Dead Eyes

"You sure this is gonna work?" Jesse asks uneasily, toying with the patch covering the emptiness where his left eye used to be. Hanzo slaps his hand away and adjusts it back into place.

"No."

"Yer confidence is so inspiring," Jesse mutters. Hanzo doesn't reply, striking a match to light the pair of incense sticks on the low table between them. The scent of burning wood drifts into warm  sage, filling up the small space quickly. "That really necessary?"

"You are incapable of relaxing on your own," Hanzo points out bluntly, flicking his wrist to put out the match and dropping it into one of the ash catchers. Settling on his knees across from Jesse, he places both hands on the table, palms up. "Close your eye. Take a breath. Do your best not to think."

"We really gotta-?"

"Do you want my help or not, McCree?"

"I just-"

"That was a yes or no question."

"Of course I do, but-"

"Do you trust me?"

That takes him aback. It occurs to him rather suddenly that he never kept anything from Hanzo, so the archer knows how much it hurt when Ana betrayed him; of course it would be a reasonable assumption that Jesse might not trust those close to him anymore.

But then, Hanzo is perhaps the only person Jesse ever fully trusted to begin with. An irrational decision, based entirely on the pointless crush he's harboured for the man since they met, but the truth nonetheless. It simultaneously hurts and warms him that Hanzo thinks he has to re-earn Jesse's trust.

"I trust you," he says after a moment, knowing full well it could be his undoing, but willing to risk it for this man who knows him as no other person ever has or ever will.

"Good. Obey."

The things Hanzo could make him do with that voice...

Jesse firmly pushes that thought from his mind as he obeys, doing his best not to think of anything. It takes a while, a difficult task due purely to how close he is to Hanzo, but he manages, and it's kinda nice to not have any worries or fears, to just be.

A burst of icy heat washes over him, piercing through his very soul with a kind of pain that's both vaguely reminiscent of one he knows, and completely unfamiliar. Hunger like he's never known gnaws at him, threatening to devour him from the inside out. Hatred screams in his mind, demanding vengeance for wrongs done. Sorrow and regret sweep in after, soothingly cool at first, only to shred his senses like millions of icy daggers.

Just as suddenly, it's all gone, replaced by a deep and empty loneliness. That too is equally familiar and unfamiliar. It fades slowly, and Jesse comes back to himself feeling strangely out of breath, shaken by an intensity he wasn't expecting.

"Are you alright?"

Jesse blinks open his right eye, faintly disappointed that he still only has one, and opens his mouth to speak, completely forgetting what he was going to say when he sees... dragons. Two long, slender cerulean dragons with large brown antlers and fluffy white whiskers that extend in a furry ridge all the way down their spines to poofs on their tails. One has silver eyes, the other has gold, and both sets are fixed on him, unsettlingly intent.

"You can see them," Hanzo nods, approving. "Excellent. Then you will be able to see as I do in battle."

"In- What- I-" Jesse can't form a full thought, much less a full sentence.

"Come," Hanzo states, standing. The dragons hop to his shoulders, shrinking until they're no bigger around than his wrists and coiling around his shoulders like a giant living scarf.

It doesn't even occur to Jesse to disobey; he trails after Hanzo like a lemming, too far off kilter to care where they're going or what they're doing.

Hanzo's cabin is isolated, hidden deep in the forest, nestled against a steep hill overlooking a shallow ravine cut out of the valley by a deceptively calm stream. Jesse follows him to the top of the hill, enjoying the calm of nature; he's been here once before, and memories of that night make him smile.

"McCree." His heart skips a beat.

"Yeah!" he responds too quickly, earning a cocked brow from the archer.

"Stand there. Face the river."

Unsure what's going on, but grateful for any reason to hide his face before Hanzo figures out what he was thinking, Jesse obeys.

It really is beautiful out here, away from the smog and noise of civilisation, away from-

Suddenly he's seeing double. Rather, not double, but two perspectives; from his right eye, he's looking out over the river and the valley into which it flows, but, impossibly, from his left, he sees into the forest behind him ― the back of the cabin is just visible through the trees.

"What the-" Whirling, he meets Hanzo's pleased gaze. The dragons are unmistakably smug around his shoulders and Stormbow is in his hand.

He can see his own stunned expression through his left eye, from Hanzo's perspective.

"It was a success," the archer hums, casually unstringing his bow. The view in Jesse's left eye dims, fading back into darkness as he stares, speechless.

"How...?" Mostly speechless.

"Through my dragons, I gave you a piece of me," Hanzo explains, gesturing for him to follow. "It is the opposite of the process I use in a fight; rather than consuming the soul of an enemy, I sacrificed a sliver of my own for an ally."

"And... now I can see through your eyes?" Jesse asks, baffled.

"In a manner of speaking. You see what I see when I use a sonic arrow."

"But... why would you...?"

Hanzo stops walking, and Jesse almost runs into him, stopping short and stepping back quickly so he's not in the archer's space. He can't see Hanzo's expression, but sorrow radiates off him, and his dragons whine, nuzzling him.

"...When I was young," Hanzo says quietly, reluctantly, "I made a grave mistake, one I can never fix. In you, I see a chance for redemption; it may not make up for what I've done, but it is a step in the right direction, and perhaps one day, I will no longer grieve for a past I cannot change."

"So..." Jesse almost doesn't dare to say it, but even if he wanted to, he couldn't stop himself. "If I asked yer help in gettin' revenge...?" He holds his breath, but Hanzo doesn't scold him like he expected.

"Is that what you desire?" the archer asks, looking at him with an unreadable expression. Jesse hesitates, but the need is too strong to deny, and he can't help but wonder if whomever Hanzo wronged feels this way, this unquenchable desperation to hunt down the betrayer.

"Yeah. It is."

Hanzo doesn't even flinch.

"Then until she is dead or your need for vengeance is sated, my eyes are yours."