#My friend asked the question if telling another omnic to self destruct is a way to say 'kill yourself'
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:) I love my friends and their ideas they let me draw <3
Thank you @thisistrashking and @shepardlives ily both ;_; <3
#ramattra#zenyatta#my art#overwatch#My friend asked the question if telling another omnic to self destruct is a way to say 'kill yourself'#and then by the power of friendship this was made
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The End of a Stalemate - BunnyRibbit Angst
She will always remember the corpse of a little girl, her brain refused to let the image fade. The memories of the small child telling Hana how she wanted to be just like her when she grew up, how she was her hero. And only an hour later did D.Va find her corpse lying in the rubble of Lucio's destroyed concert.
They had been attacked, no one knew how or who, but people died.
Hana had held that little girl's body and cried. She fought as hard as she could, but what kind of hero was she if she couldn’t even save a little girl?
The idea of how many have died during this fight wasn’t ignored, she knew the body count was high, and would only raise higher as time went on. Every fight, every new town, city, country, people were always going to die due to war. She knew how many innocent lives she watched perish, she trained herself not to count but the knowledge of how high the number was haunted her. She’s watched friends and family die, she watched her homeland destroyed over and over again. There was nothing she could ever do, and nothing could stop the destruction in Korea.
The giant omnic will always seem impenetrable. Nothing anyone did was enough to even hinder its path of destruction. Not when there were so many other omnics that seemed to defend it. Every day she watched the news, and everyday the news never changed. Destruction and death littered the streets. Even now, all these images would replay in her head and everytime she closed her eyes in a silent room she'd hear screams.
Lucio’s music usually helped, but tonight it would not keep away the nightmares. The omnic was back and terrorizing her home and there was nothing she could do. She was stuck here in the Overwatch base where she was unable to act.
She felt afraid and powerless…
Useless.
And she hated it. She couldn't lay here anymore and let those people live in fear and watch so many die, to watch their homes be torn apart. So many sleepless nights plagued with nightmares where she laid down and cried. She was done with that. She couldn't let it win, that omnic would not beat her, she would destroy it, push the fight in Korea's favor and get the high score.
Nothing could shift her mind, she had a plan, and she wouldn’t give anyone a chance to change her mind because no one was going to find out. She readied herself for battle, and left swiftly, taking her mech and leaving the base without a sound. She had a source that could get her a jet that could store her mech, after calling to meet, it should only take about two or so hours to get there. Impatient as she was she just had to keep telling herself it will soon be over.
The pilot asked why she needed to be in Korea at three in the morning, “a very important meeting” was all she told him.
Lucio had a bad feeling, he didn't know why, but he did and it wouldn't let him fall back asleep. It was four am but something kept pushing him, telling him to get up, that he had someplace to be. The feeling didn't fade in the slightest so he finally stood and walked into the hall. With no real destination he just let his feet carry him until he for some reason ended up at D.Va’s door.
He knocked and called to her softly, vocally nervous about whatever this feeling was. They do this all the time when either one is having trouble sleeping or dealing with episodes of stress. But she did not reply, he didn’t even hear her shift. He called once more a bit louder, but still there was nothing. Panic set in instantly and he opened her door, her bed was empty, and when he called again there was nothing. Her room was empty.
He took a breath to calm his nerves, maybe she had just went to the kitchen area to get a drink or a snack. He checks and she's not there, so he checks any of her usual hiding spots, but nothing. Hana was nowhere to be seen and he was starting to worry.
“Athena, where is D.Va?” he asked out loud, his last chance of finding her.
“She left the base around three-fifteen AM.”
“Left? Where?” Why did she leave without saying anything, without even a note?
“She left here in her battle uniform and took off in her mech, she did not specify location, or say anything I overheard.”
“Athena, wake up the others, tell them D.Va is missing.”
“Already done, but I believe there may be something of interest in what Ms. Song had been watching late last night.” Athena turned the TV on in the recreational room, a news station covering the war in Korea.
Their estimated time of arrival was ten minutes, when Athena turned the news on once again.
“D.Va has just been spotted.”
On the screen was her pink mech running, her boosters speeding her through the piles of what once may have been homes. She was headed towards the gigantic omnic, showing no signs of stopping.
“She doesn’t think she’s going to fight that thing all on her own does she?” Mercy questioned.
“No, she knows she can't win that exchange on her own, D.Va’s smart enough to know that's a losing battle.”
“Well, if she was anything like me, she would blow it up!” Junkrat called out, only allowed to tag along incase they needed the extra damage. “She’d end it with a bang!” he ended his idea with his usual laughter. Lucio almost stopped breathing.
“There's a reason she didn’t tell us, she is ending it with bang,” he could almost puke at the thought that came next, “she doesn’t plan on coming back.”
“No… She couldn’t, she probably is just going to use her mechs self destruct and call another to get out!” But they all knew even Mercy herself didn’t believe her words.
“Tracer, can this thing get any faster?” Soldier 76 asked through his com.
“On it!”
They had to stop before getting too close or risk being shot down and attracting the attention of any omnic. Lucio didn’t wait for a plan, he simply jumped out trying to get to where D.Va was as quick as he could. He tried her com, but all he got in response was silence, but he didn't stop trying. When he got to the clearing he watched as D.Va was boosting behind the omnic which she made her target.
“Why are you here Lucio?!” Her anger filled voice finally rang through his ear.
“What do you mean why?! Hana what do you think you’re doing? You can't fight that thing on your own!”
“You weren’t supposed to find out!” She wasn’t listening to him, “You weren’t supposed to come!” He could hear her sobs as she screamed.
“Why didn’t you want me to, D.Va?”
“You weren’t supposed to come and make me second guess! But I won’t Lucio,” Her mech lands on the omnic’s back, its arms wedged into wires. She held it there, knowing if she moved the mech would displace. “I can finally do something, once this one is destroyed the war should turn for the better! With its destruction Korea will no longer be trapped in a constant unmoving state of war! I’m finally at the final boss, and I’m going to get the high score!”
“Hana no! There’s gotta be another way!” He watched in horror as her mech began to glow blue and shake, but she did not jump out.
“If I get out my mech will fall, I can’t risk it.” her voice was terrifyingly calm, until she let out her final battle cry. “This is for all that you have ruined! Nerf this you son of a bitch!”
Lucio fell to his knees and screamed out as the blast shook the earth under him. He shut his eyes, unable to watch his best friend kill herself to change the course of war. The entire world was quiet to him, as if the world honored his loss with a moment of silence. Even though fire cracked all over the field of rubble, and pieces of metal fell from the sky like meteors. As he opened his eyes he took the world in, all that was left of the scene...chunks of metal.
When he opens his eyes he could only see the pink remains of the mech he used to know so well. He couldn’t wrap his head around it all, just yesterday they were laughing while she streamed. He wished he had known, but how could he? She never said anything on this idea, she always said she was “too young to die”, why did that have to change?
She couldn’t be gone, she probably pulled a clutch moment and got out. She had to. She always said it herself, she's too young to die. Wasn't she? She has to be okay, right?
“Lucio...”
“Mercy.. She can’t be gone...” Was all he could say before he skated off. He couldn’t accept it, he refused. He searched for anything, any sign of her still being alive. But with each minute he searched, the more he panicked. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and he was losing hope with each step he took. “Hana, why?” he chuckled as he cried, “How did I never think you were crazy enough to try something like this?” he dropped to his knees and cried.
His ride landed behind him, Mercy did not wait until it was fully turned off before running to him. She stepped cautiously before kneeling besides him.
“You do not need to go through this alone Lucio.” she gently placed her hand on his shoulder as his body quivered with sobs.
“She- she's gone, Dr. Ziegler, I can't find anything of her to even give her a proper burial!” Mercy pulled him into her embrace trying to stay strong for him. But she had just lost a girl she saw as her own child, she could not control the tears.
“We will all look together, we will find something that will suffice, I promise.” he found comfort in the sound of her voice and clung to it like a lifeline.
They held each other for a few minutes, until Lucio had stopped crying. Mercy dried his eyes and wiped away his tears.
“We all will mourn, my friend, you will not be left to mourn alone.” she reassured, but she noticed Lucio was not looking at her but at something behind her. “Lucio-?” he stands before she can ask what's wrong.
“Blue, there's something blue.” he sprints off, amping up his speed. There was something in the rubble, blue but tainted in red, and the closer he got the clearer the something became. It had to be Hana, it was definitely her uniform, but it was bloodstained and torn. Hope flowed through him at the first sight of any kind of sign of his friend.
“D.Va!” He called, deep down hoping for a response. But the sight of blood put a terrifying morbid thought in his head, that the limb he sees, may not be attached to anything. As he got close to the rubble the thought did not hinder him though in his need to know. He picked up a large piece of rubble and tossed it as best he could, and to the part of leg he saw before, more was attached. “I need help over here!”
It took seconds for Soldier 76 and Mercy to be at his sides pulling away as much rubble as they could, more of Hana’s body exposing with each chunk of rubble moved.
A good part of her body was burned from the blast, and even more of it was cut and bleeding. Mercy’s knees hit the ground instantly as she searched for any sign of a pulse. She brought out her Caduceus and quickly set it to healing and placed it besides her.
“She has a pulse but it's weak, we have to be careful,” Her hand moved to her com, “Tracer, we need the stretcher!”
“On my way!” it all happened so fast, and Lucio couldn’t wrap his head around it all, as quick as she was uncovered she was on the stretcher on the way to the ship and for some reason he just couldn't move, he just stood there and watched. Her blood on his hands as he helped them move her, but she was alive. Her heart still beat. A hand rested on his shoulder as Soldier 76 approached him.
“We hit a lucky break kid,” they look at each other, “I think she’ll be fine. Shes banged up to shit, but injuries can only keep a fighter like her down for some time.”
Three days since the blast and Hana has yet to even sture once. Dr. Ziegler said that she is stable and is simply in a comatose state as her body healed. So Lucio stayed and watched over her, only leaving her side to get food when Mercy could take his place. Every time either one would enter, they would say hello to Hana and tell her about their day. Whenever the two were in the room together they would always include Hana in their talks, hoping they could hear her.
Today Lucio was alone with her, Dr. Ziegler left after letting him leave to get food.
“I’m back Hana! Sorry that took so long, I got jumped by a worried Junkrat!” He sat down at the table next to her bed, “He’s worried about you, so is Roadhog, he says, but Roady would never actually say it”. He put the music back on before he began to eat, a playlist of the songs he knew was her favorite. “I told him you’re doing good, and he wanted me to tell you to get better and wake up soon, he misses you.” he takes a breath, “We all do, it just isn't the same without you here, Song. It’s so different without you, no interrupting your streams to show you a new song, no getting snacks at three AM, no Soldier yelling at the both of us to go to sleep.
I’m getting depressing aren’t I? Sorry Hana, it's just hard to adjust when things change so abruptly, ya know?” he was silent for a moment, staring at his plate. “I wish I knew you could hear me, it sucks thinking that maybe you haven’t heard a single thing,” he chuckles sadly, “you have things to worry about other than my problems and I’d be a jerk to just vent to you like this.” He shakes the thoughts away and sits up straight. “But if you can hear me, you better wake up soon! I have music for you to hear, and you have fans that have not left me alone since they saw the news. I told them you're doing fine, and I promise I didn't post any pictures, I’m saving that for when you wake up. But I am going to warn you, you probably have at least a billion messages on anything that you can be contacted on. You have everyone worried sick, and you pissed off a few by almost dying cause they love you too much.” staring at his food, he realized he simply wasn’t hungry anymore and he stood to toss it. He turned his chair to her, and sits down besides her, taking her hand in his. “I… I have no idea if you can hear me, but I miss you Hana. This place just isn't the same without you, I want you to come back. But I keep reminding myself that at least your heart is beating, that you’re still here.” his grip around her hand tightens as he fights back his tears again. “...Hana I thought you died, I thought I’d never see you again. When I was looking for you, every second with no signs hurt”. He laughed, “to think in just a few seconds, I watched everything end. But you won, the omnic got blown to pieces and the fight should finally shift from the stalemate it's been.”
He stood to turn the light down in the room, “I know it's selfish, but..” He couldn’t look at her, even though he knew she couldn't see him, “for a bit.. I hated you. I hated that you decided to die without a second thought to change the course of a war. Such a selfless thing, and here I am wishing you didn’t do it. I hated that you found it so easy to leave us, but I knew that wasn't the case.” he found the courage to face her again, “I thought you were gone, I thought that was it, but I’ve been thanking God since we found you, that you survived.”
He stepped closer and took her hand gently, running his thumb over her knuckles. “I shouldn’t be ranting to you like this, with my luck you’ll remember this whole thing. But that doesn’t really matter much at this point, does it? You, in a matter of one night changed the course of a war that has been stuck for years before you were even around.” He could only smile as he looked down at her, “You, Hana Song are a fucking crazy bitch, blowing yourself up to change history and then somehow surviving to watch the future play out. Only you could so something so wild”, his free hand moved to cup her cheek, feeling the curve of a healing scar. “But I guess that’s just one of the reasons I fell in love with you.” he leaned over to lightly kiss the small wound, before moving to get comfortable in his chair, his head rested on her lap. “Sorry I ranted your ear off, especially without really giving you a say in the matter. But wake up soon okay? We still have that song we need to finish and I have a few ideas I need to tell you about but you need to be awake for that so you can give me your opinion!” he could only chuckle at his own fake frustration, before simply looking at her. The peace in her expression for some reason calmed him, at least maybe in her sleep she didn’t feel the pain. His eyes closed as his own tiredness made itself know, “...I love you Hana.”
Days seemed to keep passing with no change, but Lucio was patient as he watched the time pass. The small cuts on her face and arms slowly began to fade into scars, the burns that marked her skin were doing what they could to heal. They were lucky that somehow the blast did not burn her skin as much as it could have, she would simply have scarring in spots that actually had contact. Like a spot she had that began above her left eye had stretched almost to her ear, the contact had burned the hair in that spot away, but he thought it looked cool as hell. It would be a scar with a story that would blow people's minds.
He played with her hand in his, careful not to move her too much. He ran his thumb over her knuckles and the bend in her fingers, and smiled as he left a small kiss on the back of her hand. He hummed along with the song that played from his speaker, moving her fingers to the beat like a dance. He brought her fingers to his lips and closed his eyes for a moment before they snapped open at her hands tightening around his. When he looked over at her he could see her brown eyes looking at him.
“Hey.” Was all she said in a voice so groggy.
“It’s been awhile.” was all he could say as he smiled wide.
“I have no idea what day it is, what happened?”
“You tried to blow yourself up, and only succeeded in destroying the omnic in Korea and changing the course of the war. Luckily enough you failed in dying.” She smiled.
“I get the high score?”
“I don’t think anyone in the world could ever top the score you got, let alone get anywhere near it.” her eyes closed as she took a breath.
“I feel like shit.” She tried to sit up, Lucio stood up trying to stop her.
“Careful, I would just lay down if I were you, most of your body is just a giant bruise.” But she didn’t stop, eventually getting herself in a sitting position she could handle.
“I feel it, but I can’t hug you if I’m laying down.” she patted the spot next to her, telling him to sit. He looked at her to state his worry, but she shushed him, so he sat down and faced him. “I put you through hell with how much you worried about me, I remember some of it.” she looked up at him and smirked deviously, “most of it.” he blushed in embarrassment and rubbed the back of his neck. “And I’m sorry I put you through that,” she leaned into him, careful of her own wounds “ but I had to, the war never would have changed if I didn’t do something.”
“I know you did, and you won. But next time please talk to someone before you run and almost blow yourself up.”
“I promise, but I don’t think I’ll have another situation that would require me to take such drastic measures.”
“Good because I'm warning you as your best friend, if you ever scare me like that again I'll have to kill you, and if I don't somebody else probably will. But enough of that, are you hungry?” at the mention of food she nodded her head, hissing silently as she realized it was a bad idea. “Nice to see you have an appetite, I’ll run and get you something light. I’ll fetch Mercy on the way, she’s going to be happy you’re finally up.” He stood and began to walk towards the door, but a gentle hand grabbed his wrist.
“Lucio?” he turned to her, concern evident on his face.
“Whats up?”
“I love you too.” when her words settled in his head his brain stopped functioning, becoming a mumbling, blushing mess as he tried to respond somehow. She tugged him a bit closer, “now please actually kiss me since I’m finally conscious. The few times you kissed my cheeks was cute and all, but I kept waiting for you to actually kiss me to try and wake me up like sleeping beauty. But you’re too much of a gentleman to kiss a girl for the first time while she's unconscious.” he took a breath and sat back down in his spot.
“You sure about this?”
“If I wasn’t I wouldn’t tell you I love you.” she leaned forward to rest her hand on the side of his jaw. They both moved closer, lips finally meeting for the first time. His hand moved to her jaw, holding her close as he savored a moment that they both had been needing. D.Va was the first to let go, but Lucio knew that meant time was up for the moment.
“Wow.” was all he could say, blown completely away at just the idea of he just kissed Hana Song.
“Is that all I have to do to blow your mind?”
“Bun Bun, everything you do blows my mind.” she pushes him off.
“Hurry and get some food, I’m hungry!”
“I’m going, I’m going!” Once he got out into the hall, he threw a fist in the air and cheered, before sprinting to get Mercy.
#bunnyribbit#d.va#lucio correia dos santos#lucio#angst#Hana Song#Trigger warning#I think?#Just in case
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WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66
aka the one where Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate student of the Fine Arts, attending college in what he assumes to be a reasonably sedate corner of the American southwest. Jesse McCree is an occasionally leather-clad NPS ranger whose duties extend somewhat further than shooing lost tourists back onto the clearly marked hiking trails. Something weird is going on in the desert south of Santa Fe and their lives unexpectedly come together in the middle of it.
The bit in which Hanzo has a frank and meaningful conversation with Tekhartha Zenyatta.
The UMN annex was four hoverbus transfers and one short stretch on the rapid pedestrian transit speedwalk which, this time at least, did not result in any form of grievous bodily harm, not even a bit of unscheduled nipple-surfing across the raked-stone-and-succulent-beds lawn at his point of exit. Given that his last trip out to the annex had resulted a) missing the exit, b) attempting to return to the exit by the expedient method of hopping over the lane separator, and c) being sent to the hospital via ambulance because having one foot going one direction and one foot going the other direction and each moving at roughly twice the average human walking speed was a recipe for tragedy, he considered this at least an unqualified success. In his own defence, the last time he traveled out to the annex was also his first, carrying Zenyatta’s forgotten lunch since he was the one who didn’t have any scheduled classes or studio time or anything resembling work that day, and had not expected what he found upon arrival. In the world of his childhood, buildings called “annexes” were either ancient, crumbling cinderblock-and-sheet-metal edifices that would probably exist until an earthquake strong enough to topple them came along or else post-Crisis modular prefabs of recycled and poorly insulated plastics meant to be replaced by more permanent construction but which never seemed to rate high enough on anyone’s priority queue to quite get there.
This annex, by way of cruel and distracting contrast, was a Pueblo Deco Revival architectural masterwork purpose designed and built as a showcase piece for the style, as well as to house the off-campus professional enrichment classrooms and offices for the chosen few among the faculty. His research, conducted while he was spending six weeks with his left leg in a full immobilization brace, suggested that being assigned space there was generally the result of a member of the faculty either dying or moving on and the survivors engaging in the sort of academic heft/staff seniority knife fights only spoken of in shellshocked whispers by TAs and adjuncts who’d had the misfortune of witnessing them first hand. That Tekhartha Zenyatta, known by all for his thoroughgoing gentleness and fundamentally mild nature, occupied a prime chunk of that real estate suggested that his publish-or-perish game was thoroughly on point or he knew where a substantial number of bodies were buried and probably both. His office was a second-floor corner, not quite as desirable as some spaces, significantly more desirable than others, gifted with more than adequate storage and sitting space as well as enormous windows in two of the four walls and a view of the city and the mountains beyond that could genuinely be described as a vista.
Zenyatta was sitting at his desk, silhouetted against said vista, when Hanzo arrived, having missed him in the classroom by a double handful of minutes, and knocked on the frame of the open door. He looked up and never was the praying mantis resemblance more acute than when the westering sun caught the shaved curve of his skull and the highlights in his hazel eyes as he blinked a slow and vaguely astonished blink at the apparition that appeared before him. Hanzo held up a thermos. “I have soup.”
Zenyatta smiled and his eyes glinted with unconcealed humor. “And this time emergency services were not involved in the delivery. Come in, my friend.”
Hanzo stepped inside and closed the door behind him. By the time he turned around, Zenyatta had retrieved two bowls from the depths of his desk and shut down the holoscreens of its internal workstation. Hanzo sat, and poured, the soup still warm enough to steam, and a for a moment the sat together in companionable silence and drank.
“Ah.” Zenyatta finally said. “Grandmother Sumiko’s miso soup recipe. Never tell your brother this, but I am of the opinion that no one in the household makes it better than you.”
“You flatter me.” Hanzo replied, but couldn’t help the smile that grew across his face. “And I would never break my brother’s heart that way, I assure you.”
A warm chuckle. “I hope you do not mind me saying it, but you also have the look about you of a man who wishes to unburden himself without having to spend the next two hours talking his excitable, wildly overprotective little brother out of shipping him back to Japan tied up in a crate marked live cargo, do not taunt.”
“You...are not even a little bit wrong about that,” Hanzo admitted, and set his bowl down. “I -- “
He opened his mouth to speak, and for a long, long, horrifyingly long moment, absolutely nothing came out. Zenyatta’s pale silver brows, always startling against his dark skin, rose questioningly as he finished drinking his soup and set the bowl aside. Hanzo closed his mouth, breathed deeply, exhaled, breathed deeply again, and found words absolutely failing to emerge from his word-making hole despite the ardent desire burning beneath is breastbone to expel the tale of every weird-ass thing that had happened to him over the last four days, unpleasant, pleasant, and enjoyment-neutral. His throat worked fruitlessly with the effort to produce them, his brain chased itself in fully coherent narrative circles, but the only thing to emerge from his throat was a thin, wheezy whine not entirely unlike the pitiful utterance of a woodwind whose reed was so hopelessly saturated with saliva it was utterly incapable of effective vibration. With a wordless moan of despair, he collapsed against Zenyatta’s desk and buried his head in his arms.
“I have the sense,” Zenyatta said, gently, “that this is not something you have done very often. Or perhaps at all. Ever.”
Hanzo found he could not raise his head from his arms and so he lifted a hand in a complex gesture he hoped Zenyatta would interpret as agreement.
“Would it, perhaps, be easier for you if I asked questions?” Again, oh so very gentle.
“...Maybe?” From the depths of his defensive stronghold, Hanzo managed to force out a response.
“Very well.” Zenyatta’s tone became, if anything, even more serene. “I understand that you intended to visit Shiprock. Was it all that you expected it to be?”
“...Yes.” He very much wished, at that moment, to wax rhapsodic at length, to utter self-condemnatory words for never having visited sooner, despite having the time to do so more than once over the years, to describe how it was impossible to fully appreciate the place in all its stark beauty without standing in the cool of its shadow, and settled for croaking into the crook of his arm, “I’ll show you the pictures when we get home.”
“Hanzo, my friend, are you comfortable with this? We can stop if -- “
“No,” Hanzo muttered, lifting his head enough to catch a glimpse of Zenyatta looking down at him, naked concern on his face. “No -- I wish to continue. Please.”
“As you wish.” Zenyatta leaned slightly closer, his hands folding together atop his desk in a fashion Hanzo was inclined to call mudra-ish. “I also understand that you intended to visit the Omnic graveyard in that area, as well. May I ask why? The two goals seem entirely divergent from one another.”
“Part of my Visual Thesis.” Hanzo admitted to the surface of Zenyatta’s desk. “A...comparison and contrast between natural forms of desolation -- the desert, particularly now that winter is approaching -- and the wreckage left behind by the collapse of modern civilization, the towns abandoned during the Crisis and never reoccupied, the scars left behind by hubris and war. I thought the graveyard, and the town closest to it, which was also called Shiprock, would make a striking example.”
“I tend to agree.” A little smile touched the corners of Zenyatta’s mouth. “I would very much enjoy seeing those photographs, I think, and to visit the your thesis exhibition next spring.”
“Iwillmakecertainmyadvisorhasyouonthelist.” He could feel all the blood evacuating his extremities and heading directly to his face and so he positioned his otherwise useless hands to hide it as much as possible. “The whole experience left me feeling...melancholy. There was -- there is -- an intrinsic sadness to the whole thing, even now, thinking of how much death and destruction could have been avoided, how much more could have been done in the aftermath, the appalling waste of it all.”
And now was the weird part. Where the emphatically Not Normal stuff began. He could feel the urge to beg Zenyatta’s forgiveness for wasting his time welling up in his throat and the even stronger urge to stand up and flee even if it meant risking death or dismemberment on a snow-slicked speedwalk taking up residence in his legs, pleading with him to retreat from what was certain to be a scene of pure humiliation. You should really spare your brother’s boyfriend the necessity of calling the hospital and having you admitted for psychiatric evaluation -- that’s the sort of thing that can put a strain on even the best relationships, a little voice that seemed to partake of rationality murmured in the back of his mind, seduction spiked with reproach because, really, what kind of asshole would do that to Zenyatta? He absolutely did not have to be forced to make that sort of judgment call and --
“And then where did you go?” Zenyatta’s voice, warm and smooth as oil, poured through the cracks in his internal monologue and caused how now-slippery thoughts to skid away like an unsteady but enthusiastic two year old on a particularly lubricious skating rink.
“Cerrillos,” Hanzo blurted out, before the voice of rationality could reassert itself. “Well -- eventually. This is where things become...strange. Very, very strange. I would humbly ask that you listen first and then, if you think me thoroughly irrational afterwards, we can discuss...options?”
Zenyatta’s hands lifted away from the table and took on a second, even more mudraish posture just below his chin. “Agreed. Though I should also tell you that, having lived and worked here for a number of years my standards for strange are quite liberal.”
“My car’s GPS began malfunctioning even before I left the vicinity of the graveyard -- I believe I was technically still within Shiprock town limits.” He retrieved the second thermos and jiggled it gently; Zenyatta brought out two tea bowls this time, and he poured for them both. A few sips and he was fortified to continue. “It refused to hold the route I indicated. I had to reset it several times and it misdirected me all over the hills until I reached what used to be Route 14, where it showed me a course back to Santa Fe from the south. The car itself was sputtering for miles and it finally died completely just after I made that turn.”
“I have heard of this sort of thing before from both students and colleagues.” Zenyatta informed him, meditatively. “Global positioning devices frankly refusing to function properly in certain regions south of the city, that is. The theories I have heard in relation to why this may be tend to extremes to say the least.”
“Oh?” Hanzo asked, somewhat more warily than he liked.
A certain mischievous sparkle came into Zenyatta’s eyes. “The most reasonable suggest some form of localized, persistent geomagnetic disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere, though how such a thing could both exist and completely defy conventional forms of detection is a debate all by itself. Some of the others...well. Roswell is only two hundred miles away, and well within the observed radius of GPS disturbances.”
“Roswell?” Hanzo asked, blankly this time.
The mischievous sparkle was now a mischievous gleam. “Aliens, my friend. Visitors from another world. One of my students is involved in the production of a journal of amateur UFOlogy and swears with a great deal of passionate conviction that the United States government has been covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life since a vehicle not of this world crashed in Roswell in the late 1940s.”
“I...believe I read about that at some point.” Hanzo leaned back in his chair. “A crashed weather balloon?”
“A crashed nuclear test observation balloon that spawned thousands of conspiracy theories, some of them more plausible than others.” He shook his head slightly. “But I agreed to listen first. Please...continue.”
“Yes. Uhm.” And now came the Really Incredibly Strange Parts and before his rational mind could start whispering helpful advice, he pushed himself all the way up into a normal sitting position, gripped the armrests of his chair and said, “I think there were coyotes. Actual real, living coyotes. At least one. When the car died, it was almost dark -- the road I was on barely existed on the GPS and from what I could see it wasn’t traveled regularly at all. My cell had no reception, not even the emergency contact signal. I knew that waiting wasn’t really an option, so I gathered my things and began walking north along Route 14. I saw their eyes from a distance at the edge of my light and for at least a few hours, I was convinced I was going to be eaten.”
A smile curled Zenyatta’s mouth, but he mercifully said nothing.
“I reached Cerrillos -- I want to say near midnight? I lost track of time while I was walking. It was cold, I was exhausted, and at first I didn’t realize I was looking at real lights, an occupied building. The ranger’s...station, I should probably say, but it was more like just a house? I think he’s lived there a long time, is what I’m saying. He took me in and I sort of passed out on his couch and the next morning he gave me breakfast and can I just say that if you and he got into a gently soothing smile contest, I am legitimately unsure who would win? He’s just so -- “ Hanzo’s hands, he realized with dawning horror, had released their grip on the armrests through no conscious direction of his own and started talking for themselves; he hastily stuffed them under his thighs. “Anyway, the next day he took me to my car to see if anything could be done for it and there was...something...more than one something...not a coyote...lurking around it. Nearby. We heard them first -- they howled, like a pack of animals communicating with one another.” He found he could recall that hideous, unearthly sound with horripilating intensity, a shudder running the length of his body as he did so, and Zenyatta’s sympathetic listening face took on a hint of genuine alarm. “Jesse -- that’s the ranger’s name, Jesse McCree -- told me to get back into our vehicle and as we were driving away there was something else, something louder and closer and I --”
The sensation that gripped him now was less a shudder than a convulsion as, for an instant, he nearly remembered what he saw -- the outline, the contour, the texture, the stomach-churning awareness that none of those things were born of any sane world, or even the one they both now occupied, and he deeply regretted everything he’d eaten thus far that day. He clamped his jaw and his eyes shut and swallowed hard and, as he did so, a pair of warm hands cradled his face. At a vast distance, he heard Zenyatta saying his name. With an almost superhuman effort, he forced his eyes to open and ground out, “I saw it. Something unnatural. It saw me, too, and it tried -- “
“It tried to devour your soul.” Zenyatta finished it for him.
“How -- ?” Hanzo croaked, not quite certain how many possible permutations of that question he actually meant, but he knew it was more than one.
“Did I know?” The kindly smile had a slightly sad tinge to it. “I sensed the change in you when you returned home last night, but I wasn’t certain how or when to approach you about it. Your spirit has always been wounded, for as long as I have known you, but this is...more. Not so deep nor so old but more immediately serious. Your soul was severed from your flesh?”
“Yes,” Hanzo croaked again, his stomach still seriously considering rebellion and his mind now beginning to get in on the uncivilized revolution action. “How -- ?”
“The ranger saved you? He must have, he was the only one close enough to do so. How...unusual.” Zenyatta’s eyes gleamed again, almost with a light of their own, golden welling up from beneath gray and green. “And he protects you still. I can see his aegis wrapped around you like a cloak of crimson and gold, holding you while you heal, hiding you from...the thing that saw you.”
“Really?” It came out sounding horribly, pathetically needy and he tried to cringe away, but Zenyatta refused to relinquish his hold.
“Yes.” The smile that curved his lips held more than a trace of impishness; Hanzo found that bizarrely comforting. “I would like to meet this ranger of yours. Other professional craftworkers are so hard to find outside the specialized academic sphere, and those assholes would never dirty their hands with actually rescuing someone.”
“I’d like to see him again too.” It was nothing more or less than utter honesty and it fell out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Excellent. We shall have to make a day of it.” Gently. “Can you stand? Walk?”
Hanzo tested his legs and found his knees wobbly but not so much he wouldn’t risk getting out of the chair. “I think?”
“Good, because I am not certain I could carry you.” Zenyatta leaned back, resting on the edge of his desk. “I realize this has been several sorts of shock to you, my friend. I will do what I can to help ameliorate that, and assist in your recovery however I am able.”
“He gave me a medicine. A kind of tea? It’s supposed to help.” Hanzo took a deep breath, forced his racing thoughts to slow, and then to organize themselves into at least one coherent utterance. “Professional craftworkers?”
“A term of relatively modern provenance, I must admit.” Zenyatta reached out and grasped his hand gently. “I understand that you were, in essence, studying to be part of our kindred order once.”
Hanzo swallowed with some difficulty, his own grip involuntarily tightening. “Oh.”
“Yes.” He glanced out the western window at the sunset beginning to blossom in scarlet glory over the city. “We should go home -- it’s my night to cook, after all. If it is not objectionable to you, I would like to examine the medicine you were given?”
“Of course.” Hanzo replied, numbly, feeling as he did so the ache of that older wound again, for the first time in ages. “Genji. Did he...did he tell you what…”
“No.” Zenyatta’s smile softened into something close to sorrow again. “Only that you left your path for reasons of your own. We may discuss that also, if you wish.”
“No.” It came out more curtly than he wished and he squeezed Zenyatta’s hand in apology. “No -- I...do not wish to...visit that again. Not right now.” Never, whispered that silent ache, and he pushed himself slowly to his feet. “I...would like to be home before dark, if we could.”
“Of course.”
*
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WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66
aka the one where Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate student of the Fine Arts, attending college in what he assumes to be a reasonably sedate corner of the American southwest. Jesse McCree is an occasionally leather-clad NPS ranger whose duties extend somewhat further than shooing lost tourists back onto the clearly marked hiking trails. Something weird is going on in the desert south of Santa Fe and their lives unexpectedly come together in the middle of it.
In which Hanzo tries to spill his guts and his guts aren’t having any of it.
The UMN annex was four hoverbus transfers and one short stretch on the rapid pedestrian transit speedwalk which, this time at least, did not result in any form of grievous bodily harm, not even a bit of unscheduled nipple-surfing across the raked-stone-and-succulent-beds lawn at his point of exit. Given that his last trip out to the annex had resulted a) missing the exit, b) attempting to return to the exit by the expedient method of hopping over the lane separator, and c) being sent to the hospital via ambulance because having one foot going one direction and one foot going the other direction and each moving at roughly twice the average human walking speed was a recipe for tragedy, he considered this at least an unqualified success. In his own defence, the last time he traveled out to the annex was also his first, carrying Zenyatta’s forgotten lunch since he was the one who didn’t have any scheduled classes or studio time or anything resembling work that day, and had not expected what he found upon arrival. In the world of his childhood, buildings called “annexes” were either ancient, crumbling cinderblock-and-sheet-metal edifices that would probably exist until an earthquake strong enough to topple them came along or else post-Crisis modular prefabs of recycled and poorly insulated plastics meant to be replaced by more permanent construction but which never seemed to rate high enough on anyone’s priority queue to quite get there.
This annex, by way of cruel and distracting contrast, was a Pueblo Deco Revival architectural masterwork purpose designed and built as a showcase piece for the style, as well as to house the off-campus professional enrichment classrooms and offices for the chosen few among the faculty. His research, conducted while he was spending six weeks with his left leg in a full immobilization brace, suggested that being assigned space there was generally the result of a member of the faculty either dying or moving on and the survivors engaging in the sort of academic heft/staff seniority knife fights only spoken of in shellshocked whispers by TAs and adjuncts who’d had the misfortune of witnessing them first hand. That Tekhartha Zenyatta, known by all for his thoroughgoing gentleness and fundamentally mild nature, occupied a prime chunk of that real estate suggested that his publish-or-perish game was thoroughly on point or he knew where a substantial number of bodies were buried and probably both. His office was a second-floor corner, not quite as desirable as some spaces, significantly more desirable than others, gifted with more than adequate storage and sitting space as well as enormous windows in two of the four walls and a view of the city and the mountains beyond that could genuinely be described as a vista.
Zenyatta was sitting at his desk, silhouetted against said vista, when Hanzo arrived, having missed him in the classroom by a double handful of minutes, and knocked on the frame of the open door. He looked up and never was the praying mantis resemblance more acute than when the westering sun caught the shaved curve of his skull and the highlights in his hazel eyes as he blinked a slow and vaguely astonished blink at the apparition that appeared before him. Hanzo held up a thermos. “I have soup.”
Zenyatta smiled and his eyes glinted with unconcealed humor. “And this time emergency services were not involved in the delivery. Come in, my friend.”
Hanzo stepped inside and closed the door behind him. By the time he turned around, Zenyatta had retrieved two bowls from the depths of his desk and shut down the holoscreens of its internal workstation. Hanzo sat, and poured, the soup still warm enough to steam, and a for a moment the sat together in companionable silence and drank.
“Ah.” Zenyatta finally said. “Grandmother Sumiko’s miso soup recipe. Never tell your brother this, but I am of the opinion that no one in the household makes it better than you.”
“You flatter me.” Hanzo replied, but couldn’t help the smile that grew across his face. “And I would never break my brother’s heart that way, I assure you.”
A warm chuckle. “I hope you do not mind me saying it, but you also have the look about you of a man who wishes to unburden himself without having to spend the next two hours talking his excitable, wildly overprotective little brother out of shipping him back to Japan tied up in a crate marked live cargo, do not taunt.”
“You...are not even a little bit wrong about that,” Hanzo admitted, and set his bowl down. “I -- “
He opened his mouth to speak, and for a long, long, horrifyingly long moment, absolutely nothing came out. Zenyatta’s pale silver brows, always startling against his dark skin, rose questioningly as he finished drinking his soup and set the bowl aside. Hanzo closed his mouth, breathed deeply, exhaled, breathed deeply again, and found words absolutely failing to emerge from his word-making hole despite the ardent desire burning beneath is breastbone to expel the tale of every weird-ass thing that had happened to him over the last four days, unpleasant, pleasant, and enjoyment-neutral. His throat worked fruitlessly with the effort to produce them, his brain chased itself in fully coherent narrative circles, but the only thing to emerge from his throat was a thin, wheezy whine not entirely unlike the pitiful utterance of a woodwind whose reed was so hopelessly saturated with saliva it was utterly incapable of effective vibration. With a wordless moan of despair, he collapsed against Zenyatta’s desk and buried his head in his arms.
“I have the sense,” Zenyatta said, gently, “that this is not something you have done very often. Or perhaps at all. Ever.”
Hanzo found he could not raise his head from his arms and so he lifted a hand in a complex gesture he hoped Zenyatta would interpret as agreement.
“Would it, perhaps, be easier for you if I asked questions?” Again, oh so very gentle.
“...Maybe?” From the depths of his defensive stronghold, Hanzo managed to force out a response.
“Very well.” Zenyatta’s tone became, if anything, even more serene. “I understand that you intended to visit Shiprock. Was it all that you expected it to be?”
“...Yes.” He very much wished, at that moment, to wax rhapsodic at length, to utter self-condemnatory words for never having visited sooner, despite having the time to do so more than once over the years, to describe how it was impossible to fully appreciate the place in all its stark beauty without standing in the cool of its shadow, and settled for croaking into the crook of his arm, “I’ll show you the pictures when we get home.”
“Hanzo, my friend, are you comfortable with this? We can stop if -- “
“No,” Hanzo muttered, lifting his head enough to catch a glimpse of Zenyatta looking down at him, naked concern on his face. “No -- I wish to continue. Please.”
“As you wish.” Zenyatta leaned slightly closer, his hands folding together atop his desk in a fashion Hanzo was inclined to call mudra-ish. “I also understand that you intended to visit the Omnic graveyard in that area, as well. May I ask why? The two goals seem entirely divergent from one another.”
“Part of my Visual Thesis.” Hanzo admitted to the surface of Zenyatta’s desk. “A...comparison and contrast between natural forms of desolation -- the desert, particularly now that winter is approaching -- and the wreckage left behind by the collapse of modern civilization, the towns abandoned during the Crisis and never reoccupied, the scars left behind by hubris and war. I thought the graveyard, and the town closest to it, which was also called Shiprock, would make a striking example.”
“I tend to agree.” A little smile touched the corners of Zenyatta’s mouth. “I would very much enjoy seeing those photographs, I think, and to visit the your thesis exhibition next spring.”
“Iwillmakecertainmyadvisorhasyouonthelist.” He could feel all the blood evacuating his extremities and heading directly to his face and so he positioned his otherwise useless hands to hide it as much as possible. “The whole experience left me feeling...melancholy. There was -- there is -- an intrinsic sadness to the whole thing, even now, thinking of how much death and destruction could have been avoided, how much more could have been done in the aftermath, the appalling waste of it all.”
And now was the weird part. Where the emphatically Not Normal stuff began. He could feel the urge to beg Zenyatta’s forgiveness for wasting his time welling up in his throat and the even stronger urge to stand up and flee even if it meant risking death or dismemberment on a snow-slicked speedwalk taking up residence in his legs, pleading with him to retreat from what was certain to be a scene of pure humiliation. You should really spare your brother’s boyfriend the necessity of calling the hospital and having you admitted for psychiatric evaluation -- that’s the sort of thing that can put a strain on even the best relationships, a little voice that seemed to partake of rationality murmured in the back of his mind, seduction spiked with reproach because, really, what kind of asshole would do that to Zenyatta? He absolutely did not have to be forced to make that sort of judgment call and --
“And then where did you go?” Zenyatta’s voice, warm and smooth as oil, poured through the cracks in his internal monologue and caused how now-slippery thoughts to skid away like an unsteady but enthusiastic two year old on a particularly lubricious skating rink.
“Cerrillos,” Hanzo blurted out, before the voice of rationality could reassert itself. “Well -- eventually. This is where things become...strange. Very, very strange. I would humbly ask that you listen first and then, if you think me thoroughly irrational afterwards, we can discuss...options?”
Zenyatta’s hands lifted away from the table and took on a second, even more mudraish posture just below his chin. “Agreed. Though I should also tell you that, having lived and worked here for a number of years my standards for strange are quite liberal.”
“My car’s GPS began malfunctioning even before I left the vicinity of the graveyard -- I believe I was technically still within Shiprock town limits.” He retrieved the second thermos and jiggled it gently; Zenyatta brought out two tea bowls this time, and he poured for them both. A few sips and he was fortified to continue. “It refused to hold the route I indicated. I had to reset it several times and it misdirected me all over the hills until I reached what used to be Route 14, where it showed me a course back to Santa Fe from the south. The car itself was sputtering for miles and it finally died completely just after I made that turn.”
“I have heard of this sort of thing before from both students and colleagues.” Zenyatta informed him, meditatively. “Global positioning devices frankly refusing to function properly in certain regions south of the city, that is. The theories I have heard in relation to why this may be tend to extremes to say the least.”
“Oh?” Hanzo asked, somewhat more warily than he liked.
A certain mischievous sparkle came into Zenyatta’s eyes. “The most reasonable suggest some form of localized, persistent geomagnetic disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere, though how such a thing could both exist and completely defy conventional forms of detection is a debate all by itself. Some of the others...well. Roswell is only two hundred miles away, and well within the observed radius of GPS disturbances.”
“Roswell?” Hanzo asked, blankly this time.
The mischievous sparkle was now a mischievous gleam. “Aliens, my friend. Visitors from another world. One of my students is involved in the production of a journal of amateur UFOlogy and swears with a great deal of passionate conviction that the United States government has been covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life since a vehicle not of this world crashed in Roswell in the late 1940s.”
“I...believe I read about that at some point.” Hanzo leaned back in his chair. “A crashed weather balloon?”
“A crashed nuclear test observation balloon that spawned thousands of conspiracy theories, some of them more plausible than others.” He shook his head slightly. “But I agreed to listen first. Please...continue.”
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WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66
aka the one in which Hanzo Shimada is a perpetually flustered art student, Jesse McCree is an NPS ranger with a very particular skill-set, something weird is going on in the desert south of Santa Fe, and their lives collide in the middle of it.
Partial scene because long day, tired but plot thickening is beginning to be sprinkled. Will fix the italics in the morning.
The UMN annex was four hoverbus transfers and one short stretch on the rapid pedestrian transit speedwalk which, this time at least, did not result in any form of grievous bodily harm, not even a bit of unscheduled nipple-surfing across the raked-stone-and-succulent-beds lawn at his point of exit. Given that his last trip out to the annex had resulted a) missing the exit, b) attempting to return to the exit by the expedient method of hopping over the lane separator, and c) being sent to the hospital via ambulance because having one foot going one direction and one foot going the other direction and each moving at roughly twice the average human walking speed was a recipe for tragedy, he considered this at least an unqualified success. In his own defence, the last time he traveled out to the annex was also his first, carrying Zenyatta’s forgotten lunch since he was the one who didn’t have any scheduled classes or studio time or anything resembling work that day, and had not expected what he found upon arrival. In the world of his childhood, buildings called “annexes” were either ancient, crumbling cinderblock-and-sheet-metal edifices that would probably exist until an earthquake strong enough to topple them came along or else post-Crisis modular prefabs of recycled and poorly insulated plastics meant to be replaced by more permanent construction but which never seemed to rate high enough on anyone’s priority queue to quite get there.
This annex, by way of cruel and distracting contrast, was a Pueblo Deco Revival architectural masterwork purpose designed and built as a showcase piece for the style, as well as to house the off-campus professional enrichment classrooms and offices for the chosen few among the faculty. His research, conducted while he was spending six weeks with his left leg in a full immobilization brace, suggested that being assigned space there was generally the result of a member of the faculty either dying or moving on and the survivors engaging in the sort of academic heft/staff seniority knife fights only spoken of in shellshocked whispers by TAs and adjuncts who’d had the misfortune of witnessing them first hand. That Tekhartha Zenyatta, known by all for his thoroughgoing gentleness and fundamentally mild nature, occupied a prime chunk of that real estate suggested that his publish-or-perish game was thoroughly on point or he knew where a substantial number of bodies were buried and probably both. His office was a second-floor corner, not quite as desirable as some spaces, significantly more desirable than others, gifted with more than adequate storage and sitting space as well as enormous windows in two of the four walls and a view of the city and the mountains beyond that could genuinely be described as a vista.
Zenyatta was sitting at his desk, silhouetted against said vista, when Hanzo arrived, having missed him in the classroom by a double handful of minutes, and knocked on the frame of the open door. He looked up and never was the praying mantis resemblance more acute than when the westering sun caught the shaved curve of his skull and the highlights in his hazel eyes as he blinked a slow and vaguely astonished blink at the apparition that appeared before him. Hanzo held up a thermos. “I have soup.”
Zenyatta smiled and his eyes glinted with unconcealed humor. “And this time emergency services were not involved in the delivery. Come in, my friend.”
Hanzo stepped inside and closed the door behind him. By the time he turned around, Zenyatta had retrieved two bowls from the depths of his desk and shut down the holoscreens of its internal workstation. Hanzo sat, and poured, the soup still warm enough to steam, and a for a moment the sat together in companionable silence and drank.
“Ah.” Zenyatta finally said. “Grandmother Sumiko’s miso soup recipe. Never tell your brother this, but I am of the opinion that no one in the household makes it better than you.”
“You flatter me.” Hanzo replied, but couldn’t help the smile that grew across his face. “And I would never break my brother’s heart that way, I assure you.”
A warm chuckle. “I hope you do not mind me saying it, but you also have the look about you of a man who wishes to unburden himself without having to spend the next two hours talking his excitable, wildly overprotective little brother out of shipping him back to Japan tied up in a crate marked live cargo, do not taunt.”
“You...are not even a little bit wrong about that,” Hanzo admitted, and set his bowl down. “I -- “
He opened his mouth to speak, and for a long, long, horrifyingly long moment, absolutely nothing came out. Zenyatta’s pale silver brows, always startling against his dark skin, rose questioningly as he finished drinking his soup and set the bowl aside. Hanzo closed his mouth, breathed deeply, exhaled, breathed deeply again, and found words absolutely failing to emerge from his word-making hole despite the ardent desire burning beneath is breastbone to expel the tale of every weird-ass thing that had happened to him over the last four days, unpleasant, pleasant, and enjoyment-neutral. His throat worked fruitlessly with the effort to produce them, his brain chased itself in fully coherent narrative circles, but the only thing to emerge from his throat was a thin, wheezy whine not entirely unlike the pitiful utterance of a woodwind whose reed was so hopelessly saturated with saliva it was utterly incapable of effective vibration. With a wordless moan of despair, he collapsed against Zenyatta’s desk and buried his head in his arms.
“I have the sense,” Zenyatta said, gently, “that this is not something you have done very often. Or perhaps at all. Ever.”
Hanzo found he could not raise his head from his arms and so he lifted a hand in a complex gesture he hoped Zenyatta would interpret as agreement.
“Would it, perhaps, be easier for you if I asked questions?” Again, oh so very gentle.
“...Maybe?” From the depths of his defensive stronghold, Hanzo managed to force out a response.
“Very well.” Zenyatta’s tone became, if anything, even more serene. “I understand that you intended to visit Shiprock. Was it all that you expected it to be?”
“...Yes.” He very much wished, at that moment, to wax rhapsodic at length, to utter self-condemnatory words for never having visited sooner, despite having the time to do so more than once over the years, to describe how it was impossible to fully appreciate the place in all its stark beauty without standing in the cool of its shadow, and settled for croaking into the crook of his arm, “I’ll show you the pictures when we get home.”
“Hanzo, my friend, are you comfortable with this? We can stop if -- “
“No,” Hanzo muttered, lifting his head enough to catch a glimpse of Zenyatta looking down at him, naked concern on his face. “No -- I wish to continue. Please.”
“As you wish.” Zenyatta leaned slightly closer, his hands folding together atop his desk in a fashion Hanzo was inclined to call mudra-ish. “I also understand that you intended to visit the Omnic graveyard in that area, as well. May I ask why? The two goals seem entirely divergent from one another.”
“Part of my Visual Thesis.” Hanzo admitted to the surface of Zenyatta’s desk. “A...comparison and contrast between natural forms of desolation -- the desert, particularly now that winter is approaching -- and the wreckage left behind by the collapse of modern civilization, the towns abandoned during the Crisis and never reoccupied, the scars left behind by hubris and war. I thought the graveyard, and the town closest to it, which was also called Shiprock, would make a striking example.”
“I tend to agree.” A little smile touched the corners of Zenyatta’s mouth. “I would very much enjoy seeing those photographs, I think, and to visit the your thesis exhibition next spring.”
“Iwillmakecertainmyadvisorhasyouonthelist.” He could feel all the blood evacuating his extremities and heading directly to his face and so he positioned his otherwise useless hands to hide it as much as possible. “The whole experience left me feeling...melancholy. There was -- there is -- an intrinsic sadness to the whole thing, even now, thinking of how much death and destruction could have been avoided, how much more could have been done in the aftermath, the appalling waste of it all.”
And now was the weird part. Where the emphatically Not Normal stuff began. He could feel the urge to beg Zenyatta’s forgiveness for wasting his time welling up in his throat and the even stronger urge to stand up and flee even if it meant risking death or dismemberment on a snow-slicked speedwalk taking up residence in his legs, pleading with him to retreat from what was certain to be a scene of pure humiliation. You should really spare your brother’s boyfriend the necessity of calling the hospital and having you admitted for psychiatric evaluation -- that’s the sort of thing that can put a strain on even the best relationships, a little voice that seemed to partake of rationality murmured in the back of his mind, seduction spiked with reproach because, really, what kind of asshole would do that to Zenyatta? He absolutely did not have to be forced to make that sort of judgment call and --
“And then where did you go?” Zenyatta’s voice, warm and smooth as oil, poured through the cracks in his internal monologue and caused how now-slippery thoughts to skid away like an unsteady but enthusiastic two year old on a particularly lubricious skating rink.
“Cerrillos,” Hanzo blurted out, before the voice of rationality could reassert itself. “Well -- eventually. This is where things become...strange. Very, very strange. I would humbly ask that you listen first and then, if you think me thoroughly irrational afterwards, we can discuss...options?”
Zenyatta’s hands lifted away from the table and took on a second, even more mudraish posture just below his chin. “Agreed. Though I should also tell you that, having lived and worked here for a number of years my standards for strange are quite liberal.”
“My car’s GPS began malfunctioning even before I left the vicinity of the graveyard -- I believe I was technically still within Shiprock town limits.” He retrieved the second thermos and jiggled it gently; Zenyatta brought out two tea bowls this time, and he poured for them both. A few sips and he was fortified to continue. “It refused to hold the route I indicated. I had to reset it several times and it misdirected me all over the hills until I reached what used to be Route 14, where it showed me a course back to Santa Fe from the south. The car itself was sputtering for miles and it finally died completely just after I made that turn.”
“I have heard of this sort of thing before from both students and colleagues.” Zenyatta informed him, meditatively. “Global positioning devices frankly refusing to function properly in certain regions south of the city, that is. The theories I have heard in relation to why this may be tend to extremes to say the least.”
“Oh?” Hanzo asked, somewhat more warily than he liked.
A certain mischievous sparkle came into Zenyatta’s eyes. “The most reasonable suggest some form of localized, persistent geomagnetic disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere, though how such a thing could both exist and completely defy conventional forms of detection is a debate all by itself. Some of the others...well. Roswell is only two hundred miles away, and well within the observed radius of GPS disturbances.”
“Roswell?” Hanzo asked, blankly this time.
The mischievous sparkle was now a mischievous gleam. “Aliens, my friend. Visitors from another world. One of my students is involved in the production of a journal of amateur UFOlogy and swears with a great deal of passionate conviction that the United States government has been covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life since a vehicle not of this world crashed in Roswell in the late 1940s.”
“I...believe I read about that at some point.” Hanzo leaned back in his chair. “A crashed weather balloon?”
“A crashed nuclear test observation balloon that spawned thousands of conspiracy theories, some of them more plausible than others.” He shook his head slightly. “But I agreed to listen first. Please...continue.”
“Yes. Uhm.” And now came the Really Incredibly Strange Parts and before his rational mind could start whispering helpful advice, he pushed himself all the way up into a normal sitting position, gripped the armrests of his chair and said, “I think there were coyotes. Actual real, living coyotes. At least one. When the car died, it was almost dark -- the road I was on barely existed on the GPS and from what I could see it wasn’t traveled regularly at all. My cell had no reception, not even the emergency contact signal. I knew that waiting wasn’t really an option, so I gathered my things and began walking north along Route 14. I saw their eyes from a distance at the edge of my light and for at least a few hours, I was convinced I was going to be eaten.”
A smile curled Zenyatta’s mouth, but he mercifully said nothing.
“I reached Cerrillos -- I want to say near midnight? I lost track of time while I was walking. It was cold, I was exhausted, and at first I didn’t realize I was looking at real lights, an occupied building. The ranger’s...station, I should probably say, but it was more like just a house? I think he’s lived there a long time, is what I’m saying. He took me in and I sort of passed out on his couch and the next morning he gave me breakfast and can I just say that if you and he got into a gently soothing smile contest, I am legitimately unsure who would win? He’s just so -- “ Hanzo’s hands, he realized with dawning horror, had released their grip on the armrests through no conscious direction of his own and started talking for themselves; he hastily stuffed them under his thighs. “Anyway, the next day he took me to my car to see if anything could be done for it and there was...something...more than one something...not a coyote...lurking around it. Nearby. We heard them first -- they howled, like a pack of animals communicating with one another.” He found he could recall that hideous, unearthly sound with horripilating intensity, a shudder running the length of his body as he did so, and Zenyatta’s sympathetic listening face took on a hint of genuine alarm. “Jesse -- that’s the ranger’s name, Jesse McCree -- told me to get back into our vehicle and as we were driving away there was something else, something louder and closer and I --”
The sensation that gripped him now was less a shudder than a convulsion as, for an instant, he nearly remembered what he saw -- the outline, the contour, the texture, the stomach-churning awareness that none of those things were born of any sane world, or even the one they both now occupied, and he deeply regretted everything he’d eaten thus far that day. He clamped his jaw and his eyes shut and swallowed hard and, as he did so, a pair of warm hands cradled his face. At a vast distance, he heard Zenyatta saying his name. With an almost superhuman effort, he forced his eyes to open and ground out, “I saw it. Something unnatural. It saw me, too, and it tried -- “
“It tried to devour your soul.” Zenyatta finished it for him.
“How -- ?” Hanzo croaked, not quite certain how many possible permutations of that question he actually meant, but he knew it was more than one.
“Did I know?” The kindly smile had a slightly sad tinge to it. “I sensed the change in you when you returned home last night, but I wasn’t certain how or when to approach you about it. Your spirit has always been wounded, for as long as I have known you, but this is...more. Not so deep nor so old but more immediately serious. Your soul was severed from your flesh?”
“Yes,” Hanzo croaked again, his stomach still seriously considering rebellion and his mind now beginning to get in on the uncivilized revolution action. “How -- ?”
“The ranger saved you? He must have, he was the only one close enough to do so. How...unusual.” Zenyatta’s eyes gleamed again, almost with a light of their own, golden welling up from beneath gray and green. “And he protects you still. I can see his aegis wrapped around you like a cloak of crimson and gold, holding you while you heal, hiding you from...the thing that saw you.”
“Really?” It came out sounding horribly, pathetically needy and he tried to cringe away, but Zenyatta refused to relinquish his hold.
“Yes.” The smile that curved his lips held more than a trace of impishness; Hanzo found that bizarrely comforting. “I would like to meet this ranger of yours. Other professional craftworkers are so hard to find outside the specialized academic sphere, and those assholes would never dirty their hands with actually rescuing someone.”
“I’d like to see him again too,” It was nothing more or less than utter honesty and it fell out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Excellent. We shall have to make a day of it.” Gently. “Can you stand? Walk?”
Hanzo tested his legs and found his knees wobbly but not so much he wouldn’t risk getting out of the chair. “I think?”
“Good, because I am not certain I could carry you.” Zenyatta leaned back, resting on the edge of his desk. “I realize this has been several sorts of shock to you, my friend. I will do what I can to help ameliorate that, and assist in your recovery however I am able.”
“He gave me a medicine. A kind of tea? It’s supposed to help.” Hanzo took a deep breath, forced his racing thoughts to slow, and then to organize themselves into at least one coherent utterance. “Professional craftworkers?”
“A term of relatively modern provenance, I must admit.” Zenyatta reached out and grasped his hand gently. “I understand that you were, in essence, studying to be part of our kindred order once.”
Hanzo swallowed with some difficulty, his own grip involuntarily tightening. “Oh.”
“Yes.” He glanced out the western window at the sunset beginning to blossom in scarlet glory over the city. “We should go home -- it’s my night to cook, after all. If it is not objectionable to you, I would like to examine the medicine you were given?”
“Of course.” Hanzo replied, numbly, feeling as he did so the ache of that older wound again, for the first time in ages. “Genji. Did he...did he tell you what…”
“No.” Zenyatta’s smile softened into something close to sorrow again. “Only that you left your path for reasons of your own. We may discuss that also, if you wish.”
“No.” It came out more curtly than he wished and he squeezed Zenyatta’s hand in apology. “No -- I...do not wish to...visit that again. Not right now.” Never, whispered that silent ache, and he pushed himself slowly to his feet. “I...would like to be home before dark, if we could.”
“Of course.”
*
The best part about Zenyatta cooking was that Zenyatta actually cooked. Rather than engaging in a forty-odd-minute long debate among five individuals with wildly divergent tastes that would end in an obscenely expensive take-out order, he very simply ignored the divergent tastes and made something that everyone would invariably sit down to eat and subsequently enjoy. Hanzo himself hadn’t quite mastered that art but considered himself learning at the knee of the master every time he was asked to assist and thus he had no objection to being handed a knife and a cutting board almost as soon as they arrived home. He sat and cut carrots into rounds while Zenyatta retrieved the containers of marinating chicken (for the meat-eaters) and marinating tofu (for the non-meat-eaters) from the refrigerator and set them out to reach room temperature; he chopped garlic and minced fresh ginger while Zenyatta toasted a few handfuls of shelled peanuts and set them aside to cool; he diced onion while Zenyatta heated the oil in both their large skillets and added aromatic spices that perfumed the air. The tension bled from him as they worked, Zenyatta adding half the onion to each pan, and he rose to do what dishes he could as basmati rice and water went into the cooker. Moment by moment the soothing rituals of the kitchen worked their magic on him and he found the words flowing out.
“There was something else -- something I didn’t tell you at the office. Once when I was at the ranger’s house and when I returned home last night, I...traveled outside my body.” Saying it aloud had the effect of solidifying the reality of it in his own mind and silencing the almost-continuous mutters of reason in the back of his skull that were advocating voluntarily committing himself. “Well. All right. I know I did it at the ranger’s house. Last night might have been an extraordinarily vivid and detailed dream, but I doubt it sincerely.”
Zenyatta carefully added the chicken and its marinade to one of the pans and gave it a few quick stirs. “That does not entirely surprise me. Your soul’s attachment to its flesh is attenuated at the moment, likely moreso when you sleep.”
“The ranger suggested as much -- the medicine is supposed to help with that, I think. It made me so tired when I took it last night I barely made it up the stairs.” He accepted the container Zenyatta handed to him and made it clean. “I...may have witnessed a conversation I probably should not have heard.”
“Oh?” Zenyatta glanced at him, sidelong, and repeated his process with the second container, tone and manner perfectly neutral.
“When I was...sleepwalking...last night. Possibly this morning. Maybe both? Anyway,” Hanzo scrubbed savagely at the second container for a moment, “I went back to his house -- I am not entirely certain why -- but I felt as though I woke there, on the couch. His parents were waiting for him, but they did not seem to be aware of my presence, and when he returned home he was not aware of it, either. They discussed a number of topics that were somewhat outside my realm of experience -- things I would appreciate your assistance in researching, if you would be amenable to doing so?”
“Of course. I have always been of the opinion that ignorance is not an outstandingly effective shield.” The very faintest hint of a smile as he added rice and carrots and ginger and peanuts to a third pan. “Particularly when dealing with the naturally curious artistic types. Would you mind setting the table and summoning the others? We’ll be ready to eat in a few minutes.”
Everyone in the house had their favorite plate, glass, set of silverware, and chair, no single piece of it matching any other piece, reflective of the fact that they all brought at least a handful of household goods when they moved in together. The blender/food processor belonged to Hana -- she used it to produce gallons of fruity homemade energy smoothies containing approximately four times the amount of caffeine permitted in commercially salable beverages which she fed to the rest of the game design faculty and students on a fairly regular basis, particularly in the vicinity of midterms and finals. In fact, her entire friendship with Genji came about as a result of his raging addiction to the Random Mystery Fruit variety of the same and his invitation to move in with them in order to shorten the supply chain. Lucio brought the living room sound system, which replaced the fairly dinky speakers that came with their holotank and turned the entire room into a nearly hallucinatory sensory experience when it was running full-tilt, a circumstance usually reserved for family game nights and movie marathon weekends when the nearest neighbors were away, because otherwise someone would be forced to continue the ongoing battle of the passive-aggressive complaints to their landlord, who had absolutely no fucks to give so long as they paid the rent on time and didn’t actually violate any local sound-related ordinances. From childhood on, Genji had owned every game system known to man and some that were entirely experimental products of the family’s active immersion entertainment products division -- he’d bought them all again, once he’d come to the United States, and still received regular care packages from AIE of tech and games that needed thorough testing. Zenyatta had actually brought the majority of the common-use furniture, including the kitchen table and chairs and the living room set, all of which had a rather distinct character of their own, and that character was probably the offspring of an aromatherapist, a medical cannabis dispensary, and a polyamorous hippie commune.
Hanzo supplied the pots and pans, because man in general and he in specific couldn’t live on delivery alone.
The sounds drifting down the stairs told him the rest of the household was, indeed, home and also that merely calling up to them was unlikely to jar them from their pursuits. Instead, he found his tablet, queued up the standard dinner summons, and deployed it. Within seconds, the dulcet tones precision sound-engineered to resemble a composite of literally all their mothers echoed through the house. “Make yourselves presentable, you heathens, there’s food on the table!”
Then he went back into the kitchen to help Zenyatta transfer dinner from the stove to the table and set out everyone’s favorite drinks.
“I still don’t think our mother would use the word ‘heathens,’” Genji informed him, accepting the glass of lemonade Hanzo handed to him.
“No, but she certainly would have demanded that we make ourselves presentable.” Hanzo replied, pouring his way around the table to his own seat.
“Heathens is the least my mother would call this group.” Lucio leaned against the kitchen doorframe, looking for all the world as though it were the only thing holding him up. “But I’m pretty sure she’d mean it as a compliment.”
“What happened to you?” Hanzo asked, appalled, before his better judgment or self-preservation instincts could successfully intervene.
“I’m pretty sure your story’s more interesting than mine when it comes to that.” Lucio grinned, tired but impish, and came to the table. “Sorry I missed you when you got back home yesterday, Hanzo -- I’ve been pulling double duty on this group project that’s due in a couple weeks. The classmate I was supposed to partner with went home to visit her folks in Amarillo last month and then dropped off the face of the Earth. Didn’t come back, didn’t withdraw, didn’t answer calls or email or anything. The prof only just gave us leave to reallocate her part of the project last week.”
“Oh, man, that sucks. Wait. Wasn’t your partner Cora Hernandez?” Hana materialized in her chair between one moment and the next. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this but...a member of my project team does her work study in the campus security office and her folks have been calling almost non-stop. Texas State PD, too. Apparently she never actually made it back home -- they found her car somewhere south of here, way south, like way into the coyotes-and-batshit-survivalists territory. No offense to your new boyfriend, Hanzo.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Hanzo replied, reflexively, even as all the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “And he’s also not a batshit survivalist so your apology is doubly unnecessary. Do you know where, exactly, her car was found?”
“I wanna say, like, near Alamogordo? South.” Hana shook her head. “I feel bad for her family, no matter what.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”
“Morbid curiosity,” Hanzo replied and took his seat, thoughts racing.
Alamogordo was significantly further south, he knew that much, well inside the territory that had been depopulated by evacuation and violence during the Omnic Crisis and never fully rehabilitated for any number of reasons, most of them pragmatically economic in nature. He wished that he dared pull out his tablet at the table and start consulting maps but that would have led to any number of awkward questions that he really did not want to answer at that moment, not with Genji already giving him the irridescently brilliant suspicious side-eye and Zenyatta regarding him with only barely disguised concern. He smiled comfortingly at them both, fooled neither, and attended to dinner and the lighter conversation that followed as best he could, with his mind running in a rapidly expanding series of concentric circles that kept coming back to someone else from my school VANISHED COMPLETELY INTO THE DESERT in the last month and is this the sort of thing I should tell Jesse about or am I actually such a complete asshole that I would use the disappearance of an innocent woman as an excuse to call my crush? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.
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