At Peace with You

by Giddy TF2

'Medic's gone and no matter how fast Heavy runs or how many bullets he fires from his Mini-gun or how many more skulls he flattens to pulp, he'll still be too late. Medic's *gone*.'

Pairing: Heavy/Medic

Word count: 14,624

Summary: 'Medic's gone and no matter how fast Heavy runs or how many bullets he fires from his Mini-gun or how many more skulls he flattens to pulp, he'll still be too late. Medic's gone.'

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: All Team Fortress 2 characters, places, etc. belong to Valve, but the rest belongs to me!

Author's notes: A story commissioned by the magnificent sleepersamizdat on Tumblr! This wouldn't exist without her, everyone, so do send lots of thanks and love her way for it. :) The soundtrack I listened to while writing the entirety of the story is Syriana, from the Syriana OST. The poem that appears in the story is by Yulia Drunina.

---

Heavy has not dreamed for a long time.

"We're gonna have to tell her, Heavy. Sooner or later."

Heavy has not dreamed for a long time, so long that he can't remember the last time he did. He doesn't remember how.

"We can't put up the white flag forever."

Heavy says nothing in response to Engineer's low, restrained comments. The plastic chair he slumps on is rigid and unyielding. He stares at a spot on the overlaid wall of the Infirmary, at a chip in one of the dull green tiles. It's a change of scenery from what he'd been staring at minutes before, but change isn't necessarily a good thing.

"I …" He hears Engineer sigh from far away. "I know what you're worried about. I know, but waitin' like this, when he can get some help out there, even if it means handin' him over to the Administrator … we could be causin' him more harm than good."

No, change isn't necessarily a good thing. There are some things Heavy wishes hadn't changed, some things he wishes never happened. Some things he wishes he'd said when he could.

Ya lyublyu tebya, moy vozlyublennyy vrach.

He refuses to shift his gaze from the wall, from the chip in the tile on the wall to the open door two feet to the right. It is enough for now to just listen to the stable breaths of the occupant in the room of that open door, to envision in his mind the blankets swaddled around so precious a form, the relaxed expression of such purity upon so precious a face in slumber. It is enough. For now.

"Vone more day."

His voice is gravel scraping against metal, inadvertently loud and firm in the immense hush of the Infirmary. For one moment stretched thin, stretched to near breaking point, he senses Engineer's god-blank gaze on his face.

"Okay. Okay, one more day."

Engineer clasps his right shoulder with his left hand, his flesh-and-blood hand.

"Let's hope for the best, all right?" Engineer murmurs, and Heavy has to bite the inside of his cheek to not say to Engineer that he has also forgotten what it is to have faith, in anything.

Heavy hasn't dreamed for a long time.

All he has now are nightmares.

---

It is this that he remembers, that he will always remember: The crush of brittle human bone between his clenched hands, the mashing of screaming skulls of the Gulag wardens as he storms his way through his hell on earth, stripped of his family, his humanity, his mercy. He is a starving, giant beast who is sick of the unending snow and the barren rocks and the foul stench of human sweat, feces and fear. Spraying, hot blood smothers his expanding world with renewed color. Some of it splatters his eyes, his mouth. Most of it drenches his hands and forearms, and as he dances to the outside, to freedom, he becomes a painter, a savior with every swing of his fists, every cry and scream he evokes a guttural testament of his gruesome, essential work to purify this place of torment.

The Siberian tundra in winter is more canvas to the living red rolling off his face and arms and hands as he flies across the ice.

In the world before – before he fled from war-torn Russia to America, before he spent years as a soldier of fortune for new masters with different accents but the same vile, avaricious ambitions, before he came across an advertisement in the newspapers by Reliable Excavation Demolition, before he met his team and the one, the one – the journey had taken him days. In the world behind shut eyes, he is there in an instant, at the other camp in which his mother and sisters have been incarcerated.

He is still too late.

He finds tiny, sweet Nataliya first, submerged in the snow, her slender, broken arms reaching up to the sky for mute deities who didn't heed her prayers, her luminous, blue eyes hollow pits. Faina – brave, smart Faina who could assemble a rifle faster than he or their dead father did – is a dozen feet away, facedown, her exposed legs disappearing into crimson-stained whiteness, her long, dark tresses veiling her face and swirling across a whip-lashed back. Anya is next to her, her hands – delicate hands that'd been so skilled at sewing and painting and pottery – crushed to gory stumps and her head twisted at an unnatural angle and her open eyes staring, staring at him in eternal shock and Katja's chest is open and there's nothing left inside her and –

And when he finally finds his mother, her two halves separated by a sea of scarlet-streaked sleet and ravaged by wild teeth, the winds of his homeland howl with him and follow him into the world after, and though his eyes are open, he sees nothing.

Both the fire-sand of the New Mexico desert and the ice-snow of a ghost land scorch old trails down his face.

---

And this, this he wants to remember even more, to overlay the chill, the noiselessness and the loss with it: He and Medic, sitting face to face while they consume their dinner of salad and beef steaks in the mess hall here in Teufort, in an invisible cocoon at one end of the long dining table ages after the rest of the team have finished their meals. He feels like they're in a cocoon, temperate and cozy and safe, and he's almost sure that if he were to tell Medic that, Medic would laugh, or at the very least sneer at him and demand for him to undergo an immediate check-up for such awkward sentimentality. Almost.

When was the last time Medic sneered at him, for anything?

He can't bring to mind such an occurrence. It pleases him far more than he thinks it should that his recent memories of his interactions with Medic are overflowing with a calm, unguarded Medic, a Medic with a visage softened by something that Heavy doesn't want shared with anyone else. That he wants to keep to himself.

But human memory is flawed. Biased. All too vulnerable to idealistic optimism.

That was what earned his counter-revolutionary father the bullet in the head, before the NKVD took his mother and his sisters from him and made him break his final vow to his father.

The frost-cold is all that remains in him, and he yearns for the heat in the blood coursing through Medic's veins, in Medic's large, blue eyes that look at him and see him.

"Demoman told me vhat happened," he says, looking back at Medic, seeing himself mirrored in the transparent plastic of the German doctor's glasses. Medic waves a hand and snorts.

"Ach, it vas nozhing! Just a bat to zhe head, zhat's all. I killed zhe brat later anyvay."

Heavy knows he's in trouble when even Medic's nasally snort is worthy of reminiscence.

"He said you had a …" Frowning, he plows his vocabulary for the evasive word. "A fit."

Again, Medic waves away his words, and munches on a mouthful of lettuce and arugula dressed in vinaigrette. The little furrow between shapely eyebrows betrays Medic's outward nonchalance. Medic is hurting. Badly enough that he won't give the pain any presence, any foothold onto the amicable mood enveloping them.

"You have headache?" Heavy mumbles, his mouth just as traitorous. He should be kicking himself in the leg, he thinks he should, but he doesn't. He doesn't feel ashamed at all for caring about this handsome, impulsive, multi-faceted man.

He is sick of the unending snow and the barren wastelands. He yearns for the glide of dark, thick hair dashed with silver through his fingers, yearns to unearth himself in the caress of desert-warm, tanned skin daubed with scars, divested of its beige, linen coat turned stark art piece after every battle with the mercenaries from BLU.

Medic presses a thumb and forefinger against his right temple, for a second.

"Perhaps I vill retire early tonight."

Heavy nods.

"No chess, then."

The disappointment that pinpricks him is a trifling price to pay for the slight curving up of Medic's lips, a smile of regret at their nightly recreation being postponed.

"It vould be a lousy game, Heavy, und you are an admirable opponent."

He basks in the verbal sunshine, his chest swelling, his belly full. It gives him courage to grasp Medic's forearm, bared to his touch by a rolled-up sleeve, after they clean up their dishes and leave the mess hall.

"Be vell," he murmurs under the sun-yellow light of the hallway leading to the Infirmary. Medic's skin is a welcomed brand upon his.

Medic looks at him, at the carved contours of his countenance, and says nothing with his lips.

But with his hand, just his hand, Medic sears new tracks down his forearm and palm, leaving behind channels aching to be watered into an oasis as he watches Medic walk languidly away from him.

---

Now, Medic's touches are timid. Desperate.

"Sshh, it's all right. It's all right, moy droog. No more crying, da?"

Medic's eyes are puffy and brimming, primed for another watery deluge down bristly cheeks and jaw. Another watery deluge had already taken place lower down, but Heavy doesn't want to think about that just yet. Smelling it is enough as it is.

"Ve go to your room, okay? It is so cold here in your office. You do not feel cold in only a shirt?"

Huddled against his chest, damp face partly nestled in his red shirt and arms wrapped around his midriff, Medic doesn't reply him. Medic trembles like a frightened doe in his snug embrace.

"Doktor. Say something. You – you know me, don't you?"

He receives a sniffle, then some muttered German in that odd, high-pitched voice, several octaves higher than Medic's usual timbre. It unnerves Heavy to hear it. It is so un-Medic-like. So childlike.

"Ich will ... nach Hause gehen ... Bitte."

Heavy hates himself, hates the bright spark that lights up inside him as he hugs Medic to him. Medic's hair, tousled and not gelled, is so silky against his cheek, so fresh against his nose. Medic's body is trim and muscular, the inevitable result of months of sprinting and leaping and fighting while wielding the Medi-gun and a seventy-pound backpack, a seamless complement of curvatures to his own. Medic's grip around his body is forceful, a breath-robbing reminder of the dichotomous nature of their current … dilemma.

A dilemma, indeed, to encounter his best friend (the one, the one!) shuffling around sans glasses in an unbuttoned dress shirt, weeping like a baby and nearly naked and urinating on himself.

He is thankful that Medic seems very much oblivious to his own pitiful state. He hates himself for that too.

"Ich will nach Hause gehen."

"Doktor, I do not understand German." Heavy pets the back of Medic's head and neck, rocking him to and fro. "Speak English?"

"I vant to go home … I don't know vhere I am ... Take me back home to Mother. Please," Medic whispers, and suddenly, suddenly, Heavy understands and he can't breathe and he no longer gives a damn about the stink of ammonia in the air because Medic isn't here anymore. Medic's gone and no matter how fast Heavy runs or how many bullets he fires from his Mini-gun or how many more skulls he flattens to pulp, he'll still be too late.

Medic's gone.

---

He is six years old and it's the dead of night and he is in bed and yet also out there in the snow, in his nightclothes, shivering, hands tucked in the scant warmth of his underarms. He sees his Papa standing tall and proud in the distance, massive back turned to him. He calls out to Papa, then begins his struggle across the frozen tableau, stomping forward one slippered foot at a time, calling out again and again. Papa doesn't answer him.

The winter gale claws at his eyes and cheeks. He struggles for an eternity and then, Papa is in a prisoner's uniform, kneeling on the snow in front of him and Papa's huge hands are tied behind his back and Papa is glaring up at someone. He can't see who it is.

The blast of a gunshot deafens him. A small hole appears in the center of Papa's forehead. A bigger hole appears in the back of Papa's head, and Papa paints the world behind him with wet red.

Then Papa is gone and the snow is gone and he's in his bed, still deaf, still freezing as Mama draws him to her and strokes his fine hair and tells him through a kiss on his ruddy forehead that it's all right, sshh, it's all right, my little Borya, no more crying, da?

He tells Mama that he dreamed he saw Papa die. That he broke his vow and failed Papa when Papa needed him most.

"I don't like dreams," he says later, sheltered in her embrace, his eyes open and seeing too much, too much. "I wish I never have to dream."

"Oh, Borya. My little Borya," his mother susurrates in a voice he does not remember anymore. "We must dream. We must always dream, or all we will have left are nightmares."

And then he is forty-five years old, and he does not remember what his mother looked like before he found her corpse in the snow or what her kiss upon his forehead felt like anymore, or all the words to that lullaby she used to sing to him, the lullaby he sings to a bathed and clean Medic sleeping in the cradle of his arms. He does not remember how to dream anymore, and all he has left of his mother are her sad and wise words, said too early, too late.

---

"I build and fix machines, Heavy. I don't know how to fix people."

Engineer is rubbing the dark yellow glove that encases his robotic right hand with his left flesh-and-blood hand, unconsciously. Heavy stays seated on the stretcher beneath the Quick-Fix attached to the ceiling, his eyes on Medic who clings to him and burrows in the refuge of his ample flank and stares at Engineer with wide, curious eyes.

He has never seen Medic in a nightgown before today, much less garbed Medic in one after giving the man-child a bubble bath in the bathroom connected to Medic's bedroom.

Today is a day of new, bewildering experiences.

"No vone else in the team has knowledge like you," Heavy replies, aware of Engineer's eleven PhDs, of the high number of hours his Texan teammate has already spent here in the Infirmary with Medic while they work on pet projects that Medic doesn't speak much of to him. He doesn't want to think about it, not now, not anytime soon, the possibility that that marvelous thing that softens Medic's visage, that he doesn't want shared with anyone else is being shared after all.

The possibility that, perhaps, it is never his to begin with.

Engineer, propped up against the sinks to the left of the Infirmary with his arms crossed over his chest, lets out a gusty sigh. Hangs his head.

"If I'm the best chance the Doc's got for a solution, God help us."

"He von't," Heavy says, too quietly, and Engineer's head snaps up, a thousand rapid questions in that helmeted head unuttered.

Instead, Engineer glances at Medic and triggers their brainstorming session with, "The Quick-Fix worked on everyone else, you included. Worked on Medic's physical injuries. He was bleedin' like a stuck pig from his head wound."

That, Heavy has no wish to recollect, but is compelled to anyway by the startlingly fragile organ in his skull. The collar of Medic's coat, along with the coat's back from neck to waist, had been soaked through with Medic's blood. Medic had trudged back to base on his own power, having healed himself in the combat zone.

Or so Heavy had thought.

Heavy still hates himself for not being there for Medic when his partner was in need of aid. It is irrelevant that BLU's Pyro was hacking at his chest with an axe on the far side of the battlefield at the time.

"Da. But Medic had headache at dinner last night. After using healing beam on himself again. I saw him do it." He pauses, then says in that far too quiet tone, "Demoman told me he saw Doktor have a fit after getting hit by the other Scout. That is … bad sign. Yes?"

"A fit. A convulsion?" Engineer inclines his head to one side. "Yeah. It's not good."

Medic surprises them both by abruptly smiling at Engineer and then tugging on Heavy's shirt and stage-whispering, "Honigbiene."

Engineer smiles too, a warranted reaction to Medic's broad, innocuous smile. Bereft of its cunning, sensual wickedness, it is a stunning vision that continues to humble Heavy despite having it flashed at him numerous times already. He yearns to know how anyone in Medic's past could have denied such a smile, to know when and to whom Medic had bequeathed it throughout the decades of his life. To know why Medic doesn't smile this smile anymore.

"Did ya just call me a honeybee, little feller?"

Engineer sticks both forefingers upwards and presses his hands to his temples, wriggling said forefingers as if they're antennae. When he buzzes and twirls around in circles, Medic giggles and claps his hands, eyes crinkled and mouth open in a grin.

Here is yet another glimpse of Medic for Heavy to memorize, to recall to the forefront of his contemplations when the nights are arctic and there is no one beside him in his bed.

"He was afraid of somethin' like this." Engineer has moved closer, now leaning against the side of the stretcher next to Heavy, smiling more gently at Medic who's withdrawn in shyness behind Heavy once more and peeks at Engineer from under Heavy's arm. "He's been tryin' to upgrade the Quick-Fix since that issue with your rib. He was pretty darn worried that we'd find out the hard way what else the Quick-Fix couldn't, well, fix."

"So … cannot regrow broken ribs." Gazing down at Medic, Heavy has to swallow past a lump in his throat before adding, "Cannot heal damaged mind."

"We don't know if it's psychological or physiological."

"You mean, if it is hurt brain or hurt memory?"

"Yeah. From what Medic's told me so far, the healing formula's only been tested on physical injuries. It's already havin' trouble regrowin' certain bones, as ya know. And if Medic's problem here is a physiological one, the formula's failed to heal an injured brain too." Engineer makes a humming sound between pursed lips. "Either way, we got nothin' short of us becomin' quacks and throwin' everythin' else we can find in here at him … or …"

Heavy glances at Engineer and doesn't like the expression on the shorter man's face one bit.

"Or vhat?"

Engineer's eyes are masked by reflective goggles.

"We kill him. And hope Respawn resets him and doesn't make his … condition permanent."

Heavy's world collapses to its core, compressed by the gravity of those words. He is wrenched in a billion ways and his skin is suddenly too taut, too weak to contain him and all he knows is red, living red, a hair's breadth away from an explosion of supernova proportions and his lips pull back from his teeth and he snarls and then, from uncountable light years away, he hears the shuddering, shallow breaths of a terrified child.

His rage, all of it, is sucked into a black hole in place of his core. The chill returns, a chastising gloom that suspends him and tells him he deserves to be adrift in the cold forever.

"It's just a suggestion, big feller. Just a suggestion."

Heavy discovers he's hurdled off the stretcher and is looming over Engineer, his fingernails digging into his palms, his whole being vibrating with fading energy. Engineer is back against the sinks, his hands lifted in the air with palms forward in a gesticulation of self-defense, of peace.

Engineer is not the one panting in terror.

Heavy swivels around and sees Medic at the farther end of the stretcher, cowering behind it. Staring at him with eyes saucer-round with panic, with eternal shock. Staring at him and seeing him for the starving, giant beast that he is.

"Doktor … I …"

He hates, he hates himself when Medic flinches from him and scurries away to the opposite side of the stretcher, those big, blue eyes on him as if he is a filthy murderer who knows only bloodshed and nightmares.

But that's exactly what you are, son, so you better shut the fuck up and remember that or we'll rip your green card and ship your goddamn Commie ass back to Stalin before you can kiss your Sasha goodbye.

He's sick of the unending snow and the barren wastelands and the stench of human sweat, blood and fear, and he's sick of being silent when there are some things he wishes he could say while he can.

"Pozhaluysta, moya lyubov," he rasps, holding out his hands in supplication, his eyes open but seeing too little, too little. "Prosti menya."

For a millennia and a day, the stretcher a barricade between them, he and Medic stare at each other. Medic has stopped hyperventilating and hangs onto the side rail of the stretcher, knuckles white. In hindsight, speaking to Medic in Russian – a language Medic isn't fluent in – in order to comfort him isn't one of Heavy's smartest ideas, but something traverses the universe-vast distance between them. Something soft and warm and yet almighty, something greater than the cold and the rage and infinity.

Medic shuffles to the slanted end of the stretcher, hands trailing over the stretcher's side rails, leaving ethereal, finger-sized mists on the steel. Medic watches him like a young deer watches an old, weary bear.

"Kuschelbär?"

Heavy manages a smile at Medic's hesitant murmur, all the more poignant in that high-pitched voice.

"Yes," he says, his voice stronger, buoyant, and after a shaky step, then another, Medic dashes to him and encircles sinewy arms around him, forgiveness given easily in Medic's face nuzzles against his chest. Heavy hugs him as a mother bear would her cub, securely, instinctively, one hand cupping the back of Medic's head, the other plastering the entirety of Medic's back.

"I'm sorry I scared you. I'm sorry."

"Kuschelbär," Medic murmurs again, into his shirt.

It is perhaps a tribute to the encompassing marvel of clutching Medic so close to him that Heavy has completely disregarded Engineer's company until Engineer says, "You really care about him, don't ya?"

Engineer hasn't moved from the sinks. His arms are crossed over his chest once more, although not in a defensive pose. His expression is unreadable to Heavy, as enigmatic as that of a deity who never shows their face.

Heavy considers not answering. Or lying.

But he's also sick of that.

Judge me then, Eyeless God. Your Word is meaningless to me.

"Yes," Heavy says, his voice as strong, as defiant as it will ever be. "Yes."

The upward quirk of Engineer's lips, the kindness in them, is the last thing Heavy foresees for his punishment.

---

In another universe, another time and place where there is no war, no suffering, no death, this is what he and Medic would be doing right now: Medic, scarcely giving him time to inhale or moan a curse or a plea, shoving a slick, hot cock up his loosened ass, burning him up so deliberately and deliciously with each blunt inch.

"Mine. Mine," Medic growls into his ear, and Medic fucks him rough and wildly, just the way he likes it, and when it gets too much, too good, Medic's name – his real name – bursts breathlessly from his bitten lips and Medic makes a harsh, mewling noise he'll deny later and bites his shoulder. Hard. Deep.

On his stomach, his ass up in the air, his cock is more stiff and sore than it's ever been in his life and he needs to come so bad, come now and he needs Medic to pound him quicker, harder. He needs this, needs Medic like he's never needed anything else. He needs the bruises on his thighs, the hickeys on his shoulders and shoulder-blades and he needs Medic's marks on him and chyort, Medic's slamming into his prostate again and again, again, again –

He comes so hard that he almost blacks out, semen spurting out of his pulsing cock and christening their new bed in their new house in the American suburbs. He almost does, but he doesn't and Medic pulls out of him and he flips onto his back in time for Medic to come all over his belly, in time to see Medic throw his head back in a long, satiated groan and fondle that gorgeous, luscious cock until the last droplets of come have been wrung out.

"Mine," Heavy whispers into Medic's hair afterwards, a benediction to gods he doesn't believe in that the oasis in his arms will never dry, that he will never know the scald of the desert heat or of the tundra chill.

---

Of all the team members, it is Scout who volunteers to raise the white flag for BLU's mercenaries to see.

"This is stupid, so fuckin' stupid," Scout complains under his breath, scowling as young, violent men thwarted from having violent fun are wont to do. "We can take 'em on without the Doc!"

Still, after breakfast, Scout goes up the highest tower of their fort and clambers up the roof to impale their rather crude white flag of a kitchen table cloth tied to a long metal pole. The BLU team would have to be blind as bats to miss it, would have to be silly as babies to not do a thing about it.

A mere hour later, Sniper rushes into the rec room where the rest of the team sans Engineer and Medic are and says, "Their heavy weapons guy's on th' bridge. Wot's your next move then, Heavy?"

Soldier's instantaneous reaction is to vault to his feet off the rec room's one blindingly purple, paisley couch and roar, "Let's give 'em hell and blow up those ugly sons-of-bitches until they're all DEAD!"

Spy, sitting at the bar with a lit cigarette between his fingers, rolls his eyes and mutters about screaming eagles and maggot-obsessed madmen.

Demoman, who's still lounging on the blindingly purple, paisley couch, points at the television in front of it and says, "Whatever lets me watch the next episode of Star Trek and have my bottle o' Scrumpy!"

Pyro, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor next to Demoman, emits a string of gibberish that Heavy assumes to be agreement with Demoman.

Scout simply says, "Bored, bored, bored, bored," while sprawled on a cushioned chair perpendicular to the couch, mechanically stamping one foot on the floor in tandem with his monotonous grumbling.

And Sniper, after a glance at Spy who returns it, looks at Heavy and says, "I'll keep an eye on ya."

They stride side by side to the main entrance of their base. There, Sniper departs and goes up several stories to one of his usual sniping perches where Heavy knows he'll have full, unencumbered view of the bridge and the water surrounding it. He has total trust in Sniper's capabilities to cover him and his retreat should BLU decide to not honor their signal for a parley.

He is certain that BLU's Sniper is keeping an eye on him as well.

BLU's Heavy Weapons Guy is indeed on the bridge connecting their two forts. Alone. Also unarmed.

"Ve have not fight for three days. Vhat is meaning of that? And vhite flag?"

Heavy is startled by the other man's accent. It's peculiar enough to see how similar in size and body shape they are – especially the hands! – from afar, but standing face to face in the middle of the bridge, near enough to see the similarly blue irises of the other, it becomes downright perturbing.

"Ve seek temporary ceasefire," he states plainly, his back straight, his gaze steady.

"For vhat reason?"

Govno, the other man even frowns like him.

"Vone of our own is … down. Ve need time to find out vhat is wrong. To let him heal."

"How do ve know this is not trick?"

"Ve have been fighting for months now. Do you think ve vould stop for days to play stupid, baby trick, vhen contract say ve are expert soldiers who must fight every day? Do you think ve put up vhite flag for no reason?"

"Then who is …"

He sees the gears revolving, hears the clicking of puzzle pieces into a picture and determines the precise moment the last piece falls into place in the narrowing of the other heavy weapons guy's eyes. Had he been in the other's boots, he would have arrived at the same conclusion: There is only one man on either team whose fate governs the fate of everyone else, whose crucial healing formula can make the difference between painless, invincible victory and cyclic, senseless death and torturous rebirth via Respawn.

One man, incapacitated, unable to restore himself to health even with his aforementioned healing formula, whom the other team members would be unable to help without the necessary knowledge and expertise. And time.

When Heavy's counterpart speaks again, after many minutes of pensive silence, it isn't in English. It isn't what he guesses.

"Vy takzhe Russkiy?"

Heavy blinks, the first to surrender in their staring showdown.

"Da, I am also Russian. From Khabarovsk Krai."

The other man – Russian! – gazes at him with wider eyes. Warmer eyes.

"I … am also from Khabarovsk Krai. From the Dzhugdzhur Mountains."

Heavy doesn't bother to conceal his astonishment.

"To yest' gde ya rodilsya." He blinks again. "Eto malen'kiy mir."

His counterpart appears just as dumbfounded.

"Da, it is a small vorld."

Many more minutes of silence pass, a different kind. The kind that reigns when one inadvertently comes across something unusual, inimitable. Something extraordinary.

Then the BLU heavy weapons man flits his gaze up through a gap in the bridge's aluminum roof towards the white flag flapping in a morning desert breeze. He doesn't glance back at Heavy as he says, "Our supply train has not come in six days. Fighting on empty bellies is … not good."

Heavy overlooks the broken eye contact. He recognizes the olive branch he's being offered in the unanticipated confession of disadvantage on BLU's side.

"So ve agree to temporary ceasefire?"

He extends his right hand, his gesture of armistice. He allows himself a faint smile when the other man grips it with an equally enormous, sturdy hand. The grip belongs to a trustworthy man.

"Da, tovarishch."

Heavy's smile broadens.

"Until the flag comes down, tovarishch."

"Until then," the other heavy weapons man replies, and Heavy stands on the bridge long after his counterpart has exited the scene, letting the sun smile upon him through another rectangular gap in the bridge's roof. His knees have locked from the relief, such intense relief, that he has bought more time for Medic.

He and Engineer will try the Quick-Fix again. Pore through Medic's medical journals, every single one. Rummage through every medicine cabinet, inspect and experiment with every available medication if they have to, if it means acquiring the cure for Medic's mental regression. If it means bringing Medic back.

He'll even crawl like a worm to BLU's Medic and beg for the rival doctor's assistance, if it comes to that.

Anything, except Medic being taken away from Teufort. Taken away from him –

"He is telling the truth."

The disembodied voice emanates from his left, just a couple of feet away, and Heavy would have jumped if he hadn't promptly identified it as Spy's.

"They are rationing their food. They will soon run out."

Heavy gazes at deceptively vacant air, at where Spy is standing cloaked from sight.

"So it is more serious than he said."

"If you had not put up the white flag first, I think they would have. Of course, that is assuming their supply train doesn't come within the next few days."

Heavy hears Spy's tacit warning loud and clear.

"The ceasefire vill only end vhen ve take down the flag."

"Well … that is assuming our enemy keeps their side of the bargain, non?"

"Yes," Heavy mutters.

Without another word, he pivots around and treads back to their fort, sensing two pairs of eyes on him, sensing the waning tracks of Medic's touch – his Medic, his – down his forearm and palm more than ever.

---

Engineer estimates Medic's regressed age to be around four or five years old. This estimation is demonstrated with much enthusiasm by Medic in the tepid water-and-bubble-filled bathtub, in Medic's shrill giggles and playful splashes of iridescent bubbles all over the bathroom walls and floor and a kneeling, smiling Heavy.

"Spiel mit mir!" Medic exclaims, sculpting a crown of suds upon Heavy's head.

Heavy chortles and bows his head, grinning even more when the suds predictably slide off his smooth scalp and back into the bathtub and Medic squeals in frustration. Medic's done this to him three times already since bath time started fifteen minutes ago, but each is as amusing as the first.

He has never seen Medic so happy before today, much less listened to Medic laugh so much and so innocently.

Today is a day of new, bewildering, magnificent experiences.

"Sshh, sit still. I am going to wash your hair."

Heavy carefully presses the outer side of his left hand on Medic's hairline, shielding Medic's eyes and face from the water he pours over Medic's head with a small bucket. To his pleasant surprise, Medic obeys him and sits with his knees drawn up above the top layer of bubbles, arms folded on top of those knees. Medic's eyes are shut, and Heavy is very grateful for that.

It won't do for Medic to see the profound flush of his face, the recollection causing it so unsolicited, so uncalled for.

The distressing, provocative focus of the recollection is this: A dildo. An eight-inch-long, pale-colored dildo in one of the drawers of Medic's wardrobe, so realistically fabricated that it has veins and a supple, matte surface not unlike skin and acute flexibility. Heavy ought to know, as the dildo had effortlessly sprung back to its original tumescence despite Heavy's single-handed grasp bending it in two when his roaming hand bumped into it underneath neatly folded nightclothes.

What is Medic doing with a dildo? A dildo like that?

The lascivious imagery that flares up in Heavy's mind – of Medic writhing and moaning in bed, nude and sleek with perspiration, long and lithe legs splayed wide as he thrusts the dildo in and out of a tight, lubed hole – combines a near-feverish heat with his blush. Penetration of an orifice to derive sexual pleasure is typically what a dildo is for, but … Medic? Medic owning one and using it that way?

Heavy can't imagine it. Or rather, he imagines it too well and thinks it's just idealistic optimism influencing his imagination. Idealistic optimism earned his father a bullet in the head. He may very well earn his own bullet if Medic ever learns of his devastating desire for him.

Not once has Medic mentioned being sexually involved with other men. Not once has Medic made sexual overtures towards anyone on the team (at least, that Heavy knows of). There are even rumors that Medic is married, his wife a voluptuous, blue-eyed blonde living somewhere in New York and awaiting Medic's return once their contract with RED ends in seven months.

A wife Medic has never spoken of to him.

A wife who may not exist at all, while that dildo undoubtedly does, one that so uncannily resembles his cock, his cock that Medic's seen during his physicals and –

Heavy wipes his fiery face with a cool, wet hand. Gospodi, what a damned fool he is! A damned, vain fool, to think that Medic would procure a dildo that matches his length and girth when, for all he knows, the dildo could be some asinine prank by Scout to humiliate Medic.

But then … where would Scout obtain such a thing?

Whatever the answer is to that question, it lingers in oblivion when Heavy feels the tender touch of Medic's hand upon his face.

"Kuschelbär? Was ist los?"

Medic's hair is jutting out in lathered spikes like the quills of a hedgehog. Medic gazes at him with owlish eyes vivid with concern, and for the thousandth time since his Medic was supplanted by this charming man-child, Heavy's heart melts and he forgets the worry and the cold and the uncertainty, and smiles with his entire visage.

"I am sorry, moy solnyshko. I vas … daydreaming."

"Dreaming," Medic parrots, blinking like a somnolent baby.

A mere word should not make him ache so.

Still smiling, Heavy rinses Medic's hair, then unplugs the bathtub. He turns on both taps for hot and cold water, filling up the bucket with warm water. With it, he washes away the soapsuds on Medic's body and limbs, his eyes never wandering below Medic's shoulders, never down to temptation. The body is Medic's. The mind is not, and he will not debase himself by taking advantage of Medic in this vulnerable time.

He is better than that. Medic deserves better than that, so much better.

Later in Medic's bedroom, after drying Medic with a fluffy towel and helping Medic to don another immaculate nightgown, he sits on the side of the bed and fondly combs Medic's hair into suave neatness. Medic sits on his lap, serenely, contentedly, and once more, Heavy beams at the soft smile upon Medic's face. Medic's eyes are half-open, like a kitten's. Medic is also purring like one.

"You are like big cat," Heavy murmurs as he parts Medic's damp hair on the right side with a slim, dark brown comb.

Medic leans against him and sighs, and it would be so easy, so easy, to pretend that Medic is fine, that Medic loves him the same way that he loves Medic, so very much.

"Kuschelbär …" Medic mumbles through a yawn against his shoulder. "Ich will schlafen."

But Heavy does not remember how to dream anymore, and all he has left of his Medic is a sinless child in a sin-riddled man, asleep and snuggled against his left side on the bed as he shuts his eyes and hears the distant thunder of surging water beneath stratums of ice and snow and sand.

---

They have known each other for two months, now.

"Do you dream, Heavy?"

Medic's eyes glow under the desert moonlight and starlight, behind steel-framed spectacles. Medic is wearing just his dress shirt, dark brown pants and boots. Heavy has to curl his toes in his own boots to not gape at the revealed, low 'V' of Medic's hirsute chest. It is sweltering here in the courtyard, yes, and Heavy sends soundless appreciation to the sun shrouding itself behind the moon for it.

Tonight, when he retires to his room, alone, he will surely be afflicted by the delectable, divine sight of those dark and salt-and-pepper coils upon tanned skin.

"It vould depend on Doktor's meaning of dreaming," he answers, his eyes on Medic's striking profile while Medic's eyes are on the stars and galaxies above.

Medic divulges a faint smile in response, a forlorn smile that seems so unbefitting on Medic's face.

"I do not remember vhat I dream of, anymore." Medic hones that sharp, arresting gaze on him and pins him like a frozen butterfly on cardboard. "Tell me vone of your dreams."

For an eon, Heavy is at a loss for words. They've scrambled away at the very idea of Heavy prising open the lid over that murky, bottomless cavern within him, even if it's a meager gap, and drowning Medic in its innards. Its secrets are secrets for a reason, sealed away from all eyes and ears, even his own.

Monstrous things lurk in the deep, ravenous and vengeful, always waiting for the opportunity to escape, to destroy.

But Medic didn't ask for secrets, or nightmares. Medic asked for a dream.

"A house," Heavy eventually says, disconcerted by the gushing from his parched, nervous mouth. "A house vith a small garden, maybe, and paved front yard for a car. It is in a place vhere it is alvays sunny, vith rain now and then, vhere there is alvays good food and the sea, or a lake, is near and …" Heavy falters for a minute, then says in a huskier voice, "And there is no var, no suffering. No death."

This is where Heavy expects Medic to scoff at him, sneer and stalk off in disgust.

"Und vhat do you do in zhis place?" Medic murmurs instead, eyes still aglow.

Heavy, helplessly caught in their radiance, rasps, "I am … at peace. I am a boxing coach because there vere only two things to do back in my village vhen I vas a child: Boxing or goat herding. I am a boxing coach. I am never cold and I am never hungry. I am at peace and I am free."

I am with you. In love with you. With you.

In another universe, another time and place where Medic isn't a heterosexual man, isn't rumored to be already married to a voluptuous, blue-eyed blonde beauty waiting for him somewhere in New York, Heavy would have uttered those words. Uttered them against Medic's wind-ruffled hair, into Medic's parted lips, down Medic's throat and into Medic's lungs until they flood through every vein, every cell in Medic's beautiful body.

Here, the beasts in the dark devour them, digesting them in their bellies abounding with his secrets.

"Haha, Doktor, you must think I am baby."

Heavy glances away from Medic as he blurts this out. He's abruptly glad that he is standing in the shadows of a lofty wall, his red-hot face another secret, another lie.

"It is a dream you remember, is it not?" Medic replies quietly, graciously.

Heavy is, again, at a loss for words.

"It is a dream you remember. Und if you should forget … I vill remember it for you."

Heavy is standing in the shadows, in the obscurity with his monsters and secrets and the unending snow, and Medic is looking at him and sees him.

Only him.

---

"How's your Ma and sisters in Siberia?"

It is the fifth day since Medic's mental regression occurred, and Heavy and Engineer are seated on the floor outside Medic's bedroom, browsing through Medic's notebooks and a lifetime's collection of scientific and medical journals stacked in tall mounds around them. They are very fortunate that Medic has written all his notes in English and not German. There must be something in one of them about the composition of his healing formula.

Engineer is reading through one of the many notebooks, and had not looked at Heavy when he inquired about his family. As far as the team knows, Heavy's mother and sisters are alive and well, residing in a luxurious log mansion in the Dzhugdzhur Mountains and awaiting his wonderful gifts from America and his return home with bated breath. Heavy gazes at Engineer, at the other man's bowed head and considers not answering. Or lying.

Either option has the same outcome: His cherished mother and sisters will still be gone, his noble father also.

So what of the spoken truth, then?

Will that bring them back to life?

"My mother and sisters …" Heavy whispers, staring at the floor. "They are all dead."

Engineer seems to move in slow motion, goggled, shaven head rising like a meek sun in mid-winter, shoulders sagging bonelessly, the spine of the notebook in hand hitting the floor with a dull thud.

"My God, when? What happened?"

"They vere dead long before I come to America."

Heavy doesn't have to see Engineer's face to know the expressions that must be blazing across it: Sympathy, or perhaps pity instead, shock at the disclosure of his abiding deceit, at the realization that those letters he'd written to his family, those stories he'd proudly narrated of his family's grand life and home in the Dzhugdzhur Mountains are lies. All lies.

"My father vas a counter-revolutionary. He vas arrested by the NKVD, and they took us all vith him to the Gulag," Heavy says in a flat, emotionless voice. "They shot him in the head and they made us vatch him die. They put me in vone camp and my mother and sisters in another, many miles avay. I vas in the camp for months. I vaited for a chance to escape and vhen it came, I killed all the guards and steal their food and vinter clothes and run to the other camp."

Heavy's eyes are open, but everything is a blur.

"They killed my mother and sisters and left them in the snow outside. They vere tortured. All of them. I tried to save them but I vas too late and Mama vas torn in two and eaten by volves. I vas too late and I failed them."

The ensuing hush is so weighty that even Heavy feels it bearing down upon him, the Earth upon Atlas' shoulders. His vision blurs yet more, and then he is grimacing, the muscles around his eyes contracting, the muscles in his jaw warping his lips and derr'mo, no, no, not here, not now, not in front of Engineer –

He sucks in several swift, deep breaths. With each one, he suffocates his grief with anger, broiling anger that makes him squint and vaunt his rows of teeth for a different reason.

"Go on then," he snarls in Engineer's direction, his accent pronounced, smacking one fist against two stack of books and sending them sailing through the air. "Laugh at giant man who still cry about dead mother and sisters!"

He can't see Engineer's face, but he doesn't have to do so to know the damn pity that must be there, the acknowledgement of Heavy's failure and his loss of faith in a God that won't speak, won't help, won't save anyone. He averts his own face, his hands such tense fists on his thighs that his fingernails cut bloody half-moons in his palms. He hears Engineer approach him, unhurriedly, cautiously.

"Heavy."

Engineer is now sitting perpendicular to him, to his left, a foot away. Engineer has shifted his goggles up his head, and for the first time, Heavy sees the other man's eyes up close. They are heavy-lidded and rimmed by dark, short albeit thick lashes. Crow's feet spread out from their outer corners, mini spider-webs of history and laughter and tears, and they are blue, so very blue and open and seeing so much, so much.

Engineer's eyes are just like his.

"No man deserves to be mocked for missin' the ones he loves," Engineer says with the voice of a flawed, mortal man, the wisdom of a perfect, immortal god, and Heavy's chest twinges for a very, very different reason.

"Did not mean to shout at you."

Heavy's mumble is subdued, aimed at the floor.

Engineer lays a gloved hand – his robotic right hand – on his forearm and pats it.

"I know," Engineer replies, too quietly, and Heavy's head snaps up, a thousand rapid questions cleaving to the tip of his tongue as he observes Engineer stripping off the dark yellow glove around that robotic hand.

"I know what the fellers say about me. That I ain't quite right in the head. That I hated my real arm so much, I whacked it off myself after seein' my grandpa's plans for a mechanical one just so it'd be mine."

The hand is, to Heavy, a triumph of intricate engineering, its segmented, skeletal-like fingers as agile and adroit as flesh-and-blood ones, its lack of skin and blatant displays of gauges, orange wires and red casing a declaration of Engineer's dedication to science and non-romanticism. Heavy has witnessed it in action firsthand when BLU's Spy had ambushed Engineer during one of the earlier skirmishes. One yank of a starter cord, a vicious, whirring spin of those steel, segmented fingers, and Spy's head had vanished in a cloud of misty blood and chunks of bone and flesh.

Whoever Engineer's grandfather was, he must have been a remarkable inventor. Much like his grandson.

Heavy permits one question to leave his tongue.

"Vhat is your story?"

Engineer smiles feebly, as if he is already preparing himself for combat and he is uncertain if he'll win.

Perhaps Heavy is not the only man with monsters and secrets in the deep, cold dark.

"It happened four years ago," Engineer says, gazing down at his right forearm, rubbing the red casing that sheathes the circular wrist and its components. "Started out as a soreness in my arm, like somethin' was tryin' to gnaw its way outta my flesh. I didn't think much about it at first. Figured I knocked my arm on somethin' and bruised it badly. Wouldn't be the first time." Engineer halts for several seconds, then says in that very quiet tone, "A bump grew in the middle of my arm. It was the size of a grape, then it was the size of a golf ball. Then I got myself to the nearest hospital in Bee Cave – that's my hometown – and I got it checked out.

"After days of testin', the doctors told me it was a malignant tumor. That I needed chemotherapy immediately. Told me I had a thirty to forty percent chance of beatin' it if I got chemo and cut the damn thing out along with most of my forearm."

The fingers of Engineer's robotic hand have clenched into a fist.

"That afternoon, I didn't remember how the hell I got home. I still don't. One minute I was there in the doctor's office, the next minute I was in my livin' room, just lumberin' around, knockin' into everythin'. I couldn't stop movin', like I had to keep goin', just keep goin' or I was gonna drop and never get up again. And the whole time, I kept hearin' somebody cryin' and wailin'. I wanted so bad for that bastard to shut up so I could think. Wasn't 'til I was curled up on the floor in the dark that I realized that bastard was me."

Engineer's eyes are bleary, staring down at floor between them.

"I ended up with my whole forearm and hand taken off. The doctors didn't give me a lotta time to think about it, and I jumped into chemo straight after. And all this? This was before I found grandpa's designs for the Gunslinger."

Heavy waits for a moment, then asks, "You build Gunslinger vith one hand?"

The question conjures a small, melancholic smile on Engineer's visage.

"Yeah. Technically, I had some help from my robots, but … yeah." Before Heavy can say more, Engineer looks him in the eye and murmurs, "So. Go on then. Laugh at the little man who was so afraid to die, he bawled like a baby for hours on the floor and had to be knocked out to get his forearm removed by a surgeon."

Heavy sees the challenge in Engineer's eyes, hears it in Engineer's comparison of himself to a baby. Engineer is expecting him to ridicule him now, to think of him as less than a man.

"No man deserve to be mocked for vanting to live."

He is sincere, empathetic, and he knows that Engineer knows this in the crinkling of Engineer's eyes, in the banishment of despondency from the Texan man's smile. Engineer pats him on the forearm again. This time, it is with a hand of flesh-and-blood. The significance of this isn't lost on Heavy.

They are flesh-and-blood men. Men who still live and feel. Who are still here, long after their adversaries are vanquished and gone.

"Do not vorry, your secret is safe vith me," Heavy says with a wink, and Engineer chuckles.

"Likewise, my friend."

Heavy accepts the warmth pooling in him at Engineer's response.

Engineer goes back to examining Medic's notebooks while sitting cross-legged on the floor, goggles left around his forehead. Heavy stands up and tiptoes past masses of books to the open door of Medic's bedroom, leaning against the doorframe as he stares at Medic taking his afternoon nap on the bed. Medic slumbers on his side with blankets swathing him from the waist downwards, facing the door, clasping one of Heavy's t-shirts to his face and chest. Medic's right hand is in a loose fist, pressed against pouting lips.

The view does indescribable things to something in the left side of Heavy's chest, transforming the warmth in him into a conflagration that just won't perish.

"Do you think … Doktor have secrets of his own?"

He senses Engineer glance at him. He trains his eyes on Medic, but swivels his head to look at Engineer after Engineer replies, "Yes. He does. But they're not mine to tell you."

That mysterious, kind smile is arching up Engineer's lips once more. Heavy doesn't know what to make of it. Is it a smile of commiseration? Or a hint that Engineer knows of terrible, shadowy secrets about his beloved Medic and that he wouldn't wish to know them despite his own brutal ones?

Or is it something else entirely, something that Medic has sworn Engineer to not tell him? Something he will only know if Medic chooses to tell him one day?

And if that is so, what is it?

Heavy hasn't dreamed for a very, very long time. But when he shuts his eyes and hears that thunder of surging water beneath stratums of ice and snow and sand, hears and feels that water cracking through a long-dormant, thirsting surface, it is the closest he's come to doing so for as long as memory serves him.

---

He is six years old. He is six years old, a gigantic boy for his age, and it is a midsummer morning and he is sitting at the kitchen table with his father and mother and baby Faina, still in his nightclothes and comfy, his hand lunging for his bowl of steaming-hot kasha. Papa, munching on a hard-boiled egg, laughs and teasingly tugs the bowl out of reach.

He laughs back with all his heart and lunges for a peeled hard-boiled egg in a bowl on the table and threatens to hurl it at Papa's head. Mama smacks him on the hand with a wooden spoon. Faina gurgles and smiles, her chubby cheeks rosy and a delight to pinch.

Mama scolds him, but her splendid, thick-lashed blue eyes shine and her voice is the placid, tranquil tide of the Yenisei River, swollen with affection and compassion for the lives around her. Her hair is dark and thick and long, tidily tied into a pony-tail. Her hand is warm and strong as it caresses his cheek and jawline.

"I wish I could be happy and full like this every day!"

Papa gazes at him, ageless, sage eyes gleaming underneath burly eyebrows.

"Is that what you dream of, Borya?"

He doesn't think twice about his answer to Papa.

"Yes," he says vehemently, scooping a spoonful of his Mama's kasha into his mouth. "Happy and full and warm and loved!"

Mama and Papa chuckle together as they glance at each other. There is a light in their eyes that dims the sunshine cascading in through the windows in its brilliance. Then Papa is gazing at him again, and the light in Papa's eyes makes him put his spoon down and sit up straighter.

"Then do not forget it. Remember it. Fight for it, and earn it."

Papa's voice is low and solemn. Papa is speaking to him as one man to another, and he listens and hears.

"Yes. I'll remember, Papa. I'll fight for it." He stares back into Papa's eyes, then exclaims with a grin and the bang of one fist on the table, "And I'll win it!"

Papa laughs boisterously at that. It is laughter teeming with joy and pride.

"My boy. My son."

He savors the sensation of Papa's colossal fingers stroking his hair and the side of his head, the fondness he also hears in Papa's resonant voice. He savors the kiss Mama bestows upon his forehead, the fluttering of a heavenly butterfly's wings against his skin, and he savors Mama's melodic singing of a lullaby to Faina when Faina starts to fuss.

And then he is forty-five years old, and it is dawn and sunshine is trickling into Medic's bedroom through a gap in the burgundy curtains. He pushes himself off the bedroll on the floor beside Medic's bed and up to a sitting position, still feeling his father and mother near, still hearing that lullaby. Its words – all of them – follow him into the here and now, and though his eyes are open, he sees nothing.

The love in those words, in his mother's kiss, his father's touch scorches new, cleansing trails down his face, and as it does, he smiles and he remembers.

He remembers.

---

On the sixth day, Heavy awakens a few hours after sunrise and finds the bed beside him empty.

"Doktor?"

He sees no sign of Medic anywhere in the room. The door is ajar.

"Doktor!"

In his haste, he collides with the frame of the door as he bolts out into the Infirmary, almost tumbling on his face when he trips over something on the floor. It's his t-shirt, the same one Medic had squeezed to sleep last night. He nabs it off the floor even as he darts around the dull green privacy screens and the stretcher and the surgical tables, his stark eyes scanning everywhere for the familiar, slender figure attired in a beige nightgown.

"Doktor, vhere are you?"

Heavy's whispering, but he doesn't know it. This is the first time Medic's upped and gone AWOL on him this way. He doesn't like it, he doesn't like one bit –

All of a sudden, a thump, like a body accidentally bumping into something solid. It came from Medic's (scrubbed and aired) office.

It is at the open door of said office that Heavy's hammering heart begins to settle down. Medic is in there, shambling around on bare feet, his total attention on the bookshelves lining two of the office walls. Medic traces the leather-bound spines of various books with his right hand as he ambles past one bookshelf.

Something is different about Medic's movements today. They're more … confident, more steadfast and –

Medic has spun around. Medic is looking at him.

He steps into the office, his t-shirt in one hand, the laminated floor chilly to his own bare feet. He stands on the very spot where he did when he'd encountered Medic in his regressed state for the first time, and his breath stutters in his throat as Medic walks up to him, staring at his face.

"Medic?" Heavy whispers, still not knowing it.

Their chests are sheer inches apart. Medic is scrutinizing his facial features with an intensity that overcomes him, that causes his face and bare chest to flush and oh chyort, chyort, he left his other shirt in the bedroom next to his bedroll and he'd forgotten he took it off in the middle of the night because it got too hot and now, and now –

"I know you," Medic murmurs.

Medic is pressing one hand flat upon his chest, over his heart. His lips part, but he is rendered mute by the dazzling light in Medic's wide, lustrous eyes.

"You are … Heavy."

Three words should not choke him up so.

"Yes," he replies, hoarsely, the light in Medic's eyes seeping into his, into every nook and line of his visage, into his magnifying grin.

The light in Medic's eyes does not last.

In the time it takes for Heavy to cup Medic's cheek with his left hand, to feel Medic's hand slip away from his chest, Medic's eyes glaze over and Medic presses a loose fist to his own mouth, sucking on a knuckle. Medic doesn't react when Heavy strokes his cheek with a thumb.

"Medic?" Heavy says again, a little louder than a whisper though only just.

"… Kuschelbär?"

Heavy draws Medic into his arms and hugs him tightly to his chest. Medic doesn't protest.

"It is early. You vant to go back to sleep?"

Medic takes his t-shirt from him and holds it to his face and neck, and Heavy memorizes this like he has of everything else of this man-child.

"Ja. Schlafen."

"Schlafen," Heavy parrots, and Medic peers up at him from under long lashes and giggles. He smiles back, a loitering shade of his grin, pumped with anticipation. With hope.

Medic remembered his name.

Medic remembered him.

---

That night, he is still forty-five years old and it is an hour past midnight and he is nestled in his bedroll next to Medic's bed and yet, he is also out there on the railway platform of Teufort, having disembarked from the RED transport/supply train a minute or three ago. This New Mexico desert is an arid, ruthless terrain, spreading over a hundred thousand square miles, splintered by a host of small mountain ranges, interspersed with coniferous and broadleaf woodlands in elevated areas of cooler, wetter climate and all sand, sand as far as his eyes can see. It is the absolute opposite of the ice-ensconced tundra of Siberia and the snow-capped, towering Dzhugdzhur Mountains that had been his home for twenty years.

Already, he is enamored with it.

There are eight other men who are disembarking from the train, his RED teammates with whom he will battle side by side against the mercenaries of BLU for a year, as dictated by their contracts. He's read the files on all eight of them. He's sure they have done the same, even that skinny, cocky young one with the baseball bat and the firestorm in narrowed, old eyes. He sees Demoman, outfitted in an alarming amount of bombs and a kilt, befriending an animatedly yelling, raccoon-cuddling Soldier with hearty backslaps and shared, raucous guffaws. He sees the lanky, reticent Sniper step out of another carriage and onto the platform, and a dozen seconds later, a sophisticatedly clad Spy in a tailored, extravagant suit and a balaclava that exposes his suspicion-laden eyes and mouth. He sees Engineer and a masked Pyro farther down the platform, hauling an assortment of crates out of yet another carriage, probably Engineer's equipment.

And then, he sees Medic.

Medic steps onto the platform from the same carriage Sniper and Spy exited. Medic's hair is gelled and impeccably styled, a cowlick coiling down a high forehead, and there isn't a drop of sweat on it even in this blistering temperature. Heavy is amazed that Medic isn't boiling in that long, beige coat, red gloves, long pants and knee-high boots. A dove, pure white and streamlined, perches on Medic's right shoulder.

It aims its black, beady eyes straight at him.

One eyebrow raised, Heavy stares back in amusement and something else, something soft and warm and frightening as Medic actually converses with the bird, brushing its feathers with a forefinger. The file hadn't cited Medic being doting towards birds.

Then again, Medic's file is the one file Heavy has yet to finish reading. He'd studied Medic's photographed portrait for so long that it has singed itself onto his brain, a perpetual tattoo of masculine beauty whose pale imitations he'd dared sample a measly handful of times in his life.

Everyone else pales in comparison to Medic. Everything else fades away when Medic looks at him with large, blue eyes behind steel-framed spectacles and sees him standing there with his stuffed backpack and Sasha, his treasured Mini-gun, on the floor.

In an instant, he stands before Medic, gazing down at Medic's countenance, and the dove flies away and leaves them be in a universe of their own. On their own volition, his hands wrap around Medic's upper arms. Medic feels weightless as a feather as he heaves Medic up and plants a big, noisy kiss on each of the astonished doctor's cheeks.

Medic smells exquisite. Like the fresh honey bread of Tula, or the rain in the taiga in spring, or sunlight upon skin after a dip in a refreshing pond.

Chortles of hilarity rupture the bubble around them. Engineer has a huge smile on his face. Demoman laughs even harder at the flummoxed expression on Soldier's face. The tips of Sniper's lips are curving up while Spy gazes at him from the corners of glinting eyes. Pyro is mumbling something indecipherable, and Scout is making flagrant faces of disgust and gagging sounds, jutting out his tongue, pantomiming the act of vomiting.

"It is Russian custom!" Heavy bellows over Medic's head, his cheeks sizzling like the desert sand.

The others laugh louder, but there is no malice in it.

Medic, back on his feet on the platform, is looking at him again. This is where he expects Medic to scowl at him, to shove him away. To rebuke him for daring to touch him, to kiss him.

Heavy's cheek is grazed by the pure white wing of an avian messenger.

"Vell. Zhat is new."

Medic's voice is a soothing balm upon his wounded dignity.

"Vhat is?" Heavy says as he pets the dove perched on his left shoulder with the back of his fingers.

"Archimedes has never … varmed up so fast to anozher, before."

Heavy smiles at the cooing bird, then at Medic.

"Archameedees? You name him after Greek mathematician and scientist?"

Medic gives him a long, assessing look, a look that sears his cheeks even more than the desert heat and the earlier flash of embarrassment.

"Ja, I did. Specifically for somezhing he said of his vork, On zhe Equilibrium of Planes."

"Ah." Heavy tilts his head to one side, and maintaining eye contact with Medic, says with aplomb, "'Give me a place to stand on, and I vill move the Earth.' Da?"

Heavy's smile grows at the widening of Medic's eyes, at Medic's face going slack with surprise before resolving itself to its former neutrality. He is accustomed to people miscalculating him, his intelligence, but he attains a distinct pleasure at impressing this German, obviously erudite doctor.

"You are correct."

Medic lifts one arm towards his left shoulder, and they observe Archimedes hopping onto Medic's right hand and perching on Medic's forearm.

"You look like vone who could move zhe Earth, if you vanted," Medic murmurs as he strokes Archimedes' tail feathers and stares down at them.

The heat from Heavy's face travels down to his chest, coalescing in its left side.

"Maybe, maybe." Poker-faced, eyes gleaming, he adds, "But I am only man, Doktor. I can only dream of doing such thing."

There is a second of hush. Then another.

Then, Medic glances up at him, and suddenly, Heavy hears the distant thunder of raging water. Sees them in the coolness of Medic's eyes.

"Do not underestimate zhe power of a dream. Dreams are zhe places ve stand on to move zhe vorld. Und ourselves."

In the years, the decades to come, Heavy will pinpoint this moment as the moment he falls in love with Medic.

"Did not expect man of science to say that to me," he says a century later, gruffly, floating in the air and yet not.

"But zhat is precisely vhat I am, Herr Heavy: A man."

Medic's mien and tone are deadpan, but his eyes, his eyes are twinkling just like his.

"Man who does not mind to be kissed in Russian custom?" he asks, apology in every word.

"Hmm …" Medic glances down at Archimedes once more, then glances back at him with a smirk. "Defeat me at chess, und perhaps I vill tell you."

Heavy's poker face shatters into an unstoppable grin.

"How vonderful for me, that I am as talented at chess as I am at shooting people dead."

"Und modest, too."

And then it is Heavy's turn to laugh stridently, to rejoice in the rays of Medic's broadening smile because he is here and Medic is here despite their monsters and secrets and darkness, despite all the running, all the bullets they've fired and evaded, all the blood they've spilled from themselves and had to spill. Medic is here, and he isn't too late after all.

Medic is the one. The one.

---

On the seventh day, when the gods lie down to rest and slumber evermore, Medic is restored.

---

The air in his bedroom, unoccupied for almost a week, is stale and dusty.

He sits on the side of his made bed after opening the window to let fresh air in, and he stares at his hands on his lap and he has no idea what to do with himself. He should be happy. He should be ecstatic, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and whooping his lungs out.

Medic awoke this morning as himself. Medic recognized him and called his name and spoke to him in his usual voice, that baritone, modulated voice he's missed so much.

Medic, his Medic, is back.

"And I am no longer his Kuschelbär," he whispers to himself.

His sole audience is an old friend to the one he loves.

"Vhere did you go? Hmm? Did you know Doktor vas not himself for days?"

Archimedes swoops into the room from the window sill and settles on his left shoulder, rubbing against his neck and cheek. He lets a slight, demonstrative smile bend his lips.

"You have fun vith lady friend, maybe?"

Archimedes angles his head and coos at him. Sometimes, Heavy wonders if the dove truly does comprehend what he says and is replying him in a language to which he is deaf.

"Maybe you found the vone too." His smile becomes bittersweet. "Maybe you are luckier than I am, and she loves you back."

Archimedes coos again, tersely, then pecks at his jawline and earlobe with stinging jabs, as if reprimanding him for what he said.

"Ow! Nyet, Archameedees. Stop it."

Archimedes hops off his shoulder and onto his forearm. The bird stays there, wings gathered, tail down, staring up at him with eyes as black as starless space.

"You vere gone for over a veek. You miss a lot of … strange things. Doktor became a leetle boy in a man's body after he vas hit in the head by the other Scout." He sighs, his eyes heavy-lidded. "Maybe it vas good thing you vere avay. Doktor vould not have known who you are. He did not know me. I had to bathe, feed and shave him and sleep in the room vith him because he vas scared of the dark."

For a while, he pets Archimedes' head, outlining the dove's head and neck with his right forefinger.

"Long ago, before I come here to America, I lived in a house vith small garden in the Dzhugdzhur Mountains of Khabarovsk Krai, vith my father and mother and sisters. It vas a small house, but it vas home. There, I vas never hungry. I vas never cold or sad for long, and I vas alvays loved. Ve had so many goats! Mama vould chase them vith Faina and Katja and Anya, and they vouldn't let me milk them because my hands are so big."

Heavy snorts in amusement and not a tiny amount of affection at the memories.

"So Papa vould teach me to shoot guns and to box. He vas the tallest, biggest man in the village. No, in the mountains, in all of Khabarovsk Krai! Da, he vas respected man. He vas a leader. He believed in a vorld vithout tyrants, vithout var and suffering. But he also believed that vorld can only be real after many vars, after all the tyrants are gone. So he teach me to shoot guns and to box … and to believe in dreams and remember them and fight for them."

He falls silent for many minutes. He stares at the floor near his feet, his eyes half-shut, his lips downturned.

"Spy said Doktor is married to pretty, blonde woman vaiting for him in New York. Doktor's heart already belong to somebody else. Maybe it is not true. Maybe it is. Maybe Doktor's heart belong to Engineer. But not to me. Tell me, Archameedees, how do I fight a var that I already lost before it begins? How do I fight a var for a dream that vill never come true? Papa never teach me how."

Archimedes sidles up to his upper arm and leans against it, cooing benevolently.

"Is that your answer? I do not understand you, not like Doktor. Maybe I should be happy vith vhat I already have, hm? That he and I are good friends. There is so much of him in me now. Sometimes, I feel he is all there is, and I vill not care to know any other." A fleeting smile chases away his dejected expression. "See, I am talking to burd. Just like him."

A knock on his door disturbs and dispels the somber mood.

It is Sniper, garbed in a white tank top, collared red shirt and khakis. The metal frame of Sniper's tinted sunglasses glimmer in the midday sunshine streaming through the window.

"Just thought you should know, th' brat's taken down th' flag."

Heavy smiles sideways at him and replies, "Vas he loud noise I heard outside earlier?"

"Ya mean, did th' bloody hoon fall off th' roof an' smash his thick skull on th' ground? Yeah." Sniper rolls his eyes. "He just came outta Respawn. He's already stuffin' his face in th' mess hall with most everyone else."

Heavy hears the implicit invitation, and nods.

"I vill be there."

Sniper nods back, and says, "I'll let Engie know," and then closes the door behind him, leaving Heavy alone with Archimedes in his room again. Heavy shuts his eyes and shakes his head and smiles self-deprecatingly.

Engineer, of course it's Engineer who would request for someone to check in on him. When Engineer had entered the Infirmary this morning with breakfast on two trays, he'd nearly dumped them on the floor from the pleasant shock of seeing Medic recovered. And when Engineer came forward and embraced Medic in relief and gladness, when Medic returned it –

He had scarpered out of the Infirmary with little more than a stammered excuse and farewell, directly to his room.

Like a coward. An utter coward.

And until now, he has yet to exit it.

"Nyet, I am not avoiding him," he mutters with a frown at Archimedes who ogles him in a much-too-innocent manner.

Instead of another coo from the dove, Heavy receives another knock on his door.

"Heavy? Are you in zhere?"

Heavy leaps to his feet so swiftly that Archimedes flaps his wings in a panic and flies away to the nearby dressing table upon which Heavy's bandolier rests. Heavy has to cough to clear his throat before bidding Medic to enter.

Medic isn't in his nightgown anymore, but in his white dress shirt, dark brown pants and a pair of black Oxfords. Medic is wearing his glasses as well, and the vision of Medic's dress shirt unbuttoned to the sternum, of the dark and salt-and-pepper curls on Medic's chest makes Heavy's own chest throb with an agonizing beat.

"Ah, zhere you are, Archimedes! Vhere have you been?"

Archimedes zooms over to Medic like a rocket, fluttering nimble wings against a smiling Medic's chest and cooing excitedly. Medic seems to genuinely follow the dove's monologue, to transmute it into a dialogue with sprinkled comments.

"Oh … Vell … I see … Is zhat so?"

Here, in his room in the sunlight, Heavy has no shadows in which to shroud himself from Medic's pinioning, substantial gaze.

"I did not eat breakfast zhis morning. Join me for lunch?"

Heavy is powerless to deny this man anything.

They saunter side by side to the mess hall, Archimedes perched on Medic's left shoulder. There is a foot of space between them, though every so often, their hands will brush and Heavy's cheeks will swelter and Heavy will be lured, so lured into peeping at Medic's profile. Medic appears the same and yet, does not. They have walked abreast like this before for so many days and nights and yet, it no longer feels the same to Heavy.

There is something else walking beside them, something that has been there from the instant they met. Something warm and soft and yet almighty. Something beautiful.

"Zhank you. For vatching over me."

Heavy finally caves in and looks at Medic, at the beam in Medic's eyes, the arc of Medic's lips.

"It vas nothing," he mumbles.

It was everything.

This, he does not say.

"Are you vell?" he does say, and Medic's eyes crinkle.

"Ja. Actually, I have not felt so revitalized in a long time. It vas an interesting experience, to see zhe vorld as a toddler."

Heavy's gaze upon Medic's visage sharpens with amazement.

"You remember vhat happened to you?"

"Ja, but it is like a film at zhe cinema. As if somevone else vith my face vas acting out anozher life." Before Heavy can speak, Medic asks, "Und you, Heavy? Did you sleep vell last night?"

A lifetime ticks by, and then Heavy says, "Yes."

But I may never do so again, not without your measured, deep breaths, without the flickering of your eyes as you open them in the morning. Without your tender smile greeting me. Without you.

"Did you dream?"

The murmured question almost halts him in his steps. Medic slows down with him, undeterred. He considers not answering, or lying. But he's sick of that, so sick of that and of the darkness and the cold and ice, ice as far as his eyes can see.

He wants that soft, warm, almighty and beautiful thing, and nothing except the truth will help him seize it.

"Yes ... I did."

"So did I," Medic says quietly, and once again, Heavy hears the distant thunder of surging, rousing water, tired of its ancient, dirt prison, tired of the darkness and the loneliness and the inertia.

He wonders why he is the only one who can hear it.

He wonders why he only hears it whenever he is with Medic.

In the mess hall, Archimedes flies away and they sit face to face in an invisible cocoon at one end of the long dining table, partaking in a meal of pan-fried chicken, greens and mashed potatoes courtesy of Engineer and (of all people!) Pyro. As appetizing as it is to the last mouthful, Heavy scarcely tastes it. There is a resounding roar in his ears now, and it escalates, more and more, as Medic puts down his knife and fork and wipes at his lips with a napkin.

"Heavy."

"Doktor?" he whispers.

Medic has placed a hand over his, over the seared channels that have yearned for a thousand barren seasons to be brought to life. Medic's eyes are as blue and fathomless as the seas.

"Vhat did you dream of?"

Heavy hears the fissuring of a frozen, quiescent land. He hears the cracks as sovereign, clear water erupts through them and flows over the ice-snow and the fire-sand, flows through the thirsting tracks in his hand and arm and into his hungering, enduring heart.

"I dreamed of you," he says, his voice the tremendous, breath-taking tide of the Yenisei River, swollen with adoration and pride for the handsome, impulsive, multi-faceted man in front of him. "I dreamed of who ve vere. Who ve are."

The beasts in the murky, bottomless cavern within him stand no chance against the universe-vast waves of new warmth and new life.

"Vhat did you dream of, Doktor?"

Heavy rotates his hand so that his palm faces upward, so that his fingers intertwine snugly with Medic's. In the decades, the many decades to come, Heavy will pinpoint this very moment as the moment he falls in love with Medic for the second time, for all time.

"I dreamed of us," Medic says, his voice the immense, serene waves of the oceans that meet and mingle with Heavy's own, his eyes the spring summoning forth the sprouts of date palms and peaches and apricots in Heavy's replenished land. "Of who ve vill be."

---

In this universe, this time and place, there is always war and suffering and death. Fathers, brothers and sons will be dispatched to the frontlines where they will fire guns and missiles at each other until they are maimed or dead, posted home in a flag-cloaked coffin. Mothers, sisters and daughters will fear for their own wellbeing in and out of their own homes, safe not even from themselves when they are told they are cattle to be consumed by the masses and they believe it. Children will grow up with illusions, with no parents, no family, no one to care for them or accept them for who they are. The Earth will seethe and vent its aggravation with mankind, wiping out nations, wiping out their present and their future.

In this universe, this time and place, there are always nightmares.

But amidst it all, there is also hope. There are fathers, brothers and sons who go to war as boys and lay down their guns and missiles and choose peace over bloodshed, and return home as men. There are mothers, sisters and daughters who walk their paths with heads held high and their hearts open and strong, courageous in the face of a prejudicial world that would dare demand they genuflect for being lesser beings. There are children who will grow up with the truth taught to them, with devoted parents and family who care for them and accept them as they are. There are more days than not that the Earth will be passive and lenient, granting mankind with natural miracles and chances over and over to do better, be better.

There are also dreams, places to stand on to move this world, and here in the United States, four months after their contract with RED concluded, Heavy and Medic are in a tattoo parlor on Pearl Street in their new home city of San Francisco. Medic sits on a cushioned chair as the tattoo artist, Iman, prepares to ink his left forearm.

"Don't have to answer if you don't want to," Iman says, her short purple-and-pink hair glowing like her brown eyes and her amiable smile, "but why?"

Standing beside the cushioned chair with one hand on its backrest, Heavy stares down at Medic's shaved forearm. At the tattooed serial number there, its dark blue ink washed out with time, but not enough.

"Zhe camp vas Sachsenhausen," Medic murmurs, his eyes also on the serial number, his expression inscrutable. "I vas zhere for months. It vas alvays cold und dark, und I vas alvays hungry, alvays vaiting for it all to end. I forgot my name. I forgot who I vas, und in time, zhis number vas all I knew. All I had to remind me zhat I vas still a person. Zhat, even as a number, I still deserved a name."

Medic gazes up at him with wide, unguarded eyes.

"But zhat vas a long time ago. I do not need it anymore. I am no longer cold or hungry or in zhe dark … for I have found my oasis."

As a smiling Iman overlays the chill of the serial number with the heat of Heavy's name, his real name, Heavy caresses Medic's cheek with his fingers and feels something warm and soft and yet so almighty, so humbling. Something irreplaceable. Something finally his.

Something finally theirs.

And later, in their new house in the suburbs, their California bungalow with its welcoming backyard garden of iridescent flowers and strawberry trees, its herringbone-paved front yard with its blood-red 1968 Ford Torino, this is what Heavy and Medic are doing right now: Medic, scarcely given time to inhale or moan a curse or a plea, sinking his loosened ass down on Heavy's slick, hot cock, burning himself up so deliberately and deliciously with each blunt inch.

"Mine. Mine," Heavy growls as he fucks Medic rough and wildly, just the way Medic likes it, and when it gets too much, too good, he hears his name – "Borislav!" – burst breathlessly from bitten, kiss-enflamed lips and he makes a harsh, whimpering noise he'll happily confess to and thrusts up hard. Deeper.

On his back, while Medic rides him at a breakneck pace and moans and laughs with bliss, his cock is more stiff and gargantuan and sore than it's ever been in his life and he wants to make Medic come so bad, come now and he needs to pound into Medic quicker, harder. He needs this, needs Medic like he's never needed anything else, and he needs the bruising clamp of Medic's thighs around his waist, the torturous clenching of Medic's ass around his cock, the hickeys on their chests, shoulders and necks and he needs to mark Medic and Medic to mark him and oh fuck, oh fuck, he's going to come, he's going to come –

He does, so hard that he almost blacks out, semen spurting out of his pulsing cock into Medic's spasming ass. He almost does, but he doesn't and his eyes are open and he sees Medic come all over his belly and chest, sees Medic throw his head back in a piercing, gratified groan and shudder from head to toe until the last ropes of creamy come have been wrung out.

"Und zhe Earth moved, indeed," Medic whispers into his chest afterwards. He snickers and makes another whimpering noise when Medic bites him then laves the nibbled skin with a moist tongue.

"You are like big cat," he whispers back, petting his lover's disheveled hair. Medic doesn't object to the comparison.

And later, later, a drowsy Medic on the verge of slumber entreats him to read Russian poetry to him. He reaches into the bedside table drawer for a small, red book with gold Cyrillic lettering, then for his spectacles next to the lamp on the bedside table. He opens the book with one hand and props his other on Medic's back, and although his eyes are on the pages, he doesn't read the words. He doesn't have to. He already knows them – in both Russian and English – by heart, and he recites in a sotto voce:

Life for me hardly flowed like a magnificent river -
For there wasn't enough of peace and quiet, no, never!
In a soldier's hard lot, could there be any time reckoned?
Yes, there was such a minute! Yes, there was such a second!

In the trenches the minute before battle would claim you,
For a second, life's beauty more than ever enflamed you.
Blade of grass on the breastwork, piercing lovely with life-thirst!
Oh, how lovely! Then peace is ripped apart by a shell-burst!

There were shells, there were mines, but you and I were both spared.
And our love walked beside us, as the long road we shared.
If it did not then leave us, by all means it won't now,
At long last, my poor heart can be at peace anyhow.

I'm at peace with you, dearest, so at peace with you, dearest,
As I was in the trenches, when a battle was nearest.

Medic is fast asleep by the final word, but Heavy simply smiles and plants a kiss upon Medic's crown, plants the seed of another Redwood goliath in their oasis of unending sunshine and vibrant, life-giving waters and blossoms, blossoms as far as they can see. He puts away the book and his spectacles. He shuts his eyes, and dreams of who they have become, of everything they will be.

Heavy dreams, again.

Fin