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Baptiste’s hands shake; he’s been binding wounds for the past three hours and he hasn’t eaten since coffee this afternoon and god damnit, he can barely keep up with the bloodborne pathogen prevention procedures at this rate, let alone actually checking on each patient he passes by. Whether he recognizes their faces or not is something he’s locked up tight along with the rest of him.
Sword slashes. Shotgun blasts. Some people look as if the life has been literally drained out of them. The only lucky ones are the corpses, especially those with nothing but a single, clean shot through the center of their eyes.
Antonio Bartalotti had been assassinated. This is the clean-up.
It’s days like this that remind Baptiste how much he hates Overwatch.
A tap on his shoulder. Baptiste turns around to find a twin medic, the reflection of his own red helmet shining on the glass of hers.
“Boss wants you!” The other medic points to the door.
Baptiste finds his feet walking there before the rest of him. He washes his hands in the basin outside, then washes his hands again before his brain catches up. He dashes to the boss’s lab.
The boss’s voice snarls from out the door- this is the third replacement Talon’s gone through in the last three months, so he can’t be bothered to try and remember his name right now -and Baptiste is sure to straighten his uniform.
He walks in to find the boss strapping something down. Something- someone, as the boss moves and reveals a burst of brown hair splayed all over the diagnostic table.
“Augustin, reporting in, sir.” Baptiste hits the salute.
“Keep watch!” The boss whirls around and screeches. “Those imbeciles want me to do an autopsy, as if we don’t all know he was blasted clean through! Don’t they know I’m busy?”
“Yessir.” Baptiste replies simply.
“Ugh, three doctorates, and this is the thanks I get. ‘Work-life balance’- pah! Lies!”
“Yessir, not fair, sir.”
“This one’s stable but make sure,” the boss grabs Baptiste’s shoulder and swings him around to the bed, “that he doesn’t wander off. It took us long enough to find him after the mission today!”
There hadn’t been a mission today- not one that had been on Baptiste’s radar, at least -suggesting that it must’ve been a project from the higher-ups. Terrible timing, given what happened tonight.
“He won’t move on my watch.” Baptiste replies.
“It’s sir to you!”
The boss marches off, grumbling the entire time to himself. Baptiste typically prided himself on his ability to get along with anyone, but that one? Insufferable bastard. The boss last month had been great- a soft-spoken woman, but she’d been ousted for the thing that’d inevitably kicked her out of a more formal hospital- stealing opioids. A shame. Nobody’s perfect, and she had been more perfect than most.
He can complain to Mauga about this all later. That thought holds him steady.
Baptiste shakes his head and sighs. He checks the vitals monitors, finds them stable, then he wanders away from the bedside and searches the drawers. He’s rewarded the third drawer he opens- a large packet of crackers. Thank fucking god for the boss’s apparent allergy for proper lab procedures. He bites into the plastic before he remembers to unwrap it.
Now armed with stabilizing blood sugar, he throws away the wrapper and washes his hands. He turns back to the diagnostic table.
He’s. . . not sure what exactly he’s looking at.
He was taught how to patch a man back together, not a bundle of tubes and wires. He reaches out and runs a fingernail over each ridge of the sculpted ab plate. The legs are woven over in some sort of synthetic fiber. Whether there’s actual legs underneath, he has no idea. The skin that is left juts out at awkward angles. A wire hangs loose off the elbow, and whatever port it’s supposed to belong to oozes a mixture of pus and blood.
A cough. Baptiste snaps his eyes up to the face. A human’s face. Brown hair falling over the eyes and mouth. Every choked inhale sucks some of the hair in.
That the boss hadn’t even bothered to clear the airway makes Baptiste’s chest tighten.
He comes around the table and taps his hands on the man’s shoulders, as he’s been taught. “Hey, are you awake?”
No response, so Baptiste continues; he slides the locks of hair in his fingers and pulls them to the side. He feels metal, and looks down to find a pair of implants around the man’s temples. Figures. He tucks the hair behind each.
A red light flares on the man’s chest. Baptiste recoils, pulling strands of hair with him. The light snaps to his face- looking at him -and the reflection off his helmet shines like blood on the far wall. He sprints in the opposite direction. He runs chest-first into the door. His hand scrabbles for the exit button.
The door opens, and he stumbles out into the hall.
Fucking hell, did the new boss make this guy? What are they putting into people these days? Whatever fucked-up human-Omnic crossbreed they had in there is-
-his responsibility. Until the boss gets back.
Baptiste is not going to be fired just yet, god damnit. The retirement plan is too good for that. And he’s not going to abandon his own plans- just him and Mauga, the house in Samoa. . .
Baptiste sighs, turns back around, and re-enters the medlab.
The red light on the man’s chest snaps onto him immediately.
He blinks. He could’ve sworn it had just been his imagination those few seconds ago, but on the screen literally is an eye. Looking at him. Blank and pixelated. After a few seconds, it swivels away, as if deciding it will tolerate his presence.
Baptiste rolls the boss’s stool away from the table and sits down. The rest of his adrenaline leaves him. He leans his elbow on his leg, and props his head in his hand. When the rush first started this evening, patients pouring in the door, all he could think about was how he was going to fuck his frustration out on Mauga. Now? He just wants to curl up and sleep with his head buried in his pecs. Either way, he’ll get to bitch about this all in the morning, and then he’ll be teased for being a bitch like he always is, and then all will be better with the world. . .
A sound. Baptiste startles awake. He manages to avoid falling off the stool by snapping into a salute.
He turns around, only to find the door didn’t open.
He turns back to find the man’s heart rate elevating.
The red eye on the man’s chest stills, drifting to the ceiling. But the man’s eyes move behind his eyelids.
Baptiste really wishes he had his gun right now. He should’ve checked the tightness of the straps. Should have done that first thing, actually. Instead, he scoots over until he’s standing behind the man’s head. Should be out of immediate vision. He stays still. He can hear his own breath hit the inside of his mask.
With a gasp, the man’s eyes shoot open. He jerks against the restraints. One buckle snaps. Baptiste crouches down.
The man rolls his head side to side, flopping a stray lock of his hair over his face. He crinkles his face to purse his lips and blow it off, but flinches instead. One of his implants misfiring, maybe? Either way, he pressed his head against the table and cringes.
. . . okay, not bad. Baptiste can’t assess the state of the other buckles holding the straps in place from here, but he doesn’t hear any more creaking, so. . .
The man lets out a shaky sigh. He blinks his eyes. For a minute, him and the eye on the screen are both staring at the ceiling.
His chestplate heaves. His shoulders twitch.
A sob.
Baptiste watches the man squeeze his eyes shut. Curls his flesh arm closer to himself. The strap creaks. At the sound, the man stops. He instead leans his head over. He rests his cheek upon one of the massive tubes sticking out him, this one arching over his shoulder.
And he sobs. Loudly.
Baptiste is brought back to the barracks of his old Coalition. Jeering from the bunks around him, about being an attention seeker and a little bitch as his throat clenches and the tears escape him. He’d manned up- started working out, started burning all the old trinkets and doodads he’d brought from his home island. Shoved it all down. Promised himself he’d join in the next time the squadron caught the poor fool who’d cried.
Imagines Mauga laughing with him for once, instead of against.
Baptiste feels his own lip tremble instead, as he watches a tear roll down the man’s cheek.
The man chokes something out in a language Baptiste can’t understand. His voice cracks. He nuzzles himself against the cold metal tubing coming out of his shoulder, despite how Baptiste can see his other muscles tense from the gesture. Painful, most likely.
Baptiste swallows, then takes a step forward.
The man doesn’t even hear him. His chest heaves, and he coughs between sobs.
“Hey.” Baptiste mumbles. “You alright?”
The man inhales, metal rasping somewhere in his throat. He flinches his head back against the table and rolls his eyes to the top of his head, searching.
Baptiste steps around. “Hey. Are you alright?”
The man’s eyes lock onto him. As does the eye on his chest.
“Easy. Easy.” Baptiste holds up his hands. “You don’t look so good.”
“What do you want?” The man shouts through the crack in his voice.
“I’m a medic. It’s okay. I’ve seen much worse tonight already.” He offers. “I just- I’m just checking in. Seeing how you’re doing.”
Like the man isn’t still sobbing on a table in the middle of the boss’s medical lab. Obviously. Baptiste feels his cheeks burn with embarrassment.
“Since when-” the man sobs, “-do you Talon types give a shit?”
“I’m a medic. Part of the job description.” Baptiste reaches his hands out. “Where does it-”
“Don’t touch me!” The man screams.
Baptiste backs away until his heel hits a rolling table- at the clatter of tools, the man flinches.
“Easy. Just the cart.” Baptiste rolls it out from behind him. “Just the cart. You’re okay. You’re safe now.”
The man snaps his gaze to him, red eyes glaring.
“You’re in Rialto. Back at base. You’re in good shape.” Baptiste tells him.
The man laughs, then sobs again.
“Relatively speaking.”
“You think?” Snot bubbles out of the man’s nose.
Baptiste grabs a tissue off the rolling cart. “Here-”
“Stay the hell away from me, you red-domed bastard!”
Baptiste scrambles for the latches on his helmet, and before he can think twice about the decision, undoes them. He slides the red tint up, away from his eyes. He sets his helmet on the cart, then picks up the tissue again. He holds it in front of him like a shield.
“This better?” Baptiste asks. His voice sounds so quiet without the echo from the glass.
The man furrows his brows, then squeezes his eyes shut. “Go away. Please.”
“I will,” Baptiste lies, “but I have a policy of not leaving beautiful faces covered in their own snot.”
The man opens his eyes and stares again, without a glare this time- more of a puzzled trance.
“I can leave this against your, um, tube thing. And you could wipe against it. If you don’t want me near you.” Baptiste offers. “But that also looked kind of painful. . . so you tell me.”
“You’re,” the man blinks a few times, sliding another tear out, “giving me a choice?”
“Mhmm.”
“Why?”
“Um, because I’m a medic?” Baptiste shrugs. “Unless you’re passed out face-down somewhere, it’s protocol to ask before doing much.”
The man laugh-sobs a few times. “This is a dream. I’m dreaming.”
“I mean, I’ve been told I’m the man of someone’s dreams before! But I don’t think that’s what you’re going for right now.”
Another laugh. This time, with no sob. “Right. Too good for the normal dreams.”
“Aww, you flatter me.”
“Have to be hallucinating this time. Who knows?”
Baptiste opens his mouth to assert his reality-ness, but then changes his mind. “Who knows indeed.”
The man looks away and clears his throat. He coughs on the snot no doubt building up in there.
“You want this?” Baptiste offered the tissue.
“Not much I can do with it.” The man imitates what might be, on a good day, a casual smile.
“I can help. If you want.”
“I-” the man’s lip trembles again. “If you want.”
“Alright. Here I go. Tell me if you want it to stop.”
The man laughs again. Baptiste waits until he stops trembling to approach. He keeps his hands up, his arms spread wide, his face in a careful neutral. He lowers the tissue until it meets the skin above the man’s lip.
The man blows his nose a few times, and Baptiste cleans up what he can.
“Thank you,” the man murmurs. “You’re too kind.”
“It’s nothing. You flatter me.”
“You’re not like the others.”
“Much better looking.”
The man snorts, then smiles. His front tooth hits Baptiste’s hand before he can pull away.
The man mumbles something, probably an apology, and Baptiste mumbles an “it’s okay” back as he walks to throw the tissue away. Then he returns to the man’s side, where his non-cybernetic arm is.
He hovers his hand over his arm. “You’ve got a loose wire here. Doesn’t look snapped- just painful.”
Before the man can respond, the red eye on his chest swivels toward him. Baptiste looks between it and the man’s own eyes.
“. . . it does that.” The man mutters.
“Anything I can do for the wire, or do you want to wait for the pros?” Baptiste continued.
“Should just be able to plug it back in.”
“Alright. Let me sanitize it first.”
“No need. It’ll-”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Baptiste walks over to the counter. Pawing into a few drawers, he finds gloves and a proper wipe. He washes his hands, dons the gloves, then returns to the man’s side. He rips open the packaging and wipes the end of the man’s wire clean. The red eye follows every twitch of his hands.
“Alright, this’ll sting.” Baptiste holds up the sanitizing wipe up again and then points to the bleeding port where the wire goes.
The man laughs once. “Go ahead, doc.”
Baptiste touches the wipe to the man’s skin first, before brushing towards the port. The man doesn’t flinch.
“What’s the wire connected to?” Baptiste asks as he cleans.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Alright, just prepare for some feedback when I plug it back in.” Not that he’s had much experience working with neural prosthetics like this, but he knows what happens when a wire connects back to a system.
Baptiste pinches the end of the wire between his fingers, pulls the skin around the port clear, and reinserts the wire. At this, the man finally reacts, but only with an exhale.
The eye on the screen snaps its gaze to the ceiling.
An. . . orange glow? Envelops the port? Baptiste pulls his hands away and holds them up by his chest. “Is that-?”
“Don’t worry about that.” The man stares at the ceiling, too. “Please.”
Baptiste watches the glow fade, to reveal pristine skin. The redness, any remaining pus- it’s gone. Just. . . gone. As if the wound had never existed.
“That is. . . really cool. Nanotechnology? Where’d you get all this?”
“Please don’t ask me that.”
“Got it. Sorry.” Baptiste nods, and switches topics. “So, what brought you to Talon? For me, it’s that sweet retirement plan-”
“Just stop.” The man squeezes his eyes shut.
“Sorry. I know I talk too much.” Baptiste leaves his side to dispose of his gloves.
“Why are you here?” The man asks. “In a place like this?”
“A place like what?”
“You really have no idea?” The man leans his head off the table to meet his eyes. “Of all the horrible things that happen here?”
“I beg your pardon? Do you know how this shift has been? Do I look naive to you?”
“You’re too good for a place like this.”
Baptiste feels his brows furrow. “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve never been better- but only since I got this chance.”
“You’re not like the rest. Or if you are- well, you’re putting up a damn good front, pretending to care.”
“We all care.” Baptiste thinks of his fellow medics, scrambling just a few rooms over to stem the tide. He thinks of the way Mauga talks, about him, and the plan, and the porch facing the sunset in Samoa.
Something flickers in the man’s eyes, as if he can see it too.
“Please. You have to listen to me.” The man’s tone cracks. “You need to get out of here.”
“Are you kidding?”
“You have a choice. You can leave!” The man leans towards him. The restraints creak.
“I don’t take career advice from people strapped to tables!” Baptiste snaps.
The man flinches, then lowers his head back to the table.
“I’ve got a good lot up in here. That’s why I can afford to be nice.” Baptiste keeps going. “Ever think about that?”
The man squeezes his eyes shut.
“Maybe if you kept your head down a little, you’d get better treatment.”
“Get out of here!” The man shouts. “You don’t realize your privilege!”
“You think I have privilege?” Baptiste marches up to him- a drop of his own spittle lands on his shoulderplate.
“Get out!” The man screams at him. “Get out of here! Get out-!”
The door opens. Baptiste snaps to attention.
“Augustin!” The boss screams. “I could hear his yelling from down the fucking hall!”
“Well I kept him in here, didn’t I?” Baptiste says, before lowering his voice. “Sir?”
The boss curls his lip. “Don’t give me lip.”
Baptiste exhales through his nose. “Yessir. Sorry sir.”
“Get back with the others. Got a lot more bodies to dispose of tonight.”
“Not if I can help it, sir.” Baptiste grabs his helmet off the rolling table.
He pushes his helmet back on as he walks out of the Medlab.
Three hours later, Baptiste finishes rolling the last of the corpses to the morgue.
Eight years later, Baptiste stares at the screen.
In front of him is the security footage from Overwatch’s recent defense of the Grand Mesa facility.
He is looking at the man with the red eye on his chest.
There are some differences. Graying hair. Larger cybernetics. A red scarf, stylish, tinged with cables. Firmer anchoring around the port of the wire on his arm.
The man holds a pistol. He misses every shot. The new recruit’s smile flashes behind Baptiste’s eyes with each round fired. If he listens to the air around him, he can hear her cheerful drawl in the other room.
If he listens to his memory, the words are fuzzy from that day. But he cannot forget the shape of the word ‘privilege’. Cannot forget the way the man had shouted for him to get out, years before his own conscience ever shouted the same.
The footage ends after the man ducks behind cover. Sojourn had deemed the rest ‘need to know’, and while Baptiste is confident he could hack the rest, he doesn’t want to.
It’s easier to be on his best behavior, after all. To keep his head down. This new boss is. . . the best he’s ever had. He can’t afford to blow it.
Baptiste stares at the man on the screen.
How could he do this? Sojourn had asked, and Reinhardt had gasped, in front of the entire debrief meeting.
Baptiste knows the answer.
He’d known he knows the answer.
. . .and he knows that he is a coward, the same coward that stood in that medlab all those years ago.
Mauga’s laughter rings in his ears.