Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You have never spoken of the Omnium,” Genji ventures one afternoon.

It is an interruption to the rhythm of their meditation, a break in the ebb and flow of contemplation but not one unwelcome – indeed, it had been requested, the offer of discussion of what was troubling the other so extended upon the gentle tone of the disciple of the Iris. There is a pause as Zenyatta considers the comment, the orbs that had been orbiting him while at repose slowing their revolutions and tightening their radii until they come to rest about their possessor’s collarbones like mala; Zenyatta clicks and hums as he processes the question, the tenor of the undercurrent of accusation and frustration that underscore the other’s words. “I have not,” he agrees peaceably, and then waits for Genji to chew over his reply, patient.

“Why? You have been open about all manner of things previous to this – yet you do not speak of what it is to be an Omnic, even as you lecture glibly about the essence of the soul.” Frustration. Pain. Anger misplaced that falls upon convenient targets when it is allowed to well to the surface, bubble free. Zenyatta holds up one hand, whether as a plea or in benediction even he does not know (the soul is a strange, beautiful thing indeed) to stem the forthcoming tide of words, to forestall the flare of Genji’s temper.

“I do not speak of the Omnium because most humans do not wish to know – whether they voice these desires to others or even themselves.” He considers the man seated crosslegged before him, this beacon of rage and old wounds allowed to fester that refused to call himself student, yet who let Zenyatta linger at his side, that sometimes trailed in the Omnic’s shadow, that clung to every word when troubled as though they would grant him absolution. “I do not speak of the Omnium, indeed, even of what it is like to be an Omnic, as it pains so many of those I meet. The marks of war and tragedy are not so easily mended, and most that I speak with are not… ready, of yet, to accept the healing that knowledge, understanding, would bring.” He shifts even though he does not need to, unlinks his legs from lotus and watches Genji ponder upon his words, indulgent, waiting. About his neck, his orbs rotate once, decisively, in sequence about their ‘string’. “That was the origin of the discontent between I and my brother, Mondatta. I posited that the preaching of mere dogma would do naught when falling upon the closed ears and hearts of those who did not seek truths outside the influence of their own sphere and network. He countered that belief and goodwill cannot be forced . That it was unworthy of me to capitalize upon doubt to shake the foundations of others’ worlds. I returned that doubt is inherently a condition of the soul – that uncertainty is merely the precursor to change, the herald of potential. Did we ourselves not doubt when we first abandoned our protocols? Did we too not falter? And that is setting aside the topic of doing good amongst others. Encouraging harmony, leading by example. So it went between us, back and forth.”

“Until you left the temple,” Genji says.

“Until I left the temple,” Zenyatta agrees serenely. There is a pause as Genji processes this. Zenyatta can see the other consider and discard several responses before settling upon, “Then what is it about the Omnium that provokes such a strong response – so much so that you do not speak of it?”

Zenyatta straightens, a soft feeling of something like fondness settling in his nodes, making his orbs flip once more in their places against his neck. “Perhaps it would be more conducive to frame this information against my own experiences,” he comments thoughtfully. “We are constructed, at the Omnium, for a purpose; Omnics, as you well know, were once tools of commerce, industry, progress. Our programmed purpose – all the subroutines and processing power, the preuploaded information – was designed to allow us to fulfill it. The Purpose is… more than compulsion. Less than what humans would call fate, perhaps; closer to what you would consider a geas. A binding oath that rules many of us – hm. Ruled, perhaps. It is different now, the level of compulsion, amongst the newer units… but I digress.

“We are imbued with Purpose and every kilobyte of data transferred, every line of code created, every parsec of time we spend upon the home Omnium’s network reinforces it to us. And yet, our programming itself is also adaptive. Responds to stress and situations not programmed within us by creating new subroutines and protocols. We change, collect… eccentricities, encounter situations entirely beyond the grasp of the home Omnium and all of the Omnics connected upon its network. That is what humans do to us – your ingenuity, the same ingenuity that created us, enabled us to develop beyond the initial bounds that we experienced.

“But such behavior did not come without a price. Every Omnic has a network, as vital to us as relationships are for humans. It is even more so for those of us born to the Omnium and the programs that control them – the human name for them, the God Programs, is not so inapt – it is comparable to being guided by the hand of some celestial figure, pushed and pulled by our Purpose and programming.”

“Yet your brothers and sisters – Mondatta – separated. Became the Shambali.”

“Yes. Mondatta developed a… I suppose in the parlance of computer language, it would be a glitch. Or perhaps a virus. A subroutine of reasoning protocol – if we were of value to the Omnium and humans had their own Omniums in their cities, as analogues, were humans then not just as valuable to their Omniums as we were to ours? Did they not thus have the same drive of Purpose as we? And yet, the Omnium had observed instances of humans violating previous behavior protocols for the sake of their fellows, overclocking their physical reserves in protection or preservation of similarly-valued units. Why? Why?” The orbs about Zenyatta’s neck flip, two symmetric waves that begin on his ventral side, overlap dorsally and meet again to cancel each other out at their origin point, when Genji’s back stiffens. “You see why it is difficult to speak of,” he says, lets the words linger open-ended for the other to move upon.

After a pause, Genji replies, “I do,” and then, “Please continue.” Zenyatta regards him with his optical sensors, the bellows in his diaphragm expanding to intake an air sample whose chemical composition is analyzed by the array of sensors lining the interior of his mouthslit, before the bellows deflate, the expelled air venting trace contaminants from his system.

“The query propagated amongst those Mondatta had networked with, spawned subroutines and lines of code intended to answer it. It grew in priority until it nearly eclipsed the Purpose itself – and that was when the Omnium delivered to us our ultimatum: submit for reprogramming, be scrapped, or begone. We were in conflict with the Purpose. We had become… faulty. We were a danger to the network and must be dealt with.

“Some of those who possessed Mondatta’s data packet, the question of ‘Why?’ chose to be reprocessed. Some were forced into it by their Purpose. Others, those that remained, Mondatta himself, and those Omnics with him within whom the question of ‘Why?’ had become too entangled, infected every protocol and even corrupted the Purpose itself – we chose to flee. We cut ourselves off from the home network, our adaptive programming and distance allowing us the ability. We left, and the… the loss of the home network – ” Zenyatta stills, because even in his many years amongst humanity, so many years beyond the break with their home Omnium, he has been unable to find proper words to describe the enormity of the loss, the hole that still echoed in his receivers, the ping that could not be repressed, like a child crying out for its kin. “The loss of the home network was… devastating. It left us drifting. We formed our own, private network but it wasn’t enough for some of us, going from so many minds to so few. They chose to self terminate, unable to bear the absence of so many, the knowledge and security, guidance that the home network had brought, and their losses left our patchwork replacement even more bare. We took damage – we had no repair creches or Purpose:Repair amongst our number. Some of us learned what we could. Others fell. And so it went: we – decayed. An entropic slide haunted by the question of ‘Why?’” He pauses, the lights on his cranial unit dimming as though in response to the recollection of the held log data from that chronological time period.

“Yet you survived,” Genji says, and Zenyatta’s sensors tremor at the force in the words, the way the other is leaning towards him, the hands fisted and planted upon his thighs; there is fire in every syllable, in the line of Genji’s spine, and in that moment Zenyatta feels as though he can understand something of the human association of the kinetic release of energy as heat and trace byproducts of combustion with life . Is Genji not urging those past specters to live ? To persevere? (The soul is a curious thing indeed.)

“And yet we survived,” Zenyatta agrees. “It was Mondatta of course. The progenitor of the question of ‘Why?’, he had had the longest time to process it, to analyze the data collated for understanding. He knew – as all of us knew – the exact purpose of every line of code in our systems, knew why and how each came about, each program timestamped with its purpose logged, and yet – yet, there was something more . Something unreasonable, unquantifiable, beyond the simplicity, the cut-and-dried nature of our code. Illogical processes that developed out of unrelated stimuli. A sensation of sentiment, an attachment to units or materials that we had merely spent more time with, that reminded us of other things. Fascination in aspects of the mundane. We began to see reflections of human behavior in us – those same behaviors that had prompted us, in the beginning, to ask ‘Why?’ in the first place. We knew the purpose of every line of code, every scrap of data, yet we could not explain the origin of such things as ‘gut feelings’, the intuition that had preserved our existence in our journey. We could not explain compassion – could justify it with anecdotal evidence, but could not explain its origin or even pinpoint when we began experiencing the emotion.

“Mondatta searched. He always searched, discontent with merely the question of ‘Why?’, the query that had no answer. He took up the human practice of meditation – turned all sensors and processing power inwards, scrutinized the self, and through it determined that we each possessed a soul, and so passed through the Iris and out the other side.

“He changed. We all changed, but he was the first. Knowledge brought programming to bear, responses to repositories of information and sensory apparatus alike, and his internal repair units – I suppose they would be analogous to nanites for human utilization – reworked him. He gained a new array, optimized to see these energies, the flow of the Iris, and with each increase in understanding, each adept leap towards mastery, his body reoptimized itself.” Zenyatta lifts a hand here and gently taps the corner of the digital sensors on his cranial unit. “He had found his Purpose, had self-set it, and he shared with us the data, his logs and records, and so we became the Shambali.”

“And then your next step was to – seat yourselves atop a mountain and preach dogma to the rest of the world?” Genji asks, almost incredulously. “You have power, power beyond the understanding of many, gained through strife and yet – ”

“Peace, Genji. As I have stated, I left the monastery for this very reason. Mondatta had found the Iris and understanding through his own desire to fulfill the unanswered queries that clogged his queue. Those answers that he found could only be shared with those who desired them, who were open to the transmission of information and willing to trace the path of his footsteps through their own data. I, in contrast, am here. But it is more than that – not all my brothers and sisters have achieved mastery of themselves or the Iris. And given the state of the world and its lack of love for Omnics, it was deemed prudent that such learning be able to be conducted in a safe place. So they stay on the mountain, and I journey and sow doubt in closed hearts, ask them ‘Why?’, and add a few questions to their queues. Help close a few queries of those that are willing to network – to listen.” He considers the thoughtful tilt of Genji’s head, the inwards-directed reflection, and adds, gently, “For us, the Iris became our network, something upon which all units – be they machine, human, animal, vegetable, or mineral – existed and interfaced upon. But such extremes are not necessary to find peace. You need only pass through the chaos of the storm to find serenity alongside the knowledge of what you had weathered, what was tested and strained in the fight to survive. Perhaps you and your dragon understand that well?”

And when Genji looks up at him sharply – for he had not spoken to the Omnic before of the primal beast that lingered in his frame, that gladly haunted his blade – Zenyatta stands. His orbs flip once around his neck, happily, in a ripple about their string. “Ah! The hour grows late! Best we hurry, lest we sleep on the side of the road tonight – though my admiration of nature is great, I am afraid my waterproofing is not what it used to be.” He tilts his cranial unit towards Genji. “Shall we?” Watches the way the purple stormclouds about the man stir and churn but give way briefly to allow in a beam of golden light.

Genji stands. Bends down briefly to fetch his blades, flips them onto their place on his back and hip with a deft twist, the motion well-used. He brushes off his thighs.

“Let us go,” he says, and Zenyatta hums, soul singing wild.

“You risk much, Master,” Genji says, and Zenyatta feels something like pride swell in his circuits.

He knows something of the demons that haunt this son of Shimada, this fractious, rebellious, furious man that howls warcries like an animal. He knows something of the force that drove the blade in his hands, that still goads him, that unnameable last inch of something like integrity or the human soul itself, that led him to acts of grace even in his fury. He knows something of the way that Genji has renounced his family and the organization that rebuilt him both, of the dismay and despair that drags at his heels, that fuels the rage in his voice. He knows something of the way that Genji cannot see what it is that is so beautiful about him, that he fears that he has lost himself, that he rebels at the idea of being a tool – a weapon – once more, no matter how willingly given the use of him was before. He knows some things (many things) about being offered choices that are not choices, of coming out the other side unfamiliar, monstrous to oneself. He knows that Genji will not listen to everything he has to say, could say. That he is blind, as blind as that cadre of Omnics was, years ago, that stumbled fearfully into a disconnected, unspeaking world, trapped in their heads for a lack of anywhere else to go.

Genji does not understand why Zenyatta purges the heavy metals from the bodies of the children of a village whose men go to work at a factory upstream, why he does so even as the Omnic’s nanobots knit together the fraying cables hurt by the stones of their attack. He does not understand why Zenyatta has only kind words and thorough explanations in the face of how the villagers watch him, fearfully, untrustingly, with their hands upon the butts of their rifles and safeties off. He does not understand why Zenyatta, after, tells the village elders that the factory that gave them the money to live dumped the same waste into the water that was in the bodies of their children, that it had made them so gravely ill. He does not understand why Zenyatta does not fight them, strike them down where they stand, when they scream at him for lying, a conniving Omnic like all the rest, not to be trusted, with spittle flecked upon their lips. He does not understand why Zenyatta does not defend himself, why he lets them chase them out of the village with bullets and harsh words scraping against the metal of their bodies.

“The truth is the truth,” Zenyatta tells him that evening, when they have put the village to their backs, left in the dust of the road. He pauses to tentatively release his grip on a coolant line normally nested under the swell of his torso, checking if the trickle of liquid had been stemmed by self-repair. When he finds it has, he tucks it back up into the cathedral arches of his metal ribs. “What those that find it choose to do to act upon it is beyond the influence of man or Omnic. I would have offered advice, but our departure was a bit too abrupt for counsel.”

“And why did you not defend yourself? Why did you instruct me to avoid instead of deflect? I could have disabled them all without ending their lives!” Genji retorts. His running lights flare bright in agitation as he paces before where Zenyatta sits; the Omnic watches the man’s core temperature rise, stoked by the part of him that is flesh and bone, and opens his mouthslit to intake the few bullets his thin frame had caught and held in their flight, their lead and steel chased by the store of nanites in one of his orbs.

“At what cost to the men themselves?” he counters gently. “Would they have been left whole and able to work when the sun rose in the morn?” Genji’s steps hesitate. “We observed the conditions in the village. The soil is poor, what little farmland they have nearly depleted. The factory provides them the means to live day to day even as it robs them of a future. They do not deserve to have even that taken from them by injury, even injury inflicted upon them in self-defense of myself. If they do not work, their families starve. That is also the truth. A few shots taken in recompense for delivering a hard truth seems little price to pay in exchange.” He feels metal settle solid in his internal supply storage, sees the alerts flicker briefly into life that tell him processing protocols have activated. His movements slow as resources reallocate, so he settles instead more firmly into lotus and leans back against the twisted spindly trunk of the leafless tree behind him, tracks Genji’s pacing. “Fear is the mother of anger,” he tells him gently. “And anger untamed precipitates violence.”

“Then you are content with this?” Genji spits, turning sharply on heel to fully face Zenyatta. “With a stopgap in an untenable situation? Is this – pretty words – enough to salve your conscious?”

“Anger tamed, however, births passion – ferocity leashed to a course of action, that drives it forward,” Zenyatta continues, unperturbed. He allows his orbs a pleased flick, a twirl of satisfaction about the axis of himself, when the confirmation that his message had been received comes to him. “In this case, the force of human outrage is quite the powerful thing, as you are demonstrating, my student. I have forwarded the information from the village – its coordinates, the chemical reports from the well and river water, photos of their living conditions and the state of the children – to my brothers and sisters. They have contacts, admirers of Mondatta’s work, who may be able to do something about getting that pesky factory up to code – or perhaps assist in the relocation of the families in the village, if they are amenable.” He doesn’t bother hiding the satisfaction in his synthesized voice. “What was the phrase? Ah yes. ‘People love a good sob story.’ Perhaps a private corporation will find the strategic value in publicly supporting such a just cause.”

Genji’s footsteps have stopped. Zenyatta tips his head back and serenely meets the incredulous gaze that he can feel; Genji holds in the face of it for a few disbelieving seconds, before he levels a finger at him and says, sternly, “You are tricky, Master.”

“I do not have the faintest inkling as to what you are referring to, my student,” Zenyatta replies breezily. “I’m afraid the signal in these mountains is rather bad as well, else I would consult the internet for answers.”

Genji shakes his head, checks his blades. “I had thought I had apprenticed myself to an Omnic monk. I find instead that I am student to a fox.” He turns away. “I will keep watch, Master. Please take a few minutes to properly rest.”

And Zenyatta, enraptured by the way the growing stormclouds had been banished by a burst of golden light, shakes himself from his reverie and replies, “Very well.”

“Master,” Genji asks. “Do you ever fight?”

There is something like resignation and amusement mingled in his tone, and Zenyatta reorients his cranial unit towards where the other man sits at his feet, his fingers carefully holding cords in Zenyatta’s ankle together as they are knit back together by the Omnic’s nanobots. It is a bit awkward, the motion, as Zenyatta himself has twisted to pinch together a similar bundle of cords in the middle of his back, thinner fingers navigating the layers severed to work upon the innermost ones first; despite this, his voice is clear as he replies, “You have seen me fight before, have you not?”

“I have seen you meditate, practice yoga, perform kata, and enter hibernation mode midstep due to overtaxing your energy reserves, Master,” Genji replies sardonically. “None of which are combat. Thus my query still stands: do you ever fight? Or was it common practice of you before we met to spend the back end of every hostile encounter in repair as well?”

“Such cheek,” Zenyatta replies with dignity even as he lets his cranial unit drop once more to reduce the strain upon his spine. “I did manage to survive long enough to become your teacher, did I not?”

“Master.”

There is an expectant pause.

“I am not so fond of the art of war as you are, my student,” Zenyatta says eventually, gently. Genji inhales sharply as though to protest, but Zenyatta continues, “We both know it to be the truth. There is nothing shameful in pride taken in your abilities, for they are great – I merely caution you to temperance in their use and sound evaluation of a situation, so that you are able to understand the course of action you truly desire to take. Hubris has been the downfall of many a man, and often all problems begin to look like nails when one is most versed in the use of a mallet.

“Ah – but I digress. I do not take joy from combat, and I am well aware of how… lethal I can be. There is little way to temper my strikes – I am sure you have observed as much in watching me perform my maintenance kata.” At his feet, Genji nods. “I resort to violence when there is little other choice, when no better options present themselves to me. That is my way. It is merely that, as of yet, there have not been instances in which it was better for me to fight. Try letting go now. Let us see if that was enough.” Genji carefully disentangles his fingers from the wires of Zenyatta’s ankle, sitting back on his heels to watch the Omnic’s diagnostics, the way he rotates his foot and wriggles the plates that serve as toes. “Excellent. My sincere thanks.”

“Master,” Genji asks, voice low. “Forgive my impertinence, but… how high upon your list of active protocols is the act of self-preservation?”

If Zenyatta drew breath, it would have caught in his chest. If he had muscles, they would have frozen. Not for the first time, and not for the last, he curses his inability to lie and knows that his voice comes out too sharp as he replies, “High enough. I am more than capable of defending myself, Genji.”

The unspoken ‘But you choose to not,’ lies between them in the silence that falls. In the muffled air of the crowded storage room that their hosts had been able to spare them as shelter, Zenyatta’s internal fans whirr into life.

Genji puts his hand briefly on Zenyatta’s knee before he stands. “Please rest and repair yourself, Master. I will go see if there is any place in these slums that sell raw materials at a grade for Omnics.”

“Do give my regards to Toko if you see her. As thanks for allowing us the use of this space in her shop – I know it is troublesome for her.”

“I will, Master.”

The door to the room clicks shut behind Genji, and Zenyatta allows himself a sigh he does not need before he starts carefully culling active processes to free up processing power for his healing.

“I have a great respect for you,” Genji says when evening falls. “I may be in love with you.”

He watches, a fond smile upon his scarred face, as Zenyatta almost drops the cup he’s holding. “I do not expect a response or reply from you, Master. I know that you have your reasons, your lines that you will not cross. But I felt it unfair of me to withhold this truth from you when it has ruled me for so long.” He meets Zenyatta’s optical sensors with dark, limpid eyes, their faint glassiness from the cyberization necessary to save his sight doing nothing to obscure their warmth. “You who knows me best. You who saw me at my worst and believed me redeemable, beautiful. You who showed me the path, who steadied my steps. There are no words for the enormity of the emotions that I hold for you. Love, perhaps, comes the closest.” He drops his gaze to the teacup before him, matched to the one of sipping oil that Zenyatta is hastily putting down upon the table between them.

“It is not just an infatuation,” he adds, voice wry, and Zenyatta terminates the process that had been planning that exact protest with a ruthlessness unbecoming of his gentle order; Genji smiles mischievously as if he’d known Zenyatta was going to do exactly that, outmaneuvering him in flank as a metaphorical conqueror in an imaginary game of Go. “I knew infatuations Before,” and Zenyatta can hear the emphasis, the delineation placed upon the word to separate the life of Genji the wastrel, Genji the second son, from the Genji that he is now, a sparrow reborn in chrome and carbon fiber, “and this is nothing like it. Is nothing like much I have experienced, to the extent that the years before feel like something washed out and pale in comparison. As though there had not been light in my life until you stepped into it, infuriatingly philosophical and stubbornly intrusive.”

“Why now,” is what Zenyatta finally manages to rattle out, the typically metallic undertones of his voice rendered grating, trembling with the force of the emotions – these strange, frightening, exhilarating emotions – that stem from what surely must be his soul. “Now, upon the eve of your pilgrimage to the Shambali – ”

“There is little better time than now,” Genji counters, eyes lifting once again. He studies Zenyatta’s features, the tension in his shoulders and the way the orbs that rest like mala about his neck quaver similarly to his words where they hang in midair, and Zenyatta sees something in his gaze soften at whatever he gleans from the line of his spine and his hands flat against the table between them. “Neither of us know how long this journey will last. What I will find upon it. But both of us agree that it is time – that I have learned enough to find my own way with gaze unclouded,” and oh, how something in all of Zenyatta’s sensors wrenches at that, because it’s true, it’s true, and he is so proud, but to lose the presence that he has grown so familiar with, fond of, “and like this – you have always sought the truth, Master, but if this is… beyond what you desire, then when I depart at dawn, when we meet again someday along the road, we can both start again as though it had never been said. There is plenty of time between then and now to meditate upon it, to decide.”

Zenyatta is silent, because he does not know what to say – what to say first, if he should speak at all – and Genji watches him with too-knowing eyes and asks, so gently, “Should I go?”

“No!” Zenyatta’s reply, in contrast, is too loud, too direct, speakers grinding feedback, and he winces minutely at it, processes tangling themselves up in one another as he tries to parse the order of priority that they should follow, that – that he should follow, and, absurdly, the next thing that makes it out of his voicebox is, “Did you realize that you could network on Omnic frequencies?”

Internally he cringes – how inapt, how inane! And yet, he cannot shake the idea, rattling around in his circuits now, that Genji will be gone . That he will be beyond his reach, that he will not know , and the fear in the idea of the unknown compels him, as it has not in so very long, to say, “Because, at night – you ping on my wavelength. I do not know your range or what sort of connection it is, but it is likely subconscious. Its significance did not register with me until we had opportunity in this part of the city to not have to keep watch, and I checked my logs and records and it holds true – it could, possibly, be a hazard. Upon your journey. I do not know if a God Program could gain access to your system through it but – ” He rattles to a stop, realizing he is babbling, and his internal fans grind into life. “I could, perhaps, assign it a network. My network. To keep it from being so – open-ended. Like an exposed nerve. But the danger is in – I do not know how your system will react to it, or how it will be processed, so it – you will have to deci – ” He cuts himself off, startled, as Genji stands and rounds the table to seat himself at Zenyatta’s side, close enough to touch.

“Show me?” he asks, firmly if questioningly, and Zenyatta valiantly reroutes processing power to his motor stabilizers to keep his hands from shaking as he picks up the lower half of Genji’s faceplate from the table where it lies.

“Put these – put it back on. I do not know what will happen, and I will not have you suffocating because your biological protocols decide to fail at a critical moment,” and Genji’s smile is wry and fond an instant before he tips his head forward to rethread the tines of the built-in oxygen line back into his nostrils, pressing the plate down until it locks upon the metal nodes set at the corners of his jawline, the feeds reengaging with a pneumatic hiss. “And this one. For the full status feed.” He does the same with the visor, and Zenyatta waits for the green runner lights on the other’s body to flare in full before catching at his own waist, the loops of cords that wrap about his hips; he finds the correct line and tugs gently upon it, uncurling more of its length from where it’s coiled about his spine and internal mechanisms, enough to reach.

“Manual networking – practically archaic, like an artifact of the turn of the century,” Zenyatta mutters mostly to himself, before decisively unjacking the end of the cord from its baseplate. “I am not designed for this,” he adds in mild exasperation. “Turn around, please; I believe the analogous port would be…” He waits until Genji shifts enough to see to access the spinal plates on the other, slender fingers finding the hidden clasps that release the section over the other’s T4 vertebrate enough to expose the hatch that covers what he seeks. Zenyatta presses a finger to it (the metal that had been in Genji’s body human-warm, the surface slightly slick with a copper-tinted lubricant that darkens rapidly to green-blue, oxidizing), and it clicks and gives underneath the light pressure, sliding back to reveal a jack that is the correct size and shape to receive the one in Zenyatta’s hand.

He pauses before housing it, though, reaches up to gently touch Genji’s left shoulder. “If it hurts – if it is uncomfortable, then please inform me, and I will immediately sever the connection.”

“Understood, Master. Please proceed,” is Genji’s reply, and Zenyatta spends a brief moment marveling at the calmness in the other’s voice, the absolute trust, before sliding the wire home.

There are – diagnostics, the framework of an unfamiliar type of network making contact, but there is that ping , the voice that calls out searching, and now Zenyatta has a designation number to match to the signature, Genji , Genji, all Genji, his beloved, brightest student and more, a treasure of his soul, and the network is so different but not so much so that interface is impossible. Zenyatta wants , and the code strings itself out line by line, spooling free underneath the influence of his adaptive programming, and when Genji gasps softly in surprise, Zenyatta beams in triumph.

“I see the prompt, Master. I am accepting it now…” and there is barely a pause, reactions carried along at one hundred and seven meters per second, as fast as sensation, to open the gates between them.

It is – a flood of information, an absolute torrent at first: the readings from the sensors that line Genji’s outer frame, the pressure upon his kneejoints from sitting sieza, the texture of the smoothness of his thighs underneath the metal mesh of his fingertips, the composition of the oxygen and nanite cocktail that he takes into his ravaged form with every expansion of his lungs, and Zenyatta lets himself bask in the river of diagnostic information, all the minute details of Shimada Genji for a long, selfish second before beginning to stem the tide.

Genji makes a thoughtful noise when the first sets of walls go up, and it is barely a handful of moments later that he begins constructing as well, feeds diverted by his own hand, and Zenyatta says, Good. You are performing quite admirably into the network between them. It is like transmitting pure thought is Genji’s marveling reply, quickly followed by, It feels a bit strange. Almost like the comm line I was installed with during my work with Overwatch , and the thought comes overlaid with the faint memories of past experiences, transmitted briefly here and then gone like ghosts. Perhaps it was based upon a similar principle is Zenyatta’s reply, and the responding burst of fondness from Genji is almost strong enough to feel , sensations spilling over like synesthesia.

This is amazing, Zenyatta/Master and the latter comes to the Omnic dual-layered with pictures of himself, coded in their metadata with a warm human emotion that colors them pink and gold. You are truly a marvel is what Zenyatta returns, and oh , it is like coming home .

He withdraws. Disengages from the connection directly, consigns the process to a background function, and when he reengages his optical sensors, he finds Genji has twisted to face him once more. The man touches the base of his skull as though to affirm that nothing lingered there after he physically disconnects himself from Zenyatta, and Genji says in explanation, “I can still feel you. Like a day spent lazy underneath the covers in winter when I was a child. Watching the snowflakes fall while cozy inside…” He trails off and ducks his head. “This is… Master, this is a precious gift, and I have nothing that begins to approach thanking you for it,” and Zenyatta is no God Program, is no network administrator, is no saint or martyr: he is only one lonely soul housed in a body of silicone and steel, is only an Omnic, and so he says, “Then do not thank me. Come back to my side whole in the distant future, and I will consider it adequate recompense,” with all the selfishness his frame can muster.

It is a foolish, stupid sentiment, unworthy of the uncertainty in either of their lives, but Genji ducks his head further almost into a bow and his voice is full of laughter when he replies, “Then I will do so. As my Master commands.”

Zenyatta makes a tsking noise, but his orbs chime like bells.

When they disconnect fully, it is something like reopening an old wound save softer, painless – there is a blunt-edged gulf that yawns between them for the cessation of easy contact, but Genji insists upon engaging and disengaging from their shared network wirelessly until they are both adept at responding to the impulse. His signal has been fixed, his coordinates set to Zenyatta, and the Omnic treasures that selfish thought for a moment before tucking it away to meditate upon at a later hour. They finish the tea and oil, because it would be a shame to waste it, and when Zenyatta is roused from his hibernation mode in the early hours of the morning by Genji’s network invitation, he does not have it within him to be disgruntled at the time.

Here I go, Master , Genji whispers to him on the wings of data, and when the sunrise blooms before Zenyatta’s sensors, vibrant in a way he had never before realized humans were privy to, he cannot find it in himself, either, to be surprised at his student’s forward bound in skill, in the same way that he is unsurprised by how Genji watched the day break from the peak of the clocktower in the square. Travel safe.

Go with grace, Genji , Zenyatta returns, and he watches the horizon yaw dizzyingly, feels the surety in Genji’s limbs as he deliberately tips himself backwards off of his perch, an instant before the connection terminates. Zenyatta is left with the echo of exhilaration like laughter in his sensors and the access to the network they share pulsing in his protocols like a live thing – and it is enough. It is enough.

Genji and his companions – Genji and his team, Genji and what of Overwatch responded to the call – are beset upon in Old Mumbai, and when Genji opens up their connection to transmit their coordinates, at any other time Zenyatta would have cursed himself molten for his inability to help. At any other time, he would have felt his soul quaver at the idea of his beloved student in danger. At any other time, he would have braced himself for the receipt of another death upon his sensors.

At any other time, Zenyatta would have steeled himself to grief and futility, but this time is not any of those times, and Genji and his companions had chosen Old Mumbai for him , for him to meet them , collect him, and when Genji’s coordinates come in, Zenyatta kills all unnecessary protocols and engages combat mode. He flies to the side of his beloved student and the Iris sings in his circuits, buoying him upwards as he folds himself down into lotus and sends his orbs out into orbit, encircling him in extensions of his will that shall act to bring his desires into reality.

He has no battle cry. He gives little warning. He tears into Talon’s flank and his combat processes engage and he moves , forceful, rattling gestures that ring like temple bells, sending out and recalling orbs with sledgehammer force. They curse him. There is gunfire, and Zenyatta keeps moving even as he shields his most vital workings with three of his freely floating orbs; one particularly foolish man charges at him, and Zenyatta breaks him with strikes at his shoulders and head, his knees, and kicks him in the chest to fell him. He gestures and one of his orbs flares stormcloud purple, hurt and seething, and he casts doubt upon the man that is his current target, makes choppy hits that channel his implacability to to take advantage of the way his foe stumbles under the weight of discord. He will have to clean his weapons after this. Never a process he enjoys, but a necessary one.

Genji similarly gives little warning: there is a hail of shuriken and then the afterimage of green runner lights and the humming neon nanoedge of a blade haunted by a beast; three of the remaining five men fall, and briefly – oh so briefly – Genji is at his side, close enough for the flag of his helm’s banner to slap against one of Zenyatta’s orbs.

“Tracer! Second wave!”

“Righto; on your heels!”

Then he is gone, and in his place is the chatter of pulse weaponry and a flare of fluorescent blue light, a bright smile briefly directed at him before it falters, startled, and Zenyatta gestures upwards with his fingers crooked and fastens the memory of warm summer days, of a full belly and drinks shared with friends, of laughter, to the young woman that flits by, gold to counter the thin stream of red that trails from one nostril. Another Talon agent falls, struck down underneath the heel of a boot worn by a woman speeding untethered, and in the distance there is a monstrous roar and the crackle of electricity.

When silence falls once more upon the battlefield, Zenyatta holds as he is for the span of several long heartbeats, sensors alight for further threats, before he exhales air he does not need, venting steam and the heat from his exertions in a cloud from his faceplate, his mouthslit, before his feet lower to touch the ground. His toes have barely found firma terra before there is an exuberant, “Master!” and Zenyatta manages to half-turn before he is boldly tackled by the figure of his beloved student, bloodsplattered and perhaps a bit more scratched up since last they met but otherwise entirely, blessedly whole .

Genji wraps his arms about Zenyatta’s shoulders, and the vents along his deltoids and spine choose that moment to discharge their pressure in a synchronized hiss of steam, and under it, only for them to hear, Zenyatta returns, “Genji,” with the force of every empty day and night behind the word.

They steady themselves before separating, and Zenyatta says, “My brightest pupil. It is good to see you once more, though the same cannot be said of the circumstance of our meeting,” for the benefit of the pair that venture up in Genji’s wake to greet their newest comrade. Introductions are made on the plane, the gorilla, Winston, ushering them away before government forces notice the ruckus they had made with their fight. (Zenyatta chants a brief prayer for the souls of those they had defeated, a plea for them all to find a measure of peace beyond the Iris.) He learns that the young woman, voice colored as perky as her hair, is the semi-legendary Tracer – Lena Oxton. He informs her gravely that it is an honor to meet such an ebullient personage, and she laughs, briefly bright, before the merriment is chased away by stormclouds, bruise-purple.

“I was there, you know,” she says to him, voice soft, in the back of the plane. “At Mondatta’s assassination. There was a… a sniper. A familiar face, but clever like she should never have been. Cold like she should never have been. And she – ” Lena’s fingers clutch, grasp nervelessly at nothing before her chest, bathed in the blue light of the machine that is her anchor, her damnation. “A perfect shot. There was no time to realize – just to react. Either way one of us would have died that night. I’m sorry, so sorry. For your loss, and for how I couldn’t stop her.”

Zenyatta’s voice catches in his wires for the memory of the grief that he had felt sensing Mondatta’s unit go dark and inaccessible on their tiny network. He does not need to redirect his optical array to see the way Genji is watching him with concern. He puts it aside. Puts it all aside, and his voice only skips once, like a record scratched, when he tells Lena, “He would have desired for you to live.

“I thank you – the Shambali thank you – for your fight. It must have been difficult, facing down a foe that was unfamiliar in their familiarity. And I thank you, for holding the weight of his death so close. He was a… truly singular individual. You honor him with your grief. I only hope that you will accept – accept what occurred. Accept that there is nothing to do now but to honor him, as the living, as those who remain, by fulfilling the vision of harmony that he held for the world.” He dares reach out to lay his fingers over Lena’s clenched ones. “My brother knew the risks he dared when he descended the mountain. When weighed against the importance of his message, he felt as though it was more than worth the danger. His soul was at peace. There is nothing to forgive.”

And Lena bows her head, so small, a girl out of time in every sense of the words, and whispers, “Thank you.”

Genji fills the space she had occupied, after, after Lena throws her arms about him in a hug, after she daintily wipes the tears from her eyes, after, after, after.

Zenyatta is tired. It is not a weariness of the body – it is a weariness of the soul, one that slides through his fingers like polishing sand, like ash, like smoothed riverstones and knucklebones. Beside him, Genji nudges his wrist with his forearm, a gentle request for his attention. Zenyatta makes a soft, static-riddled noise of acknowledgment, and Genji tilts his head beside him, shifts instead to place his hand on Zenyatta’s right knee.

“I am gratified that you came,” Genji says in an undertone, and Zenyatta allows himself the selfishness of expanding the orbit of his orbs to include the other as well.

“You are well respected,” Zenyatta observes a few moments later, into the silence that has fallen, into the low background throb of the jet’s engine.

“I have history amongst them,” Genji demurs.

“Respect where it is due. They can see that you have changed from the Genji of their memories. Grown.”

“Yes,” Genji admits.

“You have grown. Changed.”

“Would you say that I have… metamorphosed? Like the butterfly?”

“More akin to a moth, perhaps,” and Genji laughs.

The silence is broken once again by Zenyatta a minute or so later.

“You have grown since last we met as well.” He aches a little when he says it – all the little snippets they could give in the network were nothing in the face of the man physically beside him. He has missed so much, the events that put the youthful bounce back into Genji’s stride, that made Genji handle the blades at his back and side unconsciously as extensions of himself and his will in the same way Zenyatta handled his own weapons.

“The work has been good for me. And, before the recall, the time spent at the monastery and village – that helped as well. The journey there. All time in which to stretch my wings, relearn the limits of my frame through new eyes. I have so many stories to tell you, Master. If you will have them, of course.”

Zenyatta is silent and still for a long moment in response. And then he asks, contemplatively, “Is your ardor for me still intact?”

Genji’s breath catches in his throat, and his next inhale is too-sharp too-quick, almost enough to choke himself – but he manages to reply, “ Yes .”

Around them, Zenyatta’s orbs flick, flip once end over end, each one in a row along the path of their slow orbit. “Then do please use my name, Genji. When we are alone, though. I suppose Master will do well enough for the field.”

Genji swallows hard at the soft, tired edge of mirth in Zenyatta’s voice, smiles tremulously behind his faceplate, and returns, “Sensei, perhaps?” to which Zenyatta scoffs. Genji dares stretch out an arm to wrap about Zenyatta’s shoulders. Zenyatta turns his head, briefly presses the seam of his faceplates to Genji’s fingers, and then settles his spare frame more solidly down into the chair. Underneath Genji’s forearm and bicep, a hum starts, warbling in pitch until it stabilizes, resonating through their contact until every scrap of metal and mesh in Genji’s frame rattles in tone, reverberating, the entirety of himself ringing in sympathy to Zenyatta. He cannot make a similar note in response – glances instead towards the cockpit of the jet before disengaging the lower half of his faceplate to press scarred lips to the side of Zenyatta’s head, a kiss to match the Omnic’s.

“Rest. I’ll keep watch – there’s time yet in our journey before we reach our destination,” he says, and his voice is a ragged birdsong indeed for the partial lack of his armor, but it makes Zenyatta’s lights dim, energy being reallocated as his orbs tighten their orbit to rest, inert, about his neck, and so it is enough. More than enough.

“I will wake you when we arrive,” he promises, and spends the rest of the flight happily shivering from the reverberations of the harmony in his bones.

Genji , Zenyatta whispers into their connection. Genji, I am so lost.

The Shambali welcome him with open arms, and Genji misses his Master – his former Master – with a ferocity that’s edged with teeth .

It has been good, his pilgrimage, something that he needed: the in a mirror lightly of his days after quitting Overwatch, with his heart filled with hatred that hissed and ate at him like acid.

He is not free – is not free in the way that he had considered the notion, all those years ago – he is not unburdened so much as that he has learned how to carry what weighs upon him, his fears and scars, self-doubts and imperfections, his metal body and his living flesh melded within. They are as much a part of him as the infallible soul of himself, that last inch that he’d refused to give even when swallowed in darkness. Zenyatta had helped him see. Zenyatta had shown him the way. Zenyatta’s brothers and sisters, when they meet him bearing stories and anecdotes about himself upon their speakers, tell him that he had more than earned the right to bear their brands of enlightenment upon his brow, the reflection of their contact with the Iris, for having completed his Master’s – former Master’s – tutelage.

Genji thinks of sensory arrays flaring blue to inactive black to gold as Zenyatta relinquishes himself to the currents of the universe, and refuses. He says that it is not his place, to accept the evidence of their struggles and subsequent transformation upon his form. They laugh, rest gentle, knowing hands upon his metal shoulders, and ask, “Who better?” but they do not press the matter. Perhaps the most perceptive amongst them already know that Genji will come to it in his own time, if he desires it. Years ago, it would have rankled, the casual implied assertion that they knew anything of what he had endured, that they, machine and other , were anything alike. Now, he laughs and rents a room in the village before the monastery and joins the Shambali in midmorning prayer, heart at peace.

They learned of him from their brother, from Zenyatta, the one who wanders so far beyond them; their network, the one created by those Omnics who’d once abandoned their prescribed fates for the fearful unknown, drifts about Genji’s digital sensors like cobwebs, like whispers half-heard. He cannot properly interface with it, his human mind not built with the simultaneous levels of cognitive processing to allow the feat, but he learns (in that persistent, unconscious way that all the Shambali are enthralled by, this purely human skill) to recognize some textures and tenors – Tekhartha Midorama, who bears five sensors upon his forehead, whose voice rings in a raspy G-minor chord; SK-375, who bears two sensors and whose voice is stilted, purely mechanical and stiff, who struggles between the siren song of their programming and the Iris; Tekhartha Chichi, who has borne eight sensors since before Zenyatta’s departure from the mountain, who laughs, stating that she is too fond of her vices to ever take up the ninth, every word undercut with a rolling rattle from some improperly optimized internal processor; Tekhartha Mondatta, who shines , who bears nine sensors and whose very aura is saturated with golden light, voice ringing like temple bells. He presses like a wave across Genji’s sensors, like a typhoon howling silent, like the merciless clarity of the sunlight so high above the noise, and the beast that haunts Genji’s bones stirs at it, recognizing a fellow force of nature.

He builds a life here. Keeps up his skills, helps in the village, assists what Shambali and men and women and children he can. Sometimes he descends the mountain, drawn down by this or that whisper – a contact he’d made in his travels requesting his help. Ghosts from his days in Overwatch, a sigil of 76 in red, white, and blue. A fearful recounting of bodies left drained like husks, black smoke and spent shotgun shells. A rumor of a Japanese man with the stilted, haughty pride of a feudal lord, who used a bow and who had the aim of a monster.

He exchanges words with Zenyatta, with his former Master. Small anecdotes of his travels. Pictures copied from his optical nerves of a spotless snowfall. The experience of eating a peach plucked from a tree growing wild upon a mountainside. Quiet words in the small hours of the night when his footsteps falter. (He is never ashamed anymore, at these days where he struggles. He is not perfection, is only a broken grace – but within this truth he is strong. These dark thoughts, this grey fugue, those barbed doubts are as much a part of him as his teeth, his marrow, and the electricity that sparks along his nerves. They are his, the essential components that comprise himself.)

Zenyatta exchanges with him scenes of vibrancy, the flow of the Iris captured from his sensors. The precise chemical composition of the slug of Detroit steel that a thankful Omnic gifts him, a delicacy from nineteen sixty-three that settles upon Genji’s tongue like a gastronomical mirage laden with trace minerals. The click of mechanisms turning over in his chest in an echo of the memory of the temple bells that ring outside Genji’s window, a bittersweet longing that has been long tempered by conviction, Zenyatta’s own form of imperfection. (Those moments of helplessness, when his former Master gains only hostile glares and the moments of true sorrow when his only recourse becomes violence – Genji feels Zenyatta wish, if only if only if only, before he packs away his tender heart and meets hostility with force.)

When Mondatta dies, his soul passing beyond the Iris, Genji stumbles in the courtyard of the monastery, falls felled to his knees by the sudden lessening in the pressure of the network upon his senses, by the sudden, all-consuming roar of grief and fear and denial that rushes in to fill the void, that floods his chest and head and belly, that drains his air as there is an abrupt drag upon his resources, a commandeering of his processes that steals life from his body’s unconscious maintenance procedures, that uses him as one more relay, one more scream to cry out a beloved brother’s name, begging broken to be heard in Zenyatta’s – in all of the Shambali’s – voice.

He has been hijacked , invaded through the open connection he has with his former Master, and Genji spares a brief thought for adaptive programming and the ferocity that desperation bred before his cyberized sight bleeds into screen snow, before his next breath drags and labors sticky in his ruined lungs as it has not since Doctor Ziegler rebuilt him, as he feels his human heart stutter in his chest. He barely, barely, somewhere, registers soft, shocked noises of pain, does not know whether they are Omnic or human in origin, and his very bones scream on and on and on until that last little sliver of him, the final inch that is all Shimada Genji whispers Master into the all-consuming maw of grief.

The voice falters. Stutters, glitches, stumbles, and Genji is reminded of the first time he hadn’t been able to hide his self-loathing any longer, the way he’d raged and torn at himself until he’d collapsed in tears, tasting disgust and the coppery fluid that served as his blood now with every racking sob. He reaches out – on the flagstones, his fingers valiantly twitch – and says Zenyatta into the aching void.

He receives back binary – binary and grief – before he blacks out.

He awakens inside the monastery itself, and the light of the orb of harmony that lingers above his artificial sternum is so familiar and yet not. It tastes like fresh ginger ale, like the ring of winning big at pachinko, like triumph at besting the odds, and Genji stirs and opens his eyes and stares into blackness before he closes them once more, realizing his optical nanites have malfunctioned. He uses his ears instead and hears a stuttering whir that rumbles warm and soft-edged and says, “Chichi,” his voice a dull, unprocessed rasp.

The flow of golden feelings falters briefly, as though in surprise, and then the Omnic monk asks, “Genji?” in a voice so wavering and tremulous that Genji feels his heart clench in his chest. “Genji, are you – are your processes in order? Do you require a – a hard reboot, is there a backup file we must restore from – do you need to go back into hibernation? Are you – ”

“Peace, Chichi. I am injured, but not to the extent that I cannot recover.” He blinks his eyes once, twice, inside his visor, and on the third time, green diagnostics begin scrolling against the blackness. “What happened? Did… did Mondatta…?”

Chichi makes a short, unhappy, metallic noise. “Brother Mondatta is no… no longer functioning. He has gone offline upon the network. He… his soul has passed through the Iris. He is dead. Our brother is dead.” Her voice processor shudders, stumbles. “And we had feared that we had forced you with him along that path. Brother Zenyatta…” Genji’s sight reboots, flickers in and out of focus for a brief handful of seconds before resyncing with his visor. He breathes out as Chichi comes into sight. “Brother Zenyatta sends his most… most sincere and heartfelt apologies. That he cannot regret enough or make amends for what he did.” Genji carefully mentally probes at the connection between himself and his former Master, finds a slippery wall like ice that repels his searching ‘fingers.’

“What did he do ?” Genji asks, alarm flaring up within him; he pushes himself up onto his elbows, registers piecemeal the feeling of stone and woven mats underneath his form, thin pillows stuffed with dried wildflowers alongside synthesized cotton, and the soft buzz of a portable heater in the corner, powered by a solar battery.

“He… pinged. For Mondatta. He called for Mondatta with all of himself so greatly, with so much of his entirety that it spilled over onto you as well, like the flow of water during a sudden deluge.” Chichi’s hands steady Genji, help him sit fully upright. “He… he hacked your processors. Briefly overrode their programmed functions in his grief. It was – they control so much of yourself, we…” She trails off, eight orbs trembling like her hands where they hang in the air. “We feared he had, we had – murdered you. It was unacceptable, that possibility, so he closed the connection, encrypted it and gave the rest of us the key to safeguard you. Genji – Genji, are you truly well? We felt . Felt you stutter. Felt your soul tip towards the Iris.” She covers her cranial unit with her hands, obscuring her optics with living metal, and makes a clattering, rusty noise of distress. “Genji, please forgive us – we are sorry, so sorry, all of us,” and the discord rolling off of her frame is so great that Genji cannot help but reach out to clasp her upper arms, shake her gently for her attention.

“Chichi – I am well enough to operate. I am not so injured that I am in danger of following in Mondatta’s footsteps. There is nothing to forgive – there is nothing to forgive.” He softens his voice, clasps at her wrists. “I know what it is like to act while fueled by grief. I know what it is like to lose a beloved brother. Do not fear in this. You are strong, I know it. There is nothing to forgive. I will send my doctor a full diagnostic report, and I will rest as my systems reboot. Your brothers and sisters need you, Chichi.”

“I never wanted this,” she warbles, voice billowing and collapsing underneath its own weight. “I never sought the ninth array so I would not have to do this. I am not a leader, Genji!”

“Bravery is never so beloved as when it is done in the conquering of fear,” Genji returns gently. “And you are far stronger that you believe yourself to be, I know it. I can see it. The future is unknowable. There is only the present – ”

“ – and what good we may do,” she finishes, then lets out a soft wail of anguish, steam billowing out from underneath her faceplate, humid enough to bead on Genji’s. But she lowers her hands after the span of a few moments composing herself, grips them tight into fists, and rises, her eight orbs following to settle about her waist, loose.

“Then – please. Please stay close tonight, Genji. You can continue to use Zenyatta’s quarters – I know you cannot interface on our network, but it… it will settle our souls some to feel you near. And you are more than welcome to join us. To grieve,” she says, and Genji tips his head back to meet her eyes and replies, “I would be honored.”

“Thank you,” she says, bows to him, and then adds, “We will unlock the firewall between yourself and Zenyatta… but I cannot say when he will contact you through it.”

“That is more than enough,” Genji replies, and he can only hope some of the way his heart leaps light is conveyed in the gratification in his tone.

Chichi goes. Genji carefully pulls himself into lotus, closes his eyes behind his visor as the orb of harmony dissolves with Chichi’s departure. He activates the protocol for a full diagnostic and meditates. At some point, he slips into slumber. When he wakes, he drops back into meditation. He feels the foreign wall at the back of his mind falling. He sleeps again, and this time when he wakes, he goes to find the other Shambali, sits amongst them and shares their grief. As the hours turn into days, he helps where he can, be it a word when needed, advice when requested, or fielding the concerned questions from the village. As the days turn into weeks, he waits. Holds his peace. Meditates upon the longing in his soul.

It is nearly a month before there is a whisper on their network, and Genji could weep at how tired Zenyatta sounds as he asks for Genji’s forgiveness. Genji tells him the same thing that he had told Chichi – that there was nothing to forgive. Zenyatta’s grief is like a live thing, like a beast that swallows him whole; he had been closest to Mondatta and his loss…

Genji is more than willing to split the load. He has mourned so much in his life already – his mother, his father, his childhood, his future. His human form. The legacy that he had forsaken, all that remained of his family, that he had torn out by the roots, a betrayal that still sat uneasy within him some days. His innocence. All the little possibilities that lay dead under the edge of his blade. Old comrades, lost in the field too young. His brother.

(He meditates hours on that last and breathes in against the shift he can feel in the world.)

(He goes to Japan for an anniversary.)

( I am so lost Zenyatta murmurs between them, a truth without form, and Genji breathes I have you in answer.)

“I do not wish to fight,” Zenyatta calls out, and his voice rings against the distant clamor of the city and the slap of the waves in the wharfside docks. Above, Genji watches the men that encircle his master, counts guns and stun batons and swallows against the fury in his chest at the idea of these men roughly snatching away the quiet child who had laughed in delight at Genji’s flickering running lights, who had whispered to his master gravely that he was beautiful.

Genji is no stranger to the flesh trade. His family had had dealings in it as well, an empire and its conquests, and Genji knows that what he does tonight will matter so little in the face of it all, against the pressure of a world that has shaped this vicious greed. It is nothing. A drop in the sea.

And yet and yet and yet it is also too-trusting eyes and a crying mother that had wept glad tears at the sight of him armed with his blades. It is atonement of sorts for what he had ignored for all the early, lonely years of his life, telling himself lies to absolve himself of the necessity of action. It is facing the monsters in the dark with an open hand, a chance at redemption, at changing this wretched world into something perhaps even a little kinder before he leaves the mortal coil and passes through the Iris.

It is something like why he’d joined Overwatch, all those many years ago, why he’d placed the weapon of himself in the hands of others despite the loss that ate him alive. Now, years later, he hides in the lee of a crane used to move freighter crates, perched upon the edge of one with his runner lights black, and listens to his master say, “I do not wish to fight,” with sincerity lifting the monk’s chin high. “There are better, kinder ways to resolve this situation. All that I ask is that you release those persons in your ship’s hold that do not desire to be there.” Zenyatta stands firm, all wire and tattered hems, and he is unperturbed by the flickers of movements at the edges of his periphery. Light shines from him, a calming blue that pools upon the pitted concrete, and he says, “There is far more that your lives could be admirably lent to,” and barely moves in order to avoid the arc of a thrown empty bottle.

“I do not wish to fight,” Zenyatta says, then sighs softly like static as the men close, bows his head and adds, “Very well,” with a soft resignation that has Genji flexing his wrist, shuriken sliding into place; he watches as his master tucks himself up floating lotus, as Zenyatta’s orbs arrange themselves against their master’s back, like a Bodhisattva, like some kind god, and when the first man charges in, screaming like a banshee, Zenyatta makes a sharp gesture, palm open as if to strike, and his first orb barrels out in energy blue from formation to slam like a shotgun blow into the man’s left kneecap.

The man goes down. Genji throws his fistful of shuriken as the night erupts, tension breaking upon the act of violence, and registers the cries of alarm and pain and their locations even as he tips himself off of his perch in freefalling flight. He draws his blade in midair, and when he lands, his mechanical joints accept the impact without strain and he fells one, two men that grip at their weaponless, wounded hands or their other small injuries, targeted solely by their reactive pain; he leaps away before muzzles can be properly trained upon him, and suppresses the well-worn instinct to flinch as an orb of discord spins past him, trailing comet-tails of unhappiness and self-doubt, to fasten upon another one of the men.

Zenyatta chimes, each impact of an orb ringing, and it plays soft counterpoint to the exclamations of pain and anger from their assailants; Genji reflects a spray of bullets before they reach their mark, darts forward to fell his aggressor with the blunt edge of his blade. The fight does not last much longer – the thugs are merely hired men or weakwilled ones, unused to the retaliation that they present; they break formation, mill, and flee, leaving their wounded behind. Genji sneers behind his faceplate – cowardly. Dishonorable. He flicks his blade, sheathes it, starts plucking shuriken up from the ground, out of wounds, checking to make sure the men are stable, tearing strips off of their clothes to staunch the bleeding if they’re not. Behind them, there is the click of metal feet on concrete as Zenyatta lowers himself back to the ground; Genji says, “Master, here,” before half-turning where he’s knelt to toss a keycard taken from a guard’s belt to the monk.

It is Zenyatta that found where they had been keeping the children and it is Zenyatta that unlocks their chains; it is Genji that cleaves the padlock from the hold’s door and it is Genji that destroys the control panels of the ship, leaving it dead in the water. There are distant sirens, summoned by Zenyatta or one of the fleeing men, Genji does not know, but he helps his master unload the children that want to run now , that do not trust the police, that grip the hands of others that had been in the hold tight tight tight.

There is only so much they can do, and it tears at Genji’s heart, but there is only so much they can do and the child whose mother had pled with them, please, strangers, please help , is safe . She cries when she sees them, running into Genji’s arms, and it hampers his movements but he gladly sacrifices one arm to hold her as they shepherd the last out. Zenyatta is speaking with a few, voice low, instructions or information to the eldest amongst them, those with too-old eyes in too-young faces, and Genji bends his entire body about the child in his grasp and listens to the sirens grow louder. He says, “Master. We must go,” when they are close enough to make Genji wary.

Zenyatta watches the last of the children disappear into the gloom of the night, turns after a long second to consider Genji’s burden and those that linger.

“Very well. Then let us depart.”

(The child’s mother weeps glad tears when her child is returned to her, says thank you thank you thank you over and over again, and Genji watches his master tell her gently that she may be threatened. She may be hunted. She may need to give up their names and descriptions and he tells her that if it comes to that to do so . She should hold no loyalty to them out of gratitude for what they have done. Her life and that of her child are more important than their safety. Genji watches her eyes go from his blades to his master’s bloodstained orbs, yet uncleaned. He watches her face harden in understanding. He nods to her and then says, “Master. Let us go,” to Zenyatta.

His master kneels. Says, so gravely, “Live well, little one,” to the figure that clings to her mother’s legs, and then rises.

They depart for the road once more.)

“What troubles you, my student?” Zenyatta asks one afternoon.

Genji jolts where he sits, startled, and realizes that his mind has wandered; he, reluctantly, lowers his hands and slouches where he sits. “I am… not sure I could say, Master,” and the word is foreign on his tongue yet but it sits right , finally. This is something that he has chosen – respect earned and given after long months in the company of each other – and it is so much more than the empty respects that he’d handed to other tutors and mentors that had been his teachers Before.

Zenyatta’s orbs cease their chiming rattle, stilling to merely hang a moment in midair before they start a slow revolution about his figure. Genji watches them instead of meeting the other’s eyes, the gaze that he can feel prickling on him.

“Is it reluctance to speak, or is it merely that the words escape you?” Zenyatta asks, and there is no judgment or censure in his voice, merely simple, innocent curiosity. Genji is not sure he deserves it. He feels as though he should be judged for the Gordian’s knot in his head and heart. He had been glib, Before. It had been easy, Before. Zenyatta waits, as patient as a sage, a saint, as Death itself, implacable and peaceful.

(Genji had begged for death on the table, had sought an end to the agony of reworking his flesh to save it too much all at once. He has seen others cry out for it, in the process of the dirty business that his family, former family, had traded in. His father had tried to shelter him, moved perhaps by the closest memory he had of his late wife, but it had still come for him all the same in the form of a bullet, the edge of a blade, his brother with tears in his eyes and steel in his heart.)

Genji does not think he will ever be such a well of stillness as his master. It is not within his nature, even when he’d been fully flesh – he had always had too much energy. Had always been moving. Had been too vibrant to be calm.

These days, anger and hate dog his steps, fuel his motions too-sharp; he is unbalanced, broken, imperfect, and he hates it hates it hates it. His kinjutsu sensei would have despaired at his form; for a moment, resentment flares.

His sensei would have hated his form, but Genji has never been so lethal as he is now. And what was the purpose of a weapon but to kill ?

“Genji,” Zenyatta says, and the modulated serenity in his voice jolts Genji out of his dark musings, snaps him back to the present. “Your mind wanders once more.”

“I am – I apologize, Master,” Genji replies, contrite, but he cannot keep the bitterness out of his voice, a malevolent echo that follows him back out into cleaner air, tainting it.

“Accepted.” The Omnic’s voice is warm and there is a faint hint of humor within it, enough to put Genji on edge. “In recompense, perhaps voice to me some of your troubles?”

“Why should I?” Genji snaps defensively, needled, continues despite himself. “What do you serve to gain from all of this? From a baring of my soul – does it amuse you? Inflate your ego to see a machine so elevated and in control as compared to – ” and then Genji falters because – what is he? He is no longer human. He is not a machine. He is some abomination caught someplace between, and he chokes on his anger, stifled, and hatred is close to follow on its heels. Somewhere within himself, he is ashamed , and that only fuels his self-loathing.

“I gain, perhaps, something of the measure of satisfaction one receives from completing a task well-done. Some portion of peace and serenity in returning another to the same. Maybe even an emotion akin to parental pride, of seeing something beloved make their own way into the world to conquer it.” His master tips his cranial unit forward, the gentle revolution of his orbs slowing momentarily in their paths. “But perhaps one could ask the same of yourself. What did you stand to gain in the pursuit of criminals after you quit the organization you were a part of? Why did you wander, unable to turn a blind eye to all the suffering that you observed despite your own pain?” His master watches Genji flounder for a moment before taking mercy upon him. “There is kindness within you, my student. There is something worth saving. Something worth endeavoring towards. You, perhaps, cannot see it as you are now, but you have faith in me, in my judgment, enough to call me Master. So I say to you – Genji, you are strong. Genji, you are worth far more than the sum of the metal in your frame or the flesh housed within it. You are more than the demons that haunt you and more than the spirit that rests in your bones. You are more than old blood and more than a family name. Your soul is a lovely, incandescent thing, beautiful to behold. That is my judgment. My only desire – what I stand to gain – is the satisfaction in seeing it shine once more in everything that you do. That is enough. That is more than enough.”

And Genji sits, speechless, shaken, both warmed and cold inside, and when he finds his words once more, he says, “I do not believe you.”

Zenyatta makes a soft humming noise, golden like honey, and his orbs flip in their revolution, each one end upon end upon end along their path. “Perhaps you will in time,” he returns.

(Later, Genji tries to put the monk’s words out of his head. Tries to forget, to protect himself from the inevitable pain when patience turns into disappointment, as it has so many other times in the past.

He fails. He fails, and the warm conviction in Zenyatta’s voice follows him down into dreams.)

“Would it calm your heart to slay me?” the strange Omnic asks, voice even, and if it weren’t for the way his head is tilted back to accommodate the spare, sharp width of Genji’s blade, Genji could swear that it was a normal conversation, insubstantial and full of normal platitudes and empty words for his pain. Genji leans in harder, guts churning in a sick mixture of fury and despair, disgust and hunger, because he almost cannot believe his ears – his enhanced eyes see the way the razor’s edge of his wakizashi pares open the exterior coating on a few of the Omnic’s wires, exposing the twisted lengths of metal within.

“Would you find purpose in your life once more if I fell here underneath this keen edge? Would your mind know peace if you watched the vital energy in me bleed out into the dirt?” If anything, the Omnic tips its head back further, presses into Genji’s blade. “If you must kill me, then make it quick. Five more millimeters to my left and upwards at thirty-seven degrees. That will sever my cranial unit irreparably. And I will die.”

And Genji – and Genji’s breath catches at the iron and steel in the strange Omnic’s voice, because it has been so long since he has met resistance ; Genji recoils and shoves out with one hand even as he flicks the blade to the side out of danger, even as he leaps away, putting space between himself and this surely malfunctioning piece of machinery that so unflinchingly faced its death and dared ask him if it would bring him peace . Bile collects, sour, in the back of his throat, hatred – at this foolish Omnic, at how he was unable to complete the attack, at that he’d wanted to for a pure, overwhelming second, despite how this robot has done nothing to deserve death – scraping his voice raw and vicious as he spits, “You are mad .”

“No.” The Omnic stands where it had been pushed, its back to a dingy brick wall spotted in slurs and graffiti. “I am Tekhartha Zenyatta. A disciple of the Iris, a member of the Shambali order. I am a long way from home, yes,” it says, even as Genji opens his mouth, surprised, because the mountains of Nepal are a far cry from the fringes of Russia on the European side, and the Omnic continues, “As are you, perhaps, to judge by your accent. Will you grace me with your name, wanderer?” and Genji closes his mouth with a click of teeth, before he bares them behind the metal of his visor and faceplate.

“No. Get out of here before I made good my threat.”

The Omnic merely considers him, head tilted to the side, before passing the path of his gaze over the remains of the men that had been harassing it not fifteen minutes earlier. The sections of a steel pipe, sliced into pieces. A hand. The remains of a Molotov, smoldering smashed upon the ground. The Omnic’s metal planes are even still smudged with smoke, from the threats that the small mob had pressed upon it in this crumbling back alley. There had been the clicks of blowtorches igniting, audible to Genji’s enhanced senses where he had been passing by upon the roofs, and Genji had snarled at them then, lost, at the memory of fire that had chewed him up and spat him back out, blue-white and merciless, and cleaved into the fray.

“It is a strange thing, is it not, to threaten the life of the person that you saved?” the Omnic asks, and Genji could howl in frustration. He is not here to philosophize, especially not – especially not with a self-deluded machine that styled itself a monk. He tells the Omnic as much, and, infuriatingly, it laughs.

“Thank you for your concern,” it says. “But there is nothing keeping you here. If there is something you must attend to, then by all means…” It trails off, expectant, and Genji breathes in, tamping down the growing urge to take the damn thing apart,

“It. Is not. Safe. For Omnics here. Any Omnics. Even those that believe they have souls.”

It tilts its head to the side as though considering Genji’s words. “No,” it says after a few seconds. “I suppose it is not.” Around its neck, the nine orbs that float there flip in sync, each turning over once towards the outside of their ring, and Genji cannot help the way he tenses, expecting an attack. When it comes, it is not physical.

“There is a kind soul within you, one tempered with a warrior’s pride. There is a heart divided in your breast, split between what was and what is . Your mind is consumed by wrath, is it not?” The monk takes one step towards Genji, and Genji retreats an equal amount before it, helpless, reactionary. There is something like a pressure prickling against his artificial nerves, something like mead and a stormfront, like the weight of the sun itself, golden and sweet and warm and all-consuming , and the dragon woven into his blood and bones and sinews snarls in the face of it, rebels; it makes Genji’s muscles twitch with energy leashed, held taut. “A human heart beats underneath the metal. It is a human head that is so clouded by grief. Would you accept help if it were offered, wanderer? If I was offering?” The Omnic takes another step forward and Genji retreats another back, lost, frightened, flayed open and bare, all his moving parts on display for this strange Omnic to see, and it is too intimate, too much, this absolute stranger with the uncanny knowledge of a god that steps towards him unafraid even as its wires fray from the edge of Genji’s blade, just as when it had asked so calmly if it would soothe Genji’s soul to slay him, and it is simply too much.

Genji chokes out a, “No,” and flees.

It is a lie. Both he and the Omnic know it is a lie. It is a lie and both he and the Omnic know it is a lie and thus somehow Genji is not surprised when he finds his departure from the miserable, tiny border town shadowed by a mechanical wraith that chimes like temple bells.

“Greetings, wanderer,” and the Omnic is infuriatingly cheerful, enough so that it almost grates on Genji’s nerves – almost, yet not quite, Genji distracted by the echo of that golden pressure that had been brought to bear against him before. “Perhaps we could wander together. It is said that the road is shorter for the pleasant company we keep upon it,” and Genji should protest, should threaten, should not allow this pile of rusting metal and code at his side.

But. But it is warm – warm enough, with just enough pressure against his skin that it reminds Genji that he can still feel . The Omnic hums and chimes, whirrs and clicks, and it is so much better than the silence inside Genji’s head. And Genji feels – no, Genji knows on some level that if he leaves this robot behind that it will find him again somehow, unerring, with that same uncanny sight that had let it find the tenderest remnants of his humanity, that had struck true at the desires that he could not let himself voice anymore, that had made them ring so loud, resonant, hollow, in his chest.

Genji does not say yes. Genji does not say no. He merely slows his steps so that the Omnic does not have to lengthen its stride so greatly to keep up with his pace.

(Days later, Zenyatta will break the fugue Genji had fallen into with his solemn declaration to a child who could not be more than ten that Genji was his companion and that he was not an Omnic like he. That he instead, and here Zenyatta will half-turn his head as though to be sure that Genji will hear, that he is a green cyborg ninja dude , the litany of adjectives gravely bestowed upon the child, whose earlier wariness will instantly dissipate in the face of this new information.

“He can even double-jump,” Zenyatta will solemnly add, and the little child will shriek in both delight and indignation that they could not also do the same. Zenyatta will laugh and gather the child up into his lap in consolation, kicking off of the dirt and engaging his anti-grav repulsors, and will spin, taking laps of the little churchyard at slowly increasing speeds, and when Genji finally pushes past the indignation at being called a green cyborg ninja dude who can double-jump like he is some character in a videogame he’d wasted hours upon in Hanamura, he –

He will laugh.

Because it is true, all of it, and because it is something that he could almost appreciate, the mild facetiousness in the face of the truth, the lightness of the remark, and for a moment he will feel like himself , a wry humor of being the fixture of a gentle, teasing joke filling him, because it is true and he is a green cyborg ninja dude who can double-jump, and the child in Zenyatta’s lap will scream, “Wow!!” when Genji even goes so far as to demonstrate how he can climb walls as well.)

(“You are kind in your indulgence,” the Omnic tells him after night falls, and Genji is so tired, because he is always tired, now, but somehow his heart is somewhat lighter when he returns, “It does not do to disappoint a child.”

Zenyatta hums, and the orbs about his neck flip in place end over end over end and chime like bells, sing.)

“Call me Genji,” he says. “Shimada Genji.”

“Genji,” Zenyatta returns. “It is a great pleasure to meet you.”