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One day, Hanzo will argue that the incident was completely unavoidable and that there was nothing anyone could do to predict or prevent it. He will say that it’s merely bad luck, that it shouldn’t count, and that Jesse is overreacting. Jesse will argue back that it’s a curse instead of luck, that it absolutely does count, and that he is reacting a perfectly reasonable amount to yet another building falling on Hanzo’s head.
“Normal people do not attract head trauma like flowers attract bees,” Jesse will say. Hanzo will roll his eyes and curl around his partner, comforting him with skin contact where words fail.
One day, they will twine together, biting their arguments into each other’s skin and licking apologies over the marks without saying anything except each other’s names.
Today is not that day.
Today is the day they step into an abandoned base and a rotting door frame collapses on Hanzo’s head, knocking him out.
In his dreams, he is a wolf, or at least the host of wolves. He wears their skin and runs through the forest and hunts. There are many kinds of prey, but he follows a scent that doesn’t belong among the trees at all. It smells like the heat of the sun on a cloudless day in a place without shade or water, and it warms him with every breath. He tracks the scent to the forest path, and there he finds the man in the red cloak.
‘Serape,’ he corrects himself, though he can’t recall why. The man walks down the road, seemingly unaware of the hungry eyes upon him.
And oh, how the wolf hungers. His gaze travels over every inch of the man, savoring the sight as well as the smell, and his lips burn to draw a taste to his tongue.
He leaps out in front of the man, who stops, but doesn’t startle.
“Howdy,” says the man in the red serape. HIs smile is warm like sunshine.
“Hello,” says the wolf. It’s only polite.
“Now where did you come from?”
“This is my forest.” The wolf draws up proudly. “Why are you here?”
The man in the red serape holds up a covered basket.
“My mentor lives in the darkest part of the forest, but he isn’t feeling too well. In fact, he’s doing so poorly, he’s gone right ‘round the bend.” He pulls out a bottle with a distinct amber tint. “I’m taking him something to drink and we’ll see if I can’t get him to put to rights.”
“I see,” says the wolf. His gaze flickers from the bottle to the man holding it. “And what if you cannot convince him with drink?”
The man in the red serape sighs, puts the bottle back in the basket, and pulls out a gleaming pistol. The air around him suddenly changes to burning desert heat that sits oppressively heavy in the wolf’s temperate forest lungs.
“Well,” says the man, “if he don’t take to the reasonable approach, then we’re going to have to take the un reasonable approach.” Deadly intent glows in his eyes, but also deadly grief, and the wolf’s hackles rise. A feeling like that will kill both hunter and hunted; in the worst cases, it will burn the world with them.
The wolf pushes away the gleaming gun.
“Perhaps start with the drink,” he urges. The man in the red serape obligingly stashes his weapon, and the sunlight intensity dials back down to a more comfortable summer day.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan.” He smiles again, and the wolf wants to howl. How could he think this man was something to be devoured?
He wants, and he wants , and he wants , and it paralyzes him as the man tips his ridiculous hat and bids him good day and continues down the road.
All at once, he knows he cannot let the man in the red serape find his mentor. With the strange wisdom of dreams, he knows that the two of them meeting will result in the fiery death of the forest. He races through the trees, searching for the waiting darkness.
There’s a story, he knows, that goes something like this. A wolf and a cloak of red, a hunger that consumes life whole, and somewhere in all of it, a hunter. What is it that happens next? He can’t remember; there were always so many stories, and they seemed so hard to believe as he got older.
There’s a story… what happens to wolves in stories?
The wolf finds the cottage in the darkest part of the forest. There is no mentor there for the man in the red serape, only a twisted monster that mocks and bites. The wolf has fangs of his own, and he bites back.
This is how the man in red finds them when he finally arrives: two creatures with their teeth buried in each other’s flesh, black and bloody. The man calls out a name - whose, the wolf can’t tell over the ringing in his ears - and rushes into the fray. The wolf clamps his jaws down harder, only to be thrown across the cottage as the monster roars and muscle tears away.
The man in the red serape runs to him.
“Hanzo,” he says, “Hanzo, can you open your eyes?”
To whom does he speak? The wolf --
No. Wait.
That’s not right.
The wolf isn’t the hero of the story, and the protagonist in red surely doesn’t cradle his head. Isn’t there a hunter?
As if on cue, the cottage door bursts open for an old man with an axe. By now, even the monster seems confused.
“Hanzo, Darling, Sunshine, please, you’re really making me worry here.”
Worry? Why does he worry--
Oh, right, that’s what the woodsman does with his axe.
Hanzo opens his eyes and sees the visored face of Soldier:76 leaning over him, biotic emitter in one hand and a bloody rag in the other.
He does not, he later insists, scream and clamor backwards. He does, Jesse later attests, manage a very dignified yelp and a surprisingly graceful leap for someone with a head injury. Jesse catches him before he can sway and fall.
“Whoa there,” he says in a gentle tone. “Easy on the acrobatics. Your old archnemesis got the better of you again.”
“My old-- what?” Hanzo lets Jesse help him into a seated position, halfway leaning on his partner.
“Building fell on you.” Jesse gives him a stern look. “I’m getting you a crash helmet.”
Hanzo sighs. The wolf, the forest, the darkness… it was all a dream, and it fades faster the harder he tries to hold on to it. He slumps closer to Jesse and breathes in the scent of summer skies and smoke.
“Hanzo? Sunshine?”
“I am well.”
Jesse wraps his arms around him and squeezes gently.
“Crash helmet,” he growls. “You just see if I don’t.”