#background gency

*

“Sombra? Darlin’, can you…”

It’s Jesse again. She turns her face towards his voice. He’s speaking so softly. His metal-fire hand cradles her cheek.

“...make you comfortable. Just your gloves, boots, and jacket, if that’s alright?”

She presses into his warm touch and nods. Jesse’s distraught-looking face fills her vision when she finally manages to open her eyes.

“Hey there. Okay. I gotcha. I’ll...”

Her body is completely drained. Her mind is sluggish. Jesse’s voice becomes muffled again as she falls asleep.

*

Sombra wakes with a start this time as Hanzo sits bolt upright next to her on the bed. She looks up at him wearily and meets his dark brown eyes. They are so similar to his younger brother’s, but harder, somehow. He stares back at her for a moment, gasping for breath, then gets on his knees and presses his face to the mattress. He’s shaking.

Genji immediately rushes over to him and places a hand on his back. “Hey. You are safe now. This is Sombra and McCree, they helped us.”

Hanzo covers his face with both hands and stays there.

“Sombra?”

She looks up at Jesse, who stands next to the bed, running a hand through his hair. He’s down to his pants and black undershirt. He gives her a relieved little smile and squeezes her shoulder.

“How you feeling?”

Sombra looks back at Genji and Hanzo. Genji has dropped to his knees and now sits on his heels, watching Hanzo collect himself with his head resting on top of his folded arms on the bed. He almost looks like a little boy this way, looking up at his older brother with such wary hope.

“It is over, Hanzo,” he whispers. “The oni is gone.”

Hanzo mirrors Genji and rests his head on his forearms, only he looks over at Sombra instead and fixes her with a dark, heavy stare. “You are not oni. You are something different.”

She nods.

Genji puts a hand on Hanzo’s arm, but Hanzo flinches away from him. The sadness on Genji’s face as he settles back into his kneeling position makes Sombra turn away again, towards Jesse. She feels shaky and out-of-sorts, the way she always does after an exorcism, but the act of destroying a demon soul after allowing it to briefly possess her has left her completely tapped out.

“Darlin’... you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Jesse takes both of Sombra’s hands and pulls her up to stand, but she falters and tilts forward into his chest. “Fine, huh?”

She pushes him backwards, walking them away from the bed and towards her bag by the window. She can feel Hanzo and Genji’s tension behind her.

“Hanzo, you heard what I said. I forgive you. Now is not the time for self-pity. That is how that monster took hold of you.”

“Are you still human?” Hanzo asks, eyeing Genji’s mismatched body parts. Genji is still fully covered in his black hooded clothing, but one of his hands doesn’t quite match the other, and neither do his feet. An odd seam in the side of his neck betrays further patchwork under his clothes. These are the parts Sombra forgot when she first met him, the parts that (through her own error) nearly got Jesse killed.

Sombra can’t believe that was only twenty-four hours ago. She has learned so much that her mind, body, and soul have begun to ache with it.

Genji stands and flexes his newer arm thoughtfully. “I am still alive, despite your efforts, and that is what matters. I have made peace with what I am, with what has happened, and I am stronger for it. The same cannot be said for you.”

Hanzo frowns at Genji’s frank assessment. “How did you survive?”

“My angel could answer that question better than I can. She is a healer, and a witch, like Sombra. She also sent McCree to help us.” Genji tilts his head and deadpans, “She may curse you the moment she lays eyes on you, if you ever meet her, but that is a chance I am willing to take.”

Hanzo scoffs. His mood leaves no room for Genji’s attempt at humor. “And you claim to forgive?”

“I do forgive you, Hanzo. But I do not have to forget. Now, will you come with me and eat? Ichika’s light is still on downstairs. I told her we were going back for you tonight.”

Hanzo shakes his head and scoots back against the headboard, tucking himself cross-legged into the corner of the bed. “I need time to… reflect.”

“Then I will bring it to you. Sombra? McCree?”

Sombra still trembles minutely, though she fights to control it when Jesse wraps his arms around her. Only the feel of her body against him would give him any indication of the extent of her discomfort, and he is certainly paying close attention.

Jesse’s voice rumbles against her cheek. “We’d appreciate it, Genji, thank you. Wouldn’t mind somethin’ heavier than miso, either, if you can get it.” He runs a hand over Sombra’s hair as he makes his request. It makes her feel small in his arms.

She hears the door close behind her as Genji departs for the pub. The moment he does so, Hanzo lets out the deepest sigh she’s ever heard and starts shifting around on the bed.

“Thank you for everything you have done. I do not understand what you did, but I owe you my life.”

“You do,” Sombra replies. Her voice is scratchy, reminiscent of the sounds the demon made through her lips, and it makes her shudder involuntarily. She shuts her mouth and pushes away from Jesse to dig around in her bag.

“You felt it. You know what that creature was, from the inside.”

Sombra ignores him. Her fingers wrap around her oversized black sweater and she pulls it to her chest.

“I saw what you did, just before I... passed out. I saw the way you tricked it. You took such a monstrous thing into yourself to free me from it, and for that, I am in your debt.”

A demon settled and comfortable in its host body will always be stronger than not. A demon inside a new host with clear intent and magic laced through her soul will be an easy kill. It was the smart thing to do. The demon’s imprint now lingers inside her, but all hunts stay for a little while, whether they meet death or banishment at her hands.

Sombra sees their souls and learns their secrets. She learns everything they know, which strengthens her magic. And so, while the vision of Genji’s attempted murder now reverberates through her mind’s eye from Hanzo’s point of view instead of his brother’s, she will simply grin and bear it until the information recedes.

“I’ll let you--” Sombra begins, then quiets again, her cheeky response dying in her throat as she tries to clear it. Her voice still sounds foreign to her own ears, and though she knows it is simply from strain and exhaustion, the demon’s cackle won’t leave her memory. She sees herself hurting Jesse all over again, clawing his face with her gloves, choking him and bruising his throat, turning his face red as he struggles to breathe--

She wrings her sweater in her hands and turns to look at Jesse, to see that he’s okay.

The first thing she sees are the thin, red scratches she left on his cheek. Whatever control she gained over her trembling these past few minutes is lost.

“Sombra, hey. Hey.” Jesse curls his metal-fire hand around her shoulder and guides her into the bathroom, shutting the door behind them.

She lifts a hand to his scratched cheek and presses her palm to his skin. She focuses her energy as well as she can; as her fingers pulse with purple light, the scratches begin to fade.

Jesse pulls her hand away from his face and lifts her chin. “Hey. Talk to me.”

Sombra tries to clear her throat. Almost immediately, a cup of water hovers in front of her face, and Jesse watches her carefully as he waits for her to accept it. It goes down coolly and soothes her throat. She tries again.

“This has happened before,” she says. A sigh of relief follows now that her voice sounds much more familiar to her own ears. “I’ve done that, let demons take me. Let them think they can take me.”

Jesse’s face is cross, even though a foundation of concern lies underneath. He rubs her shoulders, still trying to calm her. “Just playin’ with the idea? Takin’ a test drive? For what?”

“For whatever I need. You saw how I destroyed it. I had to. They fight me, try to take control, but I always win. I always will.”

“What if--”

“Jesse, callate! You trusted me in there. Trust me now.”

He leans against the wall behind him in the small bathroom and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Sorry. Just… you seem so shook up.”

She nods, releasing the iron grip she still has on her black sweater in her hands to turn it over and shake it out.

“And, uh. It was scary, watchin’ you get taken over like that. I didn’t get to see it, when Gabe did that, but… it was scary.”

“It used me to hurt you,” Sombra whispers, bringing a hand back up to his neck to caress the slight bruising. She’s never done this around anyone who mattered before, anyone whose pain would have hurt her, so she will never forget the look on Jesse’s face. He was as steady as a rock with her clawed gloves around his neck, even smirking, as though the act had been one of her playful taunts. It grounded her.

“That wasn’t the scary part,” he replies, placing his metal-fire hand over the one she’s got gently resting on his collarbone. “I finally saw you, when I said your true name. You. Your eyes are purple?”

“They are. Here, unzip me.” She turns away from him and pushes her hair over her shoulder so that he can unzip her leather bodice and pull off her leggings. Then she turns back to him, bare, and slips her long black sweater over her head.

“Beautiful.” Jesse lets out a small laugh and quirks up the corner of his mouth. “I knew you had an idea of what you were doin’, ya know. I did trust you. But then when I said your true name, I saw the you underneath it all, and it spooked me, ‘cause what if I never saw you again? What if you really did disappear this time?”

Sombra sighs and steps closer to him. “I couldn’t have.”

He opens his mouth to retort with more worries, but Sombra shushes him and kisses his lips. She intertwines her fingers with his metal-fire hand and, lifting up on her toes, places the other around the back of his neck to grasp his hair and pull him in. She still aches, but the discomfort wracking her body ever since she woke up finally calms, just a little, with the sensation of being so close to him.

Jesse reaches down and underneath her thighs without separating from her and lifts her onto the sink. The way he settles between her bare legs as she wraps them around his waist is easy. Inevitable. His grip on her thighs shifts to the small of her back, where he massages her gently, and to the back of her hair, where he presses just enough to tilt her head down and kiss her forehead.

Sombra tucks her face into his neck and exhales into his warm skin. She hadn’t known that this could be the ‘after’ of her more difficult demon encounters. It’s almost overwhelming. She could cry with how good it feels to have him like this after so long enduring alone. She could, but she won’t.

Instead, she finally surrenders and lets him hold her the way they both need tonight, with her weight fully settling against him as she lets him support her.

“You know, I don’t think it’s too late to call that demon back.”

Genji snickers as quietly as he can. He glances back at the street outside the window and asks, “Would you like some privacy?”

“Would you?” Sombra whispers back, watching the way Genji’s grin gets smaller as he looks out at Hanamura.

“I have been awake for a short while. I’m hungry. I think I’ll go to the pub downstairs for breakfast. We are above Ichika’s?”

“Si.”

“Hm. I have not seen her in so long. She teased me as a fool back then, but I think she liked me well enough.”

Now it’s Sombra’s turn to snort. “She liked your top-shelf wallet, rich boy.”

“Then this will certainly be a test of what she liked most, since I have no money on me now.” Genji stretches his legs, then his arms, before he gets out of the chair and gingerly crosses the room. “To think of something I want, and only hear myself… And then, to actually do it… I forgot how it feels to control my own body.”

Sombra softens a little. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

McCree snuffles and shifts a little, his stump grazing across Sombra’s stomach. He yawns into her chest.

Genji shuts his mouth and gives them a short bow, then grabs his black hooded clothing and leaves the room.

McCree tenses and lifts his head at the sound of the door closing.

“Just Genji,” Sombra says. She can’t help but smile at the way McCree whips his head around to look at her.

“You stayed.”

“You drooled.”

McCree’s eyes widen, and he lifts up on his elbow to get a better look at her. “Shit. I was dog tired, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to dirty up these nice pillows you got here after you so kindly let me sleep on ‘em.”

Sombra squeezes her glowing eyes shut and shakes with a belly laugh, surprised by his frankness. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she is aware that she shouldn’t be. So often, people try to keep information from her, but he only offers it. He has been nothing but blunt about his attraction to her since they met.

When she opens her eyes, McCree is grinning at her, clearly pleased with himself for making her laugh. He shakes his head in awe and says, “Your smile is so pretty.”

Sombra almost closes her eyes again. Instead, she lowers her head, pinning her eyes to the gauze on his chest. “McCree…”

“It’s Jesse. And you…?”

She tenses, staring straight at him when she answers, “It’s Sombra.”

“Fair enough, Sombra.” He doesn’t push the issue at all, but lies there next to her, propped up on his elbow like he’s content to just look at her. He smiles, his messy hair falling into his handsome, rugged face, and Sombra’s neck goes hot.

Why wouldn’t you want that for yourself? Genji had asked. He was so sure, so certain of what ‘that’ meant in his own life. There was no doubt in his mind about Mercy, and whether Sombra found that sort of thinking naive or not, it had saved him when it mattered.

She furrows her brow and runs a finger back and forth across Jesse’s collarbone.

“Somethin’ on your mind?”

“What did Mercy tell you about this job?”

Jesse leans into her touch. He watches her carefully as he shifts his hand over hers and kisses her palm. “Odd time to ask.”

“Mercy sent you to help her…” she waves a hand, leaving purple wisps in the air as she searches for the appropriate label, “her Genji. But she told you to do this by hunting his brother? There had to be more. You aren’t nearly as dumb as you look.”

Jesse narrows his eyes at the teasing sparkle in hers and nips the ball of her hand with his teeth. “Well, you’re just as mean as you look, but I won’t hold it against ya.”

“Gracias.”

Jesse can hear the sincerity in her voice. At this, he kisses over the already-fading teeth mark in her hand and lets her resume her attentions. “I knew Hanzo wasn’t a true demon, that he's possessed, just like Genji was. I knew that before I came here.”

Sombra’s white-gold eyes widen as she thinks back to their conversation outside the castle.

“Sometimes you play demon. Well, sometimes I play dumb. And Mercy’s not as sweet as you think she is. She told me she’d been hurtin’ every day since she found out why Genji never came back to her. She said losin’ him to Hanzo after she thought she’d already saved him from that very same death was more than she could take. Her exact words were, ‘Hanzo causes him pain that I can’t heal. End it.’ She knew damn well what was up with those two, and she still didn’t hire me to exorcise him. She hired me to kill him, and that was it. The way Mercy saw it, exorcisin’ him wasn’t necessary. After all, human Hanzo had tried to kill Genji too.”

“And you didn’t want to, anyway, because of what happened with Gabe.”

Jesse shakes his head. “I’d just been keepin’ to myself for the longest after I let Gabe throw himself to demons. It was selfish, but a job was a job. I was gonna kill the demon, and anything past that was none of my business. But when you showed up, comin’ after Genji, that complicated things. You were here for the demon soul, and you weren’t afraid of what had to be done. So what was I supposed to do, watch Genji get his life back just to kill his brother in front of him? And what was Genji gonna do then? Go back to Mercy like everything’s just fine? Nah. He wouldn’t be okay, and neither would she.”

Sombra mulls this over for several moments, her gaze roaming all over Jesse’s handsome face. To his surprise, she suddenly leans in and kisses him. “You’re exactly the puppy I thought you were. I like it when I’m right.”

As if to prove her point, Jesse tilts his head in confusion.

Sombra laughs, her heart thumping in a rush of fondness for him. She pulls him closer with one hand curled around the back of his neck. “Moira sent me to deal with Genji, trusting that I’d figure out that he was possessed. And Mercy played you. She knew you wouldn’t take the job if you knew up-front that it was an exorcism. So, she sent you on a hunt, knowing that after we met, and you found out Genji would be freed, you would never just kill Hanzo. And after what happened with Gabe, you wouldn’t leave someone with a demon if they wanted to be free. Helping with the exorcism - both of them - would become your only choice.”

Jesse sighs. “How’d I end up surrounded by witches?”

His lips are a little chapped, and he tastes of cigars, but with the way he presses into her, none of that matters. “You have good taste,” she shrugs, kissing him again.

The feeling of Jesse’s breath against her neck as he laughs sparks a feeling of urgency that has so far been subdued in this dance. Sombra pushes herself away from him for a moment to slip her black sweater off over her head. Her grin goes smug at the look on his face, caught somewhere between shock and hunger. The physical, at least, is familiar to her.

“Just give it to me straight, darlin’. Please. What do you want?”

She swallows hard. Right now, she just wants him, and his touch, however it comes. “You owe me for the drool.”

“You are absolutely right,” he breathes out, staring at her mouth. He returns to her throat, kissing his way down until he can drop a kiss between her breasts.

Sombra wraps her arms around his neck and digs her fingers into his hair, holding him in place. She scratches gently, and Jesse groans, doubling his efforts. Normally, she would be perfectly happy to wallow in this sensation and keep him right where he is, but now she wants to swallow that sound, wants to envelop him and drag more out of him. She’s quickly becoming addicted to the ways he makes his affection for her known.

She grasps Jesse’s hair and pulls his head away from her chest, then captures his lips in her own. The little humming noise he makes this time is inquisitive, but just as cute.

“Change of pla--? MMPH.”

She quiets him with another kiss and throws a leg over his hip. That’s not the noise she wants. “Try and keep up,” she whispers, her voice raspy.

Darkness flashes through his eyes for a moment before he takes the hand that was supporting her lower back and gently massages his fingers up her spine, across the runes embedded in her skin.

She keens loudly before she can stop herself, tingles shooting up her neck and through the runes in her scalp. Sombra slaps a hand over her mouth and blinks up at him, shaking.

Jesse grins, painfully smug as he kisses the hand she’s holding against her face. “You were sayin’? Can’t hear ya all of a sudden.”

“I--” She can’t bear to say, I didn’t know that was a thing, so instead she asks, “How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” he shrugs, ghosting his fingers over her spine, “but I’ve wanted to do that since I saw ‘em last night. Beautiful, just like the rest of you.”

Her face flushes. “Jesse, por favor…”

He nods, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back, but not touching the runes again. “Too much?”

She nods.

“What I said, or what I did?”

She nods again and gives him a soft kiss.

“Okay, sorry,” Jesse says, offering her an apologetic smile. “Let’s slow this down. I guess I’m just thinkin’ I’ll look up and you’ll disappear on me.”

With less coherent thought than immediate, cheeky instinct, Sombra shifts and goes invisible in his arms. “What do you mean?”

Jesse stares through her at his own hand on her back, then at his own body, where he can still feel her leg slung over him. Her magical cloaking wobbles where they touch, outlining her body in purple light. His mouth sits open like a goldfish as he looks up and down her translucent frame.

“Whatever you’re about to say, I’ll allow it,” Sombra smirks, sliding away from him and out of her invisibility. She reaches for her black sweater and puts it back on, then picks up his metal-fire arm from beside their pile of blankets and sets it in her own lap, waiting.

He rubs a hand through his beard and sighs. “I don’t know if sendin’ us here together was Mercy’s idea or Moira’s, but I gotta thank Mercy next time I see her.”

*

After Jesse reattaches his arm, and Sombra checks the wound on his chest (mostly healed, but with a long scar, thanks to her magical intervention), the two get dressed in their simplest clothes. Sombra pulls on her leggings and Jesse throws on a black shirt before he heads down to the pub by himself to get them both food. She could have accompanied him invisibly, as either her hunting garb or her glowing eyes would have garnered too much attention at this time of day, but the amount of people likely occupying the pub at the moment deters her.

Sombra puts her hair up in a messy knot, the runes in her scalp on full display, and uses these few minutes alone to think. She could still disappear, but she doubts she could rid herself of him so easily. She reaches up and presses her fingers into the back of her neck, thinking of Jesse’s touch; he is under her skin as much as any rune, much faster than she could have foreseen and deeper than she wants to admit.

The truth is always stronger than lies, so in the face of Jesse’s insistent honesty, she has put herself at a disadvantage. But… does leverage even matter? He plays and he flirts, but his intent is always clear. He asks her what she wants, not so that he can dangle it over her head, but so that he can give it to her. He denies nothing. Sombra feared that giving him too much of herself would give him power, but… if truth is power, then he already has it.

Sombra laughs in the quiet of the inn. She has always been drawn to power, hasn’t she? This is only so different. Now she understands what that fool Genji was going on about. Why wouldn’t she want that for herself? She likes Jesse, of course, but more importantly, she’s beginning to trust him. And the truth of the matter is that if she really wanted to run, she would have done so by now.

Jesse returns with Genji at his side and two large bowls, each filled with noodles and miso soup. Genji carries his own bowl, cradling it like something precious between his hands.

“What’s the verdict?” she asks Genji, grinning up at Jesse as he hands her a bowl and sits next to her on the blankets. Jesse smiles back at her, surprised by the warm look on her face, and rubs his knuckles down the side of her arm.

Genji joins them, sitting with his legs crossed underneath him. “Ichika said these are on the house for now, but if we cannot also defeat Hanzo’s oni, they will be added to my tab.”

“Ha, there we go.”

The trio goes silent as they begin to eat. Genji holds his bowl close to his face, breathing deeply, then takes a sip of the soup. His thick eyebrows furrow and he makes a soft noise like a cat’s mewl before he dives in again with a big gulp.

“It ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Jesse chuckles. “You’re gonna burn your mouth.”

Genji carefully sets the bowl down in front of him and bows his head. “The oni did not care for delicacy or taste. It just ate what it needed to sustain its host. I know this is only miso soup, but…”

Jesse looks sheepish for laughing. “Ah, well… there’s plenty more where that came from. You’re outta that nightmare now.”

“I know. This makes it feel real.” Genji takes another taste, but much more slowly this time. “Mmm.”

Sombra sips her soup, watching him. “We’ll go back to the castle tonight. Are you ready?”

“I will take today to prepare. Fortunately, in a way… I am not out of practice.” He looks over at his sheathed katana laying on the table. “I am sorry for wounding you, McCree.”

“Aw, that’s nothin’ to apologize for. it wasn’t you.”

Genji shakes his head. “My hands. My blade.”

“I won’t accept,” Jesse replies, taking a gulp of his soup. “And anyway, Sombra’s already patched me up. It’s alright.”

“Thank you.” Genji looks thoughtfully at the runes on Sombra’s head. “Will you be able to pull Hanzo’s oni from him, the way you did for me?”

“It might not be as easy as it was with you. Depends on how screwed up he is when we get there. But I’ll get the job done.”

Jesse scoffs into his soup. “That was easy?”

Genji shrugs. “From her experienced perspective, I am sure it was. Sombra, what do you need from me now? I do not know what is necessary for an exorcism, but I am sure foolish missteps are not on the list.”

Sombra sets down her bowl and glances over at Jesse, who watches her much like Genji does, listening carefully for her word. He runs a thumb across his bandage absentmindedly and mutters, “Yeah, we all gotta stay on our toes this time.”

She hates feeling responsible for anyone, but they would be lost in this case without her. Jesse, for his part, would already be dead, and at this point, she can’t allow that. She swallows down the weight in her throat and rolls her eyes. “Then listen up. Here’s the plan.”

*

Shimada Castle has bloomed. In the outer courtyard, the cherry blossom trees surrounding the gazebo have returned in full to their lush pink petals. The weeds and fungus that covered the garden before have disappeared, leaving thick green grass and wildflowers in their wake. Only the dead plants directly outside the castle door remain.

“A lot can change in a day, huh?” Jesse says, following behind Sombra and Genji as they walk slowly through the courtyard.

Genji shakes his head and reaches up to touch a cherry blossom. “My home has been rotting from the inside ever since the oni took over. I found it like this when I returned; only the castle itself was in ruin. The rot spread here because… I liked being outside, and the oni who took hold of me happened to agree. This… rebirth? This is because of you both. Thank you.”

“Your home’s been rotting for much longer than that,” says Sombra. She doesn’t bother approaching the castle invisibly this time. Freeing Genji and banishing the first oni has removed any possible surprise. “You know exorcising Hanzo will only remove the demon, right? He’ll still be the guy who tried to kill you.”

Genji’s face hardens. “I am aware. I have also forgiven him. I returned to Hanamura to clear that rot and rebuild with my brother, and that has become more important than I could have ever predicted. And as McCree suggested, I do believe he feels guilt. Why remind me of this now?”

Sombra raises an eyebrow. “Good. Keep hold of that. Know why you’re here.”

He visibly steels his resolve with a deep breath and a solemn nod back at her. “I understand.”

She doesn’t say anything when she looks back at Jesse, but she doesn’t need to. He just looks down at the stock of flashbangs strapped to his hip in a show of preparation and tips his hat towards her with a little grin.

“I’ve got a successful exorcism under my belt now, y’know. I reckon I’m ready for anything.”

“Don’t make me charm more bandages for you. I told you, I’m not a healer.” Sombra swipes her hand across his jacket where the wound lies underneath. Jesse catches her hand and holds it there. He understands what she means.

Don’t you dare get hurt more than I can fix.

“Yes, ma’am.”

*

Sombra steps over the threshold of the castle first, both men following carefully behind her as they cross the small bridge that separates the garden courtyard from the open, lofty main room. Three shurikens rest between Genji’s fingers and Jesse’s hand hovers at his waist. All of their noses twist as they get closer to the center of the room, where the stagnant air is thick with the scent of mildew and rotted wood.

Hanzo is impossible to miss.

He kneels quietly on the platform above the shrine, staring down at them with dull white eyes and a stony expression. His skin has turned a dark gray-green, and the tattoo covering his chest and left arm, which Sombra knows should be that of his ferocious blue dragon, has morphed into a red, tusked demon. Besides his eyes and skin, his face looks no different from her intel on pre-possession Hanzo.

The demon has settled in. It is comfortable. Hanzo is much further gone than any of them had hoped.

“Brother,” Genji whispers, his breath catching in his throat.

“Genji,” the demon snorts, Hanzo’s deep voice slightly tinted with that strange metallic hissing. “You shun our power? You run away from the comfort we offer, then return the very next day?”

“You are a parasite,” Genji snarls. “All you offer is lies and pain.”

“We would not cause pain if you would accept us. You experienced pain because you earned it.”

“I do not... deserve to be hurt. I did not ask for this.”

“Hanzo did. Whatever foolhardy scheme you have devised with this half-wit and his half-demon would only betray our wishes.”

Sombra bristles at the demon’s implication as Jesse chuckles and lights his cigar. “Well, you might just make this easy for us, seein’ as how you’re so damn wrong about everything.”

“Quiet, human. You have no place here.”

“Y’know, your demon brother said the same thing, right before we kicked its ass. You might wanna reconsider.”

The demon stands, gripping a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. “Hanzo prayed for relief from his pain, and I answered. He asked and I provided. When the source of his pain left, he did not have to think on it. You should stay away, Genji. Now, your presence gives him anguish.”

A slow smile crosses Sombra’s face. The demon may seem at ease, but Hanzo is still in there. If he responds to Genji’s presence, then he must still feel guilt, and if he feels guilt, then he can still be saved. Jesse knew this when he asked for Genji’s help.

Genji glances back at her. This is what they were waiting for.

“Hanzo!” Genji calls. “I know you can hear me. I have forgiven you.”

An arrow whizzes by Genji’s head as he neatly dodges it, his reflexes as sharp as ever.

“Mada mada,” he taunts. “You kept me conditioned to fight all this time, oni. If you experience pain now, you will have earned it.”

The demon growls. “You are a child. Your arrogance will be your death, as it should have been, long ago. If only I had been there to ensure Hanzo finished his task.”

“Do you hear that, brother? This creature shows no remorse, but I know you do. And I have hope for you. I forgive you.”

“You couldn’t possibly. You will say anything to get his attention.”

Two more arrows shoot towards Jesse’s and Sombra’s heads, faster than either can react, but Genji lunges forward with his katana and deflects them.

“Hanzo, I forgive you! We can move forward, together.” Quieter, to Jesse and Sombra, he says, “It is time. Get ready.”

“Genji…?” Hanzo’s voice, low and smooth, with a pleasant little rasp to it, finally pushes through the demon.

“ENOUGH,” the demon bellows, leaping down from its perch.

The battle is vicious. Sombra shifts in and out of invisibility, running circles around the demon as it shoots rapid-fire arrows after her. Jesse uses his crossbow, stocked with much weaker arrows, as he would rather avoid causing mortal harm with his revolver. He tries to shoot near the demon’s feet, but it is quick, leaping left and right with great strides to dodge his shots. Genji darts around the perimeter, catching the demon here and there with little swipes of his dagger. Trying not to fatally end the fight on either side while still wearing the demon down as much as possible is a tightrope dance.

Calling Hanzo’s name does very little compared with the way it worked on Genji. Sombra had already known this would be the case, considering Hanzo’s condition, but that means… well, the guys will find out soon enough.

Sombra takes a punch to the side of her face and falls to the ground, momentarily stunned as the demon catches her by surprise.

“No!” Jesse turns to punch the demon back, but it jumps to the side and kicks Jesse in the chest, catching his wound. He drops, his metal-fire hand curled against his chest as he grits his teeth in pain.

“Jesse!” She turns and crawls towards him as quickly as she can. “Escuchame. Promise you’ll stay back.”

“What? Sombra--”

“My--mierda.” She spits out some blood and wipes her mouth, her heart pounding in her chest at what she’s about to say. She curls a hand around the back of Jesse’s neck, pulling him close, and whispers, “My true name is Olivia. Keep it to yourself unless… unless we need it.”

Jesse’s face darkens as he cups her face with one hand. “What exactly are you plannin’ to do?”

Sombra puts on a cheeky -- but slightly bloody -- smile as she presses into his touch. She thought it might come to this, though she hoped it wouldn’t. “Technically, this wasn’t part of the plan.”

She turns to look at the fight, but Genji is a blur, leaping, flipping, and dodging around Hanzo’s attacks with masterful agility. He doesn’t fight back any harder than he needs to, but guards and deflects Hanzo’s attacks.

“I am smaller and faster! I will always win these fights, brother! Remember when we used to spar?”

The demon growls in its frustration and puts all of Hanzo’s weight behind an aggressive swing of his bow. “All fights but one. Two, with my help.”

Genji laughs, dodging the swing and punching the ball of his hand into Hanzo’s side in one swift motion. “Yet here I am. You have to do better than that.”

Jesse takes hold of Sombra’s chin and turns her towards him. He strokes her cheek with his thumb and says, “Don’t disappear on me.”

Sombra nods and lifts his metal-fire hand to her lips, then kisses the back of it, leaving a blood-red lip-print on the silver. She stands and lowers her hood, her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. “Genji, keep talking to your brother. The other is mine.”

“Sombra will help you, Hanzo! She helped me take my body back. We can do the same for you, but you have to help us, too.”

“The witch is NOTHING!” The demon screams, swinging Hanzo’s bow into Genji’s hip with all of Hanzo’s strength, finally knocking him off-balance to send him sprawling across the wooden floor. “This castle is ours, Hanamura is ours, and when all three of you are dead at our hands, we will take you, too. But Hanzo Shimada,” it says slowly, rolling the syllables of his name in its mouth with no fear, “is mine.”

Sombra walks towards them with both hands glowing with purple light. “Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio… Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio…”

The demon growls and draws the bow.

“Hanzo,” Genji calls from the sidelines, kneeling with his katana dug slightly into the floor. “You do not want to hurt her,” he says, echoing Sombra’s words to him. “You do not want to kill her. This is not a demon’s body. It is yours!”

“QUIET, BRAT.”

“Brother, please remember how we got here. You have had enough of this violence! You want to put an end to this! It hurts you. You cannot escape your pain with that creature!”

Sombra dances her fingers through the air, conjuring a huge, circular rune in front of her. “You can’t do anything without him, leech. Your strength is Hanzo’s. You speak because he can speak. Nothing here is yours.” She shakes her head, staring the demon down. “This entire estate belongs to Hanzo and Genji Shimada, you know. They’ll rebuild it without you.”

“YOU WILL NOT WIN. YOU CANNOT WIN.”

“Aww, of course I can,” Sombra replies, poking out her bottom lip. She bends low, peering up at the demon through the purple ring. “Why couldn’t I? You can’t even walk through this barrier.”

The demon shoots an arrow at Sombra’s face; sure enough, the arrow dissolves before their eyes as it crosses the circle, falling to the floor as dust. She doesn’t blink, only laughs.

“Hanzo, you are my brother. I love you. We are the Shimada family. Now, get that thing out of our house.” Genji flicks his wrist, shooting a lone, razor-sharp shuriken just close enough to Hanzo’s shoulder to graze him with it.

Hanzo cries out in surprise, dropping the bow to grip his shoulder. Twin glimmers of blue light push through his chest, his spirit dragons emerging to cradle his body.

“Brother, fight it! Your dragons can hear you!”

Sombra holds her glowing hands out in front of her, lowers her voice, and snarls, “Venga, hijo de puta.”

All at once, the demon rushes towards her, but as it hits the barrier, it separates from Hanzo’s body with an ugly shriek. The dragons roar, and Hanzo staggers backwards, as the demon’s soul shoots into Sombra’s hands in an orb of red light. She holds her hands close to her chest and lets it into her body.

Jesse finally speaks behind her. “Sombra?”

A wave of nausea shakes her body as the demon attempts to settle in. She hears it speak through her mouth, her low, melodic voice suddenly twisted with that hideous metallic hissing.

“More arrogance,” it laughs. The sound is horrifying. Sombra watches Genji run to Hanzo’s side, but can’t concentrate on them. She focuses her energy, fighting the demon, preventing it from taking hold as best she can. She chants in her head, Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio… Mi alma esta completa, mi cuerpo es mio…

“Sombra, I’m here.”

Jesse. She tries to turn around, but the demon fights her, and so she ends up swaying on her feet until she falls to her knees, not quite facing him.

He kneels next to her. “Just tell me when.”

“You?” The demon cackles, finally turning to look him in the eye. “An assassin and a witch have fallen before me. There is nothing special about you.”

Of course there is, Sombra thinks. She’s still gathering her energy, still focusing on her magic to keep the demon at bay. Don’t fucking touch him.

“I will do as I please, witch.” The demon whips Sombra’s hand across Jesse’s face, her clawed gloves leaving thin scratches in his cheek.

The guilt stabs her in the gut as she watches Jesse gasp in pain, but Sombra doesn’t try to apologize. She is still capable of speaking for herself, if she fights hard for it, but she can’t spare the energy now. She’s getting closer to what she needs; she can feel her magic pulsing through her body, slowly surrounding the demon’s foul energy.

Jesse, to his credit, doesn’t bother with a snarky remark to the demon. He doesn’t speak to it at all. “I told you you’re as mean as you look,” he jokes, stretching his jaw. “I’m still here. Just tell me when.”

Sombra feels the demon probing around in her mind, trying to figure out what she’s doing. She can also feel its frustration when it fails.

The demon growls, the sound going feral in her altered voice, then grabs Jesse by the neck, choking off his air. “If you do not stop, then neither will I.”

She’s running out of time. This demon has a special talent for feeding on emotional pain. Sombra’s focus sharpens as the demon attempts to double-down on its own. Her body is heavy, but a weightless feeling overcomes her once her magic has fully encapsulated the demonic energy. She fights through the demon’s control and grits out, “Jesse?”

Jesse blinks through the strain on his throat and reaches out to her. He gently presses his metal-fire hand to her cheek, as he has so many times now, and rasps, “I hear... you... Olivia.”

The sound of her true name creates a surge of energy inside her, a rush of I-am-Olivia-I-am-mine-I-am-Olivia-I-am-mine as she feels Jesse’s touch against her skin and releases the hold on his throat. The demon screeches when Sombra suddenly rises in the air, beating proverbial fists against her to regain control, but it can’t vocalize its fury. Sombra crosses her arms over her chest, magical energy suddenly swelling from her core, then sets that magic loose.

“LA OSCURIDAD TE ESPERA!” she shouts, her body erupting in a giant sphere of purple and red light. Waves of energy pulse through the room until the demon, purged from her body, is nowhere in sight.