Chapter Text
The forest pressed in on all sides, ancient and gnarled. The cold wind sent a chill through you as it whispered secrets through the rain-soaked branches high above. The canopy was so dense in places, it cast long green shadows even in the daylight, and your boots sank into the soft, mossy ground with each step. Damp earth clung to your knees, your sleeves, and your gear.
It had rained a day ago, but the world was still soaked, not just with rain but also with tension.
You could feel the weight of it in your bones.
The mission had been simple. Simple enough to inspire an easy, almost arrogant confidence from your teammates from the moment you were briefed. Satellite recon. Forward presence. Secure the target.
And, as usual, the expectation that you'd follow any given orders without question.
You were PMC, after all. That’s what you were paid for. Discretion. Precision. Results.
Now you were deep in the Kastovian wilderness, far from anything resembling civilization, far from your extraction point, and far from your squad. Or what was left of them.
Because the ambush had come fast. Fast and silent, like a bird of prey descending from the treetops. One minute you were moving in a staggered file through the ravine, eyes scanning the undergrowth, comms quiet, alert but unhurried.
And the next, the air had split with gunfire.
KorTac.
That’s all you knew.
Not how they found you. Not why they were here.
Just that they struck with eerie precision, as if they’d been watching for hours, maybe days.
You’d gone down hard when the first blast hit near your six. Shrapnel tore into the men in the rear, and they screamed before their bodies hit the ground.
It was a blur of trees, smoke, and blood after that. The cacophony of rifle fire ricochetted off the trees. Shadows moved in and out of your periphery. The panicked bark of names over the comms, cut short suddenly.
You remembered grabbing your med bag, crawling to Jackson—Danny. He’d been screaming, clutching the ragged hole in his leg. You remembered trying to staunch the flow with trembling fingers, your fingers covered in a mixture of your blood and his… The hot iron smell of it all.
And then another blast. A rush of heat and a concussive boom that threw you back into the trees like a ragdoll. After that nothing but ringing and the sound of screams echoing around you as the darkness closed in.
-----
You came to in the mud. Your head was pounding, your comms were fried, and your team was gone.
That was… what? An hour ago? Maybe more?
You had no way of knowing for sure.
Now, the woods had grown quiet. Not peaceful. Peace had fled this place a long time ago. But quiet, in the way a frightened rabbit goes still when spotted by a predator. Even the birds had stopped calling.
You pressed forward.
Every nerve screamed at you to hide, to stay put and wait for exfil... but you were the medic. Their medic. And your last memory of them, shouting, bleeding, crawling, wouldn't let you give up and wait for rescue like some delicate, feeble damsel.
You kept moving.
You clutched your side where a tree trunk had bruised your ribs when you crashed into it. It ached when you breathed.
The weight of your med kit rested comfortingly against your back as you ducked under a low-hanging branch, pushing into the gloom.
"Jackson," you muttered to yourself. "Reyes. Come on. Where the hell are you?"
Nothing answered. Not even the wind.
Suddenly, the world tilted as something massive collided with your back.
You didn’t hear him. Didn’t feel him until you were already down. Slammed into the earth so hard your vision exploded into white.
Your pistol flew from your hands, landing somewhere in the brush. You tried to twist, to reach for it, to do something, but a heavy weight dropped onto your back, knocking the breath from you and forcing you flat.
Your cheek ground into the cold, wet dirt. Damp leaves and pine needles stuck to your skin. You gasped, sharp and panicked, but froze when you felt it jabbed hard against the side of your head.
The barrel of a gun.
You went still, pulse hammering in your ears, chest tight beneath your plate carrier.
“Don’t move.”
The voice came out in a growl that sent an icy cold shiver down your spine. It was the kind of voice used to obedience. He hadn’t shouted, hadn’t needed to. He had simply spoken with authority.
Something heavy, the man’s knee, you guessed, pressed between your shoulder blades, pinning you harder to the ground. You could barely breathe, barely think. All instinct screamed at you to fight, to twist free, but your rational mind knew better: you were no match for the man. Not right now, not like this.
He was too fast, too precise, too lethal. You hadn’t heard a single damn step before he’d incapacitated you.
Above you, there was only the sound of breathing, calm and steady.
You gritted your teeth, dirt grinding between them and you spotted your pistol, laying in the overgrowth. Your fingers jerked involuntarily, but you quickly stilled your hand.
Not yet.
The weight above you shifted, just slightly, but it was enough to let you know that whoever he was, he was watching every twitch of your muscles.
You didn’t breathe.
Not until the pressure of the muzzle eased from your temple and the weight lifted from your back. Even then, it was hard to drag air into your lungs. Your ribs still ached from being tossed into the tree and then subsequently being slammed to the ground.
A rough, gloved hand seized the back of your neck and hauled you upward like you weighed nothing. Your boots scrapped in the dirt before they found purchase, and in a sharp, jerking motion, you were spun to face your captor.
Your breath caught.
He was massive.
Nearly seven feet tall and broad in a way that his body armor only emphasized. Tactical gear clung to his chest and shoulders, streaked with blood, grime, and forest debris. The distinct odor of sweat, gunpowder, and iron clung to him like a second skin. A long, tattered sniper's hood veiled his face, shrouding him in shadow, but it didn’t hide his eyes.
Those eyes.
Cold, pale blue, so light they almost glowed beneath the misty darkness of the woods. Icy and sharp, they scanned you once, appraisingly, then landed squarely on your face.
His left arm was clutched to his side, blood seeping between thick fingers and running down his hip. The bright red was startlingly vivid against the muted tones of his uniform.
“Are you a medic?” He asked, voice deep and thick with a German accent.
You hesitated.
“Yes,” you answered hoarsely, mouth dry, hands held just slightly out to the side to show you weren’t reaching for anything. “Yeah. I am.”
The moment the words left your mouth, he stepped closer. You tensed, but his grip just changed quickly. One massive hand curled around your bicep, not hard enough to bruise, but strong enough to make resistance futile. He yanked you forward toward a patch of open space beneath a crooked pine, then released you.
“Fix it,” he growled, referring to his wound.
Your eyes darted down to his side again.
It looked bad. Oozing. Too close to his ribs for comfort. His armor had absorbed some of it, but the source was still leaking steadily.
You swallowed. “How many times were you hit?”
“Once,” he said. “It’s still inside.”
You blinked. “That bullet’s still in you?” You shook your head as he continued to haul you towards the clearing. "You're better off leaving it inside until you can get to a hospital."
His eyes narrowed slightly, but his answer came flat and unbothered. “I don’t have a hospital. I have you.”
You stared at him in disbelief for a moment as he came to a stop, still holding your arm.
Fine. You weren’t going to argue with someone twice your size. Not when you didn’t know where your team was. Not when you didn’t know if they were alive.
You dropped your pack without a word and gestured to a nearby tree. “Sit. Keep that pressure on it until I say otherwise.”
He obeyed, strangely compliant. Maybe because of blood loss. Maybe because he knew he was at your mercy in this, whether he liked it or not.
You swallowed, hard, gathering your courage to challenge the behemoth of a man.
“You’ll let me go,” you said firmly. It wasn’t a question.
As he leaned back, he exhaled deeply, but very slowly, as if it was painful. He looked up at you, and you could almost see him raising an eyebrow beneath his shroud.
“You are not exactly in a position to be making demands, little one,” he chided, giving the gun in his lap a little wave.
Your stomach twisted at the veiled threat, but you stuck your chin out in the most convincing show of confidence you could muster.
“Neither are you,” you pointed out. “I’ll treat you, the best I can with what I have with me, and you’ll let me go. Unharmed.”
Silence stretched between the two of you before the man muttered, “Scheiße.” Shit.
“Very well,” he lied. “Keep me from bleeding out, and I will not stop you. You may go.”
You stood there for another moment longer, watching the man cautiously. You knew better than to trust his word, but it was all you had right now.
You nodded once and crouched beside him, tugging on a pair of latex gloves. “I need to see the wound.”
He gave a curt nod, then began unbuckling his chest rig. He moved awkwardly with one hand. You leaned in to help when it was clear he couldn’t do it alone. The plates were heavy, the straps clumsy and slick with blood. You were hyperaware of his silence as you worked, as if he were studying every move, every twitch of your hand.
Finally, the vest hit the ground with a heavy thud.
You hesitated, then reached for the hem of his shirt. “I need to get this off.”
He didn’t respond, just tried to lift his arm enough to help. You could hear his teeth scraping as his jaw tightened with restrained discomfort. You attempted to peel the soaked fabric upward, carefully over the wound, but it was sticking to his skin due to the excessive amounts of blood and sweat.
“Going to have to cut it off,” you informed him, reaching for your sheers.
Immediately his hand shot out to catch your wrist tightly in his vice-like grip. It was painful and you sucked in a sharp gasp.
Your eyes darted to his and he was watching you through narrowed slits.
His mouth didn't speak, but his eyes did.
Intense and burning, they said, Don't try anything stupid.
Your mouth twisted into a small frown. You nodded once, hoping to convey your compliance.
He slowly released you and you made quick work of cutting a long slit up the side of his shirt from the hem up to the underarm. You peeled it back.
And tried not to react.
His chest was… solid. Powerfully built and undeniably cut. The kind of musculature that only came from years of violence. Faint scars tracked over his ribs and shoulders, some clean and surgical, others ragged and ugly, a story told in skin. A few old and faded tattoos broke up the pale flesh, including a line of script over his heart, written in a language you didn't speak.
You cleared your throat and reached for your supplies.
As you cleaned the area, he didn’t flinch, even as you pressed gauze to the seeping edge. But his eyes were on you the entire time, tracking you.
“You got a name?” you asked after a while, keeping your voice even and professional. Bedside manner mattered. It kept your patient distracted from the pain. It kept them calm and that was especially important to you when your patient had a gun.
A gun that was still gripped tightly in the man’s hand, trained on you, as it rested in his lap.
He was quiet for a long moment, as you removed a pair of forceps from your kit.
You thought he hadn't heard you, or that he had chosen to keep that information to himself, until...
“König.”
The word dropped heavy between you. A call sign? A surname? It didn’t matter.
It fit him, that's for sure.
You nodded, eyes flicking up briefly to meet his.
“Well, König,” you said, voice steady, “this is going to hurt like hell.”
His hood shifted, just where his mouth would be. A smirk or a grit of his teeth?
You picked up the forceps, took a steadying breath, and got to work.
You peeled back the last swath of gauze, stained dark with blood, and took in the sight of König’s wound.
It was hard to gauge right away. At first glance, all you saw was a messy gash of blood and torn flesh. Luckily, the entry point was tight: a small tear just beneath his ribs. The surrounding skin, however, was mottled and swelling fast. The bleeding had slowed thanks to the pressure he kept on it, but it still leaked. Dark red blood welled up and leaked out like angry, red tears.
The bullet was still lodged somewhere inside.
You inhaled slowly through your nose, the smell of the petrichor permeating your senses. You leaned forward, pressing your knee into the earth to steady yourself. Your gloves were already slick as you carefully pressed your fingers around the gash, exploring the wound. You poured antiseptic over the site in slow circles, flushing away blood and grit, then dabbed it with gauze until you could clearly see the wound track.
You’d done this before, in tents, in armored transports, in blown-out buildings under sniper fire, but never like this. Never kneeling in the mud before a man who could snap your neck with a flick of his wrist.
Still, you set your jaw, focusing on the work in front of you, instead of the threat beside you.
You reached for your forceps with one hand, flashlight in the other, leaning in to better examine the wound under the dull, flickering beam.
“Try not to move,” you murmured.
König didn’t answer. He watched, silent, expression obscured underneath his shroud. The pale blue of his eyes never wavered, tracking your hands as you leaned in and pressed gently around the wound, trying to gauge the depth, the angle.
The bullet had gone in at a slight upward trajectory. It had been a few centimeters higher, it might have caught his lung.
You wished it had.
“Alright,” you breathed. “Here we go.”
There was a wet, squelching sound as you slid the forceps in carefully, feeling your way past skin, tissue, and torn muscle. You worked by feel, eyes narrowing in concentration.
He grunted once, low and gruff. His body tensed, but otherwise, he held remarkably still.
“Almost there,” you said, mostly to yourself.
It wasn’t long before you felt the foreign object deep inside him.
You clamped the forceps down around it and slowly drew back. The bullet slid out slick and dark, the shape slightly flattened from impact.
You held it up briefly, assuring it was all in one piece, then dropped it into the dirt.
König’s breath hissed through his teeth.
You reached immediately for gauze, pressing it hard to the wound to slow the new bleeding. “Bullet’s out. That’s the worst of it.”
His fist clenched into the mossy dirt beside him, but he said nothing.
You moved fast now, knowing that his stitches were the only thing standing between you and your freedom.
You placed the flashlight between your teeth, so you could use both hands, and began disinfecting the wound, pouring iodine over the torn flesh. He tensed again, but didn’t make a sound this time. You threaded the needle, hands steady despite the rush of adrenaline still coursing through you. You set to work stitching the jagged edges back together.
Twelve stitches. Clean, tight. The skin puckered slightly with each pass, but it held. You paused only once, eyes flickering up to his, when he let out another grunt. His eyes were shut.
You glanced at the gun in his lap, but returned your attention to the stitches. You were just about finished.
“Almost there,” you mumbled, again, around the flashlight
Once the last knot was tied, you cut the thread and pressed a fresh bandage to the site, taping it down with practiced ease. You cleaned the surrounding skin, checking for signs of infection, but nothing seemed urgent. At least not at the moment.
Still crouched beside him, you finally sat back on your heels, pulled the flashlight from your teeth, and exhaled. “That’ll hold for now. But you need to be careful so you don’t tear it open again.”
Your body buzzed with leftover adrenaline, fingers trembling slightly as you clicked off your light and dropped the stained gauze into your med kit, zipping it shut.
König’s head slowly tilted to the side, and for the first time, you saw fatigue in his posture. His shoulders sagged and he slouched lowly against the trunk of the tree. With his sleeves shoved up, exposing the skin of his forearms, you could see just how pale he had become.
“You need rest,” you muttered, pulling off your gloves and wiping your clammy hands on your trousers.
König didn’t respond. Was he always this unnervingly quiet?
You started to rise, your back aching, knees smudged with mossy dirt, but before you could fully stand, a large hand reached out and closed around your wrist.
Your breath caught again as you looked down at him.
He didn’t release you. His eyes locked with yours, a mixture of intensity and calculation burning behind them. But beneath it… something else. Something dark.
“You stay,” he said, voice rough.
You blinked, trying to read him, but there was no lie in his tone. No mockery. Just practicality, laced with something that you couldn’t quite place.
Your blood turned to ice.
The woods had grown mostly quiet again. The birds had returned, but faint and distant.
Slowly, your eyes lifted to his. He hadn’t moved much, still sitting back against the tree, but his gaze was anchored on you with that same unnerving calm.
“I… what?” you snapped, voice growing tight with disbelief. “That wasn’t the deal. You said you needed me to get the bullet out. It’s out. You’re patched up. I’m done.”
“You stay,” he repeated simply, as if your protest was irrelevant.
Your heart starting to thunder in your chest. “You said—”
“I changed my mind.”
“Bullshit,” you hissed, trying to stand again.
“Mouthy little medic,” he murmured with a touch of amusement in his tone.
His grip tightened on your wrist and he yanked you down.
You fell onto your knees roughly and you clenched your jaw tightly. Dread curdled low in your gut and you suddenly felt like you were going to be sick.
“You don’t need me anymore,” you insisted, as if you could change his mind somehow.
His eyes narrowed in the slits of his veil, but again, he didn’t speak, which only added to your growing frustration.
You glanced into the trees adjacent to you. The woods stretched on around you, dense and dark. Your thoughts spun, calculating routes of escape.
Deep down, you knew that even injured, he would catch you.
Your pistol. It lying was somewhere in the brush. And now König wasn’t wearing any body armor. If you could get to your gun—
“You will come with me,” he said interrupting your thoughts, rising slowly to his feet like a looming specter, pulling you up with him.
He released your wrist, but you knew it wasn’t an invitation to go. Despite that, you took an instinctive step back, craning your neck up to meet his gaze.
“You shouldn’t even be moving yet,” you said quickly. “You’re going to tear the stitches wide open—”
He leaned forward. “Then you fix them again,” he said plainly. There was no trace of amusement in his tone anymore.
“You’re unbelievable,” you muttered, taking another step back, desperate for more distance between you and your captor.
“You walk,” he said, jerking his head towards the wide expanse in front of you. “Or I carry you.”
An image flashed in your mind of him cradling you against his chest, one arm under your knees, the other wrapped around your shoulders.
Slowly, with every bit of your mind and body protesting, you turned toward the woods and began walking.
You didn’t look back at him, but you could feel his presence behind you like a shadow, eery and almost silent.
You were in awe of how quiet he was for a man his size.
It was easy, for a moment, to convince yourself that you were walking out here alone.
When you finally glanced back, you noticed the way his eyes scanned the trees, how he tightened his grip on his rifle, the way he moved with deliberate care through the brush.
He didn’t limp the way you expected. In fact, he moved as if nothing had happened. Like he wasn’t freshly stitched and still bleeding somewhere beneath the bandages you’d so carefully applied.
You wondered how many he’d killed today.
You wondered if he would kill you the moment you reunited with his men.
The thought lodged in your throat like a rock.
You’d seen your squad go down. You’d seen their bodies. You hadn’t had time to check pulses, to confirm anything, but the way Jackson screamed when the mortar hit, Reyes’s radio cut to static, West’s body convulsed in a pool of blood—
You knew it in your gut: They weren’t coming.
No one was.
And König must’ve known it too.
You kept walking, heart aching, vision clouded with the ghosts of men you couldn’t save.
Without warning, a figure burst out of the trees in gray camo, holding a rifle.
Your heart leapt, instinct reacting faster than reason. You recognized his uniform. He was someone from your PMC.
He didn't see you, his eyes stuck on the colossal threat just behind you.
“Blue! Blue!” You called out, hand lifting, desperately hoping to save yourself from sharing the safe fate as your teammates.
“Hold your fire, I’m—” You broke off.
Not because the man had lowered his weapon, but because König had moved.
You didn’t see him draw the blade, just a blur of motion, heavy boots pounding dully on the forest floor, the brittle crunch of twigs and leaves crushed beneath his large mass.
He collided with the soldier like a freight train.
There wasn’t even a fight.
König grabbed the man by the collar and drove him head first into a tree, the impact echoing across the clearing like a hammer on stone.
The rifle fell uselessly to the ground.
You suppressed a scream as König grabbed the man again and threw him to the forest floor like a half filled sack of flour.
The soldier struggled to breathe, scrambling for his sidearm, but König was already there. He slammed a boot down on the man’s chest and the sickening crunch was almost drowned out by the gasping cry that was forced from his lips. König crouched and drove his knife into the space under the chin guard, plunging it in all the way to the hilt.
You could see the blade inside the soldier's gaping mouth, cutting clean through his tongue and lodging into the roof of his mouth.
It was over in seconds.
The man gurgled, his face etched with terror. He spasmed once, and then stilled. All traces of sentience drained quickly from his wide eyes, leaving the glassy orbs staring but unseeing.
You couldn’t breathe. Your legs felt boneless and your lungs tightened in shock. Nausea clawed up your throat.
It hadn’t been a battle. It had been execution. The man hadn’t stood a chance. From the familiar uniform and patches on his gear, he’d been one of yours, though not anyone you recognized.
König wretched the weapon from the poor bastard's skull and rose slowly, towering over the body. Blood dripped from the edge of his knife.
Then he looked to you.
You took a single step back, horror seizing you.
“I—he was one of mine,” you rasped hoarsely, without thinking.
“Then he was here to kill me,” König replied simply, his voice flat.
You had no rebuttal, because he was probably right.
Still, your stomach twisted as you turned away from the corpse. It took every ounce of will you had to begin walking again.
You didn’t want to look at him anymore. You didn’t want to think about what came next. Because if this was what König did to an armed man… What chance did you stand?
-----
The sky bled slowly into twilight, bruised purples and dying golds filtering through the canopy as the last of the sun disappeared behind the black line of the trees. The air turned cold fast. The sharp and brittle dampness of it seeped through your layers and clung to your spine. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted once, then fell silent. The forest around you seemed to exhale, settling into stillness.
You didn’t.
Your muscles were still tight with tension, heart pacing just beneath your breastbone. Even now, after hours of marching through uneven terrain behind the silent behemoth who had claimed a stake on your life in one quiet decision, you couldn’t let yourself relax. Couldn’t forget what you’d seen. The sound of that soldier’s gurgling breath echoed faintly in your ears. The brutal way König had ended him. It hadn’t been anger, or panic, or even vengeance.
It had been ruthless efficiency.
And you knew, deep in your gut, that if the situation were reversed, if you were the one aiming a gun at him or his team? He wouldn’t hesitate.
You doubted he would hesitate now, if you gave him reason.
He had spared you to use you. Because he needed you.
But the moment your usefulness ended?
You shook the thought from your head before it could fully manifest. You had finally felt your pounding heart begin to settle and you weren’t going to work yourself up again. You needed to stay clear headed. Focussed.
The fire crackled low between you and König. Modest and tight, half-buried with stones to prevent the light from rising too high. The man had built it in near silence, with methodical precision and a hunter’s instinct for concealment. He’d used flint and steel shavings, broken twigs, and short, smooth motions of his knife to shear branches clean.
Now he sat, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent, elbow resting against his knee. His hood was still covering his face, though his helmet was removed, resting beside him. His rifle leaned within easy reach at his side. Even injured, stitched, bruised, and caked with dried blood, he looked unshakable.
You lingered at the edge of the firelight, arms crossed tightly over your chest.
You didn’t want to get close. You didn’t want to sleep. You wanted to dig a deep hole and hide in it. You wanted your team back. You wanted this day to rewind. You wanted to wake up.
But this wasn’t a dream.
Grief and rage burned under your skin. You lowered yourself to the ground slowly, settling across the fire from him, where the light barely reached.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just watched you for a beat too long.
Then he reached forward.
You barely had time to register what he was doing before his fingers curled into the collar of your jacket and tugged.
“Hey—” you protested, hands coming up instinctively.
König didn’t respond. He just hauled you across the narrow gap, dragging you around the fire like you weighed nothing. He tossed you around, positioning you with unnerving ease, your back pulled snug against his chest, his legs bracketing yours.
You moved immediately, twisting halfway, in an attempt to shimmy away from him. “Don’t— What the hell are you doing?”
You barely had the words out before he shifted again, and you saw something in his hand.
Flex-cuffs.
Your heart dropped.
“No—”
“Hush,” he murmured, and you felt his breath warm against your temple. He clicked his tongue softly in amusement. “The little medic would slit my throat in my sleep, no?”
You turned your head up to glare at him, face hot with fury and embarrassment and the prickling edge of fear. Because he was right: you would, if given the chance. Or at the very least, you’d run.
Your silence was its own confession.
König’s arms moved deliberately. He caught your wrists roughly in his gloved hands and cinched the flex-cuffs tightly, binding them in front of you. He pressed them against your chest.
“Be still,” he said simply.
You opened your mouth, to protest, to curse him, something, but thought better of it and snapped it shut again.
He murmured something in German then, voice quieter now. You didn’t understand the words. It was something quiet and rhythmic, almost like a lullaby without melody or an old prayer. You didn’t ask what it meant. You weren’t sure he would tell you.
Then he tugged you back, gently but insistently, until you were once again flush against him.
You could feel the heat of his body behind you, the slow, heavy rise and fall of his enormous chest as his breathing began to settle. The scent of blood and sweat clung to him, earthy and metallic. His hand rested lightly at your waist, not roaming, just there.
He didn’t touch you beyond what was necessary to hold you still. He trusted that, between the ties and his own strength and size, you wouldn’t get away.
You stared into the fire.
The warmth of it was useless; You felt cold to the bone.
There was something deeply wrong about this. Sitting like this. Being held by him, this monster of a man, after everything he’d done. After what you’d witnessed him do today.
But your body was tired. Your knees ached. Your eyes burned.
And worst of all?
A small, terrible part of you didn’t resist.
Because you knew the truth.
You were alone out here. No one was coming. Your team was gone. Your employer would likely write you off as K.I.A. Collateral damage. The forest would swallow your body without a whisper.
But if you wanted to survive…
You would have to stay right here. With him.
You squeezed your eyes shut and let the exhaustion pull you into the temporary reprieve of sleep.