There were intruders in the museum. They got a word about Ahks tablet from somewhere and they wanted to steal it, people would do anything for money, Jed thought. According to the plan, him and Octavius was supposed to make the whole heist harder for the robbers, Octavius was the one who thought of a plan, as he is an army General, strategical plans were his thing.
That's why both of them were on their way to the boiler room in the depths of the museum, Octavius thought that if they could get the water that was stored there in case of a fire, switch it with the boiler one that was boiling hot and somehow get it to run from the sprinklers, the steam caused by the the temperature of it would limit the vision of the robbers and therefore, slow them down enough to be caught by one of the groups made up from exhibits that were roaming around the whole museum. It was a pretty good plan, Jed had to agree with that, but turning all those leavers by themselves would be kinda difficult. Both leaders decided that involving any of their men would be too dangerous, considering the fact that nobody would be able to be careful in the rush of the chase to look under their feet to see if there weren't any miniatures there, it was a terrible idea.
"Turn left."
Right after the words left Octavius' mouth, Jed made a quick turn to the left, their mini car skidded across the slippery floor. "The boiler room is going to be the first entrance on the right. „ Jedediah stoled a quick glance at his partner, Octavius was looking at his quickly drawn map of the museum that he sketched back in Larry's office while coming up with the plan. Jed would never stop being amazed by how quick his partner's brain could work, one of the reasons why he was such a good general. „Stop. „ he was brought back from his thoughts by the sharp command, he quickly stepped on the breaks and the car came to stop in front of a room. Jed looked at the sign beside the doorframe, boiler room, the important part of their mission begun.
Both of them got out of the car and ran inside "Now what Tavi." Jed looked at Octavius flipping through his notes, "We are looking for the major pipe of the fire protection system, then we need to find the pipe that connects it to the boiler. The boiler should be at the right temperature already but it would be better if we checked it just to make sure it's hot enough. When all of that will be done, we need to close off the water that is inside the protection system and let the hot, boiler water go through it to the sprinklers." the speed of the explanation mixed with all of the loud boiler room noises made it hard to catch all of the words, somehow Jed's been able to understand it. "Sounds like a good plan."
He glanced at Octavius, he looked uncertain "Yes, I just hope the pipes will be strong enough to hold the hot water, I don't think that the fire protection system was built to hold any kind of warm water, especially boiling one." he mumbled, his eyes quickly scanning the room in search of major system pipe. Jed observed him in the process of it, noting how Roman's eyes lighted up when he located what he was looking for. Both of them climbed up the pipe, to the little shelf hanging under the main valve. "Can you see the temperature from here? „ Jed hoped he did because he didn't want to make a trek across the room, climbing there was hard enough. He looked at Octavius, the general had his eyes squinted in an effort to make his vision better, „It's 99°C, perfect." another point to the Roman, his eyesight apparently was as good as the eagles, or whatever the saying was. Now the tricky part of the plan, turning the valves, from what Jed was able to see there were three valves, two red ones and one yellow. It seemed like those colors meant something because Octavius turned away from the yellow valve to inspect closely the red ones, his eyes followed the pipes that were leading from the cutouts. „First, we need to close this one," he said pointing at the red valve on Jed's right „Then we need to open this one," Octavius added walking up to the first valve they needed to close, Jed right on his heels. Jed hoped that opening the valve would be easier than closing it, it took them at least a few minutes to properly close it, unfortunately, there wasn't any time to rest and they went right back to working on opening the valve that would let the hot water go. He could feel the heat of the pipe through his gloved hands, which quickly remained him that his companion was in fact, bare-handed. He looked to his right at Octavius, to see him touching the pipe like it wasn't visibly burning his hands "Oct-" he began to say but got quickly cut off by the Roman „There is no time, Jedediah." Jed sighed, guess he will need to check over his hands after all of that was over.
Jed thought that everything went according to plan, they opened the hot water, they could hear that it went through the sprinklers, it was the end of their job and everything went smoothly, right until one of the systems pipes started to leak. It burst open and hit Octavius square in the face. He wasn't ready for the scream of absolute pain that came from Octavius, he quickly skidded over to his friends' side, picking him out of the way of the water. The small number of droplets that hit him gave him the idea of how hot the water in the pipe actually was, he hoped that it cooled down a little on the way to the sprinklers so his other friends up there wouldn't get burned. Jed disposed the Roman as far away from the water as he could and glanced down at Octavius, he was holding the left side of his face with already burned hands. From beneath them, Jedediah could see similarly burned skin of his face, if not worse, it wasn't looking good "Okey, let me see it. Come on, Tavi you can't touch it." he blurted out, forcing Octavius' hands to let go of his face, they were shaking. "It hurts Jed, oh gods it hurts so much." Octavius whimpered, it broke Jed's heart to hear his voice filled with so much pain.
From his kneeling position in front of the Roman Jed could see where the water made the most of the damage. The skin around Roman's left eye already started to show signs of pretty severe burns, he couldn't see in what state the eye was because both of Octavius' eyes were screwed shut. „Hey Tavi, can you open your eyes for me, baby? I need to see if there is any damage. „ he pleaded, Jed could see Octavius struggling to complete the request but after a few seconds he opened his eyes and stared straight ahead, fear clearly showing on his face "I can't see. Jedediah I can't see on my left eye."
The time stopped for a moment after Jed heard the painful words laced with fear, he knew that Octavius' eyesight was one of his greatest assets besides his mind, and losing it, even halfway, would crush him. That's what he feared, it wasn't really that long ago when he saw what Octavius was able to do if his mental state was poor enough, this would be another strike at it while it was still fragile and healing. There is no way that Jed's going to leave him alone now, he doesn't want to go through that again, especially he doesn't want Octavius to feel like that was the only way out again. „Everything is okay, just wait here and don't touch your face, please. I need to close the water off"
He knew that it took all of Octavius' power of will to not go back to holding his face once Jed let his go of his hands, but he squeezed his eyes shut back again. Seeing that Octavius was good for now, he got up from his kneeling position and quickly went to shut the water off, he dodged the powerful spray of it that was bursting out of the pipe, where the high temperature made the weak installation brake. He thought that turning the valve close again all by himself would be more difficult, probably adrenaline making him stronger, it didin't matter at this moment, he glanced at the broken pipe and saw that the water stopped flowing through the crack. He made a swift move of pulling off his bandana while walking back to Octavius, dipping it in the already cool liquid that was pooling on the shelf, once he was back to his original position of kneeling in front of the roman Jed put the wet bandana on the worst burns on Octavius' face, the general cringed at the feeling of rough material on his raw skin, but relaxed a little once the cool feeling of it hit him.
"You know we can't really go back on our own now, ya know?" he could feel Octavius tensing up at that "I didn't mean it as if it's your fault, I meant that there is no way I'm letting you climb down from here in this state, your hands are burned, you wouldn't be able to put any weight on them." Jed clarified, but his partner didn't relax, "I'm still sorry, I shouldn't have been standing in front of the pipe like some idiot, I knew there was a risk of it breaking but I still didn't move and now we are stranded here-"
"Hey, no stop. It was just an accident, yes the pipe breaking was a possibility but it didn't look like it was going to break, thinking about what could have happened won't help any of us right now." the cowboy reassured, seeing that it did a little in comforting his friend, Jed sighed and sat down. Pulling the roman down so he could lie down against him was a little too easy, which told him enough about in what state the whole incident left Octavius in, he accepted the gesture without a word and that was unusual for him, there always was at least some kind of sound that he made when Jed was manhandling him like that, but now all he was hit with was silence. Looking down at the resiting general assured him that he was still in fact awake but barely, there was no reason for him to be awake and in pain, a little rest until someone will come down and get them would do him good, at least that's what Jed thought would be good.
"Hey, you wanna rest for a little while?" he whispered, gently running his fingers through Octavius' sweat-soaked hair. He heard a quiet nod coming from the roman, with that confirmation he started to quietly hum a song he remembered his mother singing to him when he was sick as a child. At the end of the song, Jed could feel Octavius slowly going lax in his arms, he started to rock back and forth gently and began to hum again. He kept that up until the roman relaxed completely.
Jedediah couldn't tell how long both of them were sitting on the shelf in the boiler room, but he didn't stop humming the song for even a second fearing that suddenly stopping would wake Octavius up. He kept on throwing quick glances at the burn on the general's face, some of the areas were turning black which couldn't be good. After what it felt like hours, Jed finally heard heavy footsteps, he looked up to see Larry and Teddy entering the boiler room, "Hey, Larry" he cringed at the volume of his voice and glanced down at Octavius, relieved that he didn't even stir, after quickly checking on his friend Jed focused back on the night guard. Both Larry and Teddy looked worriedly at Octavius, "What happened?"
"The system pipe with hot water burst open, he got burned. It's really bad, Larry." he could see that him using the night guards first name showed the seriousness of the situation pretty good, "Ok we are going to take you two to my office, are there any doctors in your or Octavius' diorama?" Larry asked extending his hand, trusting Jed to get himself and Octavius safely on it. "Yeah there are two in mine, but this area is more of Billy's responsibility and I think there is a guy named Maximus with this kind of duty in Rome." the cowboy replied picking the roman up at the same time and getting on the night guards hand. He set his friend down and looked up at Larry, who was quiet, to see him a little shocked, "What?"
The guard started to walk out of the boiler room shaking his head a little, Teddy right behind him still looking worried, "Nothing, just the way you picked him up effortlessly." he mumbled back, Jed rolled his eyes, for the sake of normalcy and an attempt to cover up his worry just a little, even though it probably didn't do anything, "He isn't really that heavy you know, without all of this armor he is even lighter. When I picked him up for the first time I was as surprised as you are, I expected him to be way heavier with all of that muscle mass." he rambled, desperate to fill up the silence as they made their way to Larry's office. As they passed through the museum's corridors, Jed noticed all of the water puddles scattered around the floor and he suddenly remembered why they even had to go to the boiler room, the robbers. "Hey what about the intruders?"
"Oh yeah, forgot to tell you. We got them." Larry made a face scratching the back of his head, "Well, to be more specific Attilas group got them and from what I saw, they won't be getting back there any time soon if not at all." suddenly Jed doesn't want to know the details, but he can easily imagine a few things that were done to them considering the fact that Attila was the leader of the group, he kinda felt a little bad for those guys, but only a little. In what felt like one of the longest 5 minutes of his life, all of them arrived at the office. After Larry got both leaders safely on his desk, Jed could hear him asking Teddy to get one of the doctors from the Hall of Miniatures, the door to the office quietly closed and all that could be heard for a while were presidents' retreating footsteps along with Octavius' soft breathing. The night guard was the first to break the silence, "Do you think he will be okay?"
Jedediah looked up from his still sleeping friend to see Larry sitting in the office chair, worried look from before back on his face, he sighed and went back to staring at his and Octavius' joined hands "I-I don't really know, I saw what it looked like back there Larry, the burn was turning black in some places back then, I have no idea in what state it's now but Octavius said that he can't see anything on his left eye." he trailed off glancing up to his partner's face where his bandana was still covering its entire left side. He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and a squick of the office chair as Larry shifted his position, "What? What do you mean he can't see on his left eye?" Jed closed his eyes.
"He is half-blind, Larry. The boiling water damaged his eye, he can't see anything there." he barely choked out, the cowboy could feel his eyes burning with unshed tears. After that Jed wasn't able to say anything without spilling the tears he was working so hard on stopping, both of the awake men were sitting in silence until Teddy returned back from fetching one of the doctors from the Hall "I got both Billy and Maximus here. I thought that two sets of eyes would be beneficial in this situation and Maximus here is bound to know more about generals health care as he is a part of his legion." the U.S president set both miniatures down on the desk, went over to grab Larry out of the office chair and proceed to drag him out of the room to give the miniatures privacy as the doctors worked.
Jedediah observed the doctors as they began working on his friend. Billy and Maximus were both in their 50's, while Billy's hair was slightly grey on the temples, Maximus' head was filled with white hairs and no single trace of their original color, despite the cultural differences both men were pretty good friends, probably because both were doctors, which meant that they could complain about difficult patients to each other with each of them knowing the pain. Jed was brought back from his thoughts by Billys sharp inhale and Maximus' quiet hum as the Roman doctor pilled back the bandana covering Octavius' face, he was glad that his partner wasn't awake to feel all of this, pilling back the bandana from his face was bound to hurt.
With peace between both dioramas came an exchange of knowledge in many different fields, one of them being medicine. They were also able to ask Larry to stock them with modern medical supplies, such as medical tape which was really beneficial in this case because instead of circling Octavius' whole head to cover up the burn, the doctors were able to easily tape the bandage in place with tape. "Okay, I take that you will be taking care of him right?" Jed glanced in the way where the voice came from, Billy was looking at him questioningly with a raised eyebrow. The blond couldn't really find it in himself to give a worded answer so he nodded his head instead, "Then we are going to leave you the materials that are going to be necessary for changing the bandage. For the first two or three nights, change it every 4 to 5 hours, after that period of time we can do it every two nights, and even further into the healing, the bandages change could be even more far away from each other." Jed listened closely as Maximus explained while sorting the supplies in a certain order. When both doctors were all set to go, Billy turned around to face the door and whistled loudly to get the attention of the men who stood just outside the door, if the shadows under the door could tell anything. The loud noise woke Octavius up, the weak movement got Jed looking down at the roman as the door to the office opened, in the corner of his eye he could see a gloved hand being offered to the miniatures, probably Teddy offering to get the doctors back to their dioramas, he paid them no mind as all of his attention was on the slightly unfocused brown eye staring back at him from where the owner of it was lying down on his lap.
"Hey, there. How are you feeling?" Jed whispered gently running his hand through his partner's hair like he did back in the boiler room. Instead of answering, Octavius shut his unbandaged eye and grimaced, the cowboy noticed a lone tear trailing down the Romans temple into his hair. "Hey hey hey, don't cry. Everything is going to be alright, honey." he kept his voice low, boosting Octavius up so he was resting against his chest instead. The general took a sharp breath in an attempt to keep himself from sobbing out loud, knowing that they weren't alone in the room. Jed glanced up to look around the office in search of Larry, he caught him standing by the door holding the door handle giving him a knowing look when he noticed the cowboy staring at him as he walked out of the room closing them off from the outside world. When the sound of the night guard's footsteps grew fainter, Octavius gave in and started to cry quietly. Jed tried to comfort him within his best ability, as the Romans cries turned into full on sobbing as he mourned the loss of his vision in his left eye.
All Jedediah could do was comfort him as he cried himself to sleep.
The first thing that Jed registered after he woke up the next night was the slight movement of Octavius against his chest. When he looked around himself and noticed that he was in Larry's office and not in his diorama, the memories of last night's events crushed back into him. Which also reminded him about something, "Hey, Tavi I need to change your bandages." he said while rubbing his partner's arm, Octavius didn't say anything but Jed knew he had a green light, he shifted himself around so he was kneeling in front of the roman and started to change the bandages with the help o the supplies that were left by the doctors last night. Deciding that it would be easier to work on the burns located on Octavius' hands first, he started to unwrap the old gauze from the left hand. It seemed like most of the burns were located on the left side of the general's body, luckily the armor that he wore protected him from more damage. Overall besides his face, Octavius got burns on the three fingers of his hand, plus the underside of the said hand along with the upper part of his left arm, and two fingers on his right hand. After he took care of the minor burns, he moved on to take care of the one on Roman's face, he looked up to see Octavius blankly staring at the desktop. Jed frowned, the fact that he didn't hear a word coming from the general since last nights accident worried him, yes Octavius wasn't really that outgoing but he never was quiet for that long, "Please, talk to me." the soft tone of Jeds voice shocked the roman out of whatever state he was in, the sorrowful brown eye moved to meet the worried blue ones, "About what." his voice was a little raspy from not being used for a few hours.
"About whatever is going on in your head, you can talk to me about anything. I know that any of your thoughts aren't good at this moment, I'm worried about you so please talk to me Octavius." Jed pleaded quietly, carefully grasping Roman's hands in his slightly bigger ones. He could see a million emotions going across Octavius' face, but after a few minutes, he got an answer, "After you change the bandage, I want you to tell how does the burn look like." from the tone of his voice Jed knew there was no place for negotiations, so he quickly went back to work. He gently pulled the tape and bandage off his face and examined the burns, "Okay, so the burns are still red and black in some places but they look better than last night." Jed reported lightly turning Octavius' face in all directions to get a better view, "And the eye?" he could tell that the question was forced out, Roman's voice wavering at the end of the sentence. The cowboy sighed, "It's red and the pupil is already turning white."
Octavius took a sharp breath, both of them were silent as Jed finished changing the bandage on Roman's face, taping new gauze back on. He put everything back into the kit and threw the old bandages somewhere to his left, he sat back down "I'm sorry, Tavi." Octavius scoffed, "You don't need to apologize about anything, it wasn't your fault I was the one who was stupid-"
"You weren't stupid-"
"But I was!" the roman cut him off sharply, Jedediah just started back at him in shock. "Don't you get it? I knew there was a risk of the pipe bursting open but yet I didn't move away like any person with half of a brain would. I just stood there staring at it and I got what was coming in my way. Good riddance, as if I wasn't already a shitty general. I should have died behind that glass case, waste away like the trash that I am-" he was stopped by Jed shaking him sharply by his shoulders, "Stop!" the weak order was chocked out, filled with tears. Octavius looked up from his clenched hands to meet Jed's gaze, the cowboy's face was full of tears that streamed down from his eyes that were filled with salty water, the roman wasn't surprised that his face was also wet when he noticed that the vision in his one functioning the eye was slightly blurred. "Please stop," Jed whispered, bowing his head with his shoulders shaking, both of them sat in silence crying quietly while they tried to get themselves enough under control to start talking again.
After what felt like an eternity, Jedediah pulled in his last shaky breath and finally looked back at Octavius. He stared at him apologetically, "Don't you ever say that again, you understand? I don't want to hear you ever say that you should have died back there because that's just a load of bullshit, understand?" Jed emphasized every word while lightly gripping the Romans forearms feeling the scars that were located there, the memory of that night vividly playing in front of his eyes, he closed them to erase the image away. He opened them back again after a few seconds to look back at Octavius, "I know that you are still in a bad place, we have been working on that since that night and I also know that this incident will strike you back down. But we will get through this together okay? You are not alone in this Tavi, all of us got your back, we won't let you fall down. As Teddy said, there is no recovery without any setbacks. And this is one of them, a big one yes but not an impossible to overcome."
Jed searched the romans' face for any reaction from his words, he saw Octavius' face slowly crumbling to show raw devastation, "But how?" he whispered brokenly. Jedediah closed the gap between them and hugged the general close without hurting him.
"We will just have to wait and see."
The healing process of the burns was pretty slow, after a week of basically living in Larry's office, Billy and Maximus give Octavius a free pass to go back to his duties, but with instructions to take it easy for the next two weeks. Getting adjusted to having only half of his vision was hard for the roman general, for a week he constantly walked into walls, pillars, and other things like that. The adjustment time was really frustrating and put Octavius in a bad mood most of the time, the only reason why he didn't just give up was the fact that he had Jedediah on his side and other museum exhibits along with Larry.
When the time came to finally take the bandages off his face, the ones on his hands were taken off a week before, Octavius found himself feeling nervous. The bandage, while being slightly uncomfortable, covered the burned area up. He wasn't too keen on losing the only barrier he had, the roman general asked himself yet again what he did to deserve Jedediah, the cowboy strolled into his room the day the bandages were taken off and sat down beside Octavius where he was sitting on the windowsill. The roman turned his head towards him as the blonde thrust something into his hands, he looked down to see a black eyepatch, he whipped his head up to look back at his partner. Jed smiled and ruffled his head.
"I knew that you wouldn't be comfy with walking around with the burn uncovered, so I asked Larry for some materials to make this, I had to google up how to make an eyepatch though because sewing isn't really my strongest front but I hope you will like it-" he was cut off by Octavius throwing his arm around him, pulling him into a hug. The cowboy smiled again and hugged him back, he squeezed him harder when he heard Octavius whispering 'thank you into his ear. They pulled away after a few minutes, Jed put his hand on the romans cheek and ran his thumb across the scar that was left there. He took the eyepatch that was lying on Octavius' lap and put it on the general's face to cover up his left eye.
"There, beautiful as always." he beamed, putting his hands on the Romans shoulders, "Even without an eye?" Octavius smiled sadly. Jedediah reached out to hold his face in both of his hands, "Yeah, even without an eye." he whispered and gave him a soft kiss, after he pulled away Jed smiled softly looking back at him, "You will always be beautiful to me."
Octavius's eye welled up as he started to laugh. After that, both of them drove to the nearest window with a good view and sat down on the big windowsill to look at the stars. Jed looked down at the roman resting against his shoulder, completely relaxed in his sleep, he put an arm around him and kissed the crown of his head before rested his own against his partners.
"You are my everything, Octavius."