WARNING for: blood, injury, and delirium in this chapter.

PLEASE NOTE: PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is not going to be a central theme of this fic, but I thought I ought to at least touch on it and some of its symptoms. Regardless of respawn, the protagonists regularly experience traumatic/stressful situations. After some time, it's not strange to assume (with all of TF2's special circumstances), that most of the mercenaries will work past it (or not experience it at all) and react far differently to stressors than most people would.

All of this said, PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of, should you experience it at any time in your life. This is a perfectly legitimate reaction to highly stressful circumstances and situations, and is very treatable should you desire to seek help.

This chapter touches on only one of the possible symptoms thereof.

The deadbolt inside the shower hall tells you that, yes, someone had thought of your situation, and you can shower in peace. There's a long, metallic shelf on the nearest wall for your towel, clothes, and soaps—alongside a few the men had left behind: Prell, Ivory, and the like, things readily and cheaply available. Black tiles cover the room (an odd choice in color, you note again; any bathroom you've ever seen has been white, or, if the family in question was on the up-and-up, some mod shade of orange or blue), floor to concrete ceiling. Concrete. It occurs to you tonight that if there's ever a tornado (you've been assured that this is highly unlikely, no matter how similar the terrain and weather might seem to parts of Oklahoma), this room might be your best bet for shelter. As you shrug out of your uniform, orange dust cracks and crumbles to the tiles.

And things suddenly make sense: the black of the floor doesn't show a mess as readily.

You try not to dwell on that thought (or look too closely between the tiles), and select one of the partitioned stalls. It all seems relatively clean, from the showerhead to the silver drain. The spout isn't fancy, offering a simple, general spray—no rivulets or simulated rain here—but it is mounted high enough above your head to be comfortable; you quite appreciate that, closing your eyes and tipping your face to the gentle rhythm as it washes hot over hair and skin. You sigh, deep and sharp through your nose as the water washes down your face. It's… been a day. Quite a day, indeed.

Respawn is what makes this for you, you think. That death is only temporary makes all the difference. The ultimate transcendence. There has been little time to think about it, until now, under the steady rhythm of water washing the day's dust and grime off and away, kneading the stiffness and strain from your muscles. You have defied death today, experienced the impossible—as you will tomorrow, and the day after.

The thought sends a thrilled tingle running along your skin, and you turn to fetch the soap.

As though a testament to your newfound immortality, along your sternum runs the scar, just a thin, faded line now, a little disconcerting in its perfectly parallel precision. You trace it with a finger. Sensation has completely returned to the tissue around it, but the scar itself seems sensitive only to pressure. No matter. You have yet to experience the über-charge Medic had described, but if it's anything like the miracles of respawn and the medi-gun, it will be well worth everything.

You work some shampoo into your hair, taking care to massage your scalp, trying to work the sandy grit and sweat away and down the drain. That's one constant: dirt. You get just as filthy as you would have where miracles of science didn't snatch you out of the jaws of death. The other is, simply, pain. Most deaths today were so fast you hardly had time to learn what tore you away from the sun-drenched battlefield—quite thankfully. You close your eyes, rinsing the suds from your head. The alternative was… slow, terrifying, leaving a memory that worked its way under the skin, a warning against repeating the mistake.

It was just before the conclusion of the first round. The air had stilled, disappeared into cloudless skies, taking any relief of the morning's cool with it. Merciless, pale heat on your scalp, soaking into your scarlet uniform coat, instigating longing thoughts of shade and cold water…

The final point. You had to reach the final point. Sniper's voice had come over your earpiece, told you the others were making the push. You could offer support.

You're too focused to check the corner before you skid around the concrete edifice.

There stands the enemy engineer, sunlight catching on his goggles. You raise your shield, yet folded—but he's already pulled the trigger. Your ears ring. There's a steady rush in your head, a tingling in every limb, and you sag against the near wall, fibers of your coat catching on every imperfection. The BLU's mouth is moving, but your focus wavers, and your legs give way to the cracked dirt beneath you, sleeve sliding, clipping, tugging.

And now, the pain. Your arms have already seized your middle, and you clench your teeth, prying one hand from the scorching knives in your gut, to know, to see. It comes away shining crimson, your palm sticky. Even if you can draw your pistol fast enough… the taste of iron is on your tongue. And so, you raise your chin, ready for the killing shot.

It does not come.

The Engineer eyes you a moment as your body shudders in a racking cough, and, with a curt nod, hefts his half-finished sentry and disappears. Tears sting the edge of your eyes. "Bastard," you spit, as one rolls hot down your cheek, and wrap both arms tighter around the holes peppering your stomach. No point in counting them. No point in looking. With each breath, it seems a thousand jagged shards of glass shred every inch of your torso from the inside. Your lungs seize on the next mouthful of hot, desert air and you splutter, blood spraying scarlet past your lips into the too-bright air. You make the next breath shallower, but your stomach, your chest, your skin, still burns, still slices, and everything is so very red. Cold creeps at your fingertips as they curl into the tattered holes of your coat.

You're dying.

A trembling hand, slick with blood, slips, trips over the button on your ear-piece. "Medic!"

Those two syllables are agony. You spit, trying to push the suffocating taste and scent of iron from your lips. Blood and saliva dribble, hot, down your chin. Wipe it on the back of your hand; sticky crimson catching the light like a merry mobile of stained glass and crystal. "Medic!" White sparks dance at the edge of your eyes, and waves of darkness lap not far behind. Can't they hear you? Isn't there someone, anyone?

You press back against the concrete until you can feel the impression of each uneven ridge and stone, gather your legs to stand upon cracked dirt, and—

Hot, white pain rips through your torso, and you slump, sand and dust prickling your cheek. "Med—" You cough, spots bursting across your vision, blood spattering the orange soil.

There's a sound ringing in your ears—not gunshots. Not the din of the battlefield. Sensation returns, the stream running over your shoulders, a comforting embrace smelling of soap and earthy well-water. It's… a cry. Above the rush of water, a human voice, wailing, echoing along the tiled walls and…

Your mouth is open, throat raw. You. It's you, making that sound, the ungodly call that's raised the hair on your neck. You clamp down on it, cover your lips with both trembling hands.

Shit.

You breathe, let the water do its work, wash the memory off and away. Focus. Focus on the sensation of the water over your shoulders, of the silver faucet, the ebony tiles. There's one at eye-level, cracked, a hairline fracture through the black, crooked, like a spider's web. Inhale. Exhale.

Oh, hell. What if someone had heard?

You hold your next breath, listen. There appears to be no sound from the hall, no valiant attempts to break down the door and rescue you from… yourself. You shake your head, creep silently over to the bolted door, and wait, breath baited, count out the seconds.

Nothing.

Your gust of breath is a sigh of relief now. Good. Perhaps the concrete is beneficial for more than just its potential to withstand high winds.

The room seems… suddenly quite empty, and your shower effectively finished. Yes. You move back to the shower stall and close the faucet. It's time to get to bed, and forget whatever that was. It isn't as though you stayed dead! You're here, now, as you will be tomorrow, and the day after. You shake your head, tugging your night-clothes on with a little more force than necessary. Stupid. You can withstand a little pain.

At least no one had been privy to your little experience. You take comfort in that; the last thing you need is another dose of embarrassment or a series of awkward explanations.

Of course, there's no way you could know that there is at least one person in this base with absolutely exceptional hearing—one person who certainly knows of this episode. Whether his hearing is actually better than that of his fellows or if he simply listens more effectively than the others on this base is debatable, but matters not in either case: Medic, startled out of his evening tasks by a chilling sound, followed the distant, muffled call to its source. The showers, bolted shut. A frown creased his brow as he waited by the door, straining to hear of any struggle; if there was a fight, he was fully prepared bring the thing down, deadbolt be damned—but, if it were as he suspected… that approach simply would not do.

Beside the bolted door, he waited, breath baited, counted out the seconds. There was no movement inside, only the keening wail that prickled flesh down to the bone. And then—

It stopped. Cacophonous breathing. He looked about, casting suspicious glances up and down the hall before resolving to stay. If you had fallen unconscious…

But then, pacing. And then—the water fell silent. Medic nodded, slowly, brow furrowed.

Yes—as he had suspected, indeed. A gross stress reaction. In the War, they'd called it Shell-Shock. It was… something he had not thought on in some time; anything the others had experienced at the start of this employment had long since passed. Likely, it had been triggered by a disruptive memory or some discordant thought, and unless you went to him, there was little to be done, but you seemed to have handled it well yourself—for the moment. Perhaps it would happen again, perhaps it would not. For now, he knew there was nothing for it but to record the incident in the appropriate medical files. It would certainly be interesting to see how things progressed.

Medic paced down the hall, back the way he had come—long gone by the time you left to return to your room—hands clasped neatly behind his back, boot-heels clicking upon the floor, the echo of that pained howl catching fast in his memory.

Notes: The More You Know: PTSD was not categorized or diagnosed under that name until the 1980s, as the Vietnam War provoked more serious research into the condition. Beginning in 1952, what we know as PTSD was called "gross stress reaction," listed in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. In WWI, it was called "Shell Shock" after soldiers' reactions when exposed to heavy artillery fire.

(Oddly enough, when I went searching for Germany's research at this time (since Medic presumably did most of his training in Germany), I found that in the 1670s, both the Swiss and the Germans identified the behaviors the made up PTSD, but they called it 'nostalgia' and 'homesickness', respectively. Freud would later write about the afflictions, but his theories regarding "war neuroses" with its 'war ego' and 'peace ego' did not gain much ground. And, as Medic is in the States, I'm sure he's done some reading on what the APA is up to; mental health may not be his priority, but it does fall into his purview as the team's doctor.)