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It’s quiet, over the Watchpoint. The sea moves calmly in the distance, in its hypnotic dance of old. It reminds him of home.
The wound in his chest aches as he tries to lean down so he quickly decides against it. The doctor, the wonderful doctor that saved Genji from Hanzo’s own mistakes did her best and carefully extracted the long bullet that had embedded itself into his pectoral. Missed his heart by a hair’s width.
He was forced to bedrest at least for a couple of days. Yesterday.
Still. He will be resting soon enough. Right now, there’s something else he has to do. Someone else he’s waiting for, even if his muscles tense at the mere thought.
It’s been too long.
How he wishes he could have a bottle of sake in his hands. But he’s decided to at the very least try and quit. And he can’t drink it tonight. As some sort of penitence – though Genji would say he doesn’t need to. But he also wouldn’t want Hanzo to drown his sorrows away in the alcohol, so perhaps he’d accept his reasoning, just this once.
He still feels so different.
The chilly breeze has him suppress a shudder. It’s October, and while Gibraltar is rather warm, winter is starting to blow on their doors too. Well, he supposes his usual garments don’t do much to shield him from the cold – the sickly white bandages are the only thing protecting the left part of his chest after all, and not even the entirety of it.
He carefully pours a cup of the steaming hot tea he’s prepared for himself and for his guest. He keeps it in his hands, rather than drinking it.
Soft, inhumanly hushed footsteps reach the rooftop. Hanzo shudders for a whole different reason. He turns his head, and Genji is emitting his usual green glow. Not trying to hide, this time. Just. Deliberately quiet.
Hanzo pushes down the self-loathing and the regret threatening to rise up in his throat like bile.
Though something about Genji is different. He’s not… well, naked may not be the exact word, but he is wearing clothes. A green hoodie and dark trousers. If it wasn’t for the metallic and green helmet covering his head, he might even still look fully human.
Hanzo bows his head, just slightly, in greeting. Genji reciprocates it.
When he sits down, Hanzo still has a hard time taking his eyes off of him.
“Something wrong?” Genji asks, softly. Hanzo finally blinks and manages to take his eyes away. Only for a moment. He supposes he should be respectful and watch his brother in the eye while he’s talking to him.
“No, it’s…” Though he doesn’t really know where to look. Two eyes hide somewhere under his neon green visor, inscrutable.
“You’re staring.” He says, lightly. Not something he’s holding against Hanzo, despite having every right to, just… mere curiosity.
“It’s… your clothes. They suit you.” He whispers, looking back in front of himself, concentrating on the faraway tide, on simpler and older times.
“Thank you. I picked them up with Angela.” Genji replies, in that tone of amicable conversation only slightly tainted by the odd robotic reverb on what would be an otherwise incredibly familiar voice.
“I see.”
Not knowing what else to say, and needing something to keep his hands busy, Hanzo pours more tea into another tiny ceramic cup. Holding it steady with two hands, he offers it to Genji. Despite everything, he accepts.
Even though, when Hanzo realizes he’s going to take that mask off, that he’s going to show the mutilated face that he caused, he can’t exactly look at him once more. His gaze drops, picking his own cup back in his hands. The warmth isn’t as comforting as he hoped.
This is just stalling for time, though. Hanzo is doing all of this to just desperately get his mind off of the real reason why he’s invited Genji here.
After a quiet sip, Genji puts his cup down. Eyes closed to savor the taste, and Hanzo is only able to take in that before he has to tear his gaze away from the decade-old scars and burns that adorn his face.
Genji embraces the stillness like he was never able to do in his youth. And he embraces Hanzo’s awkwardness, too.
“Are you okay?” He asks, once more. Placidly. As calm as the periodic and yet always different movement of the sea.
“I am. Though it’s… it’s just been a while.” He grunts as he turns around again, on his side, his chest flaring up momentarily though he ignores it, trying to get the only important thing. Genji frowns, his eyes flicking down to the bandages, but he keeps his mouth shut.
Hanzo caresses the light, thin, narrow and long wrapped box in his hands. The light green paper it’s enveloped in glistens in the dipping sunlight. The darker ribbon around it absorbs it instead.
Genji’s eyes go wide.
With both hands, Hanzo hands it to him, finally finding the courage to truly look at him in the eyes. His throat is dry, but the familiar words slip out easily.
“誕生日おめでとう”
“You… thank you.” Genji looks speechless for a moment. He staggers, then takes the box from Hanzo’s hands with a care that almost hurts. It looks so tiny in his hands. Hanzo wholly believes it is not enough, no matter what he’ll ever do it won’t be enough. But he couldn’t do much other than that. “Can I open it?”
Genji almost sounds giddy. Like a child ready for a surprise. Despite it being so incredibly small.
It’s no wonder an old memory of a much younger and beaming Genji flashes in his mind. Hanzo shrugs, careful not to jostle the wound too much.
“It is your birthday.”
October 28th. Hanzo had selfishly been so jealous the first time he was told, in the way three-year-olds tend to be.
Genji unwraps it calmly. A tiny paper box sits in it. He places it in one hand and raises the lid with the other. His eyes go wide again, a tiny gasp escapes his lips. They twitch up in a smile and Hanzo releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Wooden chopsticks. Crafted by himself, carved and sandpapered until he wasn’t horrified by the result. If he can handle arrows, he figures he can make chopsticks for his younger brother as a hobby.
Genji looks over them, thumbs briefly caressing over the decoration at the top.
A bird. A simple and rustic bird, no matter how much Hanzo studied and drew to try and make it look like a-
“Sparrow.” Genji murmurs under his breath, before Hanzo can say anything. “You decorated them with sparrows.”
Hanzo covers his surprise with a cough, looking to the side. Though if the look his brother wears reminds him of anything, it’s of their father seeing right through him when he tried to tell a lie.
“Yes, well. I’ve had practice with my arrows… I’ve been trying my hand at a few small sculptures and carvings. I know the two sparrows are different, that… that the beak shape is wrong, and that the tail is too thin and will most likely break, so I’ll get you better ones-” The words tumbling from his mouth as his hands press into fists are interrupted by that same familiar voice. So similar and yet different from Sojiro’s.
“I wouldn’t have them any other way, brother.”
Hanzo breathes past the lump in his throat. For once, that alien word does not seem too out of place.
“I wanted to give them to you before you departed for your mission.” He admits after a beat.
Genji will be away starting tomorrow. Hanzo would have followed him, but he has orders to rest, so someone else is going in his stead. It’ll be one of those long missions in Havana. It might last around a week or so.
“And I thank you for that. I’ll be sure to bring them with me.” Genji replies as he puts them back into the box and closes it.
“Ah, it’s really not necessary…” Hanzo says before he can stop himself. Genji simply smiles, satisfied.
“But I want to. And about that, since I might not be around in six days…”
Six… days? Hanzo’s mind hiccups on the thought, hastily running dates through his mind. That Halloween party they’ve been talking about will be done by then, what is it he’s missing?
It all becomes much clearer when Genji takes something from the large pocket in front of his hoodie. A relatively small packet, wrapped in light blue paper, with reflective stars printed on top.
Words flee Hanzo’s mind. He draws a blank.
Genji hands it over. With two hands, with the same care Hanzo practiced before. He picks it. His fingers almost tremble.
“I won’t wish you anything right now. Wouldn’t want to bring you any bad luck.” Genji says jovially, putting a finger in front of the face Hanzo has such a hard time looking at. Though, with the usual smile, it’s not as painful to reciprocate his gaze.
Hanzo feels the gift. It’s oddly soft, of no discernible or firm shape. Clothing, perhaps?
“I… thank you.” He replies, belatedly, when he realizes he’s been staring at the gift, muted, for who knows how long. He has half a mind to say that Genji really shouldn’t have gone out of his way to get him anything, but he miraculously holds his tongue.
“Do you… want to open it now?” Genji asks, tilting his head to the side. Hanzo ponders on it. It would sate his curiosity. On the other hand…
He shakes his head, placing the gift on his side, using his uninjured side of the body this time.
“No, this… this is your day.”
“We’ve shared so many birthdays together, it wouldn’t even feel out of place.” The younger rebuts. Hanzo has many memories coming to mind. Of course they had their different parties with their family… but they only chose one day to invite extended family over, and the Yamagami family too… it usually happened on the closest week-end. Occasionally, it would be exactly on the day of one of their birthdays. They’d have to share.
It’s one of the very first memories he manages to recall without feeling the need to grab a bottle of sake.
“It’s not the right time.” He settles for in the end. Genji hums, but respects his choice. They spend the following hours chatting quietly, with only minor silences lingering behind. It’s only after they’ve finished the tea, and Hanzo can barely hide his trembling with the sun dipping below the horizon, that they come back inside.
Genji and his team leave. The Halloween party comes and goes, with Hanzo watching curiously how the festivity plays out.
The fabled day of November 3rd comes around soon enough. Genji is still on mission. Hanzo wakes up with a text from him wishing him a happy birthday even from his side of the world. Kiriko has sent him a vocal message, and the moment he presses play a chorus consisting of other members of the Yokai chant happy birthday wishes off-key. He smiles minutely, shaking his head. He doesn’t even remember telling her when his birthday is, and she’s surely too young to remember it from their youth.
He thanks all of them. Then he gets up to properly start his day.
As he’s getting dressed, he notices the gift still sitting on his bare desk. It has been there for a while. It’s probably about time he sees what it is.
He pulls the paper away. A black vest sits under it, shaped like a bulky tank top. Hanzo raises it up with a tilt of his head and a raised brow. His chest barely even aches with the movement now, he’s almost completely healed.
As he pulls it up, something falls from it. A small piece of paper, with something scribbled in neat kanji.
‘Please protect yourself, anija’.
Hanzo can’t help the fond scoff that escapes his lips. He’d love to say he doesn’t need it, but he can’t exactly fault Genji for his thinking either. Yet it feels strangely stiff in his hands, almost as if the fabric is structured to not yield to tears. Quickly, he checks the label.
It’s no simple clothing. It’s a bulletproof vest.
He tries it on. Stretchier than he supposed. Not too binding over his bruised chest and ribs. It just leaves his shoulder out enough to not get in the way of his bow. It doesn’t clash terribly with the rest of his clothes. For how much Genji has changed, it seems his artistic eye hasn’t left him.
Well. An extra layer of defense won’t hurt, surely.
When another team is hastily put together to help the one in Havana, Hanzo is the first to volunteer. When the opposing sniper is targeting his brother, he places an arrow right in her shoulder.