Author's note: This story was inspired by this piecer of fanart at Twitter ( /jeff_kapkan/status/1237906519871631360). I tried something a little different with this story, and since I couldn't decide on the ship, I tried to make a "choose your own ending" sort of thing, as well as making both ending fragments their own separate feel/personality (I hope!)

I - Main action of the story

Some days were just cursed. Kapkan wasn't particularly superstitious, but he would readily admit that sometimes people had streaks of bad luck. At the moment, he had been facing one of those episodes for nearly a week.

He could count with the fingers of one hand the amount of training matches he won during this time and still had fingers to spare. Whether he was taken out first or failed to clutch situations that should have been an assured win, Kapkan's mood had been getting progressively darker as the days went by. It wasn't only the matches, though. Sparring had gone badly these days too.

Kapkan knew he had a problem underestimating his own strength and his opponent's, like that time long ago when he accidentally cut Finka's face, something that still brought a hot weight of remorse in his stomach every time he thought about one wasn't the only sparring accident Kapkan had been involved in, but he thought he'd gotten better at it. Until this last week. In just a few days he dislocated Thermite's shoulder, broke Fuze's nose, and terrified everyone who got paired up with him for sparring.

If he had to pinpoint the lowest point of these days, though, Kapkan would say it was the training match that just happened. It was the reason he was brooding on a corner, looking out of the window and considering if he should take a vacation or make sure that nobody had cursed him as revenge for something. He was usually good at his job; that was a fact, not bragging. Kapkan preferred to act alone, but he was a team player, he knew how to help the team and still secure some kills. Not this time. They went for seven rounds and all he did was die again and again, each time in more ridiculous ways than before.

The first 'death' had been an unfortunate accident. He was checking the cameras too close to one of his traps, and when Montagne went through, he survived, but Kapkan didn't. Embarrassing, but not the first time that something like that happened. It only went downhill from there. Killing himself with his own C4, losing a knife fight against Iana of all people! Utterly humiliating. He was one of the best operators, if not the best, in close quarters combat, and the Dutch woman was tiny and more inclined to spend her time with Mira in the workshop than training!

Decided to do better, because that was a wake up call that he needed to get his shit together and fast, Kapkan pushed himself to be more aggressive. In his attempt at chasing a distracted attacker, he vaulted through a shoddy rotation hole and realised he was stuck. No matter how much he squirmed, all Kapkan got for his efforts were some wooden splinters digging into his sides and alerting the person he had been following. To add insult to injury, he needed help to get out of the damned hole, Bandit's snickering in the background making him question why he was friends with the German.

With a sore body and ego, Kapkan made a better job the next round. At least for a while. It was the last minute and he was the only remaining defender, and Kapkan thought this was his time to shine. Knowing the two attackers were on a certain corridor, he went to make a punch hole in the wall and wait for them. He was inches away from the wall when Sledge's hammer obliterated it, hitting Kapkan in the process. Pain bloomed in his face and he blindly staggered backwards. He could hear people talking, but couldn't pick up the exact words for a moment. After a couple of seconds, reality stopped being reduced to the flare of hot pain around his eye, although blinking was still highly unpleasant.

"Are you okay lad?" Sledge was planted in front of him, looking concerned yet unsure of reaching out to help Kapkan get up. "Should we fetch Doc?"

He could still see, albeit everything was a little blurry, so Kapkan considered there was nothing to worry about. "I'm fine."

"Your eye…" Rook winced at having Kapkan's murderous glare directed at him. "Maybe you should get some ice on it?"

"I said I'm fine!" Kapkan's temper was flaring up, angry at being treated with pity like he was a weakling. He had much worse than a blow to the eye! Besides, all he needed to sooth his bruises was winning just once. "Stop talking and let's get on with the match."

The only positive thing of all this clusterfuck was that, despite his apparent incompetence, both teams were actually pretty tied, so there was no clear winner yet. On second thought, Kapkan wasn't sure it was such a good thing, perhaps it would be better for him to be done with this as fast as possible and go lick his wounds, both the literal ones and the metaphorical wounds too. But he went on, because the match wasn't over. For the next round, Bandit started following him around, much to Kapkan's irritation, and treating him like he was blind almost.

"Careful with the barbed wire, to your left! The door's up ahead and then the corridor. There's a pile of-"

"I can see that by myself!" Kapkan hissed, fed up with his friend's 'help'.

"Really? You could have fooled me with the way you keep closing that eye. Or maybe you're winking at me? You flatter me Maxim, but I know you're taken and I'm not a home-wrecker!" Bandit laughed at his own joke, since Kapkan didn't.

"Do your job and I'll do mine, I don't need you hovering over me like a fucking babysitter."

Bandit had the cheek of grabbing his arm and trying to drag him around like he was a toddler, so Kapkan, annoyed beyond reason, yanked his arm away and took a few steps back. As he immediately discovered, there was an open hatch right behind him, which was most probably why Bandit had tried to pull him away from the area. Falling down a floor and landing on his ass was not ideal, but the worst part was the claymore that some idiot had left lying around and detonated as soon as Kapkan fell, covering him in a fine powder.

The last time Kapkan felt so out of his depth and clumsy was when he was a fresh recruit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; this was most frustrating. When Bandit poked his head through the hatch and said, "Dude, didn't you see that?" Kapkan answered in Russian with a rather rude selection of swears. It was good to let out all of his anger, yet it did nothing to relieve the stress he felt at his current streak of fuck-ups.

The last round came soon, and Kapkan decided against roaming this time, if only to avoid having Bandit sticking to him like before since teamkilling because someone was annoying you was heavily frowned upon. He set all his traps and then went back to the objective, chilling in a corner and waiting for an attacker to show up. Everything was going so well, then he heard it. The unmistakable sound of an airjab being fired and sticking into a surface. He couldn't see where it was but, judging from the noise, it landed close to him.

Not even three seconds later, Mozzie came running after one of Twitch's drones and triggered the airjab. Both Kapkan and Mozzie -and the drone- went flying, and that was the moment Kapkan knew he was done for in this round too. There was a cracking sound as he collided against a wooden wall with his back, breaking through it. However, that was an exterior wall, so Kapkan didn't land on a different room, no; he landed outside, in a muddy puddle.

At least it was all on the same floor height, Kapkan supposed it was a small mercy this hadn't happened last round, when they were defending the top floor of the building. Before he could even regain his breath, cause the impact knocked the wind out of his lungs, something hit his side, right over his sore ribs.

"Operator Kapkan out," the speakers blared, letting everyone know his fate.

He let his head fall back on the mud, looking at the cloudy sky and feeling the puddle soak his clothes. This had been, without a doubt, the worst training match of his life.