Chapter Text
Hanzo Shimada is to set off on a mission.
The night before he leaves, McCree meets him and kisses him long and deep and slow and his breath smells of whiskey.
“You’re my dragon, “ he whispers into Hanzo’s ear. His communicator grazes the edge of Hanzo’s wrist as his fingers reach for his hand. His index traces the lines of the dragon’s head, feels the veins along his skin and thumbs his fingers over Hanzo’s knuckles. “My dragon of rebirth and serenity and immortality,” he says along the traces of Hanzo’s mouth.
In the dim hallway lighting, McCee’s eyes are crinkled into soft smears. Hanzo’s breath catches in his throat.
“Find him,” he says, reverently, and Hanzo wonders if perhaps McCree considers him a God just because he is bestowed the loyalty of dragons he does not deserve--
“If anyone knows anything about redemption, it’s you.” McCree grins, wild and feral and bright as the sun.
--
He is bleeding everywhere .
In hindsight, it wasn’t a good idea to chase a wanted fugitive while already wounded.
But McCree had faith in him and that faith had been missing for so long and he just wanted to feel--
He sees the man before him take a step back, lowering the gun clutched in gloved hands. “Finish me,” he hisses, but a part of Hanzo wonders if he will accept death this easily.
“No,” says the man, a low growl. He turns.
Logic: to kill those who may harm you.
Mercy: to let him live because you have hurt enough already.
76 turns and walks away.
--
His blood makes the communicator slippery.
He pushes the red emergency button for help and is eternally thankful that Winston implemented such a feature.
But then again, who really checks the channel?
Jesse doesn’t even carry his with him.
--
Genji is the one who answers.
--
Here is his recalled memory:
He is nine, not quite a boy but not quite a man either, and Genji has bent his arm in an impossible way.
He tells him to stand up, and grabs Genji’s other arm and lifts. He is afraid, because father will surely blame him for not watching Genji carefully enough, so he crosses his arms and pouts and tells Genji that it can’t be that bad because it was Genji’s idea to jump off the stairs anyways. Genji shakes his head and whimpers and Hanzo, slightly annoyed, stomps off to find a maid.
She comes immediately, followed by Hanzo who is in every way playing the lordling, and he watches as she calls the medics and more maids come followed by the cook and by their dad.
Genji gets his arm wrapped up in a pristine white-cast, the cook makes his favourite bowl of ramen, and their dad chuckles fondly and runs a hand through Genji’s gravity-defying hair and tells him to be careful.
Hanzo is just old enough to understand he shouldn’t break his arm as well to get the same treatment, but just young enough to be bitter about it not being fair .
The mark of an older brother: expectations are so much higher.
--
Being a Shimada: everything is so much harder.
--
“You killed my mother,” Pharah says.
Presenting Fareeha Amari: she is a good, fair leader. She is loyal to her family and the mission. She will never let feelings get in the way of justice.
(Good people are born from hardship.)
Widowmaker laughs, a harsh, hollow sound. Her hair has fallen, black strands splaying across her battered figure half-lying on the ground.
One charge from Reinhardt, and the entire temple has collapsed. There is no place for a spider in a wreckage made by titans.
But he is bleeding, in a way that suggests he is very much not a god, and she knows the answer.
Widowmaker’s face narrows in a snarl as Pharah lifts her gun.
“But you won’t hurt the rest of my family,” she says, and hoists her gun and readies her missiles and lifts into the air.
As they are retreating, she sees Widowmaker’s form among the rubble.
How much does it hurt to be alone?
--
They are at headquarters.
All of them, and yet not everyone--there are people missing, just like it has been for years. Hana grabs a coke from the fridge and throws one at Mei, despite her left arm wrapped in a cast. The Chinese girl stumbles, nearly missing the projectile before Zarya intervenes and sets it down on the table, glaring at D.Va.
Lúcio starts first. He has a black eye from when he couldn’t move out of the way of falling debris fast enough.
Pharah wonders if Reinhardt feels guilty. From the quiet way the man has been holding himself tonight, she thinks maybe .
“Livia,” the Brazilian boy says, and a part of Pharah thinks bleeding hearts should not be allowed on the battlefield--
Because they will always be hurt.
“Pedro. Daniel.”
Zarya goes next, surprising everyone. The Russian female stands up, posture straight and firm and worthy of a leader, and Pharah admires Aleksandra Zaryanova with all her heart.
She has lost her mother, and that was once too much, but Zarya has lost her village and her friends and all of Russia with the omnic crisis.
(Maybe the more you hurt, the more you stop feeling.)
“Alexei. Viktor. Eva. Feliks.”
It is a way of remembering the dead, the gone, because they are soldiers and soldiers fight but they are also humans and they hurt . And Pharah is old enough now to realise that there are some things that will be , but she still finds it unfair that every victory is won with lives.
That is the reality of conflict: it benefits no one and haunts everyone.
Winston adjusts his glasses.
“Singh. Bayless. Al-Farouk.”
A breath.
“Harold Winston.”
Tracer pats his shoulder from her position perked on the couch’s arm.
“Amélie Lacroix,” she says quietly.
McCree rolls a cigar between his lips. They are missing Hanzo and Genji, because Hanzo
is in the med bay and Genji is there with his brother. He has no right to intrude on their time, but Hanzo is injured and a part of his breath skips with every reminder.
“Liao,” he contributes. “Ana Amari.”
Pharah closes her eyes.
“Gabriel Reyes,” Reinhardt rumbles.
Mercy clears her throat, and all eyes turn towards her.
She raises her eyes to the window, blue eyes flickering along the nighttime emptiness.
“Jack Morrison.”
They’ve all lost so much.
--
That night, Angela kisses her in the darkness of her room.
She catches her tongue on the edge of her lip, clutches Mercy close in the dead silence. Holding Angela is like enveloping the sun; Mercy is all soft skin and petite bone and the soft, soft haze of early morning. Pharah kisses a line into the white flesh of Angela’s tummy and the blonde stirs, a soft voice into her ear.
Fareeha is all military training and sturdy, lean muscle. Contrasted to Angela, who bends and flows and flexes. Pharah holds the blonde in her arms, whispers hymns into her ears, and is so in love she can’t see straight.
Angela is the sun and the light and the reflection of a picturesque day, but she is also a healer, a saviour.
Mercy’s fingers trace an old bullet scar on Pharah’s thigh, and wipes her tears away as they slip down her cheeks.
--
“Apollon,” Reyes whispers against his mouth. “Apollo, my Apollo, my sun, my stars, my sky and heaven.”
He kisses him, harsh and wild and feral and bites down hard enough to draw blood. Jack watches as Reyes leans back, a grin on his face as a tongue darts out and licks the blood from his lip. “My boy. My beautiful boy.”
Nothing Jack will ever do is enough to draw the warrior-fighter-killer instinct driven into Reyes’ bones, so he closes his eyes and feels Reyes bites his ear and he kisses the man’s neck, a throat made for battle cries and interrogations. His hands feel the scars that criss-cross across Reyes’ chest, his muscled arms as they wrap around his body.
“Apollo,” Reyes whispers again, into his hair. Jack draws a breath and kisses the corner of his mouth, and the Blackwatch commander turns and meets him once again and they kiss until Jack’s lips are sore and swollen.
Come back , he wants to say. He is the sun but Reyes is the sky, the night. He cannot set without the other there and he cannot bear to rise to swallow the night whole. He does not want to hurt Reyes but the man reads offense into everything he sees because that is the world he has grown up with, and what good use is the title of Strike Commander when he cannot protect those he cares for most?
He sees Jesse McCree, barely a man and already in handcuffs, given an ultimatum and nothing else, and he sees Gabriel Reyes and his cold dark eyes but he also sees Gabriel Reyes and the way he claws at Jack’s back as if desperate to hold onto something--
A commander: someone who has seen more death than anyone else.
A hero: someone who is bound to hurt.
--
76 wakes up.
He’s alone.
--
Come back, he thinks.
--
Reinhardt needs to sit down. At his side, Pharah draws her gun.
She hears D.Va’s mech whirling into position, guns at the ready.
One of the benefits of nearly dying: she is faster than all of her teammates.
Tracer steps forwards.
Widowmaker hesitates.
“I used to be her,” she says. “I used to be Amélie.”
She grins.
“You still are, love.”
--
One of the things about emotions: you can never erase them completely.
--
Hanzo is discharged from Mercy’s care a week later with painkillers and regret.
He corners McCree almost immediately.
“I failed,” he says bluntly. “I saw him, and I failed.”
McCree just smiles.
--
Once there was a boy, and he lived for his family and his name and his honour above all--
(but that boy was wrong)
(there are always second chances)
McCree takes his hand.