Team Fortress 2 and its characters belong to Valve. Most of this stuff remains canon; teams are portrayed in a more realistic manner (or as realistic as you can get with a game like this) while trying to stay true to the personalities of the characters involved. Have fun reading or simply close out of it if you don't.

Cheers.

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The days that followed were true agony.

A party of three Scouts, two Snipers, and five Soldiers had piled onto a truck headed along the Blu tracks, bound and determined to find out where the other team had gone to since no one expected that the Blu Tentaspy would be making a return.

As a matter of fact, there was much distrust among the ranks.

Many believed the Reds had been had by the Sniper and Tentaspy, the free-roaming Blu Spy in their ventilation systems only adding to that sentiment though there were still a small and silent few who saw the evidence differently.

Among them was the younger Medic.

Every day he would tend to the Sniper's basic needs while the others were apparently refining the drug they would use in a week's time to resume the interrogation.

He also went out to the pond at the tail end of the river to wait for hours at a time -- to wait for the Decaspy. Sometimes he would walk a mile out with his Medigun in hand and a bag of provisions slung over his shoulder..

Every day he went, and every day he returned alone.

Today would be no different, he thought with hesitant pessimism. He'd been outside for three hours now, the cold penetrating his coat and chilling the rubber of his gloves until he stood at the banks of the pond shivering visibly. Again he adjusted his grip on his Medigun, more or less cradling the hefty machinery against his chest as he watched his breath rise as a white puff in the air before him.

The months were getting colder..

It was too cold for his personal liking, though he knew for certain the Decaspy would never survive in such shallow, frigid waters if he stayed in them much longer.

His hands were starting to feel a bit numb and he wiggled his fingers against the lever of the Medigun with a grunt of discomfort. Just five more minutes, he coached himself, five more and maybe he'll show up. ..unless he is dead. Pessimism struck again though he tried his damndest to blame it on the cold as he lifted his eyes from the sand and looked up into the calm river twisting away from him. A visible splash spiked up the the banks roughly a hundred and fifty feet away, something moving into a deeper part of the river only to generate another splash even closer.

The Medic perked up, looking apprehensive as the splashes grew nearer. He felt as though he should be backing away though his knees, locked from the cold, were too numb to obey. And so it went that he just stood there, staring with wide-eyed fascination as a dark shadow slipped into the pond and disappeared from view.

His heart pounded, questions and answers bumping into each other in his head as he tried to decide what to do.

Licking his cold lips, he tried feebly to whistle. The sound was pathetic and quiet, a hand clamped over his mouth in an attempt to breath it back to life. Two warm exhales later and he tried again, a clear whistle cracking out after his third attempt. The wind was so cold that it nearly hurt to do so and soon he found himself shuddering even more than before as the whistle carried with it most of the stagnant heat he had been generating for himself.

The pond failed to stir, his hopes dashed as it appeared he was still alone.

Groaning with disappointment, the young Brit held his Medigun even closer to himself and numbly turned to leave. He could stay out there for days.. weeks! No one would be coming back this way and he would certainly be of no use if he froze to death. He made up his mind and kicked his legs a bit to prod them into motion.

A few rigid steps from the pond and he heard it again.

A splash!

Clumsy from numbness, he tried to turn and look back, effectively stumbling and falling on his hands as his Medigun hit the sand and the pond's water rippled again. This time it kept up, the surface reluctantly broken by.. the Tentaspy!

They stared blearily at one another, the chilled winds forcing the Blu to hug his arms about himself and retreat back down to chin-level in the cold water. He was wincing from the awful cold, the Medic noted, a worryingly blue pallor tainting his otherwise human face.

"Oh..Oh my god you made it b-back!" the Medic burbled.

"Please.. I need a doctor. I lost.. I lost a limb, I can't f-feel eet anymore," the Blu croaked. He'd dropped the tentacle he'd been carrying, his cold hands unable to grasp effectively as he had begun swimming with his arms tucked in to preserve what little heat he had left. His tentacles? He could barely bend them anymore, they felt so stiff and sluggish.

The Medic tried to recover quickly, fixing his glasses and getting to his feet and he shuffled the Medigun into his hands and stumbled up the water's edge, "Can you come here? I can't.. It won't work under water."

"Ah o..oui, yes. A moment.." the Blu said with a cringe as he forced his brittle tentacles to propel him forward and then up onto the freezing ground at pond side. The wind ate at his sopping wet clothing, shivers overtaking him in a matter of seconds as the Medic advanced fearlessly on him and and crouched near his severed tentacle and pried the bloody suit jacket-gone-tourniquet from its roughly-ripped base.

The Tentaspy barely reacted, unable to feel anything but slight motion at the site of the wound even as the medigun fired up and started to seal the open injury.

"We need to bring you inside -- you'll die of hypothermia if we do not."

"Inside? O-ok.. Okay."

"But you have to know.. The team will not trust you right now. We need to be especially careful, understand?"

"I..oui, yes. I will do what you say."

The Medic ran ahead, propping up the hangar door with his Medigun and taking measures to ensure there wasn't a Sentry erected here. Despite his own recognition of the Tentaspy's allegiance, the machines were still machines and they would not be so swayed by acts of defection..

He could hear the Blu approaching, but when he looked for him he could easily tell the man was hurting badly and moving with pain in each limb as he forced those frozen tentacles to drag him across solid, unforgiving ground. He ran back for him, hooking an arm under one of his own and offering as much help as he could despite the added heft of the tentacles. It was by working together that they made it inside, the hangar shutting heavily as the Medic freed his gun and turned to face the panting, shivering Spy.

Sighing with desperation, the Medic glanced around rapidly and chewed at his lower lip.

So far as he knew, no one knew he'd been going out looking for the Tentaspy. As such, no one was expecting him to reappear let alone be allowed inside the complex despite the conclusions they'd reached regarding him in the mess hall last week.

What to do, what to do..

"M-Monsieur Medic?"

The man looked back at the Spy, noting him slumping against the hangar wall and still attempting to warm himself though the Medic knew full well he would need some help with that. He thought hard and approached him, holding out his Medigun, "Here... Here, take this. Hold onto this while I go for help, alright? If anyone stumbles on you, you tell them I left it with you while I was gone. There'd be no other way for you to get a hold of it in your condition."

The Blu reluctantly accepted the tool, his arms quivering under the meager weight of it as he held it close to himself and nodded a few quick times to the young doctor who was already turning tail and running up the echoing hangar hall.

He hardly expected to be clotheslined the moment he turned into the main foyer.

"Hrk!" he grunted, the back of his Medigun tanks smacking the floor and preventing his head from doing the same. Nevertheless he was dazed, feeling around to try and sit up as he peered around for what he had run into.

Still searching, he never saw what suddenly clamped a damp rag over his mouth and held it there until his eyes fluttered upward and closed.

"Bon nuit, Monsieur Medic.." murmured a soft voice as the doctor's body seemingly dragged itself from the hall and into a small storage closet. Unsurprisingly, the mint-eyed Medic was the one who stepped back out of it and turned to lock the door. It wasn't really him of course, the devious grin on his face would depict as much not to mention the suddenly casual way he walked..

It was time to pay the Sniper a visit.