Space is ever expanding. It is pulling apart at its seams at a rate of about seventy-four kilometers per second per three million light years, an unimaginable velocity, one that is increasing all the time. Born from the Big Bang over thirteen billion years ago, it is a cooling haven to hundreds of billions of galaxies that are themselves havens to hundreds of billions of stars each, and right now, Heavy is gliding through it.
Compared to the stars that spark before his eyes in the endless darkness, he is a tiny mass of flesh, blood and bone with a blazing, fractured core that is being fast depleted of energy. A red giant in his own right, silent, oxygen-starved. Cleaved in half, desperate to reunite with the other. The space that constricts pitilessly around him is not the space he remembers reading about in his considerable collection of texts on astronomy and cosmology. The space that is denying him precious air is thick as honey. It threatens to flood his nose and mouth, to rob him of what little heat he has left.
To kill him. To kill his other half.
His mind cries out in soundless horror at the very notion, and he kicks his legs and thrashes his arms in concert and ever harder, diving forward, downward to where his gut, his heart tells him his other half has gone. Space is ever expanding, and he is running out of time, so swift, so soon.
He blinks. For an instant, the stars disappear. Then, a glint of light in the distance, the miniscule reflection of moonbeam on metal, and he flies towards it, reaching for it. In the shadowy, airless void of the universe, he encounters soft flesh like his own. His near-numb fingers feel the slope of a high cheekbone, the straight ridge of a patrician nose. The rounded rim of steel spectacles.
There! His other half, found!
He is too cold now to determine any heat emanating from the fractured core of the other. He draws the other close to him with one arm, and gains a surge of strength upon the realization of how slack, how lifeless the other is in his embrace. He kicks once again, this time propelling himself up, up through an eon, exhausting his final supply of energy, collapsing gradually, inevitably.
He ascends, a red giant becoming a white dwarf, his core drained.
He ascends, his chest boiling, his head splintering, his vision awash in stark colorlessness.
He ascends, and suddenly, his right shoulder smacking hard against an unyielding, unforgiving entity, he discovers that space isn't infinite. His right arm lunges upward on its own accord, ripping through the shimmering, translucent weave between universes. His right hand flails then lands on the chilly, coarse back of this unyielding entity, and thankful, oh so thankful for the crutch, he drags himself and his frozen other half from one universe to another, shocked by the freedom from the crushing pressures of space, by the blinding light honed on him, by … oxygen! Precious oxygen!
He gasps, audibly. He sucks in air by the lungful and bellyful, again and again, then coughs violently, his body expelling something very cold and wet from inside him. Water. Wintry, stagnant … water?
"There they are!"
He blinks again, numerous times. With his head turned away from the light, he can better see what it is he's buoyed on, what it is he'd collided with: Solid, white ice. He stares at it, unable to comprehend its presence, his presence here. What is he doing here? And where is his other half? Where –
"Hold on, buddy! We'll get you and your friend out! Hold on!"
His sore eyes settle on the ice to his left, on the familiar figure in drenched winter clothing sprawled there, motionless.
"D-Doktor?"
He is amazed he can even whisper, after his arduous celestial journey. He is amazed to even remember who he is and who the other man is, but he does, he does now, he remembers it all and he craves to roar at the heavens above, to unleash his rage upon gods – imaginary or otherwise – for allowing the one he loves for life to almost lose it. He is ashamed of the dampness in his eyes. He gladly blames the light bearing down upon him for it.
"S-say … s-s-something."
Ice skating. That was all he and Medic wanted to do, ice skating. They'd observed a group of teenagers skating merrily on the ice-covered lake hours earlier, before they had dinner in town, and he'd seen the soft smile on Medic's face and the gleam of nostalgia in Medic's beautiful blue eyes as his lover spoke of ice skating as a carefree child in Stuttgart. He wanted to see that smile on Medic's face again. He wanted Medic to live that long ago instance of joy again, to share it with him. That's all he wanted.
"D-Doktor … s-say something."
Medic's head is turned towards him. Medic's spectacles are askew on an ashen face, and his hair is a soaked mess, his cowlick plastered to a high forehead. Water streams from Medic's parted, bluish lips. Medic's eyes are shut.
Medic does not answer him.
"Hey. Can you pull yourself out?"
There is a man in red, waterproof coveralls lying on his belly on the ice nearby, propped up on his elbows. Heavy can't see his face, and for several seconds, he is convinced that it's someone from RED. Perhaps Engineer, who'd always been friendly and kind to him and Medic, or Demoman, who was always happy to lend a listening ear and shots of Scrumpy after a defeat on the battlegrounds. Or even Soldier, who had, despite his rabid patriotism and eccentricities, stood by them both in war and out of it.
But their days in the Badlands had long passed. Seven years, to be precise.
"If you can't, we're ready to pull you out."
Heavy, with his left hand on Medic's left arm, still immersed in the lake from the midriff down, stares at the man for a long time.
"C-cannot … f-feel body."
"It's okay. You're doing great. Keep your grip on the ice." The man has an accent very similar to Soldier's. Here and now, it is reassuring, uplifting. "If you can kick your legs at any time, do it like you're swimming and try to get as horizontal as possible. We're gonna loop a rope around your body, then pull you out. Okay?"
"D-da."
A scratching noise to his left causes Heavy's head to whip around in its direction. Two other people in red coveralls have crawled on their bellies to Medic. They're shifting him onto a yellow sled, carefully tugging him away from the edge of the hole in the ice. Away from him.
He scowls at them, his brows furrowing, his upper teeth bared.
His left hand tightens on Medic's forearm.
"It's okay, buddy. It's okay. You're confused right now. You two were in the water for a long time. We're gonna help your friend, but you have to let him go so we can do that, okay?"
He returns to staring at the man, his scowl tempering to a frown of confoundedness. Who is this man? Is he from RED? Is he telling the truth?
"Help h-him. O-or … I kill y-you."
The man glances at the other two identically attired people. In the illumination, Heavy finally sees his face in detail. The man even appears like Soldier, with a masculine, squarish jaw, a prominent nose, large blue eyes and short, light brown hair. The man's wide grin of admiration, though, is very unlike Soldier.
"How about you get outta the water first, big guy, and then we'll talk about it, huh?"
The grin unlocks something within Heavy's chill-dulled brain. It also unlocks his fingers from Medic's arm.
"There you go. He's gonna be all right," the man says in that calming tone, creeping closer. "You're gonna be all right. You're a fighter, aren't ya?"
The man, still on his belly, begins to loop rope around Heavy's chest as explained earlier, and Heavy does his best to raise his shaking arms to aid the process, one at a time. They elevate off the ice by mere inches, but it's enough.
"Now, normally we Water Rescue folks don't like people jumping into freezing water after somebody else. But you did good there, saving your friend like you did."
By this time, Heavy is finding it rather difficult to move his tongue and lips as he wishes. His teeth are chattering so much that the noise is echoing inside his skull.
He isn't just my friend, my best friend. He is my everything. And I love him. I love him more than life itself.
What tumbles from his mouth as a hoarse stammer is, "C-chto ya … y-yego lyublyu."
"That's Russian, isn't it? Okay, my Russian friend, let's get you outta here."
In a matter of minutes, Heavy is clawing at the ice in front of him, kicking legs he can't feel as the Soldier lookalike and three other people in the same red coveralls haul on the rope in unison on the grassy bank of the lake. They tow once, twice, thrice, and then, on the fourth attempt, Heavy is sliding smoothly across strong ice towards safe ground, face down, overwhelmed by vicious shudders he'd last experienced as a nine-year-old boy who fell sick with fever during a harsh Siberian winter.
Someone is removing the rope from around his chest. Someone else, then another, is helping him to his feet, helping to strip him of his sodden clothes and ice skates and wrap him in warm, thick blankets. Now he sees that the radiance that had blinded him earlier is from a huge portable light aimed at the jagged hole in the ice blanketing the rest of the lake. He sees the red Water Rescue truck next to it, with white, bold words, 'EMERGENCY 911' and a yellow-and-brown emblem printed on its sides. He sees the ambulance parked seven meters away from the vehicle, and he sees Medic stationary on a stretcher framed by the open back doors of the ambulance, surrounded by more people in dark blue uniforms and winter coats who are performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him.
Heavy, cocooned in wool and supported by two men as he approaches the ambulance, staggers to a halt. Space, in its entirety, shrinks down to the sight of Medic's chest being compressed by hands in rubber gloves, of Medic's impassive, bluish-pale face and shut eyes. Medic is unresponsive to treatment, even when a tube is inserted into his mouth and down his throat.
Medic looks dead.
Heavy stops shivering, a vibrating mass gone stock-still.
"Moy vozlyublennyy," he whispers, his soul colder than the ice that had nearly claimed him, pleading to deities he does not believe in. "Nyet ... nikomu krome nego. Pozhaluysta."
Suddenly, Medic's chest spasms. He convulses on the stretcher, his back arching. Water erupts from his mouth and the tube in it is yanked out and he is turned onto his side as he continues to spew more water over the side of the stretcher and suddenly, suddenly, space is expanding explosively once more, going faster and faster, and Heavy can see and hear and feel again.
"H-… H-Heavy!"
Medic can barely croak, and in the chaos of the moment, exhausted as he is, Heavy should not have been capable of hearing his lover's cry for him. But he does.
"Heavy!"
He lumbers on his own power to Medic's side, brushing aside all who stand in his path.
"I am here, moi darogoi … I am here."
Medic immediately clings onto his arms with arctic-cold hands, staring up at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes when he isn't coughing and retching. He, in turn, strokes Medic's head and gently slaps Medic's upper back for each coughing bout, gripping Medic's hand as tightly as Medic grips his and standing aside when the people in the dark blue uniforms – paramedics – resume their treatment. He aches to hold Medic to his body, to enfold Medic in his blankets and bequeath all his heat and make Medic warm again. Make Medic smile again, like he did on the ice as they skated together for the first time across an ephemeral, ethereal plain of ice and cosmic dust, two tiny stars united as one in a universe of billions upon billions of them.
In public, swarmed as they are by so many strangers, Heavy forces himself to deny the immense gravitational pull of his other half. He doesn't have to force himself, however, to give a breath-stealing bear hug to the good man who'd been his bastion on the ice, so much like his doppelganger than he will ever know.
In the ambulance, on the way to the nearest hospital, he sits at the head of the stretcher, huddled in his blankets, already returned to some semblance of his usual self. Medic, on the other hand, is now the one suffering from ferocious shivers in spite of the piles of blankets swathing him from neck to toes. Heavy knows that, in this case, the shivering is a positive sign. Medic's body is reacting to the cold at last, fighting it with its subconscious mechanism to regulate its temperature.
Nonetheless, he gazes at Medic with wide eyes of concern. Heavy is rapidly losing the battle to not drag Medic into his arms, a stranger's eyes upon them be damned.
"Body-to-body contact will help him warm up faster."
Heavy glances sharply at the paramedic sitting at the foot of the stretcher. The young brunette woman, who appears no older than thirty, is stowing away what seems to be a green, plastic mask into a transparent bag. She isn't looking at him as she speaks, and he is uncertain of how to reply. Has she figured out the true nature of his relationship with Medic? Have they already revealed too much just by holding hands? Or is she giving the suggestion purely on a professional basis?
He goes for a time-tested response.
"I am too big to fit on little bed vith him," he jests, smiling, and she smiles back, her brown eyes crinkling with sincere amiability.
"That you are, sir. But you can hug his upper body and share your blankets, if you like."
Heavy's smile lingers, his own eyes crinkling as it softens with gratitude. He had observed her placing heating packs between the blankets on specific portions of Medic's body earlier. They're much warmer than he is right now, and she surely knows it.
"Yes. I vill do that."
Medic has been gazing at him all this while, unblinkingly, owlishly, and those large blue eyes follow him as he swivels to face his reclined, bundled up lover. Medic's spectacles have gone missing, probably removed by the paramedics during the resuscitation procedure. Without them, the universe is a blur to Medic, a place where sound and smell and touch reign. Without them, Medic will soon grow frustrated with the lack of clarity of everything around him, and he will grumble and mutter all the way to the optometrist like the last three appointments and Heavy will mollify him with patient words and tender caresses, like he always does.
Spectacles, after all, can be replaced. Their possessor cannot.
Heavy drapes one blanket over Medic's upper body and part of his own to minimize heat loss, then slips his hands beneath the blankets covering Medic, lifting them just enough to draw Medic into his embrace before hastily enveloping them in the blankets again. Almost instantaneously, Medic's quavering diminishes. Medic's head is pressed to his chest. Medic's hair tickles his chin and nose, and even after being submerged in frozen lake water, its scent is clean, fresh. Alive.
"H-Heavy?"
"Doktor?"
He feels Medic's lips move against his chest, then hears Medic mumble, "L-let's g-go … ice s-skating again. I h-haven't … taught you … zhe p-pirouette y-yet."
Even the paramedic smiles at that.
"Da, moya lyubov," he murmurs, stroking Medic's smooth back and flank, his heart close to bursting. "Ve go ice skating again."
Skin to skin, there is nothing between them. Nothing but the merged pulsation of their core, each beat an ignition of energy, of the future, and when Heavy shuts his eyes and feels the hot breath of his other half sear his skin, he smiles and dreams of their next dance across the cosmos amidst clouds of ice dust, with the chill far below them and the heat of the stars and the vastness of space above, ever expanding.
Fin