Work Text:
David couldn’t remember a thing. Everything was blank in his mind. All he knew was he was surrounded by ruins and dead people - and a couple of people who weren’t dead. They weren’t screaming either. Neither was David. It all seemed so surreal and impossible that no one even had the mental capacity to understand what had happened to them. He lifted his head, which felt entirely too heavy, considering how empty his mind was. He saw Julia a couple of meters away from him, her chest completely open. Logically there was no way she had survived this, but he wasn’t thinking logically. There was no time for that. He lunged towards her with all the power he could muster, which turned out to be too much, as he collapsed over her body. This was a wrong decision. Now everyone would suspect him of… something. What, he wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter anyway. After that, everything went black.
When he came back to reality, he found himself in an ambulance, being tended to by a young man who looked remarkably like himself, but younger… and softer? He heard two other men talking in the front of the ambulance, he heard laughing, but it sounded very strained. He could not blame them - paramedics aren’t used to terrorist attacks, after all. They probably normally only had to deal with drunk people fighting and suicidal people, and people who got rescued from a fire. This was an absurd situation that no one should have to experience. But David had experienced it first-hand. He didn’t quite know if that was better or worse than being a rescuer, just observing it all, not knowing anything.
“He’s conscious!” the young man shouted to the ambulance drivers. He thought he heard a tinge of a very familiar accent. Was he Scottish as well?
“Oh, thank fuck!” a man shouted back. Then the young man looked at David.
“Hello, my name is Ashley Greenwick, I am your paramedic. We are currently taking you to hospital. Estimated time of arrival is in three minutes. Can you tell me your name, and are you aware of what has happened?”
David looked at the man as if he was some strange foreign object. They looked the same, they sounded the same - definitely Scottish. He knew about doppelgangers, but he did not expect the similarities to be so eerie. Even down to the accent and tone of voice. He realized he had been staring for a bit too long, when the man’s eyes started to dart away uncomfortably.
“Uh, David Budd. Bomb explosion.”
Now the young man looked at him the same way that he had just looked at him. As if he was some terrestrial being. He could hardly blame him though. This situation was fucking strange.
“Scottish?” the man asked. David tried to nod, but realized he was restrained to a spinal board. “Yes, I am. You as well?” the young man smiled at him.
“This is a really strange situation,” David remarked. “You tell me, mate.”
They arrived at the hospital, David was rolled out of the ambulance, and he got to see the two other paramedics before he was taken away by the hospital personnel. A short man who seemed to be a bit older than the other two - probably same age as David, and then a man who David presumed to be either of Asian or North African descent.
Then the paramedics left and went on with their work shift, but before they had left, he had asked the young paramedic who had seen him to call his wife and tell her what had happened. David couldn’t help but wonder how they would deal with something like a terrorist attack, but being a cop himself, he figured that all types of rescuers would have to be of the same kind of mentality, so they would probably be fine. As would he.
David was very lucky to barely have gotten any serious injuries in the attack, despite being only meters away from the explosion. He got out of the hospital after two days.
When David got home to the safehouse, Vicky was waiting for him. She seemed strangely disconcerted about seeing him.
“What?” David asked. “I come home from being in the hospital for two days following a bomb attack, and you’re looking at me like I am an alien?”
Vicky sighed at herself and looked like she softened up a bit. “I’m sorry, it’s just. When the paramedic called, he sounded EXACTLY like you, and… I guess I got a little paranoid. I’m sorry. Really, I thought you were pulling some kind of sick trick.”
David was hurt. Did his own wife really believe that he would lie to her about something like this? They were separated, but surely, they couldn’t be that disconnected from each other.
“I…” Vicky started, but trailed off. “What is it?” David said, trying to keep a bit of stoicism in his voice, although he feared what she was going to say.
“I’m sorry, I know this is a horrible time, and you could have died and all, but… I’ve realized I can’t trust you anymore. I’d like for you to leave.”
David didn’t even say anything. He didn’t want to argue, didn’t want to make a scene.
“Are the kids home?” he asked, at least he would like to see them before he left.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You can see them tomorrow, I promise.”
Then the doorbell rang. Who could that be? No one except the police knew the address to the safehouse. David reached to answer the door, but Vicky got there first. In the doorway stood a young, Scottish man, who looked exactly like David, but maybe 5-7 years younger. Now it was Vicky’s turn to look at him like he was an alien.
“Evening ma’am” the man said to Vicky. “I have to come clear and say, I know I’m not supposed to be here, but - this is strictly confidential - I got the address off a police colleague, and I’ve come to deliver this.” He handed her a wallet. David’s wallet.
He must have lost it sometime between him fainting at the bomb scene and getting to the hospital. Now the man noticed David standing behind her. He smiled faintly.
“Am I coming at a bad time?” he asked. Vicky shook her head. “Not at all, come on in,” she offered politely, and the young man stepped into the house.
“My name is Ashley Greenwick,” he said and shook Vicky’s hand. “I am the paramedic who serviced your husband on the way to the hospital.”
“Vicky Budd”, she replied.
The man nodded politely and then nodded at David, as to acknowledge his presence in the room.
“I’m sorry,” Vicky said suddenly, “I have to say this. You two look and sound exactly the same and it is really freaky.” Both David and the paramedic laughed at that. At the same time too. It was like a parallel universe gone wrong.
David, Vicky and the paramedic sat in the kitchen for a while and talked over the events, and as he left, Vicky thanked him for bringing the wallet, and for being so kind to speak to them about the trauma, as she knew David would never do it himself. She did not say the last part, but David knew she was thinking it.
For a little bit it almost seemed like things might be normal, but at the end of the day, David still had to leave.
He went to his apartment alone. He had never felt more insignificant than the moment he was sitting back at his apartment. He had no purpose anymore. He had lost his family for good, and the person he was paid to protect had died. What was the point of his life?
And then he did something really silly.
He woke up in an ambulance again. The same young man was looking down at him, chuckling lightly. Not condescending. He couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it was oddly comforting.
“He has finally woken” he shouted to the drivers.
Sounded like it was the same drivers as last time. They probably always drove together.
Then he looked into David’s eyes. His eyes were so soft. There was a certain contrast there. David and the man might have looked and sounded exactly the same, but there was a soft boyishness to the younger man that David did not recognize in himself.
“Impressive how you managed to be unconscious for so long after firing a blank” the man laughed. He was not mocking him, David could tell. Wait, shit. It just occurred to him what he had done. It was a blank? Not only had he embarrassed himself by being stupid enough to shoot himself in the first place, but it was a fucking blank?!
“Look, I’m not gonna ask you any uncomfortable questions. It’s not any of my business why you thought shooting yourself would ever be a good idea, and I personally don’t care much for deep conversations, I’m not a therapist, but… normally when people shoot themselves in the head, we don’t get there to rescue them. I don’t know if you should consider yourself lucky that a neighbor heard a gunshot and called the police, but I suppose waking up in an ambulance can’t be much worse than waking up at home alone and realizing you have failed to kill yourself.” His voice sounded sterner, but still David didn’t sense that the man was really angry with him. He sounded slightly amused, and possibly… relieved? Or maybe David was just making that up in his head.
“Good” David simply replied. “I don’t want to talk about it either.”
“If you don’t want to go to the hospital, we can take you home. You seem fine enough. That is, of course, only if we can trust you won’t attempt to shoot yourself again. And you might want to get that headwound checked out.”
In a momentary lapse of stupidity David found himself asking “will you stay with me for a bit? I don’t want to go to the hospital, but I don’t really want to be alone either.”
The young man looked at his watch. “My shift does not end for another 6 hours, and I hardly think being with you in your private home will count as working, but I can argue for a lieu day if you think that it might prevent you from trying to commit suicide again. Shit. What am I doing?”
David wasn’t sure if he meant to say the last part out loud, but it made him chuckle, nevertheless. What was he doing? What were either of them doing? He had met this man twice and it seemed inappropriate to even suggest that he should ditch work just to stay with him - he didn’t know the guy for Christ’s sake.
They both seemed to be out of good judgement, as the young man went to talk to the other men in the front. He heard uproarious laughter coming from the front of the ambulance, and fragments of a sentence, that sounded like it might be “you’re not gonna ditch us to go shag your clone, are ya?”
That remark made David wince. He had no idea that the man might be gay, and now it made his suggestion seem all the more ludicrous.
They ended up in David’s apartment anyway.
They would talk for hours about all things in life that weren’t related to bomb attacks and suicide attempts. They talked about David’s family, Ashley and his friends, work, video games, all kinds of casual normal subjects that friends would talk about. Not once did either of them mention how absurd this entire situation was.
And when David, in a moment of sheer curiousness and sudden lack of boundaries, went to kiss Ashley, he kissed him back. It was going to be okay.