Chapter Text
The streets of Zaun blurred in your vision. Your body trembled, too weak to stand but too stubborn to lay down and die in the filth like so many others. Hunger gnawed at your insides. The wound on your side was worse, leaking warmth that stained your thin blouse and seeped into the cobblestones beneath you.
The end was near, there was no doubt. You tried to pray, lips moving silently as you thought of a kinder place, somewhere beyond Zaun’s poison-stained skies, where the air was clean and the sun wasn’t just a myth whispered by drunks.
Then, a steady rhythm of boots resounded through the stillness of your lament, each step growing louder and louder.
Your eyelids fluttered, the world tilting as you slumped against the wall as if trying to vanish into the cold, grimy concrete to die alone in quiet surrender, unseen and unnoticed. But someone was coming. Maybe a scavenger to pick clean whatever was left of what you called life. Or worse, one of the chem-barons’ enforcers looking for sport. After the life you’d endured, a fleeting thought crossed your mind that destiny could have at least granted you the small mercy of dying in peace. Dignified. Or at least as dignified as this situation allowed. But the harsh truth you were about to be a witness to was that life never owed anything to anyone.
When the figure stopped in front of you, their towering silhouette barely visible in the haze. You desperatly tried to shrink back, but your adrenal glands must have already shut off and your body refused to move.
“Still alive,” a low, measured voice muttered, thick with an accent that wrapped heavily around the words. It wasn’t a question.
You managed to raise your head enough to meet the stranger's eyes, or at least, where you thought his eyes should be. The man’s upper face was obscured by a hood, jaw covered by an oversized collar beneath which peaked skin marred by deep chemical burns. He crouched low, tilting his head as if examining a broken tool.
“Impressive,” he breathed. “Most would have been dead hours ago.”
You wanted to scream, to beg him to leave you alone and grant you this one last wish to slip away from this world with your dignity intact. He could have your body once your soul had departed for all you cared. You’d heard it said that it takes seven minutes to lose all sensation, just seven fleeting minutes. That was all you needed.
But instead, your dry lips parted with a single whispered plea.
“Please….”
The man didn’t respond at first. He reached into a pouch at his side, pulling out a vial filled with some viscous substance. His long, bony fingers uncorked it, and the scent of something sharp and unnatural filled your nose.
“We will see,” he said plainly, tilting the vial above your wound.
The liquid poured out, searing into your flesh like molten iron. You screamed. Or at least you thought you did. The pain consumed you, stealing the air from your lungs, and then… nothing.
When you woke, slowly drifting back into your consciousness, the first thing that hit you was the smell. Acrid, antiseptic and faintly tinged with something nausietingly sweet like decayed fruit. The air was thick and damp, clinging to your skin and pressing against your lungs as you painfully struggled to draw a full breath.
You lay on something cold and hard. A makeshift medical cot, perhaps. A faint green light flickered, cast by bubbling vials and oversized glass tubes that lined the walls in chaotic rows. Strange machines hissed and pumped rhythmically, their functions as enigmatic as the man who had pulled you back from the edge of death.
Speaking of, you turned your head and there he was.
He stood with his back to you, hunched over a workbench cluttered with an assortment of different tools and unidentifiable materials. His movements were precise, almost surgical, as he worked with a scalpel in one hand and a shard of something crystalline in the other.
“You’re awake.”
His voice startled you, even though it wasn’t loud. He did not turn to face you. Didn’t even look up from his work.
Now that your mind was no longer preoccupied with shutting down, a flood of questions swarmed through you. “Where…?” you croaked, your throat dry and the word barely escaping as a whisper.
“Alive,” he said simply, as though the single word held all the answers you could possibly seek. His tone was definitive, leaving no room for argument, so you daren't push further. Perhaps, for now, simply being alive indeed was enough.
You tried to sit up, but familiar pain shot through your side, forcing you back down. A quiet noise escaped your lips, and for a moment, the stranger's hands paused. Then he set the scalpel aside and turned to face you.
Up close, he looked otherworldly. His tall, slender frame and his burned face illuminated by the eerie green glow of the laboritory seemed almost unnatural. He tilted his head slightly, studying you with an undechiperable gaze.
“You were dying,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact, as if you needed the reminder. “I stopped that. For now.”
“Why?” The word slipped out from between your lips before you could stop it.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he crossed the room in a few long strides, crouching beside you like he had in the alley. You felt your pulse quicken, though whether from fear or something else, you couldn’t tell.
“Why indeed,” he murmured to himself, his voice almost amused.
For a moment, his bony fingers brushed your arm, testing your pulse. Then he stood again, returning to his work as though you were no more than a passing curiosity.
“You should rest,” he did add from over his shoulder. “Your body has been pushed to its limits, and you will need your strength if you are to be of any use.”
“Use?” you echoed weakly.
He turned around, a faint, crooked smile pulling at the unscarred side of his mouth.
“Everything in this world has a purpose,” he said, “even you.”
As you drifted back into unconsciousness, one thought echoed in your mind, strange and unbidden. He reminded you of an angel. A broken, twisted angel of death.
And for the first time in a while, you felt safe.