to the counter. He set his hands on the wood with care, the surfaces meeting silently. A few more seconds for his brother-in-arms. “It hurts me too, but we cannot blame ourselves. This is work for wiser people, more dextrous people. You know this -- you called.”

“Was he all you could spare?”

“There are a hundred omnics stampeding Seoul. Jack took the rest.”

Rotating to the counter again, Jeremias sighed. “When our full roster was sent to Stuttgart while Hirsch remained in Dresden, she asked me for supplies I could not send. I never even replied to the message.”

“Those are hard words to compose,” Reinhardt said. “We are here.”

“Nine people, and they call it a rottweiler.” Jeremias made a mock spitting noise, clapping his hands to the space beside Reinhardt’s. “The force is worthless now.”

“Naw,” McCree said from his seat.

The Crusaders stared him down.

He shrugged. Draping an arm along the side of the chair, he tapped his metal hand into the canvas. Each beat sounded like the skin of a tambourine. “Jes sayin’ we can’t cordon the area without authority, an’ we can’t autopsy without privacy. We’re short on partners for this jig.”

“Your problem is access, generally speaking?” There was a shine in Jeremias’ eyes that had been missing to this point. “If you have the body and a lab, you can investigate?”

“I can call Frau Doctor Ziegler and follow her instructions,” Reinhardt said, matching with a smile.

Jeremias clapped and took to his monitor, closing his booking references and opening an address book. Another gesture brought him to a smaller list of names: Reinhardt Wilhelm, Sascha Hirsch, so on. “I know a coroner. She will help.”

“How soon?” Reinhardt asked.

McCree took his flesh fingers to his face, examining the brown-ish dust left on them. What would he do in the morgue, if the offer held?

“Within an hour or so, I imagine,” Jeremias said. Selecting her name and opening a blank page, he began to type. “Thank you, Reinhardt.”

“My pleasure.”

Bounty hunting -- hunting. That was on McCree’s resume. Omnics, often enough. Men with strange skin, or more arms than they needed. Entire gangs. If this was an animal, there’d be less thought involved than any of the above. If this was -- it had better not be -- a man, it’d be routine. Only trouble was in a third option. Slim chances. “I’ll take another look at the scene.”

“Oh?” Reinhardt’s eyebrows went up. “You seemed so skeptical.”

“Bein’ unfair, never mind me.” Creaking his back and locking his knees, McCree stood. Worth checking the room, taking a jacket and the address of a good bar? Ah, student neighbourhood -- Haidhausen on the signs -- drink’d be easy to come by even if this thing’d swallowed half the local atmosphere. Wasn’t cold enough to smother his elbow-connection in fabric. Go from here. “We’ll wrap this up, get to a brewery, follow ‘em to Korea.” He shuffled forward a foot and knocked Reinhardt on the shoulder.

“Be safe.” Reinhardt knocked back, the impact dislodging McCree’s hat.

Catching it at chest-level, he grinned. “Am I ever?”

XXX

Clouds swept across the sky, tinting it grey to match the buildings. Cover wasn’t consistent -- in the distance, there were missing jigsaw pieces of blue and black -- but this street, this block, this district was well underneath. Blocked the moon, that waning white blob. It’d hide on its own soon enough. Waste of light.

McCree flicked a flame into his cigar and puffed as he walked. Smoking might help his dilemma. The scene of the attack would have clues; cloth scraps or scratches. There would also be police. Did Germany have a warrant on him, or was he popular enough to avoid arrest? Morrison had been spotted here during a scuffle near Stuttgart, he’d gone free. After the Omnic Crisis, Reyes could steal Weihnacht and no-one would blink. McCree… McCree.

He’d circle the block another time and think about it.

Good as it was to see the team again, the current mix of high obligation work with low resources made these trips trying. You need a UN pardon to operate . Negotiation with the UN is impossible under the Petras Act . A stack of paradoxes dodged by the better members. The people with reputations listed somewhere other than a Wanted poster. Blackwatch hadn’t been the smartest job for a former criminal, an isolationist pit where a man could fall and never be given a rope out again. Small wonder the leader had become a monster -- what else was there to do in that dark?

He stopped and puffed the last red ring, then crushed the cigar under his sole. Case, beer, Asia.

The alley.

Ash was caught in his left spur. Progressing along the streets he tilted sideways, clomping the heel into the ground and shaking the remains loose. He jingled louder than usual. Europe being Europe -- anyone wanted to arrest him, following that cartoon American step would be an easy starter. Silhouette a nice second, hat and sarape. Tobacco a third, the reek of ongoing addiction.

Still odd being overseas. From a brick-lined lane around a corner into another brick-lined lane, Haidhausen a twisting system of copy-paste cobbles. Miracle if he could find the scene twice. Six years in the Wild West killed a man’s sense for urban navigation.

New Mexico had its own complexities; railways and peaks and canyons. When you lost your target it was under a train-car or into a dripping cavern of stalactites. When your victim was eaten there was an easy set of predators to blame. Cougar, mayhaps. Bear. Coyotes. Course, it was rare. Cliffs and ravines killed the average backwoods getaway faster. Add his work in Arizona and Utah and you still came short on animal suspects.

Tricky hunt for a tricky town. This seemed to be the closest arterial street. On past a flower shop, doors sandwiching in heaped bouquets. Cafes, bakeries, charcuteries. Glossy storefronts shut at sundown, from what he could read of their signs. An art kid area. Still confident there’d be drink in reach -- because, art kids -- but this section was for dates and family on orientation day. Like when Reyes took McCree on his first European mission, then for congratulatory croissants after. They’d seen a pub tucked in an adjoining alley and McCree had asked for a pint. The drinking age was 18. Reyes couldn’t put Los Angeles out of mind, ordered extra sugar in McCree’s coffee as a non-verbal alternative to scolding.

Playing that Overwatch was the same made the differences harder to stomach. McCree paused in the center of the street and looked for a cut in the sky. Even chain-smokers needed space to breathe. Where was that blue blanket, connecting from Munich to Santa Fe?

The gap in his footsteps let a new sound through -- another set, heavier feet on the midnight streets. Someone was following. An officer? The feet were loping, a good second between each. The stride was too long for an average beat cop. Rubbery paces from sneakers or padded paws. Couldn’t be an omnic, which was a useful start. Distant, but quick; sound bouncing the maze to McCree’s position.

There was a lowered doorway nearby, a recess in the pavement with walls and fences collaborating to make a worthwhile hiding spot. Worth a try. Descending the steps gentle as could be, McCree paused at the bottom and touched the grip of his six-shooter.

The footsteps continued. West, North, North, West, North. Breathing kicked in to match, an exhausted, sloppy pant. North. North. At this distance the slam of each pace was accompanied by a lighter tick, shoelaces or claws.

Draw the pistol. Hold it vertical. Forefinger on the side, could be a civilian. Press the sarape to your nose, inhale, exhale, avoid detection. Curse the fact you wear red.

Fifteen feet, ten feet, five, four, three, two, one foot…

McCree watched the shadow run by, obscured by the difference in depths. Bipedal, gangly -- impossible to see above the waist and too fast to appreciate any of it. Seemed human, didn’t hound him. No problem.

Standing in the recess was a stupid plan and as the street returned to silence he returned to the proper level.

Get to the alley.

Fifth of a mile’s journey. McCree was already underdressed for German Autumn; the chill that settled after the encounter brought the remainder of his flesh into goosebumps. There’d been no trouble, he’d continued on his merry way. The figure had been running a precise zig-zag to his location. A jogger looking for a friend on a gloomy night?

His spurs continued: jingle, jangle, jingle.

Then there was the silhouette with its disjointed lower limbs. Hard to review that flicker of memory. Disjointed lower limbs -- knee hooking back ninety degrees -- a thin shin -- then an ankle -- slipping into a tall foot.

Like the braces Lucio clipped around his legs to improve his skating. There’d been an explanation about altering the weight on his feet to increase his speed, though the explanation had been given over hard liquor and the finer details had been washed into the gutters of McCree’s mind.

Keep focus on the silhouette, the explanation, the ice on his spine.

If balance is shifted onto your toes, you tend to move quickly -- and quietly.

Woosh.

A shadow pounced from the nearest rooftop onto McCree, hitting its upper limbs into his face and its lower limbs into his waist faster than he could draw. Sharp points clashed with his cheek -- bestial claws at the end of human fingers. Knees knifed into his floating ribs -- while its digitigrade legs spread behind, curved feet lodging in the gaps between stones.

Its torso was suspended some inches above McCree’s -- fumbling for his weapon, he collected it by the barrel, twisted it around to situate the grip properly, and lined a shot.

Gnawing toward him with a jagged mouth -- muzzle, really -- the shadow scraped more cheek free. Its teeth came to points that grazed like glass. He’d be a Picasso of lines and rearranged features within another move.

But the gun fired.

Stomach spattered open and dripping -- not quite blood, grey specks through, the concoction half-congealed even fresh from a vein -- the shadow yelped.

With his available instant, McCree pumped his arms upward and knocked the shadow off of him, rolling it into the gutter. Swinging onto his feet, he checked a second shot wasn’t needed, and broke toward the alley in a sprint.

Police would arrest him but his team would get him free. That maw got him, wouldn’t matter if he slid off the teeth or not. The streets circled into each other and doubled back on themselves. He hung a right by the tips of his fingers, skidding on his worn soles. If and when the shadow stood, a muddied trail would be a blessing.

His spurs sang their tune. His sarape caught the wind whipping past. He heaved burnt breaths.

There were voices pinging between these blocks of buildings. Deep men and women talking in firm words. The pop of a camera. A box loaded into a car and the engine turned on.

“Hey!” McCree yelled. Almost there. Forty seconds run. “Hey!!”

Clatter from the rooftops. A glance at the skyline revealed the shadow, ruddied from belly to hip, bending and rocking its weight backward to power its leap.

McCree drew fast as a Hollywood hero -- and shot over the shadow’s shoulder as it landed on him again. He was pinned to the ground as he’d been before, though the shadow had him more secure. Happy with the weight on his waist it bent its arms to strike.

The first hit took his pistol clear from his hand, across and into a wall.

The second was a punch, plain and simple, from an unintended fist -- the shadow lacerating its own palm as it clenched nails into flesh. More of the red-grey mix trailed after the blow, tracing McCree’s throat.

The gun, or the fluid? He cast a glance to his pistol -- too far. He dabbed at his neck. Escape. How? Create a gap. Okay. Rolling his hips he tipped the creature’s legs aside. His own free, he kicked into its waist and tilted it forward. Waist up, head down -- body flopping onto McCree as it lost hold. Lashing for purchase it dug its claws in the meat of his biceps and its toes in the front of his shins.

McCree howled.

There was a third point to connect with.

Hinging its jaws wide, the shadow butted down and sank them around his shoulder. Lower teeth caught on his collarbone, prying it out of place. Upper pierced the skin of his back, the outermost glancing off the muscle receptors for his prosthetic.

McCree screamed.

A cacophany of bullets came in response. “ Steigen ihm! ” Flashlights, shouts, boots. Perhaps five sets of each.

The teeth unclamped. The shadow reared into the beams. It yelped as a bullet cleared through its thigh.

“ Halt! ”

Rocking onto its toes it scurried for an exit, lithe as ever despite its wounds. A keening call returned to the gathered crowd, a cry for its own reinforcements.

‘Reinforcements’. Ha. Redder than ever on the ground, McCree blinked at his rescuers. Curved hats, black vests, shirt and tie. Polizei . Police. He never thought he’d be happy to see them.

Chapter Text

The world McCree woke into was scalpel-silver and bleach-white, faded charts breaking the monochrome. ‘How long has it been since your malaria vaccination?’ He couldn’t recall, which was a damning fact on its own. ‘Non-urgent care? Go off-site! Your insurance covers a range of Gibraltar clinics’ Handy tip, if Overwatch insurance was still valid.

Home. The infirmary, but home. Surgical gown-green curtains were parted to reveal the late-morning sun. A sheer cliff dropped from the room’s outer wall to the sea. Angela’d been firm with the architects: her patients needed light.

Including him. His shoulder stung from a gallon of acid-sharp disinfectant and his face was scabbed and stitched in a sort of waffle-iron pattern. He groaned as the details of his misadventure returned to him.

“Oh?” A voice came from the corridor. Low heels clipped toward him and a slim, blonde figure dipped into the room. “McCree, you’re awake.”

“Good news, Angela. I found our critter.”

Angela did not smile.

A heavy pair of boots followed twenty steps behind her. “McCree!” Reinhardt bellowed, leaning through the doorway with two bottles in hand. “How are you feeling?”

He raised his flesh hand in tired response; his prosthetic had been removed, presumably to allow work on the receptors that’d been bitten. “Godawful. Alive.”

“There’s the real good news!” Lobbing a bottle between McCree’s legs, Reinhardt tipped his own in mock toast. “After a dozen hours with Frau Doctor Ziegler, I was biting my nails for you.”

“Our worries aren’t over,” she said, settling onto the foot of the bed. “I haven’t identified the substance in the bite.”

“Saliva. Threads from his cape. Twenty years wear! It has its own ecosystem.”

“It’s a sarape,” McCree said with the dual weariness of a hospital patient and a decades-old co-worker.

“Whatever’s lurking in that cape, it isn’t this. I’ll need you in bed a week or two more to analyse --”

“A week, Angie? Critter trashin’ Munich,” he gestured left, “robots scrappin’ Seoul,” right. “You want me in bed a week?” To the arm she’d halved and mummified.

“Seoul’s been resolved,” she replied lightly. “Hana called her crew for help and the omnics were summarily demolished or apprehended. Everyone is upstairs save Genji and Lena; they have taken your place in Munich.”

“I even visited the brewery.” Reinhardt rumbled his bottle. “Our business is concluded. Though I agree, a week’s rest is excessive!”

“No way out, huh?”

Angela shook her head. “None.”

“Lucky ol’ me.” McCree dug his fingers between the bandages on his shoulder and scowled at his sheets.

XXX

A small mercy was that ‘bed rest’ was a more flexible term than McCree’d realised. Given free roam of Gibraltar during daylight hours, McCree alternated between his room, check-ups with Angela, and the outlook near Winston’s comms building. On the first day he made two additional stops -- Morrison’s office, and the firing range.

“Was I arrested?” he asked as he leaned across the office entryway.

Morrison looked up from a stack of paper covered in abstract skulls. “What?”

“Y’know, when I was out.”

“Yeah,” Morrison said. He reverted his focus to the paper. “Doctor Ziegler and Reinhardt pulled strings for you.”

“Hm.” McCree sloped back onto his feet.

“Don’t do it again, kid.” He picked up a pen and jotted a series of notes onto the paper, stalling every few moments to cross-reference the notes against the skull design. Hm, no, they didn’t combine. Moving the sheet to another stack he revealed an identical print-out, which he launched into decoding.

McCree meandered out of the silence, up a nearby stairwell, and into the halls of the housing block.

Where Morrison had cleared memory issues, the firing range highlighted the physical kind -- namely, could he shoot without a second hand? Peacekeeper in holster McCree strode inside, ready to test his temporary limits.

Squaring his feet and confronting their set of stationary targets, he drew. Arm straight, shoulder firm, sightline along the top.

Bang!

Bullseye.

A fine shot. He fumbled his thumb to the hammer and clicked it. The barrel rotated into place. Wasn’t so hard, was it? Another pause, another pose -- another stroke of the trigger.

Bang!

Off-center, but within the inner ring.

As he wrangled the hammer for the third shot, the door slid open behind him and metallic footsteps approached. “McCree,” said a seldom-heard voice.

Bang -- this shot missed, taking a letter from the brand name at the target’s upper border. Spinning his pistol into place at his thigh, McCree grumbled. Greet the man, Jesse . Play nice with the new recruit. “Shimada.”

A passable reply, if it weren’t Genji’s surname too. Associating the pair twisted something in his stomach. They were brothers -- they had made amends -- anyone Overwatch rejected might appear in Talon’s ranks later. Understood, acknowledged, but palling around with someone who had brutalised a friend… stomach-twisting.

“May I practice with you?”

“Yeah. Be my guest.”

Hanzo took the space to his right, bow in hand and quiver on his back.  He raised his weapon perpendicular to his body, then reached over his shoulder for an arrow. Slipping two fingers around a notch on the string and flipping the arrow into place he drew them to his cheek. The fletching puffed around the curve of his face, artificial feathers disrupted by his bones. He inhaled, he exhaled, he released.

Thwip!

Bullseye.

May as well try quick-draw. Counting inside his head -- five, four, three, two -- one, McCree fumbled for Peacekeeper and delivered a single sloppy bullet into the card. Ugh, spectator was already ruining him. He eyed the archer. “Come here often?”

Recognising the phrase from any number of Lena’s rec room movies, Hanzo tutted. “Most days.” Another arrow readied and launched, splitting the shaft of his initial shot.

Could drive him out. McCree squashed a smirk and gave a loud, appreciative whistle in Hanzo’s direction.

Mm, there we go -- bristling, trying to figure whether he or his aim prompted the noise. He released the string with less certainty than before and hit halfway to the circle line. Lowering his bow with a huff he strode to the target to retrieve the undamaged arrows.

McCree remained behind the safety line, hand on hip, weight slanted to the opposite foot. The split arrow plinked to the floor in two pieces and lay abandoned. Was that how it went with Genji? A shot and a slow walk in the other direction? “You can afford halvin’ ‘em like that?”

“This kind, yes,” Hanzo over-pronounced the harder consonants of the phrase. Setting in his place, he aimed. His elbow wobbled. His eyelids flickered. His feet ground into the concrete like a knife on a whetstone. “The sonar kit is more valuable. You can afford wasting time like this?”

Cold. True. McCree hadn’t fired in a good while. He watched Hanzo’s third bullseye and felt his inadequacies creep around him. The gauze on his shoulder was too tight, or maybe it was the added restriction of the flannel on top. Weight shifting again, his boots were too quiet without their spurs. Least he had his hat. He tilted it over his eyes. “Give a sick man his credit. Angela barely let me out the infirmary.”

A single, light snort: Hanzo’s approximation of a laugh. His grip on the bow regained confidence. “If this is how you are shooting today,” he said, tapping his thumb to his earlobe, “perhaps you ought to return to bed.”

A fourth bullseye.

Tossing Peacekeeper in his holster and giving a frustrated swing of the available half of his other arm, McCree slunk out.

XXX

On the sixth day, Mei broke her leg on an investigation in Argentina. Angela’s research was postponed, McCree’s metal arm returned, and the fluid samples placed in a dusty storage room below the aircraft hangar.

Was the bite a problem? It was a big bite, so yeah, it was a problem. Any movement in his shoulder threatened to burst the scabs. Prosthetic receptors had been repaired, but the nerves below were still recovering -- his fingers would twitch of their own accord, his wrist would rotate too far, his elbow would jam. Out of the hospital and able to do basic work, though -- a good start.

The mess hall was a linoleum cavern. A head count of fifteen in a base for a hundred (assuming everyone was home) left the communal facilities in an uninviting state. The industrial ovens stayed at room temperature, the endless sink stayed dry, and none of the current occupants had found a use for the three -- really, three? -- fondue sets. Every week or so Mei would tip a single cupboard out and make a cake or similar for the team; the kitchen would regain a tenth of its former life, and as the timer rang, return to its rest.

With Mei in the infirmary, the sole noise was the beep of the microwave accepting its input and beginning to spin its plate. McCree sat on the facing bench and kicked his heels into the side. No spurs yet, but he had a plain pair of western boots. ‘Plain’. The whorls in the black hide were a modest grey, where his other sets glared cherry or waved cerulean. Low-key.

Metallic footsteps from the hall.

McCree stopped kicking. Three minutes until his reheated spaghetti was ready. Could he handle three minutes of the smarmier Shimada brother? Had a whole room, lots of dividers and islands and hanging pots. Don’t make eye contact, use them as cover. Avoid being verbally dismantled again.

The shape that filled the doorway was slighter than expected and trimmed with green LEDs.

McCree slouched into comfort, beckoning with his prosthetic for practice’s sake. “Genji, how was Munich?”

The better Shimada brother made for the cupboard with the blender. “No sign of your attacker. It must have run after the encounter. Animals, hm?”

McCree touched his chin, tinted lilac from the punch it’d received, and stared into the microwave.

Smacking the blender on the countertop and shaking the plug into a nearby socket, Genji took to a fridge in a distant corner. “It was a pleasant trip, even if we accomplished nothing. Have you seen Circus Krone?”

Typical. McCree goes somewhere nice, gets mauled, has to come home without even a token stop for local food. Anyone else gets deployed there, they spend half their time in tourist traps and art hot-spots. Go to Vienna, lose a forearm -- Torbjorn watches the Spanish Riding School. Go to the Gold Coast, contract pneumonia -- Lena goes diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

“I assume that is a no.” Stacking several square containers in his arms, Genji shut the fridge door. “Is your shoulder healing?”

“Got my hand back.” The microwave had ticked to two minutes. Couldn’t finish fast enough, assuming Genji’s nutrient soup work didn’t put him off. “Makes you savour the little things, doesn’t she?”

“To say the least.” Genji picked two of the containers up again and shook them at McCree. The left sloshed like water, the right glooped like yoghurt. “How did you spend your week?”

Minute. “Ah, y’know. Rewatchin’ Tarantino ‘n’ Eastwood, catchin’ up on old washin’. Saw your brother for a bit. He in the habit of insultin’ people, or’m I special?”

“Mm.” Genji popped the lid from the largest container and tipped it into the blender, quarter-filling it with chemical-purple liquid. “Hanzo is -- hesitant around most. I would not attempt banter with him, in your shoes.”

A firm kick to the bench, a brush of suede on plywood. “My shoes the problem?”

“Dressing more formally might help. Doctor Ziegler and Commander Morrison do well with him.” Next in the broth was a soapy blue substance. “But their clothes are a reflection of their attitude. Is a good impression that important?”

“Wanna use the range without causing a fuss.”

A thin green substance chugged from the neck of the third container. The mix stood in layers, the densities different as oil and milk. “I have a suggestion.”

“Suggestion being?”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Genji’s tone was jovial, but not to the extent his comment could be brushed off.

Ding. The microwave door popped wide, and McCree retrieved his bowl, putting the bulk of its weight on his heat-impervious metal hand. Ready to eat and fast to cool, where to take it? Main mess hall had seats, kitchen had company. Company that’d insulted him in a roundabout way. Eh, here was easier. Onto the bench, shuffling into comfort on the warm patch.

“Why do I need to do that?” McCree asked around a clod of meat and tagliacinne -- fettutelle -- the thick pasta noodles.

Genji wiped a fleck of marinara sauce from his visor and folded his arms.

XXX

Orders from Morrison and Angela were ‘no assignments until your receptors are fully operational’. By the tenth day, the restriction was getting old. Old enough to drive him to drink. Drink with Lena. Drink with Lena in the rec room. Drink with Lena in the rec room in front of --

“ ‘Love. Well, Actually. ’” McCree spoke with his face half in his glass. “Why’d they make it? Original holds up.”

“You sure?” Lena said, lying on her stomach and chewing a handful of ‘crisps’. “Even the bit where the lads go to the States?”

If her trail of fans on their last Los Angeles trip was any indication, “yeah, sure.”

“I think the omnics make it work.” The crisps were complemented with a swig of gin and tonic. “Couple trying to decide if her job’s worth moving to Astrakhan? Love ‘em.”

“Mmhm.” Glass emptied, McCree set it on their side-table. Shuffling his legs apart and flopping an arm over the side of the couch, he expelled a deep breath. Another room dwarfing its occupants -- even with the light of the monitor falling small on this rug-and-couch rectangle, abandoned ping-pong tables and a former bar dotted the edges of his vision.

Metallic footsteps in the distance. Which brother? Place your bets, hope it’s Genji. Through the rear door. Pausing behind the sofa.

McCree slouched further and wished for a refill.

“Oxton.” Hanzo. Great. “Emergency in Morocco. You are needed. Myself, the Amaris, Winston, and Morrison have also been assigned.”

Two things were annoying him and only one of them could be dealt with from his seat. McCree leaned to address the interruption -- and the words stopped less than a syllable out his mouth.

Hanzo was, for reasons unknown, wearing a dog on his head. Okay -- further inspection revealed seams and plastic eyes -- but it was a careful approximation and it was on his scalp, staring McCree into silence. Who wore a dog? Why wear a dog? The rest of the clothes were similar to the attire Hanzo normally wore on missions, but then, dog. Dog? “Dog.”

“Wolf, actually.”

Lena spat her drink onto the carpet, laughing. After several seconds beating her chest and coughing the chippy, ginny mess from her throat, she stood at attention.

“There a reason you’re goin’ to Morocco with a ‘wolf’ on your head?” McCree drawled, trying to rein in his expression -- a messy smirk-pity-pout combo -- as though it would help the conversation.

Hanzo adjusted his hat, keeping his face a series of serious lines. “My usual clothes are in the wash. Is there a reason you dress like a cowboy?”

A firefight, then. McCree grabbed his own hat and raised the front of the brim, exposing his hairline. “I’m vintage.”

“This is turn-of-the-century,” Hanzo sniped back. “Carefully maintained.”

“Yeah? Well, hope y’can find more-a these ‘special’ antiques in Morocco.”

“I will try to bring a record or two home. What shall I look for? The Cyruses may be too old for them.”

“Ain’t even what I listen to, puppy.”

“The reverberations through your floor say otherwise.” Oof. No wonder things started tense from both sides -- McCree’d forgotten someone had moved in beneath him.

“Gentlemen,” Lena said, sliding to a stop beside Hanzo. “If it’s an emergency, best be going.”

“Yes.” Hanzo’s teeth remained exposed, his lip gathered, and his brows low. “Let us go.” Swivelling and marching out, he was followed closely by Lena.

McCree was left in the dark with a British rom-com he’d never liked. On-screen, a full-conversion cyborg held placards outside the home of an all-flesh woman. She’d assumed he liked omnics. She was wrong. Rave reviews, a holiday classic, a slice of quintessential UK cinema. No point whatsoever in keeping it running without Lena for colour commentary.

He stood from the couch and crossed the rug, taking her crisp bowl as he went. Were they different to chips? Not to his taste buds, but she insisted. Shovelling salt crumbs with his robotic hand, he managed to hit himself in the cheek (ow, gouges) and the chin (ow, bruises) and then the mouth. Can’t chew dust. Let them ferment into a soup, then swallow. Second to Genji’s paste in the ‘questionable slush food’ competition.

Pressing the ‘off’ button, he stood a second longer in the dark, fumbling for another handful of crumbs. Faulty nerve signals churning them everywhere but his face, he swapped the bowl to his metal hand and his skin hand to chip duty.

Into the food sand his hand descended, scooping a bountiful supply. Toward his maw it ascended, ready to sacrifice its riches to its hungry master. He flattened his palm against his lips and inhaled like a vacuum cleaner. As the offering ran short, he curled his finger tips inward to scratch his healing face.

Sharp-pointed claws cut straight through his cheek, half the length but in equal spread to the set that had left his original wounds.

Chapter Text

Painkillers. He needed painkillers, and disinfectant. McCree’s face bled fat droplets as he pulled it in the mirror. Angela would have painkillers. Angela was tending Mei. Then there was the trouble of taking his hurt to her again -- how many days rest would she prescribe? Would she take his arm? Would she lock him up?

This was a scratch. Five scratches. McCree was an adult man who could tend his own wounds, and fix whatever idiot thing his nails were doing. The unused bunkroom below the hangar had medical supplies. Probably a dozen other places he was too sore to remember.

Taking his work glove from his bedside table, he left his room.

Half the base was in Morocco and that was an excellent thing because it meant half as many people could find him pacing the halls. Sheet white. Eyes unfocused. Face in tatters. Angela and Mei in the infirmary, Zarya in the gym (if the Europop was any indication), and Reinhardt with her (the track shifted to Hasselhoff). Torbjorn kept to his quarters, Zenyatta and Genji kept together.

Seven accounted for, six off-site -- two mysteries. Lucio was gone hosting concerts half the time, skating around the other half. Hana was much the same with a less even split, seven parts Korea with quick wi-fi and a stream running, one part Gibraltar. Statistically, McCree would make it unnoticed.

Then again, McCree had never completed high-school math.

“Jesse!” Hollered the sole person who thought the name suited him. A small figure in a green puffer jacket meandered the corridor, his locs draped around his shoulders and his top heavily cropped. Lucio. “Sad Lena ran, was gonna join you for movies.”

McCree covered his wounded cheek with his metal hand. His fingers shook and his pinky bent backward as the receptors garbled their signals. “Not missin’ much. Love. Well, Actually. ”

“You kiddin’? I heard it’s a classic but I never got around to it,” Lucio said, beaming as if he needed to compensate for the lack of an accompanying light show.

“ Love Actually . Love Actually is the classic,” McCree clipped, then cursed himself for leading into an actual discussion. “Happy to see you an’ all, but I broke some skin an’ --”

“Gotta patch it?” His smile grew brighter. Somehow. “Lemme help.”

“Lucio --”

“Is it your face?”

“Jes need band-aids an’ ointment --”

“Show me your face, man.”

“Had plenty’a fuss made over me --”

“Jesse.” Lucio’s smile flickered out. “Face.”

Fine. Hand removed. Cheek visible. Have your stupid face.

“Geeze.” He tilted his head left, right. Examined the scratches with the interest of a distressed relative. “Yeah, I got you. Doc’s attention where it is, I’d feel bad asking her too. Nasty, just not med school-nasty. C’mon, kit’s in my room.”

XXX

It was a room so Spartan it’d bore a paparazzo. Expected, per his absenteeism. Standard single bed, cover and pillows replaced with a big box frog print set. A table, a set of mixing tools, a cobbled-together computer, a footlocker full of skate gear, and a wardrobe. If you’d seen him at either of his jobs you’d seen everything but the linen.

Flapping open the wardrobe and bending to the bottom, Lucio retrieved a red polyester pouch.

“Low-tech,” McCree said, tone jovial but posture stern.

“Speaker’s for temporary repairs. Keep a guy glued together ‘til the paramedics come.” He gestured McCree onto the bed and unzipped the pouch. Rummaging past cough masks and CPR plastic -- ah, there. “Roll or plasters?”

“Yeah, sure, mummify my head to match my back.”

“Serious?”

“Naw.” McCree took the offered seat, smothering a smiling frog beneath him. Cute duvet on a tiny bed. Children’s aisle stuff. Maybe there was an incriminating snap in here. “Painkillers, disinfectant, band-aids.”

“Band-aids,” Lucio said, tossing a phone-sized cardboard box. “Painkillers.” A sheet of tabbed paracetamol. “No disinfectant, but it looks clean.”

“Thank you kindly.” McCree gave a tip of his hat, took two pills, and swallowed them dry. Freeing five plasters from the box he began to stick them in parallel positions down his cheek. At the fourth, his circuits jammed and his hand jerked to slap him.

Lucio laughed, lilting from amusement to pity. “Trouble readapting?”

“Receptors, yeah. Shoulder’s got its own holes.” Another try saw the plaster in its place.

“Got another hand, y’know.” Lucio woggled his right arm in demonstration.

“It’s --” McCree folded it into a fist, nails needling points into his palm. He placed it at his side, knuckles against the duvet. “It’s a practice thing.”

“Dunno if practice’d bypass a cut-up muscle, but you do you,” Lucio said with a click of his tongue and a wink. “Good?”

“Good.” Damage covered, sting fading. McCree’s face was a ladder of scars and band-aids, but the blood wasn’t an issue.

“Please to hear it. Home?”

“Yeah.” McCree rose to his feet and made for the door.

“By the way,” Lucio added, “like the contacts.”

“Pardon?”

XXX

At the mirror, pulling his lower eyelids. The capillaries stood from the whites. He’d been in the pose ten minutes, save a break when his receptors shorted and his wrist flipped outward. Christ Almighty. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Goddamnit.

His irises were yellow. Jaundice? Did he have jaundice? Was he not eating enough lemons? He’d had lemongrass with Fareeha’s roast chicken yesterday -- did it have to be real lemons?

Another five minutes.

No, this was pointless. Still not enough to call Angela, but he needed information. Slipping into his bedroom and onto the chair by his monitor, he hit a search into his browser. Jaundice… did cause yellowing of the eyes, but not that bit of the eyes, and it was unrelated to lemons. Scurvy was lemons.

What did he have?

Mirror, round three. Inspecting the colour: a solid yellow base with golden flecks, vibrant and simple as a cheap contact lens. Lucio’s guess made sense. The hand -- what about the hand? Raising it into view he checked the nails. Greying, coming to a fine tip, a sort of keratin scalpel, less than an inch. He tapped the mirror, leaving an indented dot.

Claws, if he was honest with himself. Proper claws.

It was time for a nap. He’d taken two pills, he’d call the Doctor in the morning -- to get to the morning, he needed sleep. Sleep, because the alternative was the mirror, or sitting with a movie he couldn’t focus on because he’d glance with his yellow eyes and see his clawed hand and it’d be much, much worse than seeing the gut scene of Unforgiven again (somehow).

Flop on that bed. Shut those eyelids. Clench those fists. Do not think about what bit you. Do not think about what’s happening to you. Do not think.

XXX

Giving it some thought there was a median, an approach that’d take both the ‘very alert’ and ‘very in need of distraction’ parts of McCree’s mindset into account. Reyes -- bless his guidance, if not the rest of him -- had lead him in Film 101, had taught him a hundred genre and a hundredfold entries within them. There’d been constant debate over what to watch any given night in the team quarters, and most nights, McCree let Reyes win.

‘Goth Night’, he’d chant until Reyes hit him upside the head. Bodies in black leather, chiaroscuro, jumping off rooftops in rainstorms. Warning signs your boss would elope with the first organisation to allow him a mask-and-cloak uniform.

Goth Night 2.0. Betrayal. Whose? Repo . Phantom of the Paradise . Dr. Phibes. The same costumes as Reyes, the bitter descents onto worthy prey, bearing knives or signs or bats. McCree had never liked them. There’d been a single tip into villainy he’d appreciated in all their viewings: Fright Night , a scene in an alley with a misguided boy offered power by an understanding father figure. The man was a vampire, the boy became a wolf.

A wolf. Which? The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps, The Wolf Man . Post-crisis: Omnicwolf, Sirius Business, Predator of the Prairie. Hadn’t seen the last on the list. Came out six years ago. Western-Horror. Common genre in the cheaper grades, but this was big budget. Perfect, if Switzerland hadn’t happened. Left it unwatched in the boss’ honour and --

The boss didn’t deserve to be honoured.

McCree sat on his bed with the movie on his monitor. Lying on his front, he balanced his chin on his hand. Still wanted snacks. Ditched Lena’s crisp bowl in the rec room, mess hall too far. He’d deal. Glass of water? No. Rest those nerves. Attend to the movie.

A man in an open field. Dead livestock. Sheriff in an old hat, weaving into a nearby canyon. Corners. Breathing. Searching for an escape, everything in blue angles. A black shape. A top-heavy silhouette maneuvering above. The shadow bounds into the valley.

Claws, yellow eyes, being pounced on by a mysterious creature. Bipedal and bestial, punches and bites. McCree cupped his face, careful not to scratch himself again. If Reyes could become a -- zombie, ghost, whichever -- if nanotech and an adventurous doctor could do that -- it wasn’t unreasonable to think McCree was becoming a -- a --

Becoming someone that truly needed sleep. Too roughed up to think things through tonight.

Before he slipped into bed, he spun both locks on his door.

XXX

In the morning his nails were round and his eyes were hazel and that worked for him.

He cooked bacon with Reinhardt in the mess hall, swapping suggestions for waffle toppings. There were spoons bent as Reinhardt’s argument for banana, caramel, and peanut reached peak intensity (shifting from ‘a good topping’ to ‘the objective best topping’) -- though the skirmish halted when Genji walked in and reminded them that any waffle was an ideal waffle relative to waffle-flavoured nutrient paste.

At noon (just noon, only noon, Torb’d flambe him if he prefixed it with that other damnable word) he took a trip to the firing range to make the best of Hanzo’s absence. Plinking at the targets, every shot through the same hole, McCree felt like a worthwhile agent for the first time in near two weeks. His session was interrupted by a figure through the door -- but as the light shifted onto it, Morrison was revealed. Morocco: finished. Day: saved. Team: to base. Altercation with Talon, so the Commander needed to simmer off. McCree gave him his privacy.

Around four, Lena asked if he’d watch the end of Love. Well, Actually with her. Surprising himself, he agreed, and the pair resumed their positions on and around the rec room sofa. Restarting from the scene at the woman’s front door, they sat ten minutes until Lucio wandered in and returned them to the start of the film.

It was a nicer repetition of yesterday, complete with Lucio pausing McCree in the hall post-credits and checking on the scratches.

“Jes fine,” McCree said with a shrug. “Right as rain.”

“Still avoiding Doc?” Lucio’s smile had a knowing quirk.

“Respectin’ her priorities,” McCree euphemised.

“Be good to yourself,” Lucio said. Turning and waving, he disappeared up the stairs after Lena.

McCree surfaced around a different corner to find himself in orange Gibraltar twilight. The compound and the view surrounding were a spectrum of warm colours, a burnt landscape akin to his desert hometown. He took a wall and lit a cigar. Somethin’ bout a solid view: whether a green forest, a blue sea, or a gold outcrop.

Cigar burnt, twilight going purple -- metallic buildings catching the gloom and making him feel like an ant in a punnet of blackberries. Autumn was a weird season. Could lose the sun in five minutes or fifty. Like Russian roulette with a star, a new bullet in the chamber each week closer to winter.

Twilight giving ground to night, and now the walls were blue tiles, a giant reproduction of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. That was a landmark he’d seen. Beautiful as it was, it was also cold, and Morrison’d promised the team burgers during their range run-in. Dinner, ahoy.

Starting along the main walk there was a tingle behind McCree’s eyes which set him rubbing, rubbing, rubbing at them. Punishment for an afternoon in a basement with one-and-a-bit viewings of a decade-old holiday film. Placards carved into his vision, ‘ I love you ’, handwriting worse than his. Character should’ve quit photography to learn some calligraphy.

The tingle continued. Retracting his hand, he spotted -- no -- the claws, longer and darker than the previous evening. Which meant his eyes were -- oh, no .

Burgers would wait. His room, his closet, a set of shades or similar -- those were the order of the hour.

XXX

It wasn’t just the nails, everything was worse. McCree tapped his thumb around his teeth, feeling out points larger than a human mouth was supposed to have. His face twisted in disappointment, but with its new edges, it displayed closer to a half-snarl. Like a stupid dog in competition for a chew toy. He hit his wall, cursed, and nursed the dented side of his hand.

There was an outfit that’d cover the lot -- albeit a regrettable one. For a while after Overwatch’s closure he’d experimented with ways to conceal his identity, ensembles that strayed from his signature red-and-ten-gallon-hat. Long-coat and waistcoat: too formal, he’d looked like a southern mayor lost en route to a fundraiser. An American flag costume: Lena laughed at him during a stopover.

‘The banana suit’: Angela’s description, not his. Pinstripes, gloves, structured scarf for covering his jawline. A domino mask, because -- because -- Zorro wore them and Zorro was cool. The titular banana colour for almost all of it.

McCree couldn’t abide destroying history, so he’d kept it folded behind his dozen flannel shirts. Fortunate, far as concealing the signs of lycanthropy. Unfortunate, far as his reputation.

Halfway through changing there was a pang either side of his skull. Losing balance and toppling to his floor, his eardrums pulsed loud enough to keep him there, groaning blasphemy. The sensation passed, though he couldn’t estimate how long it’d taken, and as he stood his stomach sank.

On with the scarf, the glove, the suspenders. Domino mask and half-cape were a bit much; he left them piled at the foot of the bed. The fedora remained. The mystery of his trip to the ground remained.

He was sick of his bathroom. Not even a nice bathroom. Shower with a plastic curtain, sink with a fussy tap. Linoleum, because whoever built Gibraltar loved linoleum. And oh my stars and garters, the mirror. If Hanzo had found an antique store on assignment, great, because he was ready to rip this rectangle from its setting and smack in a replacement. A frame with volutes or mosaics or any decoration to improve the blocky boxy nightmare.

McCree stomped into place and scowled into it.

The vertigo cued it’d be something bad but even so, he needed a dozen strokes along the sides of his face to accept it. His ears -- the proper, pink set -- were gone, and in their place -- or another place, the top of his skull -- were a duo of fur-covered triangles, matched to the hair surrounding them. Most werewolves and werewolf-making prop departments had the decency to pair delicate elven points with their low-tier creature designs. This was unfair, and embarrassing, and where was the fedora?

On the bed. He picked it up and jammed it on. Augh -- the new cartilage below it whined with pain, and he was forced to lift it higher. The ears rang. The hat sat askew, barely touching his hairline. Hiding them would require something with more headroom, or a softer lining in the cap.

Ah.

XXX

The door opened less than half a foot.

“Shimada!” McCree cheered, holding his brim to make his hat’s jaunty angle seem intentional.

“McCree.” Hanzo said. Koi-scale pajama pants and a white singlet were visible through the gap. His hair was untied, his breath smelled -- McCree could smell it at this distance? Consarnit, there’s another inhuman trait -- of salmon. Someone’d skipped team dinner. Recluse.

“Y’know how you, er.” McCree scratched his ankle with his foot and tried to look casual. “Y’know how you like dogs?”

Chapter Text

Hanzo peered at McCree. “Wearing a wolf hat does not mean I like wolves.”

McCree laughed and slapped his knee. “Silly ol’ me, makin’ assumptions. Hey, if you’re not attached to them, an’ if the hat’s jes a joke --”

“I do like them.” The door swung further inward. “I assumed someone with spurs and no horse would realise clothes are not cues. Why are you here?”

Preemptively nudging a toe into the gap, McCree’s face sombered -- as much of it as anyone could see behind the scarf. Hold tight on the brim of his fedora, his voice went lower: “To try an’ borrow the hat. Serious.”

“The hat you mocked yesterday."

“The very same.”

Checking left for Lena’s laughter and right for Hana’s camera rig, then reviewing McCree’s obscured figure in front of him, Hanzo frowned. Nevertheless, his door opened the remaining distance needed for a person to pass. “Inside. Explain.”

“Appreciated.”

As McCree squeezed through, Hanzo’s face tinged peach.

Every shelf in the room was stuffed with pastel books covered in kana, or treasures intended for a large display case. A cushion had been abandoned six steps from the door. The walls, a slight ten feet between them, were draped with minimalist prints. The abode of Overwatch’s rarest species -- a hoarder.

“Nice -- cushion.” McCree’d never been the type for art. Those vases -- his antiquing jab was justified.

“For meditation,” Hanzo said, swiping it from the ground and tossing onto the head of his bed. “A spare of my brother’s. Come, sit.”

“Where?” If there’d been floorspace, McCree would’ve taken it, but even with the cushion gone there was scarce room for spread legs.

“Ah.” Glancing around, Hanzo paused at several possible spots: floor (too small), stool (acting as a plinth for a fish statue), box full of nature photography tomes (a bad impression). “The bed?”

“Eh,” McCree replied and sat on the box instead.

Hanzo folded his knees onto the bed, peach tinge still present. With his hands in his lap and his breath steady he waited for the colour to fade, then looked his guest direct in the eyes. “You dislike me.”

If letting go of his brim was an option, McCree would’ve taken it -- instead, his surprise came through in a sharp stamp at the floor, shaking the books below him and sending a judder through his shins. “Not what’m here for, Shimada --”

“You call her ‘Lena’, you call him ‘Genji’. Why else would I be ‘Shimada’?”

“Everyone calls me McCree.”

“By choice. When I arrived I requested to be called Hanzo,” he said. “I am not a Shimada, whatever my history might suggest.”

Despite the questions it’d bring McCree released his fedora, abandoned it a half-inch from his scalp, and took his jaw in his nervous hand. His feet slipped wider apart and his posture sloped downward.

“If you want my help,” Hanzo continued, “you must show you respect me.” He couldn’t keep his gaze. He crushed his pajama pants in his fists.

In their hiding place, the ears sank. Dang. Easy to hurt someone when you thought they’d do the same -- hard to see they’d do otherwise, with that history of Hanzo’s. Amputation, leaving someone with phantom pain and electric limbs. McCree’s receptors were fresh cold in his shoulder, and the mount for his arm pinched as it had after installation. Genji experienced worse.

But it was time to forgive, or try. “Yeah. Sure, Hanzo.”

Exhaling, unfurling his hands, peace spreading across his features, Hanzo nodded to his set of drawers. “My usual clothes are clean. You may borrow the hat for the weekend -- though an explanation would still be appreciated.”

An explanation. Bravado at the door had been a mistake -- Hanzo liked wolves, but framing his visit around that fact would set strange expectations. You’re fond of an animal, I’m maybe that animal, don’t bring attention to it, give me your belongings and let me go. Best to bluff and avoid swapping from ‘friend’ to ‘object’ when he’d barely reached the former. “Figured it’d go nice with my outfit.” Perfect.

“Your outfit which includes a matching fedora,” Hanzo said, upper lip raised in a mix of skepticism and reproach. “Which is -- of questionable aesthetic value, relative to your chaps and sarape.”

McCree couldn’t help but smile. “You like the sarape?”

“It has character.”

For an awful second the ears perked to their full height and added an extra lift to the fedora.

Hanzo furrowed his brow. He swung his lower legs from underneath him and over the edge of the bed. “What have you done to your scalp?” One foot pressed to the ground.

“Nothin’,” McCree blurted, jamming the fedora against his skull and crushing the cartilage another tear-pricking time.

“It hurts,” Hanzo stated, balancing his weight on both feet. “Doctor Ziegler should see.”

“No, she shouldn’t.” He swivelled it clockwise, counter-clockwise, as if it was a jar that could be tightened.

“Let me see.” The gap between them disappeared.

“No --”

Wedging his fingers between hairline and hat-band Hanzo lifted the fedora clear in a single motion, and two crumpled wolf ears were revealed.  

McCree knocked Hanzo’s arms back in futility, tense from toe to tip.

The pair froze: Hanzo doing his best impression of a human coat-rack, McCree outstretched and visibly wincing. The fedora swung from its finger-hook until, on its eighth repetition, it swung free and plopped to the bed. The ears kept at an alert point, shocked to paralysis.

Life returning, Hanzo sat on the bed with his elbows to his knees. He dangled his forearms into the space between his legs. Hair falling across his face, it was hard to identify his next reaction -- a shaking chest and a repetitive, throaty sound. Laughter?

Pressure released, McCree slid the weight of his legs onto his heels and spread them wide up the side and along the front of the bed. Shaking his hair into place and throwing his scarf to a corner he barked a single ‘hah’. “S’right. I got bit by a werewolf. Yuk it up.”

“I was your best choice for help,” Hanzo coughed, his laugh running dry, “wonderful.” An empty glove slapped him in the cheek.

“Came fer yer hat.” McCree gestured with his clawed hand, exposed with the rest of it. Complete set of features plus yellow pinstripes, it’d be stranger if Hanzo didn’t joke. “Not yer help.”

“I will provide both.”

“Help’d amount to not tellin’ Angela,” McCree said. Pressing the heel of his palm to his plaster-ladder, he closed his eyes. “Mei’s the girl needs urgent help. I don’t want more bed rest. Nothing but trouble in a report.”

With delicate steps, Hanzo moved to the drawers and reclaimed their raison d’etre. Polyester fur, resin eyes, and stitches so wide they could be unpicked with a sword. The cap was large enough to accommodate his hair in an updo, and the stuffing thick enough to hide any bumps underneath. It would serve its purpose. “The bite that damaged your shoulder caused this?”

“Best I can tell.”

“It was feral?”

“Punched like a person, that was about it.”

“Will you --?”

“Dunno.”

Shifting to McCree and crouching near an outstretched leg, Hanzo offered the hat.

McCree accepted it but refused to put it on, instead piling it on his thigh. “Oughtta look for a fix. It’d be nanotech, wouldn’t it? Problem is these things tend to be one-show only -- and no point makin’ a cure for a single guy.”

“Say this is permanent,” Hanzo said, taking the free patch of floor. “Are there any benefits?”

“You tell me, dog boy.” Lips pried away to show his teeth and an eyebrow provocatively raised; McCree gave an insincere grin.

Hanzo held a neutral position, though the corners of his mouth twitched toward something else. “Has your hearing improved?”

The grin disappeared. “Dunno, haven’t tried. I can smell better.”

“There,” Hanzo said, “a benefit.”

“Disappears at sun-up.” McCree scratched the side of his scalp, corresponding ear twisting to a slight angle. “Least ‘m not saddled with ‘em forever-forever.”

“But of course. Werewolf.”

“Japan have the same stories?”

“No, I --” Hanzo caught himself. Touching his tattooed shoulder with his mouth still ajar, he waited for the rest of his new sentence to formulate. “I have an interest in folklore.”

“Film,” McCree replied, “‘tween us, should be easy to figure a plan.”

Despite the assertion, the room fell to silence. Hanzo kept in place on the ground, McCree kept his perch on the box. The hat stared into the space between them with its little resin eyes, stuck in equal quiet. Europop rumbled from several corridors along, though only McCree could hear it. Snippets of broken English, and synths half a century past their use-by date.

Raising the hat above his head McCree dropped it into place, the weight enough to twinge the ears but not to damage them. Flipping two framing bangs of fur in front of his shoulders, he gave Hanzo a flushed smile. “Now I’m the guy wearing a dog.”

Hanzo smiled back without any sign of restraint. “Did you really think it would match your banana suit?”

“S’it bad if I hoped it would?” McCree said, using a scratch at his forehead as an excuse for hiding his face. “If this looks silly, imagine how I’ll look soon.”

“Fine,” Hanzo replied carefully. “You will look... fine.”

It was McCree’s turn for a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, you bought this thing. Not trusting your opinion. What, wanna take my place? Think it’s fun? Think it’s --”

Hanzo inhaled and exhaled as though he could find no easier response.

“You do.” McCree stood from the box, his laugh growing surer. “Damn. I’ll leave you to it, then.” He collected his scarf and glove from the bed and pulled them on.

There was embarrassment on Hanzo’s face, draining from amused self-awareness to mild hurt as McCree redressed.

“Be ‘round tomorrow afternoon,” McCree said as he crossed for the door.

Hanzo looked hopefully after him.

“Thanks, Hanzo.”

The door made a brittle ‘whomp’ as it shut between them.

XXX

McCree sat in the rec room, eyes stuck on the screen, hand deep in a tupperware container of popcorn. The past four visits downstairs had ended in broken china and the cook was sick of it, so a rule had been instituted: if it ain’t plastic it ain’t leaving the kitchen. Somewhere in the cupboards were neon green bowls for children that might’ve suited the task better, but he’d heard his share of ‘team baby’ comments for the week.

The movie was ten minutes in and Reyes was late.

More reason for McCree to get comfortable. Throwing his legs onto the other half of the couch and resting the container on his chest, he spread his limbs through the available space. Elbows on the back cushions, knees extruding past the front edge, feet over the opposite arm. Turn the thermostat five degrees higher, it’d be perfect.

But where had Reyes ghosted to?

Insult to injury, it was the boss’ pick. Title: Devil in the Darkroom in English, or something he couldn’t pronounce in French. Premise: photography teacher preying on his students for art’s sake. Style: teen slasher with a too-obvious final girl. If he hit the half-hour mark without Reyes showing he’d swap it for a brighter choice. Arthouse horror was worse than its root genre, almost never knew how to be visceral and cerebral at once. Missing man of the hour mostly watched it to feel smart.

The clock struck six on a distant wall. Reyes had been gone twenty minutes. McCree felt annoyance itch at him, a tingling in his skull as he considered his situation.

A voice echoed from behind: “Morrison needed to talk.”

Yet the itch continued. Flipping his legs in front of him again, McCree waved Reyes to the couch. “Shall we restart?”

“No,” Reyes said, sitting. “What’ve I missed?”

“Girl died in the cold open,” McCree recounted, passing the popcorn. “Lead enters the school few weeks later, missin’ posters everywhere. Decides to investigate with dead girl’s best pal. Tryin’ to pin it on the rich kid with a habit.”

“‘Course they are.” Reyes took three pieces and jabbed them in his mouth. “How’re they framing the teacher?”

“Lesson might have some references ‘m not catchin’, otherwise, jes that he’s pushy.” He scratched at his hairline and blinked to refresh his eyes. Itch, itch, itch. “Why this flick, boss? Shotgun Wedding ’s out, plus you keep promising From Russia with Love .”

Noticing McCree’s anxious behavior, Reyes turned. “We did Electrical Fire and Smith: A Lifetime . Had to show you some class. What’ve you done to your scalp?”

“Dunno.” Scratch, scratch, scratch. “Started when you came in.”

This gave Reyes pause. He stood from the couch and folded his arms. “Do you think it’s contagious?”

“Nah, boss. Won’t give you anything.”

Something crawled in the corner of McCree’s vision, fuzzy lines edging from his periphery inward -- like ants up the walls.

“Did I make you like this?”

The trails skittered into proper sight. Not ants; but tiny, black, and alive. Fingers, massive fingers of conscious particulate, a dozen jerking upward in stop-start motion. One of the shadows would pry itself over the bar with distinct joints propelling the mass -- then another, clawing and collapsing over the poker table toward the skirting board -- then another, using the clock as a hold as it made for the ceiling.

“Was it something I taught?”

There were more than a dozen fingers. There were fingers overhead and underfoot, like an army of giants trying to pull the room apart. Fingers touching nails above the screen, forming into a steeple with every component part still visible to the attentive viewer. A dark cage closed around the men, and from that steeple-point, the particles began to drip.

Each fell on Reyes, digging into him like carrion bugs. A spot on his forehead -- the skin chewed to the bone, a mottled red-and-black hole left behind. A speck on his eye -- the pupil cored like an apple, a dead circle in its place. A smear on his cheek -- gnawing to his teeth, giving him a skeletal grin.

The drip turned to a trickle, the trickle to a gush, the gush to a flood: a bath with its plug pulled, the fingers bunching upward and draining through the ceiling. When there was nothing left to devour, they piled into a new shape of their own: six foot, broad-shouldered, with a white mask and a black coat.

Reaper stood watching, no breathing or blinking to disrupt him. He was waiting for a reply.

Frozen in his seat, jaw tight and knuckles light, McCree managed a whisper: “I’m scared it was.”

This seemed to satisfy him. He reclaimed his seat, the popcorn bouncing onto the carpet and scattering around his boots. He paid patient attention to the film, and in this moment of distraction, McCree paid attention to him.

Staring is hard to ignore. Reaper’s gloved hands took to his mask, raising the hard coating and peeling its second fabric layer away to show the features behind. Scar tissue and smoke, the patches of rotted flesh akin to a third mask, smothering the sentient mass of smog behind them. A set of crimson eyes burned in the proper place, seeming to spew the vapour that comprised their setting.

“At least we’re both monsters.”

XXX

McCree started from his bed at 4am, and though waiting awake in his new body was bad, the one he saw in his dreams was worse.

Chapter Text

“McCree, go get your gun,” Morrison said, power walking into the mess hall. “Lena, flight suit. Lucio, skates. Escort work in Valencia.”

The trio turned to greet him, toast or a mug in each of their hands.

“Angela cleared me?” McCree asked through a mix of jam and white ex-bread.

“Doesn’t have to. Easy job guarding a crisis friend of mine.” Morrison stopped with his arms at his side. Mask and jacket were nowhere to be seen -- this mission wasn’t for him. “Arrested a pair of criminals just for them to break out of jail. Notorious thieves. The kind that pursue vendettas. Wants to lay low with a nephew in Oslo and I said I’d get him there.”

“Are we seein’ any work outside crisis friend contracts this month?”

“If we don’t protect these connections, kid.” Morrison bent forward from the hip, arms forming a rigid fold in front of his chest. “We’ll never hear about the bigger issues. We’re not getting UN tips anymore.”

“I hate the UN,” McCree said, attention disappearing into his coffee as he swirled the cup and broke the milk layer on top.

“UN have their reasons.” Morrison straightened. “You’d have less to hate if you caused less trouble.”

“Says reckless, feckless, anti-corporate vigilante Soldier 76.” He slurped on the coffee, even as it burned his lips. Keep the pose, maintain the illusion of moral superiority. Roast your taste buds..

The comment earned a modest laugh and a loser’s smile. “I’ll amend my comment: you’d have less to hate if you watched your tongue.”

“What’s the plan then, chief?” Lena chirped in as she finished the dregs of her tea.

Morrison turned serious and turned to her. “McCree, Lucio, Zarya, and Torbjorn will collect my friend from his home and escort him to the airport. From there, you and Winston will fly him to Norway while the remaining four agents come home. His assailants are dangerous on the ground, but best we can tell have no resources to track a party internationally. When he’s in the air, he’s good as there.”

“Roger that!” Saluting, she bounced from her seat and whooshed out the hall faster than her companions could track.

“Whoa, girl!” Lucio called after her. Two fingers of chocolate spread-covered toast remained on his plate, so he remained in place. Taking a drink of his tea -- lemon and ginger -- he nodded to Morrison. “When we gotta be at the hangar?”

“Half an hour.” Morrison peeled from his spot and headed for the exit. “So get eating!”

Three minutes of coffee left in McCree’s cup, plus a ten minute detour to his room for his kit. The rendezvous would be easy to meet. The bigger question -- the question he should’ve asked instead of taking a long sip -- was when they were expected home. “Valencia’s a snap from here, yeah?”

“Mm?” Lucio was already in his mug again. Tilting it to a high angle, he gestured for continued silence with his free hand. Swallow, gasp. “Never been, but our Barcelona mission went quick. Why?”

What was a good lie? “Takin’ meds to get my arm online, an’ they make me drowsy. Gotta have ‘em six-ish.” As long as Lucio hadn’t studied prosthetics past middle-school, it’d sound fair.

“Yeah, your arm…” Score. “Sure we’ll be home then. Doc’d kill Morrison if you weren’t, wouldn’t she?” Even for McCree’s more general, honest ailments, yeah.

“Should be a good holiday,” McCree raised his coffee for a cheers.

“Should be!” Lucio clinked his tea in reply.

XXX

It was a horrible holiday.

Leading Lucio onto their flight to Gibraltar, McCree wrapped his sarape around the boy’s shoulders and supported him with an arm across his back.

Lucio swallowed, trying to ignore the pain, then gasped as he brushed a seat and triggered it anyway. His right bicep was bleeding where a hook had been thrown into it, snagging the upper layers of skin and leaving a red valley.

“Bandages!” McCree yelled into the aircraft.

A civilian pilot -- another friend of Morrison’s -- launched toward the cockpit. Returning a minute later, she handed a toolbox-shaped object to McCree, nodded, and disappeared to continue her take-off duties.

“Guess we’re even, Jesse,” Lucio said, holding his arm straight in front of him.

“Oh, we’re even.” McCree unclipped the medical kit and removed a jar of ointment. Rubbing it into the wound -- ignoring Lucio’s whimpers -- he found himself frowning. “Who throws a meat hook at a kid?”

“Australians, seems.” The words came through a tight grimace as the ointment stung whatever grime it had encountered.

“Got any concerts to cancel?” Screwing the lid into place, McCree pulled out a roll of bandages. Unwrapping an end he wound it up and down and up and down Lucio’s arm like thread in a bobbin.

“Touring the Americas all year, so I’m fine.” Lucio’s sentence concluded with a squeak as McCree tugged a knot into place.

“That’ll do ya ‘til we land,” McCree said, returning the supplies to their place and setting the kit on an open seat beside them. “My bad vacation luck must’a snagged you. Sorry.”

“Naw, you pried him offa me. My own fault for skating in his path -- I thought Zarya needed a boost, so --”

“Missions go south through a million lil’ actions. Yer fine, Lucio. Don’t think too hard on a single blunder. Drive yerself crazy if you do.” A lesson he’d been told on a similar jet by a similarly distinctive man at a similar age. It needed to be said, though it made something inside him twinge.

The flight from Valencia to Gibraltar was just over an hour, during which McCree stared out the window at the setting sun. If his condition lasted to Spring, he’d have half the night free for work and leisure and talking to friends -- not that he wanted it to. In Autumn the evenings were so short, even three days of this had him half-mad. Maybe that was why he’d been bitten? The werewolf’d been sick of October alone, and so…

So it ate nine people and mauled a tenth. Real sociable. If that was a universal byproduct of this tech, give him the strength to deal with it responsibly. Talk to Morrison or Angela, find a suitable prison, keep contained at night. Pray they don’t execute him for practicality’s sake. Hope against hope they treat you as the person you worked so hard to become.

Gibraltar was purple as they touched ground. Fifteen, twenty minutes to get to his room or Hanzo’s and face whichever change came next. Ideally a loop through both, first stop for supplies and second for company. Giving Lucio a last tip of the hat, he sprinted for the housing block.

Within ten minutes he had his banana suit, and within fifteen he was knock-knock-knockin’ on Hanzo’s door.

The response came faster than the room’s diminutive size could justify. “McCree. How was Spain?”

“I’unno, Spanish. Aussies took a chunk of Lucio’s arm,” McCree replied, pushing the door further open and walking inside without real invitation. Taking his place on the box, he tossed his excess garments onto the bed preemptively.

Hanzo shut the door and leant against a free section of wall. Expecting company, he’d remained in his day-clothes; a sweater and semi-formal slacks. Some of his books had moved to new places, and one of his prints had been rolled up and tucked behind his drawers. Despite the general tidying, there was a spot of added clutter: reading glasses and a novel with a moon on the cover had been left atop his pillow.

“Pity there’s no window.” McCree placed his legs at angles up and along the bed as he had the prior night. “Can’t tell if it’s sundown or not.”

“The base was carved from rock,” Hanzo said. “The fact it has any windows at all is worth celebrating.”

Fair point. McCree ran his hands through his hair, brushing his thumbs under his earlobes. Hunting for a distraction he spotted the novel-and-glasses stack. “Your day -- you been readin’?”

Hanzo considered the cover. “A chapter here and there. It was topical.”

“Print copies ‘a relevant stories on base. Lucky I picked you.”

“Lucky,” Hanzo repeated.

Nausea shot through McCree and he lost balance, toppling sideways from his box. Closing his eyes and curling his legs to his chest, he focused on breathing. In -- ears full of static, fingers aching -- out. In -- sore skin, numb jaws -- out. Placing a hand to the ground to steady himself, he felt his claws scrape the cork slats. Blinking, he could see clear through the darkness under the bed.

As the hum in his head subsided, he sat up. He felt at his scalp, confirming the ears, and outlined the teeth with his tongue. Two nights in succession. A routine. An exhausting, humiliating, concerning routine -- like any other progressive infection, as it were.

Hanzo had moved a foot or two nearer. He offered a hand, maintaining a respectful stoicism.

McCree accepted the offer and swung to a stand. “Doesn’t feel any worse.”

“Your beard might be wilder,” Hanzo speculated, squinting to confirm. “Hard to say, given the style.”

“What can I say? I’m a rugged outdoorsman.” McCree tried to laugh but lacked the energy to make it sincere.

“If you are comfortable being judged for your fashion choices, we could go to dinner.” Taking the scarf from the bed and gesturing outside, Hanzo wavered between optimistic and pragmatic expressions. “I suspect you need food.”

McCree looked from the scarf to the box. The glove to the book. The hat to the glasses. “Yeah, good call. Think Reinhardt’s cookin’ sausages.”

XXX

“For five hundred dollars, will you take it off?” Hana asked.

“‘S’an important part ‘a my look.” McCree tapped his knife to his plate as punctuation.

“‘Thrift store discount rack’? C’mon, oppa , it’s watching me eat.”

“Didn’ you do that professionally?”

“I quit,” she said, “it got creepy.” Eyes locked with McCree’s hat she dipped a spoon into her mashed potato, raised it, and placed it into her mouth back-to-front. After sucking the potato clump from the implement she set it back on her section of the table.

Hanzo sawed through a piece of broccoli with cutlery held neatly in each hand. His forefinger followed the handles, he chewed each mouthful through before taking another. No point getting involved in a children’s argument.

“Six hundred.”

“No.”

“Seven hundred.”

“No.”

“I’m gonna move to Ana’s table and tell her and Mei you’re being weird and they’ll knock you out and freeze you somewhere until there’s a cure for whatever makes you the worst.”

“No.” Though that did hit close to a valid motivation.

“Ugh,” Hana huffed and inhaled her last scoop of potato. Standing as she swallowed, she migrated from Hanzo and McCree’s table -- though to Genji and Zenyatta’s, rather than the one she’d threatened.

Finishing his plate, Hanzo turned to McCree. Hana gone, their table otherwise empty, the people likely to interrupt them otherwise occupied. “How are you feeling?”

“Had a piece ’a carrot, stomach tied itself in knots. Same fer the broccoli and ‘tatoes,” McCree’s words grew more hesitant as his summary went on, “single edible bit ’a this’ been the sausage.”

“Were you able to eat in the daylight?”

“Yeah, toast an’ a wrap an’ things.” No longer under obligation to continue, he pushed his plate to the center of the table. “Guess I‘m jes gonna have to fill up ‘fore sundown.”

“I suppose. Shall we return to the living quarters?”

“S’pose.”

The pair took their plates to the bench separating the kitchen from the mess hall itself. Reinhardt stood behind it, scrubbing grill marks off the tray he’d cooked the sausages on. The pots had already been relocated to the sink, plates joining them as they were returned.

“Acceptable cooking?” Reinhardt’s gaze was stuck to the tray and the black marks flaking from it.

“Felt sick so I didn’ finish, but what I had was mighty fine,” McCree said, offering his half-full dish.

“A shame, a shame. Hanzo?”

“Excellent,” Hanzo said, placing the sauce-stained china onto the bench.

“Glad to hear it!” Tapping the tray twice with his scrubbing wand, Reinhardt cued for them to leave.

Into the hallway, Hanzo wasted little time resuming conversation: “Should we tell him?”

“Who, Reinhardt?”

“He was with you in Munich.”

“Morrison was in Vienna when I lost my arm, didn’ mean he wanted front row seats fer the operation.”

“I am wary of being your sole confidante. I know precious little of your life outside this particular secret.”

“Maybe,” McCree teased, grin flashing behind his scarf, “tha’s the point. This gets too bad, ya got no stake in me. Turnin’ me in, lockin’ me up, I can trust you to do what’s needed.”

“Hm.” Hanzo’s pace slowed.

Leaving the building and crossing the compound’s main causeway, they continued toward the hangar. The conversation hung between them, turned in each mind without being spoken; a caesura while they processed the blend of interpersonal and medical quandaries they’d spun up.

“If I told anyone else,” McCree broached as they entered the towering archway at the end of the hangar. “I’d probably tell --”

Someone bounded toward them from a nearby corridor, hair and jackets thudding and flapping against their shoulders and back. The figure gave a whoop.

“-- Lucio!”

“Jesse!” Lucio descended a short flight of stairs in a shorter number of steps and sprang to a stop in front of them.

Hanzo gave McCree a look. Jesse?

“How’s the arm?” McCree asked, leaning at an odd angle as if it’d let his eyes see through sleeves. “Get it treated proper-like?”

“Yeah, had the okay from Doc and I’m still authorised for work.” Lucio gave a thumbs up for emphasis. “Meds kick in?”

“Yyyeah.” He tried to straighten as he answered, but for some reason, his muscles wouldn’t cooperate. Something about the hook-wound.

“That why your fashion’s slipped?” Lucio gestured from tip to toe with his good arm.

Something about the hook wound…

McCree’s eyes lost focus.

Next he knew he was pinned to the ground underneath Hanzo as Lucio shook nearby, clutching the wrist of his injured arm. The glove was in place but the fingertips had burst, the scarf waited on the steps, and the hat was beyond his notice.

Lucio had seen him

He had scared Lucio.

“What’d I do?” McCree shook against the knee on his back, attempting to throw Hanzo and stand up. No dice. “Lucio -- Hanzo -- what’d I do?”

“Last night,” Lucio panted, eyes wide, “they were new. The scratches, you scratched yourself. Jesse, you were gonna chomp into my arm! What happened to you, man?”

Hanzo’s weight lifted from his knees, allowing McCree room to move. “He was bitten by a werewolf.”

“What? Naw -- whatever this is, Doc’s gotta know. You need help.”

“Won’t see her,” McCree insisted. Climbing to his feet, he rubbed his face with his prosthesis and tried to avoid Lucio’s eyes. “Gotta fix this myself. Need ta --” of course. The ears pricked up.

“You have a plan?”

“Munich. Wolves love packs, we’ll draw it out, get things fixed.”

Lucio shook his head. “Bite some other guy? Can’t let that happen.”

“If I’m gonna find a cure it’ll be there. Hanzo, let’s mosey.” Without Overwatch help they’d need a commercial flight to the mainland, then on to Germany; McCree would have to collect his fake IDs; Hanzo would have to disassemble his bow for flying. Peacekeeper’d be a no-go, but long as half the duo was armed on arrival, speaking with Jeremias again could well fix that. “Hanzo?”

He stood a ways from McCree, looking between him and Lucio. Hat collected from the floor and draped between his hands, expression unreadable but for its conflicted context.

Lucio took a set of stammered, hasty steps in the direction the other two had come from. His palm hovered over his shoulder. He couldn’t pick what to watch either: Hanzo’s moment of indecision, or McCree’s burst of determination. Clenching his other fist he settled on Hanzo. “Jesse’s good people, I feel you, but that wasn’t Jesse then, was it? Let’s tell Doc, then you and me, we’ll go to Munich.”

McCree gave a laugh more bitter than he’d ever mustered. “Not gonna find it. Genji couldn’t, he’s the best tracker we’ve got. I’ll sit in a cage an’ you’ll waste time until I’m so bad I’m not even -- not even --”

Hanzo crushed the hat in his grip, fur and compressed stuffing pushing between his fingers in an uneven spread. “Lucio,” he said, making eye contact.

“Doc’s a-waiting.”

“No,” McCree gasped.

“If Munich goes awry, I will be sure to call her.” Moving to McCree’s side, Hanzo took his shoulder in hand. “Today, we pursue alternative medicine.”

Lucio bounced his weight between his feet, crestfallen, knocking his mood from confusion toward sad understanding. Swivelling to continue his run, he called a last sentence: “see you there soon, I guess.”

And if he was running to tell, then they…

Broke for each of their rooms, claiming clothes and tools and tech and papers. Having filled a bag each and confirmed the necessary supplies they hit the perimeter, locating the single gate to the civilian section of the island. Then the airport, then a forty minute rest in a careful nook of the departure lounge. A closed-mouth smile at a flight attendant as she welcomed McCree aboard. Hanzo stashing their bags in the overhead lockers.

Back to Munich.

Chapter Text

“You do realise,” Hanzo said, taking the pieces of his bow from his bag and laying them on the bed nearer the window. “That the moment they land, they will check this inn for us.”

“Yeah?” McCree replied, stretched across the bed nearer the door. His head hung over the edge facing Hanzo, his feet the other. His bag was still packed, dumped on the carpet, but he’d removed his outerwear to lounge in his shirt and slacks. Effort had been made.

“And that I am too tired to go further tonight.” He screwed the two halves together, then held the bow at its center mark and shook to check it was secure.

“My brain’s tired.” He scratched his exposed ‘V’ of chest with his metal fingers, pushing the plackets further apart to get at the scabs below his collarbone. “Body’s not. Like chuggin’ coffee ‘fore a Blackwatch raid. Caffeine and Reyes -- couldn’t slouch without one of ‘em pickin’ me back up.”

“Gabriel Reyes?” Hanzo asked as he fished a string from below his clothes and travel documents.

“The boss. Best guardian I ever had.” Both McCree’s arms dropped to frame his head. “Worst man I ever knew.”

“For his actions in Zurich?” Genji must’ve given Hanzo a history lesson on recruitment. Good noggin on the younger Shimada, providing context to either side of the uneasy alliance. If McCree never recapped that day again, it’d be too soon.

“That’s half ’a it.” Though there was plenty more disaster to recount. The rest was impersonal, dim meetings with the old team. Morrison, Ana, Angela, Torbjorn, and Reinhardt in another of Gibraltar’s nine-tenths empty halls. A map of Cairo on the monitor, a snapshot of an international terrorist, and a description of a face on the brink of being unrecognisable. “Ever heard ’a ‘Reaper’?”

The string was mounted with a twang. “Talon’s favourite hire.”

“Ambushed Gibraltar before Winston recalled us. Skirmished with Lena at a museum. Kept poppin’ up, an’ we could never figure why.”

Hanzo set the bow against a wall and sat quietly.

“Then Morrison an’ Ana are back, an’ they’re tellin’ us that if we see Reyes out the corner of our eyes, it’s not a dream, but we should ignore it anyway.”

“Would you chase him?” His tone was soft, his voice pitched low and curious.

“Chase him? I’d run an’ tackle him an’ punch him in the jaw.” McCree touched his plaster ladder. “The better question is ‘would I try an’ drag him home’?”

“Would you?”

“If I knew,” McCree said, “wouldn’t be a question.”

XXX

Walking through the reception in the morning, Hanzo’s bow in a case on his back and general supplies in a rucksack on McCree’s, the pair were stopped by the mountainous figure of Jeremias.

“Investigating?” Jeremias asked, staring from his extra foot of vantage.

“What, think I’d come by for somethin’ else?” McCree shifted the bag higher on his shoulder. By some miracle he’d packed a plain, long-sleeved t-shirt and a leather jacket. By another miracle, Hanzo had convinced him to leave his (dirty, conspicuous, mismatched) ten-gallon hat behind. He looked every bit a civilian.

“My assistant told me you had arrived after midnight with a strange man.” Jeremias’ scrutiny was shifted to Hanzo. “Forgive me for entertaining other possibilities.”

“Jeremias, Hanzo. Hanzo, Jeremias. Not a stranger now, is he?” McCree waved his hands between them while exasperation spread across his face.

“Actually,” Jeremias said, shuffling from the center of the room around and behind his desk. “Someone introduced him earlier.” He took a handwritten note from beside his monitor and a set of rounded glasses from beside his fixed phone.

“‘Jack Morrison and Lucio Correia dos Santos have left a note requesting Jesse McCree and Hanzo Shimada call them’. I reprimanded my assistant for forgetting our privacy rules and confirming you were guests, but she at least withheld your room number and threatened to call the police if they forced the issue.”

Slopping the bag strap into his hand and collapsing into the reception armchair, McCree huffed. “Morrison an’ Lucio. Great. When’d they visit?”

“Even later than you. Four, five?”

“They would need sleep,” Hanzo said, taking position near the desk, “or a warrant. We should have room to move.”

“Had to happen sometime.” McCree reached to tip his hat, overshooting through the empty space and making an awkward grasp above his head. The problem of wearing them day and night -- his bare scalp had phantom limb syndrome as bad as his arm. “Hoped we’d get the day, though.”

“Any further services required?” Jeremias shuffled onto his stool, the gears in his legs crunching and his shins clacking against the lower panels of the desk. “I know a driver.”

McCree scratched behind his ears as an alternative thoughtful gesture. “Breakfast?”

Hanzo nodded with unusual insistence. “Breakfast.”

XXX

Their best bet was visiting the scene of the attack for new evidence. The outright killings had been widely reported and carefully scraped of clues. Easy to glean the addresses from a local news site, if need be, but not avenues worth pursuing. Maybe for triangulation, figuring their ultimate destination -- but to connect the map they needed string. Information. Evidence.

“This was the street?” Hanzo stepped into the center of the path, gesturing with both arms.

Even in day the whole neighbourhood was interchangeable. McCree could identify a clearing by its trees, but a street by its houses -- a centuries-old street where half the houses predated exterior paint -- that was an ask. He spun and strained for a detail. Had he seen that weathervane? Was that a familiar shade of coral? Could the chained bike on the stoop be a clue?

Ah. Below an old apartment was a short set of basement stairs, trapped on either side by gothic iron bars. His hiding place at the start of the scuffle.

Crossing to the apartment, Hanzo in tow, he pointed. “Tried to avoid it in there. Not the street it bit me, but we’re nearby.”

“Can you recall the trail from here?”

“Couldn’t forget it if I tried.”

The duo peeled around the corner into a thinner lane, the rooftops showing a little more overhang, the sun a little less direct. McCree scoured the gutters for a mark or a sign. Ah -- broken tiling, third house on the left, claw marks on the ground below. He moved closer. Maybe the cops had cleaned the end results, but this starting point was messy as the night that made it. Rust-red spatter from McCree on the edge of the footpath. Darker drops from the creature, still studded with the iron compound they’d featured when wet.

Hanzo crouched at the werewolf blood, tilting his bow aside so he could hinge low as possible. Six circles, dried and flattened to the concrete save for the moss-like patches of metal. “We should take a sample.”

“Fer who? Angela?” McCree pored over his own blood. Nothing he could learn here his veins wouldn’t tell him, he hoped. No sane way to check. When the iron grew in, would it wax and wane like the claws? Or would it grate against his innards at every hour? The details outside the movies, those scared him. Without safe expectations to gradually subvert, he had to rely on sudden realisations. He liked those as much as any other jump scare.

“Or Lindholm. This is nanotechnology, and he is our roboticist.” Hanzo gestured for the rucksack.

McCree provided it. “Diff’rent fields.”

“You avoid Ziegler,” Hanzo smiled wicked and proud, “‘like the plague’.” Taking a first aid box out, he used a set of flat-head tweezers to pry the deepest drop from its place and into a miniature container.

“Haa. Haa. Good joke.” Little of use to do, McCree sat on the footpath with his legs outstretched. “She and I ain’t married or anythin’, but we ain’t enemies either. Jes hard to be proper friends with a doctor when yer as -- ‘accident prone’ -- as I am.”

The container returned to the box, the box returned to the sack, the sack returned to McCree. “I doubt we will ever be friends either. We are civil, but I know the trouble I caused her.”

Given a full week McCree wasn’t sure he’d find a good response to that.

“Each new connection I find with you, the ‘old guard’, I find a new sliver of hope.” Hanzo unfolded onto his feet and looked to the broken edge. He gave a huff to clear the air. “Shall I check the roof?”

“You into parkour?”

“In a sense.” Tapping his toes into the ground and setting off an electric hum in the soles of his feet, Hanzo dashed toward the building. Planting a foot on the wall, then another, then another, he jogged up the side, hands offering slight assistance over the windowsills and the lip of the tiles. Reaching the top he crouched low and plumbed the terracotta waves.

McCree whooped. “Like a damn gecko!”

“Height is important for a sniper!” Hanzo called down, this smile brighter. “How can a dragon direct his fire if he cannot see?”

“Thought they were boots, to be honest.”

“They are part of me.” He bent his leg at the knee and grabbed his ankle in demonstration. “As much as your arm, if not more. There is bone underneath, but some of the flesh has been removed.”

“Do it for work?”

Hanzo let go of his leg and gave his attention to the search. There was a reply, eventually, but it was small and self-conscious: “in a sense.”

Grout crunched, clay chattered, a hunched shadow was cast into the street. McCree kept rubbing behind his ears, squishing the lobes and cleaning the helixes and enjoying the sense of having them. There was something surreal about such a vital part of his body disappearing for half his day, a disconnect felt even when they were present. How important could they be if they disappeared like that? Or perhaps they didn’t disappear, perhaps the alternative nighttime set were his as well, reorganised like his teeth and his cuticles.

No -- he’d take ownership of his lash at Lucio, he’d take ownership of his unreliable innards, but he wouldn’t take ownership of those little inhuman triangles.

“Another clue!” Hanzo announced, leaping to the pavement with something pinched in hand.

“A nail?” McCree asked, standing.

“A toenail.” He held it for the both of them to examine, black and bent into an apostrophe shape. “This and the blood may help in crafting a cure.”

“Or…”

“Or?”

“There’s still a monster on the loose, an’ much as I hate to acknowledge it, my nose’s been gettin’ better.”

“We track it,” Hanzo said, tucking the nail in his pocket. “If the creature is like you, we must wait to nightfall.”

Tasting the inside of his mouth, McCree grinned. “I got the perfect time-killer.”

XXX

A tankard smashed into the counter beside him, causing Hanzo to jump. “Beer, sir.” The bartender said, his sentence tied together like a loose bow, liable to come undone with the slightest pull.

“ Danke ,” Hanzo attempted in response.

The bartender formed a ‘we’re even’-face and pivoted to his next customer.

Rotating his back to the counter and leaning from his stool, McCree swirled his own drink around his glass. The bar was ‘rustic’ in a word and ‘panelled like a damn log cabin’ in more, with a mezzanine stood on oak poles and portraits of former owners on every flat surface. Could almost guarantee there’d be a corner with an elk head, if he poked through the many-sided space. “Reinhardt bought me a bottle ‘a their’s last visit, but I missed seein’ inside. Worth comin’.”

Hanzo turned and faced the room with him. “Our food has yet to be served. What if the bread is too oily?”

“Bruschetta can’t be too oily,” McCree said.

“I still find it hard to believe,” Hanzo sipped his beer, “that you ordered bruschetta.”

“What? ‘Cause it’s a fancy food?” The jab seemed to hurt McCree more than any Hanzo had made prior. “I eat fancy foods. Jes don’t cook ‘em. Blackwatch rules: you go somewhere nice, you order nice food. Cultural awareness.”

“Eating bruschetta in Germany is cultural awareness.” Likewise, Hanzo achieved a new level of disbelief.

“Reyes from LA, me from Redneck country, dunno what you expected.” Where Hanzo sipped, McCree chugged. “Figured we should learn more about the world. Two-prong operation: we watch a lot of movies, an’ we eat a lot of food.”

“Then you style yourself after the most American genre possible.” Warmth was creeping into Hanzo’s responses.

“Could be worse,” McCree said with a snort. “Could’ve gone Scream like the boss. Candyman . Elm Street . Whichever you’ve seen. Man with the Mechanical Face , that’s recent. What about you? Said your look’s antique, why pick it?”

Hanzo chilled. Setting his tankard on the counter and placing his hands on his knees, he stared across at a random portrait. “How much has Genji told you?”

“‘Bout the fight?”

“About the Shimada clan.”

“‘Nough to know why you -- they -- crashed him.”

Gaze drifting into a corner, skimming across an ornate join, Hanzo stilled. “We lived in a vast castle, full of ornate art and expensive costumes. When I finally left I stole a not-insubstantial portion of them. I had lost my family, my home. My brother. Books, clothes; you saw the vases. I was hoping for stability.”

“Vases,” McCree sighed, “were the most comfortin’ thing you could think of.”

“Expensive, too.” Hanzo tried to deflect the criticism, but there was that blush. “Until I found my own contacts they were useful for paying rent.”

“If you say so.” Glass finished, McCree tapped it next to Hanzo’s.

The gentle clinks and laughs of a daytime bar rang around them. Someone knocking a bound menu over. A stool dragging at the other end of the counter. The kitchen door wobbling open and closed, tap-heeled waiters pacing in and out.

A plate hit the counter next to their drinks. The duo spun to face it. Bruschetta -- hidden somewhere below a mound of tomato and herb. Taking a piece from the pile, a trail of olive oil running to his wrist, McCree shook his head. “Stickin’ to my guns on the oil, but the toppin’?”

Claiming his own and dipping his eyebrows in mock disapproval, Hanzo nodded.

XXX

McCree sat on the floor with his legs spread in a ‘V’, jacket and shoes piled beside him. His elbows were hooked loosely onto the end of the bed. The sun had fallen below the skyline, but the clouds and the taller rooftops still caught flecks of colour. “How much worse ya think it’ll be?”

Hanzo, dressed in his traditional black work clothes, was retying his hair in front of a lacquered dresser. “There was very little change yesterday.”

“Like you said.” McCree cracked his toes and stretched his spine, clearing the tension from each joint. No point moving position until it happened. He preferred not to fall again. “Prob’ly the fact I’m already scruffy.”

“What happens, happens.” Elastic securing his ponytail in place, Hanzo began looping a decorative ribbon over top.

“Least fer this it’ll be useful,” McCree said. “Least there’s that.”

Stepping to his bed, Hanzo took his bow case and paused. Out the window, the flecks drifted from their places. The world turned blue. McCree winced and hissed behind him, accompanied by hits to the mattress and kicks to the carpet. The night was here.

A minute later, McCree moved across, barefoot, to consider it with him. He wore the ears, eyes, teeth of the previous evenings; facial hair definitely longer and his tuft of visible chest hair the same. His weight drifted to the front of his feet, though there was no noticeable shift in their proportions. His hands draped at his sides, each joint of the right a little longer than it should have been.

“Will you wear your boots?”

A rueful toe poked at one, digging hooked enamel into rough leather. “If I can.”

“Do you need a drink? Any food?”

A mouth split open to show a row of canine teeth, serrated into a natural smile. “Barely finished with the bar.”

“Help dressing?”

A set of claws ran across a shaggy neckline, breaking tangled hairs apart like scissors through a seam. “Prosthesis can handle the buttons.”

“McCree.”

He stopped, caught with his hand on his heart and his face trying -- failing -- for bitter acceptance. The ears flattened against his scalp.

“We will find the creature. We will fix this,” Hanzo said. Without realising, he had moved to face McCree, a hand on his undamaged arm, prying a thumb against his shirt, holding tight as reassurance would take.

McCree watched from below his fringe. His shoulders were hunched, cold and defensive. His eyes were wider than he knew they went. Unwinding a breath at a time, he fell back to a neutral pose.

Hanzo released him.

McCree couldn’t help but smile; half-appreciative, half-sad.

The look broke and the pair went about their final preparations: sonar and scatter arrows in the quiver’s second compartment, samples of the creature tucked into pockets, and -- at long last -- sarape draped over its owner’s shoulders.

“Leaving the banana suit,” Hanzo observed as he activated the soles of his boots.

“Gloves wouldn’t fit, hat wouldn’t fit.” McCree spread his arms casually. “Might as well be comfortable. What’s with the shoes?”

“Morrison and Lucio might be in the foyer,” Hanzo said with a hint of mischief. “I assume you can handle the window?”

With a bark of laughter, McCree replied: “can indeed.”

There was a flicker of panes, a clutter of bolts, and twin thuds as they set into the streets.

Chapter Text

Running Munich at inhuman speeds, McCree and Hanzo cut from underpopulated alley to unlit avenue, their path picked with predatory, professional skill. Hanzo slipped from the ground to the walls whenever the track thinned, allowing McCree’s broader steps the necessary room.

There was remarkable cohesion in the sprint, somewhat ruined by the fact --

“You are still wearing spurs!” Hanzo blurted as they entered a derelict sidestreet.

“Might be the last night with my boots! Wanna savour it!”

“And I want to avoid Morrison!”

“Hanzo!” McCree flashed a sore face, eyes catching the last functional streetlight.

“Ugh!” Hanzo lead them on a hard left into a cobble path. “Fine. Waste our attempt at stealth. Is this the block?”

“Close enough.” Skidding to a stop, McCree shuffled his weight between his feet, twisting them around the cramped inner of his shoes. “Got the container?”

“Here.” Taking the little square box from inside his clothes, Hanzo shook the lid free and handed the lower half to McCree.

McCree raised the container to his nose, paused, and lowered it again. “Don’t even know if I want this to work.” His brows furrowed and he breathed slowly. There was a quirk in his arm, a hesitant twitch from the elbow.

“You were a bounty hunter,” Hanzo said, thoughtful breaks between his words. “This is unpaid bounty hunting.”

“Defeats the point ’a bounty huntin’. ‘Sides, that’s how I got here. Thought I was huntin’, became somethin’ else.” Oh well. Bottoms up. With the rim of the container to his philtrum, he inhaled. “Ugh.”

“Is there a scent?”

“Blood. Yeah.” Another heave from the container, scowling like a teen on their first cigarette. “Iron. No surprises.” Returning it to Hanzo, he lifted his face to the air and drew a third breath. “Jackpot. Trail.”

They wound around the block, slower to allow for McCree’s still-shaky tracking skills. As they walked, Hanzo twice reached for his bow case, then wavered his hand away. McCree caught the movement, ears quirking, but kept his attention forward.

“Not sure shootin’ it’s the best plan.”

“What else can we do?”

“Catch it? Watch it ‘til mornin’? If it has a cure, or knows ‘bout a cure, we’ll need a chat.”

“Troublesome.”

“Assumin’ we find it at all.”

“You have the trail.”

“Yeah, but -- eh, we’ll see.”

They took a turn into a blind alley that echoed as bad as an empty church. A turn at the opposite end into a nominal street, a set of ten houses crushed between the alley and the next road over. Into that road, wide and low, student flats with taped windows.

McCree covered his nose and looked from the pavement to the rooftops. “This is where it got me. Damn. Followin’ the blood -- if it’s human half the time, would’ve patched itself. Scent’s gonna be from after the fight. Useless.”

“Not useless,” Hanzo looked around as if there’d be a better visual cue to follow. No broken tiling, no rusty smudges. Smell was their best bet. “You tried the claw?”

“Do nails smell?” McCree asked.

“I feel it is worth a try.” Hanzo passed the container again.

Removing the claw alone and setting it in the center of his oversized palm, McCree sniffed. “Not much on it.”

“Enough?”

“Dunno.” Back in the container, back to Hanzo.

“Hm.” Hanzo considered the container for several moments, the blood starkly visible even below two layers of plastic. Glossy, sharp, distinctive. Nothing like it visible on this intersection, no, either the police or the residents had been thorough cleaners. “The evidence was washed into the gutters, but you found our way here.”

“Yeah,” McCree said.

“If the creature was bleeding when it ran there would be more to follow. You shot it at the spot we visited in the day?”

“Which is why that stuff was there.”

“Try for anything leading another direction. This is the middle of a route, not the termination point.”

“Oh.” McCree splayed his hand across his forehead with a mix of shame and exasperation. “Not used to this yet.”

“I understand.” Hanzo said. He tucked the container in its pocket again and hefted his bow into a more comfortable position. “Let us continue.”

“Not,” a voice called from the far end of the road, “so fast.”

Skates clattered on uneven paving, followed by a pair of heavy leather boots. The distinctive whine of night-vision goggles. The pulse of a portable speaker. Dreadlocks tipped with giant beads. A rifle sloughed onto a tense shoulder.

“Jesse,” Lucio said hesitantly. “Hanzo. Hi.”

McCree pivoted to face him. “Thought you’d both be quicker on the draw.”

“Hope you gave your receptionist a tip,” Morrison growled. “Made this chase a lot longer.”

“You have your weapons.” Hanzo slipped a thumb under the strap of his case.

“McCree tried to bite someone. Allow me my precautions.” Though Morrison’s comment was followed by him swinging his gun to his side and hiding it as far behind his thigh as he could manage. “I want you both to come with us. Doctor Ziegler’s working on the samples, she has a room prepared. I can’t have an agent attacking people.”

“‘Scuse me for bein’ less than optimistic ‘bout her work,” McCree said with an undercurrent of bile he hadn’t noticed accumulating. The Reyes meeting flashed in his thoughts -- Reinhardt asking if they could fix him, Angela insisting they couldn’t, Morrison claiming death or capture were the remaining remedies. She was a good doctor and a kind woman, but if she failed to treat this Overwatch would do little to compensate.

“She’s trying her best,” Lucio replied, touching the bandages on his arm.

“Lucio,” Hanzo warned.

“Her best might not cut it,” McCree said.

“She’s a miracle worker.” For all his gruff facade there was real sadness behind Morrison’s voice. The mask covered a lot -- but it could only cover. Country boy Jack, amicable leader who valued his team and their work, he was the man wearing it. Pity even Jack had never liked McCree. “If she could save Genji --”

Hanzo winced.

The bile choked its way up McCree’s throat until he couldn’t keep it in: “what about Reyes?”

Morrison froze.

“Reyes?” Lucio asked.

“Reyes made his choices.” The rifle snuck forward, Morrison’s fingers clambering up the grip and taking it properly in hand.

“Well, ‘Commander’,” McCree said. “I’m making mine.”

Whirling on his toes, McCree began his sprint in the opposite direction. With low balance and stable arms, he pumped toward the nearest adjoining road and threw himself into it, half-expecting Morrison’s gun to fire after him. As the relative silence reached him and the realisation he had a substantial lead settled in, he reached for his left boot and -- without care for his foot -- ripped it off with whatever force he could muster. Hopping a few more paces, he did the same with the right, and then continued at an even faster pace along the new road.

There was a skitter from the rooftops as Hanzo climbed a suitable building and began running alongside him. Making a futile attempt to uncase his bow as he went, he looked below at McCree. “Your shoes!”

“Keep runnin’ with ‘em an’ we’ll never ditch Morrison!” He glanced to his toes, rolling from each step to the next, the lengthened joints seeming to correct every wonky aspect of his normal gait. “Also: quicker!”

Wheels shook across the sides of the corner house, Lucio skating after the pair with green trailing behind him. Morrison dashed beneath, form tight and rifle held close.

“Hey, Hanzo?” McCree edged toward the nearest building.

“What?” Hanzo replied, at last flipping a catch on his case -- one down, three to go.

“What’s your top tip for wall-runnin’?”

“What?” Hanzo repeated, fumbling for the next.

“You heard me!”

“Hm.” There was a pause for thought, and for finding a better grasp on the second catch. “Keep your momentum up!”

“Okay!” Reaching the end of this road, he kept going, facing off against a two-floor apartment. Each floor had tacked a metal-barred balcony onto its windows, providing easy hand-holds for any wannabe-traceurs. Given his total lack of climbing experience, McCree was a wannabe at best, but if the other werewolf had done it --

Feet on the ground-floor windowsill, hands on the second-floor balcony.

Feet on the second-floor balcony, hands on the lip of the roof.

Feet on the lip of the roof, hands on the roof proper.

McCree stood above the streets, eyes sparkling and smile wide despite the circumstances. “I’m King 'a the world!” He hollered.

Hanzo took a running jump from the other side, landed on a lower floor, and clambered effortlessly to join him. Out of Morrison and Lucio’s reach, at least for the next thirty seconds, he took the case off and lifted the bow out. Holding it by his hip, string brushing his forearm, he stared at their pursuers with remarkable disdain. “He should not have attacked you, Lucio, but you should have left Morrison out of this.”

Lucio skidded to a stop, processing Hanzo’s comment and the skate-potential of the row of buildings before him. “What else could I do?”

There was a shift in Hanzo’s lips, fresh concern in his eyebrows. He gripped the wood of the bow tighter.

Morrison braked and looked up, rifle still half-ready in his arms. “Down, both of you.”

“Yeah, Hanzo,” McCree said. “Down.” Shuffling to the opposite side of the roof, he jumped into another alley, blocking both the chase and the conversation.

After a lingering stare with Morrison, Hanzo followed suit, tapping to the ground with a delicate tink . The alley was full of garbage and locked bikes, with washing dripping from windows. To the left, a variety of townhouses. To the right, the rear of an oversized apartment block.

Waiting by the back porch of a wealthy home, McCree’s posture had begun to cave, and the ears had flattened against his head. He picked under his shirt at the scabs on his collarbone, his feet still tilted onto tiptoes. “Keep runnin’, I guess. Won’t take ‘em long to reach us.”

“Resume the hunt nearer morning,” Hanzo agreed, placing his hand on McCree’s sloped shoulder.

“Pity ‘bout ‘no shoes, no shirt, no service’.” He dug a toenail through a crack in the concrete, compressing a lick of moss and pressing dirt under the cuticle. “Coulda gone for a drink.”

“Alcohol is poison for dogs.”

“Don’t call me that,” McCree snapped. “Jes… don’t.”

XXX

Practice makes perfect, and McCree’s tiny bit of tracking practice had brought him slightly closer to tracking perfection.

Rose clouds blossomed on the horizon. Dawn approached. The duo had spent half the night hiding in alcoves, and the other half finding and pursuing the trail again. Two hours of slow wandering had seen them into another district, a patchwork of cheap buildings from varying eras. A street could be turn-of-the-millennium styrene and concrete spray and connect into a boulevard of post-crisis steel-frame. Easier to orient yourself than in Haidhaussen, but harder on anyone with delicate design sensibilities.

Arching into a row of freestanding houses, McCree connected the lead to a particular door -- a chipped brick building with a walled-off garden to one side. As he approached, the blood smell faded and a familiar scent of wet fur and sweaty skin filled his periphery. Familiar? No, familial. The realisation added a bitter tinge. The McCrees were dead or better off that way, Reyes -- their closest substitute -- much the same. This was what he had left: some creature that bit him and almost ripped his collarbone out. What a life.

Knocking at the front door -- oak, full of pinholes from untreated wood lice -- there was no real response. A yowling from another room, further confirmation they had the correct address, but it didn’t sound eager to let them through. “Think I can kick it in?”

“I think we should find another entrance,” Hanzo replied, giving McCree an unimpressed quirk of his brows.

“Garden prob’ly has a door,” McCree said. “Or a big window.”

“The garden, then.” As soon as he’d said it, Hanzo was vaulting the wall, bow still in hand. He hit the other side with a dull splat, boots into thick mud.

Scrabbling after, finding nail-holds in the brickwork, McCree took a disappointingly long while to join him -- even considering the disparity in their climbing skill. Arms sluggish, and legs unsure. He tipped over the top and just managed to avoid hitting the ground sideways. But there was the light, halfway into the sky, dawn close to full bloom. There was the reason. “Gonna get real uncomfortable, walkin’ back with people feet an’ no boots.”

“Maybe,” Hanzo said, “they will have boots.”

“Yeah, ‘you cursed me, gimme yer shoes so we’re even’.” He picked himself square onto his feet and brushed dust from his clothes. Not that it made him notably more presentable, but, anything to feel civilised.

The garden had a set of glass doors, as hoped. Shaking at the handles to no avail, McCree stepped aside and gestured Hanzo toward them. Giving a sharp kick to the center, he burst the mechanism inward and both doors with it. The path was clear -- they went inside.

First room from the doors was a quaint sunroom, dominated by a cheap cedar table with a single chair at its end. The space caught the rising sunlight with ease; no curtains, no obstructed corners. A pleasant spot for coffee or breakfast, if the owner enjoyed those things. The lack of any decoration or clutter aside from the two pieces of furniture indicated they didn’t.

Deeper inside was a living room with drawn curtains. The other side of the front door was visible to their left, a large staircase in front of them. To the right, a doorway to a mild, yellow room -- probably a kitchen, a sink and the corner of a fridge were visible. The layout was innocuous, fillings mundane, until you considered the density of notepaper on each flat surface. Screes and screes of pages, handwritten in German where they were intelligible and dense scientific jargon where they weren’t. Then there were the marks in the sofa, the window frames, the balustrade. Jabs and scuffs from daggerpoint-claws. This was the place.

There was the yowl again, below and to the side of them. Hanzo paused, considering the noise, then lead them to the opposite side of the staircase. Tucked beneath the stairs leading up were a flight leading down, plateauing into a concrete floor at the bottom. Gripping his bow until it gave a whine of protest, he made his way into the bowels of the house, McCree several steps behind.

The concrete basement held shelves and shelves of equipment, makeshift lasers and heavy presses. Half the space was dedicated to electrical engineering, circuits and mathematical charts strewn over its cupboards and desks. The other half was more medically-oriented, with pull-apart plastic models of eyes and hearts and skeletons gathered around a blank monitor. At the opposite side was a solid steel door, a vent struck across the middle like a slot for prison food.

Drawing an arrow and approaching the slot, Hanzo kept his stance low. “Are you in there?”

The yowl came in response, angry and agonised. Something struck twice at the opposite side -- the resounding thunk of a fist on metal, then the scrape of claws.

“Definitely,” McCree said, blanching, “definitely feral.”

There was a sharper screech from inside, and a heavier thud, the sound of a body hitting a hard floor. Screech continuing, higher and higher, small slaps joined it. Soft hands slapping at anything near them, trying to find a grip or a distraction from awful pain. The screech kept ascending.

With several seconds delay, McCree felt the joints in his hands wrench and the ringing return to his skull, tipping him into one of the shelves and knocking the medical models to the desk below them. His chest heaved and he locked himself into place on his feet, even as they shifted beneath him, returning to human proportions and balance.

Caught between the pair, Hanzo stalled. In a slow gesture, he returned his arrow to its quiver, and slipped his bow case from his shoulder. Setting his weapon inside again, he waited for the noise around him to subside.

McCree reached quiet first, rubbing his fingers in the corner of his eyes and shaking his head as if it’d either sync with or dislodge the ringing. Wobbling into his standard pose, he crossed to Hanzo’s position. “Guess we picked a good time to drop by, huh?” His voice reached for levity but struck exhaustion. ‘Good to get the night over with’, there was the real message. “Hey, you all right in there?”

A moan. Short taps of bare feet, making toward the door. A slender hand reached through the slot and around to a locking mechanism. Blindly pulling its pieces around, rolling pins and knocking bolts, it released a hiss. The hand retracted and the door was shunted open.

The figure that emerged was a woman in her mid-forties, by McCree’s guess. She had the worst bed-head he’d ever seen, brown hair looped into a cloud around her subtly lined face. A dirty grey dressing gown swallowed her from shoulders to knees. As she walked, she kept a hand pressed to her stomach, the muscles in it trembling. “As all right as I can be.” There was no surprise to her response, no wonder at the men in her dowdy little house. Only the bitter drawl of someone in need of caffeine and a seat.

“May we assist you?” Hanzo asked, that telltale quirk in his eyebrows.

“Assist me?” She scoffed, collecting the models McCree had upset and replacing them in their original spot. “Your bow -- I suspect you want to put another shot in me. I sealed that room, I built that door, I am no trouble to anyone. Yet here you are, interrupting when there’s no longer reason to.”

McCree tugged at his collar, exposing the bite scar. “Ma’am,” he said. “I got plenty ’a reason.”

XXX

Papers cleared onto the floor or the monitor stand, the three of them sat around the woman’s living room, coffee distributed to each. Hanzo and McCree had taken the couch, packed close together across its two undersized cushions. The woman leant her weight on the windowsill, now dressed in a loose cardigan and flared grey pants.

“I’m afraid I have no memory of my nights over the past three weeks,” she said, her mug high and obscuring her expression. “The gunshot wound, that made me realise I was wandering. I reconfigured my basement to avoid any other altercations, and hastened my work on a cure. The cost to my sleep has been -- well.” She tipped her drink.

“All this, alone?” Hanzo inquired, face scrunched as he took another sip of coffee too dark for his tastes.

“The labour, yes, but I have financial support.” Setting the mug beside her, she puffed up her chest and smiled. “I am Doctor Kasimira Brasher, formerly of LMU, currently performing research under private commission. A top scholar in the field of human enhancement via nanotechnology.”

“An’ yer workin’ in a basement,” McCree said flatly. His sips at the coffee were appreciative and slow.

“The project is hush-hush,” Kasimira chimed back, tapping a finger to her lips. “Or would be, if I had anticipated my excursions. My client needed a researcher fluent in German willing to study alone -- I was so sick of my co-workers -- I offered my basement and my credentials, it was a done deal.” Eyeing McCree, she sighed. “You complicated the arrangement.”

“Me? Not the other folks you --”

“You did bite him,” Hanzo said. He tapped McCree’s leg with his knee to emphasize that yes, the interruption had intent. “Shooting you was a reasonable reply.”

“True.” Kasimira pointed to McCree, expression cold. “We are the same now, aren’t we?”

He chilled in turn. “Yeah.”

Still cold, newly contemplative, she took her mug in hand again and drained to the grounds. “Complicated, indeed. My nanomachines, spread to you. Complicated, complicated.”

“Why do this, Doctor Brasher? What does your client want?” Hanzo asked.

“I specialise in the use of nanotech to repair and rearrange human features,” she said. “Glorified cosmetic surgery, in most cases. I had hoped to find more creative applications, more unique challenges -- he came with both. ‘I have been mutilated by life-saving nanotechnology’, he told me. ‘Craft machines that can repair the visual damage, without shutting off their restorative function’.

“Leadin’ to werewolves -- how?”

“He made these demands, yet he wouldn’t allow me to work on him. ‘I won’t be an experiment twice’, and such. Sworn to secrecy, in need of a subject, and --” she gestured around the room, “ -- I hardly have anyone to entertain or stay presentable for. I crafted something that would cause physical alteration in tandem with a damage-repair cycle, then used it on myself.”

“But… werewolves?” McCree repeated in mild desperation.

“If you saw my client,” Kasimira laughed, “you would understand. A mass of shadow and dead flesh, like a monster from a picture-book. I was inspired. Perhaps you will see him? He was due by today.”

McCree and Hanzo bristled, shuffling closer to the edge of the couch in unison. Hanzo placed his cup on the floor, took McCree’s, and repeated the action.

“Nothing to jump at, nothing to do with you. He said someone had come to Munich looking for me, an old co-worker eager to halt our project. Planned to shift my research somewhere safer. Really, I ought to be getting ready, but I have a surplus of coffee and guests with functioning digestive systems are a rare treat.” With a pleading look, she narrowed her focus onto McCree. “It might be worth taking you with us. We can protect you, fix you.”

“I’d rather,” McCree swallowed. “Take you with us . We’ve got resources, too. ‘Nother lady speaks German workin’ on this. You could tackle it together.”

“Thank you, but --”

There was a sound in the garden, a form hitting the dirt. As it stood, something jangled, and as it moved, metal plates bumped against each other.

“-- ah, he’s here. I was going to say, we have a contract, and he pays very well.”

Hanzo’s bow case rested vertical against the couch, and it took most of his willpower not to grab it in anticipation of Kasimira’s employer.

McCree’s toes gathered into the carpet, clutching for reassurance in absence of his boots and his gun. He pulled his hands into fists and watched the sunroom.

Through the exterior door, haloed by the morning sun, strode a man in a black coat, his face obscured behind a white mask. Pausing as he noticed the occupants of the couch, he settled steel-plated hands on multi-belted hips. “Jesse McCree. Why am I not surprised?”

He rose to his feet, reaching for a pistol he knew wasn’t there. “Howdy, boss.”

Chapter Text

McCree and Reyes watched each other from either side of the living room, the former’s glare matched by the slit eyes of the latter’s mask. Student posed for a high noon showdown, even unarmed; teacher in a casual pose.

On either side of McCree, Kasimira and Hanzo stiffened. Clutching for the case, Hanzo slid his bow loose and set an arrow in place.

“Takin’ her to avoid me?” McCree asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Reyes took a step nearer. “Half a dozen agents through Munich, did you think I hadn’t noticed? Genji was the closest to a concern until yesterday.”

“So, Morrison --”

“Jack. Cairo played in my brain. He can be so disruptive.” He gestured to Kasimira. “I’ve found a lab for her elsewhere, built a containment room.”

“Pity you didn’t suss that earlier -- lettin’ her kill those people --”

“Kill?” Kasimira interrupted. “Who?”

“No-one,” Reyes said, a little too quickly. “We’re going to leave. You’re going to let us.”

“Why?” McCree flicked a hand toward Hanzo, inviting him to stand -- he did as asked.

“I don’t see Peacekeeper in your belt. I have Talon ready to evacuate me.” He counted a strike on his fingers. “Outgunned.” A second. “Outmanned.”

“Outgunned, perhaps,” Hanzo interrupted, hooking his right forefinger over the string of his bow. “But that has never been a problem for me.”

“Mmhm.” Reyes appraised Hanzo with a slow bob of his head, the stilted nod of an owl or some other bird-of-prey. His hands stayed on his hips. “Genji’s brother, correct? I’m familiar with your work.”

Shame shook at Hanzo’s elbow, and his string teetered between fifth-and-quarter drawn. Steely-faced as ever, but for all his practice meditating, he hadn’t kicked his other nervous habits. His feet spread wider, firming his stance to compensate.

Tilting his mask to an angle, Reyes made another noise of disregard. “Doctor Brasher? Would you give the police a call?”

“What for?” Kasimira asked, looking around the room for her phone as she did.

“The intruders in your home,” Reyes said. “You were arrested last visit, weren’t you, kid? They won’t be too happy to see you here.”

“I gave them coffee,” she mused.

“Which they finished.”

“The American, he’s infected,” she added.

Reyes prowled over to McCree, folding his arms. Stopping a foot short, he leaned in, using his extra half-inch of height as best he could. Whatever Reyes was made of vibrated like static on a CRT screen. “Is he? I hadn’t heard about that.”

McCree inhaled and straightened his spine, trying to level himself with his mentor. He was beginning to miss his shoes as much as his weapon. “What’s it to ya?”

“Funny,” Reyes said, his matter prickling upward. The mask couldn’t emote, not really, but the top ridge of the eye-holes peeled apart with greater frequency than the rest, giving the impression of smug, raised eyebrows. “That you’d be implicated. You’re more like a lamb than a wolf. Everywhere that Reyes went, McCree was sure to go.”

This tweaked something in McCree, caused a flash of real anger. “You died, I let you be. You came back, I left you to Morrison an’ the others. I get dragged into some stupid plot ‘a yours by accident, an’ I’m ‘chasin’’ you?”

“Sure you are, kid,” Reyes teased the epithet out, mouthpiece emitting a puff of smoke for further emphasis. “So, how is lycanthropy treating you?” He turned and moved toward the doorway again, arms and legs ghosting into a mass of particles, the sun piercing through them like a mesh screen. “We’re early in the current lunar phase, but if there’s been enough to bring you to Munich --”

“I’m gonna be fine,” McCree said. “I’m gonna take Brasher and we’re gonna be fine.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Reyes swept a hand to point at her, a visible trail behind it. “She’s mine.”

“I’m employed by you,” Kasimira corrected.

“She’s my employee,” Reyes said. Fixing his hands back on his hips, he gave a more forceful nod. “Is my employee going to call the cops?”

“I suppose,” she replied, tapping to the contact and waiting to connect. Moving to the side of the room, she turned from the rest of the party.

Hanzo’s arm had firmed while Reyes’ and McCree’s attention was diverted. Collecting a new arrow from his quiver, he lowered it to the rest and half-drew it. Aiming at Reyes’ feet, he cleared his throat. “If we face arrest regardless -- I suggest we make this a kidnapping.”

“What?” Kasimira mumbled, attention drawn from her call.

“Doctor Brasher,” Hanzo said. “You are coming with us.” Pulling his bow the remainder of the way, he raised the sight to Reyes’ chest.

“Or I take your shot?” Reyes tapped his gloves to the point Hanzo was aiming for. Each of his curved nails pried a section of black dust from below it, leaving five trenches that refilled over the following seconds. “Go on, then.”

Hanzo nudged his chin in the air, either midway through recoiling or in an attempt to intimidate. His eyes flared.

McCree paced backward until he was at Hanzo’s side -- whatever followed, better to hold position with an armed man.

“Go on.” Reyes urged.

So Hanzo did. The prepared arrow burst apart as it left his bow, ricocheting through Reyes’ sternum and fractioning his figure into portions of mist, the mist then scattering into a million pieces of static.

He drew a second. Something in the arrow flashed blue, and he flicked his aim an eighth-turn sideways into the garden. Releasing, the tip wobbled a line through the air, and embedded in the grout of the brick wall. A sphere of light expanded around it, encapsulating the grass, the sunroom, the road.

Leaping behind the couch and pulling McCree with him, Hanzo reached into the lining of his sleeve and freed a rectangular device with a series of indentations and marks across the front. Pressing a circle on the upper left he snapped: “Athena -- contact Morrison, we are in Giesing, my signal should be visible.”

“Your message has been passed along, Hanzo.”

“Good,” he said, tucking the device into his sleeve again and readying another arrow against the rest. Back to the couch, he listened for Reyes’ response.

“You had a comm in yer pocket?” McCree interrupted instead. “She coulda tracked us, you thought that was worth it?”

“I trusted she would not,” Hanzo said. Was that a footstep? A metal clatter? What was going on on the other side of their thin, fabric barrier?

“An’ Morrison?”

“He can get her -- or her research -- out of here.”

“An’ us?”

“You are not fighting anyone without a weapon.” Still nothing identifiable. Nothing -- no phone line, no Kasimira. Wait. A voice from upstairs. She’d slipped off in the initial commotion. Reyes, then, where was Reyes?

Smoke crept around the sides of the couch, hitching on the gaps between floorboards as it went. Sections were grazed away like skinned elbows, shaved for not conforming to the flat lacquered wood. Coalescing into two stiff arms, it grabbed McCree’s shoulder in one hand and Hanzo’s shoulder in the other, then dragged them around the furniture to the center of the floor where they’d previously stood.

Reyes puffed and steamed, parts coming together with the slow, messy dedication of a child repairing a favourite toy. Slinging his right limbs into their sockets, he held McCree aloft. “I agree with her. You’re welcome to the cure if you come along.” His left limbs hooked into his hips and shoulders, Hanzo scraping on the ground. “Even if Shimada ruined things by calling the scout leader to our secret jamboree.”

His bow -- Hanzo’s bow had clipped on the furniture, knocking it from his hand as he went. Struggling against Reyes and struggling to gain traction against the floor, he grunted and reached. No, too far…

Claws in his shirt collars and shoulder wound howling from the mishandling, McCree could barely open his mouth to breathe. Waving his legs in an attempt at kicking, he gurgled. Grabbing Reyes’ arm in an attempt at freedom, he whined. Clenching his metal fist -- his metal fist -- still functional, no air or muscles to restrict -- he reeled it out and swung it in.

It connected with Reyes’ masked face, causing both his hands to release.

“Hanzo,” McCree panted as he regained his balance, stumbling back.

On cue, Hanzo scrambled across the floor for the bow, his legs adopting their usual glow. Spinning on the wood, he collected his weapon and skidded into the wall heel-first. Raising the sights to focus on Reyes, he took a fresh arrow in hand: solid metal, no tricks this time. Breathe, confirm target, fire.

The arrow struck Reyes through the eye of his mask, boring through whatever semblance of a skull he had. Clutching his chin and pressing the ridges around the arrow, he roared.

“Trouble with yer offer --” McCree said, still heaving between words, “-- is you were a bad boss, an’ I don’t wanna work for you no more. We’re leavin’.”

Hanzo slipped onto his feet, readying another shot and keeping focus on Reyes. “No -- I had best stay until Morrison arrives.”

Reyes hacked out a series of laughs, the mouth of his mask dripping apart into particles with each beat. “You’ve worn out your welcome.” He dipped his hand into the folds of his coat. With the sound of sizzling plastic, he withdrew an engraved shotgun from inside.

Swinging the barrel toward McCree’s injured shoulder and crushing his forefinger against the trigger, he fired.

Too close to evade, McCree took several of the pellets. His shoulder seized and shook, dropping his metal arm limp at his side. He yelped and staggered onto one knee, clamping out a longer scream and locking his legs in place. The sole thing -- the sole thing he could feel holding his arm together -- the sole thing was the bandages for his prior wound. Like a mummy, like The Mummy, like a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow left scattered by the roadside. A real pile of spaghetti western.

Reyes strode forward, squaring a proper shot, an arm outstretched while the other jimmied the arrow in its hole.

“Stop!” Dashing for the door, bow slung over his left shoulder, Hanzo grabbed McCree and tossed him onto his right.

Reyes fired into empty air.

Into the sunroom, forward to the garden, Hanzo’s initial, adrenaline-filled hold on McCree was rapidly failing. Stumbling to the wall with his soles humming blue, he whispered a command -- “do not fall,” -- and attempted to power up the brickwork. The connectors in his feet pulsed, used to a better grip, and Hanzo struggled with one hand to brace the weight of both men. A step, two steps, three steps, four… The top of the fence line.

Reyes had reached the exterior door and leaned through, gun brandished as a continued warning. His matter wavered halfway behind him, already preparing to re-enter the building and escort Kasimira into Talon’s waiting arms.

But it was no empty threat, and Hanzo was not allowing an agent to die in a small house in a cheap neighbourhood fighting a single, laughable foe. Especially not this agent. He dropped to the other side and shuffled McCree onto the ground beside him. “Can you stand?”

Half his weight still slung on Hanzo, McCree groaned. “Yeah, if you help. Need Doc.”

“If Morrison finds you, he will restrict you to Gibraltar,” Hanzo said.

“See a German hospital, get arrested again.” Bail footed by Overwatch, Morrison retrieves McCree, Gibraltar...

“We cannot treat this ourselves,” Hanzo urged. He pivoted McCree to face him.

Staggering, hand to the pellet wounds, McCree found his feet again. “What other options are there?”

Hanzo paused, staring at the holes in McCree’s sarape. A spatter of black dots, small as stars in the sky. His posture falling loose, he brushed his free hand against his pocket. “We have enough to leave Munich.”

McCree gave a bloody, tired smile. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Chapter Text

They disembarked from their train into the heart of a quaint township, a place as repetitively old-fashioned as the district where they’d spent the previous night. McCree attempted to shuffle the sarape to cover his bullet wound, his face shock-white from leaving the injuries untreated some three hours. Hanzo grabbed the fabric to finish the motion, setting the garment in careful, concealing folds. Drifting along the platform into the nearest street, they began their hunt for a pharmacy.

Red cross: a universal sign. Hanzo placed McCree against an exterior wall and ducked inside, returning with a half-empty wallet and a selection of surgical supplies. Unbranded painkillers, stiff bandages, and tweezers with a poor grip. Checking the wound again in case any pivotal medicine had been forgotten, Hanzo confirmed his shopping had been successful and shuffled his companion along the shortest path out of town.

Entering a damp meadow, hidden from the road by a scattering of vast trees, he removed the sarape altogether and tossed it beneath them as a blanket. Tight-woven wool -- far from an ideal seat, but something. He knelt with his feet tucked underneath him, pulled the shirt from McCree’s shoulder, and addressed the damage.

There were pellets to pick out, buried into the tissue like mites into hardwood. Clamping onto them one by one, Hanzo pulled them free and tossed them into the bushes nearby. McCree whined every time Hanzo’s hand withdrew. New blood welled in the emptied pools.

Refreshing the bandages on McCree’s shoulder only made his noises worse, as polyester rubbed against broken skin like low-grade sandpaper. Saving money for food or accommodation had been the priority, but all the wincing begged the question of whether proper supplies should have taken a higher place in Hanzo’s list of necessary purchases. Or perhaps this was a sign he was useless at health care, that he should stick to his skillset, inflicting pain rather than remedying it.

A creek rattled in the background, thin water tumbling over sharp stones, running parallel to the road -- the clearing boxed in by tarmac on the right and shale on the left. Flushing the dregs of his flask into the dirt, washing it out, and filling it with water, Hanzo returned to offer McCree a drink and a way to clean the red-and-brown stains from his arm.

McCree accepted both proposals, and as he removed the last smears from the joint of his prosthesis, managed his first full sentence since Munich: “can’t believe they let me on the train like this.”

Hanzo sat on the sarape beside him, legs folded casually to his side. “In any other scenario, I would call it callous.”

Passing the empty flask to his metal hand, McCree attempted to place it upright on the ground. His elbow twisted too far to the side, jerked toward the ground too fast. Fingers released their hold too soon. Every move in the right direction but exaggerated past the point of function.

“Are the receptors broken again?” Hanzo asked, picking the flask back up and returning it to his waist.

“Yeah,” McCree said with a grimace. Glaring at his joints, he willed them to fall across him and rest on his knee. Instead they flopped onto his thigh, a finger hyperflexed out of alignment. “Gonna need replacin’.”

Hanzo nodded gravely. “Should we continue running?”

Pressing the raised finger into place, McCree snorted. “What else is there?”

Dwindling funds, their cases abandoned at a hotel over an hour in the opposite direction, a hotel being picked over by police or former allies, each wanting the duo in a cell. The solution to their predicament being whisked off to who-knew-where, guarded by a foe neither could adequately handle. Limited time to learn where they needed to go, limited money to get there, limited mobility from a failed confrontation.

“I can afford either shelter for the night or a trip elsewhere in Europe,” Hanzo said. “Should we wish to visit Asia, there are favours I can use to facilitate it. The Americas, Australasia, Africa, the Poles -- they are inaccessible.”

“Was thinkin’ more local, more alpine.”

“I doubt Talon is hiding in Austria.”

“Hanzo…”

“McCree,” Hanzo replied curtly. No. He shook his head. “Jesse. We pursue this alone, or we return to Overwatch. Anything else is irresponsible.”

Chest struggling from each breath to the next, more than it had on the train, nostrils flaring with frustration: “I know. I jes --”

“I understand,” Hanzo tiptoed through his words, “that being shot by someone you care for would be a shock. I will respect your recovery process as best I can. However, we are in a sensitive situation and we must plan our next move. Will we stay here for the night, or will we continue on?”

There was so much sun in the clearing, for October. They could walk to the village, boring but an ideal rest stop. Brochures on the train had mentioned it was a popular spot for recuperation, a beautiful lake with expansive clinics that employed half the locality. A man hobbling about with an arm askew and a bloodied shoulder would make sense. If he could find new shoes, they could get dinner. If he could find a new hat, he could be comfortable.

Powering on through the continent -- where would they go, anyway? Throw a dart at a map and land in Siberia, or Transylvania, or any number of worse places. The cold played with his prosthesis on the best of days. He wanted nothing to do with the dark for a while.

Then there was Asia, running to -- Hanzo’s homeland, perhaps. He could get a bit Lost in Translation, lose his identity in a hotel somewhere, leave his predicaments in countries where he could voice them and have chance of being understood. Yes, the moon would grow fuller, sundown would weigh heavier. If he couldn’t communicate to begin with, maybe falling into an inarticulable situation would be fine.

He was too tired for two thirds of his options. Footwear, food. A breath. “Let’s go find us somewhere cheap.”

XXX

Spread on a lakeside bench with a box of noodles in his lap, a bit of life returned to McCree’s eyes with every forkful. He had purchased a tidy new shirt -- souvenir, on clearance, a ‘welcome to Tegernsee’ postcard printed on vivid yellow. He had taken a shower -- flipped his hair from his eyes, scrubbed the sweat from his pores, smothered his face in a boiling-hot hand-towel. He had even snagged a set of shoes.

“I cannot believe,” Hanzo sighed, “I allowed you to buy them.”

“Whad?” McCree asked through a blend of chicken and carrot. “They’we fashion’ble.”

“I am beginning to think our definitions of ‘fashion’ differ.”

McCree swallowed. “Culture clash.”

“Would Lena approve?”

He wiggled his toes under the vibrant velcro straps of his sandals. Chunky, square cording wrapped over his feet and around his ankles. Searing orange, more Tegernsee slogans painted in white on top. “Lena would applaud.”

“I regret helping you,” Hanzo said. Setting his chopsticks into the box, he stared into the lake in shame. “I regret leaving Munich without our bags. Jesse, you are an embarrassment.”

This sent a shiver down McCree’s spine, forced him to drop his fork and switch his focus from the water to his companion. Shuffling into his seat, splaying his legs wider, and leaning his face onto his good arm onto his thigh, he turned to Hanzo. “Makin’ that a trend?”

“I would say our relationship follows a trend of regret, yes.” Hanzo raised an eyebrow at the shift in McCree’s posture.

“Naw, not that -- true though -- I was meanin, uh.” McCree fought between a genuine smile and a mocking smirk. “You callin’ me Jesse.”

“Ah.” Hanzo’s eyebrow dropped and he drew his elbows inward, closing his Thai box as he went. “I assumed, given our situation, you would allow a degree of -- congeniality.”

“‘Congeniality.’”

“Did I choose the wrong word?”

“Jes not the word I’d’ve picked.” McCree dove into his food with renewed energy. “If Jesse sounds right to you, use Jesse. It’s my name, after all.”

As his companion resumed eating, Hanzo resumed his contemplation of the lake. The corners of his mouth tilted upward, and he settled his box to his side. The water was beautiful -- the town’s prosperity was justified. The talk -- the man beside him was almost sufferable, ignoring the sandals. It wasn’t a moment worth being shot for, but in less dire circumstances, it would’ve validated the trip. This expanse of lazy blue.

“We could walk the lake,” Hanzo said after a sustained silence. “It would be cheap entertainment for the remainder of the day.”

Shoving the last of the noodles into his mouth, a piece of ginger trailing from his lips, McCree nodded. “Goob ibea.”

“Follow the path until sunset. Then return to our lodgings.”

McCree shook his head. He clamped his box shut and tossed it in a nearby bin -- clear through the hole, slam dunk. “That what we’re doin’? Scramblin’ for a room every time it gets dark?”

“It is the safe approach.”

“Yeah, I should rest, hide,” McCree said. There were ducks on the lake, paddling toward the shore nearest the bin. Mighty polite of them, waiting for people to finish a meal before pecking for the scraps. “Never been big on ‘should’.”

“You opted to stay here,” Hanzo warned, taking an abandoned shred of carrot from his box and throwing it for the ducks.

“When Switzerland happened --” McCree checked for any uneaten food. A noodle had fallen onto his t-shirt. He lobbed it, but it fell far short of Hanzo’s offering. “-- I went home an’ ran ‘round ‘til I felt better. Y’know, I pick a forest or a ravine or somethin’ then I explore as long as it takes.”

“In better circumstances I would support camping, climbing, whatever activities you enjoy, but this is Germany, we are wanted, and you -- you are --”

Which word would he choose this time? “C’mon.”

“-- not in a state for them.”

What a cop out.

The ducks waddled to Hanzo’s carrot, two of them closing their beaks around either end and breaking it in half. Swallowing, satisfied, they meandered to the bin, while a third crossed closer to the duo and took McCree’s noodle. Slurping it in a split-second, it raised its head and quacked encouragingly at them.

“Wanna call me what I am?” If he kept looking at the duck, McCree could ignore the sting of the conversation.

“Is there a particular term you prefer?” Hanzo took another scrap, a piece of ginger, and tossed it to their new friend.

“No preference.” McCree waved his hands in apology. All his other leftovers were in the bin. Sorry, waterfowl pal. “Jes don’t say ‘monster’.”

Fishing the last piece from the box, a sliver of something green, Hanzo threw it directly onto one of the duck’s feet. “‘Werewolf’, then.”

XXX

This hotel room was smaller than Jeremias’. Dark red carpet bristled beneath their feet, rough wartime wool -- an era where assisted weaving machines were shut off for fear of omnic possession, and fabric was spun harsh at best. The walls were painted dim enough to cause claustrophobia, a thick mustard. The curtains wore an unnecessary valance, as if it would improve the feeling of the room at large. Undersized single beds were crammed two feet apart, linen already a layer too cold for the weather.

“Shoulda let me outside.” McCree lashed at the built-in wardrobe, thunking the doors with force to rattle them.

“Stop hitting the furniture,” Hanzo insisted. “We cannot afford repairs, or for the staff to spot you.”

“Damnit, Hanzo." Another strike. Lighter. “I feel like I’m burnin’!”

“You will do further damage to your arm if you continue.”

With a nigh-literal growl, McCree threw himself onto his bed. Breathing into the covers, he dug his claws in beside his head. His prosthetic flopped useless at his waist “Controls’re gettin’ worse whether I smash ‘em or not. It’s messin’ with my muscles.”

“If you damage the circuitry it will be inoperable during the day as well.”

Raising his eyes from the duvet to stare, McCree pitched the claws deeper. “Won’t leave me my face, won’t leave me my senses. Think it’d at least leave me my arm.”

Hanzo sat on a chair in the corner of the room, hotel sewing kit on a table to his left. McCree’s sarape spread across his knees, he held a red-threaded needle, half the major holes halfway darned. Reading glasses balanced on his nose -- how much did he have buried in those pockets and sleeves? He made a strong case for loose clothes. “Your face is fine. Do not put holes in the duvet -- I refuse to patch anything else.”

He clutched his hand into a loose ball. Papercuts where the claws had been -- if no-one brushed the fabric too fast, from the wrong angle, whichever, the damage would remain invisible. Heaving himself to a sitting position, his mechanics wobbled along in tandem, fish hooked to a shoulder. “What can I do?”

“Sleep.” Hanzo suggested, licking the tufted end of a new length and looping it through the head of his needle.

“Can’t sleep. Told you before, it’s like coffee, like I’m nocturnal.”

“Watch a movie.”

“Tryin’ not to think ‘a Reyes.”

“I refuse to believe every movie in the world is a Reyes movie.”

“Most of ‘em.”

“What if you choose a children’s channel?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it might be a distraction.”

Standing from the bed and looking for a remote, McCree kept his features tilted toward the door, away from Hanzo. There, on the nightstand between their beds. He took the remote and flipped on the lamp beside it, then moved to the overhead light switch and tipped it off.

“I would have appreciated some warning,” Hanzo called from below his own lamp. Tugging a stuck needle, trying to yank it through a misplaced stitch, he frowned.

“Y’got light,” McCree said, returning to his prior spot on the bed.

“You startled me.”

“Mmhm.” His feet raised on his pillows and his chin resting on his hand -- oops, no, his wrist, electric joints pivoting out of line -- he turned the monitor on and pressed for the catalogue of channels and archived films. Skimming the list of free options and seeing nothing, he moved into the live broadcasts. The kids’ channel, bless its heart, was playing The Fox and the Hound. “Not watchin’ that. Nope.”

Hanzo adjusted his glasses and tried not to smirk. “Is there a romance option?”

“If there’s not, you gonna suggest some upstairs-downstairs drama? Gonna drag us into nature docos?” He reversed into the catalogue and -- nevertheless -- clicked through the ‘romance’ tag.

“I would enjoy either of those options.”

“Course you would.” Here’s something: Your Mascot. ‘A duo of costumed characters perform together in Times Square -- until one realises their relationship is becoming more than just an act’. Opening the film and settling himself into a more comfortable variant of his starting position, McCree sighed.

Fade in: a gloomy apartment, interiors washed-out to the verge of grey. A man in his bathroom, in a t-shirt and tights, in a bad mood. Strapping squared pieces of a robotic mascot suit onto his legs, a strip of velcro at a time. Struggling with the knees, sitting on his toilet and twisting them this way and that to properly enclose the joint. Then the torso components. Monochrome credits segueing into a gaudy title card.

The title card drops as a phone rings. He dashes into his living room, dressed to his neck, a helmet under his arm. Fumbling for the phone with gloved, armoured hands, he manages to collect it on the fourth tone. The line sputters open. ‘Hola mijo!’ says an old man.

McCree hit the red button on the remote and felt a shiver of relief as the monitor dropped to black. “No movies. Need a walk.”

Hanzo dropped the needle and tossed the sarape onto his bed. Standing from the chair and crossing the floor, he removed his glasses, pulled their case from his sleeve, placed them inside, and returned it to its hiding place. Looming over McCree with his arms folded, he shook his head. “You agreed to rest.”

“How’m I supposed to rest?” He hurled the remote to the ground. “How’m I supposed to rest, Hanzo?”

The remote rattled onto Hanzo’s feet, buttons-down, depressed against his exoskeleton. “Jesse.”

“Lemme go -- jes a run around the lake -- be back soon --” Staggering to his feet, McCree loomed over Hanzo, not a lick of either lamp falling on him. He was so tall, taller than he was in daylight. A great shadow, determined to stay that way, playing coy with his details.

But any man willing to stand off against a full yakuza clan could have no qualms standing off against an oversized mutt. “I will incapacitate you if you try.”

“You can’t --” McCree took a step to Hanzo’s side, trying to move past him.

Hanzo grabbed McCree across the chest, stepped in the opposite direction, and slammed him into the carpet. On the floor, he placed his knee in the spot he’d grabbed, leaning his weight into McCree’s chest and keeping him pinned. “I can. Behave.”

Close enough to make out McCree’s face -- his pupils refocused, and his mouth twitched in pain. His nose was slightly snubbed, damp and dark as if from a cold. His beard had claimed a little more of his cheeks, and the gold of his irises had begun to encroach on the sclera. The ears twitched from alert to submissive, accepting his situation -- on the floor, under Hanzo’s knee, in a shabby hotel room in rural Germany. “What was I doin’?”

“Causing trouble,” Hanzo said, holding in place. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Rather not do that to you,” McCree replied, tone levelling. “Thanks fer, uh. Knockin’ some sense into me.”

“Are you still feeling unsettled?”

“Hah.” Rolling his head to the side and rubbing his cheek on the carpet, friction pulling him further into place, he frowned. “Been unsettled since I got bit. Angry, though, not so angry.”

“Shall I move?” He tilted some of his weight onto his other leg.

“Yeah, but sit with me, if it’s okay,” McCree said, placing his skin hand to the floor for leverage. “It’ll keep me calm.”

Removing his knee and sloping into a seated position against the foot of one of the beds, Hanzo waited for McCree to join him.

Slower, trying to juggle his body onto a stable center of gravity without using his busted prosthesis, McCree moved onto his front and dragged himself to the spot next to Hanzo. Pivoting and dropping onto his tailbone, he spread his legs into their usual part. Someone’s abandoned action figure, a high-concept cowboy werewolf, its accessories lost midway through use and its possibilities wholly explored. Blackwatch collected the darndest playthings. “Why’d you come along, anyway?”

Poking at the fallen remote with what passed for his toes, Hanzo stared at the blank monitor. “I hoped to impress an old Overwatch member. Improve my reputation.”

“Could’ve done that with Morrison -- could’ve done that better with Morrison, got in good with Angela too.” McCree played with the joints of his prosthetic. “Why pick me?”

Hanzo stared harder. “You asked.”

“Lucio asked too.”

“I --”

“And you’re mostly friendlier with Lucio.” He gave Hanzo a pointed look. Any more excuses, he’d smell ‘em out. Lord knows he had the nose for it.

Clearing his throat and shuffling his legs underneath him, Hanzo took a moment to consider his real answer. Kneeling, straight-backed, eyes cast to the ceiling, he began. “Before I arrived Genji described his team to me, and you were of particular interest. He told me you had joined Overwatch to make amends for past banditry. I had hoped you would empathise with my background. I never considered the differing natures of our pasts. You hurt people, but none your colleagues would hold against you. I hurt your friend.”

“All right, okay.”

“When you asked for help, I saw a chance to change your perspective on me, as well as a chance to better familiarise myself with you and --” a last intake of enough air to support him through, “-- your condition. Your guess the other evening was correct. I am fascinated by what is happening to you.”

Scratching at the newer part of his beard, McCree tried to turn his attention elsewhere. Wardrobe? Skirting? Bathroom door? The ears weighed heavier on his head. Where was his hat? Where was his glove? His sarape -- that was in the room, that was on the other side of Hanzo. His feet curled into the carpet to ground him.

“The tattoo on my arm -- the dragons it summons. They represent the Shimada clan’s founding story. Two draconic brothers who became human and sired our ancestors. I often feel, were I like them, I could have flown the path to redemption instead of crawling it,” Hanzo said. “I wish I were more than this.”

“A werewolf, though?” McCree replied. “Look what it’s doin’ to me.”

“Anything other than human.”

They dwelled on the statement.

McCree gradually turned his face to Hanzo, features angled with their customary mix of mirth and skepticism. Holding his claws into the light and parting his lips enough to show his fangs, he gave a single beat of laughter. “I’m jes my boss with stupid ears.”

“You are more than Reyes.” Hanzo countered with his version of the expression; thoughtful where McCree’s was jovial. “Your ears are not stupid.”

“Don’t call ‘em that.”

“Call them what?”

“‘My’ ears,” McCree huffed. His face collapsed into exhaustion. “They’re not my ears.”

“They are ears which are attached to your head,” Hanzo said. “Therefore, they are your ears. A simple case of ownership.”

“Don’t wanna own ‘em.”

Another pause. Hanzo’s hands twitched on his lap, contemplating and denying a motion -- impossible to tell what kind, with how careful he held them. Conflict played across the rest of him, warm impulse and cold denial. Finally, he raised his hand toward McCree’s head. “May I?”

“May you… what?” McCree asked.

“Touch the stupid ears.” Hanzo’s voice lilted into a bad impression of McCree’s accent as he parroted the term.

“Uh.” They bent into his hair. He looked to the ceiling for further reassurance. Good ol’ hotel ceiling. Speckled with cheap plaster, decorated with a bulb and a mottled lampshade. Faithful friend. “I guess?”

Without further comment, Hanzo brushed his fingers across McCree’s scalp, settling them into place at the base of the ears. Feeling around the join, careful not to poke inside, he gave a sage nod. “Connected, as they should be. Yours. Though I have no clue how they link into your sensory system, set atop your brain like this.”

At some point during Hanzo’s observation, McCree’s pupils had constricted, mouth clamping shut. The remaining tension drained from his arm.

Hanzo frowned. “Jesse?”

Biting his teeth together and blinking forcefully, McCree shook himself back into awareness. “They link alright.”

“Was it unpleasant?” Hanzo’s hand retreated. “Given your rough treatment of them, I assumed they were hardy things.”

“No,” McCree said. His prosthesis rotated to a sharp angle and rose close to his face, covering his left eye and nothing else. “No, felt -- fine. Weird, though.”

In the ensuing silence, he reached and traced Hanzo’s movement. His hair had always been some standard of soft, but there was a distinct transition between the regular variety on his scalp and the silky strands on his ears. The densest tufts came at the apex and on the tragus, tiny knots forming as a consequence. The join at the base and the upper sections of the interior gave a soothing twinge as he prodded them -- hinting but not repeating the sensation Hanzo’s exploration had caused.

“If you gotta cool me off again,” he slipped his hand along his face, pulling his lower eyelid and tugging his mouth into a pantomime half-frown, “might be the best approach.”

Hanzo’s nose gave a puff of laughter. He shuffled his legs underneath him, shifting closer to McCree as the movement concluded. “If that is your wish.”

An elbow digging into his waist, McCree nodded, ears in a curious lift. A knee touched to his thigh. A shoulder hovering near his, careful not to brush his bandages; care, thought, intent. Was this a Japanese custom, shoving joints into people while trying to reassure them? ‘You seem worried, I will press the edge of my hip into yours’. Perhaps he’d learnt from Overwatch’s hands-on rugby-tackle approach to friendship and didn’t know how to apply it as yet. Or --

Hanzo, I have been asked to deliver a message.

Springing to his feet and rummaging in his sleeve, Hanzo pulled his communicator free. Athena’s visualisation pulsed onscreen. “Winston claimed short of recall for a major international incident, you would refrain from contacting absentee agents. I would have destroyed this device if I knew your non-interference policies would be broken.”

My apologies. Given the supplies Soldier 76 checked into the evidence room, I assumed you would value the help.

“You are an OS. You should not be assuming anything,” Hanzo said. Pausing beside his bow, he sighed. “Yes, we would appreciate help.”

Patching the message through.

‘Say it --’

‘He and I’ve got a pact, I don’t say it, he doesn’t say ‘it’s high noon’ --’

‘This is the perfect occasion --’

‘You say it!’

‘We could both say it.’

‘Fine, both our funerals. Okay!’

‘Cheers, brother! The cavalry is here!’ / ‘Cheers, love! Cavalry’s here!’

Chapter Text

The VTOL placed its landing gear into the grass gentle as a lamb. The propellers whirred to a stall. With a gasp of hydraulics, the door plunged open, and two slender figures swaggered out.

“Straight from Gibraltar, your ‘dashing’ saviours --”

“Genji and Tracer, Overwatch agents par excellence!”

They struck a pose on the ground, hands clasped into the air between them and Lena’s smile wide.

“We hear you have been very bad,” Genji said, abandoning the tableau to approach Hanzo, his helmet unfolding to reveal his amused face.

“Perhaps rebellion is in our blood. You left unnoticed?”

“No, but it’ll take them a bit to get a pilot and catch up,” Lena said, prancing forward to McCree’s position. “And when they get her, she won’t be good as me!”

“True enough,” McCree gave her a one-armed hug. “Thanks fer steppin’ in.”

Lena returned it with both arms, crushing McCree tight around the waist. “Shame we had to dupe Winston, but I’m on call for anything that peeves the Commander. Plus, I hear you’re dealing with a bit of a lycanthropic problem?”

Escaping from the hug and waving his hands above his head in exasperation, McCree sighed. “Everyone tellin’ everyone?”

“Proper briefing on it. Think Lucio cried.” Lena turned to the Shimadas. “Genji, did Lucio cry?”

“He did not cry.” He folded his arms and considered his statement. “But he was certainly upset.”

“You broke his heart, McCree. He’s worried you’re lost and alone in the woods and you’re going to get shot,” Lena said, at least feigning sadness. “We gotta get you fixed post-haste, so you can Prince Charming in and wipe away his tears.”

Hanzo bristled.

McCree laughed. “Ah, shaddup. Owe the kid an apology, sure, but nothin’ more.”

On tiptoes and pirouetting into the soil, Lena laughed as well. “Just pulling your tail, no worries.” She unwound her feet and tipped her weight onto the left, raising a thoughtful thumb and forefinger to her chin. “Do you have a tail?”

He made as if to tilt the brim of his hat, and slapped himself in its absence. “Lena, we really doin’ this?”

“Do you?”

“Lena --”

“Doctor Brasher did,” Hanzo said, nudging Genji and bringing the cluster tighter. “Jesse does not.”

“Let us make sure it stays that way.” Genji added, allowing himself to be corralled into place. “We are still in favour of flying to Hanamura?”

“Yeah, guess.” McCree shrugged and inspected the VTOL, parked out-of-place in some out-of-the-way farm. Best to move before the accompanying farmer noticed them. Least Lena had opted for an inconspicuous little ship -- she’d threatened to fly a shock-blue and electric-gold prop plane, ‘give the engine a warm up’ , until reminded it seated two-at-best.

“Talon mentioned dealings with the Shimada clan in both their missives to me.” Hanzo folded his arms and contemplated the grass. “Infiltrate the offices, force our cousin to call them and organise a rendezvous. A simple plan.”

“Provided you enter more quietly than your last visit,” Genji said, smile returning. “A blind man could have followed your trail.”

“They have yet to take precaution against my annual intrusions,” Hanzo replied. “I was mocking their lack of effort. I am capable of greater discretion, should the situation demand it.” Still, his cheeks turned telltale peach.

“Of course.” Genji gave a wry laugh. “Onward, then?”

“Yeah, onward!” Lena flashed into the VTOL, around the corner, up the stairs to the captain’s chair.

“Sure. Hanzo?” McCree swept a hand toward him, holding it flat for a moment as if it were an offering, then swinging it back to gesture to their ride.

“... Yes.” He followed the party to the landing ramp and inside.

Jamming a button on her console, Lena closed it behind them, and ran the engine for takeoff.

XXX

Over the Mediterranean, past the Middle East, and straight on to the Asia-Pacific: the VTOL flew a smooth path through the morning, rain holding and wind conditions favourable. Each hour that ticked by ticked them into a new time zone, cutting them fast into the afternoon, then the evening.

At some point Hanzo moved to the flight deck to discuss the group’s situation with Athena and Lena, leaving McCree and Genji alone at the ship’s coffee table. Genji tapped at a match-three game on the communal tablet, while McCree attempted to brew a decent cup.

“How will your condition react to travel?” Genji asked, a ‘lose’ card flashing across his screen.

“Hm?” The machine hissed and gurgled, spewing foam without a trace of actual coffee. “Dunno, guess we’ll see when the lights go. Assumed it was a UV thing.”

“What happened with Lucio -- has it happened since?” He slid the tablet aside, setting it on the seat beside him and laying his arms flat on the table.

“Nah,” McCree said, turning the machine off and taking his cup from under it. Peering into the foam for a hint of brown, he sighed. Busted, and Genji never liked being asked for tech support. Slotting it where it’d came from, he folded his arms in front of him to match his companion. His prosthesis twitched at the wrist, still disrupted by his wounds. “Least, haven’t been violent.”

“Oh?”

“Gave Hanzo some trouble last night.” He scratched at his collarbone. No bruises from being knocked over, but he’d remember the spot a while. Hard to forget the surprise. “Got a lil’ too wanderlust-y. Had to clothesline me.”

“I am surprised,” Genji said, turning to the stairs to the flight deck. Hanzo and Lena’s voices echoed down, arguing about sandals and whether noodles were an appropriate food for waterfowl. “You were so antagonistic toward each other, and not a week later, you seem so friendly. Clotheslining aside.”

“Clotheslinin’ far to the side.” In absence of coffee, the VTOL had a reliable stash of cigars -- Torbjorn’s, theoretically, but theories exist to be disproven. Shifting for the makeshift bar a little further around the table, McCree found the box and plucked a fat specimen free. Taking the lighter from next to it, he lit the cigar and raised it to his lips. Days without. How in tarnation had he managed?

“The pressure of the situation?”

“Prob’ly jes me bein’ nicer to him.” A long drag from the cigar, and a smooth exhale. Thick smoke filled his respiratory tract, and despite the damage it was doubtless doing, he swore he’d never felt better. Even his shoulder seemed to sting less. A bright little miracle. If Torb heard the good it’d done, he couldn’t begrudge the loss of the stick, could he? No, not even he was that cruel.

“Perhaps.” Genji kept staring in the direction of his brother, as though his visor would let him see through walls.

“Said he’d wanted to be friends a while. Whole ‘mutilatin’ you’ episode put a damper on it -- my fault for not bein’ forgivin’, guess.” He tried to take another puff, but the cigar fell short -- a tremble in his flesh wrist, a catch in his throat. “Feels wrong. Droppin’ a grudge jes cause a pal asks. Course you had to make amends, yer his brother. I had no stake, an’ bein’ angry seemed the righteous thing.”

“Years ago I would have agreed. Today -- it is best to consider his perspective. He has been adrift, he needs new relationships to anchor him. He needs to know Overwatch was the right choice.”

“Yeah.” A beat more contemplation -- and McCree crammed the cigar into the corner of his mouth with renewed confidence. “Gonna make that clear. ‘Specially since he’s made it clear he wants ta be friends with me.”

“‘Clear’ how?” Genji’s visor folded away, focus placed sharply on McCree.

“Uh,” McCree said, swinging the cigar to the opposite side. “Runnin’ to Munich with me, buyin’ me clothes an’ food, calmin’ me at night, helpin’ me --” he felt behind his ear lobe, tracing the connections between cartilage and bone, “-- helpin’ me figure myself out?”

Nodding, brows furrowed in thought, Genji said nothing.

Slouching deeper into his seat, smoke trail pluming from his cigar, McCree accepted the silence. Misanthropic brother starts showing actual affection -- plenty to contemplate. Two new people along for the ride, question was, would Hanzo still stick to McCree like tar to a lung? Like something more pleasant, like a deep sleep to a Sunday morning. He wouldn’t mind more time with Lena or Genji, but there’d been something special to the trip thus far. McCree had cultivated a circle of friends who would jeer at movies and dare each other into pranks. A few days with a straightforward someone, a man who spoke seldom but sincere, who liked vases and folklore, that had been a breath of fresh air.

A breath, tugging more chemicals in. This breath felt wrong. He hacked the smoke out, cigar flopping from his mouth onto the table. Every ounce of tobacco burnt inside him like direct fire.

Glance to the plexiglass of the landing ramp: true night outside, the stars and clouds moon-bright against the blue-black sky. McCree continued choking, fighting to his feet and tearing the straps of his shoes, straining against the buzz between his ears.

“McCree?” Genji asked, snapped from his thoughts. “McCree, are you --?”

Hanzo sprinted into view from the stairs, tense from shoulder to sole. “Jesse.”

Hand to his neck, claws growing into place and the hair on his forearm thickening, McCree whined a wordless answer. Rolling from his feet back into his seat, his prosthesis fell limp as the muscles shifted from under its receptors. His facial features twisted, first to form a grimace, then in a more literal fashion. His fingers and toes stretched and hooked into the nearest available surfaces.

“Is McCree okay?” Lena called from her seat. “Athena, is it safe to pass controls to you?” Athena’s response was too quiet to hear from the deck, but by the flash of blue light and Lena’s appearance in the room, her answer had been in the affirmative.

Taking Lena by the shoulder, Hanzo maintained a several-foot distance from the table. Genji shuffled to the opposite end of the bench. The trio waited, still, for McCree’s convulsions to end.

As they did, he picked himself into a proper sitting position and gave himself a pause to catch that breath he’d been reaching for. Slapping his prosthetic against the table with whatever motion he could muster from it, he dislodged the remaining embers from his cigar. Airways ached, whatever -- least he wasn’t fever-y in the mental sense, like yesterday. Less than a dozen hours ago, if he was specific. Jeez Louise. “Wondered what travel’d do? Does this.”

“McCree…” Genji said, apologetic as he could.

“Should ‘a asked you to go the other way ‘round.” McCree tilted his head toward Lena. “Got some extra daylight.”

“Twice as far,” she replied, usual levity missing.

“Jes want a break.” He rubbed an eye. The inner corners had lengthened, hollowed through an extra sixth-inch of skin and turned a hardy charcoal colour like flecks of thick make-up. “That’s all.”

XXX

Landing in Japan and stepping outside, McCree was unimpressed but unsurprised to see a dark sky with only the orange tint of light pollution brightening it. “Lena, what’s the local time?”

“I’ve announced it twice,” she said, strolling to his side. “Should have been listening. Midnight.”

“Don’t s’pose yer gonna let me run ‘round.” He leaned onto the front of his feet like an athlete on the starting blocks. “Vent a bit.”

“Hey Hanzo, Genji.” Lena watched the pair descend the ramp, and whispered a ‘close’ command into a device on her wrist as they stepped clear. “Can McCree run around?”

“Can he run silently?” Genji responded, whip-fast.

“Can try,” McCree said.

“Of late, my people have been less curious toward foreigners.” He feigned contemplation, though there was a lilt to his voice that revealed he was working to an insult. “You, McCree, are a curiosity even on American soil. I think it is best for you to stay hidden.”

“That’s prejudice against werewolves.” He retorted, as though it were a reasonable protest.

“No,” Genji said, stifling a laugh. “It is prejudice against your shirt.”

XXX

The ryoukan Hanzo had booked for the party was tucked into the outskirts of Hanamura, two floors of sizeable tatami rooms. McCree waited outside with Lena as the brothers checked in, a sheet from the VTOL draped over his head to avoid scrutiny. He looked, best he could describe it, like a -- “cartoon ghost.”

“What?” Lena was leaning on his shoulder, as if having a girl sloped beside him would make him less suspect. Some sort of Totoro gambit.

“I look like a cartoon ghost an’ I don’t know if that’s better or worse,”

She considered this. “Better, probably? Werewolf look’s a bit nasty.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“Your hand’s doing that stretchy thing, and your feet. Plus, you’ve got about half a snout,” she counted through the list on her fingers as she spoke. “Ears, not bad. Eyes, not bad. Fur’s more like you’ve forgotten to shave. Sub par werewolf. Par sheet ghost.”

“Uh-huh.” He tugged the sheet lower.

“Hanzo said it’s progressive. I guess you’ve been less goofy ‘til tonight,” she said. “Given he’s been so invested.”

“‘Invested’.” McCree tried to stare at her, but the sheet and her position on his shoulder shook his aim and left him angry at a blue-tinted reflector on a bicycle nearby.

“Invested.” She nodded with her lips pursed, like a plumber appraising a broken pipe.

“Sure.” He shifted a foot to the side, leaving Lena’s weight to her own two feet.

She took a breath for a rebuttal, but before she could offer it, the door opened and Genji emerged, his visor down.

“The room is ready.” He tossed her the spare key.

“All together?” She asked, spinning it around her finger by the ring. The key and its tag clacked together.

Genji nodded, folding his arms. “The room is very large, and there are no beds. I saw no reason to pay more.”

“I dunno,” Lena said, smile growing like a plot. “Some of us might like privacy.”

He tilted his head and quirked the space where an eyebrow had once been. “If you were uncomfortable sharing sleeping space, you could have --”

“No, no,” she waved her hands. “Never mind.”

McCree, under his sheet, couldn’t pick who to leer at, let alone pick them apart.

XXX

The room was -- according to Hanzo’s read of the guestbook -- six jo, with half the floor-space clear for sleeping, and the other half furnished with low chairs and a kotatsu. Opening the cupboards across the walls revealed blankets, heaters, and standard refreshments -- minibar, kettle, and coffee set. An inlet on another side held a monitor and entertainment system.

McCree’s past trips had been to Western-style hotels and the mats would be an experience, but this place comforted him in a way their previous lodging hadn’t. Could be the neutral colours, could be the expanded area. Could be that having two-thirds of a standard team made it feel like a mission rather than a mistake.

In any event, he was calm. Stretched across the tatami with a pillow behind his head, legs crossed in the air, he threw his arms wide. Hatched straw pressing patterns into his skin. Stuffing shaping around his skull. Eyes open, set on a stalled ceiling fan. Breathe in -- second floor, somewhere new, with friends. Breathe out -- action tomorrow, relaxation today, you’re safe.

The locks spun in the door, old metal keys pumping pins through their outdated slots. It swung open, and hard feet stepped from the tiled entrance onto the tatami without any pause to remove shoes. Crossing the floor to McCree, the intruder folded neatly onto his knees, and placed his hands on his lap.

“Thought you an’ the kids had gone shoppin’.” McCree draped his prosthetic over his face in lieu of a hat.

“I ate dinner with them, then opted to return home while they continued to buy clothing.” Hanzo said.

“Didn’t think Genji wore clothes.”

“He does not,” Hanzo sighed, running his fingertips over the silk of his trousers. “The pair of them are shopping for you.”

“Got my sizes?” McCree asked, trying to laugh past his surprise. “I mean -- coulda gone myself tomorrow.”

“They were adamant. Perhaps because whenever we leave you to dress yourself -- this happens.” He gestured up and down McCree’s body.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. I admit the shirt was to git a rise outta you.”

“I knew it.” He struck his knee, face lighting. “You are a terror.”

“Yeah.” McCree shifted his prosthetic sideways to reveal his eyes, overshooting and dropping it against his cheek, fingers twining with his hair. “But I’m gettin’ Lena’s fashion advice from it. Scare tactics got their uses.”

Hanzo nodded, levity sinking from him, shoulders curling inward. “... Would you be comfortable discussing Reyes?”

The prosthetic flopped hard onto the floor, McCree’s arms spread wide, chest and face exposed. He dropped his legs flat. “Not comfortable, but I have to sometime.”

Slipping from kneeling to sitting cross-legged, Hanzo nodded again. “You do indeed.”

“Whaddaya wanna know?”

“If he is funding Doctor Brasher’s venture,” he said, “with the intent to cure his own condition, what will you do when we find him?”

What would McCree do? He’d punched Reyes, though in a more desperate situation than intended, but he’d never planned further -- maybe because he’d imagined a different reunion. Plenty of people hated Jack Morrison, McCree sometimes included, and Winston’s optimism had always grated against Reyes’ pragmatic tendencies. Easy to think, stuck in a living room with his borderline-adopted son, the turncoat would turn once more.

He hadn’t. Reyes’ antipathy toward Overwatch included the people that should’ve been more than employees to him. Jesse McCree was a good kid, a fun student, an ideal movie-watching partner -- and a target. Not even a bullseye, a speck on the outer ring, compared to the Commander.

Cripes, McCree was starting to see how Reyes had gotten jealous to begin with. The whole organisation came back to a single man, blue-eyed square-jawed poster-boy patriot, ‘Hero’, Morrison. Like father, like son.

Reyes wasn’t a father, not anymore. McCree could pick his own path. “Lock him up. Fix him. Keep him locked.”

“And if it comes to light that Ziegler’s work damaged his mental state?” Hanzo continued, focus honing on McCree.

Brasher was responsible for herself, regardless of how the situation closed -- she had, essentially, taken mind-altering substances of her own design and allowed herself to run rampant in the aftermath. Reyes was an accident, and if McCree got worse, repeated Brasher’s errors…

Would he want to be an accident, could he accept being called an accident? For preservation’s sake, yes, but he had a helluva guilty conscience and a court’s ‘innocent’ verdict wouldn’t free him from that. It’d be into the desert, earning redemption a bounty at a time, like every mistake. The Reyes he remembered would join him there.

“Somethin’ like that panned out, I’d want him with me.” McCree tried to shrug, but his position on the floor made the move impossible to read. “Repay him for when he picked me up.”

Contemplative, Hanzo swept onto his feet, arms folded and posture straight. “My third and final question is how you are feeling in light of his comments.”

Angry was the easy answer. Angry was the easy emotion. Angry was easy every angle McCree looked at it. It wasn’t wrong, but it was stopping at the surface. Tap a little further, chip six feet through the topsoil and look for the feeling below --

Hurt. Obvious, tricky to admit. Like snapping an ankle and pretending it’s a twist. Because everyone else at Gibraltar had given up on Reyes, at least nominally, and warned him to do the same. He hadn’t, and he’d taken a shot for it.

There was another layer underneath, the hardest to reach, knocking through bedrock and into earth that’d never been turned. Scared -- he was scared. That he’d followed someone into a bad place, they wanted to press forward and he wanted to turn around, but without their help he couldn’t tell how to leave.

“Feelin’ a lot ‘a things.” McCree finally answered.

“If you would like to discuss anything specific,” Hanzo said, “I am here.”

Talking with Hanzo -- he liked him fine, but as the meeting Morrison and Ana had organised made clear, Reyes was a topic for the old guard. Their skeleton, in their closet. Not that any of them knew Blackwatch well enough to sympathise. “I appreciate that.” Sitting up and sighing forcefully, the big bad wolf trying to blow the conversation down, McCree gave a grin.

Hanzo clung to the tense mood a moment longer, then made his way toward the outer door; a sliding glass panel, set in a stylised frame to resemble a traditional paper screen. Parting the curtains and flipping the catch, he shoved it open and walked onto a slight balcony. “Come on.”

“Could be spotted,” McCree reminded, on his feet anyway.

“This is my home.” Hanzo gestured across the nearby streets. “Trust me when I say we will be fine. You wanted to go out?”

McCree eased across the tatami on tiptoe, wary of his claws catching in the weave. He tried to roll onto his heels, set his weight somewhere less sharp, but with the current configuration of his feet settling into a human stance was impossible. “Wanted to, thought you said no.

“Genji said no.” Excitement ran under his words -- three decades as the restrained Shimada, each action was contrary and new and sparked in his veins. “I am saying yes. I remembered a route we could run unnoticed. Difficult, but I trust you can follow it.”

Taking Hanzo’s side on the balcony and looking into the night, McCree took a preparatory breath. “Let’s git, then.”

XXX

Skidding to a stop on the concrete roof of a department store, McCree posed over the district below them. Neon lights, bright clothes, and omnic-owned-and-operated plazas breaking the 2am gloom. Trust Hanzo to know the best sights in the city.

He tapped into place at McCree’s side without a hint of inertia, soles darkening as he did. With the hum of his running aids subsiding, the pair were left in a silent pocket above the crowds. Hooking his legs over the rooftop’s barrier wall, he sat. “When I was a child, this place would be quiet at sundown.”

Struggling across the barrier to join him, McCree laughed to conceal his comparative trouble. “This happen post-crisis?”

“Of course.” He took the flask at his waist and raised it to his lips, sipping contentedly. “One year, when we were teenagers, I forgot Genji’s birthday until the night before. A housekeeper suggested I visit the shop beneath us -- I thought she was joking, I could not imagine it staying open so late. I walked inside, and I was greeted by omnics.”

“Were you scared?” McCree gestured for the flask.

“No. Awed, I suppose. I bought him a clockwork sparrow to commemorate the experience, but I saw it abandoned in a guest bedroom a week later.” Hanzo’s hand hovered in McCree’s direction, but before he passed it on, he recoiled. “This would be unhealthy for you."

“C’mon,” McCree said with an anxious smile.

“The cigar caused trouble, I assume whisky will as well.”

“You put whisky in there?”

“I could not find proper sake in Tegernsee, so I improvised.”

“Gimme a swig --” flailing for the flask, McCree felt his claws catch on something, then his palm settle on the bottle. Closing his grip and tugging it from Hanzo’s hands, he brought it in and drank a substantial mouthful. Between the container and his throat, however, the liquor began to burn, and he tore the flask away. Spitting onto the pavement below, coughing to follow, he set the remainder beside him. “Hell.”

Reclaiming his drink, Hanzo’s brows dipped in disapproval. He held his free hand close to his chest, scratches run through his bracer. Silent, he capped the container and hooked it back at his belt.

As McCree’s coughing fit ended, he rubbed at his face with his functional hand and tried to look anywhere but Hanzo. The pachinko parlour across the road, the American-themed diner a block off, the greeters for the multi-floor clothing shop two stores to the left. Genji had better buy him a hat. Without a hat, hard to cope with embarrassment. Nowhere to hide.

The gap stretched wide enough that someone had to fill it, or face a rift in future encounters. Hanzo was used to -- bridging gaps, difficult conversation. His job, then. “I should not try to police you.”

“Tried to stop me doin’ somethin’ stupid. Meant well.”

“It was your decision to make.” He turned to meet McCree’s eyes. “No good comes from deciding for others.”

“That why you changed stance on me goin’ outside?” McCree turned to meet Hanzo’s.

“Every visit home, I think on the month prior to the incident.” It was difficult to hold the shared look, but both parties managed. “If I could repeat it, I would tell him to drink, to gamble, to take as many partners as he could.”

“Not my last month human.”

“No.” He didn’t sound sure of that. “No, but say it were, I could not begrudge you whisky or cigars or being spotted by locals.”

McCree gave the sentiment consideration, sliding from discomfort to appreciation to skepticism. “In my case, though -- prob’ly not a good idea to shack up with anyone.”

“Probably not.” Hanzo affirmed, straightening his posture.

“Prob’ly...” McCree took note of the shift.

Neon blared against Hanzo’s features, orange and pink into the underside of his chin and nose, yellow glancing off the metal fastenings on his uniform. He reeked of sweat, three active days in the same clothes taking their toll. His ponytail was falling askew. Prickly, self-serious, each conversation rich with condescending subtext --

He couldn’t bear to add the ‘not’ to this repetition of the phrase. “Up to me, I guess.”

Chapter Text

The clothes Genji and Lena had assembled for their companions were both better and worse than anticipated. McCree, post-orange t-shirt, would be wearing an improved outfit whatever they threw his way -- and the provided waistcoat and tie sat at the upper end of the list of possible options. Hanzo, meanwhile, was handed a costume that might’ve seemed appropriate to Genji, but was less so to anybody -- everybody -- else.

“Bright side: you don’t smell,” McCree laughed as he rolled his sleeves past his elbows, giving his prosthetic room to move - as much as it was moving, the signals making a worse recovery from his changes each night that went by.

“Instead I am an assault on people’s eyes.” Hanzo pulled a scarf around his lips. Genji’s fashion sense, whether from nostalgia or atrophy, had not advanced since the incident. Buying clothes for Hanzo he‘d dipped into his love of clashing colours and pointless drapery, leaving his elder brother swimming in an ocean of primary blocks and vivid decals. It wasn’t objectively awful, just an acquired taste, a taste Hanzo had never acquired.

“I’ll take it,” McCree said with a smile, taking a futile swipe at the wrinkles in his shirt and turning toward the door. “Genji, Lena, thanks.”

“No worries!” Lena called from beside the frame.

“ ‘Douzo’ tte ore ni jyan?” Genji asked, lingering on the opposite side, visor tilted toward Hanzo.

Hanzo groaned.

Last garments and equipment thrown on, the party made to the hall. Genji set an upbeat pace, which Lena matched, while McCree kept several feet behind them. At the rear of the team was Hanzo, fiddling with a button on his neon-blue jacket. Through the lobby, smile at the receptionist and the doorman, into the street.

“Run it by me once more?” Lena asked, balancing with outstretched arms on the curb, trying not to fall into the damp gutter to her right.

“I will enter the offices and find our cousin. Hanzo will keep watch from the nearest rooftop. Lena, you will follow after me if I meet resistance, otherwise you will wait outside,” Genji said, dodging around a hair salon blackboard.

“Me?” McCree was in the road, though the lack of cars in the semi-residential neighbourhood largely justified the decision.

“You are still missing Peacekeeper,” Hanzo said. Jacket fixed -- first button closed, the rest open, scarf hanging lazily over his right shoulder -- he was now adjusting his bow case. The new ribbon in his ponytail, along with the shorter end of the scarf, were catching in its straps and fastenings.

“My fist is made ‘a metal.”

“You intend to punch everyone in the building?”

“If Genji’s allowed to hit ‘em with a sword --”

“The goal is to not hit them,” Genji said with an audible smile, “it is to sneak in. Which none of you can do.”

“I could have assisted, had you bought me clothes in more subtle --”

“Which none of you can do.” Genji repeated.

McCree and Hanzo shared a look of frustration.

“Tag along with me or be Hanzo’s guard dog,” Lena said, teetering a foot into the water below. “Either of us’d love the company, it’s just Genji you’ve got to leave be.”

Swerving onto the footpath as a delivery van trundled along the road, McCree rubbed his cheek in thought. Hanzo: an easy person to spend a day with, depending how long the operation took. Had skinny wrists, would probably like a better set protecting him if things went awry and folks needed smacking. Lena: job more likely to turn exciting, but yeah, team had a point, infiltration wasn’t McCree’s strength and he’d be floundering without a sidearm. It’d give Hanzo peace and quiet for once, which he might appreciate. Might. Couldn’t rule either way. Man’d seemed private prior to this week, but last night -- he’d opted to stay together when separation was possible.

Risky fun, safe boredom. Old friend, new friend. Give him space, show him you care.

Avoid seeming too attached.

“... Put up with me enough lately, I’ll stick with Lena.”

“I appreciate your company. You do not have to go.”

Did he really need to run the whole list of reasons? “You need to focus, I’m jes a distraction.”

There was no debating it. Hanzo glanced at a shop sign instead, breaking the conversation with resigned silence. ‘Distraction’. That was an understatement.

XXX

Tilt left. Tilt right. Tilt forward. Check the window -- which is best? Another round of tilting -- which is best? Right.

“If I knew you’d spend the morning peacocking, I wouldn’t have bought it for you,” Lena grumbled from a meter deeper into the alley.

Releasing the brim of his new hat -- a trilby with a crimson band -- McCree laughed and waved finger guns at his reflection. “C’mon, what else’m I s’posed to do? You an’ Genji made it clear I’m a tagalong."

“Anything else?” she said, swinging her leg to kick at a trash can but slowing the motion as her toes made contact.

Stealth. Jiminy Cricket, no wonder the Shimadas had relegated their compatriots to back-up, they’d barely know stealth if it hit them in the face -- which as Genji had clarified, was not a normal component of being stealthy. Screwing his hat tighter onto his head, McCree mourned his lack of cigars. Nicotine, the single substance that would keep him quiet and entertained in tandem. Good he didn’t have Peacekeeper, would’ve turned to target practice next. “How long was he plannin’ to take?”

Falling onto someone’s stoop with her legs crossed, rocking forward and back, Lena huffed. “Up to three hours, depending on activity levels.”

“Should ‘a gone in at night.”

“Didn’t want to leave you alone,” she said, leaning her cheek onto her knuckles. “‘Sides, families like this don’t tend to keep normal business hours.”

“Keep normal enough offices.”

“Think that’s just this cousin. Hanzo mentioned on the jet, she’s the brains. Balances books, manages renters, handles correspondence. Makes a lot of the work look like regular real estate.”

“An’ if anyone’s gonna keep Talon’s home phone on record --”

“It’s Eriko Shimada, ‘property manager’ --” Lena made air quotes with her fingers “-- ‘extraordinaire’.”

“No need for sarcasm, might be good at her job.” He placed two fingers around his lips and exhaled imaginary smoke. “Not her fault it’s in a shady industry.”

“Thought you hated gangs? Given your occupation the last few years.”

“I do, it’s jes --” harder to think of them as gangs when they wear suits and have six-storey glass office blocks. City, turning his head upside-down again. Hanzo, days alone together wondering how anything adjacent to Deadlock could turn out a man that respectable. “I’m an idiot.”

“Dressing in fancy clothes and buying a nice base doesn’t change what they do in them.” She added a sage nod. “Look at Genji -- Deadlock ever ask you to do anything that bad?”

“Other folks killed people. I was stuck racketeerin’ and ridin’ shotgun on getaway cars.”

“Did they chop up their own?”

“Dunno.” He straightened his spine and stared out the alley toward the nearest populated street. Midday sunlight pried between the buildings, redirected and magnified by the Shimada offices. Sharp beams, sharp dressers, sharp business. Had to watch he wasn’t blinded again.

Lena’s pocket chirped. Twitching for it, she pulled her communicator free, glanced over the display, and hit the ‘talk’ button. “Hanzo, how’s it looking?”

“ My brother has appeared in the top office and is approaching our cousin. No conflict as yet. ”

“Bit sad we won’t get a moment in the sun, but quiet’s for the best, yeah?”

“ Yes. How is McCree? ”

It took a moment for Lena to wrestle her grin to neutral. “We bought a new hat while you two were taking places. You should see -- looks good on him.”

Years of experience with her ribbing, and McCree couldn’t stop himself starting and snapping to face her.

“ I -- will see as soon as danger has passed. ” The fizzle of the rooftop and Hanzo’s breathing continued even as the conversation concluded, neither end ending the call as they awaited Genji’s success or failure. The pause drew out, making room for an imagined confrontation; sauntering to a table with shuriken in hand, the hilt of a katana visible, greeting the woman seated at the desk, reminding her not to summon her guards. “ There is no visible trouble. Yet. ”

Nothing from the communicator, but -- McCree could pick something in the air. A heel striking against a rooftop above them, a heel-heel, someone in high, pointed boots. People went on rooftops of their own accord, look at him and Hanzo the night before, but those people preferred practical footwear. Interesting.

“Hanzo.” He made toward Lena and took the communicator from her hand.

“ Jesse .”

“Hear runnin’ up there, be careful.”

“ Thank you. You take care as well. ”

Foisting the communicator to Lena’s waiting hand, McCree ducked into a pile of junk at the rear of a cafe. Sorting through expired egg cartons and dirty napkins, his grip closed around a slender, metal stick. Hauling it out, knocking aside coffee cups and sugar packets, he held it aloft. “Weapon.”

“Ladle.” She grumbled.

A hiss from the communicator, Hanzo scrabbling over tiling. The clunk of his body and the click of his feet as he dropped into a new position. Something rubbed against the receiver of his communicator, and a cord groaned nearby. Woosh -- an arrow fired. A sphere of blue light burst across at the office. “ Yes, someone is here. Keep watch over Genji. ”

The sonar arrow synced to a set of nanomachines in the agents, revealing two silhouettes through a series of walls and windows. Genji, a hand raised and brandishing shuriken, loomed over the desk of a woman with her hair in a severe bun. The pair moved just enough to assure they were alive, but stayed in place, a tense conversation doubtless unfolding between them. After an extended stand-off, Eriko Shimada reached inside her desk, pulling out a series of files. Shuffling through and reclaiming a thin folder, she returned the rest to their place and tossed the folder to Genji like a shuriken of her own. He caught it handily, and opened it in front of him. Stuck in a reading pose and telegraphing another impasse in the interaction -- the scene was broken as he grabbed his sword and jerked to the nearest window, facing to the rooftops where Hanzo waited.

Smash! A chimney broke over the communicator, bricks shattering across the rooftop and into a fireplace below them. Hanzo let out a gasp and tapped to his feet, drawing and firing as he went. The arrow slid out of receiver range, only to hit --

Crack! Into the upper floor of the building beside Lena and McCree. Wobbling in the gib, it was followed by another shot two meters to the right.

Someone gave a low laugh, accompanied by the paf of a silenced rifle.

The communicator shivered with the sound of falling plaster. “ Lena. To the roof. I require assistance. ”

“Got it,” she replied, on her feet and zipping from the alley, around to whatever stairs or footholds she could find.

Genji had his cousin and a sword, Lena and Hanzo had their sniper and their equipment.

McCree had silence and a ladle. Couldn’t climb to join the roof duo, not without claws -- fancy that, human hands a problem; couldn’t visit Genji without involving a whole building of Shimada goons they’d managed to bypass without fault. Yeah, he’d hit anything that came for him. Had to wait, though. Had to wait and listen and read shapes for information on the skirmish.

Brandishing the ladle at head height as if it were a baseball bat, he pressed his back to the base of the building Hanzo had hit. Just defend yourself, they’ll handle it, they’re three times the agent you are. Just wait.

In his periphery, the dark section of the alley grew shades darker. The dirt pried itself from the concrete, cigarette ash pluming into black smoke. The smoke gasped forward in an indistinct mass before separating into two columns, sucking more shadow from the surrounding to support the growing figure. Columns jointed at their midpoint, eased up into a torso, separated at either side to form arms, burst into a head. Denser, denser, to tar, to coal. Reaper.

“Reyes.” The ladle wouldn’t be enough. McCree attempted to lift his metallic arm, wield it as a threat, but the broken circuits left it waving back and forth in front of him.

“I assume you were asking for directions.” Reyes came closer, movements stern. The tail of his coat was only half reformed, and each step stripped a layer of particles free from it, matter building and collapsing at a balanced rate, forming a thick trail. “Thought we could give you a lift.”

“Not ridin’ with someone who shot me,” he snapped, sweeping the ladle in Reyes’ direction and fanning a line of makeshift smoke-skin free.

“What a shame. I was looking forward to a little chat on the flight.” Heaving in a breath and regenerating the missing strip of his chest, he settled into place three feet from McCree. “A few hours over the ocean. Watch a movie together. Blazing Saddles ? Django Unchained ? The Most Cursed of Hands ? Your pick.”

“Gonna git to yer hideout on my own terms --”

“Our reunion went badly, I’ll admit.” He crept another foot. “My comment about Jack, I should’ve held my tongue. I owed you better.”

“You think?” That tweaked something in his chest, pulled a string he thought couldn’t be played anymore. Strings, playing, nights on a cliff with an acoustic guitar. Arguing with the team which song the boss should strum next.

“Whatever happens, has happened -- you’re still my pupil.”

Still the man who let him wear a scarf and hat with his uniform, who taught him to count his shots until he could track them by the weight of the pistol, who helped him with sneak into his hometown on the tenth anniversary of his ma’s death and bought the bouquet for the grave, who made snide comments about every boyfriend and girlfriend through the barrack doors.

“I wanna believe it, boss, but Hanzo had ta pull eight pellets out my arm.”

“He shot first,” Reyes purred. Another foot, just one to go. “Escalated the situation.”

“You let Doc Brasher kill ten-some people. Let her bite me. Had to get her into custody.”

“It took time to realise she was responsible.” Step in. “I regret standing by.”

“But you did. Gotta take ownership, like you made me take ownership after Deadlock.”

“Hanzo Shimada. You’re working with him?” Step in. A breath apart, Reyes’ mask clustering and dispersing with the rise and fall of his chest. Hard plastic, hard to read.

“He stepped up when we noticed what was happenin’.” McCree held ground, lowering his arm and the ladle to his sides.

“I remember you telling Genji you’d never forgive the man that mutilated him.” The gaps between Reyes’ cells widened, stature growing and growing more transparent. “Sad, seeing you more forgiving of some aloof interloper than the person who raised you. Mijo .”

That stung. His heel slid into the wall behind him. The ladle slipped to the end of its handle, head clinging against the pavement. “I’ll forgive you soon as you prove you deserve it.”

Coming together again, Reyes raised his arms and hooked one around McCree’s shoulders. “At least let me try to.”

The ladle clanked the whole way from McCree’s hand, wobbling to and fro beside his boot. Wanted to push Reyes off, say no, but he remembered this shaky, one-sided hug. It’d been there when he was released from hospital without his left hand, and it’d accompanied Ana’s death certificate. Wrong face giving it, no face giving it; didn’t care. Reyes. Shit, he’d missed Reyes.

And Reaper, hand behind his neck, tilted against his collarbone, couldn’t miss him -- a syringe flashed into his palm like a card from a trick sleeve and dug straight into the nearest vein. Squeezing the fluid through the needle, setting his other arm around McCree’s waist, he gave a gasp of relief.

“Boss --” His arm wouldn’t move. Maybe it was the busted prosthetic, causing problems? No, he was trying to move his flesh hand, use it to push Reyes away. Couldn’t lift it higher than his waist, couldn’t muster the strength for a proper shove -- hit an elbow, hit a hip. Ankle faltering, knee dropping, muscles allowing bones to collapse under the weight of his skin. His vision went white. His circuits gave a proper fizzle. Kept clear of the ground by nothing but Reyes, never anything but Reyes. Someone, spare him from Reyes.

“Goodnight, kid.”

OOO

Sliding across a flat, concrete roof to rest behind an air-conditioning unit, Hanzo readied a scatter arrow. “Lena, position?”

“She’s around the side of that balcony!” Lena jumped over the unit, bouncing from edge to railing to window-sill and down for the spot in question. Blood bubbled at the outer seams of her tights -- bullet, just a graze, no energy to rewind it. Tend to wounds later. Now, Talon. Usual operative. ‘Widowmaker’.

“Understood.” Releasing his shot into the section she’d indicated, he watched each piece bounce up toward -- let it strike, let it strike -- his target.

A grunt came in response. Perfect.

Lena skirted the edge and let out a shout as she tackled their foe. A smack followed, and the grind of metal on metal. Some sort of wrestling. Yelps, curses, bodily smacks into the plaster and the grating. Their altercation was over, or close to it.

Swinging an arc toward the offices Hanzo sent another sonar arrow toward the room his brother had occupied. As soon as the light erupted he took stock of the figures: Eriko, tied or unconscious in a corner, office in decent order save for a flipped lamp, Genji nowhere to be seen. The disappearance of a ninja was hardly worth fretting over -- ought to be wending his way through the elevators and partitions to the street.

Third party to check on: McCree. Last seen in the alley with -- had he heard correctly? -- a ladle, wearing a new hat. Typical, in ways that riled and thrilled him. An idiot, a slapstick figure, a boke in want of a tsukkomi . Intriguing, because or despite. Probably fetching in his fedora.

With a two-footed jump, Hanzo plummeted to the ground, machinery in his legs dispersing the shock. Making from his landing-alley, he curved into the main road. First right, second right, third right -- there. He took the corner and came face-to-face with:

McCree, but not just McCree -- a black-coated man with McCree balanced over his shoulder. A long mask with slanted eye-holes. An oversized hood. “Shimada.” Each syllable rumbled from his mouth like an ancient curse. “No sense shooting, is there?”

Another arrow nocked, his thumb hooked behind his cheekbone. “Drop him.”

“Can’t do that,” Reyes said, voice alternating between uncanny, unsounded depth and remembered casual notes. An actor fumbling from role to real, hidden in flanged frequencies and pitch shifts even as he tried to shirk his casting. “Kasimira wants to perform a check-up.”

“We will make our way to you --” could he fire around McCree? No, Reyes swayed a slight side-to-side movement, keeping him from targeting safely. “-- in our own time, with our own transport.”

“Just skipping the middleman.” With that said, Reyes turned, swinging McCree’s unconscious body to cover most of his back. Walking to the rear of the alley with heavy, self-assured steps, he paused. Well, Hanzo? Were you going to try something?

Were you? Hanzo lowered his bow and hooked it around his shoulder by the string. Sprinting after Reyes and leaping into the air, he raised his feet to deliver a flying kick.

Matter pouring from his legs, Reyes dropped a foot from his height, forcing Hanzo’s kick to connect with McCree’s lower back. Pace stuttered but not stalled, he collected his components together and continued on his way.

Catching himself left then right, Hanzo bent at the knees and swept one leg in an arc along the ground, trying to trip Reyes’ continued march.

Again, Reyes reduced the solidity in his legs, leaving Hanzo brushing through a cloud of gnat-like particles. “Tenacious, aren’t you?”

Knocking him over was impossible, but McCree had punched him fine the other day -- so. Standing and taking a run-up, he connected with the wall and squeezed past Reyes into the next section of the alley, landing to face his foe. Balancing his left arm in front of him as a guard, he swung his right back and hooked a fist toward Reyes’ chin.

Without flinching or faltering, Reyes caught Hanzo’s wrist in a painful grip. Crushing his claws into the joint until he heard a wince, he shook his head in amused warning. “I was surprised they hired you, given the threats they’d make after a drink or two. Guess your functions outweigh your faults.”

Despite the burning in his right hand, Hanzo curled and popped his left toward Reyes’ nose. It hit, but under several layers of masks, through the mist of his body, and sans the element of surprise, it did nothing of note.

“You’re an excellent assassin.” The hold tightened. The crack of bones filled the space between them. Oh, and a cry -- who knew? Hanzo Shimada couldn’t repress all his feelings. “And a terrible bodyguard. I’ll look after him from here.”

The veins under Reyes’ claws darkened, blue and purple and black, a poison working through Hanzo’s arm. The skin beside them, greying and greening, dead as anything. The burn of his broken joint put out by a torrent of ice-water, that tide aching as or more sore. He wrenched his arm out of the hold and staggered into the wall, gaping at the damage.

Reyes walked past without a care. Reaching the mouth of the alley, he turned for a moment and waved with two fingers, then passed out of sight.

Passed out -- no, Hanzo had to keep conscious. His veins were blackened to the elbow, possibly further, the sleeves of his shirt and jacket made it impossible to know. His skin greening from fingernails to mid-forearm, still spreading. Bruises blossomed from the points where Reyes’ claws had been buried. Five awful flowers, eclipsing his pale complexion petal by petal. His fingers fell loose, his wrist stopped moving. His elbow slipped from its place.

He was awake, he had to be awake. Writhing his other hand into his sleeve he tried twice to collect the communicator, fingertips slipping against the glass of the screen. Third try, that idiom, ‘third time’s the charm’, he took it out. Pressed the button. “Lena -- I am in the alley -- Reyes was here -- he has McCree.”

“ Hanzo? ” She replied, a second feminine voice in the background; good, they still had a lead.

“My arm -- call Genji, call Athena.” His vision bruised like his arm, patches turning too dark to see. “An ambulance, if you must.”

Light metal to the concrete, oh, he had dropped the communicator. His shoulder to the concrete, all support gone from his muscles. Keep conscious, keep conscious. A shadow in his brain. He was falling asleep. He was out cold.

Chapter Text

The world Hanzo woke into was scalpel-silver and bleach-white, faded charts breaking the monochrome. ‘How long has it been since your malaria vaccination?’ No. ‘Non-urgent care? Go off-site! Your insurance covers a range of Gibraltar clinics’ Oh, no.

Gibraltar. The infirmary at Gibraltar. With its surgical gown-green curtains, with its cliffs, with -- Doctor Angela Ziegler, checking a folder and shaking her head, no joy in her features and shoulders sunken with inevitable bad news.

For him, perhaps. Because as he shuffled into a sitting position, bracing his back against his pillows and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he felt the details of Hanamura trickle into the gaps of his memory and he realised he couldn’t move his right arm.

“Herr Shimada.” Doctor Ziegler turned to him, keeping her face clear of emotion. Doubtless the rest of the trio had been given stern words, but given his sore circumstances, she was restraining any outright negativity . “You are very lucky.”

“Doctor Ziegler.” If this was to be their exchange -- titles, surnames, careful sentences -- he would match it. Overwatch’s lack of formality had been unusual anyway. Shimada-san, Mister Shimada, Herr Shimada. This was his domain. “What has happened in my absence?”

Shifting to his side and taking him by what seemed to be his elbow, she lifted his arm into view. “The soft tissue was scoured by Reyes. I have, for the most part, removed it, and Lindholm has built replacement casing. Given your legs, I trust you are familiar with the recovery and maintenance process for this sort of work. No heavy lifting, disinfect daily for the first six months. At that point we will remove the cast and review whether the amount of cover can be reduced.”

His third limb in a plastic and metal sleeve. The cost: loss of sensation, flexibility, difficult upkeep for a year or so. The benefit: it would be nigh impossible to damage again. He could chase Reyes, reclaim McCree. Except -- “my arm will be unusable for the foreseeable future.”

“Yes, though you have been grounded by Morrison, so it hardly matters.” Folding the arm in and placing it on Hanzo’s chest, she sighed. She was probably sick of clapping exoskeletons around Shimada wounds. Somehow, it seemed the worst of their family traditions.

“He cannot hold me here.” Clenching his functional fist, he stared forward. “Jesse needs me.”

She showed no surprise at Hanzo’s statement, though her mood shifted regardless -- premeditated anger, reeled to her full height with her feet planted square on the floor. Doctor Ziegler stared at Hanzo with the severity of a much harsher matron. Face taut, rings clear beneath her eyes, sunlight catching the escaped hairs of her ponytail. “I would have treated him if he asked. This could have all been avoided. Why did the pair of you run?”

He was more than prepared to meet her. “You and Commander Morrison, your response to any injury or inconvenience is to lock people in the compound. He felt the best chance at curing his condition and apprehending the creature lay in Munich. I agreed.”

“I wanted to like you,” Doctor Ziegler said softly. “You had a good temperament, you were courteous at meals. I tried to trust you despite what you did to Genji.” Her speech sped faster, her words drummed harder. “Then you lead an old friend of mine into a trap, allow him to be taken -- because you won’t trust me to treat him, or Jack to support his choices? Hanzo Shimada, your goals may be better but your actions are every bit as harmful as when your name first crossed my desk.”

“What did you do to Gabriel Reyes?”

That gave her a proper shake. Rage dispersed, panic underneath, she stalled in place. “Gabriel has nothing to do with this.”

“Whatever happened with him, he was the source of Jesse’s anxiety.”

A reply looked doubtful; Doctor Ziegler stuck in her spot, breathing quick and heavy, lost in a different infirmary on another year, having a conversation with an alternative man in a messier bed. The sheets dusted with charcoal, the air thick with smoke. Even as they came clean, he couldn’t pull his face together: it was little more than meat on bone.

It seemed she would need a small push. “Jesse was afraid that, should his condition prove incurable, he would either be locked up for the remainder of his life or executed. Who put that fear in him?”

“My pistol stayed in its holster every hour at Gabriel’s side.” Do no harm -- she tried to adhere to that principle if the harm could be foreseen. “Locked in a room, yes. I thought he preferred the privacy. He broke the mirror as soon as I offered it, he smashed the windows from their frames. He wanted to stay hidden, much as Ana and Jack had following their near-death experiences.”

If he was so amenable to containment, why the resentment, the hit list? “What changed?”

“He began asking to leave, but he had destroyed Zurich and he was wanted pole to pole. The next occasion I visited he grabbed my hand, and --” she gripped it through her surgical gloves, fingertips settling between her knuckles, “-- I realised what he was capable of. I sealed the room airtight to keep every atom of him inside.”

“Did you abandon him then?”

Turning to face the wall, touching her palm to a chart, she swallowed so loud he could hear from the opposite end of the room. Not crying, no, she would not cry. Leave the memories at a dry ache.

So Reyes had been trapped in a box, both McCree’s prospects true enough in the Doctor’s mind. Schroedinger’s Boss. Alive forever in a closed chamber, or dead and spared his abandonment. There was no choice: it was both or neither. Running had been fair -- more than that, running had been the fairest treatment McCree could hope for.

Based on precedent, which had become Hanzo’s least favourite basis for conclusions. Even so, his stomach twisted, an ailment best fixed by escaping the Doctor’s presence as soon as possible. How to remove her? Short of contracting an impossible condition and scaring her away with the prospect of failing her medical duties.

Ask a request no hospital would deny. “... I would like to see my brother.”

Her gaze peeled from the poster, exhausted, and she gave a nod. “I will send him in. Good day to you, Herr Shimada.” She strode from the room without another beat.

Good riddance.

OOO

「 I’m glad to see you awake, 」 Genji said, entering the room and sweeping the door shut behind him. Not a scratch on his armour, not a dent in his helmet. Someone had made it out of Hanamura intact, and that was worth celebrating in itself.

「 What restrictions have they placed on you? 」 With any concerns about Genji’s health settled, better to skip to business.

「 Morrison’s tagged me. I can’t leave without approval for the next week. 」 Sitting in a chair at Hanzo’s side, he flipped his visor open. 「 Lena’s facing the same. 」

Touching the plastic strapped across his elbow, Hanzo bit his sigh short. Disobeying Overwatch policy, stealing Overwatch property, and bickering with Commander Morrison and Doctor Ziegler -- of course they had been placed under house arrest. Not that the restriction mattered, without a plan of action. Assuming the trio had failed to seize any information on Talon’s whereabouts, which was starting to feel likely.

「 Cousin Eriko gave me an address for Talon’s primary headquarters, 」 Genji continued. With a lifetime of practice reading Hanzo’s expressions, of course he had surmised the direction the conversation was heading before the wheel had been turned. 「 Her claim was Guadalajara. Which was countered by our captive, who suggested Brisbane. 」

They’d wrangled Talon’s prize sniper home. 「 Widowmaker would have more reliable information. 」

「 I’m not sure Widowmaker is a reliable person. Sending us into an irradiated desert on a wild wolf chase -- I think she’d get a laugh out of it. 」

「 Assuming we escaped Gibraltar. 」 Clutching the plastic tighter, Hanzo focused on his right wrist, willing whatever muscle was left inside the casing to move. No luck, no, of course not. He knew from his legs that the initial installation involved enough local anaesthetic to disable a limb for a day straight. Archery: impossible. Climbing: would rely on the strength in his left side. Say he left, what could he do to help? Small wonder he’d avoided a tracking device.

「 About Gibraltar, 」 Genji said, straightening his posture and looking to sea. 「 You might not be stuck here. 」

Leave the arm alone. Shifting the cover would slow the recovery, aggravate the wounds that were being coached into place underneath. 「 Much as I’d like to charter a plane across the Atlantic, what would I do on landing? 」

With a whir of driven servos and a scrape of solid plating, Genji returned his attention to his brother. Raising a hand and turning it this way, that way, furling and unfurling fingers, spinning the tips of shuriken beneath his knuckles, creaking his wrist in an unoiled socket, he smiled. 「 McCree’s left arm was non-functional at best. I’ve lost the use of both. You struggled to your feet within two days of your original operation. You could do anything you want. 」

Lower lip hanging and teeth gritted as he considered the proposal, Hanzo at last answered: 「 I want that idiot home. 」

OOO

The third visitor Hanzo received that day was neither expected nor wanted, slipping into the room as the sky turned deep purple. He was dressed in yellow and green and carried a complimentary bouquet of sunflowers, which he tucked into a vase on the bedside table. Taking the seat Genji had taken earlier, he hung his head for a few moments after sitting, either preparing for the conversation or showing respect to a man he’d deeply inconvenienced several days ago.

Scrutinising the chart on the far wall, Hanzo took care to regulate his breathing. The key step in staying calm. “Are you satisfied?”

“Nah,” Lucio said, word released with the force of a popped balloon. “Stand by my choice to tell Morrison, can’t defend his follow-up.”

“Anyone else would have yielded a fairer result.”

“Know that now.” He scratched the back of his head, fingers weaving between his locs. “If I could I’d pick Rein or Ana. Can’t though, and Jesse told me not to sweat the mistakes I make under pressure.”

“Jesse,” the name stung in his mouth, bitter in their shared failure, “never knew what to sweat and what to stay dry for.”

“No rescue planned,” Lucio’s tone became more urgent. “Can’t send people runnin’ across two continents for him. Ain’t any pressure to do anything which is why I know I’m doin’ right this ‘round.”

“Doing right how?” Hanzo asked, cautious not to sound too hopeful. His eyes flashed from the chart to the man beside him.

There was tension through every section of Lucio’s face, taut lines of determination and optimism and terrible, terrible fear. “Got a concert planned, little club you wouldn’t’ve heard of. In Morrison’s good books since Munich so I managed to swing a tagalong. Glitzy rep you’ve got, he called your adventure an ‘anomaly’.”

“You must be joking.” Damn, he veered hopeful anyway.

“Nah, serious as you are, man. Know it’s an iffy scene, but formal offer: wanna see me play Australia?”

XXX

McCree came around with an ache in his lower back, the blood sluggish through his veins, and his arm unscrewed from its socket. What a state. He rolled face-first into his sheets and moaned. Could the world give him a full week with two hands? The fabric was glossy, thread-count high. Beige, with a pattern he couldn’t discern given the proximity of his eyes to the weave. Too nice for his bed, for Overwatch at large. Where was he? Another hotel?

“Welcome to the world of the living,” rumbled the voice of Gabriel Reyes, neither affectionate nor vindictive.

It could’ve been any number of his dreams. Boss was standing there, no hood, no claws; he leant against an inset wardrobe, the doors clicking gently with each shift in his stance. No skull mask, but another was in its place, a sort of spandex balaclava like a superhero might wear. Problem was the red eyes set beneath it. The smoke curling from his shoulders and thighs.

Heaving himself up with his remaining arm, McCree sat with his back against the headboard. Proper vantage acquired; he was in a mundane bedroom with white walls and glass sliding doors, leading to a balcony over a wide river. Clouds puffed in white shapes above, and a low-built bungalow city stretched below. This was an upper floor of a hotel or an apartment block, then. The area beneath it hard to pick, but not Japan, definitely not Japan.

“Swish quarters for a captive,” McCree groaned as his tongue at last agreed to move.

“Only the best for you, kid.” Aside from the little twitches jolting the wardrobe doors, Reyes didn’t move.

“This a Talon spot?” He asked, pulling his memories into line. Comfy as the scene was, the circumstances segueing into it had been iffy at best.

“Not quite. This is a place they leased for me.” Because of course, Reaper would never wear a hoodie and jeans on the job; that would be unconscionable, unprofessional -- to Talon, anyway. “Good to get some use out of the spare room. Would’ve preferred to leave you awake, for the record.”

Gripping his neck, McCree winced as the last moment clicked into place on his chronology. “Ambush me, tranq me, jes to get me to visit. Overkill, boss.”

Reyes shrugged. “Could’ve come straight here from Munich if you wanted an easier ride. We offered.”

‘We’. “Where’s Doc Brasher, anyhow? Thought you were pals.”

“At the lab, with the rest of the company. Eager to see you. We’ll walk there whenever you’re ready.” He reached for his cheek and itched through the balaclava, spandex twisting to reveal a crag of skin and a gully of bone. Releasing, he ran his hand over his scalp, as if the fabric were hair he could brush back. “I’ll need some warning to fix my face.”

Assuming a lot. That McCree would go, that McCree would be ready for anything in short order. Though the bed had been soft enough to coax the fight from him, he probably had the will to argue. Probably. Given the circumstances and the person proposing the journey to him. Just needed to tip things from a conversation to a confrontation, toss a contrary word in: “fancy sheets can’t fix what you did.”

He was so proud he’d spoken that he almost missed the reply. “-- stuck in a basement.”

“‘Scuse me?” Next challenge was to lower the volume of his heart so he could hear.

Whatever Reyes had said, he took a moment to reconsider it before speaking again. “Only trying to be better than her.” His form faded at the edges, and dark specks rose into the air around him.

“What happens if I act out?”

“I move you in with Brasher.” The alternative took no thought.

“Better get my shoes an’ get goin’, then.” Heaving his legs over the side of the bed, he couldn’t help but snort in relief as he saw the slacks he’d been wearing in Japan. Whatever Reyes had been up to, he’d left things decent.

“I’ll clean up,” Reyes said, slipping deeper into nerves than McCree had.

With a click of the door, the men were parted again.

XXX

A cough mask around his mouth and liquid latex filling the gouges in his upper face, Reyes passed as either a burn victim or someone a week early for Halloween. His old beanie was pulled over his head, covering the space where his ears may or may not have been, and he had shoved chocolate brown contacts in his eyes. It was unseasonably warm -- maybe this was the southern hemisphere? -- and the attempts at blending in were further subverted by the difference between his clothes and the shorts-and-t-shirt crowds.

Still, no-one would think to call him Reaper, however closely they followed the news. “We can visit the market, if you want. Get you a meal.”

The pair walked slowly across a vast bridge, a cycle-and-footway across the river McCree had spotted. Ferries wobbled below them, and people on city-hire bikes trundled past. The light seemed early afternoon.

“Dunno if I’m hungry,” McCree replied, contemplating the distance ahead of them. On the decline, but still another five minutes to the other side.

“You were out a day, so if you’re not it’s anxiety.” The latex Reyes had mushed into his scars and pitfalls was several shades pale. Each shift of his features risked squishing it out like pus from a spot, or pulling it from its place and leaving gaps. His hood would have blocked the light from the uncanny sight were they not facing straight into the sun.

“You ain’t my dad.” Saying it made McCree feel seventeen again -- this could be the day after he was picked up, strolling to buy reconciliatory cola from a bodega.

“Just your boss,” Reyes said with a touch of smarm.

“Hah.” Called him as much too many times to refute it. “Ain’t got the cash.”

“My shout.” Of course it was.

“You even need food?” McCree’d never been good at holding grudges in a casual situation. Yeah, easier to pretend this was a decade ago and they were peachy-keen, at least until the guns came out. Talk nice, buy local cuisine, catch a flick when work was done.

“I don’t have a digestive system.” Reyes tried to make the statement neutral, but there was a twinge in his voice and a slip of the particles around the sides of his face. “Or a heart, or lungs -- as far as Brasher and Talon’ve figured. Just fake skin with some junk shoved inside to keep its shape.”

“No wonder you hired her.”

Despite emoting through latex and contacts and a mask, Reyes’ face showed clear discomfort. “I don’t expect she’ll find a cure. Paying her for some hope, that’s it.”

What about a cure for McCree, was that outlook as bleak as Reyes’? “Let her mess herself up and maul folk and turn me for ‘hope’.”

“If you hired someone to cure a rare nanotech condition, would you expect them to invent werewolves as part of the process?”

“Point, but you could ‘a stepped in when you heard.”

“I realised what was happening around the same time as Overwatch. I may have had an extra day or two, but that’s a single body off her count.”

“Marianne Flater. Fifty-somethin’. Dance teacher, had a wife and a pomeranian.”

Black smoke rose from Reyes’ shoulders. “Did your research, I see.”

“Face on the front page when Hanzo and I went ‘round town. Couldn’t miss it. Same shawl in the photo as when I found her in the alley. ‘Member when we’d check that stuff together?”

It was a miracle there was any matter left in him, the cloud gathering about his head. “I don’t have the time.”

“Can’t eat, probably can’t sleep. Think you’ve got twenty minutes to see who you’ve killed in a given day.”

XXX

Taking their plates outside and finding a plastic table with a decent outlook, McCree sat in wait for Reyes. Gone to the bathroom to fix his latex, part of his forehead had come loose -- back in five, so he claimed. Would be the talk of the ‘bloke’s’ bathroom, if anyone else was in it. Accents, slang, he’d sussed the country if not the town -- Australia. Agents had told him over the years ‘Aussie’s not all radioactivity, just inland and out west’. Adelaide and Perth were the only cities with contamination, and everything from Melbourne to Cairns was picture-perfect. Never quite believed it, but here he was, on a tiled deck beside a fake beach, children playing in the water like it was any other country.

He stared over the beach, across the river, and up at the CBD -- where Reyes’ apartment had been. Had skyscrapers like the States and Europe, big glossy towers with brand names stretched across the top. ‘Vishkar’, he knew that one, a developer with designs on any country still rebuilding from the crisis. ‘Westpac’, ‘Woolworths’, those were foreign. Place spoke enough English, stuck high enough in the air to be home. Warm as California. Made sense Reyes had picked here to lay low.

Speak of the devil -- shuffling into his seat with his face intact, Reyes gave his food a nod of approval. “Hardly fine dining, but it’s culture.” A cube of searing pink icing with shredded coconut tossed across the surface. Raising it to his mouth, prying his mask off, and biting a chunk free, he chewed like a poorly-animated cartoon.

“Thought you lost your guts?” McCree asked, considering the palm-sized meat pie on his plate. He prodded it with a knife, then noticed a nearby local eating it sans-cutlery, and shoved the edge in his mouth.

“The nanomachines mash through it for me,” he said. “The only necessary part of my diet is ‘life’, of a sort.”

“In an Eat, Pray, Love way?”

“In a Dracula way.” Reyes tried to derail the conversation by cramming the remainder of the lamington between his jaws, the lower unhinging as though it had never been pinned into place. “Or Night of the Living Dead . Blood, brains, anything warm and human. Powers them.”

“Creepy. Realise that if you try ta grab any snacks while I’m around, I’ll have ta stop you?”

“It’s fine. I dined yesterday. I’ll function a while.” The lamington was gone. Reyes’ eyes rested on an ibis as it stole fries from a young couple. “Your boyfriend’s arm was delicious.”

McCree spat the filling of his pie back onto his plate. “What?” Which to address first? Sakes alive, Reyes. “You ate Hanzo’s arm?” Was probably the better place to start.

“We were sparring and I caught it. What happened next was -- instinct, I suppose.”

“Can’t just eat people’s arms on instinct! Tell me you’re jokin’, please, God.”

“I sucked the energy from his veins. Unless there were complications, it should still be attached.” Impossible to say under the cough mask but he sounded like he was smirking. “Is he?”

“Is he what? If I find him an’ he’s had it lopped, won’t be feignin’ civility any longer.”

“Your date. Overprotective, fought me for you. Kicked you in the back by accident, so if anything’s sore…”

Explained the bruise on his spine. Jeez, explanations. What to share? “Not datin’, but --” given the last couple of nights, their chat on the floor in Germany, their rooftop run in Japan, “-- if he asked, I’d give it a shot.”

“Playboy McCree’s grown up, huh?”

Deflecting the question with a shrug and tapping his feet on the tiles, McCree sighed. “Had our first conversation ‘bout a week ago, half since’ve been werewolf-related. Might jes be forced proximity.”

“In Munich, you never replied to my question -- how are your ‘werewolf-related’ activities going?” Dropping romance and moving to darker matters without a beat; Reyes hadn’t changed, not really. Though the prying was less than appreciated.

“Used to the changes -- used to them as I can be. Losin’ my mind’s the scary part.”

And now, Reyes seemed to be smiling. “You’ll be happy to hear that’s almost fixed.”

“What, Brasher patchin’ the problems piecemeal?”

“It was an error. Harmful changes to her blood, like rabies in a real dog -- paired with some of the intended wolf features, the pain made her lash out.”

“Changes like --”

“Nanotech clogging the stream, clumping into lumps of metal.” That was what he’d seen in the samples -- it wasn’t meant to happen, it was almost sorted.

“When that’s fixed, it’ll jes be physical?”

“Yeah.” Reyes tugged his hood lower. “Fortunate for you. Shall we?”

“See her?” McCree found himself standing, dusting pastry crumbs off his shirt. “Have to sometime.”

XXX

Familiar shelves of medical models and circuitry littered a corner of the Talon lab, a slight, hunched figure sat within the mess like a bird in a hi-tech nest. Notes were strewn this way and that. Christmas coming soon, Reyes owed the woman a filing cabinet for sure.

Neither of the men had the quietest footsteps -- dress shoes with tap-solid heels versus steel-capped workboots -- so Kasimira heard them well before they reached her domain. Flapping her arms and rolling onto her feet, she removed a set of hairline fractured-reading glasses. “The American! I was concerned he had evaded you.”

“No such luck,” McCree said with a tip of his hat. Best keep outside her dividers, who knew what he’d trigger or trip if he entered.

“His name is Jesse McCree,” Reyes added, fumbling his way closer and peeling the mask from his face. Each tooth in his lower jaw had a fifty-fifty chance of being exposed under his ragged lip, and the tears through his skin were blackened at their edges. Part of an explanation McCree hadn’t realised he’d wanted -- what caused the scarring to start. Explosion, looking at the hot shrapnel marks, then the tech that’d revived him took those holes and scars as default.

“McCree.” Kasimira chewed through his name, rolling the ‘R’ and extending the ‘E’. “I almost have a solution for the pressing part of our problem.”

“Reyes said.” Taking a chair from an empty workstation, he sat in front of her. “Doesn’t make me any happier you bit me.”

“I would never expect it to.” She moved toward him with clumsy steps, pressing through her waste pile an uneven pace at a time.

“Been good since comin’ to Aus?"

“Locked tight every night.” Free of the mess, she stopped and crossed her arms. “Will you be sharing my cell with me?”

There was the question. “Reyes hasn’t said about that.” Looking to him, his exposed face, he waited.

In this instant, features fully visible with patches of eyebrow and pieces of lip clear, Reyes could not be read. “Still deciding.”

Perhaps the whole excursion had been for a catch-up and an update on Kasimira’s work? Not a great reason to take McCree across the globe, but Reyes had done worse for worse reasons. Comforting thing to consider, however false.

“Wherever he’s staying,” Kasimira said, “I would like to run those tests I proposed. Mister McCree, would you allow me some samples? Cross-referencing our conditions will allow me to work faster.”

Nothing else to do around the lab. “Sure.” He held his remaining arm to her, and she lead him back to the pile.

XXX

Spotted with needle marks like a dalmation, McCree ambled into the hallway in search of a drink. Not the alcoholic kind -- though he’d never turn that down -- anything liquid to clean his throat. He’d bared his teeth and bit enough thermometers to need the wash.

Reyes in a meeting, Brasher hunched at her monitor, and here he was, schedule empty in a three-floor warehouse, boring linoleum and unpainted walls twisting along corridors without end. Was Talon too evil to stick a vending machine in? Did being hired by a terrorist organisation foot the contract with a note that your office couldn’t have a kitchen or a coffee machine? Cripes. Crikey? When in Rome...

The other item on McCree’s wishlist was a phone. Couldn’t remember the numbers for any friends, but Reinhardt’d have a listing somewhere, or Angela or Mei. Contact Overwatch, and -- to be honest, he hadn’t planned past ‘contact Overwatch’. Felt wrong slinking around after Reyes, but stuck in Australia without a gun or a rescue, what option did he have? If he buzzed home things could go awry as a slice of bread and he’d at least have an escape.

Call Hanzo. Tell Hanzo you’re okay. That was the ideal. Hanzo carried a stupid regulation comm with no external dialling. Athena would block Talon numbers as a matter of security. Ugh. Stupid, stealthy Shimada. McCree kicked the metal skirting board to his left and grunted. Wandering thoughts picking dead-end paths.

Approaching a door on his left, he leaned in for a look-see, and had to smother a whoop as he saw a kitchenette, sofa, and monitor playing late-noon soaps. Hold me in your arms / don’t let me go… uninteresting and unfamiliar but it’d pass the time if it had to. Opening the cupboards one by one, he found detergent and plastic cutlery and, bingo, dark grey mugs. He poured a glass of water and took a seat.

Plenty to say about Australia, favourable and less-so, but at least the water was clean from the tap. Unless it wasn’t, and he’d just sculled a glass of radioactive waste, but it tasted all right. Refreshed and calmed he gave his attention to the screen.

Beaches, lot of beaches, people with flowing hair and bright teeth. Maybe a midpoint between Surfspotting and Lena’s ‘I only watch it biannually for the big events’ guilty pleasure, Coro . Could’ve sworn that was short for something, but he’d never heard the full title. Trouble with soaps was for every show that bored him was a show that reminded him of his actual parents, his mother camped by telenovelas from sunrise to sunset, numb to the crisis unfolding around them. Pushing past the point of reasonable escapism into willful ignorance.

He couldn’t rest here. Couldn’t stay near Reyes, if he was going to keep letting the buzz of having his mentor back override every other urge, like -- like a dog waiting too long for its owner to come home. Consarnit.

Stumbling onto his feet as he tried and failed to prop part of the move with his missing arm, he returned to the cupboards. Halfway through when he’d found the glasses, pick up from there, look for a phone or some sort of comm device. Tablet, maybe, heck, carrier pigeon. He’d use whatever worked. Three-quarters through there was nothing but a stack of local takeout brochures. Complete, no more discoveries.

Where would they hide a phone? Break room seemed the best place for the unguarded kind, but no dice, and Reyes’ meeting couldn’t keep on forever. Not to mention the sun was arcing lower and he needed this sussed before nightfall. Phone, phone, phone…

The monitor gave a distinctive ‘beep’, distracting him. Turning from habit, he saw a box flash in the upper right corner -- ‘From: Jenny Redford, GP; Re: Insurance Coverage? -- Yes, your daughter should be [...]’ . Mail. Someone was logged into the break-room monitor. Not on a Talon account, though their personal’d be tracked nonetheless. Wasn’t calling, but if he made the right connection, it’d serve fine.

Dashing to the monitor and hitting the pop-up before it could disappear, the mail account slid into place over the TV broadcast, touch keyboard unfolding in front to handle his reply. ‘Jenny Redford’ could wait, for a better time and a better person -- McCree needed Overwatch. Hitting ‘compose’ and entering the address bar, he stalled as he considered his options. Hanzo, Lena, no public address. Angela, Mei, no obligation to check. Needed someone with a known listing who was likely to look their messages.

An option sprang to mind. Might not be seen personally, but from experience, the inbox was always tended to. Lucio’s manager, he kept an eye on things, he’d met the team. Wouldn’t be as conspicuous as contacting someone direct-ways. Yeah, perfect. Okay. Cracking his fingers with his thumb and hovering over the keyboard, McCree bashed out his SOS:

To: Aurelio Nunes

Subject: IT’S JESSE MCCREE

HI NUNES

KIDNAPPED

IN AUSTRALIA

LOST MY ARM

YOU’RE THE ONLY PUBLIC EMAIL

BIG RIVER HERE, NOT MUCH POLLUTION, ARTIFICIAL BEACH?

TELL LUCIO

-MCCREE

And sent. Naught left to do but feign innocence, stick close to Reyes, and pray Lucio heard -- then, given their rocky terms, acted to help rather than ignoring him.

It was basically a done deal, yeah?

Solid footsteps hit along the hall outside, echoing from the linoleum and hollowing as they continued past the break room. Belts shuffled against each other. He’d recognise the combination anywhere -- exiting from the inbox and flopping onto the sofa, McCree waited for his pursuer to enter.

With a thrust of the door and a lean into the frame, Reyes appeared. “Meeting ran long.” His face was covered with the cough mask. Someone didn’t want to spook the suits.

Tossing his feet onto one arm of the sofa and resting his neck over the other, McCree nodded. “Wasn’t fussed. Found somethin’ ta watch.”

Circling to stand by McCree’s head, Reyes gave the screen his best disapproving stare. “You know there’s a movie channel? And streaming?”

“Wanted to experience the local hotness.”

“Yeah? Have fun talking to Natalie in R&D about Home and Away . Fire for it hasn’t spread to anyone else.”

“Noted.” Remote in hand, McCree swapped to the streaming list. At a glance, not much going, films probably divvied up among different providers. Skimming through the genre tags, still no easy choices. “Uhhh.”

“Give it to me.” Taking over, Reyes made a quick jump to the action list, and slid to a listing for The Most Cursed of Hands. So he hadn’t been lying yesterday. When no protest came from the couch below him, he clicked play.

Opening credits laid atop a scene of shuffling cards. A black man in a white hat, drawing coins and pocket watches across the table with a stick. Each coat at the table emptied of valuables, save his. Slow acoustic chords. The dealer deals, the gamblers gamble their scraps. A man donates his wedding ring, a woman surrenders her smoking pipe. Fade as the title appears.

Cut to the woman folding. The piles are added together -- the man has continued his winning streak. Someone asks, ‘ Hunter, there any parlours you ain’t robbed empty?’ . He replies, ‘ gonna head south an’ find out’. The shadows swell from the edges of the room into a scene transition, setting us into a red-hot bordello with a white man in a black hat. He twists his bolero tie and considers the stakes, then makes out the door, down the stairs…

“Did you watch this when it was released?” Reyes asked, pulling a chair from the kitchen.

“No,” McCree said flatly.

“You’re not tired of Westerns, are you? Still wear chaps everywhere.”

“Looked more like your type, so I left it.”

“‘My type’?” Reyes chuckled with surprising warmth. “Do you save many movies for me?”

“Horror, yeah. That war film the Germans made ‘bout the Crusaders where you appeared for two minutes.”

“That’s charitable, calling him me. Couldn’t get the colour and the shape in a German-speaker so he ended up being a rake.”

“German Reyes is a skeleton, you’re a zombie.”

“Right.” Bitter and fond at the same time. “Lucky you’re a werewolf or I’d sock you.”

“Thought people were supposed to mellow with age.”

“Same to you, vaquero .” Playing off a smile, Reyes turned his face toward the ground. It was doubtful that he needed to breathe, or shuffle for comfort, or scratch at his skin, but he went through all available fidgeting motions before turning to McCree again. “Thought we’d go home in a couple hours. Spare bedroom’s got a heavy door, and we’re on an upper floor. Won’t trouble anyone there.”

McCree steadied his eyes on the movie, letting the halls of the bordello capture every flicker of his attention, the man in the black hat on-screen taking absolute precedence over the man in the black hood beside him. “Figured you’d be leavin’ me with Doc Brasher.”

“Figured wrong.” If McCree was going to focus on the screen, so was Reyes. “I could, but I’d rather not.”

“Worried ‘bout my health?” He touched the sleeve where the bite and the bandages were hidden. Still stung.

“I’m always --” Reyes was halted by a curt ding from the monitor, and a flash of cool operating blue in the right corner.

McCree froze.

From: Aurelio Nunes; Re: IT’S JESSE MCCREE -- Passed your message to Lucio [...]

A steel-capped boot pressed to the lino just heavy enough to echo, followed by its pair. Reyes sloughed to his feet, matter rolling from sitting to standing like the fade between frames in an animatic. Drifting into his next pose a foot closer he furrowed the remains of his eyebrows as low as he could. The contacts, so carefully placed onto his irises, sank through their setting as it lost solidity, leaving intense red behind. He came to kneel near McCree, staring into his face. “I was going to help you.”

“Shot me in the shoulder, tranquilised me, rotted the flesh from Hanzo’s arm -- I’m s’posed to trust that?”

“Different circumstances,” Reyes burst. “We’re safe here.”

Initial surprise seeping from his limbs, unfurling them onto the floor, McCree flattened his soles on the ground. Squaring himself and staring Reyes in the eyes at point-blank range, he set his face stern. Here they were -- had their share of wishful thinking, time for real talk. “Different circumstances to when I’d let you by my bedside, too. Any idea how many coworkers Winston told us were ‘never comin’ back’ when our reunion started? Never said how many were your work, but anythin’ above zero’s too high. I want Blackwatch -- I want us -- to be fine, but unless there’s a good explanation behind this, we can’t be. It’s an insult to ‘em if I keep pretendin’ it is.”

“How is hanging around big bad brother Shimada any different?” This was not an accusation. This was a bristled question, spiked and sincere.

“Genji told me to give him a chance,” McCree said. “People you an’ Talon went after can’t do the same.”

Reyes’ matter swelled and depressed, taking unnecessary breaths with every nanite inside him. Like a star going supernova -- but he didn’t, wouldn’t explode. Tamping down his anger and whatever mix of anxiety and regret he’d fertilised it with, he collected himself into human form again.

“Guess,” he wasn’t sure which words to pick in response to that display, “you’re gonna hafta rethink that apartment plan.”

Peering from under dipped brows with those burning eyes, Reyes gave a slow nod. “To say the least.”