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The Underworld was never quiet. Mining machinery whirring, cheers from the fight club, Geomarrow heaters humming away…true silence was not something most Underworlders had heard in a long time. Despite all of this background noise, Natasha would still call this a quiet night. There were no patients that needed her constant supervision asleep in the clinic, and she had had enough time to make herself a cup of coffee that would wake up the dead with its strength. She took a long sip, and sighed happily.
Just the way she liked it.
Weaving through the clutter of her tiny kitchenette-slash-storage room, Natasha grabbed books and papers from seemingly random piles. Manuals on strategic reconnaissance and hastily copied Wildfire reports were not exactly light reading, but she intended to take them upstairs and have a comfortable sit down with them regardless.
Just as she was about to turn and leave the public part of the clinic, a quiet knock sounded on the door.
Shave-and a hair-cut, two-bits. In all honesty, Natasha still did not know what the bits in question were, but she didn't need to understand to know who was at the door. She put down her papers and went to unlock the door, wincing at the loud creak it made. Thankfully, nobody seemed to be awake at this hour other than her and-
“Hey, Nat! Burnin’ the…burning the midnight oil?”
“Sampo. Welcome back.” she greeted him with a soft smile. Her friend bowed and ducked past her, a glint in his eyes and supplies in his arms. “The pleasure’s all mine. Heard we were running short on painkillers?”
Despite his usual theatrical mannerisms, Sampo was quiet enough to not wake even the lightest sleepers. His steps were light on the tiled floor, deftly avoiding any patches that were louder than others. “Fresh from the Silvermane supply trucks, only the finest goods from yours truly.” He slotted in the small boxes to their respective drawers, giving them a satisfied tap for good measure. “So!” He spun around on his heel, almost stumbling into a counter but turning it into a casual lean at the last second. “What are we up to?”
Natasha laughed quietly, used to his antics. “We were just about to head upstairs to catch up on the backlog of reports. Although, I suppose we could make another coffee stop first. Is that the exciting activity you were looking for?”
“Absolutely. Page-turning action.” Sampo reached around to find his mug in the chaos of the counter, squinting through the darkness. “Mind turnin’ that into a hot chocolate stop for your favourite merchant?”
It was said in as casual a tone as the rest of his ramblings, but the request made Natasha scrutinise him a little closer. Sampo had never said it in as many words, and probably never would, but he had very specific preferences. Coffee for a normal night, tea after any high-octane chases through the streets, and the Silvermane-issue, powdery, sickeningly sweet hot chocolate for nights when he wanted nothing more than to curl up in an armchair and pass out for a week.
Natasha saw the dark shadows under his eyes. She saw the almost imperceptible sway in his stance. She saw that most of his body weight was braced with that hand on the counter, and she mentioned none of it. Instead, she pulled out a sachet of hot chocolate and took Sampo’s mug out of his other hand, pouring the sachet in and heading to the kettle. “Of course. You can pry my coffee out of my cold, dead hands, though.”
“Wouldn't dream of it, Nat. Do I look like I have a death wish?”
She leveled him with a Look. He flashed a plastic grin that didn't reach his eyes. Neither said anything further.
As Natasha picked up both her coffee and his hot chocolate, Sampo gathered the papers she had put down earlier, trying to balance them on his hip. She tried to muffle her laughter as the papers repeatedly slid off the flat surface, before Sampo sighed in annoyance and bundled them up in his arms.
“Is this all reports?”
“Mostly Wildfire, a couple of Silvermane, and some light reading thrown in…but other than that, yes. You coming?”
Sampo bowed theatrically, quickly realising he had no arms spare and gesturing at the stairs as best he could with his head.
“Ladies- oh, shouldn't-have-done-that- ladies first!”
Natasha leveled her Look at Sampo again, who was straightening up with significantly more of an unsteady sway. “Fall risks first.”
“Ever the charmer, Nat.” he sighed, but didn't refuse the assessment.
They had made it up the stairs and into the study-slash-living-room (who was she kidding, every room served at least three purposes in the cramped clinic) without incident. Two well-worn pairs of boots sat next to each other by the door, and their equally tired owners had found their usual places. Natasha was at her desk, sorting documents into neat piles that only made sense to her under the gentle lamplight. Sampo was sat cross-legged on the sofa, warm mug in his hands and watching her with half-lidded eyes.
“What's the piles mean?” he mumbled, gesturing vaguely at the desk. Natasha knew that he would not process a single word of her explanation, but she decided to humour him regardless.
As she talked about duplicates, useless reports, and the classification of what was a Fragmentum problem versus a human problem, she saw him gradually relax, until he looked more like a pile of limbs than an attentive person. Even still, his head snapped up as her ramble trailed off, eyes flicking open before squinting in pain at the light. “‘s there…anythin’ I can do t’ help?”
She sighed, getting up and padding over to the generous pile of blankets and cushions shoved in a basket in a corner. “Sampo. It's just us here. Nobody else is awake right now.” She made a quiet sound of triumph as she found the blanket she was looking for, midnight-blue and soft as a cloud. She shook it out and walked back over, grabbing a report from the unread pile on the way. In one fluid movement, Natasha sat down on the sofa, pulling her legs up and throwing the blanket over herself and Sampo.
“Rest. That's how you can help. I'll be right here, nobody else is going to come in, and I'm worried. Rest.”
It wasn't anything as dramatic as a puppet with its strings cut. Rather, it was the silent removal of a mask, a change in his face from attentive confusion to the heavy, pained exhaustion that had been just under the surface all along. His head dropped gently onto her shoulder, the rest of him curled up far smaller than anyone would expect him to be able to.
Most of the time, Sampo Koski had a powerful presence to him. Charismatic, loud, lighting up any room he entered with quick banter and dramatic quips. Very few people knew about his various other sides. A caring friend, who would go to great lengths to make the clinic even a tiny bit better. A cold, silent force to be reckoned with, who left no traces, no footprints, no witnesses who could remember a thing. And finally, the exhausted, quiet presence next to her. A man in an endless cycle of pushing himself too far and facing the consequences. A man constantly working around problems most people never had to think about.
Someone she couldn't cure. Someone she wished she could cure every time this happened. But instead, all she could do was reach an arm around to card through soft blue-black hair and be there. Aeons be damned, Natasha fully intended to be there until the end of time if she could.
“Bad day?”
“Everythin’s spinning. Everythin’s been spinning. An’ it's cold, but the wrong type.” He shivered slightly, none of the usual bravado in his tone. “I was gonna bring the painkillers with some other stuff in a coupla days. Biiig surprise. But…couldn't sleep. My bones are tired. So…figured…” a hand vaguely gestured under the blanket, looking for the right words, “Early present. For you. Merry Christmas.”
“What's Christmas, again?” Natasha subtly rested a hand on his forehead, wincing slightly at the abnormally warm and clammy feeling. Sampo automatically leant into the cold touch, eyes tightly shut.
“Big snowy holiday from some old backwater planet. They sent some red guy into everyone's houses an’ they all got presents and the kids all went yay, Christmas! It's always snowy here though. So it could be Christmas today. So I'm right.”
“I’m sure you are.” If the general temperature discrepancies hadn't clued her in, the open rambling was a sure sign that he had sauntered directly into one of his bad days. It had become obvious very early on, when a fresh-faced Sampo had pushed himself to a crash and wound up feverish for days, that he wasn't from Belobog. He almost never slipped up in casual conversation, but Natasha had lost count of the stories of other worlds she'd been told on nights like these. She would never tell anyone else, though. Patient confidentiality aside, she wasn't about to scrap the life he'd obviously worked hard to build.
“‘s it too hot in here? Or too cold? Won’ make its mind up.” All this was frustratedly mumbled into the blanket and Natasha’s shoulder.
“Neither, dear.” The platitudes she was used to using on Hook and the other kids slipped out, but Sampo didn't seem to notice. “You're just sick. It'll be alright in the morning.”
“Sick of this bullshit.” The response seemed almost automatic, and Natasha snorted with laughter.
“Oh, me too. Speaking of bullshit, did you hear about the huge fight Seele had to break up yesterday?”
Green eyes peered up from under the blanket, hazy with fever but still interested. “Oh?”
“Yeah, some guy entered the food stall contest and got real mad…I'll tell you the rest in a sec, I just have to grab some things from downstairs.”
Sliding out from the blanket proved easier said than done, as Sampo wasn't exactly in a state to be helpful. However, she eventually managed, leaving it wrapped around him as she silently made her way to the dark staircase. Nothing had exactly been forgotten, but there were things she needed to fetch all the same. Cold pack, painkillers, glass of water. They were all where she expected, and things stayed quiet downstairs as she went back to the warm light of the study, grateful to leave behind the cold tiled floor.
Sampo was, unsurprisingly, exactly where she'd left him, wrapped haphazardly in the blanket with his face in his hands. Natasha gently pulled one hand away (and oh, he was not hiding the pinched discomfort on his face at all anymore) and placed the cold pack in it, smiling as it immediately found its place on his head with a resounding slap.
“Lifesaver. Thankssss-Nat.”
“It is my job.”
“Don't matter. Qlipoth’s angel. Almost ‘nough to make a man c’nvert.”
Natasha laughed quietly at his dramatics. “If all my patients were this grateful, I'd have an ego the size of the planet. Just one more thing before we get back to that story I was going to-”
“No.”
There was the man she knew. She didn't even need to look to know that Sampo had set his eyes on the tab of painkillers in her hand and immediately made his decision. She turned regardless, and saw a stubborn glint in a glare between flushed cheeks and damp hair.
“Yes.”
“Nuh-uh.” He shook his head, wincing immediately after (and pointedly ignoring Natasha’s raised eyebrow at the action). “Don' need it. Save it for more…’portant stuff.”
“You are more important stuff.”
“Nope.”
“Sampo.”
“‘tasha.”
They stared each other down, steadfast pink meeting unfocused emerald.
“You are not helping anyone like this. I know you can't see yourself, but you're running a fever, I can tell you're most of the way to a migraine, and this is absolutely the use case for these.”
“No ‘m not. Even if I was, I…can manage.”
“You don't have to manage. And, would you look at that-” she scored her nail through the foil, popping up a tablet, “-it's open already. And it'll go to waste if you don't have it.”
Sampo kept up the glare, but it seemed half-hearted. “Y’know that's not how that works.”
“And you know I'm not going to stop pestering you until you take the damn pill, Koski.”
She was met with nothing more than a hand stuck out of the tangled blanket and a resigned stare. He took the single pill with a generous gulp of water, shivering slightly.
“And if the symptoms don't get any better-”
“Y’tell me an’ don't go jumpin’ outta windows. I know.”
“I wasn't going to say it in that many words, but yes. No escaping out of some misplaced sense of guilt.” Natasha sat back down on the sofa, taking the offered half of the blanket.
“Sampo Koski doesn’ feel guilt. I only got cool emotions, like…uhh…awesomeness. Ch’risma. Moxie.”
“Of course, dear. Awesomeness is definitely an emotion.”
“Mhm.” Sampo’s head tilted in the start of a nod, and Natasha’s hand flew to stop the motion before she could even think. Sampo was too expressive for his own good, sometimes, talking with every part of his body. This included his head, which, according to the Sampo of a few months ago who had been in a worse state than this, felt like “ten million sharp rocks in a fleshbowl” when he moved it too abruptly.
“Why do you never remember this part? I can tell you're agreeing without the gestures. I know it's muscle memory, but-”
“The fleshbowl.” Sampo murmured with a tone of deep understanding, and Natasha replied with something between a sigh and a laugh.
“You remember that?”
“I r’member everything. Sorta.” Sampo pulled a face, gently taking her hand off of his head. He didn't let go.
“I'll remember this. Won't remember…why. What I was thinkin’. But I'll know it hurt and I'll know y’ were here. You're here.”
His grip tightened, just a fraction. Natasha gave the smallest pull, and smiled as he took the cue to glue himself to her side again.
“A fleshbowl…it's like a fishbowl. For goldfish. But the walls aren't glass ‘cause they're my head. And the fish is my brain. Well. Maybe my brain is loadsa fish. Did you know there's a fish that knows every language?”
His voice, that distinctive twang that promoted a million reactions from as many people, was lower and quieter than most would ever get to hear. She could feel the deep, subtle vibration like a tuning fork, tempting her own eyes to close, even through the energy boost of her coffee.
She knew she couldn't. Natasha could never sleep first, not before anyone. So she listened to his rambling, pulling a report into her lap and turning the pages with one hand as his words grew quieter and quieter.
The last thing he said before his breath evened out was so quiet that she barely heard it. She was grateful that she had, though.
“...you're here. Tasha. ‘m glad you're here.”
Sampo's eyes slid shut, and she was left to her own thoughts.
Natasha wasn't one for pondering on what could have been. It usually led to nothing but distraction and regret. But sometimes, she wondered about the world where she wasn't Wildfire’s leader, and he wasn't a courier-thief with a bad reputation. One where either of them could afford to have close ties without worrying about the dangers that would pose to the other. One where they had gone further than this quiet, unspoken thing, where they'd wake up in the morning with their heads leant on each other and their hands clasped tightly.
The world where she would reply, “I love you too”.
But that was not the Belobog she lived in, and there was no use in wanting what could never be. Instead, Natasha gently squeezed the hand that held hers like the most priceless treasure, and turned another page.
This was enough.