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It doesn’t feel like waking.
It feels like being born.
Everything is bright, and loud, and none of it means anything right away. A ringing in his ears, and blood in his mouth, lungs burning like he’s been breathing smoke.
Like he’s been breathing fire.
His eyes sting when he opens them. He’s crouched on a concrete floor, some kind of gas fogging the edges of his vision, figures moving through the haze in his periphery. It’s nothing he can focus on, and he blinks, and tries to shake away the dizziness that’s threatening to overwhelm him. The room rocks under his feet, stuttering fluorescent light painting everything in harsh yellows, and it’s nauseating. The world roils and strobes around him, and his palm slides a few inches across gritty stone as he briefly loses his balance.
Focus.
He closes his eyes, and breathes, focus, focus. It isn’t his voice. Isn’t a voice at all, just a command twisting through his mind, and it centers him like a lighthouse in a storm. Flickering, and faraway.
The promise of safety, if only he can get there.
There is something alive inside of him, pulsing with every beat of his heart, and it is ancient, and unmerciful. It’s all he is, all he knows, and it’s thirsting for vengeance. He doesn’t know why.
There is nothing else. He doesn’t know who he is, where he is, what he’s doing there. There is no past to guide him, no sense of self, no identity. His mind is a blank slate where his memories should be, as though he came into existence just like this, bloody and beaten and hungry for destruction. Nameless, and empty, except for-
“Hanzo.”
It spills off his tongue before he is aware of it, and he opens his eyes again, feels the frantic way they dart around. Searching, desperate, and they settle on another figure a few yards away, and refuse to move again. The person is on their hands and knees, dark hair falling loose around their face, staring back at him through the smoke. Wide-eyed, and furious, blood streaking red across their cheek.
“Genji,” they reply, and oh, it sounds like home, the way they say his name.
Genji can feel the beast in his chest heave, yes, that’s you, and if he has nothing else, it’s okay.
He’s not alone.
“Hanzo,” he says again, and Hanzo lifts up onto his knees, and paws the hair out of his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Finish him, Hanzo,” a man says from somewhere in the fading smoke surrounding them, muffled like they’re speaking through a mask.
Hanzo’s head snaps toward the voice, brows furrowing as he rolls up into a defensive crouch.
“Take what’s yours, Genji,” another man says from the opposite direction, and Genji can’t find him through the din in his head, through the pain and confusion.
Only then does he notice the weapons on the ground at their feet. A pair of identical katanas, one hilt wrapped in blue, the other in green. Genji cannot remember anything, would not have known his own name if Hanzo hadn’t spoken it, but the implication is clear.
They are fighting, and it’s time to end it.
Genji grabs the sword on autopilot, looking up to see Hanzo doing the same, both of them standing now. It feels natural, the blade in his hand, the way his body falls into position as though he’s done it all his life.
Except raising the weapon against Hanzo is impossible. Wrong, like trying to make himself breathe underwater. Just the thought has his stomach turning again, and his very muscles rebel, hands shaking, jaw clenched so tight it hurts. He can’t look away from Hanzo. He’s wild eyed, and fierce, and scandalously beautiful.
He’s mine, Genji thinks, and the whole world shudders in shades of green before righting itself.
Hanzo takes a step forward, irises lighting up an unearthly blue for a moment, and he bares his teeth in a snarl.
“No,” Hanzo hisses, and then he moves like liquid, flowing through the space between them until they’re standing back to back.
Hanzo lets his head fall onto Genji’s shoulder, and then Genji’s fingers are in his hair, tangling in the strands.
“It’s okay,” Genji says, “I have you.”
Hanzo is all he has right then, and even without himself, it feels like enough.
A radio squawks something unintelligible, and Genji can make them out now, the mercenaries standing in a loose circle around them both. Red helmets, white panels on their uniforms here and there, familiar in a distant sort of way he can’t place.
“Negative, sir,” one of them barks into a handheld receiver, “the V3N has ceased efficacy.”
The world is silent but for the ringing in his ears, and there is nothing but Hanzo’s hair between his fingers, Hanzo’s back rising and falling against Genji’s own.
“Understood. Proceed with the secondary protocols,” the voice on the radio replies, and the soldiers are all more alert, shoulders squaring, weapons brought in tighter.
“Copy that, command,” the head merc responds, and then he’s jerking his chin towards Hanzo and Genji, hand falling to rest on the hilt of his sidearm. “You heard the boss, we’re doing this the hard way. Initiate secondary protocols.”
Every gun in the room is trained on them suddenly, shotguns and pistols and pulse rifles, as though the two of them are enough of a threat to justify such a response.
“Take ‘em out,” the mercenary orders, and it’s the last thing he’ll ever say.
He’s dead as soon as he finishes the words, bleeding out on the ground at Hanzo’s feet. Hanzo, who moves so fast it’s hard to follow, a blur of blue energy spilling across his sword as he cuts his way through the mercenaries one by one. It’s only when blood splashes across his face that Genji realizes he’s moving, too, the rattle of gunfire faraway as skin parts under his blade.
Everything is in slow motion. There’s a roaring in his ears, and bodies falling like broken marionettes. They are painted in shades of red, then everything is still, and Hanzo—
Hanzo is a revelation.
He stands in front of Genji, chest heaving, teeth sharp and stark white against the crimson mess of his face. He’s reaching forward with his free hand, blood dripping from his fingertips, smearing across Genji’s cheek as Hanzo cups his jaw. Gentler than should be possible in the moment, and Genji can’t look away. Hanzo is feral, a predator drunk on slaughter.
He’s exquisite, and Genji doesn’t need his memories to know Hanzo is all he’s ever wanted.
There is nothing Genji can do but kiss him, and so he does, sinking his fingers into Hanzo’s hair and bringing their mouths together. Hanzo melts, until Genji has to drop his sword, has to support Hanzo’s weight. Hanzo yields, and lets Genji take, and something unknots in Genji’s chest, like he’s been suffocating all this time.
Like he’s breaking the surface after being underwater, and he breathes Hanzo in, and holds him close.
There are sirens in the distance, and Hanzo and Genji separate, heads cocking to the side in unison. Genji tangles their fingers together. Tugs, and knows Hanzo will follow.
“Let’s go.”
-
The city is unfamiliar, even if there’s a vague sense having been there before, of some history just out of reach. They’re in Japan, at least, which is comforting. He doesn’t remember home, exactly, other than how it feels to have Hanzo by his side, but noise and clatter of the streets feels nostalgic all the same.
It becomes readily apparent that the memory loss goes both ways, that Hanzo doesn’t know any more than Genji does about their pasts. Neither one of them speaks, because it isn’t necessary. They creep silently through back alleys, keeping to the shadows, carefully unseen. Whether it’s instinct born of the beast in his skin or training that is irrevocably ingrained into them both, Genji isn’t sure. It’s effortless, how they move together, and after an hour or so of serpentine evasion they’re ensconced in an empty hotel room on the shitty side of town.
No words pass between them, but the way they fall into one another is like breathing— natural, something that happens without conscious thought, without intent.
Hanzo is pliant and liquid underneath him, and he lets Genji put him where he wants him without resisting. Revels in what Genji gives him, eager and shameless— hungry, like he’s been waiting for this, like it’s all he’s ever wanted.
Genji wonders if they’ve done this before, if this is familiar ground they’re treading. Hanzo with his knees thrown wide, Genji’s name on his tongue, hands clutching and needful. Without his memories, all Genji knows is how he feels.
It feels like Hanzo has always, always been his, and Genji cannot help but break him into pieces.
Genji sinks his teeth into Hanzo’s throat. Leaves bruises on the inside of his thighs, and dusted over his hips. Pulls his hair, and pins his wrist, and slowly, meticulously, eats him alive.
Hanzo takes it, and takes it, and takes it, and Genji is agonizingly, breathtakingly whole.
There is blood smeared between them, streaking the sheets in places, painted across their skin. On their swords, and their hands, and it feels like a vital part of things, like the blood is tying them together.
Genji kisses Hanzo until it hurts, their lips swollen, Genji’s jaws sore. Fucks him until Hanzo is shaking, wrung out and oversensitive, gasping with every touch.
Holds him tight, and breathes him in, and Genji never wants to let go.
-
Dawn comes slow, finds them aching and filthy and dozy. Their memories return in snatches, the two of them wrapped up together, morning light washed out through cheap motel curtains. It’s disorienting, bits and pieces of the past shifting back into clarity, other still lost in a drugging fog. They’re both still, and quiet, and Genji is afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
Afraid to do anything, because Hanzo is everything Genji thought he was, and more.
His partner.
His brother.
Just Genji’s.
They hadn’t been retracing well worn steps, but giving in to an inevitable gravity.
Something stretched taut between them finally snapping, and Genji doesn’t want to fall backwards, or forget. Doesn’t want to let Hanzo slip from his arms, because Genji doesn’t think he can do this— have a taste of everything he’s ever wanted, and then lose it again.
Their family would never allow it, but it’s their family who did this in the first place. There is no one else who could have gift wrapped them so neatly for Talon but the elders, and Genji clenches his jaw, and fights down a growl. They tried to take Hanzo from him.
Tried to take him from Hanzo, because as much as Genji likes to posture and protest, there’s only one way that fight would have ended.
Him in pieces, and Hanzo left behind. Alone, only discordant memories of how he’d gotten there, and guilt that would swallow him whole.
Genji rolls Hanzo onto his back, knees on either side of his thighs, cupping his face with both hands. He brushes Hanzo’s hair out of his eyes, expecting Hanzo to look away, to skirt his gaze.
“Anija,” he says, and it’s soft, and careful. Tentative, like Hanzo might flinch under it, but he doesn’t.
Hanzo meets his eyes, and his expression is something fearsome.
Hanzo isn’t going to flinch under anything. Hanzo isn’t going to yield, or obey, or submit.
“I won’t let them take this from me. Won’t let them take anything from me, ever again.”
They are a long way from Hanamura, but the journey back is easy. Genji’s sword is weightless on his hip.
His dragon is restless in his skin, and Hanzo is burning in his blood, and they walk through the gates of Shimada castle hand in hand.
The world is red, and loud, and the elders don’t go down easily, but they do go down.
The bells ring, and the gates close, and Hanzo is still holding his hand.