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It was karaoke night in the Watch point, and it was nothing short of a miracle who was in the crowd.
Genji had been very, very happy to see his brother. He was smiling, getting closer to him. He doubted Hanzo would sing anything, but he didn’t fault him for it. Having him here was already a win, and old members knew how many of those nights Genji himself had spent glaring at everyone from a corner.
So, he was going to count every little victory.
Lùcio started things off with a bang, making a cover of another song and mixing it in real time. Hana made a duet with him immediately after, warming the audience up. Angela went on the stage next, singing a song half in English and half in German. Reinhardt’s booming voice soon followed as the night proceeded and Lùcio had to lower the microphone’s gain to prevent the speakers from bursting.
Kiriko approached Genji after having made a couple of snarky remarks at Hanzo, that at the very least seemed to have left him in a slightly better mood. Genji tilted his head at her, as his visor was in the way of his raised brow.
She waved her hand, making the most out of the few seconds dance break before Reinheardt started ‘singing’, or really shouting as loud as he could, again.
“I asked him whether he was going to recite some of his haikus.” She replied with a grin. Genji hummed. He obviously imagined what she’d received in reply.
“He still writes poetry?”
“Sometimes, when he’s feeling inspired. A lot less dark than a few of the other things I found he wrote, that’s for sure.”
Genji nodded, this time glad. Hanzo had always been terrible with his emotions, thought he did blame the clan’s upbringing for most of it, but expressing them in rhyme, or on a piece of paper, carefully choosing words and rhetoric, worked best for him. When he was young, Genji had teased him about it to no end, saying how poetry was useless and boring and made no sense.
While he still partly thought that, poetry clearly wasn’t for him, some of Hanzo’s verses had stuck with him. A few had helped him in time of need once he started to scratch below the surface, and Zenyatta had been a great help in that.
So, Hanzo writing happier poems was one of the best pieces of news he could have ever received.
“Any songs?” He asked after a moment, despite the older voice monopolizing their attention. Kiriko tilted her head this time, blinking in surprise.
“Songs?”
“He used to compose. I think it did him good, but I guess he’s been too busy to actually sit down and try something.”
“Hanzo, a songwriter…” She brought a hand to her chin, and looked at the oldest brother. He was sitting alone on a chair they’d borrwed from the mess hall with his hands crossed over his chest, but at the very least his usual scowl had lessened somewhat. He appeared to be enjoying the music, despite the lacking performance. “I wonder what kind of songs he would make.”
Genji tried to remember one, but his head drew a blank. Hanzo’s music had often been traditional, bordering on classical. Definitely nothing he’d listen to for pleasure.
No, wait. Those were the pieces he’d show to the elders and to their father. But Hanzo, in what little free time he had that wasn’t spent training, would sometimes make his own compositions. At the time Genji thought it weird. Hanzo would scribble lyrics and plunk music that was never right and only seemed to get him more frustrated than he already was. Though, looking back on it, perhaps it was another way of exploring and keeping his emotions in check.
When Genji had gone back to destroy the Shimada Clan under Blackwatch… he’d been thorough in his search, even if Hanzo had already left. He’d looked for him anywhere, and when he couldn’t be found, he’d started looking for stuff that was his instead. He’d burned papers and shattered everything that could have belonged to Hanzo to sate his ire. A few things he hadn’t been sure on how to destroy, so he’d carried them back to see if they held any information on where he could have possibly gone.
There were none, and he winced thinking back on his rage and frustration. But, one thing had eventually survived his onslaught.
A demo. A musical demo.
He rose up from his seat. Kiriko watched him, her mouth curling into a smile. “Are you offering for the next song, Genji?”
“In a moment,” he explained. “I have something to grab first.”
Augustin came down from the stage, after a theatrical bow that had the crew clap louder at his performance.
“Can I go next?” Genji asked, back into the room and holding a little and old-fashioned pen drive in tow.
“Sure thing, man! What did you have in mind?” The DJ asked, sweeping through instrumentals and playlists with a flick of his fingers.
“I’d have something here.” He explained, holding the drive out. The other winked at Genji and plugged it in. Selected the song, and Genji leaned over the console to make sure it was the right file.
“What’s your bet on what he’s singing?” Kiriko, back next to Hanzo, asked him.
He shrugged. “Some cheesy love song.”
Kiriko looked unconvinced. “I was thinking more of Super Sentai Opening number three just for giggles, but that also works.”
Hanzo looked back up on the stage, and Genji in the middle of it. He looked somewhat tense. Two women sitting in the front row, Oxton and Doctor Ziegler if he remembered their names correctly, started clapping in encouragement, carrying the rest of the room with them. Hanzo copied their movement on impulse even if he hadn’t actually applauded anyone else for the entire night.
Genji gave a nod to the DJ, and with a swipe of his hand, music started playing.
It was… a strange bass riff, with some oddly tuned-down guitar under it. Fast, sharp as a blade, with drums that felt almost unreal with how frantic they were underneath it all, making Hanzo tense for a reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint. After a full round, a somewhat melodic guitar, though equally as pinched and rapid, joined in, following the same quick set of notes.
It… sounded just like noise, and yet strangely melodic in its own way.
And then all of the room was incredibly surprised, because out of the song itself, a practiced scream was heard. Somewhat dignified, walking a thin line between annoyed and desperate, loud and silent. Controlled, and yet trying to be let loose, only to be kept on a leash. More takes were added a few seconds later, creating a strangely controlled harmony. Something that didn’t make any sense on a shout.
Hanzo felt the hair at the back of his head stand on edge.
Even if it wasn’t uncomfortably long, and soon died out, the guitar and bass continued with their repetitions. Everyone, including him, was stunned as if caught in a trance, until Genji started singing.
“Shotgun blasts and telecaster wrasp
Words sit in a row singing “unhappy”.
Sitting sad as the city cackles back
Don’t you hate the sounds of the muzzle’s cold screams?”
Hanzo muted his gasp, if only not to alert Kiriko, though she’d already trailed her questioning gaze on him. He’d wrapped his hands in front of his chest again, so the shaking wasn’t all too visible. Though now he understood why everything reeked of strangely familiar.
He remembered the frustration, the anger he’d felt at his brother. He’d started writing lyrics and figuring out melodies long before Sojiro had died. Then he’d scrapped everything ‘pleasing’ he’d put into that. The piano lines were cut, the strings he’d thought would soften some parts too. Everything that was left was bare bone. Angry and frantic drums, repetitive and insistent short melodies.
Oh, how he didn’t feel happy in those moments. How he watched over Tokyo, and Hanamura, and thought of all those people, all the things he’d have to do, weighting on his shoulders.
He would have loved to scream. To screw it all. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t how a Kumicho would be expected to act. And he dreaded that, if he started now, he’d never be able to stop.
He swallowed, fearing what was sure to be coming next.
“Watch me belt until my voice is ruined
Wasting all my time I went and blew it
Now that I finally got you there, right where I want
Don’t you think for a second you’re moving on along”
His hand curled around his bicep. He’d written it, yes, but it was a long time ago. He’d written it over moments of weakness. Having a song made against Genji all those years ago be sung by that very same individual, after everything that happened…
An individual who, no matter how much Hanzo would shout and argue with, would never listen to him. All those words, were always lost to the wind. Even when he forced a verbal confrontation onto him.
““Her debut was the perfect kinda new”
My head’s in the clouds full of shoujo manga
Ammo too is all gone from misuse
Guess it’s time to turn back ‘fore the night is all lost”
Yes, his brother would always be after some girl, or losing time in the arcade. No matter what words Hanzo spent, even if the shot round and rounds of words at his brother as if he had a machine gun, lady luck would never bestow a win upon him.
He’d have no choice but to go back home and figure something else out.
“Watch me cheat and take a cheap advantage
As the world all caters to my hand, and”
But at the very least he’d be able to get his revenge. He could order anything to be done to his brother, if he really wished.
…Though Genji would always end up just doing unpretentious work around the castle. Just to try and get a point across.
“Now to this stupid life I will wave “bye bye”
So I’ll see you again, but I’m leaving you behind”
And then abandon him there, because Genji would never follow him in the clan’s way. He constantly made it very clear.
So he started to be farther and father away from Genji.
Hanzo coiled up on himself, a bit more. Looking down did not ease the effect his own music had on him. The noise that was now reverberating on every wall.
“Asking “What’s out of place?” is just leaving me dizzy”
The guitar pinched his ear again, getting under his skin before he could notice it. A chorus backed up the main vocal. And there was something unsettling about the tone of their voices.
“Tell me how do I look at the time that is long outta reach?”
He remembered it still. The sensation of everything falling apart, slip through his fingers, through his control. Control he had to keep. No matter how much part of his heart yearned and wished to go back to much simpler times, he knew that would never be possible.
“I’m as good as can be,”
Even if he tried to make more idle conversation with Genji, it always turned out to be pointless.
This moment, in particular, was still clear in his mind. He was wearing his blue outfit. A bright blue tie he was struggling to knot properly. He’d asked Genji how he looked after a horridly failed attempt.
Genji hadn’t even looked up from whatever game he was playing on his phone.
Hearing his reply in his own voice, even if slightly more robotic, still hit Hanzo right in his heart.
“Lookin good to me.”
Hanzo hadn’t even known what to say then.
“Really?”
It felt like nothing would ever work.
“Really.”
And that rage was nestling inside Hanzo again.
“Really…”
The buildup felt like it was choking him, but Genji simply kept going.
“I guess that my friend that, you’d call me lucky
As I loop through the same old seconds spinning round and round I
Saw it, I thought it, so am I happy?
Yeah go to fuckin hell, that’s news, I’d say, to me.”
That unhappiness. That constant uneasiness. Even after all this time, Hanzo still felt it clawing on his back, dragging him down. No matter what he ended up saying, or doing, following his father’s advice or the choices of the clan; he’d started to get a feeling he would never truly be happy, even back then.
“No matter, the spatter, of noise I dish out
There’s no end or a kind beginning I had ever found so I
Guess in a mess you could say it’s all doubt
Not that you ever would get it, flailing on around”
Not even writing songs had worked its magic eventually. Meaningful lyrics fled Hanzo’s hands. The right notes just wouldn’t come, and this condition only worsened as he grew up. And then he’d almost scrapped everything he made, leaving only a rhythm and an idea.
And Genji.
Genji was still there, doing whatever he wanted, without a care in the world.
“I reach through the screen and who do I see?
A girl flipped off her feet, a world so bittersweet”
“Hanzo?” Kiriko asked under her breath, slightly concerned. Hanzo forced himself to breathe as the early instruments began tormenting them with the same riffs.
Kiriko. He’d forgotten, but he’d managed to stuff her too into those malevolent mutterings that ended up being the lyrics.
He’d tried to keep her as far away as possible from the Clan’s nastier business, even if it meant pushing her, and Asa, and Tojiro, away from the clan. From Hanamura. They ended up in Kanezaka.
They’d grown far apart.
And their worlds, he could tell with a single glance, had always been completely different.
With just the snares punctuating the tempo, Genji’s voice continued.
“Shotguns soar, the telecasters more
No words to be found, simple unlucky
Broken, torn, a game over
Such a pitiful sight, don’t it hurt ya to see?”
There was frustration, even here. No matter how much he’d forced himself to think, no other word came to him to make the third verse. How ironic was it, that Genji’s irksome passion for useless games had made it into his song?
Hanzo really must have looked pitiful, to settle on that.
“After tripping so painfully to see
I gave up on every new repeat”
Hanzo kept collecting losses, and nothing more. They piled up and up, until he was arguing with his brother out of something that felt like routine. Repeating everything one more time, constantly, with the clan breathing down his neck, was getting terribly tiring.
“Rolling on and on was a pain you won’t believe
Rolling on and on had you laughing in glee”
Though Genji’s voice at some point got weaker, it didn’t stop Hanzo from thinking.
No matter his pain. Genji just kept going, deriding him, with that stupid playboy grin on his face.
““Her last tour was the kind you can’t ignore”
The festival dies as we’re sentimental
Votes all for, we split, a new course
Can we turn it around and abandon it all?”
Festivals. They meant flings for Genji. They’d grown so far apart, they barely talked like brothers anymore. Everything tying them together was how similar they were.
Couldn’t they just leave this path they’d taken on, and go their separate ways? Hanzo wouldn’t have to be bothered with Genji anymore, and he was fairly sure his brother was constantly looking for a way to get away from him, and from the clan.
“Watch me belt until my voice is ruined
Wasting all my time I went and blew it!”
Hanzo found himself murmuring his own lyrics under his breath.
The phrase was repeated, but slightly different in the melody, making it sound even more desperate. He would have been amazed by Genji actually hitting all the right notes, was he not so taken by his own inner tumult.
“Now that I finally got you there, right where I want
Say, tell me my friend how you’re going on along?”
Moments with Genji started to become rarer and rarer. The Clan started to get more insisting about Hanzo putting his brother in his place.
He was Kumicho. Surely she should be able to handle his own younger brother.
Yet he saw him slipping through his fingers, like everything else.
“Kept awake by the dreams and it’s driving me crazy”
Everything that came to his mind wouldn’t work. He’d dream of how it would be with his brother by his side. Or how it would be with him gone for good.
“It’s the end of the line for perfect ones never at ease”
But of course they would never come true. And Hanzo felt his chest throbbing with the usual anguish.
He had to be perfect. What kind of perfect Kumicho couldn’t convince his brother of joining in family matters?
“And I’m begging you please for that kind of me”
Even if Hanzo tried to be perfect, he never could be.
“Really?”
He should have been able to.
“Really”
He’d trained his entire life for that.
“Really!”
And he still couldn’t do it.
“Why is it, oh is it, that kind of “happy”?
Empty eyes dulled at 4 am that wander ‘round so lost and I”
Perhaps if he could be perfect he would finally be happy. But he kept working on the song while he should have been resting, but sleep just wouldn’t come.
“Wonder how longer until I’m “happy”?
But I’m just so exhausted, haunted all along”
And the exhaustion would pile up over his shoulder, adding to the weight of everything, until he felt like a ghost of his former self all the time.
“Why is it, oh is it, that kind of “happy”?
As I’m sprawled on a broken road that never seems to end and it’s”
He never would be able to change anything. Not his brother, not the clan. Not everything that needed to be done.
“Falling, it’s falling, apart around me
Well all I know for certain’s that you gotta bend”
Then… his only way to survive would be to abide to the elder’s requests, would it not? Follow their every rule, their every command. Perhaps, if he did what they told him to do, he’d finally be able to bring Genji to his side. Then they could be a family again.
Bend to their will. It was the only thing he could do right.
The rhythm of the song surprised him, going directly for the chorus once more, without giving a single break, just adding to the frenzy in his head.
“I guess that my friend that, you’d call me happy
As I loop through the same old seconds spinning round and round I
Saw it, I thought it, so am I lucky?
Strange cause there’s no reward wherever I can see”
Even then. After everything.
That feeling of happiness kept eluding him.
What was it all for?
“No matter, the spatter, of noise I dish out
There’s no end or a kind beginning I had ever found so I
Guess in a mess you could say it’s all doubt
Right then I guess it’s time we jump and tumble down!”
No matter what Hanzo would do. Nothing would change. Not his beginning, not his end. He couldn’t even change himself. Couldn’t even change his own fate.
Then what was he to do…?
“I reach through the screen and who do I see?
A girl flipped off her feet, a world so bittersweet”
“Hanzo!”
He didn’t register someone shaking of his arm.
“Would that be…”
The final, slightly altered “Happy…?” reverberated through the room. In the same voice that had screamed at the beginning, that was part of the choir, though barely anyone seemed to notice. He remembered recording that himself in a cellar. Where he, and his father before him, held sake and expensive wines.
It was his own voice.
As all the noise was canceled out, more was made. Everyone applauded again, some even got up.
Genji’s performance really had moved them. He had to admit, it worked well with his voice. Even if slightly robotic. He watched as the old egyptian captain made her way to the stage, immediately asking Lùcio to lower the volume and setting up a slower song.
He still couldn’t believe Genji had chosen to sing that, specifically—
Something was slapped on his neck. He flinched, finally getting back in touch with reality. Kiriko was looking up at him, eyes wide and terrified. He barely saw the golden aura of a healing ofuda fading beyond the curvature of his jaw.
He blinked, then got to calmly and carefully tear his hands away from his own arms. They were stinging, and glued with sweat. He might even have bruised himself, he’d see the next day.
“What the hell? I’ve never seen you this much spaced out!” Kiriko voiced, though lower as the clapping died down.
Hanzo waved a stiff hand in front of himself. It felt like his fingers had locked into place. “I’ll be fine.” He said with far more effort than it should have taken him.
Suddenly, a wave of dread passed over her.
“What is this song to you?”
“Anija.”
Hanzo turned to the side, grateful to get away from Kiriko’s staring, but his heart sunk at seeing his brother again. With an old pen drive in hand, the one he’d plugged into Lùcio’s console.
His old pen drive.
He hadn’t brought it with him on his escape from the clan, for obvious reasons. He didn’t even want to know how Genji had acquired it. But that thing held a letter to his frustration. A hate letter to Genji. He couldn’t stand it, he should just destroy it.
Hanzo didn’t respond. He felt like he was going to burst. If one more word escaped his throat, it might as well be a sob.
Genji’s visor angled down. He took Hanzo’s stiff hand and put the drive into it, closing it gently with the free one. The metal felt strange, but not unwelcome, over his skin. He spoke quietly, next. “I realized the meaning of the song halfway through it. I… I’m sorry.”
Hanzo swallowed all the wetness in his throat and finally managed to push a few words out, squeezing his fist until his knuckles turned white. But it still wasn’t enough to break the tiny electronic disk within.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I wrote it. You just wanted to perform it. He wanted to add more, but he felt the sobs choke him.
“I meant…” Genji hesitated, his voice doing something weird to Hanzo’s chest. “For how I used to act.”
Hanzo looked up at him, now. This time in utter bafflement. Words fled his mind, so Genji kept going, slightly squeezing his hand. He sounded… remorseful.
“I… would taunt you. Test your hand in front of the clan. I made it all… rather stressful for you, I see that clearly, now. Even when confronted with your words, I would just provoke you further, see as far as I could push you. My actions must have caused you a lot of pain. I apologize for that.”
Hanzo didn’t know what to say. Genji wasn’t guilty of not following in the steps of a criminal family, they’d talked about that before. So he shouldn’t be accepting the apology, considering that in order to ease Hanzo’s stress, he should have done exactly that. Something he’d made clear he didn’t want to do.
But a moment later made him realize that was not what Genji was apologizing for. It was for causing him pain, even if just on an emotional level, a level he should have had more control over, and Hanzo didn’t know what to do with that.
Nobody had ever apologized for causing him distress before. Not their father, not the clan, and definitely not the countless assassins that had relentlessly tracked him down in the last decade. Not even Genji, not even when they were boys. He’d have to be the mature one, to take responsibility, to apologize without really meaning it to keep family ties from crumbling.
Genji’s apology didn’t feel like that at all. It was sincere and heartfelt and it was doing things to him.
He shouldn’t be impeded by something as flimsy as an emotion. Why would someone apologize to make him feel something, to make him feel bad? As Kumicho, he should have been able to overcome whatever strange test his heart decided to put him through.
And yet, those words… he felt defensless. But not vulnerable. Mostly, strangely… understood. He didn’t know what to say, and his eyes were starting to itch.
Genji was still tense. Hanzo slowly bowed his head, looking to the side. Then took a step forward. Placed his head in the nook between Genji’s head and shoulder. Not quite a hug, he wasn’t ready to see his hands encircling his brother’s throat again, but he closed his eyes and breathed as deep as he could.
Hesitant hands slowly trailed up his back, in a movement so slow Hanzo could predict where they would land next and pull away at any moment. He didn’t, and they settled, crossed and featherlight, on his shoulders. A third hand joined on his back. Smaller, slightly swaying over his clothes in comforting and circling motions.
Kiriko.
She who knew a world that was so different, and yet still tried to see his own.
“So…” Genji asked after a moment, in which Hanzo didn’t really want to pull away, so he only opened his eyes. This close, he could feel mechanisms and organic systems moving in tandem as he swallowed. His heart drummed in his chest, worndering what he’d done wrong, what was making Genji still so distraught. “Am I forgiven? …I can do something to make it up to you, if you wish.”
He sounded tense. Hanzo realized just now he’d not given any actual response as his heartrate spiked again. Half a nod could mean anything, even just a simple assessment. How stupid he’d been.
“No need. You are forgiven.” He said, his voice smaller than he thought it would be. Genji sighed in relief, and Kiriko behind him too. He urged himself to keep going, though his voice was raspy, as well. “If you can… forgive everything that has… happened, between us, I… I can let go of a few things of the past.”
Genji straightened. The hands supporting Hanzo tightened around him, and Genji got more comfortable, pushing his head so it was leaning against Hanzo’s. So the sides of their faces were joined at the cheek. He found himself pushing back against him, even if just to feel the warming metal. He dared to encircle Genji’s lower back with his empty hand, just out of sight.
“That’s everything I was hoping to hear, brother.”