Chapter Text
“Are you seriously,” the female sniper pinned the medic with a glare, “about to diagnose me with hysteria?” The doctor’s eyes widened, caught off guard by her sudden sharpness. “Are you lookin’ to pass off a quickie as medical treatment? How stupid do you think I--”
“I vas not insinuating it should be vith me!” The doctor’s face flushed at the idea, The sniper found herself flushing to match him, with the embarrassment at assuming as much. She hated how clinically a doctor could just ask about a person’s sexual activity, or lack there of, as casually as asking about a change in diet or sleep habits. Doctor or not, it was still a dodgy topic for any man to prod her about.
Medic quickly regained his composure with a readjustment of his glasses, “I could, however, assist in procuring you, vell, an opportunity.” he looked at her with something condescending, approaching pity, in his eyes, “Perhaps ve are too shy to approach our colleagues vith such a proposal, hmm?”
She scoffed at this. Like she needed his help to get laid. She re-assured herself her lack of ‘activity’ was down to her lack of interest in any of her teammates in that regard.
“It ain’t that important doc,” she deflected.
“Vhat did you come in here for?” he asked rhetorically. “You are out of balance, out of sorts, not sleeping right, not eating right, not shooting right, vound tight like a spring.” He paced closer as he listed the symptoms she had come to him with.
“I thought you’d just give me a bottle of Valium or something.”
“Nonsense! You zhink you vould have your head on straight enough for battle with zhat in your veins?” He tutted and brushed the idea aside with a dismissive wave.
“Now,” began the doctor as if she had already agree, “You have a target rich environment, so to speak. Certainly you have noticed a few of the fit specimens who share zhe field vith you each day, hmm?” He cocked an eyebrow at her in a teasing manner.
She laughed and shook her head. Perhaps it was so simple to him. Maybe it was a male thing. Maybe it was a psychopathic doctor thing.
“Vhat about...” He began pacing a circle around her as he guessed. “Spy?”
“You playing match maker now?” She shook her head and tightened her folded arms, shrinking shyly. Medic grinned, amused by her timidness on the subject. The sniper sensed the medic was not about to drop the subject. She deflected his suggestion at last with a sigh, “Pretty sure everyone knows he’s tied up with that kid’s, mum.”
“Hmm...Demo?”
“Not terribly attracted to drunken, dishevelled messes, no”
“Ooh, harsh.” He smirked, enjoying her sassy defensiveness. “Vhat about Scout?”
“Pshh, No! I mean...the kid’s got a good face but, he’s a bloody larrikin. And what is he 19? 20? He’s a kid y’know? Seems like he’d be...a bit...inexperienced.” She wondered at why she was giving him so much insight into her inner logic on all this anyway. Medic seemed to have a talent for dragging things out of people, she had notice. But decided for the moment to let herself slip. Casually sharing these, normally stifled thoughts, on this forbidden subject of, ‘reasons to shag or not to shag each of my co-workers’, was having a therapeutic effect.
“Ah, but you could be his first! Wouldn’t zhat be exciting?” The doctor said brightly.
“What?! I didn’t think he was that inexperienced. I mean, I know the others tease him, but I thought that were just boys bein’ boys.”
“Perhaps zhe soldier? He has a decent physique, no?”
“Never. He’s insane.”
“Hmm,” He circled closer, “Engineer zhen? He has a good head on his shoulders.”
“Nothin’ wrong with Engie.” She shrugged, “...but nah, never thought of him that way.”
“Hmff. Women. So very picky.” Medic tutted.
“Hey! If it were a priority, I’d sort it, mate!” She said, growing offended. “Maybe I don’t see my workplace as a meat market. It’s about professionalism.”
“Sure,” said Medic, clearly not agreeing. He ceased his pacing and leaned with his back against the exam table, arms folded, eyes boring into the floor, keen to crack this riddle. “I do vhant to help you.” To her surprise, something genuine in his tone gave her the sense that he actually did. “Zhere must be somevone...”
Her mind did indeed go to someone. Someone she had been comparing each option he threw at her to. She had been avoiding his gaze, but now she returned to it, finding his sharp eyes studying her. He read it all on her face. His face curled into a devious, knowing grin. “Oh, ho! Zhere is someone.”
She squirmed under his accusation. “Fine. Sure. But you could never get him.”
“My dear,” He approached with a superior strut and tilted his head to peer at her over his glasses. “I can talk a man into replacing his heart with a baboon’s. You think I vould have any trouble talking a man into fucking a voman?”
She blurted out a laugh at hearing so crass a word as ‘fucking’ out of this otherwise proper and dignified, older gentleman. “You could never get him.” She insisted, shaking her head at the proud doctor’s face. He squinted, un-phased by her laughter.
“Try me.”
She sighed, casting one last calculation over the risk of exposing her interest in this person. She cleared her throat and met his eye contact with seriousness.
“The sniper.” She dropped her voice to a whisper before clarifying, “their sniper.”
The medic’s eyes widened a moment, but he held his poker face otherwise. He had so boldly bragged his ability to deliver, he was not about to back down now, even with this surprising new angle to the challenge. “Hmm,” He grinned, back into a mode of teasing her about it. “Interesting.”
“Impossible.” She corrected him.
Medic chuckled. He turned to wander into the depth of his lab as he spoke over his shoulder to her. “Zhey said it vas impossible to bring back zhe dead. Yet here you stand.” She had no response for this.
“I believe we are done here, miss. I have some verk to do now. Good day.” He dismissed her as he arrived at his syringe gun which lay open for maintenance on a workbench. The sniper awkwardly stood a moment, surprised at the abrupt end of the conversation, then found her way out.
The medic rifled through his collection of poisons, arriving on the ingredients he had been seeking. Something a little different to load the syringe gun with.
“Ohhh Fraulein!” an unmistakeable voice sang triumphantly down the hall at the sniper the following night, stopping her in her tracks. “I have somezink fur yooou!” She turned slowly, wary of what might have the doctor in such high spirits. “Come vith me!” He swept her along with him in the direction of the infirmary with a jovial spring in his steps.
“Medic...?” She said in a tone that was more of a warning than a question. “Doc!” She stopped short of the infirmary doors and held him firmly by the arm. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.” Medic had his hand on the door, and now looked back at her, puzzled by her hesitation. She looked back down the hall for witnesses. “Tell me,” She dropped to a threatening whisper, “you didn’t bring the enemy here. Tell me there isn’t a man drugged and hog-tied in there!” The medic’s eyes flicked away quickly in thought then returned to her.
“Vell, I did. And zhere is.”
The sniper threw her hands up and whirled away from him in disbelief, then dragged them down her face as she returned to address the situation.
“Ok, ok, ok, what--?” she dropped her sentence for an exasperated grumble, checking the hall for witnesses again. “What exactly is the plan here? I go in there and just...what? What then?! He wakes up, he’s been drugged and dragged here, ‘Oh, hello, I kidnapped you for a quickie, wouldja mind?’ He’ll think I’m a psychopath! And, he’ll try to kill me, and he’ll probably escape, and we’ll be fired for whatever trouble he causes on the way out.”
She hushed her voice again, which had been rising with her anxiety, “This can’t happen. Just set him free in the woods like a rabbit and let him scamper off.”
Medic laughed at her suggestion. “You put too little faith in me, my dear. Do you think I would not think this through?” Her sceptical glare answered his question. “Vhy don’t ve step inside, ja? A little privacy for zhis conversation, hm? And zhen, if you are still too shy, I vill ‘let ze rabbit scamper off’, as you said.”
He pulled the door open a few inches, but the sniper made no move to enter at first. She did not want to be party to any of this. But, she did want to continue this conversation behind a closed door. After an indignant huff, she responded. “Fine.” She allowed his hand at her back to escort her through the threshold.
He was drugged. So heavily drugged in fact, he was not even restrained, but sat, slumped, leaning heavily on his hands, planted for balance, wavering on the exam table. He stared zombie-like at the floor. His hat lay upside-down, left where his head had apparently spent some time before he had risen to his current seated position. His usual shades had been lost at some point on his journey here.
“No. No, no, no,” said the female sniper, practically hiding behind the medic. “Medic, what is wrong with you?” She hushed her voice so even the man in the room with them would not hear. “I can’t shag him while he's drugged like this, are you mental?!”
“I did not expect you too,” replied Medic in a far less cautious volume. “I doubt he vould be able to...perform anyvay, in such a state.” He approached the man on the table, whose focus wandered up to Medic, then away as if he had been no more than another fixture of the room. “I have been meaning to test zomesink, and your request for some time vith zhe enemy, has given me a chance to kill two birds vith one stone.”
“I don’t recall requesting it, actually,” she put in, now braving a few steps closer to this odd scene. The man’s eyes wandered her direction without achieving eye contact. He swayed dangerously, then sloppily corrected, blinking to look back at the floor again. He may have been sitting, with his eyes open, but he was not really awake. “What did you ‘test’ on him?” She asked.
“Somezink to make zhe enemy less aggressive. So passive in fact,” the doctor continued, lighting up with the opportunity to explain his concoction, “zhey may just lay down zher guns and wander off zhe field. Or more likely, wander into our sentries.” He rubbed his hands together excitedly, leaning in for a closer look at his specimen. “Now, I did also have to sedate him razher heavily to get him here. Quite zhe feisty ‘rabbit’ he vas. But soon he vill be lucid enough zhat zhe two of you can, vell, get to know each other.”
“Again, Doc,” She lowered her voice, not that the nearly-blacked-out man on the table would likely comprehend a word, “I can’t shag a man who’s...shit-faced as this.”
“No. But you can talk to him. I did say, ‘get to know each other.’ You are the vone talking about ‘shagging’.” He articulated her slang for the act awkwardly.
“Talk to him?”
“Ja,” Medic shrugged. “Generally, a necessary precursor to ‘shagging,’ in my experience.”
For the first time since he began dragging her down the road to this moment, she appreciated his thinking on it. How else would she have ever had a safe opportunity to approach one of the enemy for a dialogue like this. She sighed, watching him.
“How long until he’s talk-able? And how long until he’s dangerous again?”
“Vell, we will know the first vone when he starts talking. And, I have a strong feeling zhe second vone vill not happen.”
“You mean, it’s permanent?”
The doctor chuckled, “No. But I can surmise he vill be less keen to kill you after he’s spent some...quality time with you.”
“I’m not gonna shag him, doc.”
“You are assuming my meaning again.”
“Whosenotgonnashaghim?” Slurred a new participant to the conversation, snapping the attention of the medic and female sniper to him.
Medic beamed over at her in excitement. He patted the sobering man on the shoulder as he passed by. The male sniper looked at where Medic had contacted him few seconds too late. Medic strode past the rapidly tensing female Sniper.
“I..I don’t know what to say to him,” she stammered, watching in horror as the male sniper’s face began emoting his confusion at regaining consciousness in this setting.
“I figured you might need some liqvuid courage,” said the medic, who had wandered somewhere behind her. “Vhich is just as vell, because I could use more test subjects.” Understanding his implication immediately, She turned to protest, but medic’s hand was already on her bicep, and his needle already in her arm.
“You can’t just--!” She reached for the hand injecting her but the job was already done, and the nasty little pricking implement yanked safely away. “—inject people with things, you...” Her sentence trailed off as she could not think of an adequate insult...and suddenly, finishing that thought did not seem so important.
“I find zhat people vorry too much about injections if you varn zhem.” Medic mused as he wandered off to discard the spent syringe. She stayed right where he had left her, her hand still hovering where she had failed to stop him.
“Now,” said the medic calmly, guiding her toward the exam table with a hand at her back. “Vhy don’t you hop up zhere and meet your new freund, hmm?” Finding nothing wrong with the idea, she complied.
She approached, taking his hat from where she intended to sit, then placed it on his head...it just seemed like the right place to put it. Medic chuckled at her from somewhere, but she did not mind as she climbed up and sat cross-legged like a child beside this new curiosity.
Here he was. A face she had only seen at many yards before, through a scope, for the fleeting seconds one could dare looking before taking a shot, to avoid being taken herself. His face bore a long thin scar she had not noticed before, drawn diagonally from his nose to the tip of one ear. His cheek had taken the brunt of whatever had done it.
Her presence drew his focus. The sedative had released him, but the substance medic was testing on them both still had a powerful hold. He perceived a woman there, but concepts like ‘enemy’ were yet unplugged in his consciousness.
“Goodday.” he said politely with a small dip of his head, seemingly out of reflex at meeting a stranger.
“Goodday.” She chimed back in a timid voice, equally out of habit. Medic laughed at their adorably innocent exchange from his small kitchenette where he was busy brewing himself some tea before settling in to watch the little drama play out.
The enemy sniper’s eyes wandered slowly to her crimson shirt, then blinked with a growing understanding. “I’m in the wrong base,” he stated to himself, his tone entirely lacking the concern that revelation should merit.
“Yeah, you are.” She answered just as simply.
“Are you gonna kill me?” He asked, sounding more curious than worried.
“Nah. The medic’s testing something on us.”
“The medic?” said the man, gazing across the sinister medical implements of his surroundings. Then back to her. He leaned closer and lowered his voice as if to share a secret, “If your medic’s as loony as ours, he’s probably plannin’ to sew us together.” The female sniper laughed. The male sniper’s face lifted into a goofy drunken smile, enjoying her laughter. His hat was not quite set right, adding further charm to his disheveledness.
“No,” she said, coming down from her laugh. “He thinks I need a shag.” She blurted into a new laugh. In her uninhibited state, she had not for a moment assessed the personal nature of the statement before sharing. Now that it was out, the absurdity of it tickled her, and him as well it seemed. He joined her in her laugh.
“Is that why I’m here?” He asked between chuckles.
“It’s a very bad idea isn’t it?” She squeaked breathlessly.
The man’s laughter intensified, doubling him so he nearly rolled off the exam table. He managed to articulate through his fit, “bloody hell, your team’s more mental than mine!” The female sniper giggled, nodding in agreement, then found herself possessed by the contagious sound of his joy. The two shook with unbridled laughter, rocking so much that they bumped into each other, which only spurred them on.
“Hmm, vas not expecting zhis,” said an amused medic. He sat cozily in a chair nearby with his tea, scribbling on a clipboard.
“Oi!” said the recovering enemy sniper to the medic he had just now noticed. “Whatcha up to nurse?”
“Recording symptoms.” Answered the medic with a grin.
“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?” The male sniper’s voice was bold, like he was ribbing an old friend. “Weird.” He cast a glance to her, shaking his head with a grin. “These doctors are weird. Not even doctors, really. Probably. Are ya?” The medic held his smirk but squinted with a hint of annoyance at the personal nature of the jab. “What’s all this then anyway, doc? Draggin’ me in here? Tellin’ her she needs a shag?” He pointed sloppily at her, nearly poking her.
“Vhy, it is my conservation program.” quipped the doctor as he straightened his glasses and lifted his tea to his lips. “Snipers are endangered you know.”
“He’s good.” said the male sniper, nudging the female sniper who started giggling again, unsure of if the conversation or the drug were more responsible at this point. “Still weird. But good.”
“So.” The male sniper said, turning his attention fully to his new female acquaintance. “The doctor says you need ‘a shag’,” he smirked, almost laughing again. “Do you need a shag, love?”
“Not here.” she said, finally recovering from her giggles, “not now.” She said glancing at the medic. The substance may have dissipated her anxiety entirely, but she was still well aware that commencing such activities, on an exam table, in front of a doctor, with a doped up, delusional partner, was not an enticing proposition to her. “Not like this.”
“I figured not. I should be trying to leave anyway...no offence to you, miss.” He looked around the room. His statement indicated the gravity of his situation was somewhere in his awareness, yet he made no move to actually leave.
“The doc says you probably can’t perform like this anyhow.” She nudged him teasingly.
“Oi! Oi!” The male sniper squinted at the medic and planted a fist on his hip, though he sounded more like he was joking with the man again, than actually offended. “Presumptuous!” The medic raised an eyebrow in response. The sniper’s gaze fell to his own anatomy. He blinked in thought. “Probably right though.”
The lady sniper snickered immaturely at his admission. He looked dopily back at her, satisfied that he had entertained her again. They shared a moment of curious eye contact, undisturbed by the usual social awareness that would have made them averting such a prolonged stare. As she took him in, she remembered how rare and valuable this opportunity really was. She needed to say something.
“We should...do something...some other time.”
“Do something?” he asked.
“When you’re not so....”
“Off meh’ tits?” he finished for her.
“Yeah.” She smiled, amused by his phrasing.
“You mean meet again?” He searched her with newly interested eyes, then turned a sidelong glance at their audience. “Probably shouldn’t discuss that in front of...witnesses.”
“A little late,” said the medic, entertained by their slow-witted-ness. “But your little secret, battlefield romance vould be of no concern to me. My job is only to heal.” He waved a dismissing hand as he sipped from his tea. This ‘war’ was little more to him than an excuse to fund and pursue his own experiments. The politics and outcome of it held no weight to him. “If you two have trouble blasting each ozher’s heads off after zhis, zhe administrator vill be your vorry, not me.”
“Yeah.” The male sniper said, returning to his new lady friend, seeming satisfied with the medic’s declaration of disinterest. “Something. Some other time. Such as...”
“Shag?” She suggested bluntly.
“If you like.” He grinned, responding as casually as if she’d suggested going for coffee. “We could do other things too though...that I’ll...think of...later....” He seemed to loose his fragile concentration as his eyes wandered over her gracelessly. “A shag would be good though.”
The female sniper smiled at how successfully this bizare solicitation was going, considering she was so out of her wits.
“You know something?” The male sniper went on. “I’m usually shite at this. It’s rather easy talkin’ to you, miss.”
“That’s the drugs.” She explained.
“Ah. That’d be it then.”
Suddenly the man tensed as a syringe lodged in his arm. The female sniper reeled back at the surprise. “Alright,” the medic cut in, who seemed to appear from nowhere by the female sniper’s perception, with the syringe gun in one hand, glancing at the watch in his other. Her new friend began to slump blearily, only to be redirected by the medic to lay on his side, forcing her to hop off the table to make room. “Time for zhe rabbit to scamper off.”
The female sniper felt her mood drop precipitously to an empty low with the abrupt end of the promising conversation. “But--” she protested.
“Like you said my dear, vonce sober, he vould try to escape, and zhats where zhe trouble for us vould start.” He yanked the empty dart free of the man’s body and tossed it back onto the work bench. “Now, go write him a nice note to make your arrangements. It’s best if I don’t know zhe details.”
She had to give him credit. Medic had actually thought this through.