Chapter Text
It's one of those nights when pain lodges itself in the depths of his bones, and the ghost of his lost arm tortures him. Cole tries to pass off his insomnia as the fault of a Mediterranean roaring storm, or the humidity making his shirt stick to his body, or the muskiness of the bedsheets. But when the red digits on his nightstand read 2:47, and the weight of his prosthetic arm feels too wrong on his body, he gives up.
Throwing the blanket away, he gets up and pulls the switch to enable the mechanism, which detaches his arm. The first layer slides off with a sound of smooth metal, exposing the bone-like peg that extends from where his hand was mangled. This is his least favorite part. It feels wrong to touch a thing that extends to your bones and goes all the way to your brain. If he were not a man of battle with a mission, he would have never agreed to having this hunk of metal added to him.
It's finnicky but he manages to press down on both sides of the mechanical lock, and finally, his arm is free. There is still a ring stuck to where his hand ends, but that is designed to fuse with his flesh.
Feeling nothing better than before, he lies back down on his bed, trying to go under.
The clock reads 3:19 when he hears the door to the roof open. He decides it's either Genji or someone insane enough to enjoy the typhoon outside.
It's 3:22 when he hears the slow tap of metal feet over his head. It must be Hanzo then. That's when he decides to check because no matter how many times Genji talks about forgiveness, it cannot sit right with him. To trust a traitor is to dig your own grave.
He picks up the peacekeeper, mumbles a profanity when he realizes he doesn't have time to reassemble his arm and puts on his boots with one hand. Heading to the stairway, pointing the gun and slithering slowly up the stairs. That's when his suspicion turns out to be right. It's him, Hanzo, standing there, but not to do something particularly suspicious. Not even meditating like Genji does sometimes. He stands there too serene against the blueish-gray of the sky, his image going in and out of focus as the oceans of raindrops fall from the sky, as if he were stretching the strings of fate just by standing there, filling the space with tremendous, unreleased energy.
Then it hits him.
For the first time in forever, Cole drops the peacekeeper and takes off running.
His boots splash water until he reaches the man standing too close to the ledge and tugs back so hard that they both hit the ground.
"What the fuck were you thinking?!" Cole shouts as he's propping himself up. Hanzo finally shakes off his confusion and just looks at him dead and empty.
It's these times when Cole can't stop himself from talking. A habit inherited from his mama when he, too, would've done something stupid for her to witness. He wants to yell until it gets drilled into Hanzo's skull that he is an absolute moron.
It's before he calls him every name he can that a punch meets his jaw.
"The hell was that for?!"
They're both drenched, their shirts sticking to their bodies, and Cole sees Hanzo's jaw press on itself, a flicker of fire igniting in his eyes, and another punch being sent to his stomach. He doesn't know when he reciprocates. Punch for a punch and another for the ones to come. Two figures fighting against the vast roof and the infinite sky. The rain is indifferent, and the ocean roars, deafening their struggles.
Suddenly, Cole finds himself holding Hanzo in a chokehold against the wall, muscle memory making him push hard enough for a moment to block his airway when he sees Hanzo smile. He shivers as he retreats, and Hanzo slides down, laughing. Ugly, unhinged laughter, the kind that sounds like crying if you close your eyes. It cracks through the storm.
For a moment, Cole has nothing to do but watch this madness.
"Now I can't do it. Even my death would bring pain." Hanzo howls. Seeing him like this feels taboo, but not inordinate. You would expect the man to snap like a violin string too tight the moment you saw him, yet this was something never meant for outsider eyes.
It's when the adrenaline fades inside Cole, and he realizes he should be comforting the man, when Lena appears from the door.
"Everything alright there?"
It's perhaps out of pity for the man, or mutual understanding that he knows there'd be nothing worse than to let others know about this. "We're fine."
"We?"
Shit. She hadn't noticed Hanzo. "Yeah. Just boys bein' boys."
"In the rain?"
"Romantic, huh?" he feels his gums bleeding. "Night, Lena."
With a sigh, she leaves, and Cole's eyes fall back on Hanzo.
"We should leave. Get up."
The pale gray hallways of Overwatch headquarters hum with the sound of fluorescent lights, the lamps turning on one by one as they move through the vast space. Cole's gun sits in his sweatpants, which he initially wore to sleep, and his hand pressed to the back of Hanzo, leading him through. When they pass Cole's room, he takes his shoulder and commands, "My room." He expected anything but relief wash over Hanzo's face when it did.
Inside, Cole heads to the closet as Hanzo stays in the entrance, blinking, possessed. Cole's room is like every other suite in the Gibraltar HQ: practical with walls made of metal and a kitchenette adorned with Cole's dirty dishes. a small round dining table sits at the middle and opposite of that awfully small bed in the left corner, the bathroom.
"Agent Cassidy, my sensors are picking up unusual activity in your room for this hour. Do I have the permission to turn on indoor surveillance?"
"No, Athena. It's just us having a nighttime chat. Don't you worry."
A towel is thrown at Hanzo, waking him up from his deep thoughts, whatever they may be. "Go take a shower. You need it."
And Hanzo does. It's almost sad to see this stubborn man be so obedient. He heads to the bathroom, closes the door, and Cole hears the lock.
"Hey, no locks. Okay?"
"Leave it, cowboy."
Cole waits a few seconds until he hears the water running, then goes to fetch his prosthetic, cursing under his breath as he does so. He's dealt with a lot of fucked up things. Has broken news of soldiers' deaths to their mothers, seen more corpses than you can count, too many people destroyed by war, hell, even tried to take his own life once or twice, but this is different. He wonders if he should just tell Angela right now or not, but something irks him to keep this can of worms shut.
In the bathroom, Hanzo clogs the drain, then moves over to take off his shirt, putting the bundled-up cloth under the stream to silence the sound of water splashing against itself to not alert Cole. Checking the cabinet, he finds what he hoped for and sits to wait for the tub to fill.
"You okay there, Hanzo?"
"Yes." You'd begin to wonder if anything in the past fifteen minutes had been real if you thought about the control and usual coldness in Hanzo's voice.
When the tub fills up, he enters it slowly, holding the razor blades in his hand, but water splashes and Cole's sharp ears betray Hanzo's plan.
"You usin' the tub?"
Hanzo mutters a groan and gets in, submerging head to toe, as if the water were a portal to another dimension where he wouldn't have to hear Cole's nagging anymore.
Taking the razor, he tests it on his abdomen like he's done countless times before. Red dances in the white of the tasteless tub. Again and again, he tests, wondering why he cannot bring it to his neck to finish the job.
He's well-versed in the act of killing, knowing exactly where to cut to finish the job fast, where to cut to hide the scars, and how to stitch them up after another failure.
On the other side, Cole's hand is resting on the knob; his expression reads dread despite the joke that comes out of his mouth. "Now don't go making me come in and see things I shouldn't."
Hanzo is in the world below the waters, unanswering.
"Hanzo?" He tries the doorknob, remembering it's locked. "Come on, you good in there?"
No answer.
"Dammit." He slams into the bathroom door.
"Agent Cassidy, my sensors are picking up unusual-"
"I said no!" And then his shoulder rams into the door again.
Under the water, Hanzo opens his eyes, the scenery as muffled as the white noise of water. It's only after he hears a slam that he reemerges to the real world, realizing it's Cole trying to break in.
He musters all his strength to not let the defeat in his voice come out, posing instead as annoyance. "I'll be out in a minute! Christ."
Cole wishes the night would just end. Pulling out a chair, he tries to breathe deep and not imagine how Genji would react if things hadn't gone the way they did tonight.
It's not long after Hanzo comes out wearing the beaten gray shirt and sweatpants Cole gave him. For a while Hanzo just stands there, looking like he's lost all his agency here in his room. Cole looks up and pulls out the chair next to him, and Hanzo sits. Stiff and awkward, like he doesn't know what he should do with his body.
Cole presses his hands together, gets up, and looks through his cabinets. Collecting a white metallic box with a red cross on it and throwing it on the table.
"Yer bleeding." He barks.
He releases a defeated sigh as he extends his hand to the med kit, but Cole insists he do it for him.
Cole crouches, pulls the med kit closer, and opens it with the precision of someone who's done this in worse places, under worse light, with worse odds.
"You keep a stash of blades in your shirt or somethin'?" he jokes while grabbing antiseptic and gauze. He hates how it falls between them but what can you do when it's already out of your mouth.
Hanzo just sits perfectly still, eyes on the floor, lips pressed into a thin line. His hair is still damp, dark strands sticking to his cheek. He doesn't look up even when Cole grabs his shirt and rolls the end up to expose the red that's begun to well and streak.
Cole swallows whatever else was going to follow and dabs antiseptic onto a gauze and presses it to the worst cut. Hanzo flinches, almost imperceptibly.
"Hold still."
He cleans the rest in silence, his jaw set so tight it could crack a tooth. His hands are steady, methodical. This kind of work has muscle memory. The battlefield, the backrooms of nowhere, abandoned outposts, the insides of moving aircraft- all places where he's patched up flesh with thread and fire. The burn of disinfectant. The tug of a needle breaking skin. It's all too familiar. He's done it to himself with a bottle of whiskey and a mirror.
This one hits different. Because he's not doing it to save someone from dying in front of him. He's doing it to a man who looked at life and said no and thank you. A man Cole thought was made of nothing but pride and silence and empty stares.
He threads the needle.
"Had a rookie once, green as grass, got a jagged piece of shrapnel lodged in his side," Cole says,
voice quiet. He's not trying to tell a story, just trying to fill the room with something other than the tension between them. "Didn't cry until I was almost done. Kept saying sorry. Like bleeding on me was some kind of sin."
The first stitch bites in. Hanzo doesn't move.
"I told him then, if you get hurt, you patch it up. You don't say sorry for bleeding. Ain't like we were made of steel in the first place."
He ties the thread and moves to the next cut. Some are old. Too many for someone with a medic on base.
"You didn't do these all tonight," he says, flat. "Did you."
Hanzo doesn't answer. Doesn't have to.
Cole looks up at him. The tiredness in Hanzo's face isn't the kind that comes from battle. It's the kind that sinks its teeth into the soul. That leaves no bruises, just rot.
Cole sighs, like it burns coming out of him. "Christ."
For a minute, he's back in a safehouse in Peru, stitching up a friend who wouldn't stop laughing while bleeding out, delirious from blood loss. Then he's in a snow-covered ruin with a gutshot comrade who didn't make it. Then he's in a desert camp, hunched over a woman who refused to let go, whispering names of people long dead. Always the same. Always blood, thread, silence.
He finishes the last stitch and cuts the thread, hands stained again. Only this time, the body in front of him is still whole. Still breathing. And maybe, if he doesn't fuck this up, maybe it stays that way.
He tapes the gauze down with practiced gentleness, then sits back in his chair, arms heavy. He doesn't say you're lucky or you scared the hell outta me. He just looks at the bandage, then at Hanzo.
"You're an idiot," he says, voice rough.
Hanzo meets his gaze for the first time, and there's a flicker of something like shame. Or it's just exhaustion.
Cole stands, shoving the med kit aside. "You want pity, go talk to Genji. You want a lecture, ask Angie to file a report."
He turns to grab a blanket, but stops mid-step and glances over his shoulder.
"But if you ever think about pulling that shit again, I swear to God, Hanzo, I'll drag your ghost back just to kill it again."
He tosses the blanket at him. Hanzo catches it. Barely.
There's no thank you. No apology. Just that heavy air between them. The quiet buzz of lights overhead.
"You sleepin' here tonight," he says, not offering, just stating.
Hanzo doesn't argue.
Cole walks to the kitchenette and pours two fingers of whiskey into a chipped mug, then hesitates. He pours a second and sets it in front of Hanzo. The gesture is dry, simple. No eye contact.
"To making it through the goddamn night," he mutters.
Hanzo takes it, finally.
The clink of ceramic is soft between them. The rain is still falling, but quieter now. Like it, too, has tired itself out. And Cole, sitting back down, sending the glass's bottom up like a man who's just defused a bomb that might still go off tomorrow.
Cole gets up and pours himself two more, drinking them back to back, facing the window.
It's when he turns back that Hanzo finally lifts his eyes. They're bloodshot and glistening with hints of tears, but his voice, when it comes, is dry as always.
"I don't know how to stop."
With those words, Cole is suddenly thrown to the memory of the photograph Genji brings with him everywhere. Two brothers standing together, Genji being too young and smiling too widely for what's waiting for him. And Hanzo, deadly stare as ever, but still a child. It's now that he's at the doorsteps of fourty that he realizes nineteen is way too damn soon for being burdened with what Hanzo was.
Sitting here, with his hands in his lap and his shoulders hunched as if to make himself small, Hanzo blurs into that photograph. The cold, stoic man is once again a young boy, unsure of how to deal with a life too ridiculously harsh on him.
"I'm sorry." Cole damn means it, but doesn't know how to make it sound real. "You wouldn't be wrong to say I hated you," Cole sighs, "but I realize I was bein' cruel. I'm sorry."
Hanzo's lips twitch, like he's about to say something, but then the tension breaks. Not with a sob, not with anything as clean as that. He just suddenly trembles in his shoulders, lifts a hand to his face, and tries to pass it off as something stuck in his eye, but it's too late. His breath hitches. Once. Then again. And then the mug is back on the table, untouched.
Cole doesn't speak.
He watches Hanzo press the heels of his hands to his eyes, as if he could scrub the weakness out of them. Like he could force everything back into the vault it escaped from, but the tears come anyway. Silent and embarrassing. Cole doesn't move, doesn't say a word, but he reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder.
All Cole can do is witness it. And maybe, maybe, keep it safe.
The gentle pitter-patter of rain hitting the small dormitory window is muffled by the noise of the Atlantic Ocean, filling the room with a foamy, soft blanket of sound that drowns their grim thoughts, helping the moment pass.
"Alright," Cole mutters, more to the room than to Hanzo. He gets up, joints stiff, and crosses to the narrow closet by the wall. Pulls out a spare pillow and an old but clean blanket. Throws them across the floor and moves to tidy up the bed.
"Bed's yours," he says softly. "Ain't much, but it's warm."
Hanzo doesn't answer right away. When he does, his voice is hoarse.
"I can take the floor."
Cole's brow furrows. "Nah."
Hanzo stands slowly, gathering what dignity he can from the pieces left scattered around his feet. He picks up the mug and sets it in the sink without a word. Walks past Cole and sits down stiffly on the bed, as if it might reject him.
Cole nods. Flicks the nightstand lamp off, and the room sinks to darker shades of blue. The glow of the outdoor lights paints a pale line across the floor, just enough to see by.
Hanzo's already lying down, facing the wall. One hand tucked beneath his head, the blanket pulled over his shoulder like a shield. His breathing is still uneven.
Cole just lets him be and decides to bite down on his urge to tell him he's not weak. He's already overused his ticket to say soapy things, especially for men like him and Hanzo.