Chapter Text
As usual, his day had started out too early and too grey, over fifteen hours ago. One of the few things that was keeping Arthur going was caffein; his personal black blood pumping through his veins, in a desperate attempt to keep his body upright and the exhaustion at bay. Without meaning to come across as bragging, his fit body – for his mid-twenties – should not be having this much trouble with such a simple task.
Medical residency sucked ass. Recently the government had changed some laws, restricting the hours the residents were allowed to work weekly. They even build in some specific rules: if your shift had lasted longer than 24 hours, you were legally required to get at least a twelve-hour break. This was not only for the safety of the doctor-to-be, but also for the patient’s safety.
Not that it meant anything; it was void protection. The moment you arrived at your hospital; they asked you to sign a contract. It stated that you freely let go of your legal protection, because you decided to work more hours. If you refused to voluntarily sign this document, you did not get a pass. After all, the person asking you to sign the form was the person deciding what grade you would get. It did not feel like a fair system, but Arthur had admitted defeat. He had accepted it and moved on, because honestly? What more could he do?
It was with those sour feelings that he stepped into the room where his next patient should already have been waiting on him. When he entered the room however, no one was there. He figured he’d take a brief moment to check his mails. Arthur seated himself behind his desk, opened up his mail when he heard a click of the door. That was weird, these doors didn’t have any locks. He looked up from his computer but saw nothing special. Until he did.
From the corner of his eye, he saw something move to his left. He focused over there but saw nothing. Then the same thing happened at the other end of the room. Once more he switched his gaze, but nothing. Then it started happening at a faster rate. He never saw what moved until he realized the room was getting emptier. Things weren’t moving, they were vanishing. Would he too disappear? Where to?
Arthur started panicking and ran to the door he’d entered through, but found it locked. Even though it wasn’t supposed to have one in the first place. He felt the adrenaline replace the dark liquid pumping through his body. The adrenaline chased off any fatigue, until just fear was left. Arthur stormed over to the door where the patient was supposed to enter through, straight through the middle were his examination table used to stand until a few seconds ago. Upon his arrival there, his fears were confirmed: another locked door. With only one real option left, he started screaming out for someone as he banged his fist on the door.
“HELP! PLEASE! SOMEONE! HELP!”
His pleas went unanswered. Things around the room kept disappearing at an increasing rate. First it had been smaller things like a pen or the individual keys from his keyboard. However, the disappearing objects kept growing in size, as demonstrated by his vanished examination table. Now he was freaking out, what would happen to him if he vanished too? Where were the things even going in the first place? Or, most of all, how was any of this even happening?
“Hey there!” a jolly voice suddenly spoke from behind him.
He blitzed around and saw a tiny red panda standing upright in the middle of the room. For a second, he was completely confused until it clicked. This was a hallucination, from a lack of sleep. Maybe just a really weird dream? Arthur did have chaotic dreams now and then, but it didn’t feel like that. Normally he had a strong control over his surroundings in his dreams, almost all of them lucid. Now, however, when he tried to change something or even waking up, nothing happened. Until the panda spoke again. Now he knew it was the panda that was talking, since its mouth moved while the same voice reached his ears.
“I have good and bad news for you. Humans like to pick which one they prefer to hear first, right? Go ahead.”
Arthur was baffled. Good and bad news? The bad news probably included some kind of clue to what was happening and the good news hopefully something regarding what was going to happen. Arthur could only wish for that scenario, since the opposite – good news about now and bad for the future – would be less pleasant.
“Uhm, maybe start with the bad news. Then it can only get better from there, right?” Arthur faked a chuckle, trying to sound like he had any hope left. This was all too crazy. The most likely conclusion was still a hallucination, but interacting with it shouldn’t be too harmful, right? He just had to make sure he didn’t let the hallucination convince him of doing anything he wouldn’t do otherwise.
“You died ten minutes ago. The patient you think you were waiting for stabbed you in the back the moment you entered the room. The patient’s mom died from cancer last month and he blamed your supervisor for not managing to cure her. He didn’t mean to kill you; he’d expected your supervisor to walk in.”
What. Can this even be real? What is going on? Was his imagination coming up with some worst-case scenario? Why would he imagine that news being delivered by a red panda though? Arthur liked to call himself a rational person. He thought back, did he have any bad memories or experiences with red pandas?
“Yes. This is real. I’m not a figment of your imagination. I’m in the form of a red panda because I felt like it today. Are you ready for your good news?”
If it, whatever the red panda was, could read his mind, then maybe this was actually some supernatural situation. At the same time, it was also highly possible that it could ‘read’ his mind, because it WAS his mind coming up with all of this. The good news… what could that even be? Arthur could only really come to one conclusion in heat of the moment. He asked the question unsurely.
“Uhm. Am I going to heaven?”
“HAHAHA! Heaven, my dear. You’re a funny one. No, I believe that in the place you’re going to, more people would refer to it as hell than as heaven.”
Arthur was horribly confused. He’d always tried to live his life in the best way he could. Suddenly the idea of all of this being a figment of his imagination was out the window, indignation taking the place where doubt had reigned before. Arthur hadn’t been religious but had adhered to overall good morals. Respect thy neighbor, donate to charities and all that. His plans were even to go work for Doctors Without Borders for a few years after he got licensed.
“I’M GOING TO HELL? WHY? I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG? I swear if I’m going to hell for being gay, I’ll kill you, if it’s the last thing I do.”
Suddenly the panda somehow looked angry, which looked horrifying on a panda. Before he knew it, Arthur’s feet had lifted from the ground, and he was thrown across the room. He slammed with his back into one of the white walls, gasped for breath on impact and fell down to the ground with his body aching.
“Listen here, funny little thing. I have no issues with you being gay, but don’t threaten me. I’m here to give you another chance at life, you’d think you creatures would be grateful for that.”
At life? But this panda had just said he’d send Arthur to hell, had he not? This was all way too confusing, though maybe his mind had literally been shaken a bit with that slam. Arthur doubted that it would help with processing all of this.
“I’m not following, I’m afraid.”
The panda honestly to god just sighed.
“I know. Don’t worry, you don’t have to. I’m giving you a gift. Though I won’t tell you what it is, maybe you’ll find out, maybe you won’t. Exciting, isn’t it?”
Arthur had honestly given up. He was not going to understand what this thing was trying to tell him. So, he just uttered, “Uhm, yes.” Not sure what else to react.
“I think so too. Now, there’s only one condition before I send you off. I need you to deliver a message to a certain person when you meet him. If you can do that, you get to live. If you can’t, well… you won’t.” At the threat of death, adrenaline kicked in once more and Arthur found himself desperately crawling upright.
“That’s not a problem. I’ll deliver your message,” he found himself make an effort to sound convincing.
“Okay great! One day you might come across a bulky blonde guy who swings a hammer and throws lightning around. His name would be Thor. Tell him the following. ‘Thor, I have a message for you. The real gods are getting angry at Asgard’s and Alfheim’s people delusion. Who do you think you are to call yourself a god?’ After that you can also tell him that you’re someone who’s been blessed by the Original Five.”
Arthur was starting to panic. That was a whole lot of information he didn’t know anything about. He was really stressing out now, what if he’d forget anything. What were the names again? Thor, Assguard and elf-something? Shit! Either his panic was visible on his face, or the panda could actually read minds since it started talking again.
“Don’t worry, I’ll install the message in your memory. You’ll remember the exact phrasing. Now, don’t you worry about the content of the message. You have no need to know the answers to any of the questions that might arise after the message is delivered.”
Mentally he quickly checked and indeed, the phrasing came to him the moment he thought of a message to someone called Thor. Though he had no idea what it all meant.
“Now uhm. Good luck, try not to die again.”
And then the red panda just vanished, in the same way all of his office’s stuff had done so. Now he was just surrounded by white, everywhere he looked; until he wasn’t. Out of nowhere a golden circle started growing bigger until it was large enough for an adult to walk through. Not too tall of an adult either, it was Arthur-sized at 175 cm.
Arthur was lots of things, but not stupid. It was clear that he was supposed to walk through it, thus he did so. It wasn’t like there were many other options. When he arrived at the other side, he stood in a room. The first thing that caught his eye was a handsome man around his age strapped to an examination table. More exactly, it were the other man’s grey eyes that caught his. Arthur was about to ask a question, but the other man was quicker.
“Who are you?”
Which caught Arthur a bit off guard. He was about to ask the exact same question. Though his list of questions also included things like, where are we, when are we and why are you tied to the table. Guess he’d put them off for a while. This man had seen him suddenly appear in this room; off course he’d be freaked out.
“Oh, English, okay. My name is Arthur Peeters. What’s yours?” That had been something else, his mother tongue was Dutch. He was happy his English was not bad. That could’ve been an issue.
“I’m Sergeant James Barnes. Why are you here? Where’d you come from?” And boy, if that wasn’t a good question. Though what was more important at the moment was the ‘sergeant’.
“I honestly have no idea. Even more than that, I don’t know where ‘here’ is. Where are we?” Arthur praised the Red Panda that he came across as genuine enough, since the man’s initial doubtful looked changed after a few moments.
“We’re in a Hydra base in Austria,” the man said, as if that explained everything. Well, Austria gave him something.
“I’m familiar with Austria, but Hydra doesn’t tell me anything, I’m afraid.”
“How do you not know about Hydra? Who hasn’t heard of the Kraut’s allies? Are you a moron? Even civilians know that much,” the man told him in an aggressive tone, though he wasn’t too loud.
“Krauts? Hold on, that rings a bell.”
It did, Arthur was sure he’d heard of Krauts before, but where? It sounded German. It sounded a lot like the Dutch ‘kruid’, but Arthur was pretty sure it wasn’t connected to herbs. It had a negative connotation in his head. After he muttered the word to himself to hear it again, it clicked. Didn’t the Allied Forces use to call the Germans that during the second World War?
“Are you talking about the Germans?” The man was clearly horribly baffled, since he just nodded in confirmation. “Oh. I don’t know anyone who refers to Germans as Krauts. They did that in World War II, did they not? My god, I didn’t know people were still doing that.” The other man’s eyes widened at an alarming rate.
“What do you mean with ‘were still doing that’?”
This time it was Arthur’s turn to be confused. Why was this man asking incredibly weird questions? It’s as if he believed it was still going on; and he was tied to the table. That’s when it dawned on him. This man might be crazy; well, have mental issues at least. Did this handsome man actually believe he was in the second world war or something? With that thought in mind, he looked around the room.
He noticed that the designs weren’t your typical ones. Everything looked horribly outdated; from some antique maps with incorrect borders hanging on the wall to the single, ugly lightbulb that barely gave off light. Not only that, but the man was actually wearing camouflage pants. It was as if everything was designed to look like they were in the past. Even some of the medical equipment next to what appeared to be a psychiatric patient was outdated. Arthur made sure to straighten out his face, making it neutral. He hoped he didn’t agitate the patient too much.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Arthur said with some hesitation. Was this the proper way to speak to someone of that rank? Was he even supposed to address him with his rank? “I think I’m a little bit lost, what year are we in again?” What baffled him, was the man’s reaction.
“Don’t treat me like I’m a moron. It IS 1943. I don’t know where you come from or what year you think it is, but you don’t look like a soldier. Am I right about that?”
The man, James, had a certain air of authority about him. Somehow Arthur felt compelled to believe him, and before he’d realized it, he was answering the man’s question.
“You are, I’m no soldier. I’m a doctor, or well, almost.”
“Okay, listen to me carefully. I would like to escape, but that’s not happening at the moment. It’s about time my captors are going to return to experiment on me. I need you to hide somewhere that they won’t find you, since you’re probably my only shot at getting out of here. I’m realizing that you don’t completely believe me, we’ll talk about that later. For now, just hide, you’ll see that I’m right. Worst case scenario, I’m wrong and I’m a lunatic, right? Then you could just come out of the closet and explain yourself. But if I’m right and you’re wrong about me being crazy, then you’ll die. Please, fast, just hide. I don’t know exactly when, but they’ll be coming soon.”
Arthur wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Hiding in a closet would be incredible embarrassing if it’d been a patient who talked him into it. On the other hand, he had just apparently died and afterwards magically teleported to this room. If this man was right, he might die again. He doubted he’d be revived again by that Panda, so hiding was the best option, even if it was an embarrassing one.
“You’re right. Though I have to admit, I hope you’re wrong.” He really didn’t fancy being stuck in world war two Austria in a facility of Nazi allies.
The man gave him a sad smile, filled with deep loss. “I wish I was too, now hurry!”
Arthur looked around before he found a closet where he’d fit in. He slid it open and crumped himself inside. Barely settled in, he suddenly heard a clicking noise before the sound of a heavy door opening followed. Tapping shoes were heard before an awfully cold voice spoke with an awful nasal German accent.
“Ah, Sergeant 32557. How are you?”