Ship: Magentashipping (Zigfried Von Schroeder x Mana/Dark Magician Girl)

Magentashipping because of Zigfried's hair and the pinkish accents on the Dark Magician Girl's outfit. If there is already a ship name, or if you have a better one, please don't be afraid to give me a holler! (Once again to the one who requested this, I am sorry it has taken this long!)

So, this started as something else, a different AU, but I realized the idea I had for that could not be contained in a oneshot. I might end up elucidating on that idea via a multi-chapter story, we'll see, I guess. So, instead, here's an AU where Mana is a surgeon at a hospital and Zigfried is admitted into the ER.

An Apple A Day… Doesn't Do Jack Shit When You Get Shot

Shivering. He couldn't stop shivering. He was so cold, and his whole body was trembling.

The voices came as if through static. Machines beeped and blared.

"He's going into shock!"

"We need two units of A, stat!"

He groaned, eyes rolling deliriously, tried moving his arms.

A face loomed into view in the blazing white light. A white mask stained with blood, but her eyes gleamed. A valkyrie fresh from battle, here to carry him away to the glory of the afterlife.

"Sir, I need you to stop moving. We're going to take care of you," came her voice, the clearest of them all, cutting through like a divine sword.

A valkyrie, caring for him? He had always known that whatever gods existed had him in their favor.

He tried to speak to her, but only a pained groan tore from his throat. Suddenly he was aware of his pain. It was sharp and throbbing, total agony from deep within.

Take me away, end this pain.

And he faded into the cold and the pain.


Beep. Beep. Beep.

His right arm was cold, heavy. The cold slithered through his veins, like a sluggish reptile curling inside him to absorb his warmth. He shifted from a world of darkness to a world of bright white, then back again. Black, white, black, white.

"He's waking up!" came a voice, so near and dear to him, he knew, but he could not place face or name to voice. "Zigfried!" A warm hand touched his cold arm. It was startlingly hot, the palm sweaty. He twitched.

The oscillation changed from white-to-black to black-to-hazel-and-maroon. He realized suddenly that he was blinking, slow and groggy. And the force of memory struck him, though his lips moved as if around lead. "Leon." His entire body felt… dull, heavy. What… what was wrong with him.

He could barely manage to get his fingers to twitch, and he looked down. From beneath a piece of medical tape, transparent tubing twined from the inside of his elbow. An IV was steadily dripping a medical cocktail into his veins. He licked his lips. They were bone dry, but, surprisingly, they didn't ache.

"The hospital…?" he murmured, grateful when Leon tangled their fingers together.

Leon's hazel eyes were bloodshot, the skin around them red and raw. He'd been crying, a lot, it seemed, Zigfried noted distantly. "D-Don't you remember what happened?"

A huff of breath, and somehow it made his abdomen feel tight, but he ignored it for the sake of a faint smile. "I hardly remember my own name right now, Leon."

"Y-You were shot," Leon gurgled, a fresh sheen of tears glistening over his eyes.

Oh. Oh. He… He sighed slowly, eyes falling closed again, head falling back. It felt like it took too much energy to try to remember. "I think I'm going to fall asleep again, Leon," he murmured, and even he could hear the distinct slur to his words. "Keep… Keep holding my hand." He needed an anchor in that blackness. Even as he drifted off, he was frightened, though the feeling was muted. But if Leon held his hand, Leon could guide him back.

Leon could always guide him back.


The next he woke, he was decidedly more coherent. Leon had fallen asleep in the chair beside Zigfried's hospital bed, but their fingers were still tightly tangled together. Zigfried squeezed, weakly, though he still would have been gentle even if he had his strength.

His body felt stiff from laying down in one position for so long, but he knew better than to stretch and shift.

He remembered with haunting clarity the events leading up to his admission to a hospital. A disgruntled employee, the black metal of a gun glinting wickedly in the lights of Zigfried's office, the sound that he could've sworn had shattered his eardrums, the pain.

There was no pain now, only a dull discomfort, no doubt because of the aid of powerful painkillers. But still, it made him wonder again, how on earth had that man made it through security to Zigfried's office?

Questions burned within him, bright and frenzied with anger and panic. What had happened to the man that had wounded him? Had the police apprehended him? Had security killed him before the police even arrived? The questions lingered on the tip of his tongue, but he bit them back. Leon needed rest, too. He'd probably been awake worrying for his big brother the entire time.

Zigfried sighed and laid his head back. His mouth was dry, but he wasn't thirsty. The saline solution in his medical cocktail was undoubtedly keeping him hydrated. (And it was probable that the cocktail itself was what was giving him a dry mouth, too.)

A light, gentle knock on the door had him lifting his head again. The door cracked open, and a woman ducked her head in.

Thick brown hair was tamed back into a ponytail. Bits and pieces still fell down to frame her richly tanned face. But it was her eyes, their bluish-hazel hue and their lively gleam, that caught Zigfried's attention.

Hazy images teased the edges of his mind, but they were too blurred to make out.

All he knew was that this woman was familiar.

She smiled brightly at him. "Hello, Mister von Schroeder. It's good to see that you're awake." She was quiet enough not to stir Leon, but just loud enough for Zigfried to hear her clearly.

"We're going to take care of you" an echo of her voice whispered into his head.

"Are… are you my doctor?" he asked, and his voice was still hoarse from sleep.

She stepped into the room and gently closed the door behind her. Sure enough, she wore a pristine white labcoat - it seemed a tad too big around her shoulders for her, and it hung a bit over her wrists - and blue scrubs beneath. She waved a hand around in the air. "Yes, but also no."

He arched an eyebrow at her.

She smiled, sheepish but mischievous at the same time. "I'm not the doctor assigned to looking after your recovery, but I was one of the ER surgeons present when you were admitted."

A face loomed into view in the blazing white light. A white mask stained with blood, but her eyes gleamed. A valkyrie fresh from battle, here to carry him away.

His cheeks heated. The ramblings of his blood-deprived mind were… quite something.

Another energetic wave of her hand. Her hands her small, delicate things, with finely-boned fingers and gently defined knuckles. They were hands designed for intricate tasks, like plucking harp strings or handling scalpels. Perhaps not the hands of a warrior goddess, but respectable hands nonetheless.

"Well, I just wanted to see how you're doing. You took quite the hit, with the nick to the diaphragm and the intestinal damage and all that. We had to give you a blood transfusion, too, but there was no damage that we couldn't fix," and she ended the statement with a cheeky wink. "Anyway, I'll be on my way, before Doctor Ishtar comes to reprimand me for," her face affected a dramatically stern expression, and her voice a stuffy, pedagogical tone, "'harassing her patients.'" And then she was turning toward the door, her delicate bronzed hand resting on the handle.

"Wait," Zigfried croaked out, before his brain even realized that he wanted to speak. When she looked at him over her shoulder, he came to the stunning conclusion that he actually had no idea what he wanted to say, anyways. He mouthed silently for a moment, growing incredibly frustrated with himself by the second, though she was waiting patiently for him to speak, and he finally managed a "What's your name?"

The smile that cracked across her face was bright and warm even in the cold white of the fluorescent lights. "Well, since I'm not your doctor anymore, you just can call me Mana." She wiggled her fingers at him in farewell. "I'm sure I'll catch you around, Mister von Schroeder." She slipped through the door and closed it gently behind her.

Though she was gone, the room seemed so much warmer, so much brighter.

Perhaps not a valkyrie to carry him away to the afterlife, but something else…

A guardian angel that kept him alive.

He knew he just saw the face of the woman who had saved his life.


"Mana, were you harassing my patients again?" Ishizu asked, green eyes staring sternly over the edges of her glasses.

Mana laughed. "Patient, singular, and no, I was not harassing him. I was barely in there for two minutes!" She tucked her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. "C'mon, I had my hands rooting around inside him for a stray bullet - the least I could do is drop by and say hello!"

"Don't make it sound like you owe him something," Ishizu replied, and she was shaking her head, though a gentle smile was flirting with the edges of her lips. "If anything, it's the other way around."

Mana leaned her forearms on the edge of the counter. "Nope, he owes me nothing." She rolled her shoulders. "I was just doing my job."

"Yes, because you're just 'doing your job,' even though you care enough about patients you've never even spoken to that you drop by their rooms in the ICU just to say hello." Ishizu tapped her younger colleague on the top of her head with a clipboard. "Be gone from here. Go take an actual break on your break for once."

Mana ducked under the clipboard before it could bop her again, and she trotted down the hall, and she stuck her tongue out at Ishizu as she went. "Yeah, okay, okay, mom, I'll be sure to do that."

Ishizu shook her head and turned her attention back to her clipboard. "That girl, I swear…" How had Mahad handled mentoring her for so long?

One of the great mysteries of the universe.


They were finally letting him eat and drink, and though the hospital meals were by no means the luxurious fare he was accustomed to, they were a welcome addition to his hollow stomach.

Some part of him twisted with displeasure - Leon had told him that the bastard that put a bullet in his abdomen was dead. Not shot by security. Not shot by police.

He killed himself. Right there in Zigfried's office. He must've thought that Zigfried was as good as dead after he'd shot him and took himself out.

Zigfried poked at his food with his fork, a thoughtful frown on his face.

No justice, no jailtime, no making the man suffer with a lifetime of misery inside and outside of prison. The only way he could spite the fucker was by staying alive and well.

So, despite his lack of appetite, he took another bite of food. Eating would help him regain his strength, anyways.

His nurse was quietly shuffling around with the machines he was hooked up to and jotting things onto a clipboard. He mostly stayed out of her way, and she out of his.

Leon was gone - back to his relatively normal day-to-day schedule, as Zigfried had demanded of him. He had no other visitors aside from Leon and that surgeon, Mana, and it made his days quiet. The television had but a few channels, and most of the shows on those channels were insipid soap operas. When he wasn't working on the paperwork Leon had brought him, he was reading quietly, the blinds drawn back from the windows to let in the natural summer light from outside.

He'd been moved out of the ICU the day prior, but it seemed Doctor Ishtar was still concerned with the damage the bullet had done to his intestines, so he would remain in the hospital for observation for a few more days.

He sighed, a little tight and a bit achy - with a smaller dose of pain-killers, the discomfort of his wound was more obvious - and by all the Norse gods, it itched like no other. He pushed the mostly-finished food away and let himself recline back more. Though the medication still made him just as tired. Or maybe that was the wound. Either way, he was exhausted without end these days.

A light knocking at the door had him suddenly sitting up straighter, and the nurse looked up from her tasks as the door cracked open.

Bright eyes and a brighter smile peeked in. Mana. "Hey there, Zigfried," and it was all sing-song, teasing and lilting, the same way she'd said it when Zigfried had requested, not the least bit flustered, that she not call him 'Mister von Schroeder' anymore.

(And she'd tilted her head, ponytail falling over her shoulder and asked, 'But isn't it your name?' But he'd had no response, because despite all his acumen and eloquency with language, he somehow could not verbally express how the title made her sound like a giggly, mischievous schoolgirl when she uttered it, and the perverse response that burned in his chest each time disturbed him to no end. Thinking indecent things was not a habit of his, and he wanted to stop it in its tracks before it became one.)

He inclined his head in greeting.

"Oh, Doctor Alzalam," the nurse greeted, blinking at their uninvited - but not unwelcome - visitor.

Mana beamed. "Ah, I'm off duty today. It's just Mana." She stepped in, and Zigfried had to blink multiple times.

It was the first time he'd ever seen her out of scrubs and a labcoat - an airy cerulean scoop-neck blouse, strapped down with a magenta belt just below her breasts, and similarly magenta shorts peeked out from around the hem that dangled down to her mid-thigh. She was clearly dressed for the balmy summer weather, though her hair, brown and thick and wild, was free from what had seemed to be a perpetual updo. It tumbled down her shoulders and along the bare skin of her bronzed collarbones.

She practically bounced her way farther into the room. Her legs were long and toned and such a rich brown.

She was gorgeous.

From head to toe.

"You're…" he gulped thickly. "You're not working today?"

"Nope! First full day off in a while!" She giggled and dragged a chair up to his bedside.

"But… you're here…?" he said, slowly, trying not to stare too intensely at her. It hurt his eyes - it was almost like staring directly into the sun.

"Yup! Thought I would visit you, anyways. I know on Wednesdays Leon doesn't have much time to visit you." She plucked a piece of food off his plate and popped it into her mouth. "You get grumpy when you get lonely." She winked.

He hummed in response, watching as her hand crawled across to the tray and onto his plate again.

"Sorry," she giggled, sheepish. "I haven't had lunch yet. I should probably let you eat, though." He managed to look at her once more. She was beaming at him again. "You need your energy, after all."

"I'm done," he murmured. "You can have it." He pushed the tray toward her.

"Oh!" She picked up the fork. "Thank you."

He hummed again.

"You know, I thought you would eventually move to a hospital more suited to your… tastes," she said, thoughtful but not unkind. "I mean, we definitely don't have the luxuries that you would expect of a hospital that's more of your… financial caliber." She quickly chewed a small piece of food. "No offense, or anything. Just genuinely curious."

She had a point. Zigfried loved living in the lap of luxury… five star meals, the most expensive of hotels, beds, care. He was sure the decor in one of his living rooms costed more than his whole stay at this hospital. But something had kept him here when he could have transferred to a place more suited to his tastes.

He breathed out slowly and met her eyes, and he was immediately mesmerized, once again, by the blue and brown strands that twined together in her irises. "The… doctors here are very talented. Why transfer when I trust the doctors here?"

"That's a good point," she replied, finishing off the last morsels. She lightly tapped handle of the fork on the edge of the plate. "Y'know, by the next time I have a day off, you'll already be discharged. How am I going to visit you then?" She said with a smile, almost shy, with the tines of the fork resting on the right side of her bottom lip.

His breath caught in his throat, and he managed a small smile in return. "Anytime you want to visit me, Mana, I'll be sure to make time for you in my schedule."

"Awwwwww!"

They both nearly jumped out of their skins.

They forgot the nurse was still there!

Zigfried hid his blazing red face behind a shaking hand.

Mana laughed.

Despite being stuck in the hospital, it was a good day.

END PART

So, requester, I hope you enjoyed this! It's confirmed - my original idea for this oneshot is being written into a full-length story! (One I plan on finishing before I begin posting it XD), so if anyone is interested, I'll be sure to mention it in another author's note when I begin posting it ^-^ One thing I'll say now - it's a fantasy AU!

Next up: Mistshipping (Mako Tsunami/Ryouta Kajiki x Duke Devlin/Ryuuji Otogi)