almightythirst | Open Post

Jesse doesn’t try to touch Hanzo again, hand hovering in the air between them before he lets it fall.

“Wasn’t going to.” Even if he’d like to, what is he going to say? The truth isn’t his to give, and Hanzo doesn’t need any more lies. He grimaces at the tone of the other man’s voice, glancing to the side once more only to force himself to look back and meet Hanzo head-on.

“I can’t explain it all right now anyway. I…” he stops, struggling to find the words. His silver tongue isn’t so good at saying the things that matter.

And as Jesse tries to speak, someone else watches from the nearby rooftop of another building, visible should anyone look with a keen eye. He’s been there for some time, in fact, crouched on the roof tiles, head cocked to one side in a way that might be thoughtful. Hard to tell with the mask covering his features.

If Hanzo had been more focused on Jesse, he might have missed the figure entirely. Jesse had a way of swallowing up his worldview, something he was both aware and wary of. Rather than let the anger boil over, he jerked his gaze away again, moving towards the window...

And then swiftly drawing his bow again.

This time there's no pause, pushing past the glass doors leading to the balcony and taking aim at the shadow there, face framed by that mask. That mask. No stranger had a right to it, and that anger that had been seething inside finally finds a place to focus.

It snaps. And his hand releases, sending the arrow piercing through the air, towards the figure there on the rooftop.

It happens so fast that any human watching might have blinked and missed it. Hanzo fires, and the masked man has his sword unsheathed almost simultaneously. In the time it takes the arrow to reach him from Hanzo’s position, the man dodges to the side and swings up with his blade. As he straightens up and stands, Hanzo’s arrow falls, now neatly cleaved into two pieces.

It had been completely unnecessary to cut the arrow in two. At best, it’s showing off. Worst, it’s an insult.

Jesse steps up behind Hanzo, the beginnings of a question dying on his lips as he stares at the familiar silhouette over his sire’s shoulder.

“Hanzo-” he starts, a hint of warning in his voice, just as the masked man raises a hand. The quick crook of his fingers is pretty difficult to misinterpret.

Come on.

Impossible.

The vampire feels his hackles raising. The warning barely slips past Jesse's lips before Hanzo is simply not there anymore, a shadow leaping through the night air towards the beckoning figure. The image of a ghost, taunting him. Whoever is wearing that mask will pay for coming here.

Swiftly, he reaches to ready another arrow, and before his feet find purchase on the roof he's fired another arrow for the bastard's throat. He's forgotten everything in that moment save seeing him bleed and fall. Everything except standing over his corpse and tearing that mask from his face.

He was unworthy. No one had the right, least of all this interloper.

Jesse swallows a sound of frustration as Hanzo leaps out into the night. It’s reckless, which is all the more frustrating given how careful Hanzo is the rest of the time. If this hadn’t been Genji, and if Jesse hadn’t been so sure that murdering his elder brother was a motive off the table, he’d go leaping out on his sire’s tail.

Instead, he heaves a heavy sigh and takes Peacekeeper out of its holster. Better to be prepared than not.

On the rooftop, the masked vigilante is dodging Hanzo’s last arrow with the fluidity and confidence of someone who might as well have been expecting that exact attack. His momentum sends him sliding back over the roof’s tile towards the ground- but at the last moment he jumps backwards into the open air, vanishing into smoke before he can even fall.

“You’re faster than you ever were, but just as predictable.”

The smoke manifests at Hanzo’s back, along with the sound of feet touching down just behind him.

For a moment he follows in pursuit, to the lip of the roof, only to realize seconds later that he's been had. Of course. This person, whoever they are, has been tormenting his family for months now, evading all efforts to corner and catch him. All while using techniques that should be so familiar.

Smoke. He should be picking out the scent of the components, tracing his movement. Listening for a heartbeat. But this sense of reason and composure has fled him, shredded in the sight of the facade in front of him.

It isn't Genji's face, but it's close enough. In pictures, it is one thing, but to see it as he turns around to face the thief, his senses are assailed with memory. It floods back to him, rage and guilt soaking through and dampening what should have been carefully honed instinct, and he pulls back on another arrow with gritted fangs, nocking it and setting it loose with inhuman speed.

"Do not speak as if you know me. Thief."

And with inhuman speed, the masked figure angles his body so the arrow flies past him rather than through. Not human, clearly, but not a vampire. His blood runs hot, unlike his brother’s. Like Jesse’s might have, once.

“Curious choice of words. Can you steal something that belongs to the dead?” He spins, sword lashing out like a lightning strike. Sharp, precise, its intended point of contact the bow in Hanzo’s hand.

“You were content enough to let it sit in the clan’s hands.”

Quick as blinking Hanzo shifts and deflects, catching the edge of the blade and wresting it to one side. Not quite strong enough to disarm, but still of the mind that this? Whoever it is, it is an enemy.

"It belongs to a dead man. As it will again...!"

And this time he ducks low, sweeping with the storm bow to catch his opponent at the legs.

The man hops to avoid the bow at his feet, landing within range of another strike should it come. Whatever his goal, running away doesn’t seem to be a part of it.

“I didn’t think you would be this sentimental.”

Instead of raising his sword, he reaches up for the mask instead. The fact that Hanzo could easily put an arrow in him in the meantime seems of little concern.

“But I should have guessed. You did come back every year, on that same day, to pay your respects.”

That confidence rolls right over bravery to foolishness. Does he hope the former Shimada scion will strike him down where he stands.

No time wasted, he readies another arrow as the stranger lifts a hand to the mask. Does he intent to surrender it, in the hopes of having his life spared? What game is he playing? Questions upon questions tumble over in his mind as his dark eyes narrow, fixed on his quarry.

"Who are you?"

Hanzo has always favored action over words, has he not? The mask is slipped off with a steady hand, the movement not fueled by haste or hampered by a need for drama. And beneath it, predictably, is a face.

Arched eyebrows, notched at the ends in the signature Shimada style. Black hair swept up and back from his face. It’s familiar, but not the same. Not with the scars crisscrossing over his skin. He holds the mask out for Hanzo to take, deep brown eyes watching closely in case Hanzo decides to fire after all.

“Hello, brother.”

If he wasn't dead, his heart might have stilled in that moment. The face engraved into his memories as lifeless and pale, staring back at him in a living, breathing form.

"...Genji."

Whatever he'd prepared himself to see, it wasn't that.

The tension doesn't leave his form, even as his eyes widen. No. That's impossible. It's a trick, some illusion meant to throw him off, which just infuriates him all the more. The bowstring draws tighter still.

"No, that cannot be. My brother is dead," he hisses through his teeth, almost as if to convince himself.

Genji smiles, a wry twist to his mouth that says he’d expected just this sort of denial, even if he would have preferred to go without it. He continues to offer up the mask, his stance not shifting an inch.

“That’s true, in a way. The Genji you knew then is dead, just like the Hanzo I once knew. But you’re still here, and so am I.”

He glances down at the arrow pointed at him, considering the prospect of Hanzo firing.

"You don't seem convinced."

"How could I be?" he snapped in turn, dark eyes sharp as flint and burning in the cool night air. It's too easy to recall those last moments, holding his brother's bloodied body in his arms, realizing what had happened. What he'd done, in his mindless hunger. A part of him had shattered forever in that moment...and perhaps that had been the point. The cruelest lesson possible in the importance of severing one's humanity.

That same humanity that had been threatening to blossom once more, with Jesse's aid. Now, as if on cue, the very reason he'd taught himself to grind such emotions into the dirt under heel presents itself.

The arrow doesn't so much as shift, his poise untouched even as something rough enters his tone. "Prove it, then. Prove you are who you say. Tell me how he died. If anything less than the truth leaves your mouth, they will be your last words."

Genji closes his eyes for a moment, his frown deepening. But when he looks at Hanzo again, there’s no uncertainty in his gaze.

“They wouldn’t tell me where they’d taken you.”

His own voice betrays a hint of frustration, even now, so long after the fact.

“You disappeared, and I knew they’d done something. But the elders had stopped trusting me with much by then. The more I asked, the less they said. The more strict they became. It was impossible to sneak out anymore—which you know is saying something, for me.” A hint of a smile, there and gone as he continues. This is more than Hanzo had asked for, but should this go badly, he still wants him to know.

“Then one day, they said they would take me to you. So easily. It was suspicious, but I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know where you were, or what they’d done to you, and it had been weeks. So I went.” His tone grows softer. This next part is the hardest to revisit.

“They brought me underground, to a part of the compound I hadn’t known existed. And you were there. Caged, and you looked… ill. You were suffering.” His grip on the mask tightens, and he pulls it a little closer to himself. “I thought they had tortured you. And when they forced me into the cage as well, I thought the same would happen to me. I didn’t know… until you looked at me. It was the first time I’d ever felt truly afraid of you.”

And though it brings him no joy to say, this is what Hanzo had asked for.

“Then you attacked. I was no match for your strength, though you were weaker than either of us is now. You used your hands. Your teeth. They had starved you, and you killed me in your bloodlust.”

Slowly, the bowstring goes slack.

The arrow lowers as he listens to Genji recount that terrible night in perfect detail. How well he recalls that pulse of fear, the quiet questioning voice before it was savagely silenced. Images and sounds that haunt him even now, but those ghosts are his. No one else had been there with them, save for the elders. No one else would have possibly known what transpired.

Slowly, anger gives way to stunned surprise, to shame and guilt, and then the quiet dawning of realization. It has to be him. With stunning clarity, he knows it to be true, and Genji only looks as if he is waiting for Hanzo to catch up to the truth of the matter.

"...how is this possible?" His voice is hoarse, now. He's not entirely sure how he manages the words at all.

Genji’s answering smile is sad. Knowing, in a way. The weight he has had to carry isn’t the same as Hanzo’s, but it’s been no easier to bear. And he knows what Hanzo’s burden has done to him all these years.

“Like you, I became something else. Unlike you, I had a choice.” He glances up to where Jesse still watches, then looks down over the skyline of Hanamura. “It still took me many years to accept what I had to become to survive. It took longer still to forgive you. But I have, brother.”

He doesn't believe him. Not for a moment. How could he? How could he accept that Genji would forgive him after what he'd done, the pain and fear and whatever had followed and transformed him after death.

Not a vampire like him, small mercy that that might be. Something else. He can sense it around the edges now that he knows what he's looking for, and it's the glance towards Jesse that reminds him of that feeling.

Demontouched.

"...what have you become?" The words feel numb, spilling out of his mouth.

“I am alive.”

Hanzo won’t find anger in that statement to support his doubt of Genji’s forgiveness. It’s merely matter-of-fact. A little stern, maybe. But he sighs, and a tension loosens in his shoulders. He would spare Hanzo this if he could, but he knows his brother. Even now, after all this time. He won’t be content without answers.

The shift, when it happens, is quick. His eyes are the first, the white overtaking both iris and pupil. Their faint glow accentuates the blueish-gray of his skin, shines on sharp incisors, illuminates hints of red arranged almost artistically on his face. His horns are the last to come in, but they more than anything probably confirm Hanzo’s suspicions.

“I was offered a deal," he says, his voice just the same. "A way to cheat death, between one breath and my last. I took it without thinking. This,” he gestures down at himself, “is the result.”

It's distinctive to the demons of their land, the final proof that he's speaking the truth. This is Genji, or rather, this is what has become of him. Not dead and at peace, but lingering in this world as a cruel parody of himself.

One moment of blind hunger had doomed them both.

Hanzo's shoulders sag slightly, the corner of his lip almost curling upwards, not i mirth but disgust instead. "Then we are both cursed. After all that, I thought killing you was the worst thing I could have done to you. But look at you now."

All the more reason he wouldn't have forgiven him. And it explained the mask, didn't it? The clan deserved to understand what haunted and hunted them, after what they put them both through. This was a monster of their own making, all of them.

Himself, just as much. Perhaps that is why he was here, now.

“You blame yourself for what the clan forced you to do. You’ve shouldered the guilt, all this time.”

He sheaths the sword still in his hand, a show of trust that Hanzo won’t try to strike him down again.

“I am at peace with what I am, and what I had to do to survive. It’s time you did the same. I’ve forgiven you, and so now you must forgive yourself.” He hooks the mask onto his belt next, letting it hang there, a parody now of what it has been hiding.

“Why, do you think, I’ve been attacking the clan and not you? You’re easy enough to find.” For him, anyway. There's a quiet huff from the cowboy up above.

"Forgive? No. There is no forgiveness for what I did."

He was the elder brother, meant to guide and watch over him. To lead by example. And yes, blame lies with the clan and what they hoped to turn him into, the way they intended to divorce him from his humanity, and make an example of the rebellious younger brother all in one. They deserved whatever vengeance Genji could muster. But it was the beast inside of him that delivered this fate upon him.

His hands were the ones left bloodied. And years of solitude to turn these thoughts over in his head, again and again, stewing in fury and despair, had let him come to terms with what happened only by accepting the blame himself. If Jesse had decided to slay him, then and only then would justice have been done for what was done to Genji. An honest death to release him.

Though that hardly seems to be the case now. Genji remains in this world, cursed as Hanzo was cursed. Now, even his death would not suffice.

His jaw tightens, eyes going harder around the edges. "Why now? If you were truly alive all this time, why only seek me out now?"

“Perhaps not from yourself. But you have mine, even if you feel you do not deserve it.”

He hadn’t expected any quick resolution. Hanzo had always been stubborn, and he’d always denied himself leeway of any kind. Genji can only hope this is the beginning of something else, a slow-growing seed that can take root in his brother’s heart.

Perhaps, before now, he hadn’t thought it possible for a seed like that to take hold. But lately…

“You’ve changed. I’ve seen it in the way you hunt. And in the company you keep.” He tilts his head towards where his brother’s first fledgling stands watch.

“Before now, I didn’t know if you would listen. I truly did not know how much of my brother remained within you. These last few months have been good to you, brother, whatever it is they’ve wrought.” A quick smile, there and gone like the throwing stars he’d been so fond of as a child.

“That, and there is change in the air. I wasn’t certain I would be able to speak to you before it starts."

"Before what starts?"

He spares a swift glance towards Jesse, when Genji's gaze flirts that way. There is something there to take note of, but later. There are more important issues at hand. This, he feels, has something to do with the attacks.

With Talon notifying him of Genji's appearance, and actively wanting him to seek him out. What reason could there be? Why is he suddenly involved in all of this, when a year ago he'd been alone and perfectly content to keep it as such?

“There are those among us that are no longer content to stay in the shadows. You’ve heard of Talon, I’m sure. I know they’ve heard of you.”

Genji indulges himself in a familiar hobby, producing a card with a quick sleight of hand. The plain white card stock appears between his fingers between one second and the next, and he holds it out for Hanzo to take.

“They’re planning something that could throw the world into chaos. But they will not do it unopposed. Your skills and your cunning could do a lot of good on the right side of this fight.”

On the card is a logo, a name, and a single phone number. Nothing else.

“This number goes to a burner phone. You can use it only once before it will be disposed of.”

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