1 . Name: SirKai @ 2011-12-08 05:23

My half of a TF2 fic trade I did with Ele. I hopefully did justice to her request (don't want to spoil the premise though). Posted in Adult for explicit violence/gore.

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If Medic was ever thankful for any aspect of his Scottish teammate’s constant insobriety, it was that it made him a refreshingly compliant patient compared to the rest of the RED mercenaries. The doctor quickly drew his syringe from the dark skin of Demoman’s arm and peered at the sloshing blood inside the vial. He pushed his glasses studiously back up the bridge the nose as Demo stood up from the stitched examination chair.

“Don’t get too excited ya Quack,” Demoman ordered, pulling his white undershirt back over his forearm. “That’s my blood yer fiddlin’ with.”

“Please Demoman, zhis is purely for your benefit. Do you think I get some sick satisfaction from simply plunging needles into people?” Medic asked.

“Yes,” the Scot said bluntly with a blank stare.

“Hmph, I’m a qualified practitioner of medicine you know.” The doctor said as he turned towards the dove perched upon the nearby cardiogram. “Isn’t zhat right Archimedes?” Medic ran a gloved index finger across the top of the bird’s head and offered it a sweet smile.

Demoman rolled his eyes and fumbled his feet towards the door, clutching the frame as he passed through it.

“Vould you like to hear zhe the results of your blood alcohol content after I run zhe tests?” Medic asked.

“No thanks Laddie, I’d rather not know,” Demoman called back, his voice echoing from the adjacent waiting room.

“Good,” the German said to himself. He strolled over to the sink and hummed as he dumped the Scot’s blood into the drain beneath the running faucet.

---

“No... numbness?”

“I’m afraid not Heavy,” the doctor apologized with a sigh. He wiped a damp dish towel several times over the length of his bonesaw. “It seems RED must have suffered some budget cuts. No anesthesia, fewer proper surgical tools...” He lightly picked at the fleshy bullet wound in Heavy’s arm with the flat side of his saw. “Well, no time like zhe present!”

Heavy shrieked as the saw’s teeth grinded and tore at his skin. Sweat beaded down his face as he watched the doctor so casually sever his arm open as if the man was carving a stuffed hen.

“Just a bit farzher...” Medic reassured, but the words were barely audible over the distracting, squishy slashes of muscle and sinew.

Heavy heaved in a deep breath as a piercing thud bounced through out his body like sonar.

“Ah, zhat’s the bone!” Medic said. Blood flung across Heavy’s face and torso as the doctor ripped the saw from his patient’s arm. He casually tossed the blade over his shoulder towards the empty instrument cart behind him. It missed, and slapped the tiled floor with several clangs.

Gritting his teeth, Heavy felt the doctor’s bare fingers wriggling inside his mutilated arm, brushing the bone and igniting more pain than he believed he had in his entire body.

Medic’s tongue was peeking out through the side of his mouth as his fingers fished through out the meat and muscle of his teammate’s arm. He paused as his thumb passed over a slick, prickling piece of metal. “Aha!” The doctor wrench his hand up and held a mangled, reddened bullet in front of the bright overhanging lights.

Heavy breathed several exhaustive, relieving breaths and laid back into the seat.
“See? Zhat wasn’t so bad!” Medic said, and gave an affectionate pet to Heavy’s damp cheek with his cleaner hand. “Now it’s only a matter of sewing you back up!”

---

A set of knuckles feverishly pounded the other side of the door. Medic continued to casually rinse the ash from his hands. The doctor enjoyed washing his hands. It was therapeutic for him.

“Dammit Doc, get your ass up! I don’t pay you sleep around all day!” Soldier barked from outside.

Medic shook his hands over the sink and turned off the faucet off. He glanced out his window at the rising 7 AM sun and smiled at it before pacing over to his office door. “Soldier, you don’t pay me at all,” Medic said as he opened the door.

“Don’t get smart with me with your fancy-shmancy setamics!” Soldier said, drilling an accusing finger into the doctor’s chest.

“Semantics,” Medic corrected. He didn’t flinch, and maintained his blank stare into the gunmetal gray of his teammate’s helmet (specifically the area where he suspected the man’s eyes were).

“I said not to get smart! Now fix me up!”

“What seems to be zhe issue, Soldier?” Medic curiously propped his chin up on his index finger.

“I’ve been attacked! That’s the issue, fritz!” Soldier slipped his arms out of his jacket and threw it onto the floor. He turned around, revealing a wide blot of red on his white sleeveless shirt just above the right shoulder blade. “I woke up with THIS. There is a filthy spy in the base and he MUST be rooted out!”

“Mein Gott. Inside my office and let me take a look.” Medic ushered the feverish Soldier into the office and retrieved his glasses from the top of his desk.

Soldier slowly pried the shirt from his back. A clump of it had stuck to the fresh wound. The commando tossed the shirt onto a nearby open cabinet door.

Medic peered into the laceration. It definitely looked like a botched back stab attempt, and several more minor cuts were scattered across his back. “Hmm... I zhink I know just the zhing.” The doctor returned to his desk and pulled a large, silver staple gun from the top drawer. “The RED budget cuts have been more severe zhan I imagined, so this vill have to do.” Medic pinched each side of the knife wound closed, and applied the cold metallic head of the staple gun to Soldier’s skin. The American flinched.

“Wait Doc, what is tha-GAAAAHHHH MY FLESH!” Two fresh lines of blood trailed down Soldier’s back as the doctor reapplied the staple gun further along the gash.

“Hold still, Soldier,” Medic said just before plunging a second staple into his back.

About twenty seconds and eleven more staples later, Soldier felt confident that at least half of his body had gone totally numb just from the pure exhaustion of feeling so much pain. He stood up straight and wiped his forehead with his seemingly weightless hand. He wracked his brain to remember when the sensation was more similar to the time he’d had a stroke, or when he’d had a heart attack.

“Very good Soldier!” Medic congratulated with a heavy pat on the back. “You’ll be good as new in no time!” He reeled back his arm and beamed at the results; Soldier’s back was considerably bloodier now than when he entered only a few moments ago. Medic admired the weight of the staple gun in his hand. What a magnificent tool, he thought.

Soldier stumbled towards the cabinet where he’d deposited his shirt. He pitifully tugged at it with waving, drunken arms until it came loose, and then stared blankly at the bloody cloth with glassy eyes like he’d completely forgot what it was used for. The commando wavered back towards the office door shirtless. “Need to... catch that... damn spy...”

“Ah yes, zhe enemy spy,” Medic agreed. He nonchalantly put the bloody staple gun onto his desktop. “Be sure not to use respawn!” the doctor called out to the exiting Soldier. “It’s simply not natural to rely on, you know!”

---

“Not natural? Truckie, please tell me you’re kiddin’.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to kid about, slim,” Engineer said. He absentmindedly scratched at the tall, wrinkled bandage wrapped around his neck.

Sniper was afraid about to ask about the murky stains seeping across the bandage; it definitely wasn’t blood. “So yer gonna sit there and let that sicko grind yer body against a cheese grater till yer just some bleedin’ shavings on his office floor?”

“You don’t understand pardner,” the Texan said. His shaking hands struggled to bring his cup of steaming tea to his lips.

Sniper averted his gaze from the sorry sight, and panned his head around the center of the mess hall where the rest of the team, sans Medic, were grouped together. Heavy was slowly eating tiny spoonfuls of chicken broth with his left hand. His right arm was hanging limply at his side. Pyro sat next to Spy, gently spoon feeding him some gray colored mush like he was tending to an infant. Spy’s unusually bare hands were covered in blisters. Even Demoman was sitting with them, feebly waving an amassing pack of flies away from his fully casted arm.

“Sniper, he’s helpin’ us,” Engineer reassured him. He interlaced his fingers to keep his shaking hands from rattling the tabletop.

“Whatever mate, you do whatever you gotta do,” Sniper said. He stared into his coffee cup, and did his best to ignore thehis teammates. “I won’t have a part in it.”

“You’ll turn around pardner, I promise. You’ll see.”

Sniper didn’t respond, and he didn’t look up from his coffee. He felt like some kind of immortal vampire, staying the same age while all of his friends were withering and dying pitiful, embarrassing deaths.

Eventually, Medic entered the cafeteria, and greeted everyone softly and with a modest smile, and addressed everyone as his “dearest patients.” Engineer limped away from Sniper to join the rest of the team. They all centered around the doctor in the long dining table in the middle of the room, and listened to him comment on their conditions and injuries. He scheduled their next appointments and procedures, and they all hung vitally onto each of his words.

Sniper sighed and left the cafeteria, abandoning his warm cup of coffee. He paused and looked back at everyone as he opened the door to leave. No one noticed him.

---

“Oi, spook!” Demoman called out. He jogged to catch up to his teammate. “Ye got any runnin’ water?”

Spy shook his head as he raised one of his festering, bleeding hands to pluck the cigarette from his mouth. Blood has soaked the end of it. He exhaled the smoke from his mouth in short bursts. “I was just on my way to see Medic about it,” Spy said.

“Aye, a good idea. Mind if I join you?” the Scot asked.

The two RED mercenaries strolled down the corridor and took several left turns to arrive at Medic’s office. Demoman knocked the hardwood door a few times with his unbandaged hand. They waited patiently until the resident doctor opened the door to greet them.

“Ah, my dearest patients!” Medic said with a wide grin and his arms spread apart invitingly. There were smears of dark grease on his hands and shirt. “What can I do for you?”

Demoman swatted his arm at a fly homing in on his eye patch. “Ya been gettin’ any water, lad?” he asked, returning attention to the doctor. “Spy an’ I seem to have run bloody dry.”

Medic cocked his brow curiously, and ran his bare blackened fingers over his chin. “Hmm... My shower and sink have been functional for me.” He lowered his hand from his face and motioned it at the two of them. “Vould you two like to clean yourselves in my quarters?”

“Aye, won’t be nary a problem, right lad?” Demoman nudged Spy excitedly in the ribs.

Spy held a rattling palm over his gagging, convulsing mouth and nodded.

“Spy, is somezhing zhe matter?” Medic asked. He reeled his face forward toward the masked Frenchman.

“My-” Spy started, just before another raspy cough. “My mouth, it’s been... hurting.”

“Hmm.” The doctor stared at Spy’s raw, chafed lips. “Let me take a look inside zhe operating room. Demoman, feel free to wash yourself in zhe bathroom.”

Demoman stepped past Medic’s arm, motioning him inside. “Aye, lad.” He tossed a concerned glance back at Spy before beelining for the shower room.

Following the RED Medic through the waiting room and into the operating room, Spy’s breathing started to pick up; being under the German’s care was exhilarating.

Medic dropped a pair of fresh batteries into his large yellow flashlight, and gently pinched the Frenchman’s chin as he aimed the lens at his patient’s mouth. “Say ‘ah!’”

“Ahhh.” The smoking cigarette dropped from Spy’s mouth to the tiled floor.

Unflinching as he inhaled a mouthful of cigarette fumes, Medic darted his eyes around the inside of the spook’s mouth. A series of swollen, bleeding sores had collected across Spy’s gums. His tongue was peppered with leaking pustules, and appeared dry and cracked like his lips. The doctor brushed the tongue with his thumb, rattling Spy’s body and prompting a gasp of pain. A liberal amount of blood was spread across Medic’s thumb (along with the grease) as he pulled his hands away from the Spy’s face.

The Frenchman slowly closed his mouth and began carefully rubbing his lips with his wrist.

“Zhis is bad,” Medic said with a sigh. “I’m afraid I only have a single option.” He quickly paced past the operating gurney and swung open his refrigerator door. The doctor snatched a beer bottle from the bottom shelf and shook it for a moment, testing the contents. He nodded to himself as he shut the fridge and moved towards the sink. Shielding his face with his free arm, Medic held the empty brown bottle at the neck and smashed it against the edge of the sink bowl. Glass shattered and bounced around the sink. The doctor backed away from the scene, and eyed the newly formed jagged ridges on the remains of the bottle. It reminded him of a shark’s mouth. He smirked at the thought.

“Doctor?”

Medic turned around with his brow arched in a solemn expression. He traced his steps back towards Spy. The Frenchman was hunching over, tightly pressing his wrist against his lips. A thin line of blood trailed down his chin. Medic brushed Spy’s hand away from his mouth and opened his mouth with his fingers. “You’ll need to open very wide.”

Spy winced as he spread his jaws open even farther apart. Blood started to collect at the corners of his mouth.

The RED Medic gradually guided the jagged end of the broken bottle into the spook’s mouth, until the piercing glass was tickling his tongue near the back of his throat. The doctor forcibly clasped his patient’s tongue to the floor of his mouth with his free thumb.

A wheezing gag crawled up from Spy’s throat.

“Zhis will hurt,” Medic said.

---

“Yeah man, it’s great that the doc is lettin’ us use his shower.” Scout’s hands were behaving dramatically as he talked, as if to make up for the lack of motor capability from his head thanks to his snug neck brace.

Pyro and Heavy, standing single file alongside Scout, nodded in agreement. The three of them were occasionally glancing back at the doctor’s office door, waiting for their turn to bathe.

“Da. Is best doktor,” Heavy said as he wiped his eye with an open palm, leaving a slimy residue on his hand.

Sniper briskly passed the trio on his way to the second floor respawn room.

He shouldered the respawn door open and reeled in immediately on his locker. Sniper wrenched open the locker door and retrieved his pristine kukri and a small submachine gun. After blowing thoroughly into a loaded clip, he jammed the magazine into the gun, tucked it under his vest and sheathed the kukri on his back. Finally, he slung his scoped rifle over his shoulder and kicked the locker door shut on the way out. He marched to the other end of the base, not even noticing the stares and murmurs that followed him from his teammates. When he reached Medic’s operating room, he struck the swinging double doors open with his palm.

Medic was sorting what looked like bloody bits of shrapnel and bent nails. “Ah, afternoon Herr Sniper,” he greeted as he turned around. “Did you need some assistance?”

“From the loikes a’ you? No,” Sniper said venomously. He was practically snarling as he spoke. “I dunno what you’ve done to me mates, but I ain’t bein’ a part of it. I’m leavin’.”

“Very well,” Medic said with a subtle grin and half-lidded eyes. He darted his gaze around the Australian’s visible weapons before turning back towards his task, sorting the bits of red metal. “Please have yourself a safe trip.”

Sniper stared into the hairs of the back of the doctor’s neck as he worked. He knew something was wrong. He knew the quack was full of more shit than a gulag cesspit. His fingers twitched, tempted to whip out his submachine gun and litter the entire magazine into his back.

Medic started humming to himself as he worked.

Opting not to press his luck, Sniper left the office and marched to his camper van parked just outside the RED half of the Teufort compound. He unloaded the weapons onto his bed and collapsed into the driver’s seat. Staring through the windshield, Sniper’s eyes followed the dusty desert trail that lead to the highway. Waving mirages bent and coiled the earthy imagery.

Suddenly, the trained assassin was very much looking forward to the berating “I told you so” he’d receive from his father. He just wanted to go home. Sniper pawed at the key ring resting in his vest pocket and blindly jammed his van key into the ignition. He twisted the key forward and the engine groaned. And groaned. And groaned. And then groaned in unison with the driver.

“Aw piss.”

Sniper fumbled the door open and circled around to the front of his van. He shielded his hat over his face from the biting sand kicked up from the dissonant wind. Prying open the van’s hood with his fingertips, Sniper bent over the amalgamation of metallic bolts, wires and tubes. He reached his arm over the side of the engine. His fingers brushed an empty hexagonal spark plug hole. Sniper hung his head forward and sighed.

---

The sun had retreated beyond the dusty hills. Dipping the oily rag in cleaning solution every minute or so, Australian sharpshooter thoroughly wiped down his collection of kukris and knives. He disassembled and polished his entire rifle. He picked out each individual bullet from his tin ammunition case and cleaned them all. He stared out at the twilight horizon from his roost high above the rest of Teufort.

The man was a hunter by nature. He’d spent the past thirteen years of life subjecting himself to virtually uninhabitable conditions and tracking game twice his size wielding nothing but a piece of slightly sharpened bone fragment. He’d devised traps knowing what his prey would do before they knew it. He’d never approached a target, animal or human, where he couldn’t account and prepare for damn near every possibility. Hell, he’d even trained himself to contend with prey that could disguise itself as people he trusted, or turn itself invisible. Sniper had a plan for everything. He had a plan for his prey before it had a plan for itself.

Sniper thought he’d rightfully earned his ego, but he was a man who valued action and results. He never had to reassure himself of his capabilities or accomplishments as a person. He never had to justify anything to himself.

But now, he was revisiting over a decade of his life and wondering how the hell it led to this. The image of that evil German son of a bitch had flashed through his head for the ten thousandth time that day. He pictured Medic performing one of his barbaric ‘treatments,’ and then kindly guiding the victim outside of the operating room like he’d done them a fucking favor.

For the past two weeks, Sniper witnessed the vile degradation of his friends. Every day a few more of them would stalk the halls with a smile on their face and another piece of themselves that would barely function, if at all. The sharpshooter felt like he was the center of some increasingly depraved joke.

Sighing, and idly tapping the stock of his sniper rifle with his thumb, Sniper’s head shot out over the wilderness. His eyes narrowed over a flickering light. From his distance, it looked like candle light. He rested the rifle on the open window sill. Peering through the scope, the sharpshooter aimed the spotless cross hair over the abandoned mill and followed the industrial cart track from the mill’s base. It curved around the steep hill and disappeared into an underground mine. The entrance was framed with wooden beams like a hanging picture, with yellow and orange light dancing across the ground just outside. Sniper slung the rifle over his shoulder, sheathed his kukri and descended the ladder from his roost.

---

His hands hovered over the flames. Medic enjoyed the warmth that spread over the front of his body.

Gravelly footsteps and gasping breaths closed in from behind, and halted at the small mine entrance. The doctor slowly rotated his head to his shoulder, eyeing the silhouette of the tall lean hunter against the desert night.

“Evening,” Medic said. He rubbed his bare hands together and returned his gaze to the burning materials. Many of the crates were marked with the crimson Reliable Excavation Demolition emblem.

“You... you bastard!” Sniper heaved, trying to catch his breath. “You been wreckin’ the proper supplies RED sends us! You ripped the spark plug out of me van!”

“Mhm,” Medic agreed. He casually brushed some soot from the front of his coat, and slowly bent over forward, reaching towards the ground.

Sweat started to collect on Sniper’s forehead. He whipped the stock of his rifle against his shoulder. “You turned all me mates into goddamn lepers!” His fingers groped the polished bolt to chamber a bullet.

Medic spun around, his arm outstretched and releasing a mining pick into the air. Sniper raised his hands up, but it was like using warning tape to stop a cement truck. The heavy pick plunged into the flesh of the Australian’s jaw. Several thundering cracks and snaps later, Sniper lay in the dirt staring at the dark ceiling of the cave. The cackling fire suddenly sounded distant and muted. He was afraid to move. He didn’t want to realize the damage done to his face. He couldn’t feel anything, except for the subtle tremors of incoming footsteps. A pair of warm, greasy hands grabbed a fistful of the Australian’s collar as a heavy set of knees pinned his arms against the dirt. Sniper’s hands feebly pawed at the doctor’s thighs.

“What is it zhat ails you, hm Herr Sniper?” Medic asked quietly. “A fractured jaw?” The doctor pinched Sniper’s chin and jerked it forward to view the opposite side.

The Australian howled as a distinctly loose part of the jawbone fidgeted in the doctor’s hand.

“Not to worry mein friend, I know just zhe treatment...” Medic’s breathing picked up behind his wolfish smile and inspired eyes. He withdrew his hands from Sniper’s face and felt around inside his coat. “I don’t normally keep my surgical instruments, but zhis was a thing of beauty.” The doctor pulled his hand from coat, now holding a large, jagged piece of broken glass. It was stained in streaks of blood. “I found it in zhe bathroom zhis morning. A piece of the mirror. The shape is quite gorgeous.” He held the glass above his head to view it more easily in the fire light. His breathing slowed down into a more steady rhythm and his crazed grin subsided into a modest smile.

Sniper watched, unmoving, as Medic stepped backwards on his knees and pinned one of his legs down. The doctor groped around the underside of Sniper’s knee, tongue peeking out from in between his lips in concentration. The sharpshooter’s torso felt like it was weighed down by a boulder. His breathing was heavy and strained, and he didn’t know how to describe the pain in his face. Aching? Stinging? He couldn’t find any word for it.

“You know, your teammates vould beg me for zhis,” the German said as he slowly pressed the edge of the glass against the tendon behind Sniper’s knee. “And afterwards, zhey would thank me.” The quick slice effortlessly shredded through Sniper’s pants, severing the tendon and ruining muscle and flesh.

Sniper squeezed his eyes shut and buried the top row of his teeth against his tongue. Even more blood filled his twisted maw.

“And of course, as symmetry demands...” Medic crawled on top of Sniper’s leg and, once again, found the man’s pulsing tendon with his fingers. The doctor let out a pleasant sigh, and then ripped the glass fragment through it like a soggy milk carton.

Sniper heaved in a dry gasp, but otherwise, couldn’t budge his limbs to react.

“Well,” Medic started, as he casually rose to his feet and tucked the glass back into his coat. “I must say I am quite pleased wiz the results.” He stared down at his patient while wiping his black and red hands against his coat.

The patient felt his mangled jaw throb. He felt the pooling blood collect around his legs. He felt more and more blood trickle down his throat. He tried to grip the earth with his fingers. His eyes started to water.

“It’s about, oh... six zhousand or so feet back to the fort?” Medic asked as he stepped outside the mine entrance and into the moon light. Turning back for a moment, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with two of his fingers.

“Good luck.”

---

Medic glanced uncomfortably at his team as they settled into his waiting room. His sad, worried expression was contagious.

“I tried to help him, but...” Medic looked down at his feet and rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “He refused. He succumbed to his illness and injuries zhis morning. I am sorry.”

Engineer stomped his foot down. “That damn fool! I told him, but he wouldn’t listen! I thought he’d come around...”

“Do not blame yourself Engineer. If it’s anyone’s fault, it is mine,” Medic said, flattening his hand against his chest.

Everyone sat in silence, their gazes not directed at anything in particular. Most of them simply staring at the floor next to their feet.

Medic eventually raised his head to look down at his teammates and sighed. “Even zhough we have experienced a tragic loss today, I still have zhe rest of you.” He beamed at everyone with a modest smile.

They all smiled back.

“Now, Soldier,” Medic said, turning towards the hunched over commando. “I vill need to reapply some of zhe uh, stitches to your back.”

Soldier shot up from his seat and delivered a crippled, arched salute. “Affirmative!”

“Sehr wohl,” the doctor said with a nod. He opened the door to his operating room and guided Soldier inside with his arm draped over him like a protective wing. As the two walked inside, Medic’s eyes drifted over to the pile of bent nails next to the sink. “Unfortunately our supply of staples has dwindled, but I know just zhe thing to make up for it.”