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“I don’t know, doctor, it just didn’t appear. I don’t know what went wrong, what happened? What did I do? What does this mean?”
Everyone knows how it goes. The night before your eighteenth birthday is the hardest sleep of your life, because when you wake up, those words will appear on your forearm and you’ll spend the rest of your life looking for the person they come from. The first words you’ll ever hear from your soulmate.
When she came to him, he’d only spent two years with his own words on his arm. His own “soulbrand.” He was barely twenty, he’d only just started doctoring, and he had no experience with anybody whose soulbrand didn’t appear.
“Maybe yours is just broken,” he’d said. “Like mine, look. It’s not even in German.”
He’d lifted his sleeve and showed her the words that confounded him for years and years to come.
Мы идем вместе, доктор.
He’d had it translated within the week when he woke up and found his soulbrand in Russian. He’d been toying with the idea of medical school for months, his father really wanted him to be a doctor because it was prestigious and well-paying and he needed to earn his way. He’d always wanted to be a scientist, and fought his father on the subject for years.
When he had it translated from Russian to German, he didn’t hesitate to enter medical school. His father didn’t understand why he suddenly stopped fighting, but the Medic just told him that it was because he finally saw reason. He didn’t tell him it was because the words on his arm read ‘We go together, doctor.’
The first words she said to him were ‘I need help, doctor.’ He should have known it was doomed from the start. But she was so young and scared and vulnerable, with curly blonde hair and watery eyes the color of the sky, and she needed him. His best guess, he told her, was that it was just going to show up a little late, and that she should continue to see him so he can track her progress.
His best guess that he didn’t tell her was that it meant she would die before she got to meet her soulmate. He didn’t want to frighten her.
They were only married for six months before they both realized their mistake. They weren’t in love. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other, but they didn’t even sleep in the same bed. She told him one day “I feel you’re more of a brother than a husband,” but the scandal in the community that would have come with divorce was just too scarring for them to bother. At least they got along.
He knew some day, someone would come along and speak Russian, and he would know. There wasn’t an abundance of Russians in Germany in 1933, so he hoped they wouldn’t be too hard to find.
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It was cold the day Misha turned eighteen. Not just cold, freezing. Winters in Siberia usually were, especially that far north. He woke up after a fitful night and stared at where his arm should have been on the cot. He could feel it there but it was impossible to see in the dark. Sunrise wouldn't be for a few more hours. He had to decide if he wanted to bother with leaving his relatively warm bed and get up and start a fire or waste another match lighting the small candle beside his bed (which considering the cold and how his fingers shook was really more like three matches to get it right) or just roll over and pretend he was still asleep. The first two options would let him see the brand he'd been dreaming of all night, giving them both a little more strength than the argument his brain was making to stay in bed a little longer.
Eventually curiosity and cold won out. There was work to be done and his mother and sisters would appreciate their small home being warmed by the fire when they woke up to make breakfast.
There was no fireplace in Misha's bedroom. The large teen had to make his way into the small living room, which was really more of a wide hall with a chair in it, without waking anyone else in the house to light the fire. Luckily there was wood by the fire that he had collected the night before so he didn't have to retrieve any from their meager pile outside.
He was an old hand at lighting fires by then and in no time the grate was filled with roaring flames and warmth washed over Misha. It seemed to seep through his thick muscles down to his very bones as it did every morning when he started them. He reveled in it before turning the most important business of the day. The soulbrand he knew was waiting on his arm.
Eagerly Misha rolled up his sleeve to find... he wasn’t sure. There were markings there, just like there should be. But they weren't words he knew. Even the letters were strange. He only recognized a few of them but most were a mystery.
There must be some kind of mistake, he thought. Maybe he was sick. He'd have to ask his mother when she woke up. She'd know what was wrong.
====
By the time the Medic was employed in America with Redmond Mann, he’d given up. He’d already spent 25 years waiting. His wife had spent 25 years falling into bed with man after man, looking for the love she was doomed to never find. She was just as jaded as he was.
Most of the stories he heard, people spent a few years at the most waiting for their soulmate. 60% of people worldwide found their soulmate in their twenties, 35% in their thirties, and only 5% in their forties and later. He’d spent twenty-five years in his career as a doctor looking for his Russian partner, twenty-five years in a career he never even wanted to begin with.
Biology still called to him, and some days, he would seriously consider leaving the field of medicine to follow his passion, but then he’d see that brand again and lose his will. “We go together, doctor,” he would whisper to himself, tracing the words on his forearm.
He would dream about who might say these words. The face would be different every time. Sometimes, it would be a woman, with long hair and soft eyes, and other times it would be a man with a strong jaw and a voice the color red.
Maybe signing on to work for Mann was a bad idea. Men seemed to come from all over the world to kill for him, but he was yet to meet a Russian. There seemed to be even fewer of them in American than there were in Germany. He’d spent years learning the Russian language so that when the day came that he would meet his soulmate, there wouldn’t be a language barrier, and sometimes he thought he’d move right to Russia because he’s bound to meet a Russian or two there.
If meeting his soulmate was a priority, he might have moved. But he was more likely to move into biology than he was to move to Russia.
====
Misha jumped at the chance to join Redmond Mann. He'd been looking for a reason to move to America ever since his mother told him the words on his arm were in English. She hadn't been able to read them but there was a man who lived nearby who spoke enough to translate the words.
Admittedly, they weren't anything like what he was hoping. "Are you dying?" was a much darker phrase than what he'd hope to hear when meeting the love of his life. He just hoped the answering phrase on his soulmate's arm was "no."
But it made sense as soon as he was scouted by Mann. A war, in America. Of course he would meet people who spoke English there and a war was a good place to find oneself in mortal danger. He'd accepted without a second thought.
His mother wasn't happy about it of course. But she couldn't say no to his salary. Or what might be his only chance at finding love. And at 35 years old it was about time he settled down. 17 years was a long time to stay lonely. He and his family were more than ready for that to change.
The plane ride to America was the scariest and most terrifying thing Misha will ever experience. He wasn't sure they were going to let him on the tiny plane because he's so big. But in the end they worked it out and they landed safely in Alaska. After that there was a long train ride to New Mexico that Misha sleeps through, exhaustion from the excitement on the plane and the soothing movement of the train lulling him to sleep.
When he wakes the world around him is like nothing he's ever seen. The flat white plains of snow he's used to have changed to a light tan, like the snow has been burnt. The air is as dry as it was in Russia but hot. Hotter even than the warm fires of his youth. It's like sitting inside that childhood fireplace but without being consumed by the flames. He wonders if this is what being inside an oven feels like.
They arrive at his barracks soon enough and he unpacks with the other heavies. None of them are as big or as strong as he is and they laugh at his accent but he doesn't mind. They aren't who he's here for.
Over the next few weeks he settles in nicely. He makes friends with the head engineer and a few of the soldiers and learns to avoid the spies and pyros. And he starts to hear horror stories about the head doctor.
He doesn't see the man much. Which from what he's been told is a good thing. They pass in the hall a few times and he sees him getting coffee in the morning looking as if he hasn't slept yet that night. Some of the others say it’s because he doesn’t sleep. They say the doctor is nocturnal like a vampire and spends his nights doing Frankenstein-like experiments on unlucky prisoners. Misha isn't sure how much he believes them but he doesn't try to attract the doctor's attentions just in case.
He can't seem to stop looking for him though. Something about the man has captured the heavy's attention. Every time he sees him he looks for some sign that what the others say is true, that he's some sort of demon, but all Misha sees is a tired man who seems to have no friends on the base. He starts to think that that might be why he never eats with the rest of the company, rather than because he eats corpses and drinks blood like some of the more creative scouts like to claim.
The few times he’s unfortunate enough to wind up in the medical ward, that medic isn’t even there, and he’s tended to by other doctors. He cranes his neck to try and look for the peculiar medic, but he’s never in sight.
When he does see him, it’s usually when they’re passing one another in the halls, and he can’t work up the courage to talk to him. What does one say to a man he’s never spoken to in the middle of the work day in a concrete hallway? Nice weather? He’s not very good at conversation in English at the best of times.
He would approach the man if he ever spent time in the communal areas because the atmosphere was always more relaxed, but he never did. He never even saw him come to the mess hall to get his meals, which doesn’t bode well for the cannibalism rumors.
The first time he hears the medic speak is on the battlefield. He’s tailing after a different Heavy, the red beam of his medigun trained on the younger man’s wounds, and he shouts, “Geh schneller, du Elch!”
He hadn’t expected to hear the nasally accent of a German come out of him. It shouldn’t have surprised him considering the worldwide reach of Mann, but the majority of the people working for him are still, predictably, American.
Misha knows he needs to meet him. He can’t keep anonymity from the head Medic. He’s the top surgeon, so it would pay to befriend him. And the soft heart hidden snugly under 270 pounds of bloodlust and muscle aches for the man who is clearly close to no one. But he has no idea how to even start trying to befriend him. He can never pin him down.
So he starts to try and pay attention to his meal schedule. Maybe he could offer a seat, just the two of them if crowds put him off. But in a week, he doesn’t see the Medic so much as set foot in the mess hall. Every night he’ll see a different nurse leave with two trays and he realizes he has them fetching his meals for him. His chance comes on a Friday, when after two hours, no nurse leaves with a second tray.
He collects the meal and goes down to the medical bay, and knocks cautiously on the Medic’s office door, balancing the trays atop one another. He doesn’t care if his sandwich is a little smushed. He hears the Medic clear his throat in what he decides to take as an invitation of entry.
The Medic looks up at the mountain of a man that takes up most of his doorway, holding two trays, and it occurs to him suddenly that he’d forgotten to ask one of his nurses to fetch his meal. He doesn’t know who this man is or why he’s suddenly elected to bring him food.
Silence hangs in the air for a moment between them. The clock on the wall behind the Medic’s desk ticks, deafening. Twelve ticks, thirteen. Should Misha speak first?
“Are you dying?” the medic asks bluntly.
The Heavy’s heart almost stops. He shakes his head slowly, too stunned to say anything.
“Are you bleeding?”
He shakes his head.
“Zhen please go. I have a lot of vork to do.”
Heavy doesn’t know what to do. His voice has shrunk three sizes too small. He puts the tray down on an empty corner of the Medic’s desk and flees.
He gets back to his room and climbs into bed, already kicking himself for not saying anything. He'd just met his soulmate! Why had he run! He can't believe he ruined it. What if he never gets another chance?
No. That's not going to happen. He can't let the love of his life get away. That was why he left home to begin with. To find his soulmate! And he isn't going to fail now. He just needs another chance.
But as it turns out the medic is a hard man to get ahold of. He's a very reserved fellow, which is putting it politely. He doesn't talk much to anyone and only works on the absolute worst injuries himself. The rest he hands over to lesser medics or even nurses if he thinks they're up for it. And he's always busy. He barely seems to have time to sleep let alone chat with some heavy he's never even really met.
Finding him out on the field seems to be the only way Misha is going to get a chance to talk to him. But even then the doctor only leaves the base on rare occasions and no matter how fast Misha finds him he's always already teamed up with another heavy.
His favorite seems to be an American man younger than Misha by at least five years. He has no lines on his face and a beard that makes him look distinguished and his muscle-to-fat ratio is much kinder than the older Heavy’s.
Sometimes if Heavy gets hurt and the Medic is nearby, he’ll offer a few moment of his healing ray before he’s off again, his white coat fluttering behind him like wings. But he can never think of a thing to say, not even a thank you. If this is the man he’s going to spend the rest of his life with, his first words have got to be good. It would be easy if he could see the doctor’s arm, it would take away the mystery. But he always wears those big red gloves.
It’s curious, this position. He wonders while he’s lying in bed at night, what would happen if he saw the words on the Medic’s arm, and he said something different? Would his soulbrand change? Would it destroy the bond they would have had? It makes him sick with worry. What if he says the wrong thing? Is he over thinking this? Is it possible to undo a soul-deep bond by saying the wrong thing?
His fears become part of what keeps him from speaking out. The worry that he'll say the wrong thing runs so deep that even opening his mouth around the medic becomes difficult. What if he says it but Medic doesn't hear him and never knows? Or what if he does say the wrong thing and someone else says the right thing and it turns out they were never soulmates? Could a person be one person's soulmate but that person not be theirs?
The questions build and build until even looking at the Medic becomes difficult. He shies away whenever the doctor is near, even if he's wounded, fearing he might speak out in pain and all his fears will come true.
But the more he worries and hides from the Medic the more he thinks about him. He composes poems in his head, all in Russian, that he would say if he could be sure they would be the right words. He tries to think of clever quotes, things from books and plays that will impress his soulmate. Even out on the battlefield when he's killing enemy mercenaries he plans speeches in his head while keeping an eye on Medic to make sure he isn't hurt.
Out on the field with bullets spraying all around him is the only time he can find peace, ironically. He doesn’t have to worry about talking to the Medic on the field because chances are so rare when one is running for one’s life.
And it gives him the chance to watch the Medic in action. He moves like a man half his age, with a spring in his step and a manic sparkle in his eye. He has an enthusiasm for murder than the Heavy has never encountered in another person. Not only an enthusiasm, but creativity unrivaled. He’ll find someone strung up on a ceiling fan by their intestines like a grisly marionette inside the enemy base and he knows that it’s the work of his future soulmate.
When he loses sight of him on the field, he feels his blood run cold. The other heavies might not be able to protect him. He likes to keep one eye on him at all time, just to make sure he’s still alive. Losing him in his range of vision is like losing part of his very soul. Nobody else would protect the Medic like he could.
It’s not that he’s exactly in love, yet. He hasn’t said a single word to the man. But he’s in love with the idea of him, and his daydreams. His daydreams which, coincidentally, are the cause more often than not of him losing sight of the Medic. Including today.
He rushes through the field, past corpses of REDs and BLUs and unidentifiable meat piles, but he doesn’t dare call out for him. When he hears a scream of anger that he recognizes as the pitch in the Medic’s voice, he charges for it, veins icy.
“Stay vith me, Gott verdammt noch mal! You do not have permission to die!”
The Medic doesn’t even see Heavy round the corner. He’s crouched over the body of the Heavy he spends the most time with on his field, his beard full of blood running from his mouth like a tap. Most of his body has been blown open by a stray grenade, leaving him more of a hole than a man. He knows that he can’t repair the organs fast enough, it doesn’t matter how hard he points his medigun. He’s losing him.
He’s lost people before. He doesn’t particularly care for this man, he doesn’t even remember his name. Patrick, maybe, or Peter. But every time he’s unable to save somebody, it’s a blow to his ego. It reminds him that no matter how much technical knowledge and practice he has, his heart isn’t in medicine, and passion is necessary to save lives. It only makes him reconsider his field all over again, and makes him bitter and angry.
The Heavy dies with his eyes open. Medic sinks down to his knees, defeated, and lets the handle of his medigun disengage. Blood soaks into the wings of his long coat and he closes his eyes with a sigh. He takes off his glasses and wipes the blood off the lenses with a clean edge of his jacket, hands shaking. He doesn’t look at the dead Heavy.
Misha stays back out of respect. He clears the area of the enemies he can see so the Medic can mourn in peace. He and the other heavy must have been very close for them to work together so much. Misha is almost a little jealous. He might be the medic's soulmate but if he were killed right now the other man probably wouldn't even notice.
Sooner than he expected the medic is rising from his place beside the body, looking downhearted and a little lost. Misha wishes he knew what to say to help the doctor but as always he's too tongue tied to even open his mouth.
Until he sees the grenade coming towards them. He acts on instinct then, jumping in front of the Medic to shoot the grenade before it reaches them, effectively taking most of the shock and the little bits of shrapnel that rocket towards them.
Turning towards the medic he doesn't think, he just says the first thing that comes to mind.
The Medic doesn’t know how to respond when he sees an enormous meat shield diving for him. He feels the heat from the explosion and the weight of a body as it protects him. None of his comrades care for him enough to take a blow for him. When that giant hand reaches out for him, his muscles tense and ready him to flee if he needs to.
“Мы идем вместе, доктор.”
The world stops spinning. The earth shatters and the sky cracks open and all the activity around them stands still. He stares at the hand, follows it up to the kind face of the man standing over him.
“Vhat did you just say?” he whispers.
Heavy doesn’t get a chance to answer. He opens his mouth, but all he can do is cry out as a pain pierces his ribcage and as a bullet digs a fierce path through his body and out the other side, embedding in the doctor’s leg. They both crumple with a shout, confused and bleeding.
The Medic recovers first. He doesn’t think, he doesn’t have enough time to think. Instinct takes over and he grabs his medigun and seals his wound, bullet still inside. He’ll open an incision and dig it out later. He almost straddles the Heavy in his haste to heal him, he can’t lose two in one day, he can’t lose this one.
“Keep breathing!” he commands in a voice like needles, and slaps Heavy across the face when his eyes start to close, startling him back into consciousness.
Misha's eyes open wide, the pain in his face momentarily distracting him from the pain of the bullet wound. He grits his teeth and nods, determined to follow the medic's orders. Of course he's going to keep breathing. He has to. His soulmate is with him. There's no way he can die now.
He can feel the pain starting to lessen as the medigun works its magic and the wound starts to close. He hears another shot crack and he rolls them both over, using his larger body to shield the Medic. This time the bullet passes them, sailing over their heads to embed itself in the chest of one of their soldiers. Misha doesn't care. As long as his Medic is safe.
Stunned and on his back, the Medic only gives himself a moment to stare up at the force of muscle and protective fury over him. This man could have his own gravitational poles he’s so big.
Suddenly twenty-five years didn’t seem like a very long time to wait at all.
“Get up!” he barks when he hears a third shot, and they both scramble to their feet. The Medic is off before Heavy can even react, running straight into the building the BLU sniper had been nesting in. He stares up at the window to try and see, but his vision of the sniper is obscured, so he lopes along after the speedy Medic.
He isn’t halfway up the stairs before he hears a screech of pain and a nauseating squelch. It gives him pause for just a moment before he collects himself, stomachs the growing stench of blood, and continues up the stairs with Sascha on his hip.
The Medic is standing in the middle of the sniper’s nest in between two halves of the sniper, separated by the length of the room. He’s calmly cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief as red as the blood on his face.
Misha doesn’t know what to do. He’s waited for this moment since his eighteenth birthday, but all of his speeches and prepared poems and words flow out of him and leave nothing but a sense of warmth.
The Medic puts his glasses back on his nose and wipes the blood from his cheeks with the handkerchief. He pockets it and then turns to regard the Heavy.
“So,” he begins, posture upright, sounding very official. “Ve are soulmates. Vould you like to have coffee sometime?”
"Da." Misha says, still stunned by the gory scene before him. He can't help smiling a little though. He can see himself growing to love this man. He might love him a little already. "Coffee sound good."
“Vell,” the Medic hoists his medigun up onto his hip and checks the gauge. “It looks like I have an übercharge ready, and you are vithout a Medic. Shall ve?” he holds his hand out to the other man.
When the big Russian’s hand closes around him, everything feels worth it. The waiting, the suffering, the loneliness and the overcompensation. The Heavy’s hand wrapped around his makes him feel sheltered. He belongs here.