Ludwig was far too used to waking up a couple hours before dawn. The split second he stumbled out of bed, his first thought was to throw on his lab coat and gloves and make any last minute checks to his Medigun. He wasted 10 minutes scrambling uselessly for his coat and gloves in the dark, his hands shaking in what he felt was anxiety about being potentially tardy. Before he was overwhelmed by a spell of dizziness and had to lie back down. He lay in the dim of his spinning bedroom, wondering just why he couldn't find his things.

He got up shakily and staggered to his window to pull the curtains back. Rays of morning sunlight stabbed his eyes, causing to hurriedly close the curtains with a cry.

There was no way he could have woken up this late.

He rubbed his eyes, feeling like he hadn't drank water in 3 days. His heart was palpitating; enough to make him short of breath. Ludwig sat down on his bed and inhaled deeply in hopes of calming his racing heart. Why was today so strange?

Then he realised: Ceasefire, Rottenburg, he was in Germany and not New Mexico.

And he had a few too many beers last night.

And there was the other Medic, the woman belonging to BLU in his house.

Schiße. He'd completely forgotten she existed.

He staggered out of his bedroom and slowly made his way downstairs, treading carefully to make sure he didn't fall. The stairs in his place were a little uneven. When he was a small child of 10, he remembered falling down these stairs and ending up with a broken nose and a split lip from both the stair fall and the extremely hard wood floor boards on the ground level.

Luckily his father had been a doctor. And a good one at that. Danke, Vati.

Now, back to the BLU Medic in his living room.

She hadn't woken up yet, still sleeping in her coat on the sofa. Out of habit, he went to open up the curtains in the sitting room. The sunlight made him squint hard and look away. It was still a little much for him. Shielding his eyes, he left as fast as he could to the kitchen to nab some water and breakfast.

After some bread and coffee, he felt a little better. His head was clearing and the room had stopped spinning. Ludwig went to check on BLU's Medic in his living room, but stopped when he heard her scream. Well, she was awake now. And now she was lurching straight for him down the main corridor, looking furious and dazed. She didn't seem to see him standing there, but he knew she had when she reached out and slammed her open palm into chest with a frustrated shout.

The force of the blow knocked some of the breath out of him. But he found himself mildly amused and his mouth shifting into his typical wide (dubbed by his teammates as "evil") grin,

"Guten Morgen, Frau Doktor." He remarked, "How was your sleep?"

"Get out of the way."

Her words were forced through gritted teeth,

"Where is the bathroom?" She spat.

"Upstairs, to the left." Ludwig said. He held back a chuckle as she stumbled past him towards the stairs.

"Watch the stairs! They are a little… ah, irregular!" He called after her before heading back into the kitchen.

She didn't come out for a while. In the time she was upstairs, Ludwig managed to feed his doves, tidy the place a bit and get some paperwork done. But he was in a jumpy mood, and his time away from work made him want to be more productive than usual. His teammates' medical files won't update themselves and someone had to do it.

When he decided she was taking far too long, he went to check on her. And found the bathroom door locked. He politely rapped on the door,

"Are you alright? You are taking a lot of time in there!"

This was met with an angry scream from inside,

"COULD YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?!"

She was being quite irritable. This time he let himself laugh; a short burst of laughter before he spoke again,

"There is bread in the kitchen. I recommend you eat something—."

"SHUT UP!"

"By the way, if you're vomiting, could you clean up after yourself, please?"

Ludwig kept quiet to let the moment fester. When she didn't reply, he left to return back to his work. Here he was — working on a long weekend. But he had things to do.

The clomp of footsteps down the stairs broke his train of thought, and a string of German curses and the clatter of someone falling on a hard wood floor made him spring out of his seat.

Curse those uneven stairs.

He knew it was her. And he wasn't surprised to see that she had ended up at the foot of the stairs with her ankle twisted in an odd position. But he certainly was taken aback by how calm she was behaving in the face of a sprained ankle. Not a single cry of pain came out from her mouth. Usually, most people would be screaming. He would know; he'd sprained people's ankles enough times to know how they would react.

He watched as she shifted herself into a seating position with much effort, her injured leg stretched out and held as still as possible. She knew what she was doing.

"I did warn you about the stairs, you know." He said.

"I did not hear." Her words came out with force and her eyes were pained, "Could you… please, help me?"

That last question came off as surprisingly desperate. She sounded almost reluctant to ask. Ludwig walked over and leaned casually up against the banister,

"Well, since you are already here and I seem to be the only other person in sight, I might as well—."

"Gottverdammt! Stop talking and help me!" She snapped, glaring daggers at him.

He laughed, which made her angrier. Eliciting reactions out of her was amusing. Then maybe he was being a little too much of a bully. He lifted her like one would a child, of course after checking for any spine injuries — which she had none and carried her to the living room again. He set her on the sofa and wondered just how to treat her…

"Ice. Tight bandage." Her voice cut into the fog in his mind, "You have sprained my teammates' joints enough times for me to know how to treat them."

"I knew that!" He retorted, "I just want to find a faster way to get you back on your feet."

"Unless you happen to have a Medigun with you by any chance—!"

Wait.

Ludwig didn't bother to listen to the rest of her sentence before sprinting out of the room. How could he forget?! He raced upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms he had converted into a laboratory, throwing open the door and immediately breaking into a coughing fit from the torrents of dust that filled the air.

He recovered quickly and began pushing aside piles of notes and calculations and chemical vials almost desperately. His old Medigun prototype had to be in here somewhere. He knew he wasn't a very organized man, and it had been years since he'd stepped foot in this place. He couldn't remember where everything was.

Or maybe he was just getting old.

Then, he found it. Covered in a tarp was a large mass of metal. He ripped off the tarp and tossed it aside, revealing a very crudely made machine that sort of resembled the Medigun. Like his own current Medigun, it was connected to a bulky backpack via a hose.

Now armed with the contraption, back to the living room he went. He was met with an astonished stare from BLU's Medic. Blatantly ignoring her, he set the heavy Medigun on the floor near her with a decisive clang.

"Hah! I completely forgot about this thing!" He said, "It should still work! No need to worry about that aspect! After all, I did invent it! There is a 99% chance it will not make your heart explode! You'll probably still be alive by the end of it!"

She lay back and closed her eyes, "That is not very reassuring, Herr Doktor."

"I know! But I assure you, I can certainly bring you back to life if you die!"

He was grinning like a madman. He excitedly wondered whether this old prototype would make a human heart explode. It would be a rather interesting observation to make, and a refreshing challenge to bring back his patient from death (if it happened) without the aid of the components in his lab back in New Mexico. He gave a giddy, maniacal giggle, barely caring for the increasingly disturbed looks BLU's Medic was giving him.

"You are mad." She deadpanned, "I hope I never come under your care again."

"Well, I thought you knew that already!" He remarked from his spot on the floor, where he was crouching and messing with some switches.

"I may not be professional…" he stood back as the Medigun whirred to life, "... but I am your last resort."

He added,

"Anyway… let's get to work, shall we?"

Unfortunately the Medigun didn't make her heart burst as Ludwig had hoped. He admitted he felt a little disappointed afterwards.

But she was walking about again, good as new.

And her hangover seemed to be better. At least she wasn't constantly getting angry at every little thing he did or said. Now she sat perched on a chair at the kitchen table, sipping tea she had just prepared. Ludwig was off to the side with Archimedes and two other doves, one on each of his shoulders and one on his head.

He'd scribbled down his observations with his Medigun prototype on the nearest surface he could find (which happened to be a bit of torn wallpaper), and now he was doing the dishes, mostly out of restlessness. His doves cooed softly, providing bit of background noise to an otherwise dead silent kitchen.

He tossed aside the washcloth he was using and deciding he needed to get some more work done, headed up to his lab, leaving his guest in the kitchen. His home lab was a relatively peaceful place, if not for the mess it was in at the moment. He breezed in with his doves still perched on him, spending some time to race around and organize things a little. He was buzzing with energy when he finally sat down to actually start work.

"You are… working. During ceasefire?"

He glanced up; she was in the doorway, strolling into his lab. She gazed curiously at the strange preserved specimens floating in dusty glass jars of fluid on the shelves.

"Made it past the stairs, didn't you?" He quipped.

She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm, said nothing and only went over to the window, which stood closed, before throwing it open. Dragging over a stool (which she could somehow find amidst all the mess), she sat down and stared outside.

Ludwig turned back to his work. There was nothing for him to see, anyway. All she was doing now was scribbling(?) with a stubby pencil on a bit of paper she had found lying around.

"I did not exactly get the chance to ask…" he said, "... but how did you end up in Rottenburg last night?"

She didn't look at him, though he glanced up at her ever so briefly. It was so quiet he could hear the soft, gentle scratching of her pencil's tip on the paper; her strokes sounded light and rapid, perhaps like writing, but yet it didn't seem like that at all.

"I was lost."

She spoke suddenly, her voice slicing into the silence,

"... I was going to a town near here. Was visiting family…" She didn't look up from her paper, "... I may have walked a little too far off the path."

There was a hint of wavering uncertainty in her voice that made her statement come off as being not entirely true, but Ludwig let that go. He reasoned it wasn't worth it to probe further into her private matters.

"You know how to get to your original destination, then, ja?" He rose from his seat. His doves warbled and fluttered away, startled by his sudden movement.

"Yes... I do."

She was looking at him now. No, not at him. But at the doves.

"Well, since you have places to be, I believe you should be on your way." He said, "I don't want to take up your time if you have people to see."

She stood up promptly and stared him straight in the eyes, taking the time to decide how to reply. For some time, none of them spoke. And for the first time, Ludwig realised how surprisingly tall she was. The top of her head ended at his nose. The only woman he knew at the moment stood at his shoulder or slightly below.

"I will leave."

Her voice pulled him back to reality suddenly. She was already leaving. He went to escort her out, even opening the front door for her when they got there. At that, she gave him a look,

"For a psychopath, you are quite the gentleman."

"I would prefer to be described as... eccentric, Fraulein." He said.

He leaned on the doorframe and watched her leave.

"So, I will see you in New Mexico…" She shot over her shoulder, "... perhaps at the end of my bonesaw, no?"

A dark chuckle bubbled from Ludwig's chest, a manic grin tugging at the corners of his mouth,

"We will see about that, Frau Doktor…" He grinned wider, "But I accept your invitation. I look forward to slicing your head clean off your body."

"Hm, very well." She took a few steps forward out into the street and gave him a cocky smirk, "Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Ludwig."

The sound of his name being said hit him like a slap to the face. Ludwig's mind was suddenly a whirlwind of fear. Revealing personal information wasn't allowed in his line of work. But he and his teammates (more like his friends, though he didn't like admitting that) sometimes forgot to not refer to each other as their real names when working, never considering the fact that the other team could hear them too.

"...how do you know my name?" He said.

"Your team shouts it all the time. Quite subconsciously, I'm afraid." She said, gaining more confidence after finally scoring this one little victory over him, "They're loud enough for me to hear."

"Perhaps since you know my name already, it is only fair that you tell me yours?"

She appeared indecisive, before saying,

"My team calls me by my name as well. Maybe you should listen more next time." She grinned when she saw that she'd made him worked up.

"I'm sure you know revealing personal information is very much against regulations." He said, trying to keep as calm as possible.

"Yes, of course. I know that. But let me remind you that your team does that as much as mine. We are both equally in trouble." She had turned to face him, a sardonic smile plastered on her face.

"Ah, might as well. You would be looking out for it since I told you, after all." She continued, "If you want to know… it's Hannah."

He was a little shocked by how daring she was.

"You are very brave, Frau Hannah." He said.

"What can you do, anyway? Kill me?" She said, face brimming with glee as she taunted him, "What will that do? You'll just have a corpse on your hands! How useless!"

Her little remarks were getting on his nerves. Didn't she see she could get both of them fired?

He loomed over her, piercing grey eyes burning menacingly into her face. She remained unfazed, though her grin swiftly disappeared when she felt his sudden change of mood.

His voice deepened, sounding almost like a snarl,

"You and I are risking our jobs like this, Frau Doktor. So I would very much like you to leave."

That ended things. She was saying something else in reply, but he couldn't hear her over the sound of him slamming the front door in her face.