In Hindsight

by October Revolution

The RED team is up to its usual antics, but Spy is up to something that could be the downfall of all of them.

6. Chapter 6: Medic

In Hindsight…

A TF2 Fanfic

Chapter 6: Medic

Medic's words hung in the air for too long, and he looked up to see where Sniper had gone. There was just an empty cot there now. Ahh, well. People only seemed to favor his company if he was healing them. Sometimes one of them would stick around, but not often. He'd actually banned Pyro from his office after an instance where the childlike thing had made a sheaf of printer paper into a fleet of origami boats, complete with tiny people and even a kraken. The ships were in Pyro's room now. Medic chuckled to himself when he thought of it, filling out the forms diligently.

The German was very in-tune to the emotions and behaviors of his team, and he suddenly had a bit of a revelation. What was happening to them? They were all slowly falling apart, all getting to be edgy and nervous and uncomfortable, all of them turning mean even towards each other. Was it homesickness? Was the constant cycle of killing and dying, death and rebirth, war and peace, and friendship and enmity getting to them? Were the RED team slowly going mad from the stresses of their everyday lives? Worse—and Medic shuddered to think of this—was he himself beginning the slow descent into madness? Only time would tell. And being trapped in the hell that was Mann Co., time was the one certainty—they had a lot of it. The rest of their lives, and beyond, in fact.

Suddenly, Medic's thoughts were interrupted by a noise he hoped he would never have to hear. It was the sound of the deepest pain in the human soul bubbling up, distilled, and escaping in a gust of wind. It was the keening wail of one who is truly lost, and will never be found again. It was the sound of grief and madness and every emotion that humans should never experience. Medic stood, and he felt his blood turn to ice, for he knew what that sound meant. He himself had made that sound once, when his wife had died in his arms. It was the sound of grief; pure, raw, soul-wrenching pain—the sound that meant that someone had died. And they were not coming back.