Notes: The end of the semester is getting crazy, but there we are! Thank you, as ever, for your patience!

Warning in this chapter for: blood, graphic violence, some dissociation

Despite the night, you wake early, with plenty of time to sew the patch on the shoulder of your uniform coat. The grey dawn filters through the window, highlighting the creases of our fingers, silhouetting the pull of the needle. Stitch by stitch by stitch, the emblem is secured on your dominant side, proud, the saffron field catching the early morning glow and making the sunlight, flowing quiet through the window-bars, its own.

As you button the coat over your chest, you force yourself to recall yesterday's supper—the real supper—in place of the phantom memory still looming in your mind. The quiet congratulations. The casual conversation, the surprise at Scout's mastery over bacon and potatoes. Medic's curious absence, attributed, in your opinion, to your refusal to join him in the infirmary, though Engineer insisted the doctor frequently got distracted with personal projects and it was likely nothing to do with you. Well, you'd see today, whatever the case.

On your way out the door, your eyes fall on the little wastebasket, overflowing with crumpled scraps of ink-stained paper. A graveyard of letters. You bite your tongue, shake it off.

You are assigned a locker in the minutes before the match begins, located halfway between Heavy and Demo parallel to the metal benches. You fill it with bottles of water. The latter slaps you on the back, welcoming your first truly official match. You hear the countdown under the fluorescents. You don't notice Medic until he's out the door after Heavy, and you decide it's probably better that way.

You draw your weapons. You follow the steps you've learned upon this field. Distantly, the first point is captured. Distantly, you slaughter your way over the cracked, orange soil. The sun rises. It glares overhead. Sweat runs down your forehead in sticky rivulets. Your Gyrojet hisses. Shots crack against your shield. Second point, third point. Fourth—

PAIN.

Hot, slicing through your arm with such force that your pistol nearly skitters to the ground. Your shield comes up, drop to one knee, but—

The ground rushes to meet your back, a hollow thump that throws your breath from your chest and by the time your vision has righted itself: "Looks like you're still fucking here," your own voice spits, too close to your skin, saliva sprinkling your cheeks.

"Yeah," you grunt, gathering up your legs even as the BLU specialist presses down with her full weight, shield locked with yours, crushing and snarling, white-hot sparks of pain shooting into your chest with each attempt to throw the doppelganger and her pistol back.

"I'd say 'congratulations,' but I think fuck you is more in order."

A bark of pain escapes your lips as her wrist slips from your grip, punching her Lancaster straight into what you are sure is a bloody bullet wound through the bicep, scarlet pain flickering, flooding, clouding your vision. "Fuck you, too." Your fingers try to find her hand again, to pry the pistol from her grip, your Gyrojet lost somewhere in the sand around you, past the snarling mirror presented before your own visage.

But now your fingers are gliding, sliding through blood and sweat, well-oiled skin on skin, coats catching, and you can't bring your legs under the shields to force her off and away. Panic creeps in, mingles with the pain, pooling behind your eyes, shocks riding the skin and sinew through your arm until the only thing keeping you from dropping your fist is the mad threat in the BLU's eyes, eyes you've seen a hundred times looking at you from the surface of a pool, through the fog of a bathroom mirror, the waxed surface of a towncar, and here, alight, alive with such wrath, calling without words for blood—

Snick. Snick, snick, snick.

You grunt as your double collapses, boneless, and a familiar burgundy suit melts out of the air above. Spy wipes his blade on the BLU specialist's back before flicking it closed, the silver balisong disappearing within the folds of his coat.

"This is what happens when you wander off alone," he says flippantly.

One patent-leather shoe helps you nudge the corpse off your body, and you manage one deep, sand-laced breath as she strikes the ground. You have forgotten the gunshot wound as you try to push yourself up, and promptly collapse over your arm—burning, stinging, aching, searing—

"Shit."

"You may want to find Medic," the Frenchman lilts. "As for me, I have other business."

Gloved fingers curl into a fist. "Wouldn't it be easier to just—"

"Au revoir, mademoiselle."

Ass.

Once more, you try for a standing position, this time getting your boots under your hips first, keeping your weight off the injured arm. It's awkward with a shield still waving about attached to the other like a kite catching every little breeze, but you manage.

The BLU's corpse is gone, only a rusty stain in the sand to suggest it had been there at all, and no trace whatsoever of Spy remains. You wonder what the hell everyone seems to have against medi-kits.

There are gunshots in the distance for you to filter back into your hearing—the patter of guns sprinkled with explosions, like rain and thunder. The battle had moved on without you, or you without it, if Spy's dry commentary was any indication. Well, you feel more yourself now, in control, as you jog across the packed dirt, gritting your teeth with every step as it jostles your arm and shoulder. But you still don't want to see the medic. The very thought sinks a stone of trepidation into the pit of your stomach. What if he is angry after yesterday? What if he holds your rejection against you? What if he refuses to heal you?

Well, then you'll finally have occasion to use a medi-kit.

You suck a deep breath of the achingly dry air and flick the button on your earpiece. "Medic?" Static. Static and gunshots. That is, until you round the next corner and find him immediately in the fray, tall and bloody, readily recognizable in the white of his coat. He looks—

Occupied. You immediately regret calling. Maybe you can slip off since he hasn't seen you—

["Ja?"] His voice cuts through the radio static.

"I um—if you can't it's—what I mean—I'd like to request, if—"

But he's caught sight of you, even as he evades the swift swings of the BLU scout's bat, sunlight glaring on his spectacles. ["Ja. A moment."]

He does not sound pleased as he kicks the scout's legs from under him and slashes vigorously, messily at the boy's throat with the jagged teeth of the bonesaw.

You suddenly feel a bit ill, and fire a handful of shots into the fray before the BLUs notice your position. You finish off the demo, you think, and wound their soldier. And then, Medic approaches, still blood-spattered—none of it so far as you can tell, his—and he nudges you into the cover of the alley.

"I suppose zhis explains where you were," he says, eying you over his spectacles, and hefts the medigun off his shoulder in half a moment.

"When?" You hiss as the medigun stitches every scratch, scrape, and bullet hole with a series of sharp pinches and replenishes lost blood, searing under the skin. A bone you didn't even realize was broken snaps into one piece. You flex your hand.

"A moment ago! I tested the adjustments I made to the medigun last night. On Heavy, of course, as a control—and I have increased zhe efficiency greatly—the feedback loop is such that über can be achieved in almost half the time!"

Feedback loop means little to you, but greater efficiency and half the time, yes, those sound fine-quite all right, in fact. Good, perhaps.

And maybe he sees it on your face.

"How would you like to see how much faster we can make it?" he asks, revealing his teeth in that manic grin you're becoming perhaps too familiar with.

But you're grinning right back. Too familiar and too contagious. Truly, your grip on sanity is tenuous. Most importantly-he isn't angry. "Why not?"

Right now, there is no why, now how, no basket of crumpled letters, no scars, no clinics, no guilt. There's just a couple of assholes that need to be reminded who they're dealing with. Because once the über lights your nerves, the world, for just a moment, is yours.