Chapter Text
The smell of blood always filled the clinic. Even when it’d been wiped clean, the rusty, iron smell of it never left. Her constant companion in all things, for as long as she’d known.
Now, as soldiers marched into the room, the smell grew stronger.
“Slowly,” Sylvie clipped at the soldiers transferring their comrade from the stretcher to the bed, instantly soaking it red as blood weeped slowly from multiple holes in his midsection.
“I’ll take it from here. Everyone out,” she ordered, not bothering to look if they actually did leave, as she grabbed her scissors and began cutting his uniform open.
Fabric gave way to an expanse of wet, dark skin. Five holes, each the size of a coin, peppered his midsection. Placing a gentle hand on his hip, she turned him over just slightly, and her stomach dropped at the sight; his back was nothing more than an unrecognizable mass of flesh. The bullets had shot clean through him. Or blasted through, more like, as she stared at the wet gleam of vertebrae.
A gurgled cough broke through her thoughts. “Wh—why the face, Doc?”
“Kujo,” Sylvie breathed once her brain finally put the pieces together.
A corner of his mouth lifted to a smile. “Thought I’d be sexy enough for you to remember.”
Sylvie gritted her teeth. Of course she remembered. She remembered every single one, which was exactly why it was better to not see their faces.
Kujo winced as she eased him back down. “Want the good news or bad news?”
“Don’t make me laugh, Doc.”
Grabbing a clean rag, Sylvie began wiping down the blood. She tried drawing the curtain back in her mind, but it stayed partially open, allowing a breeze through; once open, it stayed open. She hated when that happened, but it was the best she could manage. And if there was anything she learned in her year with the Spearhead Squadron, it was that no one could be like Shin.
Throwing the now-red rag into a bowl, Sylvie grabbed her knife. “Fine,” she said. “Bad news first. This is gonna scar.” A year of use had the handle molding to her hand, as if the wood took her fingers’ shape until it became an extension of her. When once it seemed alien, the weight of it now was just like putting on shoes in the morning.
Kujo’s dark eyes twinkled with mirth. “It’ll make for a sick story, right?”
Sylvie forced herself to smile. Clearing her throat, she continued. “Good news is you get to take me out on a date.”
His smile widened, blood dribbling down the side. They both heard the “If” in that, but Kujo replied anyway. “Promise?”
Sylvie willed away the tremble of her lip. “I promise.”
“Then I leave myself to our Goddess.” He gave her one more smile before his eyes drifted close.
Once more, here was a soldier in her bed, another life whose thread was in her hands, thrusting them into another battle they would have to win, one they would fight alone.
One only they could decide if this would be their last or their first of many within the four walls of her room.
Sylvie extended her arm over Kujo’s torso, knife poised over the delicate skin of her forearm, pointing the tip where the blue of her veins was most visible.
Out of habit, her lips mumbled a prayer. Above or below, it didn’t matter who was listening. She just needed Kujo to make it through.
With eyes closed, steel bit a burning trail up her arm, and blood welled between parted flesh, gushing in steady rivulets over Kujo’s wounds—a baptism that would either drown him or birth him life anew.