The boy looked twenty at most, but more likely somewhere around sixteen – a younger one, perhaps one of the youngest scouts they had ever captured. Though it was hard to tell much about him through the iron spikes that tore through his body like a skewer, and the blood covering his face - the open, bleeding eyes and the towering mouth frozen in one, last horrified expression. His skin had already gone pale as she carefully brushed the snow from his eyelids, and empathy flooded through the girl that stood before the scene, for a moment, although she didn't know what such a weakness felt like. She was always such a healthy girl.
It all looked and smelled very rusty, and she wanted to be rid of it fast. But she knew she couldn't leave a specimen there, out in the open, before Medic arrived. Underneath her dark red hood, she shivered and hugged her shoulders tightly, looking up at the sky and letting icy flakes touch her skin. From far off echoed the sounds of war, gunshots and cries ringing through the emptiness, making her feel even colder. She comforted herself with the thought that she would be inside soon, away from all of this, perhaps with something hot in her stomach once all the aching numbness had faded away, everything back to normal. Listening to Engie's mellow guitar, steaming mugs of ginger tea, sleep for the first time in so many hours she had lost count.
Maybe, she hoped, even a chance to get a quiet moment with Medic when he wasn't working. Though there was little plausibility of this happening. Seldom recently did the team ever catch more than a glimpse of him, in the short breaks he took to leave his laboratory and find supplies. She was lucky, of course. She saw him the most out of all of them. He needed her. Who else built these elaborate traps quite like she did – and from where else would he gather such a fresh, bountiful supply of corpses, on which to perform his research, on their side of the battlefield? And what other member of the team would be so hopelessly willing to offer their services? After all, from the outset it seemed as though she and Medic had always had an inexplicable fondness for each other. Since joining the team, she, the Huntress, simply admired him. His work, his stature. Even his thick, German accent. Everything about Medic struck her as iconic.
Everything about him she wanted to see again so badly, even if it meant soon shouldering this mass of rotting flesh on their backs to the laboratory. She looked at him now – the boy's skin was paper-white, a stark contrast to the bloodstains littering the snow. Medic would be disappointed – the way the boy had gotten ensnared made this one of her messiest captures yet. His body was so severed in all the wrong places, he could hardly be called human anymore by standard definition. "Again vith za messes, Fraulein. How many times have I told you, I vant a clean-cut specimen!" Medic would scold her. "I have said it many times, and I vill say it again: you are too young for zis job, Fraulein." He'd say it out of some sort of affection, and yet this dissatisfaction would eat at her every time, much more than he would realize. She sighed, her breath a puff of white vapor that rose up in the cold air and faded away.
There was his voice, a hoarse calling in the distance. No need for subtlety here – they were far off from anything dangerous, or, as she put it, far off from anything that vaguely resembled a form of life. Her arms still bound tightly for warmth across her chest, she turned towards the sound and saw a shadowed figure coming forward from the distance. There he stood, a tall 6'2 against the silhouettes of the old, worn fortresses, his sleek, square jawline set grim. Her face flushed and she shyly turned back towards her prized catch, realizing too late that she should have undone the boy from the iron stakes before Medic arrived. Huntress began to work at them quickly, until she soon heard the telltale crunch of his approaching footsteps traveling in the snow.
"Vat have you caught for me today?" he said, causing her to start. She turned around to see his grinning face, as he brushed past her, giving her shoulder a squeeze and peering over the still half-trapped specimen. "Anozer scout?" Medic sighed and adjusted his spectacles. She nodded, averting her eyes. Was he angry? But no, he laughed his guttural laugh and said to himself, "You sink zey vould learn." Together they began to work their kill off the large iron bear trap and carry it back to the RED team base, leaving a scarlet trail of the boy's blood dripping in their wake.
