Chapter Text
The first thing he felt upon waking up was burning, searing pain so many places he didn’t realize existed in his body before. Dully, he recognized the pain was caused by his breathing , his lungs stung with every inhalation. He opened his optics and they too burned as they welled up with tears. Tears? It didn't matter, he immediately lost his balance anyways. It was strange - he wasn’t much higher up than he was used to being, but there was depth and dimension that he logically knew was there, but that he’d never felt until right that moment.
Virgil fell forward and Mel caught him, white as a sheet. “Hey, hey, easy. I got’cha, I got’cha. Relax. You feel sick?”
He nodded, and she gently brought him to his knees. He couldn’t help but dry heave, unable to throw up his totally empty stomach. Mel kept rubbed his back in small, comforting circles.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” She murmured, “You’re fine. We’re okay. Let’s get you in bed.” She hauled him up, just a little bit, putting him down into one of the beds. She seemed to have dusted it off while he slept. “God, you look like a skeleton.”
As his body touched the musty sheets, he realized how damp he was, somewhat sticky even with that vitreous fluid he must have been suspended in. The realization came slow, as he picked up his hands and looked at them, front and back.
Oh no.
Mel’s expression was unreadable while she produced a towel from seemingly nowhere and he realized he had no idea how long he was out. “Uh… Was I long?”
She shrugged. “I slept a bit, don’t know how long that was. Time doesn’t… Feel, here, you know? Too dark.” With steady, clever hands, she pulled a pair of underwear up his legs, and merely paused when she got mostly up his thighs. She turned around and gestured at him with a grunt when she reached the part of his legs he couldn’t do without lifting up his hips. She took a couple steps away to beat the dust out of a pair of pants and a shirt.
“How’d you find this stuff?” Virgil raised his hips and pulled them up with some difficulty. Mel turned around sharply on her heels and helped him ease into a raggedy white button up shirt with an Aperture logo emblazoned on the breast.
“Luck, mostly. I got nervous just sitting and watching while that… Thing did whatever it was doing to you. It kept- it- I’m squeamish,” She said finally, “Or, well, squeamish enough about this. Couldn’t look at it, so I got up and tried to find you something to wear.” Mel gently set him on his feet and helped him step into the jeans that barely fit.
She had to cinch the pants with a belt she’d stabbed another hole in with one of the various random medical tools she found in the room. The shoes in the locker with his corresponding number, surprisingly, fit him, but it was really quite concerning how bony he was. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“Well let’s get out of here and never have to see any of it ever again,” She said under her breath. She dusted off his shoulders and admired her handiwork in dressing him. “You good? Nausea passed?”
“Yeah, I think,” Virgil said.
Mel crushed a water bottle into his hands. “Not sure how old it is, but by the looks of it, you’re more dehydrated than me after my first marathon.”
“You ran marathons?”
“Three, won them all, now drink,” She said. She opened the bottle and held it to his lips to gingerly sip from.
As soon as the cold water touched his lips, the realization that his mouth was cottony washed over him. His throat felt so dry it hurt to swallow, but he couldn’t help but keep going. He leaned on Mel for support and greedily drank all the water in the bottle. It took another second before it finally registered - she hadn’t had any water since he woke her up but he’d drank it all anyway. “Oh no- I’m sorry, you should’ve had some.”
Mel smiled and tapped the large pocket of her jumpsuit. “I found four. Drank one on sight, and I’m keeping two more just in case. We don’t know how long our walk is gonna be. You were out for a while.”
Virgil cracked a smile. “Well prepared.”
She smiled back at him, and Virgil felt a little tightening in his chest - was this the heart attack? “Always. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s get out of here. I’m allergic to dust and I’m itching more than you could imagine . ”
And the two of them set out in the no-longer-quiet facility.
Virgil could kind of tell Mel was sort of panicked, she started at every clatter, and her eyes shifted left and right as things whizzed by above and below them on the catwalk path towards the elevator.
She wasn’t impatient with him, as he got his footing and started walking, but she’d often forget who she was with and would jog ahead and had to wait. Every step strained Virgil but they had to move , it wasn’t a matter of if She found them at this point, it was a matter of when.
Mel had a look about her that Virgil never really noticed before right then, her brows knitted together in some impossibly focused way, mouth curled into a perpetual frown. She was apprehensive and that much was incredibly obvious, but there was a measure of impeccable toughness about her, the sort of roaring internal combustion engine that kept her going forward and forward and forward still. She was solid titanium under that skin.
He shivered. She would love Mel. #1498 and her had that same tenacity, that same unstoppable drive.
Virgil snapped out of his thoughts as a catwalk clattered to the endless pit beneath him, Mel on the other side of it. He stopped on a dime, but only just barely didn’t trip and fall in. “Son of a…” She looked across at him, “Can you make the jump?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“It’s your best bet. I’ll get off this unsupported one, just... Bend your knees and spring forward, hard as you can. It’ll be alright.”
They were maybe 50 feet from solid ground, and another five minutes of walking from the elevator. There was no way they’d find another way around.
Virgil swallowed the lump in his throat. He was literally metal until just a while ago, but even then he didn’t have half the steel-strength that graced Mel naturally. He couldn’t even pray for it.
“Nervous?” She said.
He nodded dumbly.
“Hey, it’s okay. If you can walk. You’ll be fine. We’re not gonna get stopped by a bit of a jump. If you don’t think you can spring forward, take a couple steps back and get a running start..”
Once more, he nodded, and took a couple steps back, and for the first time in his whole life, ran. The force of his footfalls went straight to his knees. Each of them was thunder in the quiet. He neared the edge. He bent his knees, and jumped off the creaking metal with as much strength as he had in him. He hit the catwalk with surprising force, given his incredibly thin body, and the metal boomed in the silent facility, before creaking beneath his feet.
“See? Told y-”
The metal snapped.
There was a split second where Virgil was falling, before two arms came down and grabbed him by the wrists, and pulled him up with little effort, like he was weightless. The segment of the catwalk began to sway, and Mel didn’t wait. She hauled Virgil up into her arms bridal style and ran . Catwalks fell as she got off of them, and by the time she reached the stairs up to more solid ground, the entire length of it was gone, occasionally heard in echo-y clatters as they hit things on their way down.
Virgil shivered in Mel’s arms.
“Sorry.” She said, “Spoke too soon. Good jump, though, clean landing, good on the knees. You’d make a great hurdler.”
Though his hands were trembling uncontrollably, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course that’s what you’d say.”
“Hey, it’s all I know!” She said, with a lofty little giggle. “Wanna get out of my arms or am I gonna prince-charming carry you?”
He felt his face heat up a little at that - Heart attack? Am I having a heart attack?
“Uh- yeah- I mean, no- I can walk.”
They carried on. “You’re too skinny,” She said offhandedly. “Gotta get out there and feed you CRISCO on crackers. Get some meat on those bones.”
“I think that would probably kill me.”
“Oh yeah and sounds outright disgusting. Straight CRISCO? No thank you.”
They reached the elevator, and Mel shifted her weight back and forth between her feet. “Nervous?” He asked.
“Not sure what I’m gonna be looking at, you know. Do the honors?” She gestured to the button. He was nervous that the elevator has been shut down.
There was a moment where he held his breath and merely stared at it. He pressed the button with a slightly shaky hand, before turning to Mel and smiling. She put a hand on her back and rubbed small, comforting circles into it.
The elevator came and Mel stepped in, kept her arm on the automated door like it was going to hold it open for him, and he walked in after her. “Ready when you are,” He said softly.
She pushed the up button and the two of them ascended, stuck on baited breath.