Work Text:
There are very little things that Heavy remembers from his traditional childhood. He struggles to grasp onto celebration he knows he had, and prayers he must have sung in a language he does not understand no longer. He knows his father would begin the Shabbat, always with warm words that Heavy continues to try to find. HIs mother’s mouth works far better around Russian than Hebrew. He does not dislike her for it, he does not resent the missing moments he digs for late at night, when everyone else has settled down.
Tonight, he feels as if he is breathing through hot dense air, the desert suffocating from the home he holds to close to forget. It is static, as if he can reach into his own memory and pull out any of the pieces he wants.
It was an off-comment. Perhaps insensitive, but rather true nonetheless. It had been almost twenty years since Heavy tucked his rations under his arms and fed his family under the guise of sleep. Twenty years since his father had left him, and with his death, he took a God that Heavy was so ready to give a life for.
He felt sick.
“Don’t know,” Sniper began, lazily stretching his legs over the kitchen table, much to everyone’s dismay. “Never did understand the war by all of you. I was young, stupid, and far away.”
The kitchen was silent, most of those in the team had endured the harsh reality that Sniper wasn’t able to conceptualize. Solider had walked out of the room as soon as the conversation had begun, Pyro following after her. Medic sat bored by Heavy, not paying attention to anyone but Archimedes on his hand.
“Been a long time since I was reminded of it.” Sniper began to pick something out of his teeth, “You fought in it, didn’t you?” he began to nudge Heavy’s arm. It didn’t move.
Heavy stood up from the table, “No.”
This still felt like something that could not be said out loud, it hung uncomfortably around his shoulders. He left the room unceremoniously, not paying attention to whatever noise had begun to buzz behind him. He lingered in the corner before his room. His fist clenched beside him. Heavy rubbed his other hand over his wrist. Letting the rough pads of his fingertips graze over healed over scars and burns.
He was only somewhat aware of how the war had affected everyone else. He was aware of some things, of course: The Magen David around Medic’s neck, the photos he ungraciously took as often as he could. Snapping memories of Scout laughing, tears running down her face, her eyes. Medic collected the photos in a small book, a short sentence about the photo underneath. He keeps it under his desk, a nondescript leather bound.
Perhaps, Heavy was not the only one struggling to remember.
Heavy closed his eyes and took a deep breath, forcing his fingers to uncurl from its stiff position, he began to walk forward. His feet shuffled across the tile floor slowly, unsure of his own movements. When the lab was in view, he shifted his weight between his feet. He lingered in the doorway.
Without pause, or glancing up from the counter, Medic waved him in.
“It was Sniper’s comment, was it not?”
Heavy tilted his head up slightly, a lie already forming under his tongue. He kept it there, let it run down his throat. His silence a better answer than anything.
Medic shifted his body, his necklace softly clang against the metal of the surgery table.
Unsure of what to say, Heavy sat across from the doctor instead, watching him deftly dissect an organ he wasn’t able to identify. Medic held the scalpel skillfully, yet relaxed. The tool loosely balancing on his gloved fingers. Letting the instrument write notes within the flesh of the body part. A novel on its own, Heavy reminded himself.
“What is eating you?” Medic asked, he still had not looked up.
“Am no meal.”
Laughing, Medic placed his scalpel beside him.
“This is an old pair of hearts I had lying around, unrecognizable, Ja?”
Heavy nodded.
“Can’t remembered who it belonged too, no matter however.” Medic flippendently flicked his wrist, “Used to collect my own, when I was a young boy, nothing else to do.”
“What did school friends think?”
Medic shrugged, “Did not go to a school, my mother taught me anything she could. My father kept me inside until I went to college to study medicine.”
Humming, Heavy looked over the organ in front of him, “Hmm. Lonely.”
“Perhaps. I understood his reasoning.”
“Reasoning?”
Medic sadly smiled, “We escaped when we could, erased everything. You know me, have I ever been known to share my secrets?”
“Da, I like that about you.”
“My father did not.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you miss it?”
Heavy furrowed his eyebrows. “It?”
Medic fingered his necklace, “the believing.”
Heavy shook his head, “I believe in many things.”
“You and I both know they took more than bodies, It is hard for me to ask him to feel safe. The believing, a blanket of sorts, Ja?”
Heavy nodded and swallowed thickly, his throat dry and hoarse.
“I’ll tell you what,” Medic picked up a pair of tweezers, and pointed them at Heavy. “If I will tell you what I miss, will you do the same?”
“Da.”
Medic went back to the organ, attempting to pick something out of the flesh.
“My name.”
Heavy pulled back slightly, “Doctor, you are not allowed to -”
Medic smiled and shook his head, “Do not worry Mein Freund, I will not slip any information should you not want it.”
Heavy paused. He categorized the sounds in Medic’s lab. The doves were sleeping in the rafters above, he could hear the soft noise of a sentry not far from the lab’s walls, his own breathing, louder than he would have preferred.
Heavy sunk down in his seat, “You can give me anything.”
Medic processed the request momentarily before smiling wide. “Now, if only I heard that in this office more often!”
He wiped his hand on his chest, leaving red streaks carelessly drawn all over his white coat. Heavy watched the blood dry almost instantly as it hit his fabric. Medic ignored the drop of blood that clung to his jawline.
“We had changed our family name for two reasons,” Medic began, once again giving his attention to the hearts on the table, “One of them, to hide.” Medic punctuated the last word with a unexpected jab, violently plunging the tweezers into the middle of the two organs. He left the tool half stuck in the muscles.
“The other reason,” He leaned against the table, facing Heavy. “Was because my last name became tainted.”
Heavy crossed his arms, “Tainted?”
Nodding, Medic put his chin in his hands, “Ja, I can no longer walk around with my previous name, both my parents realized this. That name, I miss. "
“That name?”
“I had changed my first name as well, that one I chose.”
Heavy was quiet for a moment.
“What is name?”
Without hesitation, Medic obliged, his voice unusually quiet, “My full name is Ludwig Reichstein.”
“Ah,” Heavy shook his head, “Can see why ignorant people would have issue with name. However,” He uncrossed his arms, “Ludwig suits you.”
Medic smiled, “Thank you Mein Freund, I’m sure whatever name you possess fits your body like a sock.”
“Glove.”
“What was that?”
“English expression, da? Fit like glove.”
“Never did have good fitting socks,” He momentarily paused to think for a moment, the doctor’s eyes wide and unfocusing, when he snapped back into the present, he smiled.
Medic reached down to fiddle with the star around his neck, pausing for Heavy. He watched the doves above him breath softly, their feathers expanded across their chest.
“Mikhail.” Heavy said softly, his eyes down.
“Meek-Hail?”
Heavy gave a amused huff, “Mikhail.”
“Mikhail.” Medic repeated, smiling at getting it right, “As I knew it would be, it is a fitting name.”
Heavy put one of his pointer fingers on the tip of the tweezers, still jammed in between the two hearts on the table.
“My father prayed.”
Medic hummed, acknowledging and edging Heavy to continue.
Heavy hummed back, “Hmm, I can not remember what he said. But,” Heavy put his arms on his lap, “I had something.”
Medic stood still, “You felt safe.”
“Da.”
“Before the -?”
“Da.”
“When did he -?”
“When he died.”
“Ah.” Medic nodded, “Do you think you would try to continue after all of this?”
Heavy rubbed the back of his neck, “Maybe. If after happens.”
The silence between them buzzed. Heavy was used to silence, Medic was not. The doctor seemed to be contemplating something, his face scrunched up in thought. The two hearts between them continued to lay out in the open.
“I have something, you may like it, do you wish hear it?”
Heavy nervously played with the scalpel on the counter, “Hear?”
“Ja, hold on, stay there.”
Medic stretched up from his crouched position and lifted his arms in the air. He flitted to the corner of the room where a record player rested. Underneath, a stack of albums lifted the machine in the air, it looked one breath away from toppling over. Heavy sat, amused by Medic’s ability to retrieve the album from the tall stack with little trouble.
“This, I think you will like this one.” Medic briefly flashed the album cover towards Heavy. The cover itself was read in a mix of German and Yiddish, neither Heavy could understand well. The doctor spun the record, and lifted the needle.
The sound began warm, full of strings that Heavy can almost smell, his father’s study still dusty from the long since removed musician. It was not a tune he could recognize but it was a tune that felt familiar. It reminded him of his father’s prayers, the timber of his voice, the woman’s voice flew over the room and awoke the doves, who began to preen their feathers as they woke up.
Medic reached a hand out.
“I don’t know the moves either, come!”
Heavy slowly stood up from his seat. Medic reached further and grasped his hand.
“Doctor, I can not dance!” Heavy shouted over the music, a smile already forming on his face.
“Neither can I!”
Heavy let Medic pull him closer, they began to move from side to side, their feet tripping over themselves, their swaying not matching the rhythm to the song. Heavy felt warm and safe, he did not think to look behind him, didn’t check the door again, didn’t listen in to make sure Engineer’s sentry continued to search the high fortress, scanning for enemies.
They hadn’t realized the song had ended, and another slower one had begun, they had only slowed their dancing by a miniscule amount.
Erupting in a fit of giggles, Medic began to trip more often, having Heavy catch him more often than not. Their arms around the others for support more than anything. On the battlefield, they were together and solid, but in dancing on the surgery floor they both felt like fools, all limbs.
“I’m sorry! Haven’t done this in awhile!” Medic shouted above the music.
“Have never done this!” Heavy responded, smiling in kind.
The record stopped it’s spinning, the needle lifting from its grooves, and with a click, all sound in the lab had ceased. Heavy and Medic continued to smile at each other, both still clinging onto the other, neither of them made a move to dislodge themselves from their tangled arms and legs.
“I have not dusted off that old player in a while, I am thrilled for it to be used again.” Medic locked his hands behind Heavy’s neck.
“The music it was -”
“Traditional?”
Heavy shook his head, he tried to reach for words he did not have. His own education filled with beautiful languages that could describe anything. For this he was blank. “That is this it is.”
“What is it?”
Heavy leaned his forehead on Medic’s. Medic grinned, and closed his eyes. Heavy’s voice sounded reverent. His voice lower than a whisper. Medic wished to tuck it away, to fold it together and burn it over the candles he kept late at night, when prayer seemed the hardest way out of anything.
“The believing, this is it.”