Chapter Text
Hanzo had a plan. The past few days had left him such an emotional wreck, he didn’t even know what to feel any more. He had experienced many days like this before Genji showed up alive and well, though they were, on the whole, brought on by soul-crushing depression. This, on the other hand, was a whole new type of unpleasant. He felt like he was a rock that someone had tossed down a rocky cliff, leaving him tumbling, helplessly disoriented, each impact against the cliff chipping away at him as he fell.
He had his own private quarters and a sense of relative safety; of not needing to sleep with one eye open in case of an ambush. And so, even though it wasn’t yet seven o’clock in the evening, he planned on getting thoroughly drunk.
Hanzo knew exactly just how much sake he needed to drink tonight. He had a bottle of Wakatake Onikoroshi Tokubetsu Junmai Genshu, also known as “Demon Slayer,” and he still wasn’t sure if he liked it because of its rich, creamy flavor of berries, plums, and cinnamon, or the supremely apt name.
Six cups of this sweet 20% genshu sake, sipped slowly over the course of an hour, would leave him loose and relaxed, and just this side of unconscious. It was enough to allow him to sleep without dreams for at least the first five hours of the night. Drunken sleep was far from ideal, but it was better than the alternative. Still, it could only stave off the inevitable for so long. When the nightmare finally hit, it would be around two or three in the morning, and that would give him plenty of time to sober up completely and be ready for team training at 7 am.
He changed into some comfortable bed clothes – navy sweat pants, and a soft grey cotton t-shirt he had picked up somewhere in Malaysia that depicted Godzilla shredding on a guitar. He sat cross-legged on his bed, sake cup resting on one knee while he balanced his holo-pad on the other, and read through the dossiers of the other members of Overwatch.
He was deeply relieved to discover that he did not yet have a dossier. As his gradual intake of sake loosened his hold on sobriety, he worked up the nerve to ask Athena about it.
“Given that much of your history is known,” she answered, “your brother thought it important that you be given the opportunity to make your own first impression.” Hanzo nodded, frowning, then paused as another thought occurred to him.
“Athena, are you always in my room?” He found the prospect of being constantly monitored by the AI deeply troubling.
“No, Agent Shimada,” Athena said, sounding almost amused. “I am like any other guest. If you call for me, I am notified, and I will come. When we are finished with our business, I will leave.”
“Ah,” Hanzo said. “That is good to know. You may call me Hanzo if you wish.” He sighed. “I believe it will take me a while to get used to being called agent.”
“Very well, Hanzo.”
Hanzo found that Athena was perfectly agreeable company – there in a moment at his call, gone as soon as his questions were answered. So it wasn’t in complete solitude that he read through each dossier (except for McCree’s, he would read that last, maybe even wait until tomorrow to read it, because who said he had to read everyone’s dossiers in one night? It certainly wasn’t because he thought that doing so might aggravate his already-aggravating fascination with the man). As he read, if some particular detail struck him as interesting, he would ask Athena for more details. Athena seemed happy enough to share anything about the recalled Overwatch members that wasn’t classified, and even found him web articles covering their exploits, allowing him to see the public’s varying perspectives on his new teammates.
A little over an hour after he began his methodical consumption of sake, Hanzo was feeling very relaxed and pleasantly buzzed as he read an old Atlas News article on Tracer’s Slipstream accident, with various scientists chiming in with their theories on what went wrong. Not exactly the stuff of grand adventure, and he wasn’t sure if it was boredom, exhaustion or alcohol that made the words blur before his eyes. He felt sleep tugging heavily at his eyes and limbs. Time to rest, then, in blessed, dreamless, drunken oblivion.
He set his tablet on the bedside table, fumbled with screwing the lid back on the sake bottle before setting it on the floor, and was about to fall back and let his head hit the pillow when there was a knock on the door.
He only knew of one person who had such horrendous timing, and he groaned aloud. “Go away, Genji!”
“Actually,” said a muffled voice on the other side of the door that was definitely not Genji, “it’s Jesse. McCree,” he added, as if unsure if Hanzo remembered him.
Hanzo remembered him. He remembered Jesse McCree plenty, thank you very much, and he also remembered Genji’s parting taunt from earlier, that he would send McCree up to “keep him company.”
Memories flooded Hanzo mind – memories of a much younger, much more reckless and pleasure-seeking Genji sending people to his room to “keep him company.” All such incidents ended with him throwing those people out of the castle, and then giving Genji a stinging lecture about having a modicum of decency, all while Genji laughed at him and told him to loosen up and enjoy himself for once.
Hanzo thought of Jesse McCree standing on the other side of his bedroom door and felt his face flush with fury and embarrassment. He got off the bed and stood, staring indignantly at his door – well, as indignantly as he could as the room dipped and swayed around him, and he realized that he might be a bit more drunk than he realized.
That was not about to stop him from giving the apparently-promiscuous cowboy a piece of his mind.
“Jesse McCree,” he shouted at the closed door, “I do not know what Genji has told you, or what kind of person you think I am, but I am not one to indulge in meaningless physical pleasure with a man just because I find him attractive!”
“Um—” McCree said, but Hanzo cut him off, not willing to hear anything from that smooth, deep voice that might convince him to open the door.
“We’re supposed to be professionals!” He stomped forward, staggering in a rather unprofessional manner. “So you can just take your rugged, handsome face,” he said, gesturing at the door as if McCree could see him, “and those… those shoulders, and, and by the heavens, do you even know what your chest looks like? Those arms? The rippling muscles of your back…” Hanzo trailed off and shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to clear the pleasant buzz – or was it an alarm? – from his mind. “Just take all of that, go away, and leave me in peace!”
There was a long silence on the other side of the door; long enough that Hanzo wondered if McCree had wisely taken his leave.
Then McCree cleared his throat. “So…” he said, his muffled voice slow and stunned. “Genji went into town with Lena for a supply run and asked if I would drop off some dinner for you. Said you weren’t feeling well. So I’m, uh… I’m just gonna leave this tray here by the door, okay?”
Hanzo suddenly, fervently wished that the great Rock of Gibraltar, or rather, the part of the Rock specifically above his quarters, would suddenly crumble and bury him.
Moments passed, and the Rock refused to comply.
Hanzo stared at the closed door, and then, like a man facing execution, plodded unsteadily forward and pushed the button on the wall that let the door slide open.
Jesse McCree was kneeling, setting a tray of food on the floor next to the door. He looked up in surprise, and Hanzo couldn’t help but notice the flush across his cheeks. McCree’s raised brows, wide eyes and cautious expression gave him the look of a man who had been minding his own business and had inadvertently stumbled upon a coiled pit viper in his path.
Hanzo steadied himself against the door frame, hoping he wasn’t being too obvious about needing the support, and looked directly into McCree’s eyes. “Forget everything I just said,” he ordered flatly.
His words seemed to shake McCree from his shock, and his wary expression slowly morphed into one of wry amusement. “Why would I go and do a fool thing like that?” he asked, getting back to his feet. “Those are the nicest things anyone’s said about me in a month of Sundays, and coming from a fine-looking man like you, I can’t help but take ‘em as a compliment.”
McCree, standing at full height, easily had several centimeters on him, and Hanzo found himself looking up instead of down. “Please don’t,” he said, weary and irritable as the alcohol left him feeling dizzy and disoriented. “They are sentiments that should have been left unspoken.”
“Yeah,” McCree said, scrubbing at his beard with one hand. “Nice as it was, this whole business has been… kinda awkward.”
Hanzo thought McCree was severely understating the matter, and would have said so, but McCree continued. “Now, I’m not sure what Genji told you about me, but I assure you, my motives for this visit are pure as the driven snow.” He gestured at the tray of food next to the door.
“Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” Hanzo said, desperately trying for dignity, but feeling like he sounded more like a sullen child.
“No,” McCree said, giving him a narrow, discerning look. “You’re just drunker than a skunk, partner. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not one to hold a man to anything he might say while he’s a good three or four sheets to the wind.”
“A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts,” Hanzo said. The words came automatically. He seemed to remember someone saying that to him on more than one occasion, and as he repeated them, he felt like he was expounding great wisdom even as the rest of him wondered how quickly he could pass out and escape this embarrassment.
McCree winced, even as he chuckled. “Yeah, you’re just digging that hole deeper, ain’t you. Maybe it’s time for you to sleep that off.”
“I was planning on doing just that, when you showed up,” Hanzo said in his most imperious voice, but the slur in his speech ruined the effect. “You interrupted me.”
McCree huffed a laugh and actually tipped his hat at him. “Well, I beg your pardon for that.”
Hanzo desperately needed this conversation to end, so he let go of the door frame, turned sharply to walk back to his bed, and would have face-planted on the floor with his first step if McCree hadn’t been there to grab his arm and steady him.
“Let go of me,” he growled as McCree guided him toward his bed. “I do not need your help.”
“Uh-huh,” McCree said. As they reached the bed, McCree continued to hold him steady with one arm while throwing back the blankets with the other. The next thing Hanzo knew, he was sitting on the edge of his bed with the covers turned down.
“I’m guessing you can handle it from here,” said McCree, and though Hanzo’s vision was blurring, he could hear the smirk in the cowboy’s voice. He didn’t dignify that with a response, and instead churlishly flopped onto the bed, turning onto his side with his back to McCree.
He didn’t want to fall asleep with McCree still in the room, but the alcohol in his veins was taking that decision out of his hands. Muzzily, he heard the slosh of sake as McCree picked the bottle off the floor. “Onikoroshi,” McCree said, reading the label. “Demon Slayer.” He heaved a heavy sigh, a sound completely bereft of his earlier humor, and there was a slight clink as he set the bottle on the side table. “Know how you feel, friend.”
Then he thought he heard McCree say, “Athena? Keep an eye on him for a few minutes, would you? I’m gonna grab a couple bottles of water and some of Angie’s hangover meds. I’ll be right back.”
“Of course, Jesse,” the AI responded warmly, and then Hanzo’s consciousness flickered out.
As Lena pulled the supply truck up to the loading bay, Genji, sitting in the passenger seat next to her, saw the glowing end of Jesse’s cigar flare in the darkness of the unlit garage. The glow briefly lit Jesse’s scowling face, and Genji knew he was in trouble.
“Uh-oh,” Lena said, catching Jesse in the truck’s headlights just as he blew the smoke out through clenched teeth. “What did you do?”
Genji looked at her, affronted. “What makes you think he’s mad at me?”
“Because I never do anything to piss him off,” Lena said glibly. “Whereas you two have a history of going for each other’s throats.”
Genji looked at her, askance. “That was one time,” he protested.
“At least three times, mate.” Lena ticked them off on her fingers. “One time at the Swiss HQ mess hall, another at a bar in Bangladesh, and yet another right here in the practice simulator.”
Genji stared a moment before spluttering, “How do you even know about the first two times? You weren’t there!”
“Word gets around.” Lena gave him a cheeky grin. “There was even a betting pool on which of you would kill the other one first. You and Jesse broke a lot of hearts when you two worked out your differences and became friends.”
“You’re joking,” Genji said, giving her a flat look. “I would have heard about a betting pool.”
“Nope!” Lena said, opening the truck door and sliding out. “I think you underestimate just how terrifying you two were back then. Anyway, I’m going to go get Reinhardt to help me unload this thing. You should go apologize to Jesse for whatever you did. Ta!” She closed the door and skipped off without another word.
Genji looked over at Jesse, and fought the urge to swallow hard, because, as another pull on the cigar lit the cowboy’s face in the darkness, he could see that the scowl was indeed directed right at him.
Well, whatever he had done, at least he and Jesse were friends now. If this had happened back in his early days at Blackwatch, there would have been real trouble that would have ended with them both in the infirmary.
He well remembered their first two fights at the mess hall and the bar. He couldn’t remember exactly how they started except that Jesse had been provoking him, and back then he was easily provoked. It had infuriated him, how the big, slow, clumsy goof of a cowboy ended up not being either slow, clumsy or goofy when attacked. Genji actually had to work to get past Jesse’s defenses, often at the expense of leaving himself open to a hit. The fights had been broken up by Reyes before any mortal injuries could be inflicted, and Morrison had wanted them both court martialed.
The court martial ended up not happening because both he and Jesse were too valuable to Overwatch and Blackwatch. After the Rialto debacle, Morrison decided that they couldn’t afford to lose two of their best agents, even if they kept trying to kill each other, especially since he still needed Genji’s help to dismantle the Shimada empire.
After the second fight, instead of getting court martialed, Genji and Jesse had bathroom-cleaning duty at separate Watchpoints for a month. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that some of the rank and file had taken their punishment as permission to leave special messes just for them. Genji couldn’t help but wince at the memory.
It was the third fight in the practice simulator that had finally changed things. It wasn’t even much of a fight. It was more of Jesse talking him down from a violent, bitter rage. He had felt so lost at the time, not knowing who or what he was any more. In his mind, his humanity only existed in bits of flesh and bone wired to machinery. He was little more than a tool, no better than the bots he was sparring against, and he furiously shouted as much as he attacked them with nothing but destruction on his mind. Bots, equipment, computer terminals, the very walls, he slashed at all of them with impunity, wanting to ruin everything the way he was ruined.
Gone was control, gone was form and discipline, gone was his very sanity until Jesse had grabbed his arm, wrenched his sword out of his fingers – something that would not have been possible had he been in his right mind – and slugged him hard across the jaw, sending him sprawling.
Genji came to his senses lying on his back and looking up into the barrel of Peacekeeper. Jesse stood over him, his right eye glinting red. “You listen here, Shimada,” Jesse said, his voice cold and flat. “You ain’t what you used to be, but you ain’t no toaster either. You’re alive. You got a soul. And you know what? Omnics? They got souls too.” He pointed to his red eye. “I know because my Deadeye can’t kill anything that doesn’t have a soul, a shining spark of real life in it. I look at an omnic, I see that light, I can kill it. I look at a human, I can kill it. I look at an animal, I can kill it.”
“Good for you,” Genji said, glaring at Jesse, his jaw aching. “What is your point? Or do you even have one?”
Without taking his eyes off Genji, Jesse tilted his head toward the metal carnage he had unleashed. “Those bots you destroyed? I can’t take them down with anything but my natural skill. I can’t kill bots with my Deadeye. I can’t kill a toaster, or a truck, or an airship. I can’t kill something that’s just a tool or a weapon.”
Jesse raised Peacekeeper until the barrel of the gun was aiming right between Genji’s eyes. “But I can kill you with my Deadeye. You got a light in you so bright, I have to constantly fight against this damned eye’s natural urge to snuff it out. More than that, you got your dragon blazing in you like green fire. You think that dragon would stay with you if you were really any less than what you were before your brother tried to kill you?”
Jesse’s words, spoken with such absolute conviction, had left Genji stunned and speechless. He had stared up at Jesse wordlessly until the cowboy sighed, shook his head, holstered Peacekeeper, and walked out the simulation room.
Genji didn’t want to admit it at first, but that encounter changed him. Jesse, who could ramble on and on without actually saying anything just to fill the silence, and who never talked about his Deadeye, had spoken to him plainly about it for the sole purpose of trying to help him understand himself better. It opened questions in his mind that he had never considered before – questions that would eventually lead him to a certain monastery in Nepal where he would lose any last remnant of prejudice he held against omnics and would learn to accept himself, cyborg parts and all.
They didn’t become best friends right away after that. But Genji stopped giving Jesse the sullen silent treatment, and as the weeks passed, they actually had a few normal conversations. Jesse, apparently taking that as a good sign, relaxed around him, joked with him, and Genji found himself feeling more like his old self – something he hadn’t considered possible before.
A little over a month after the incident in the simulation room, Jesse had invited him to participate in a prank war against other Blackwatch personnel. There was a grim atmosphere permeating the ranks as Blackwatch was slowly exposed to the world by a rabid media, and morale amongst the agents was at an all-time low. So Jesse recruited him to help “lighten things up,” as he put it.
And lighten things up they did. He and Jesse became partners in crime in pranking Blackwatch agents, and many of the agents gleefully retaliated. There was glorious escalation on both sides, and Genji couldn’t remember having so much fun since he was a kid. It was a great game with only one unspoken rule: Don’t put anyone in the hospital.
Of course, there were some agents who disapproved and sneered at their “childish antics,” but Genji didn’t care. The Great Blackwatch Prank War of 2069 gave them something to dwell on other than the rapidly deteriorating relations between Overwatch and the UN. He and Jesse “lightened things up” so much in Blackwatch that Morrison only half-heartedly threatened them with court martial, and Reyes would glare at them whenever he saw them hanging out together. “I liked it better when you hated each other,” he would growl, but there was always just the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Well, they didn’t hate each other then, and they didn’t hate each other now. Genji took comfort in that as he hopped out of the truck, closed the door behind him, and headed over to where Jesse, glowering in the glow of his cigar, waited in the dark garage.
“Yo, Jesse,” Genji said, raising an arm in greeting. “What brings you out here to welcome me back on this fine evening? I thought you and Athena were going to be working on planning tomorrow’s team exercises.”
Jesse stared at him with a narrow-eyed look without saying anything long enough for Genji to really wonder what he could have done to get his friend so irritated. Maybe because he had been waiting so long for Genji to return? The ash at the end of his cigar was a good four centimeters long, with no sign of breaking off.
Finally, Jesse took another pull on his cigar and exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “So. Genji. You care to explain how it is that when I went to drop off some dinner for your brother, he thought I was there for another reason entirely?”
Genji felt completely baffled. Another reason entirely? What could Hanzo have thought that would—
He suddenly remembered his parting words to his brother, and his eyes widened. “Oh no.”
Jesse scowled. “Oh yes.”
Genji couldn’t help it. He laughed.
That did not improve Jesse’s mood in the slightest. “It ain’t funny,” he growled.
“I was joking,” Genji said, trying to swallow his laughter, knowing that Jesse wanted him to take this seriously.
“Clearly Hanzo didn’t get the joke,” Jesse said sourly. “What did you say to him?”
The laughter died in Genji’s throat as he thought about trying to explain how, back before everything went so wrong, he would send high-priced courtesans and prostitutes to Hanzo’s room in an effort to loosen him up a bit because he always worked so hard and never allowed himself to have fun. It never worked because Hanzo turned them all away.
He thought about trying to explain to Jesse that those simple, teasing words of ‘I’ll send Jesse to keep you company’ had inadvertently put Jesse in the role of a prostitute in Hanzo’s mind.
He swallowed. “Uh…” he said eloquently.
But apparently the story, or at least the general gist of it, was written in his face. Jesse groaned, looking like he’d had his worst fears confirmed. “You know what? Never mind.” He sighed. “If I’m lucky, he won’t remember any of it tomorrow. He was pretty wasted.”
Genji frowned. “Wait, he was drunk?”
“Yup,” Jesse said wearily. “Looked like he’d been wrung out of a bartender’s rag. Drinking himself to sleep from the look of things.”
Genji’s brow furrowed in concern. Jesse would know; he did it often enough himself, in spite of Angela’s disapproval, and long-standing offer of sleep-aids. Jesse said the pills made his nightmares worse, so until she came up with some meds that didn’t make him wake up screaming in the night, he’d “rather just pay the price of a hangover, thank you very much.”
Apparently, coming up with a hangover cure was easier and less time-consuming than working through the chemical intricacies of Jesse’s brain. He was shocked when Angela gave him the new medication. “If I can’t help you sleep, and I can’t stop you from drinking,” she had said, “I can at least make sure you don’t have a hangover when you need to work.” Jesse was so touched, he had taken off his hat and held it over his chest with both hands as he thanked her.
Genji sighed. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m truly sorry. I did not mean for Hanzo to take my words in such a way.” He bit his upper lip, wincing. “Though… in retrospect, it’s difficult to see how he could take them any other way.” He sighed. “I will apologize to him tomorrow.”
Jesse nodded. “You do that.”
It looked like he was about to say something else, but at that moment there was a loud click, and all the lights in the garage flooded on. Jesse winced, but Genji’s eyes immediately adjusted to see that Lena and Reinhardt were looking at them as they headed toward the truck.
“Ah,” Reinhardt said cheerfully. “You boys are not fighting. Good, good! You can help us with the unloading then!”
“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to bow out on the unloading,” Jesse said, tipping his hat. “I got a date with Athena. But Genji here can help enough for both of us!” Jesse clapped Genji on the back hard enough to make him stumble forward a step. Genji gave him a half-hearted glare, and Jesse gave him a lazy smile.
“Ah, yes, you must plan for tomorrow’s training,” Reinhardt said. “Go then, we will take care of things here.”
Before Genji could protest, Lena blipped next to him and took his arm. “Come on, mate, you can’t just do the shopping and skip out on the rest,” she said, altogether too chipper as she dragged him toward the truck. Then she leaned toward him conspiratorially and whispered, “You and Jesse are still friends, right?”
“Yes,” Genji said, glancing back and smiling a little as Jesse disappeared through the Watchpoint’s main entrance. “Still friends.”
The nightmare that woke Hanzo from sleep was right on schedule. He came awake lying on his back, gasping, heart thudding in his chest, his head pounding in sympathetic rhythm. He rolled onto his side with a moan and saw that the time, floating in green numbers above his holopad on the bedside table, read 0227.
He stared at it, unmoving, the nightmare still roiling in his mind.
His nightmare rarely changed. The details often differed, but they were always variations on the same theme. Genji, lying shredded, bloody and broken at his feet. His own hands held out in front of him, stained scarlet and dripping. Sometimes Genji’s eyes were closed, sometimes they were open, staring and accusing even as the light within faded. Sometimes the sword was still in his hands. Sometimes his clan surrounded the two of them in a tight circle, cheering, clapping, congratulating him on following through with his duty all while he tore at his hair and screamed and screamed.
Tonight’s nightmare had been different.
Genji still laid at his feet, dead and broken, but Hanzo’s hands were clean. On the other side of Genji’s body, McCree knelt. He was in a full cowboy get-up, including a strange, bright red blanket draped around his shoulders. His arms were outstretched as if he wished he could take Genji’s body in his arms, but didn’t dare.
Then he looked up at Hanzo, his expression devastated, mournful, pleading. His right eye – his Deadeye – was a solid, burning spark of red, and weeping blood down his cheek.
And, in the way of dream logic, Hanzo understood that McCree had killed Genji.
McCree had killed Genji, and yet, somehow, it was still Hanzo’s fault. The guilt was all his own.
It made no sense. It was unsettling. He hated his usual nightmare, but he knew where it came from. He understood how the pain of his guilt clawed its way into his dreams and manifested in all those variations on a theme.
This… he had no idea where the hell this came from.
Well, it hardly mattered. A nightmare was a nightmare was a nightmare, and he would deal with it the way he always did.
He groped unsteadily for the lamp on the bedside table, wincing when the light came on. He squinted his eyes shut, waiting for the spikes of pain in his eyes to fade to manageable levels, then carefully levered himself into a sitting position. His stomach lurched, his head swam, and he kept his eyes closed and held very still until both sensations settled to bearable levels.
Water was first on the agenda. Get hydrated and take something for the headache. Shower, then food if he could stomach it.
Bracing himself, he opened his eyes and noticed that there was something on the bedside table that he couldn’t remember putting there. Two large bottles of water sat on top of a folded sheet of paper, upon which his name was written in English. Along side the paper was a square of folded wax paper that held two capsules of a medicine he had never seen before. Grabbing the folded square, he tipped the pills into his hand, and saw that the capsules contained a strange, goldish liquid.
Frowning, he moved the water and unfolded the paper. Inside was a note from Jesse McCree.
The memories of his last few minutes of drunken consciousness flooded back to him.
He knew from experience that grief and guilt could not kill him, but now he wondered if it was possible to die of pure mortification. Well, at least he now had an idea of why McCree had invaded his usual nightmare.
By all the gods in all the heavens, had he actually said those things to McCree? How was he ever going to look the man in the face ever again?
Hanzo held his head in both hands for a good long while, his fingers pressing against his aching temples, before he could bring himself to read the note.
McCree had surprisingly neat handwriting. He didn’t use cursive, but instead wrote in small all-caps print.
Hanzo,
Here’s some water for your hangover. The gold pills are Dr. Zeigler’s special hangover remedy.
There’s nanites involved, not sure how they work, but they take care of the headache, dizziness
and nausea right quick. Once they fix you up, your body will get rid of the nanites naturally,
but the side effect is that your piss will be neon orange for about a day.
Take the pills as soon as you wake up and you’ll be feeling right as rain in no time.
Genji’s been boasting about your sniper skills for weeks now. Looking forward to seeing
how you measure up. Team exercises start at 0700 sharp. See you then.
Jesse McCree
Hanzo read it twice to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. There wasn’t much he could glean from a written note, but there didn’t seem to be any derision or condescension in McCree’s words. The cowboy wasn’t taking the opportunity to joke at his expense; in fact, his straight-forward tone seemed designed to spare Hanzo further embarrassment.
He eyed the pills sitting in his palm suspiciously. A hangover cure? Dr. Zeigler didn’t seem like the type to create something so convenient for such a bad health habit as regularly getting smashed. He looked at the pills long enough that his natural paranoia started to kick in, and he began to imagine that they were poisoned or drugged. That all of this – Genji bringing him to Overwatch – was just a farce to get him here, incapacitate him, and then Genji could take slow, sure vengeance…
He was being ridiculous, and he knew it. Before his imagination could conjure up another ludicrous scenario, he swallowed the pills and washed them down with over half of one of the bottles of water. By the time he had answered the call of nature and had showered away the alcohol sweat, the hangover was almost completely gone. By the time he had dressed in loose robe and combed the tangles out of his wet hair, he felt, as McCree had said, “right as rain.”
So here he was, hangover-free, standing in the middle of his room at a little after 3 a.m. wide awake with four hours to kill before he had to present himself at team practice. He knew exactly what he wanted to do.
Sitting down on his bed, leaning against the backboard, he picked up his holopad and looked up Jesse McCree’s dossier.
It was disappointingly brief. McCree had been part of the Deadlock gang and was seventeen years old when he was arrested during the Overwatch operation that finally killed Deadlock leader Earl Cooper.
Hanzo frowned. He had never met the infamous Earl Cooper, but his father had, and the stories he told of the man were mingled with admiration and disgust. Apparently, when Cooper had taken over leadership of the then-unknown Deadlock biker gang, he had grand plans – plans that included following in Pablo Escobar’s footsteps and becoming an international crime lord specializing in drugs and arms dealing.
At the beginning of Earl Cooper’s climb to power, his main tools had been blackmail, bribes, murder, and buying the love of the people. He blackmailed anyone he couldn’t bribe, murdered anyone who tried to get in his way, and poured money into building homes and infrastructure into poor desert communities, providing jobs, and boosting the local economy. Soon local governments were in his pocket, then governors, all the way up to the US Senate.
As far as other gangs in the southern States and northern Mexico, Deadlock either absorbed them into itself, or destroyed them. All except Los Muertos, which was a powerful-enough entity to hold its own against Deadlock’s ever-growing influence. Some of the skirmishes between the two gangs were legendary.
The real turning point for Deadlock came when Earl Cooper invented a weapon of mass destruction – some sort of fast-acting bio-weapon that killed instantly upon contact. Then the real massacres started. Humans and omnics alike were slaughtered en masse at rallies protesting against him until the rallies stopped happening. Lesser gangs that didn’t fall into line were wiped out. A contingent of the US National Guard was destroyed when they laid siege to Cooper’s luxury compound.
Finally, Overwatch intervened. They stormed Deadlock Gorge and destroyed the heart of the gang, killing hundreds of gang members – including Earl Cooper. Hanzo remembered his father scoffing at the news, and saying that perhaps Mr. Cooper should have chosen a role model who didn’t end his career by being gunned down by international law enforcement.
Jesse McCree was not among those killed during the operation, and because of his youth, he was given the choice of life in a maximum-security prison without parole, or working for Blackwatch. McCree chose Blackwatch, and that was that.
No mention of his family, no story of his past; of why he joined Deadlock in the first place. Hanzo began to suspect that McCree was probably just one more war orphan that joined a gang because he had nowhere else to go.
Sighing in frustration over the lack of information the dossier provided, Hanzo turned to the internet. Top search results informed him that McCree’s bounty was now at an even sixty million dollars, and he was wanted for… well, it was easier to list the things he wasn’t wanted for. There were plenty of articles debating whether or not McCree was a hero or villain, vigilante or criminal; whether his work in Overwatch balanced out any crimes he might have committed as a member of Deadlock.
Hanzo started to notice a pattern with opinion pieces written by one Joel Morricone, who often effervescently praised McCree’s actions in defending the defenseless – including an incident at his favorite ramen shop in Hanamura – and he couldn’t help but eye Mr. Morricone’s initials suspiciously.
The deeper he dove into the search results, the more he started to find articles about McCree that were… strange, to say the least. There were several conspiracy websites that claimed that he was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. No one seemed to be able to agree on which horseman he was, though the majority seemed to favor Death. Some argued against that theory, saying that no one had ever actually seen McCree riding a pale horse, but the rebuttal was that the horse was a metaphor. Someone had seen him ride a black motorcycle once, so he could be Famine, they reasoned. Others said that Famine didn’t fit his persona, and besides, the motorcycle had lots of red flames painted on it, so he could be War. And what about the red serape he was often seen wearing? See? That proves he’s War.
And so on, ad nauseum.
The more Hanzo looked, the more outrageous the headlines seemed to get, and the less hope he had of finding anything actually informative.
Jesse McCree’s Deadeye is a Cybernetic Gift from Aliens to Fight Omnics
Details inside!
Breaking! Jesse “Deadeye” McCree Robs Train, Loses Payload!
Has the Infamous Outlaw Lost His Touch?
Former Overwatch Hero Jesse McCree a Pyrokinetic Responsible for Warehouse Fire?
“He was looking right at it when it exploded and burst into flames!” witness says.
There were pages upon pages of similar results. Hanzo groaned, and was about to give up on finding anything useful or true about McCree when another strange search result caught his eye.
Jesse “Deadeye” McCree Secrets Exposed!
WHAT IS THE DEADEYE?
Exclusive Interviews with Former Deadlock Captain Mateo Velazquez, and
Jesse McCree’s Own Navajo Great-Grandmother Reveal All!
Don’t miss our next issue!
Hanzo stared at the headline for a moment. This one search result had just given him more personal information about McCree than any article he had read thus far – McCree’s great-grandmother was Navajo, and she agreed to be interviewed about him. It was his most promising lead so far.
The website was called The Roswell Nexus, which was already a bad sign. It was just another conspiracy website filled with stories about UFO sightings, ghosts, and Bigfoot, and the page he’d pulled up was from the archives, with the publishing date listed as June 23rd, 2067, Issue Number 875. Nine years ago. The main story was about how Skinwalkers had been seen several nights in a row in Borrego Pass along Navajo Service Road 48, and that travelers should take appropriate precautions.
The headline that he had touched was at the very bottom of the page, promising the story in the next issue, so he touched the link.
He was brought to The Roswell Nexus, July 11th, 2067, Issue Number 877.
Frowning, he touched the “Previous Issue” link, and was brought right back to Issue 875 and the Skinwalker story. He tried again, this time going right into the web address and changing the 875 to 876. He was immediately redirected to Issue 877.
What sort of nonsense was this? He finally finds an article that seems like it might actually hold some interesting information, and the website keeps skipping over it?
“Athena?” he said.
There was a pause, then a soft chime announcing her presence. “Yes, Hanzo?”
“I’ve encountered a frustrating dilemma. I’m looking for The Roswell Nexus, Issue 876, and the website keeps skipping over it, taking me to the issues before and after. Would you scan the website and see if you can find it?”
“Very well,” Athena said. Then, after a moment, she said, “I’m sorry, Hanzo, but that issue does not appear anywhere on their website or their servers.”
“Perhaps there is a copy of it, somewhere else?” he asked. “Maybe a screen shot in a forum? Stashed away in some internet archive?”
“One moment, please.” Athena’s silence was several minutes longer, but still faster than Hanzo thought would be possible for her to scan through the entire internet. “I can find no trace of the file you are looking for,” she said at last, actually sounding puzzled. “Perhaps it was never posted at all.”
Hanzo had suspected as much, but it was still disappointing to hear. “Thank you for checking, Athena. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“It’s no problem,” she said. “Goodnight.” A soft chime sounded again, telling him Athena had left his room.
Hanzo wasn’t quite ready to give up. The very mystery of the absence of the one article he actually wanted to read made him press on. He went to The Roswell Nexus home page and found the contact information. All that was listed was a post office box in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a phone number. Santa Fe was eight hours behind Gibraltar, so if it was 0432 here, then it would be 8:32 p.m. there. Still within reasonable hours to receive phone calls.
He reached for his phone, then hesitated.
Why was he doing this?
Yes, he had looked up articles on the other Overwatch members to learn more about them, with the hope that, with that knowledge, he could be a better teammate. And he had also found several strange conspiracy articles about them, especially about Winston and Tracer – mostly uncreative drivel about time travel and moon aliens. But why was he going to such lengths to track down an article about McCree that might not even exist?
If he was going to do this, he at least wanted to be honest with himself. Too many times over the past ten years, he had ignored his own motives, acting on impulse instead of taking a moment to self-reflect and question why.
So why was he doing this?
Because McCree was a mystery. Dangerous, beautiful, and completely baffling. McCree knew the worst things he had ever done, and yet seemed open and affable. McCree had responded to his humiliating, drunken confession by helping him to bed and leaving him water, a miracle hangover cure, and a friendly note. What kind of man did that?
He didn’t know, because, while McCree knew all about Hanzo, thanks to Genji, Hanzo still knew next to nothing about McCree. He didn’t know how McCree felt about the things he had said while drunk. He didn’t know if McCree was inwardly disgusted at his open declaration of attraction, and was just an expert at putting up a friendly façade, or if he was amused, maybe even flattered, but completely straight and uninterested.
And what was Hanzo supposed to do about it? He couldn’t exactly walk up to the man and say, “Hello, tell me about yourself because I’d like to know more.” After what had happened tonight? How could McCree take it, or anything like it, as anything but a pathetic attempt at flirting?
That was why he was doing this, he thought as he picked up his phone and put in the Santa Fe phone number. He wanted to read this article that claimed to know McCree’s secrets. He wanted to read what McCree’s great-grandmother had to say about his childhood – if he had grown up on the reservation; if he had always wanted to be a cowboy. What had happened to his parents. Why he ended up in Deadlock.
He wanted to know something about this man who already knew all of his deepest, darkest secrets.
He pressed the call button.
The phone rang three times before a man answered. “Dufresne,” he said.
“Mr. Dufresne?” Hanzo said. “I’m calling to speak to someone about the online magazine, The Roswell Nexus.”
“Well, you’ve called the right place. I’m the editor. What can I help you with? Do you got a good story we could run?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m having difficulty finding something in your archives—”
“Dag-nabbit, is the server down again? I swear, the server that holds the archives seems to go down every other day. Maybe if I had a competent IT guy, this wouldn’t happen!” Dufresne said, clearly turning to speak to someone else in the room with him.
“Aw, Uncle Charlie, don’t be like that.” Hanzo heard the other voice, distant and a little muffled. “The server’s up, I just checked it a few minutes ago.”
“Great, now if you could just keep it up for more than a few hours at a time, that would be magnificent!”
“Ain’t my fault you won’t invest in a decent cooling system to keep everything from overheating! Every time the temp goes over a hundred degrees outside, it’s gonna go down, I keep telling you!”
“Why, you ungrateful—”
Hanzo cleared his throat to get Dufresne’s attention. “Excuse me,” he said. “The archives are not down. There is an issue of the magazine that seems to be missing, and I am very interested in reading it.”
Dufresne went silent for a moment. “What issue?” he said, and there was a sudden coldness in his voice.
Hanzo’s eyes narrowed. “Issue 876,” he said carefully. “I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
“And you won’t find it,” Dufresne snapped. “That damn issue caused more trouble than we’ve ever seen, even more than when we published that Vishkar-Illuminati exposé.”
“What kind of trouble?” Hanzo asked. This was turning out to be far stranger than he expected.
“The government kind of trouble, that’s what,” Dufresne said. “That issue wasn’t up more than five hours before some huge, muscled man-in-black guy showed up, confiscated Gina’s computer, notes, her recorder – scared her half to death doing it – ransacked our paper files, took our flash drives, and scrubbed the file off our servers.”
Hanzo blinked. A sinking feeling filled his stomach. “So… the government came and destroyed any trace of the file?”
“That’s right.”
“Which government?”
“Whaddya mean, ‘which government?’ There’s only one government, and that’s the New World Order.”
Hanzo somehow managed to suppress a sigh. “Of course.”
“And that ain’t even the half of it,” Dufresne continued. “The very next day, the Deadlock captain that Gina interviewed at the prison? He was found dead in his cell, his head nearly twisted right off his neck! No sign of anyone going in or out, nothing on the security feeds. That scared poor Gina something fierce, I tell you. She thought for sure she’d gotten that sweet old Navajo lady killed too, but she was fine. Nothing and no one ever bothered her, far as I know.”
Hanzo’s mind was racing. Even as Dufresne rambled on, he was looking up Deadlock captain Mateo Velazquez and finding the reports of his mysterious death in New Mexico’s maximum-security prison on July 4, 2067, the day after issue 876 was published – and then apparently scrubbed.
This mystery was turning into a full-blown white-rabbit hole. “So, there is no copy of this issue anywhere,” he said. “Not even a print-out?”
“Like I said, the man-in-black ransacked our paper files,” Dufresne said. “If there any chance a copy still exists somewhere, it would be with Gina, but you won’t ever find her. After that whole mess, she took off, changed her name, and went underground. Haven’t seen her in… going on nine years now. And she was my best reporter.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hanzo said, and he truly was. This cursed article that he wanted to read so much seemed to be slipping farther out of his reach with every second that passed.
“Yeah, well, that’s the risk we take as reporters devoted to uncovering the truth,” Dufresne said, sounding put-upon and weary.
“Indeed,” Hanzo said. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Dufresne. I appreciate you answering my questions.”
He hung up before the man could respond.
Who would be so outraged over an article about Jesse McCree’s secrets that they would go to such lengths to see it destroyed within hours of it being posted? A man in black. Blackwatch?
Surely not McCree himself; he would have been recognized.
He pulled up the archives of The Roswell Nexus again, checked the bylines of issues pre-dating July of 2067, and found several articles by one Gina Rodriguez.
He looked at the clock. 0457. Three hours until he needed to be at team practice.
He got dressed, complete with Storm Bow slung across his back, and left his room, heading toward the Watchpoint’s entrance.
“Athena?” he said.
“Yes, Hanzo?”
“If anyone comes looking for me, please inform them that I have gone for a walk to enjoy the night air. My room was feeling a little stuffy. I will be back in time for team practice.”
“I will do that. Enjoy your walk, Hanzo.”
“Thank you.”
Once outside, he headed for the east side of the Rock, and quickly scaled down the jagged, vertical cliff face. He walked south along the beach for about a mile until he reached Sandy Beach. There he stopped, pulled out a phone, then opened it up and inserted the power source. Once the phone was on, he made the call.
Sombra picked up on the first ring. “Hanzo, mi amigo, calling me so soon? You’ve only been at Overwatch for a day. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten bored of it already. Or did they get tired of you?”
Hanzo ignored the jab. “I need you to find someone,” he said without preamble.
“Oh, I see, you need another favor. You still owe me for the last one, you know.”
“Then I will owe you two."
He could practically hear her smirk. “Hm. Okay, who am I looking for?”
“Her name was Gina Rodriguez. She worked for a conspiracy website out of Santa Fe called The Roswell Nexus. She stirred up some trouble, so she ran, changed her name, and disappeared back in July of 2067.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Sombra chuckled. “Jesse ‘Deadeye’ McCree Secrets Exposed! Oh, Hanzo, don’t tell me you want me to hunt this girl down just because you want to read a schlocky article about the cowboy!”
“Will you do it or not?” Hanzo growled, and Sombra laughed in delight.
“Of course, mi amigo! What are friends for? Besides, I’ve been looking at some interesting upgrade possibilities, but they are a wee bit expensive…”
“I will pay for them, of course,” Hanzo said flatly.
“Ah, gracias, my friend, gracias!”
“When you find her, leave me a message. I will check this phone every day.” Before she could respond, he hung up, opened the phone, and removed the power source, rendering it inert.
The waves against the beach were gentle and soothing. Hanzo looked beyond them to the Mediterranean, still and black and deep, and wondered what the hell he had just done.