Chapter Text
"Everything I've ever let go of has scratch marks in it" David Foster Wallace
Something about the habitual rocking and clicking of the hyper train was comforting. Hanzo could almost fool himself into believing the sense of domesticity. The light of the morning drains through the dirty window to poorly illuminate the waterlogged book clutched on his lap; the ink of the words blurred to the point of almost illegitimacy. This book has been his only true companion for years of his own self-imposed exile now; he was loathe to part with it, even if it was for a newer copy.
It was the only belonging he just justify having, after all.
He stares at a poem halfway through the book. In this train ride alone, he’s gotten through the book two and a half times. Starry Night, Anne Sexton . Her words leave him with a strangely distant, unsettled feeling in his abdomen. It strikes too close to home, too close to closed scars on his middle, so with an unsatisfied sigh he closes the book and stores it back into his bag. It fits snugly against his meager changes of clothes and money pouch. The grey-green sea toils outside his window, the sky of Gibraltar beside it, and cradled in the distance is his towering destination.
Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Not to be confused with the English overseas territory, Gibraltar.
Upon his “brothers” return from death and his subsequent message, it was unclear what Hanzo was to do. A sparrow feather thrown at him as Genji vanishes was no clear indication of anything ; How to choose sides, how the world was changing and how it concerned Hanzo, who had long ago left his concerns for the world behind him. Hanzo had no reason to do anything besides go back to praying for the man he murdered and then disappearing again into the plains of Asia. Yet, when Hanzo raised his head from the wood he could do little but give in.
Ten years, and here he is, chasing down his little brother again.
Not to say that the platinum-neon creature who nearly bested him was Genji, his brother, his match. Ten years ago he had killed his brother, felt his blood on his own skin, shakily cleaned the murder weapon. He killed his brother. He killed his brother; Genji Shimada was dead. This was a reality he accepted, integrated into his life, and not a day went past where the truth hit him like a cybertrain going 600 kilometers per hour down a track on the coast of Spain:
Genji Shimada is dead and I have killed him.
There was too much to brush aside. Did the automaton not conjure his own dragon? Did he not sound like Genji, fight like Genji? It was familiar in a painful way, the roaring green dragon, the way steam rose off of its scales, the terrifying cry. It’s open maws as it took his own and reversed them on their vessel-- it was straight out of a nightmare. He felt the dragon as well and the pain was almost comfortable, familiar, similar. Out of it’s place; when was the last time he felt its bite?
But he did not allow himself to admit it, and instead forced himself to stall at the question: If only a Shimada can control the dragons, who is this?
The answer came unbidden: Genji Shimada.
Genji Shimada, if he would accept it.
Following him was flighty, but with Hanzo wrestling the life and words out of the few underworld contacts he still had by virtue of being a Shimada (disgraced, fallen) he got answers.
A omnic (cyborg). The one who obliterated the Shimada Empire while Hanzo fleeing with his past hot on his heels. Last known, he was allied with Overwatch to the day of the Swiss Bomb. This is where Hanzo's leads ended, if Overwatch really had died. He held doubt, of course, when was it reasonable to not have doubt. Who better to change the world than Overwatch? Who more able, who more controversial, and who more well known for taking in men who had yet to “pick a side” like Hanzo?
If Overwatch was back, it would have been illegal. It would be hidden in the shadows, doing work more like that of Blackwatch rather than Overwatch. It was nigh impossible. There were no signs to prove it was back.
But Hanzo had a feeling.
The yakuza lord hidden inside him could only feel nervous at the thought. When he was a young man, Overwatch was on the top of his list of ‘ organizations that could ruin your life ’, and in a way, it had. The cyborg tore the Shimada empire down brick by brick, only Hanzo wasn’t there to witness it. Hanzo wiped his clammy hands on his jeans; the train was air conditioned by still he was sweating.
For the sake of anonymity, Hanzo did not wear his traditional kyudo-ji and hakama . He instead squeezed into a pair of Levis that were way too tight and slipped on the cheap black tank top you could buy at any half-pint corner store. It bore his tattoo to the world, yes, but tattoos were not rare here in Europe. They meant no sort of underworld connection as they did in Japan. It was just a fashion accessory like the piercings in Hanzo’s bridge and ears were. He stuffed the rest of his meager belongings in a (stolen) adidas drawstring and his bow and arrows in a cylindrical cloth bag. He looked like any visiting tourist.
The warm sun beat down on Hanzo's collarbones and chest the moment he stepped off the cold train. There were hundreds of people milling outside the train station. An assassin could easily hide in their ranks, and Hanzo wished he had more than his fists readily available to him. Normally he would be hesitant to abandon the weapon, but only so many strangely dressed people could pass through a town bordering the historically relevant military base before someone raised the alarm.
The crowds ignored him as he pushed through them, heading unsurely for the sands of the beaches. He wasn't sure who would or if someone provided passage to the lower steppes of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, but he knew there were few things money wouldn't buy.
A wizened old man agreed heartily before Hanzo even had to give an excuse, and he found himself clambering into a boat with a motor that might have been from the 20th century. The man only asked why he wanted to go once, and Hanzo shrugged and said, “I enjoy exploring abandoned places.”
For whatever reason, the old man took that as a legitimate answer.
Hanzo silently watched the misty Gibraltar grow closer, and closer, and closer, until the boat hit the shore with an obnoxious grinding. The driver gave Hanzo a business card with his phone number on it. “When you need a trip back, call this number. I will come get you.”
If Hanzo’s suspicions had been wrong, he would use that number. Sadly enough, Hanzo was rarely wrong.
Hanzo nodded and tossed Stormbow onto shore first before hauling himself over after. He doubted he was going to go back to shore for a long time, if he was right. He doubted he might ever go back to shore. A niggling thought in his mind was that the automaton who called himself Genji had lured him to this place so far from his homeland to kill him. Kill him at last, he would corner him, raise that serrated neon blade to his throat, and then he would chop off his head and that would be the unfortunate, irrelevant end of Hanzo Shimada, last of his line. A death with no fanfare or mourners. No flag, no belly, no cry . How tempting was the fantasy of an end.
But he still went.
Promise of death notwithstanding.
There was what might have been a path through the rock face. Hanzo decided to follow it rather than try to avoid any sort of ambush that may come. The mountain was steep and prone to have sheer drops of about ten feet. There were molded, half-broken down constructs that might’ve been stairs at one point, but when Hanzo tentatively laid his weight on one, it broke with a resounding crack. He resolved to just climbing the cliff face himself. This lasted for about fifteen minutes before the trees began to thin and Hanzo found himself at the concrete creation of Watchpoint: Gibraltar. A tactical fence with barbed wire at the top lay a couple yards away from the initial concrete. A camera lay on top of the gate, but if it was active Hanzo didn't know: either way he was coming in whether someone was there or not. Nature had begun to reclaim the place. Dandelions grew from cracks in the ground; a tree had collapsed into what might have been a garage at one point, and moss, dirt and collective weeds had crawled up the fallen wall and began to bleed nature into the man made.
Hanzo was careful to avoid the flowers reclaiming their land as he approached the gate. No hum. No electrical box. Not electrified, then. Without further ado he unlatched the gate and approached the compound. There was a long concrete road he had to walk down to reach the actual compound He hadn't even reached the first door of the long span of industrial doors when a blue streak of light much like an avant-garde visual display flashed in his peripheral. Before Hanzo could even turn, he felt the cold metal of a gun pressed to his temple.
"Cheers, love. Athena says there's an intruder-- that you?" A cockney accent croons, a sheer layer of threat hidden underneath the otherwise cheerful greeting.
He was not wrong to suspect an ambush, then. "I am," Hanzo assures monotonously. This is not the closest he has been to death in the last six weeks, and he does not bother to try to take Stormbow out of it’s case. He has a inkling as to who the European he's talking to is, and if he's right--- if he's right.
What did he walk into?
"If you happen to just be a curious tourist, checkin’ out the sights and whatnot, I’ll let you off scot-free. Sound good?"
It takes him a moment, but he slowly pulls his hand to his pocket ("Mate, I can see you do that, really, you trying to be sneaky?") and pulls out a single sparrow feather. It's in awful shape-- a trek around the world will do that-- and holds it up. "I believe I was invited."
The gun drops from his head sooner than he expected, along with the vaguely threatening tone. "Ah, the you're that guest Genji told us to expect!"
Genji had told them to expect him and they still put a gun to his head. Europeans.
"Yes," Hanzo answers succinctly, without warmth, and he hides his irritation at being held at gunpoint again.
"Ridiculous, that guy, what’s with the feather? You arrived a few days ahead of him, had to drop by Nepal for some reason, so he’s keeping us all waiting." The woman dances into his vision. She has short hair, spiked, goggles on her face and a grin like... a European. Her features are otherwise unmentionable if they weren't splashed on every Overwatch poster across the world, even some on the walls of his very own Hanamura.
Hanzo hums in a way he hopes is friendly-ish as Tracer sticks out her hand and says. "Lena Oxton, callsign Tracer, call me whatever you like!"
Hanzo looks at the outstretched hand with distaste. "...Hanzo,” he says, clipped.
Lena drops the hand and promptly rubs her hideous orange leggings like that was what she was doing all along. Very good recovery, Hanzo remembers doing it himself once or twice. "Last name? Callsign?"
Did they not know he was Hanzo Shimada, brother to Genji Shimada, his murderer?
"Shimada. I do not have a 'callsign'," Hanzo supplies roughly. He wanted everyone to already know what he did, to treat him as he is. Now he would have to say, awkwardly, 'Yes, I killed my brother. Yes, that was me. Yes, I'm aware of what kind of person I am.' His patience is waning. He expected something when he arrived, sure, but this was not it. He wants to go home. He wants to pretend this never happened.
He wants his brother to be dead again.
"Unfortunate, unfortunate. Gonna need one, Overwatch is a bit incognito as it is," Lena says distractedly. She says words strangely. It is already hard for Hanzo to understand them without the awful accent. "Wait, hold on, you say Shimada? That's Genji's last name, right?"
For the love of ... "Yes. He is my brother."
"Genji never mentioned a brother! This is gonna be a blast!"
Must Genji leave Hanzo to say everything.
"I--." Hanzo starts, the next words being I killed him, tore him to pieces, looked him in the eye and pushed deeper, ignored his cries of surrender, ignored his apologies, ignored him pleading, and struck and I struck.
"Well, no time to waste, got the rest of the team camped out somewhere around here waitin' to flank you in case things got tricky here! They end up doing that a lot. I’m the only flanker that responded, can't avoid the nasty bits, but might as well...," Oxton interrupts him as though he had never started to say anything. She presses two very slim fingers to an audio-retriever in her ear and says, "No bite, pals. Just Genji's invitee. Said his name was...," she trailed off and looked at him expectantly.
"Hanzo." He supplies.
"Hanzo Shimada! Genji's brother, can you believe that? Never told us he had a brother, gonna wring him proper for that. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I'll go ahead and bring him in. 'Round what corner? Oh, yeah. You really fell in? Haha, Winston, you had to know that thing was rusted to hell! Yeah, yeah, gotcher, I'm bringin' him through the employee entrance."
She really could talk. Hanzo's not sure he's said that many words in one go in his life. She talks like she's never going to get another chance.
Oxton removes her fingers from her ear and says. "Winston says he isn't surprised and that the old entrance is out of order for reasons he will be mad at me for saying!" Hanzo can fill in the gaps. "So we're gonna take a different route. It's faster anyway."
Oxton takes him through an old bunker filled with rusted beds, an overpass, a storage yard and finally into a launchpad area that led into the actual living part of the base. "Here it is! Home sweet home. Whole team is waiting for you-- not the whole team, truthfully, not all of us have replied and some of are still en route, McCree and your brother for instance, but who's here. Winston. Reinhardt. Mei. Hana. Angela. Er... I already say Winston? Yeah, pretty sparse lot, but we're trickling' in.” Oxton chatters absentmindedly as he plugs in a code to open the bay doors. They open with a gentle woosh and a flood of cool air. A large mass stands just in the shadows; Hanzo is reaching back for his bow and arrow on his back.
A gorilla greets them at the door. His hulking mass is large, animalistic, and sets off a primal reflex that nearly sends Hanzo skittering up the wall. His shadow falls over Hanzo, he walks forward on his arms; he must be able to crush Hanzo's skull like a sparrow’s egg.
This kind of fear is instinctual, a fight or flight response. he’s switching between flight and fight so rapidly he’s frozen in place.
But the gorilla bares his lips in a human smile, canines bright and clean, and says, "Mr. Shimada! A pleasure to meet you, I'm Dr. Winston."
Ah. The gorilla is a doctor.
Hanzo glances at the hand, is almost shocked into shaking it, but does definitely not . Who knows where that’s been. "I hear you are expecting me, Dr. Winston," Hanzo says cordially and without hesitation, his shock boxed away and stored elsewhere. This is a professional environment, a professional greeting, and Hanzo was raised in venomous professionalism. He's brokered deals that leave him richer with a semiautomatic held to his head and a broken nose. The gorilla, however, is a new one.
"We are! Genji mentioned that he knew a very talented sniper, and we are unfortunately without any sort of long distance air support, but, uhh, he never mentioned it was his brother. Funny, haha."
This was a very pleasant gorilla.
It almost wipes the rapid-pace, hostile encounter with Oxton off Hanzo's mind.
"You flatter me," he says although he is hardly flattered at all. He knows he can shoot an apple off a stand 500 paces away. "But I am not joining Overwatch, you are mistaken." He already has enough people with guns chasing his every footstep, who is to say he needs one that are backed by the UN?
"Oh, is that so?" Winston rumbles, and a very gorilla-like huff of frustration falls out of his nose. "Genji said... Bah, whatever." He meanders out of the way so that Oxton and Hanzo can cross into the main part of the building, which is a scientific lab filled with slightly out of date computers and a team assembled in their gear.
A large white man midway through shrugging out of a heavy breastplate lets out a racious yell at his appearance. A German. Hanzo would, unfortunately, recognize that kind of attitude anywhere. The German unceremoniously drops his breastplate to the side with a clang, clad in just greaves and a black tanktop, and appears to be overcome with joy at his appearance. That must be Reinhardt. The image of the crusader is almost familiar; all Hanzo can recall is the amber flame on the back of the Crusader suit.
Next to him a small Asian woman of indeterminable nationality smiles beamingly at Hanzo, and another Asian girl of equally indeterminable nationality climbs out of a pink MEKA and pops her gum in boredom. Hana and Mei, though he is unsure which is which. There are no others-- the mysterious Angela is sight unseen.
None of them look at him with any sort of suspicion, or distrust, which was more stressful than if they did. Hanzo has no intention to hide his nature from these people nor his actions, but he is not a teenager and will not blurt, 'I tried to kill my brother 10 years ago and that is why he is an amalgamation of machine and man!' There are timing for such things. One has to read the atmosphere.
So instead he says, "Greetings."
The three of them make their way over to his side before Hanzo can even draw in another falsely pleasant breath. Reinhardt leans into his face, a distance uncomfortable for the Japanese man, and says with a roar, "I am Wilhelm Reinhardt, Crusader! Welcome, welcome!" He holds out his hand, changes his mind, and goes in for a hug. Hanzo puts up his two hands and firmly dissuades him. "No, thank you," he mumbles. "A pleasure."
The two women are less up forward. They keep a respectable distance and the smaller, chubbier woman even tilts into a semi-formal bow. "我很高興跟你見面 我很高兴跟你见面," She says pleasantly. The teenager tilts her head in something that could somehow be interpreted as respectful and adds, “만나서 반갑습니다.”
Hanzo pins his arms to his side and bows shallowly; his face never leaves his company. Polite, humble, but not without pride. Just the way he was raised. "I do speak Korean and Mandarin, but it has been many years. I am rusty," he replies diplomatically. Mei is from China and Song is from Korea, it seems. Before he can stop it, Hanzo's mind is running through every drug swindling operation they've run across the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea and every bug they had in their prospective governments.
He shakes his head. He is no longer Yakuza.
Instead he wonders at how a Korean could be here, when their government was gripped like an iron fist and smashing against the raging omics in their sea, and when China had retreated so far back into their communist roots that outside communication had been heavily regulated for the last five years. How the omnic crisis has changed the world.
Song inclines her head to the side, pops her gum, and assesses Hanzo quietly. "No problem. My name is Song Hana, callsign D.VA. That super cute MEKA there is mine," she jerks a thumb at the pink MEKA. It sits dark and inactive without a pilot, a hulking mass of military power meandering in Europe. Misplaced.
"Are those not part of the Korean anti-omnic military programme?" Hanzo says bluntly before he can stop himself, and even he hears the hostility in his voice. But the fact remains, he distinctly remembers knocking out an engineer and stealing plans for an employer. Back then, the program was just ideas, but while Hanzo has been off the map it seems that they actually went through with it.
"Yeah, they are. Recruited a bunch of gamers for their tactical prowess and eye-hand coordination or something… I caught wind of Overwatch, and South Korea really needs some manpower right now, so they cut me loose as a diplomat," Song says casually, as if the implications of trusting a mere teenager with a high-risk diplomacy job were not large. He reassess the girl who pops a hip and pops her gum at the same time, her bored eyes boring into his. “Agreed to let me join the taskforce in return for a hand in garnering UN support, blah blah blah, top secret, mumbo jumbo, coded messages.”
"You are just a child," Hanzo barks in disbelief. How old is she? Seventeen ? Eighteen ?
"Yet I am a soldier, just as you are… what? A ninja ?" Grumpily Hanzo thinks that he fits more into the samurai archetype, but she’s got him there. He was not her age when he had his first assassination.
Hanzo hummed diplomatically and desperately pushed off the rising anxiety in his chest. That was over twenty years ago.
"I am Zhou Mei-ling, really nice to meet you! I'm a climatologist that was stationed at Watchpoint: Antarctica," the chubbier woman says politely. Surrounded by a large German veteran, an assassin for hire, a gorilla, a time anomaly and a teenage diplomat, she seems ordinary.
A second too slow, Hanzo digests her words.
Watchpoint: Antarctica.
That is far from ordinary.
"My family followed the work of your Watchpoint very closely," Hanzo says, and he is not lying. They were threatening their trade bonds with several large, illegal oil companies and other illicit businesses. "I had thought there were no survivors."
Mei's expression slopes off, and suddenly she is somewhere else with someone else if her eyes tell the truth. "It was a tragedy. There could've been... Whoever told you there weren't survivors didn't look." She is too young for this sort of survivor's guilt, Hanzo thinks. He had hit a spot he hadn’t thought to avoid.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Zhou, Miss Song."
"Likewise, Shimada-san!" "Yeah, same."
At that moment the motorized doors that connect to the rest of the facility slide open, and a blonde woman in a white-chrome and gold cloth flows through the door. Electrical wings fold against her back as she strides in. "It was a quite a walk, I apologize," the woman begins to say before her eyes slide onto Hanzo. Immediately her expression solidifies, becomes something unreadable and professional and very cold.
"Genji's brother, Hanzo," Winston says.
"I am aware,” the woman says coldly.
"This is our resident doctor, Dr. Angela Zeigler," And the woman to her credit politely strides to him and reaches out her hand. "Also your brother’s personal doctor," she says, the meaning sliding off the rest of the company.
Ah.
Hanzo takes her hand and shakes it.He squeezes it in a challenging way.
"I see," Hanzo says.
"Genji had never mentioned you," Angela says politely, her tone almost accusatory, and Hanzo’s irritation swells so rapidly he chokes on venom in the back of his throat.
Her diplomatic words were useless here. If she thought she could win at this sort of passive aggressive game, she was wrong. Her attitude was familiar, true, but not welcome. He grew tired of this socialization, of these people who knew his brother more than he knew his brother, who talked about his brother in a way that made him seem alive.
Genji Shimada is dead and I have killed him, Genji Shimada is dead and I have killed him, Genji Shimada is dead and I have killed him.
"A likely occurrence. I am not surprised," Hanzo answers brusquely. He schools his face to be even, his tone to be blank, his eyes to be darkened. He sneers as he stands to his full height. His regret is something he will admit easily; not something he will show.
"Who’s Genji? What? Why isn't he surprised?" Song whispers not so quietly to Zhou, and Zhou turns to whisper not so quietly back, "Genji is his brother. I don't see the resemblance--,"
Mei is cut off by Angela's authoritative tone calling, "Genji has not always looked that way." Her voice rings out sure and justified.
"A flowery way of saying I killed him."
The room grew silent at his declaration. He steps up the last remaining steps to square up to Angela, face in her face, eyes on her eyes, the lutheran blue into his brown, and he says quietly enough for her and only her to hear, "And he should have stayed that way, Doctor."
Angela says nothing in response, unguarded eyes boring into him, and he steps back. If he knew one thing only, it was how to be the center of attention in a room. He breathes in deep, centers himself, centers the emotions raging in his chest, centers the tears brimming in his throat, and breathes it all out through his nose. Another time, another place, preferably with alcoholic beverage.
He turns to face Dr. Winston. "I will need safe quarters for a time until Genji arrives and we can discuss... Whatever nonsense brought me to this place. Will this be admissible or am I no longer welcome here?" His voice booms with authority as he descends the steps, the metallic clunk-click of his feet marking the hall with tension until he had, once again, stood a respectable distance away from the gorrilla.
Winston seems to struggle for words, his mouth open. His teeth were as long as Hanzo's thumb. "Uhh," is all he says.
"Am I no longer welcome here?" Hanzo asks again, quieter, firmer. He wishes to be shown possible room and then to be left alone.
"Well, uh, I mean if Genji sent you, and he did because that's definitely Genji's smell on that--," Winston looks at the feather in Oxton’s hands. "--I mean, I guess? It's not like... Well... Yeah. Hana, if you would?"
The room is still deadly quiet. Song looks around her to verify that it was, in fact, her who would lead the sour samurai to an empty room, and when no one else was stepping forward, she did. "Sure." She motions for Hanzo to follow her, and he does. Six paces behind.
As soon as they leave the room with all its occupants, Song turns a critical eye on Hanzo. "You really killed him, huh?”
Was that not just sorted out. “Yes, I believed I did,” he replies dully.
“Was it some sort of family drama stuff?” Song wondered, and Hanzo’s eyes narrowed in surprise. She guessed so easily.
“I suppose,” Hanzo answers cryptically. Song turns to send him an unimpressed look, “Yeah, yeah, I know I’m right. Why else would you kill your brother?”
Hanzo makes a displeased sound in the back of his throat. "You are sharper than you appear," Hanzo says begrudgingly. It is not the first time appearances have deceived him, but it is the first time in a long time.
"That’s what everyone says,” Song replies. The two of them step off the stairs.
At the end of the stairs is a wide hallway. On the left end of the hallway is a series of rooms labelled with a grey A ; the further to the left you go the smaller the numbers become. The right end of the hallway opens up into a medium-sized square room with cheap, round plastic tables and chairs. A large kitchen is tucked away in the corner; there is still coffee brewing on the stand. In the far right corner of the room lies a darkened archway. The hallway leads on past the cafeteria area into more rooms.
Song takes them to the left. They pass A12, A10 and A8 on the left side of the hall and stop at A6. Song opens the door and reveals a dim, dusty room.
"Your room, Shimada-san."
Hanzo peeks into it. It has one large window from ceiling to floor, and in front of that there is a single desk with a single chair, unpadded, disused and discolored. The bed is just a frame with no mattress, no pillows and no sheets; just a rusted metal frame with dust collecting an inch thick onto it. The closet is empty, door spread open. There's a rather astounding amount of active spiderwebs within it. One spider seems to have grown rich here, its thorax large and bulbous.
Either that or it was pregnant. Which was the infinitely worse scenario.
"Home sweet home," Song says dully.
"Are you giving me this room on purpose?" Hanzo spat, his eyebrows drawn together in a displeased line. The room was a disaster .
"It’s the next empty one,” Song shrugged noncommittally at Hanzo’s accusation. “Laundry room is off the door in the kitchen by the fridge, they have brooms and stuff in there. All the cleaning supplies you need too, sheets, pillows. There's a door that leads to the basement with other furniture in there too, but I think you'll just go for the bed."
" It is fortunate that I enjoy cleaning,” Hanzo grumbled.
Song laughed loudly. She didn't cover her mouth with her hand or her smile with her fingers. She shook her head in disbelief, commented, "Aren't you a rich boy? Do they ever clean?" snd disappears into the room next to with a slam.
What a welcoming party.
Hanzo investigates his room further. There is a black panel screen hidden in the wall at the foot of his bed. The door beside the closet leads to a bathroom that smelt of mold, mildew and rot. With spit on the end of his tanktop and quick swipe at the walls, Hanzo realizes that the wall and floor are supposed to be white instead of a dingy gray.
Well.
The day is still young.
No one else has appeared while Song introduced him to his room and while he inspected it; they must have scattered and been avoiding him now. With a sigh of relief, he moves through the cafeteria into the laundry room as told. True to word, bottles of bleach and other cleaning supplies sit on plastic racks. He fetches the bleach, the window cleaner, several rags, a bucket, and a mask.
No need for gloves. He will savor the burn.
He spends the next six hours deep cleaning the room. As he rubs the floors with lye and bleach, cleaning away their dirt and dust and mud, their disuse, the lye seeps into his open scratches. It stings, licks at the wounds and irritates them until his entire calloused hand is red and inflamed. When he flexes, he sees a swell of red prickle at the base of the cuts.
Still he scrubs. He scrubs, and scrubs, and scrubs. The wall, the floor, the door, the bathroom counter, the sink, the toilet, the tub. He dusts and dusts, he tackles the spiders with a broom handle, he crushes the pregnant spider under prosthetic foot and scrubs her green remains, he trashes the hangers, trashes the bits of paper written in a language he did not speak (Spanish) though he does linger over the human words.
He tosses the entire bed frame into the hallway with one arm. It is too rusty to be trusted with his weight; he will search for another or sleep on the floor.
When tossing, he finds that he nearly hits Song as she emerges out of her room. She stops with a squeak as the frame flies past her and into the wall. The rust streaks like blood. At her yell, Hanzo stops to look out the open doorway to see her standing in a white t-shirt, clutching microwave ramen to her chest and breathing heavy in recovered fear. She looks at the rusted mess, at Hanzo, at the frame.
"My apologies," Hanzo says. "I will clean that up as well." Since it looks like he is the only one in this god forsaken watchpoint that can clean.
"Watch out next time!" Song exclaims. Her eyes dart down to his hands. “What happened there, dude?” Hanzo looks down at his hands. While he wasn't looking, the small welts of blood has turned into small rivers of blood that coursed down his hand, decorating the floor.
Huh. He hadn't even noticed.
"It is no issue. I do not feel it," Hanzo assures. He goes to wipe it on his shirt, reconsiders, and pivots briefly as he tries to figure out what to do. He almost dips them in the bucket of bleach in spite.
"Stupid," Song chides. She puts her ramen on the floor and ventures closer to investigate. She makes a motion that translates as ‘ lemme see ‘em’.
Confused, he does.
Song clicks her tongue and says a korean word he can’t remember at the sight. His hands do indeed look ghastly; even the skin that is not bleeding is red and irritated. She leads him to the sink and runs water over his hands until the cuts can be clearly seen. She takes bandaids out of her back pocket. “I used to get these awful calluses from playing Starcraft ,” Song says as way of explanation. The bandages are patterned after a children's show, but Hanzo does not protest as she patches him up best she can.
"I do not deserve your kindness," Hanzo says tonelessly.
"Sure don’t,” Song fires back immediately. “But I’m going to give it you anyway.”
She peers past Hanzo's shoulder to see his clean room and her face drops open at the surprise. "It's so clean! You did this all by yourself? It took me hours to clean mine and I had people helping me," she looks back at the bedframe and shrugs. Perhaps she did not try to salvage hers either.
“I enjoy cleaning,” Hanzo says as way of explanation.
Song shrugs. “To each their own,” she says brightly. She picks up her ramen cups and goes on her way.
He thinks of the blood that comes from battles and hopes that Song knows how to clean out blood; he will secretly do it for her if he is given the opportunity. He does not wish to be a burden.
He cannot find a frame despite his searching. So he forgoes it. He throws the mattress on the floor as if it is a futon, dresses it with sheets and calls it good. He spends an additional half-hour cleaning up the bed frame and the rust on the wall but after that, there is nothing to clean. Hanzo has sparse belongings to begin with; there is no setting up process to speak of. He simply drops his drawstring on the drawers, falls into lotus position and basks in the smell of bleach.
Everything smells new and clean, their faults and filth scrubbed from them. It is refreshing. But still his chest feels stuck in between two places, running but going nowhere, and an acute sense of dread falls over him.