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“We meet once more.”
The omnic is present, as always. It’s been following him for days on end. Sometimes it leaves, and he hopes that he won’t see it again, but it always comes back.
He doesn’t like it. It has no reason to follow him, after all.
“Are you with them?”
“Who do you speak of? I know nothing of people called ‘them’.”
If the omnic had a proper face, it would be smiling, he thinks. He growls and turns away, but he doesn’t expect that to deter it any. Him outright ignoring it hadn’t worked, either.
He keeps walking, aimlessly. The omnic - follows.
------
They are walking (well, he is walking) in a forest. Light dapples the ground through the leaves of the trees; a soft breeze stirs the flowers growing here and there. It is a perfect and golden summer’s day.
It’s been three days since they spoke last, and Genji finally breaks the silence between them. Twigs and mast crunch under his feet as he whirls to face the omnic once more.
It simply stops, and shows no reaction.
“Why do you pursue me?”
“I do not. Our paths have simply converged.”
“Time and time again?”
“It seems to be that way.”
Genji’s voice is sharp, and angry. His stance, too, is aggressive. The omnic’s voice is calm, and smooth, and it floats there and makes no moves at all.
He can’t actually tell whether it’s serious or not, and deflates a little.
It doesn’t seem to mean him any harm, at least. But its presence still unsettles him.
-------
He sleeps (or, at least, his brain tells him to sleep, though he no longer needs it as much). He tosses in his chosen patch of grass, restless, trying to get comfortable. (Though in truth, he feels stifled, trapped, enclosed. He needs to get out of this metal shell, but he can’t-)
He eventually slips into uneasy dreams, dark, tangled;
(The omnic’s presence no longer registers as a threat. If it was designed to dispose of him, it would have done so days ago. He’s certainly left himself open enough times, sometimes in calculated ways, just to see what it might do.
What it has done is: nothing.
It follows him, yes. Sometimes it talks in that calm voice about the scenery, or the weather. About butterflies and birds, books and sunshine, inane chatter that he has no patience for but washes over him anyway as he walks and the omnic floats by.
He doesn’t know where he’s going.)
and lost. A distorted voice talks to him in wavering visions of bright lights and the gleam of metal; pain crackles up his fingers, hums in his bones, crawls in his throat like lightning until he wants to scream.
He does scream (breathes harshly, violently, like he’s trying to expel something) and nothing comes out; fluid fills his lungs and chokes him, becomes a tight knot in his chest and burns like fire --
and he snaps awake in a panic, breathing hard, half-expecting to wake up with the glare of lights beating down on him, flames racing across his body. He fumbles with his helmet, fingers scraping across the glossy metal, forces it open to let what skin is left be exposed to open air. Takes harsh breaths and coughs once, twice, dreading at any moment a rattling in his lungs (what’s left there to be compromised anymore?) or to see neon green smeared across his fingers, dripping onto the ground, clear proof that he is no longer even close to human.
He can’t sleep. Not like this.
The omnic is only a few feet away, seated upon the ground for once, completely still. In a meditative pose, as always.
Genji watches for a while, wondering if it will move again. In this torn-apart state, the omnic almost seems comfortingly stable, and for a moment he wonders, actually wonders, what it thinks of him.
He lets a breathless laugh escape him at his own folly, daring to hope that perhaps something, even an omnic, might view him with clear eyes.
Even omnics would reject him, he thinks. He’s neither one or the other. Not human, not omnic.
He might as well be nothing.
Who he was is gone, dead at the hands of his brother. Whatever is left, this new thing, trapped in a metal shell, is something else entirely.
How else can he view it? He has no choice. It’s too heavy a burden to bear for Genji Shimada, disappointment of his family and his brother, a careless footnote in the legacy of a clan he hadn’t cared for.
Much better to be whoever - whatever this is. Wrapped up in a shell so close and tight that it’s woven into his flesh and bone. Metal can’t be betrayed. If it’s hurt, it doesn’t feel it.
He doesn’t want to feel anything.
So far, it’s not working.
----
It takes another week before Genji musters a sufficient amount of what can only be called ‘courage’ to actually ask the omnic that has clearly been following him, though it had said otherwise, about anything.
“What is your name? Why do you follow me?” His voice is rough. (Another difference between him and the dead.)
“I am Zenyatta. And I follow you because a shadow hangs over you.”
“A shadow.” He must have sounded disbelieving, skeptical, because the omnic - Zenyatta - inclines its head in a nod.
“You are deeply troubled, my friend.”
“I am not your- your friend,” Genji retorts, but the attempt is half-hearted. Despite himself, he’s interested in what the omnic has to say (or, at least, conversation-starved enough that the sound of birds and animals is something he can’t stand listening to for any longer).
“My friend...there is darkness in you that clouds your mind. You have been done a grievous injury. Though your body has healed, your soul has not, and you have fallen into conflict with yourself-”
“And what should I do?” Genji’s voice is angry, sharp. It cracks like a whip. “Are you going to tell me to stand still? To think - peaceful thoughts? You know nothing - nothing of what made me this way!”
He turns on his heel, storms away; if Zenyatta could blink, he would have.
“Such anger,” Zenyatta murmurs, at last, to the quiet sounds of the forest, and to Genji crunching his way angrily down the hill. “You must have been hurt badly.”
----------
He dreams of his brother’s sword; metal flashes in firelight as the blade is turned this way and that. Hanzo sits beside him, a solid presence, but his voice comes only distantly, as if filtered down or far away.
The metal shines, mirror-bright.
The sword moves like it has a mind of its own, fluid and gleaming and razor-sharp. It moves and bites like a snake; he flinches back as it strikes at him.
“Brother,” he says, pleadingly, though in this dream-world he doesn’t know quite why the words roll so familiarly off his tongue, “your sword-”
Hanzo turns to him, and all sound fades away.
It’s only then that he realises he cannot see his brother’s face.
He jolts from uneasy sleep, the echo of a phantom heartbeat shuddering in his chest. It is night. Everything is still.
Zenyatta is meditating again (he wonders if the omnic ever sleeps, needs to sleep). He hovers, serene. Quiet.
Genji shakes the blurry image of his brother from his mind, too shellshocked still to rise to his feet and move properly. He crawls, instead. Not too close.
But close enough, to someone who represents at least some point of stability in his journey.
(“Would you like to meditate with me, my friend?” says Zenyatta, the next day.
“No,” Genji says, but his voice is somehow less aggravated than it was before.)
------
The dreams keep coming, with more intensity. (When he was in Overwatch, focused on his task, they never came. Now they flood through, waves crashing over him, dragging him into deep water.)
Sometimes he cries out, struggles for breath, in broken sobs imparts words and phrases to an uncaring listener. Over and over, he jolts from sleep. It’s never restful.
Zenyatta wakes him from such dreams now, more often than not; a few words, a gentle touch or shake, are enough to bring him to the surface and keep him from drowning.
“You are deeply wounded, my friend. It is long past time for you to heal.”
If he’d heard pity or judgement in the omnic’s voice at his weakness, he might have lashed out at him. But he finds only a grave acceptance. An understanding.
Something in him, a last, frail shard (something he didn’t even know he still had) starts to hope.
“Do you think I can?” His voice is weak, weaker than he’d like. Wavering, pleading.
“Yes.”
The absolute conviction in that answer makes him almost feel like he can believe it.
“My name is Genji,” he says, after a moment. “And I am still -- not your friend.”
“We will see,” Zenyatta says, and for the first time in a while, Genji gets the impression that had he a human face, he might be smiling.
“My friend,” he adds, and Genji shakes his head in what can only be exasperation.