Chapter Text
Heavy’s heart gleams with a sickly sheen.
It thrums with a weak pulse; it can barely keep time with the fluorescent lights that buzz overhead.
Blood seeps from the pound of tough, sinewy flesh.
Runs, slick and warm, through Medic’s fingers.
Every other beat sends a trickle of blood through the thin lines drawn across his palms; clumps the finer hairs on his knuckles together; drips fat, black drops onto the tiles beneath his boots.
The muscle contracts.
Expands.
Oozes a thick gush of red syrup.
Medic shifts his hold on it. It threatens to slip from his grasp, even without his gloves on; its heft matches that of its owner’s, and then some. He cuts a glance towards the man in question.
He had drawn the curtains before he had begun his work. Standard practice, of course: keeps the patient comfortable, the distractions minimal, his eyes occupied solely by his work. But in the middle of excising Heavy’s heart from his chest, it had occurred to him that he would’ve had nothing to look at, anyway.
BLU team’s other bases have, in the past, at least offered him the thick canopy of a forest, or the lip of an ocean that he has never seen in full--that he likely never will--but here?
Here, there is nothing.
Or, there had been something.
There had to have been for them to have come along and be placed inside its empty shell.
The fluorescents wash Heavy out in soft, blue-greys, and in even starker shadows. He sits in a bed half his size; his back is set right up against the headboard, his head against the wall. His hands lie at his sides. A thick blanket drapes over his legs and falls into the space between them.
It takes his eyes a moment to focus on Medic’s.
They’re foggy. Tired.
Even then, the bright blue light of the Medi-Gun swims within them.
With the clinic already being as small as it is, a nest of boxy machines cramp the already limited space around Heavy’s bedside further. Their sleepy, golden lights blink intermittently. A machine by his head keeps track of his heartbeat. Another, smaller machine--that rattles every now and again--sprouts three plastic tubes from its top.
Medic had inserted the first two tubes into Heavy’s superior and inferior vena cava respectively. De-oxygenated blood pumps, black and sluggish, through it with every little jolt from the machine; neon red bubbles float where the trickle catches the light.
The third tube runs into a second machine. This machine rumbles like an engine; siphons the black blood from Heavy’s heart; churns it out scarlet and healthy and into a pump, which then does its work of bringing the newly freshened blood back into the aorta.
To think that, very soon, these machines will be doing all of this from the comfort of Heavy’s soft and cushiony intestines. If only, Medic muses, ruefully, they could all have it so easy.
He shifts his hold on the heart a second time. He minds the tubes. Snagging them on all this equipment would be like if he were to personally tear Heavy’s nails off. Besides--such carelessness would only serve to give him even more of a mess to clean later.
Beside him, Heavy sucks in a breath from between his teeth. The sound eases him from his thoughts.
He peers over the lip of Heavy’s heart and into his chest; watches his diaphragm contract; his lungs, thin, pink sacs criss-crossed with even thinner veins, struggle to inflate.
The breath rattles in Heavy’s throat. He, however, manages to draw it in, to let it out in turn--but only just so. It comes out as a wheeze. He screws his eyes shut. Grits his teeth.
His eyelashes tickle the top of his cheek; Medic had never noticed how long they were until now.
The latter presses his lips down into a thin line.
Getting shot at, blown up, and dismembered on the field is one thing. It is the farthest thing from pleasant--but at least the others make for good company, regardless of how immature they can be sometimes. At least they have the Respawn machine.
But seeing such pain dull Heavy, of all people, to the point of silence--
It’s not something he’s used to.
It’s not something that he’d like to get used to.
The silence lingers. Makes the clinic feel all the more minute.
It isn’t long before a click, click, click draws Medic’s attention from it.
He glances back at Heavy’s heart. The round, glass face of an Uber meter looks back at him. Its small, black hand moves by the rhythm of Heavy’s heart. It’s a simple rhythm-- simple enough that under any other, better circumstances, he otherwise wouldn’t have given it much thought.
Were it not for its affliction, he would’ve let the sound--alongside Heavy’s heartbeat--fade from his mind.
After a few moments, however, the hand wrenches itself past its normal range. It remains stuck at the little black mark at the top of the meter for half a second--then it falls back into its usual tempo like nothing had happened.
The heart beats.
The hand rises and falls.
Another few minutes pass before it happens again.
This time--it doesn’t come back down.
Instead, it twitches in place, as if snared on an invisible hook. Each twitch makes the faintest of clicks; the many cogs behind its face gnash their teeth together.
Medic frowns. He eases the bulk of the heart into his left hand. Its weight comes to rest against the front of his apron. A wet spot begins to seep through the cloth and into the vest he wears underneath. He can feel its feverish warmth beat against the thin meat of his torso, even through his clothes.
He grasps the meter’s face between his right thumb and forefinger. His thumb leaves a bloody mark on the glass; it smears as he adjusts his grip. He wrinkles his nose.
Without thinking about it, he takes his hand back and flicks the meter once, twice.
The hand, at last, escapes its snare.
The meter tick, tick, ticks away.
The cycle begins anew.
Heavy groans beside him. The sound thins out into another wheeze.
“Oh!” Medic exclaims. He quickly slips both hands back around the heart. His nape warms as he looks at the other man head on, a sheepish smile crawling onto his lips. “My apologies, Misha. Did you feel that?”
Heavy’s eyes are still shut when he grunts, in response, “Is fine.”
There’s a thickness to his voice.
His large fingers twitch at his sides.
Medic draws his brows together. He looks away from him, and to the Medi-Gun. Suspended on a metal armature, it hangs from the ceiling. Its light drifts in lazy circles over Heavy’s warm, open torso. It fills the room with a low hum; its only rival is that of the radiator in the corner.
He considers the device’s many silver dials. Everything looks to be in order. The contraption has assisted him through many other operations akin to this one--in other words, everything should be in order.
But...
“You shouldn’t have felt that.” He exhales through his nose. He mutters to himself moreso than to Heavy. “Did I miscalculate--?”
“Is fine,” Heavy insists. The mattress groans as he shifts his weight. “Is only little thing. Doktor does not need to worry.”
Medic considers that for a moment before sighing. Frustration pricks at his insides. He decides, however, to let it go--for now, at least.
But he can’t help but cast one last glance at the Medi-Gun.
It takes everything in him to tear his attention from it. Even then, it lingers in the back of his mind. He must’ve done something wrong. Must’ve gotten distracted. Routine is as much of an invitation to make mistakes as it is a means of preventing them.
Maybe Heavy is right: it’s only a small matter--which means it should be an easy fix.
He runs his fingers along the slimy outer membrane of Heavy’s heart. The latter doesn’t react to this beyond opening his eyes; they come alive with a faint curiosity.
A good sign, perhaps. He tries something else: he taps the muscular flesh encasing the atria. He gets nothing in response beyond the wheezing of the machines.
He traces the heart’s exterior until he finds a shallow slit in the flesh. Carefully, slowly, he squeezes one finger into it, then another, then a third still; the pale fat within gels around his nails. He can feel the right atrium squeeze around him.
Only then does Heavy hiss through his teeth.
Medic shouldn’t smile at this--but he does. His earlier frustration gives way to a perfectly odd kind of thrill.
With his free hand, he prods at a few of the Medi-Gun’s dials; he leaves blood on the silver as he flicks each one accordingly. In the meantime, the Uber meter tick, tick, ticking away threatens to fill the room again.
Heavy beats the meter to it: a few moments pass before an easy sigh falls from his lips; his shoulders loosen; the bones melt from his body.
Medic’s smile only grows. He clears his throat.
“Better?” he asks.
Heavy grunts. There isn’t much to the sound that indicates a proper answer--but he’ll take what he can get.
“I think,” he continues, still smiling, “I know what’s causing your palpitations, my friend.”
The meter jumps once more, as if to make Medic’s point for him; the only reaction it garners from Heavy is a pointed look. Medic tries his best to stifle a laugh. It sits in his chest regardless, warm and bright.
He brushes his thumb against the fine line of Heavy’s heart; he doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he’s done it. That same warmth rises up the back of his neck and settles in his cheeks. It’s his fortune that Heavy is looking elsewhere.
He doesn’t get to count his blessings for long. The oxygenator dwelling within the man bursts with a sharp pop. The sound turns guttural; congested; thick. Medic nearly jumps out of his skin.
He cradles Heavy’s heart in both his hands and against his apron as he peers into the latter’s chest cavity.
“Your breathing,” he remarks. He clicks his tongue. “You are still sick.”
“No.”
A beat.
Two.
“No?” he echoes, at last, incredulously.
“No,” Heavy mutters. “Is fine.” He sounds a modicum more uncertain this time--and, in turn, a little sleepier for the increased anesthesia.
Medic lets the laugh dredge itself from his chest. He rolls his eyes behind his spectacles.
“The body does not lie, Misha. You’re still sick, aren’t you.”
Heavy glances up at him through his eyelashes. Medic meets this half-glare head on, still smiling. He finds that he welcomes the slight irritation that he finds on the other man’s face.
He much prefers that over the dull sleepiness that had proceeded it, anyway.
It isn’t long before Heavy gives in; he sighs. The sound, as small as it is, falls out of him as a concession in and of itself.
“...да,” he mutters.
Medic exhales himself. “And you really thought you’d be able to get away with hiding it from me? Come now, Misha--” he laughs a second time-- “I’m not stupid.”
Heavy doesn’t justify this with a response.
Medic doesn’t bother pushing it; he’d be far more irritated by Heavy’s petulance if it weren’t for the anesthesia smoothing it out.
He grasps the Uber meter once more. He begins to ease it out of Heavy’s heart; every little twist sends a trickle of blood dripping into his open chest cavity. Only a quack would fret over a silly thing like contamination; it’s not like the blood is going anywhere it shouldn’t.
The meter pops out with a deliciously wet squelch. It leaves three holes in its wake; the beam of the Medi-Gun stitches them back together in a matter of seconds. He sets the meter aside on a side table to his left.
Careful not to let the plastic tubes catch around the prongs of Heavy’s pearly white--albeit cracked--rib cage, Medic lowers his heart back into his chest. He slots his arms into the small space beneath the larger man’s sternum and tucks the heart back into the nook carved out of his left lung. He squeezes the long, red line of the heart’s aorta back into place with a similar caution and ease. The three machines come last.
His knuckles brush against Heavy’s right lung; the thin membrane has gone soft.
He hesitates, then he palms the bottom of the sac. His fingers find the slight and shallow recesses in the pulpy, pink flesh; his thumb falls into one such divot; Heavy’s breath hitches.
Then, a cough wracks his chest.
Another.
Soon, his whole body shakes.
And he can’t stop.
He has the sense, at least, to turn his head from his open chest.
Small favours, Medic thinks, as he takes his hand from him.
Kinder mercies.
Heavy’s pulse jumps up a tick; the Uber meter rattles; every muscle in his body rises and falls in quick succession. The diaphragm, then the lungs. The hard line of his throat spasms.
The machine nestled into his intestines rattles.
Every part of him struggles to draw in a breath.
It takes a few minutes for the coughing to pass.
It feels like an eternity before it does.
The silence after echoes.
Heavy’s eyes flutter closed. He goes slack. His mouth hangs open as he tries, in vain, to breathe again. His fingers twitch at his sides.
Medic presses his lips down into a thin line. He places a hand over Heavy’s. Slowly, gently, the latter’s pulse finds its feet again. His breathing comes easier, inch by inch.
A thick congestion of mucus had built up inside Heavy’s lungs; Medic had felt the hard and terrible mass of it. He had thought--not for the first time this month--that the Respawn machine would’ve taken care of this for the both of them already.
Respawn has stitched them back together; has left pockmarks where it could not close the gaps; has kept them from sinking into that soft, dark place forever.
But it hasn’t, as of yet, proven to concern itself with anything beyond that which makes them bleed.
Heavy startles him from his thoughts.
“Doktor?” he says.
Medic blinks.
His hand is still on Heavy’s.
When he takes it away, he leaves long trails of red in his wake.
“Well,” he says. He hesitates before he starts putting Heavy’s organs back in order. “Should be no matter. We’ll get you on those antibiotics again, and then--”
“Doktor,” Heavy repeats, louder this time.
Medic’s fingers still. A rib pokes into his right elbow. He meets the man’s gaze; there’s something unreadable in those grey eyes. Something familiar.
“What is it?” he says, carefully.
“I am fine. You know this.”
He sighs. “You are not fine. You are sick.”
“For now.” Medic opens his mouth to argue--but Heavy quickly adds, “This has happened before.”
“Yes, that’s the problem--”
“--and was fine. Will be fine again.”
Medic grimaces. He can’t argue with the fact that this has happened before--how could he ever forget that it had?--but he will argue that that isn’t the point. Next summer will mark two years of their existence; two years that have passed him by in a haze; two years that he’s failed, one after the other.
For a man of Heavy’s stature and strength, pneumonia should be nothing to him.
But what of a body that has never withstood the harsh cold that every one of its original cells claims to remember?
What of a clone?
What then?
In the year that has crawled past, he still has yet to find an answer to any of those questions.
He startles when something touches his hand. He looks--and finds Heavy’s fingers curled around his. It takes him a moment to comprehend the sensation; it takes him even less time to squeeze back.
“I trust Doktor,” Heavy says, tone a little brighter, a little more forced. “Doktor always knows what to do.”
That stings more than it should.
Medic swallows.
“I...” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “I worry. That’s all. Your body should be used to this by now. Your immune system, I--it’s as if it hasn’t caught up with the rest of you.”
Heavy considers this.
Then,
“Maybe needs another year.”
He offers this like a joke.
Despite himself, it draws a smile from Medic, however small and rueful it feels sitting on his lips. “Maybe so.”
Heavy matches his expression, then he tears his eyes from his. He taps a nail against his slowly healing ribcage.
“Heart,” he says. “What is problem?”
Medic adjusts his glasses. He’s secretly grateful for the topic change.
“Your meter.” He gestures to the machine in question. “Some fault with the mechanism, I believe.” At Heavy’s--somewhat exaggeratedly--dour look, he laughs. “Oh, don’t be such a baby. You won’t even know it’s gone.”
“It is gone now.”
“I meant figuratively...”
“No, no. I mean...Will be strange.”
He tilts his head. “Strange how?”
“To not hear the...” He trails off, looking for the word, eyebrows pinched. He waves one large palm over his chest--over his heart. The blood Medic had left on his wrist gleams when it catches the light. “The sound.”
It takes him a moment to connect the dots. When he does, he exhales sharply.
“Oh!” He nods once, twice. “Yes, well--certainly. But it will be more of a relief, no? It must be incessant, that ticking.”
Medic doesn’t wait for an answer before he turns his back on Heavy and pads towards the tiny sink in the corner closest to the door. The water that gushes out of the faucet is warm. Even then, it takes some time and effort to scrub the thick cake of blood from his forearms.
Somewhere in the room, the radiator hums.
Louder still is Heavy’s heart.
That steady thumping.
The occasional skip.
Even without the Uber meter sunken into it, it goes like clockwork.
“Relief,” Heavy echoes, at last. The bed groans. “No. Sleeping will be different.” A thin, strained laugh. “Is nice to listen to.”
Medic glances at the machine in question. The bright red streaks of blood that score its crystal face stare back. He frowns and brings his attention back to his hands. The blood on them refuses to go.
“I suppose,” he murmurs, half-heartedly. He goes back to scrubbing his skin down. “If that’s what--a-heh--lets you sleep at night, Misha.”
He has never had a use for an Uber meter himself. The Medi-Gun had been designed as a one way contraption; he can use it to heal himself up to a point, certainly, but taking an entire Ubercharge for himself is out of the question. He doesn’t even want to imagine what that would look like.
While it could be fun to storm RED’s ranks and take them all by surprise, there’s not a person on this team that he would trust with a scalpel.
Medic shuts the faucet off with a squeak. He dries his hands on the unstained end of his apron, then he takes it off.
He throws it into a laundry bin by the counter before he returns to Heavy. The soft, pink flesh of the man’s chest has begun to sew itself back together; there are still large gaps, however, where stringy red muscle and white bone peek through.
He looks up at the Medi-Gun. His eyes drift towards the contraption’s meter: it sits at a low twenty percent. The clock above Heavy’s head tells him they’ve been at this for a little under two hours.
The whinge holding the Medi-Gun whines as he pulls it down closer to him. One hand cups the sleek, dark barrel of it; the other runs across its blue body, over the bolts that hold its lever in place, and to the pipe in its back. The tube that’s usually connected to his pack now hangs from the pipe in a tight, noose-like coil.
His fingers find the small dial on the underside of the pipe; it’s turned to the center notch. He flips it to the right. The Medi-Gun’s beam grows a brighter blue in the corner of his eye. Hums that much louder.
He turns to watch. He finds Heavy watching, too.
The Medi-Gun makes quick work of knitting the latter’s skin together. Gaps disappear, and starbust scars--some faded, while others are silvery and fresh--come to take their place.
It isn’t long before the hum grows faint, and the device shuts off; it now sits at a decent seventy percent.
Medic pulls the Medi-Gun back up to its resting position. He never gets to appreciate his gear on the field, let alone in the unforgiving throes of his work--but it’s these small moments that make all the difference. While nowhere near his regard for the Respawn machine, he’d still consider the Medi-Gun a truly beautiful marvel of science.
He’s only sorry that it hadn’t been him to invent it.
He considers that.
Then, he smiles a little.
It’s true: in a manner of speaking, it wasn’t him who invented it.
He begins tidying the space around Heavy. He lets his mind wander from the task.
He wonders, for the nth time in his, as of yet, short life, if he had been given the time and the materials--would he have thought to invent the Medi-Gun?
The utter futility of his job without it had made itself plain to him during their very first match as a team; what good can he do when tying a tourniquet takes time that he doesn’t have?
When sending his teammates to the Respawn machine was the kinder thing to do?
But that isn’t to say that he hadn’t tried to save them.
He had pressed down on their wounds; watched the red bloom through their uniforms; the life, in turn, seep from their eyes.
They had always been good sports about being sent to the Respawn machine.
Sometimes, they had even asked for it.
If he had had the time and the materials--would he have had the same foresight to ensure that the Medi-Gun could, in its own way, administer a form of anesthesia? Would he have been as kind as his counterpart?
Or perhaps, he amends, kindness had had nothing to do it.
Is it easier to imagine himself the better man when he had come along after the fact?
Medic presses his lips into a flat line. The creak of a mattress startles him out of his thoughts. He turns and finds Heavy sitting up, the blanket set aside, his large back to him.
A handful of thin, silver lines score the muscles there; a majority of them mar his trapezius. Heavy had confessed to him, once, that his RED counterpart had probably been whipped at some point in time.
While Medic doesn’t know where he stands on kindness and altruism, foresight and hindsight, he does know one thing about himself, if nothing else--and it’s that he’d be lying if he were to say it’s the technology alone that fascinates him.
(Such lies are easier when they aren’t his to begin with.)
(But team colors hardly make the difference meaningful.)
Heavy stands. He turns in a half-circle to face Medic. He ghosts one large hand up the broad line of his bare chest, sets his palm over where his heart would be, and breathes in; his breath still whistles on the way out, slithers from him thin and tired--but the Medi-Gun has, otherwise, served its purpose.
He smiles. Medic matches his expression.
“Good as new,” the latter chirps. “Er, for the most part.”
The former nods. Laughs under his breath. “Feel like big bucks.”
He quirks a brow. “Who taught you that?”
“Who else?” Heavy takes his shirt from where he had left it folded on Medic’s desk. He starts shrugging it back on; his voice comes muffled. “With little Scout going on and on, sometimes he says something interesting.”
His head pops out of the collar of the shirt. That thin BLU shirt leaves little to the imagination; Medic wonders, vaguely, if the wash had shrunk his clothes.
He clears his throat.
“How do you feel?” he asks. “Palpitations?”
Heavy puts a hand over his heart again and waits a beat or two before responding.
“Is quiet,” he grunts. He taps his chest, then lets his arm drift back to his side. “For now.”
“Wunderbar. You must inform me if they start back up again, yes? I’ll try to return the meter to you as soon as possible, but--well.” He cuts a glance at the machine in question. “The Engineer will have to take a look at it.”
Heavy’s smile cedes an inch. He narrows his eyes.
“He will make it into some toy.”
The grave certainty in this statement makes him giggle.
“He will not!”
A huff. “He will.”
“He won’t.”
“You are so sure of this?”
Medic can’t help but grin, some parts out of exasperation--and other parts borne from this odd lightness in his chest.
“Honestly, Misha,” he chides, without much bite. “Thinking that I would let him do such a thing.” He holds a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “You wound me.”
“Be serious, Doktor! You know the Engineer; always looking for opportunity.”
“Maybe so, but...” He shrugs. “What’s the worst that he could do?”
“Don’t want to know.”
“Oh, come now, where’s the fun in that?” He steps up to Heavy. He puts a hand over the man’s heart. “What if he could--oh, oh! What if he could connect your heartbeat to Sascha? Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
Is it just his imagination--
--or does Heavy’s heart skip a beat when he touches him?
It must be a palpitation. He’s grateful to see it go as quickly as it had come. He glances up at Heavy--and finds that the man’s cheeks are flushed pink. How odd.
There’s something...uncertain in his eyes. But his twitching lips, which sit halfway to a smile, betray another feeling entirely.
He taps Medic’s shoulder with one large finger. “You give him ideas.”
That earns him a surprised laugh.
“You give him ideas,” he continues, “so you can keep me here.’
“Yes, I asked the Administrator herself for a meter that will give you palpitations, so you could stay with me forever.” Medic steps away from Heavy and folds his arms behind his back. “You caught me. I’m a very, very bad doctor.”
Thankfully, Heavy picks up on his sarcasm. His lips, at last, startle into a full grin.
The rosiness in his face, however, remains.
Medic takes one hand and draws a cross over his heart. “I promise,” he says, more seriously, “that I will reign the Engineer in if he gets too...ambitious, so to say.”
“If Doktor knows what he is doing...”
“...then you will have your meter back in no time, my friend.”
Heavy nods, and says nothing more. He crosses the room, heads for the door, and stops to take his vest from the coat rack to its right. Medic narrows his eyes at it. From the looks of it, it is made of real wool--but still.
“Oh, Misha, would it kill you to wear a coat?” he says, to Heavy’s back. “Look at that flimsy thing!”
The larger man turns to him. He begins to shrug it on, despite Medic’s clear disapproval. He zips up the front; the collar barely covers his neck.
“Is fine,” he responds. “Don’t need coat.”
Medic gapes at him. “You’re sick.”
“For now.”
They stare each other down for a beat.
Two.
Then, Heavy returns to him. He sets his hand on his shoulder. Even through his clothes, the latter can feel the callouses pockmarking the former’s palm; the natural warmth of his skin; the sheer weight of such a simple touch.
Despite the way his chest cavity had been gaping open not more than ten minutes ago--Heavy smells clean and sweet, like pine needles.
He looks Medic over; Medic tries not to shrink beneath this scrutiny.
Then, after another moment,
“Thank you, Doktor,” Heavy says, faintly.
Medic smiles. It takes him a second to think on how to respond; his initial thoughts sound awfully perfunctory--dismissive, even. Every other part of him reels, confused by the thick edge of earnestness to the man’s tone.
The words die in his throat when Heavy’s hand begins to move minutely. He glances at it out of the corner of his eye. The man’s fingers drape across his back; come to slot themselves between his shoulder blades, to rest on the muscles there.
Their scientific names spring to mind and they push aside the script that he had been so carefully picking at.
It’s easier to believe this small touch to be nothing more than an anatomy lesson.
Easier to think of it as nothing more than the interactions between skin and muscle and touch and pressure.
Those lessons had been so ingrained in him that he remembers them, even now, when he remembers little else of the life that coagulates around the margins of his psyche.
These are the kinder gifts of being a copy of someone else.
These are the things he’s happy to call his.
The lamp behind Heavy casts the man in soft shadows. His thumb all but settles into the groove between his neck and shoulder.
It takes Medic a good while to remember that he has yet to respond. He swallows. His tongue sits uselessly in his suddenly dry, dry mouth.
“Of course,” he murmurs. A playfulness creeps into his tone. “But I do wish you’d wear a coat. You’ve given me an awful amount of work, you know.”
Heavy barks a sharp laugh. He pats Medic’s shoulder and nearly bowls him over with the force of it. He always shows a little teeth when he smiles.
Just as Medic thinks Heavy is about to say more--the latter brushes his neck with the rough pad of his thumb, then he takes his hand from him.
The former lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.
The door shuts behind Heavy with a click.
Medic stays standing there for a long time. Some kind of foreign warmth drags its little nettles across his insides; the feeling is nauseating; cyclical; the same warmth with which Heavy had looked at him.
The blood on the tiles beneath his boots catches the light.
Each drop gleams red.
--
When Medic emerges from his clinic, the lodge is quiet.
The tall windows to his left leave wide squares of sunlight on the wooden floor before him. Soft, pink light falls on the mustard yellow quilt that had been left draped over the back of the couch.
Apart from Heavy, the rest of BLU team had made themselves scarce. Medic can’t blame them; he himself isn’t looking forward to trudging back to the bunkhouse. He figures that that’s where they’re hibernating. They’ll probably only slither out from under their covers for supper.
He pads towards the couch, eyes on the crumpled blanket. He hesitates before he sets the Uber meter aside--which he had cleaned--and picks the blanket up. He begins to fold it up in twos, in fours. His mind wanders from the task--and to the world outside the windows.
It was snowing earlier; now there’s nothing but snow, snow, snow. A fence of thin, black trees line the gravel road. The mountain range that marks the horizon in the distance is no bigger than his thumb.
He sets the folded blanket back down on the couch. In the window to his left, the rocks at the foot of the much closer mountain are now half-buried in snow; the green tarp over the old gondola cart hadn’t fared much better.
Snow falls in a cloud as the tarp gets pushed aside. One person exits the cart, then another follows. They go tromping off towards the bunkhouse. He knits his brows together. It takes him a moment to make out who they are--and when it finally hits him, he sighs. How many times must he remind them to not play inside that rusted tin can?
Medic turns from the sight. He’ll give them a piece of his mind later; maybe he’ll turn it into a team-wide lecture on tetanus, even if he knows, already, that he’ll get more whinging about how the gondola should’ve never been left to rot in the first place.
This place had been a ski lodge, once upon a time. Certain utilities had been reconfigured for their purposes; his clinic, however, had remained mostly unchanged, save for a few added pieces of furniture. He thinks that the room beside him--where the Engineer had made his nest--had once been the business’ main office.
Speaking of: the door creaks open.
Then a mug flies through it and shatters on the ground.
Medic jumps. A bolt rolls through the door. It stops at his feet. He blinks down at it.
“Shittin’ son-of-a--”
The Engineer’s voice startles him out of his confusion.
He goes towards the sound. Every step he takes makes the sporadic whirring of a machine more and more apparent. He places his hand on the door frame and peeks in; the workshop is empty. He raises his brows.
Then, from below him and to his right, “D-Down here, doc.”
Dell sits with his back against the wall. He’s still in his uniform; his left hand works the rough cloth of his overalls. He’s curled over the other.
Medic kneels by him. He finds the source of the whirring: the mechanisms of Dell’s metal arm twitch and clench and pull the black wires within the main shell of it taut, as if intending to snap them in two. His fingers fly open and shut with a mind of their own, joints working erratically.
Their owner does his best to keep quiet, in contrast; he clenches his jaw. Grits his teeth so tightly that Medic swears he can hear them grinding against one another.
Dell won’t look at him straight on--but he can still see that, underneath the haze of pain, there’s something sheepish in those blue-greens. Something embarrassed. He clamps his mouth shut completely when another wave jolts through his metal arm.
“I-It’s this damn cold,” he manages to eke out, once it passes. “Careful there, doc--don’t get--get y-yer fingers pinched.”
Medic ghosts his hands over his prosthetic arm. He heeds the man’s warning; he palms his elbow, instead of his seizing forearm.
As far as he can tell, the arm’s mechanisms are in order. Although they’re being pulled back and forth, the black wires inside his forearm are slotted into where they should be. There are no rips, no tears--not even a scratch. The clock on the side of Dell’s thumb goes haywire with every spasm. His knuckles--these big silver bolts--fluctuate, hissing short flutes of steam with every pump.
“Dell,” Medic says, carefully, over the whirring, “where does it hurt?”
“My s-shoulder,” Dell gasps. “This--damn fuckin’ cold.”
He glances up at him. “When did this start?”
Dell manages to muster up a glare; Medic matches that look with one of his own, albeit with much more exasperation.
“Dell,” he says, again, “when did this--”
He cuts him off with a shaky bark.
“H-Heard ya the first time, doc--and hell, I don’t know. Must’a’ been--been a while back. Start a’ the season. A-An’ don’t give me that goddamned look, alright?”
Medic ignores him. His eyes drift back towards the prosthesis.
“We’ll have to take it off.”
“That right?” A dry chuckle, humorless and pained. “Thought fer sure you were gonna say we need t’ amputate.”
“Don’t get any ideas, now, Kapitän. The last thing you need is yet another prosthesis.”
“You ain’t any fun.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He runs his fingers up Dell’s arm and reaches for the sleeve of his jumper. He rolls it up. He finds the pockmarked skin swollen around the metal socket, red and angry.
“Scheiße,” he mutters. His eyes flick to Dell’s. “What on Earth have you done to yourself?”
“As if i-it’s my damn fault, huh?” Dell looks away from him, as if unused to being looked at so directly. His hand clenches itself into a tight fist as he squeezes his eyes shut. “Aw, hell--”
“Easy, Kamerad. That’s it. I’ll be just a moment.”
Medic rolls up his own sleeves. He then gently pulls Dell’s arm closer to him; the man’s metal fingers hook onto the fabric of his shirt, bunching it up near his stomach. Whether he does this consciously or not, Medic is uncertain.
He slips his hands under Dell’s sleeve. The blue cloth folds up around his knuckles as he works the two black straps from what remains of Dell’s arm. He unbuckles the first from around the man’s shoulder--then a second from the girth of his bicep. He wraps them around his left palm and pulls them aside to keep them out of the way.
He begins to ease the prosthetic off. Bit by bit, Dell’s hand grows still and quiet. His limp, metal fingers, now sapped of energy, fall from Medic’s shirt and into his own lap.
Dell breathes out shakily. His face is shiny with sweat, despite the cold. When Medic squeezes his inflamed stump, gooseflesh erupts over his skin. He leans his head back against the wall. Another, thinner sigh crawls from him.
There’s silence for a moment as Medic looks him over.
After a few minutes, Dell breaks it by asking, “How was the--the big guy?”
The banality of the question has Medic stifling a laugh. He just about keeps it to himself. He clicks his tongue in response instead; his hands move over Dell’s arm of their own accord.
“Pnuemonia,” he answers, flatly.
“Yeah? Shit.”
“It’s nothing too threatening. But...” He trails off. He frowns, takes Dell’s detached arm in his hands, and places it in his lap as he leans away to sit back on his heels. “It’s like his vaccinations didn’t take.”
Dell nods. “Maybe not. But--if he ain’t any worse than last year, ya could say they are workin’, though, right?”
“Perhaps,” Medic concedes, however reluctantly. There is some truth to the sentiment. He goes on. “He’s been having palpitations, too. Some trouble with his meter.”
“Oh, those, uh...” He sucks on his teeth. “Those ain’t fun. ”
He hums in agreement. That reminds him: he had left the contraption outside. Dell’s arm still in hand, he eases himself to a standing position. His back only mildly complains; he’s getting to be too old for this.
(The irony of that statement is not lost on him.)
(But his feelings about it are sincere enough.)
He sets Dell’s arm on his workbench; helps the man in question up and back into his chair; leaves the room and returns with the meter in hand. He places it in the open palm of the prosthetic.
Its fingers drape across the nicked surface of the workbench; each seam in those metal digits are similarly worn and scratched. The utter craftsmanship of the prosthesis, however, renders these faults as nothing more than decorative. This is the hand of a working man; a man who, despite all sensible, outside advice, works himself to ruin.
Medic watches Dell pull his sleeves back down over both his stump and his flesh arm. He watches how BLU’s fearless leader looks to him not with embarrassment at being caught in such a vulnerable state--but, instead, with a relief so worn that it throws Medic off all the same.
“Thanks, doc,” Dell mumbles. He rubs the butt of his palm into his right shoulder. The whites of his teeth poke out from under his beard as he groans. “Don’t know what I’d do without ya.”
Medic waves him away, more frantically than he had intended. “It’s nothing,” he responds. He changes tact. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”
“C’mon, pal.” Gratitude gives way to a much more welcome exasperation. “You’re really gonna give me a sermon? Now? Can’t ya see I’m dyin’ over here?”
He ignores this half-hearted attempt at a joke and does so with gusto.
“What if that had happened on the field?” Medic raises his brows. “What if that were to happen while you were driving?”
“Just means you’ll have t’ drive us, ‘s all.”
“You think I’m going to let you out while you’re in this state?”
“I’m fine! I am the whole pretty picture a’ health.” He blinks, then he gestures to the prosthesis. “Mostly whole, at least.”
“Oh, my apologies, my friend--I thought you were dying.”
“I was dyin’--” Dell grins-- “but you’ve brought me back from t’ brink, miracle man, as per usual.”
A traitorous warmth blooms in Medic at the name; it’s a far kinder variant of the one Heavy had instilled in him earlier. Still. He can’t--won’t cede his ground to such simple charm.
“If it’s the cold that’s exasperating your disability,” he sniffs, “then what good is it going to do you if I let you go out gallivanting into the snow?”
“Fer one thing,” Dell counters, “you’d really be killin’ me if ya kept me in tonight. The storm’s gonna hit next week--’s a big one, they say--an’ I still got orders on the backlog...an’ you got that thing ya wanna make, don’t ya?”
“Ja, but--it can wait. We still have time before--”
“Hell, what time? Between the storm an’ yer evaluations, when are we ever gonna get the time t’ make it to town while there’s still daylight?”
Medic glances at the window behind Dell’s head. “Well, not today, by the looks of it.”
Dell ignores this. “’m fine, alright?” He starts to get up. He waves Medic away when the doctor tries to go to him. “I’m fine, honest. I’ll be better in the spring--but fer right now, I’m still kickin’.”
He glances at his workbench and does a double take when he notices the Uber meter in the palm of his prosthetic arm. He grabs it with his flesh hand.
“Did ya want me t’ take a look at this?” he asks.
Medic opens and closes his mouth. A handful of half-baked rebuttals run around in his mind; they fizzle out just as quickly.
He sighs.
“Yes,” he answers, finally.
“I’ll take it with us, then.” Dell tucks the meter into the front pocket of his jumper. “So ya can walk me through disassemblin’ it.”
He starts to say, “But it can wait--”
“Captain’s orders!” He smiles at Medic. The mischief in his eyes makes him look like a much younger man. “We’ve been cooped up fer far too long, an’ God knows you an’ I both need the air.”
Medic can’t help but look down at himself before he glances back up to meet Dell’s gaze, confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Here, Dell’s smile falters a bit into a genuine sympathy.
“Ya look tired, doc. ‘s all I meant.” A pause. Then, more carefully, “Ya must be real worried fer Heavy.”
Is he?
He is, of course, worried for Heavy--why wouldn’t he be?--but is it really that obvious?
“So,” Dell continues, tone soft and easy, “let’s go--get yer mind off it. ‘m sure ya did all ya could for him today, yeah?”
“Short of curing him,” he points out, without much enthusiasm.
A shrug. “Ya can’t make every miracle happen.”
Medic has half a mind to continue arguing; to insist that that--fashioning miracles out of nothing--is exactly his job. Some miracles take time, but he still makes them happen.
Dell comes up to him. He looks remarkably well put together for a man who had been on the floor not more than five minutes ago; a miracle that only Dell Conagher can pull off.
“Y’ready to go?”
Maybe...
Maybe Dell is right.
When he had found Dell on the floor, it had briefly crossed his mind that it would mean he’d finally be able to sleep in. Take the time to himself. Get to roll call bright and early. Run through his supply of all the nothing he has left before they have to dig their heels in and do the work the Administrator demands of them.
But he doesn’t know if he’d be able to stand hearing Heavy cough in the next room over.
“Give me ten minutes.”
--
Medic takes his time in trekking out to the bunkhouse, in changing clothes. He pulls the sleeves of his blue sweater down over his hands and his black coat tighter around himself.
He had ordered the former off the Mann Co. catalogue; it’s real wool, thankfully, but he wouldn’t have put it past the company to use a synthetic alternative. It surprises him that it’s gone this long without fraying.
When he exits his room, he finds Scout exiting his. He’s dressed similarly in BLU wool--but he had added a bright yellow scarf to the mix.
“Scout,” Medic calls, quietly.
The boy looks to him. A light comes on in his eyes, and an easy smile onto his lips.
“Heya, doc,” he responds, at his usual volume. He looks him over. “Me an’ Pyro are goin’ out t’ town--ya want anythin’?”
“Funnily enough, the Engineer and I are going out, too.” He hums, then adds, “But I do need something from you.”
Scout raises his brows. “Ya need my kidney back already?” The two tails of his scarf bounce as he crosses his arms. “Ya said I could keep it ‘till the end’a’ the month!”
“Oh, yes, your clock’s still ticking on that matter--but no, I need something else.”
“...My other kidney?”
“I fed that to Pythagoras ages ago.” He waves both Scout and the topic away. “Ach, nevermind that. What I’d like you to do is check in on Heavy before you leave for town.”
“Why?” Scout glances at the door between them. He, for once, has the sense to lower his voice. “The big guy ain’t doin’ so hot?”
“Pneumonia again, I’m afraid.”
He considers this. “Like last year.”
His tone is soft; unreadable; familiar all the same.
“...Ja.” Medic tries for a smile, for some sort of reassurance; it feels more like a grimace. “But that won’t happen again.”
Scout looks between him and the door, lips thin.
“I dunno, doc...”
“Come, now. You don’t have to stay with him. Just make sure he’s alright before you go, that’s all I ask.”
“Yeah, I got it, I got it--” he raises his hands-- “but I ain’t too hot on havin’ t’ babysit yer boyfriend.”
The term stirs an unease in Medic.
“Heavy and I,” he says, “are not involved.”
It comes out sharper than he had intended.
It’s sharp enough that it has a palpable, wide-eyed surprise bleeding from Scout.
“Oh. Oh, uh, yeah, doc I-I was just bustin’ yer balls there.” That surprise remains, even as an uncharacteristic sheepishness rises alongside it. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, I swear.”
Medic sighs, nape warm. He doesn’t know where that had come from--but he pushes it to the back of his mind. He has bigger things to worry about right now.
(The thought writhes in its cage.)
(Has those barbs from earlier making themselves known once more.)
“Will you please just do this for me?” He tilts his head. “Please, Kaninchen?”
Scout screws his face up at the pet name, his expression halfway between throwing up and smiling. He suffers Medic for a moment longer before he groans--the sound a concession in and of itself.
“Fiiiiine,” he grumbles. “But just this once. An’ if I get sick ‘cause’a youse--”
“--then it will be a kinder sickness to have over tetanus, yes?” At Scout’s confused look, he elaborates. “How many times must I tell you and the Pyro that the cart is not your hideout?”
Scout breaks out into an easy grin at this. He shrugs.
“Tinnitus is a small price t’ pay,” he hums, “for a place away from this ole nursin’ home.”
Medic can’t help but match the unspoken affection he hears in Scout’s voice when he responds, that, “It’s tetanus.”
“Yeah, yeah, what’d I say?”
Medic glances at the clock on the wall. He’s taken far longer than he had initially thought he would. He walks up to Scout and places a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Don’t forget,” he says. “Alright?”
“Okay, okay. An’ can ya cool it with the freakin’ goo-goo eyes, doc?” He pushes Medic’s face away from his with one gloved hand. “It’s just gross, man. Ugh.”
Medic laughs. He says his goodbyes and turns to go.
The conversation had left him with a pleasant glow.
It fades in slow flutes, however, as he gets the keys to the van from Dell; as they pull out of the lodge and onto the road; as he plays the conversation over and over in his head.
It’s as if everyone knows something that he doesn’t.