Disclaimer: I own nothing and profit none.
A/N: I had this new idea. It's a little vague, but this is the beginning! Enjoy?
He tended to think of it more as a battle of wits than anything more sinister or underhanded. She wanted to doctor; he wanted to not be in the infirmary. Ever. A simple contest. And, as well he knew, the easiest way to win a contest was to let the other person think that they had already won.
So when the witches from medieval times scrambled his brains, he let her make sure he was coherent and set his wrist. While doing so he analyzed, sympathized, vocalized his own opinion, and then made good his escape. He had always been good with '-izing' things. Bandaging the gash in his side and taping up his ribs could wait until this new mystery was at least on its way to being solved.
When Nomad tricked him into being kidnapped, he told her she made it in perfect time. The man never laid a finger on him. Long sleeves weren't impractical at that time of year anyway.
The fact that she never remembered everything that happened when the crazy parasite staged a coup in her limbic system certainly made hiding that whole wrench-meets-head incident considerably easier.
And after the debacle that was the Super Abnormals, well, who wasn't hurt? Others needed her attention much more seriously, as he told her. Convincingly. He was getting quite handy with a med kit by then, anyway. Working alongside someone who has had over a century to perfect the art of medicine has its perks.
When he considered just that first year, the amount of time he would have wasted in the infirmary that had been saved by harmless subterfuge was truly amazing.
So he continued for another year, one made easier, in this one respect at least, by her utter distraction in the wake of Ashley's death. She kept him close, she kept all of them close, needing them to be safe and whole and alive, but the details slipped by her. Particularly if one had practice in submerging them anyway.
Two years now. He didn't always win every battle; she knew more about him now then he would have liked, more than he had let past his guard before his world was turned upside down. Somehow, and the details in this eluded him in a frustrating fashion, she learned that the medicines she gave him to take after his release more often than not wound up back in the infirmary. Rarely down the sink, he couldn't bear waste, but sometimes it was the only alternative to that separation of body and mind that so clearly spelled 'drugged' to him. Luckily, she seemed to accept that he simply had a high pain threshold. Unluckily, on the occasions when she was determined – and who could do determined better than she? – now she knew to corner him, stand over him, dog him until he gave in to her inevitable will. So not always a shining victory, but he had learned, largely from her in fact, that the battles sometimes matter less than the war.
Kali, however, and the entire set of circumstances surrounding that whole series of crazy weeks were definitely not on the side of the wins. He thought that every hour skillfully conned outside of the med bay came back to haunt him in those weeks. After Mumbai, he almost thought he would escape, given Ravi's glowing report based mostly on sheer disbelief that he had come back to the land of the living at all. Then, of course, his repressed memories began playing havoc with his sleep and, in time, all hopes of hiding that went straight out the window. Hiding a cold would have been hard surrounded by people who kept checking to make sure you were going to continue to stay alive, let alone the mood swings and narcoleptic tendencies he began to display. He was introduced to a whole new side of the infirmary's capabilities (Sentient leeches? Really?), not to mention her stubborn will, that time. Although, to be fair, he had downplayed very little of his symptoms; something dire was clearly going on and he was a reluctant patient, not a suicidal one. Especially after the specters attempting to suck out his brain showed up. Still, his internment in the sick bay was an aberration that was bound to happen in their line of work; he was (mostly) cured, she got a new puzzle, and the status quo could now resume. It did.
Until it didn't.
