Chapter Text
The hospital reaked of antiseptic and something underneath it that antiseptic couldn't quite scrub out. Secret Agent noticed it his first hour on the job... The kind of smell that made his fur stand up along his spine before his brain caught up to why.
He'd talked his way in easily enough. A forged badge, a confident stride, and the cherry on top was Dr. Harlow who was overworked, underslept and grateful for literally anyone with opposable thumbs and a pulse, who hadn't asked more than two questions before handing him a lanyard and a floor assignment.
The story to be let in was simple enough, sent by the Animal Corporation itself. He was just also very lucky... well, not really very lucky but luck anyways that they are also very short staffed for reasons unknown.
“ We need help with a little bit of everything, if you don't mind. ”
He minded plenty actually. Now it was no news that strange things happened here, but where they put him was with the ones who didn't respond to normal medicine. The ones the staff called, in low voices when they thought no one was listening, 'anomalies'. Secret Agent had a gun holstered under his coat for a reason, and that reason had a name that started with recon and ended with an exit strategy if things went sideways.
But here things went sideways almost immediately, but not the way he expected.
“ Oh you're the new guy...” said a nurse, breezing past him with an armful of charts.
“ Congratulations, you get the Intern. Nobody else has time. ” She didn't slow down long enough for him to ask what that could even possibly mean.
What it meant, it turned out, was a small cream-colored rabbit in a white jacket akin to that of a straight jacket that is two sizes too big, standing very still in the middle of the supply closet, staring at a shelf of gauze like it might tell him what to do with it.
“ Hey. ” spoke the agent with no response in return.
“ You, intern fellow. ”
The rabbit turned, slow, and looked at him with round eyes that didn't blink nearly as often as they should have. They didn't say anything. They didn't say anything for the rest of the day, either... Secret Agent learned fast that the Intern was non-verbal, communicating in small gestures, tilts of the head and the occasional soft huffing sound.
Nobody had trained them. Nobody had time to train them. So Secret Agent, a hired gun playing doctor, in a building he intended to case for exactly as long as it took to find what he came for, now found himself spending his first shift teaching a rabbit intern how to restock a linen cart.
It should have annoyed him, but it didn't at all really.
By the third day, it was a routine. Secret Agent would find the Intern wherever the last nurse had abandoned them, a hallway, an empty exam room, once memorably inside a laundry cart they'd apparently climbed into out of curiosity and then couldn't figure out how to climb back out of, and he'd walk them through whatever task had been left half-explained and was needed to do.
The Intern learned fast, which as rude as it sounds, Secret Agent didn't exactly expect. Goes to show you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover... They had a way of tilting their head when they understood something, a little downward nod that Secret Agent started looking for without meaning to.
One small detail the agent ended up learning was how the rabbit flinched at loud voices. They liked the supply closet because it was quiet. Once, when a patient down the hall screamed through a coughing fit, the Intern grabbed two fistfuls of Secret Agent's coat and pressed their face into his side until it stopped, and he stood there, stiff, unsure what to do with his paws, and did not push them away. He told himself it didn't mean anything. He was here for a job. The rabbit was a temporary complication, nothing more.
... Or at least that's what he originally thought and kept telling himself until one night.
It was well past closing. Most of the ward had gone quiet, the kind of hospital-quiet that isn't silence so much as held breath, machines humming, yeah normal stuff. Secret Agent had stayed late, ostensibly finishing rounds, actually trying to get a look at the records room without anyone watching him do it.
He heard it before he saw it. A wet sound, rhythmic, coming from what seemed to be near rooms 8, 7 and 6. The hallway doors weren't locked...
He nudged it open with the back of his paw, one hand already on the grip of his gun, and found the Intern crouched over an open waste bin in the dark, small clawed hands buried in something that had, until recently, belonged to a patient.
The rabbit froze. Secret Agent froze. For a long, ugly second, neither of them moved, and the only sound in the room was Secret Agent's own pulse, loud in his ears.
Green ooze spilling out from the rabbit's teeth, teeth that had never been seen until this very moment in this dark room. Agent should have shot first and asked questions never. That was the training. Instead he found himself ignoring the gun, slow, hands where the rabbit could see them.
“ Easy. I'm not going to do anything... ”
The Intern didn't move. Green ooze that could register as blood, obviously not their own, dotted the fur around their mouth, dark in the half-light. They looked, more than anything, ashamed. Like they'd been caught stealing, not caught being exactly the kind of thing the hospital existed to contain or even eradicate.
Secret Agent thought about the nurse who'd wheeled that bin down here two hours ago, muttering about overtime, not even glancing at what she was throwing away. He thought about every task he'd walked the Intern through, patient and slow, the little downward nod they gave him when something finally clicked. He thought about small fists in his coat while a stranger screamed down the hall.
He thought: this thing has had a hundred chances to hurt someone, and it never has. Not once. Not even close.
Secret Agent stood in the doorway a long moment.
“ Okay... ” spoken more to himself than the Intern. He'd shot men for less than what he'd just watched. “ Look, I won't report this. Understand? ”
A pause. Then the small downward nod from the rabbit, the one he'd started looking for. Relief, plain as anything, in a face that couldn't say a single word.
“ But if you can don't do this again, especially not out in the open. You'd probably end up euthanized if anyone else found you like this. ”
Another nod, firmer this time.
“ Come on, ” Agent said, standing, offering a hand down. “ Let's get you cleaned up. ” A smile, that wasn't even visible due to the dark environment and black fur.
Hopefully this wasn't spoken of again. He didn't tell Harlow. He didn't tell the nurses, or the corporation whose badge he had forged on his own. It sat between the two of them, small and unspoken, in every quiet hallway and supply closet after that, a secret that made the Intern hold his sleeve a little tighter, that made Secret Agent glance back over his shoulder a little more often to make sure they were keeping up...