Chapter Text
It starts with the fire alarm.
This whole mess— call it what you will, the beginning after the end, the post credits scene, the peek behind the curtain post happily ever after… well, it starts with a terribly cold and irritable Scaramouche, the dead of night, and a fire alarm.
Life had never been kind to Scaramouche.
Not much had been kind to him at all, in fact. Such is the case for most people. Still, the days when he lays in bed with nothing but the bare bones of the stars and a life that slips him by, he thinks perhaps it has been overly cruel to him. He was dealt a good hand in the beginning, though now he feels as though he has spent the last few years trying to salvage his tattered deck of cards as if he’s been playing a losing game all this time.
Sometimes he can no longer distinguish the patterns between the reds and the blacks. Or maybe he has no cards anymore, except for a set of jacks that he never seems able to see clearly. Always out of focus.
Even as he stands outside in the blistering cold of September, he thinks it rings true. It’s day one and three quarters of senior year— his last year of college. He’s exhausted by the assignments that haven’t hit yet, living by the calendar already too full to manage. He’s a medical student, gathering work experience at a nearby hospital through residency. He works mostly around in the Trauma Department and while it’s exciting work, it can get exhausting quick.
He’s in his last year at college before he takes a year off to finish up his residency. His schedule is a little more than packed at the moment from balancing classes. His residency akin to weights on his shoulders and his part time job as breakable pottery on his hands.
“Is that you, Scara?”
Scaramouche turns squinting through the pitch black void of the sky to identify the voice. Childe’s neon orange hair is like a satellite in the dark, navigating around other grumbly students waiting in the asphalt in nothing but pajamas and the occasional pillow and blanket— both of which are a major fire safety hazard.
“Oh good,” Childe smiles brightly, “I was worried I lost you in the crowd, comrade.”
“This is absurd,” Scaramouche replies raspily, “first day of senior year and some idiot,” he raises his voice loudly, letting it echo through the flooded streets of campus and through the sleepy evacuating students, “decided to set off the fire alarm at two in morning?”
Scaramouche hopes that whoever set the alarm off can hear him and feel terribly ashamed of themselves. It’s freezing outside, raising the bare hair on his arm to stick upright and chilling him to the bone. There’s faint chattering outside as the general public of the students began to get more lucid with the biting air. Phone flashlights light up, making the crowd of students look like a sea of obsessed fangirls at a concert.
“The year has just begun, come on, Scara.” Childe slaps him on the back, snickering while he watches the way Scaramouche’s jaw ticks in annoyance. “Cut ‘em some slack. Oh, speaking of… how did your finals go?”
Scaramouche groans, rubbing his eyes in irritation as he pats down his shorts pockets. “They went fine. And Russia?”
“Colder than usual. It almost wasn’t worth it,” Childe mentions. He frowns as he watches Scaramouche’s jaw twitch as he gives up patting down his pockets, “Teucer’s doing fine and Tonia is at that age that she has a stick up her ass– love ‘em to death, though. What are you looking for?”
Some administrator has perched on top of the stone steps to the dormitories, reading out a notice that the apartments weren’t safe until tomorrow morning due to prolonged inspection.
Scaramouche’s gaze flickers over to him as the crowd mumbles in discontent. He nudges the staff around the building, looking annoyed.
“My car keys. What, you expect me to hang around you until the building is secure? Which, I’m sure it is– some pathetic fool probably burned their pot brownies.”
“Well, you don’t know that,” Mona huffs, materializing out of what looks like nowhere in the dark. Fischl is by her side, and Scaramouche can feel the impending headache at just the sight of the girl.
Mona’s eyes twinkle like stars in the night as she hugs her pillow to her chest with a thin tank top and oversized pajama pants. It's her favorite pair of pajamas - soft grey cotton with a tiny black cat print on them and they hug her body.
“Finally, I found you. Nice to see you again, Scara. It wouldn’t kill you to have some manners. ”
“And it wouldn’t hurt you to have some self respect,” Scaramouche crosses his arms, “heard you went back to your ex again–”
“Quiet,” the girl demands, “that’s— you know that’s different. Maybe if you weren’t so stuck up, you would know that too. I wasn’t going to… she misunderstood, and you know it—”
“Where are you staying for the night, Megistus?” Childe interrupts, motioning to the sealed off apartments. “I’ll be crashing at Scara’s.”
“No you will not be,” Scaramouche replies, bewildered.
“Fischl and I are pooling our money to rent a hotel out for the night,” Mona sniffs, “I got a job offer a month ago, but I need to send another portfolio by the end of this week so they have a better understanding of my work. It’ll be harder considering we’re about to crash at a hotel with no wifi but… I suppose I can manage.”
“I forgot all about post graduation,” Childe rubs his cheek, “I have a few interviews lined up, but the industry is really tight knit, so I’m scouting the best options there are. Most are over in New York City, but I’m used to the cold, so if anything, it’s really an advantage… And you, Fischl? Scara?”
“Volunteer work,” Scaramouche rasps, “Continue my residency. Maybe get myself a sugar daddy to pay for it– I mean, I’ve got the face.”
“You’re still working at the same hospital, Scara?” Mona says hesitantly, “I would’ve thought you transferred after… you know.”
Scaramouche shrugs, leaving the silence cold and chilling. The mostly empty space of the outside school campus is entirely too small now. He fixes his gaze on a sign just behind Mona’s stray, unregarded curl. He can see the frown on Mona’s face melt into concern. Nausea builds up in his throat as he squints at the sign. He can feel the chill of the air all too well on his skin under the thin, oversized shirt.
It’s a pity that he attended Northwood University, a prestigious school that was filled with people whose first choice was a fraternity college. Word travels fast–especially in Michigan. It doesn’t matter how long something happened or how long you spent trying to get over it. It doesn’t matter if you used to sit on the floor of your bathroom and cry so hard you puke, because whatever happened will stick to you like crazy glue.
But it’s not like Northwood University is hell on earth. He has friends; Mona, whom he met in his first year and the two hit it off instantly by badmouthing their literature professor. He roomed with her for two years before she moved in with Fischl, who she met at one of Northwood University’s traditional end-of-semester parties.
Scaramouche hated those parties. The ones with too much alcohol and music so loud that you can feel your heart beat to the rhythm of the drums and some poor girl drinking her fears. He went twice. Ever.
The first time he went was right after the incident. When he was knee deep in denial and high at every turn and drunk every minute of every day– never sober. Never giving himself time to think, or to process, or to understand what he had went through. But the second time, he met Childe.
Childe, with a flaming personality who found him sulking on the balcony of the party house and assumed he was going to commit suicide and panicked.
They hadn’t hit it off right away, not with Scaramouche’s clipped sentences and Childe’s warm exterior. They were in different majors, different friend groups, and it had only been through a lot of arguing and petty pranks and jokes on the other to get them to where they were now. He had moved in with Childe the same year that Mona moved in with Fischl, so he didn’t live by himself for too long– Childe, a frat boy with a kind heart and ambitions that flew over the heads of most.
He was a concoction of man that Scaramouche didn’t even know was possible. Over the years, Childe had dragged him out to every event imaginable– his hockey tournaments, end of year award ceremonies, school dances. He’d made him tag along to a month-long road trip before Scaramouche started his residency, claiming that Scaramouche’s schedule would be too packed later on so it’s now or never.
That trip had been just talk, at first. They were broke college students with no plans other than to live their dream careers and do whatever they want as long as it isn’t killing themselves or starving to death. They lived in a sleepy city, where Scaramouche had taken up the part-time job of working long hours in a convenience store.
The job provided him with a extra disheveled room in the property upstairs– where Childe and him would most likely stay tonight, actually– In addition to college and his work at the hospital, he would work long shifts under the deteriorating ugly store light, cleaning and restocking and performing otherwise menial tasks. It wasn’t exciting work, and the pay was hardly even enough to fund a road trip for a week.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Childe knew Scaramouche like the back of his hand, and it’s why he fishes his own car keys out his slacks and presses it into Scaramouche’s dainty hand.
“Whatever,” Scaramouche says, closing his fist around the cool metal. “I’m out of here. Bye.”
He shoves off the ground, leaving the small group to talk amongst themselves. Cold air presses against his exposed skin, leaving blushing red skin and frostbit tips. He’s probably going to drive to the hospital and scrub in– there’s no use sleeping now, not when his head gets like this. He might as well get some more hours in.
He huffs, shivering in his plain shorts and a T-shirt. Childe’s car is cold to the touch as he unlocks it and steps in, cranking the heat up to an ungodly amount. He’s always been much more tolerant to high temperatures than cold ones. He clambers in gracelessly, revving on the gas and pulling out. It’s quiet in the car, and it’s quiet in his head as he drives to Michigan Reed Hospital.
Michigan Reed Hospital– the one thing that fucked Scaramouche’s life up. The hospital that appears in his nightmares and his dreams. It had been his dream school, once upon a time.
A school to create a new life for him, a roundabout way of forgetting his mother and everything that came before and after her. Everything that was once was his and just isn’t, anymore. And in a fucked way, he had accomplished just that– a new life, for sure, where his family line doesn’t butt heads with his social life and stays contained over telephone calls and postcards and headlines from the Japanese news networks on television. It had created a new life, a new Scaramouche, but a much worse one.
One that was so fucked in the head that he would often be, too far away from reality to think straight. One that he would never really be sure of the time that had passed between that day at Michigan Reed Hospital and wherever he was then. Prolonged refusal to seek therapy had only fucked him up more, but it had turned him from mindless and miserable to angry– irritable. In for the long run with a scowl and a sneer and knife in his back.
The incident— the Michigan Reed Hospital Shooting— was the only thing that Michigan could talk about for weeks, months, milking every drop out of it and interviewing everyone who was involved. Scaramouche always refused interviews or the press’s attention, but he was so heavily involved that all other eyewitness accounts had mentioned his name anyway– and yet, even with all of America talking about it, he never got a word from his hometown in Japan.
But he did hear words from Northwood University. Lots of them. Rumors piled on rumors piled on lies and the itching for a good tale that someone is thrown to the dogs for entertainment. He’d really heard it all, but the most prominent of all– why did irritable, infamous Scaramouche stay at the facility that traumatized him?
Why did he not take advantage of their hospitality and run away? No one seemed sure. A little bit too confused if they wanted to be honest with themselves. There were theories, of course. Some said he didn’t want to get into trouble. Why didn’t he leave when the hospital would’ve gladly allowed him to sever the ties his name has with it. Why didn’t he leave when no one could bear to look at him for the next few months?
But he couldn’t leave— not when he was the only one who really knew what happened in that cold hospital hallway. Because the only other person who knew the real story was dead.
Scaramouche parks the car on the side of the road, looking up at the looming hospital. It towers over him with the same kind of life that the home from Monster House possesses. He reclines his seat, shutting the car off as he looks through the car window. There’s not much to look at – just a small lot with a few parked cars. The street lights cast enough light on it for people to see where they’re going.
It’s quiet in the car as he sinks lower and lower into his seat. It’s only fairly damp outside, small dewy drops on Childe’s windshield that he absolutely will not be cleaning off. He doesn’t really want to go inside. Not today, at least. There’s no special occasion; it’s not the anniversary, it’s not any kind of inciting event. He just doesn’t want to. But he’s never missed his weekly hours, and he’s lacking a few.
Even when he was drowning in misery, he never missed his hours. Even if he’s not at the same department he used to be in. He’s not living in a shared apartment littered with moments of time and life and wisps of breadcrumbs and glass coke bottles and some run down diner next door. He’s twenty-one, sitting in Childe’s sad excuse for a car that's littered with Crit Theory reports that were never turned in and empty cans of redbull.
He’s twenty-one. He’s sitting in a car, and there’s no point in missing a day now. He’s over it.
Scaramouche takes a deep breath, sitting upright in his car as he reaches for the button to unlock the car doors. He flicks it, hearing the gentle click of the car door mechanisms.
Just as he reaches for his seatbelt, his car door is thrust open. Scaramouche freezes.
“Apologies,” the man pants. He’s out of breath. “Please drive.”
His voice is raspy from what Scaramouche assumes is exhaustion or something like that. He pulls himself quickly into the car, slamming the door shut, breathily heavily and looking at Scaramouche like he’s his last reprieve.
Scaramouche snaps out of it as shouting rings through the square, directed to the guy in the passenger seat. Someone’s screaming at him, swinging a bat threateningly.
One strong swing hits Childe’s car, shattering the window on his side. The boy’s hands grip the car door, white knuckled as the armed guy rears his arm again.
Scaramouche looks, frozen at the man, and then back to the hospital— and then he steps on the gas.
He kicks the car into start, the engine whirring to life. He puts the car in gear, revving the engine and speeding down the street. A car gives chase as Scaramouche grunts, pressing down on the gas and taking a sharp left turn.
The boy gasps, thrown to the left in haste. “Careful, please–”
“We’re in the middle of a car chase, you're telling me to be careful?” Scaramouche hisses.
The car follows, screeching as they pass. Scaramouche curses under his breath as the tires squeal and skid across pavement. His foot presses against the accelerator hard enough to make his hands shake and the car swerves dangerously close to another vehicle. He glances in the side view mirror, adrenaline flooding into his veins in a way that reminded far, far too much of–
The other car pulls up next to him, shouting something inaudible. Scaramouche flips him off.
”That guy you got—“ Someone pokes their head out of the other car, and Scaramouche recoils in disgust at his monstrous appearance, “sabotaged us, he did! Just pull the fuckin’ car over!”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Scaramouche hisses darkly. He doesn’t even know who the guy is, and yet right now he would rather kill myself than give him up. He’s in Scaramouche’s (Childe’s) car, and he will stay there, damn it.
The boy beside him locks himself in the seat as Scaramouche curses under his breath, entranced in the way they’re racing around corners at the speed limit. He merges onto the express-way and stomps on the acceleration. The streets are empty in the dead of the night, and Scaramouche pushes Childe’s car to its limit. His head isn’t clear enough to think of sending Childe mental apologies for frying his engine.
“Take a left here!” The stranger gasps, and Scaramouche eyes the road he means. His hair is whipping around his face, into his eyes and all the places that it shouldn’t.
“Why?”
The stranger’s eyes are weirdly intense. The wind is roaring through the shattered window, nearly eating up his words. “Do you trust me?”
“What?” Scaramouche questions. The question is so stupid, so dumb that it knocks him out of his focus, “What the hell? Of course not!”
The time to take the turn is nearly gone, and yet— nobody tells Scaramouche what he cant and can do. He yanks that son of a bitch steering wheel with a might that could rival hades; and turns the car left.
Turn might be an underestimation. It was more of a very lucky drift.
Even so, his heart races in time with the roar of the engine beneath him and the wind whipping past his face from the window. His veins are on fire as the boy next to him laughs, soft, thrilled in the thrill of the chase, the wind, the euphoria.
Scaramouche hisses, scanning the road to an exit to the express-way. He hates adrenaline, the panic it fills him with– once upon a time, he used to be an adrenaline junkie. Used to chase the thrill and the feeling like he was nothing but a wisp in time, to feel like he was the everything within the space of nothing. And then he got fucked in the head and the idea of adrenaline was associated with blood and death and the smell of antiseptic– you could feel sorry for him, he thinks, but he doesn’t care.
Not anymore, because he knows better than anyone that nothing comes from wishing on stars, or the apologies people sing, however sorry they are.
Glass is shattered all over the dashboard, and blood drips from his hand from the shards imbedded into the gear shift. The pain is grounding.
The turn he made made them exist I-95– never mind how he got on there anyway, and Scaramouche squints trying to look through his rear view mirror. He slows the car to a crawl. Scaramouche glances briefly in his rearview mirror, pulling Childe’s busted and overheated car off the road and onto the dead grass of the winter.
The man’s breathing slowly steadies. As he leans back against his seat, Scaramouche looks at him– really looks at him. He’s enchanting.
He has a soft face, thin nose and chin that are sculpted into lines by years of hard work. His hair is pulled into a ponytail, silver in the moonlight and his face full and handsome. His eyes are like blood red, the kind that would cause a war to be declared with mere glances.
– the perfect mix of a strong gaze and soft adoration. His features are sharp but delicate; alluring enough so you want to kiss them and hold onto them for eternity. The kind of thing that could make anyone’s heart melt from just seeing it. Fortunately for them, Scaramouche is not just anyone.
“What,” Scaramouche lets his hands fall from the steering wheel, suddenly tired beyond belief. The adrenaline rushing out of his body is a sickly familiar feeling. “was that.”
“That was you saving my life,” the man replies, and Scaramouche blinks. His voice is like a melody, soothing over a burn he didn’t know he had. His voice is softer than most, the kind you’d see used to sing the final movement of Stravinsky’s Septet on the Needles. “Kazuha. Kaedehara Kazuha,” he introduces.
“I don’t care for your name,” Scaramouche dismisses, “and you have no need for mine. Get out of the car.”
Kazuha seems wholly undeterred. “You’re Childe’s roommate, I presume?”
Scaramouche squints as if trying to decide whether to be angry, impressed, or just confused. He decides on all of them.
He unlocks the car door again, giving the stranger a thinly veiled look of contempt. The stranger’s knowing gaze is like twigs to a sparking fire of self-explanation in Scaramouche’s stomach. “Listen, I didn’t do all that because you told me to, I did it because… because…”
“Because?”
“Maybe I just didn’t want some random car chasing me,” Scaramouche snaps. “And this isn’t even my car. It’s Childe’s. And you need to get out of it.”
“I sincerely hope you do not think I believe that. It’s almost insulting to think so.” Kazuha replies, smiling slightly. “You could have just told me to piss off and find someone else.”
“But I didn’t, so you better be grateful,” Scaramouche grumbles back. He can feel the stranger’s eyes digging into his skin. “You can start repaying me by getting out of the car.”
Kazuha leans against the passenger side window without moving from his spot, watching the other with a curious expression.
Scaramouche doesn’t bother to hide his annoyance. The stranger’s hair and part of his face is obscured by a large, cotton grey hoodie. He could see light hair, seemingly pulled back on the side. Wisps of red strands infect the pure white, subtly falling out from the all encompassing hoodie that he’s chosen to wear.
“Surely you wouldn’t be so cruel as to make me walk home on my own— say perhaps, those men come back? You are willing to make me walk back all the way from I-95?”
”Yes?”
Kazuha’s eyebrows disappear into his hair. He looks nearly impressed.
Scaramouche wants to scoff. He tears his eyes away from the red strands and looks into his equally as red eyes. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“On the contrary,” Kazuha replies. “I think your laugh would sound pleasant to me. I am prone to think it would suit your face.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
Kazuha’s smile widens, a charming divot in his cheek. “If I am, I apologize for overstepping. You mentioned repayment— there must be another way for me to repay you that does not endanger my being.”
“You are utterly risibile.”
“Perhaps with a poem?” Kazuha offers, “I’m rather talented in the art of Haiku. Allow me to spin one for you, for I suppose I am rather inspired—“
“Spare me your flowery words,” Scaramouche crosses his arms, “tell me who those men were.”
“Ah.” Kazuha blinks, “those were… the Kettering University’s hockey team.”
Kettering University— truly the bane of Scaramouche’s existence.
Ever since he’d met and became rather unwilling friends with Childe, he’s been dragged to all kinds of outings and otherwise unimportant events hosted by their school. Award ceremonies, assemblies, celebratory parties, even academic discussions about literature, and all sorts of meaningless events. At some point it had begun to grate on his nerves.
They always manage to drag him back to campus for more meetings, or get him to attend some ridiculous event where he has to play the role of an honored guest. This is something Scaramouche never particularly indulged in, and they are not exactly enjoyable— but they are tolerable enough that he doesn’t complain.
But amongst all that, Scaramouche has been dragged to more hockey games than he could count on his fingers and his toes. Most of that is due to because Childe is part of the infamous Northwood University’s hockey team.
Childe plays left wing on the field– generally a position that requires you to work well with your partner on the right wing, and Childe is exceptionally good at that. Scaramouche has been lounging in the stands for as long as he can remember, never taking much too notice of the other players on the team.
He knew Childe, and the man who mirrored him on the right wing– Arataki Itto. Though Itto had left halfway through last year, so Childe had been having more meets than usual to accompany the new player, who was a man that Scaramouche was not fond of. (No matter how many times Childe tries to tell him that Kaeya is not as bad as he thinks).
But because he’s been to meets— and subsequently does not pay attention to the players or the game or really anything, it’s easy for him to know when something big has happened on the ice. Most of which comes from the games between Kettering and Northwood.
Kettering University’s hockey team was loud, brash, aggressive and otherwise people Scaramouche would not willingly associate with. He’s seen Childe get dragged away from bashing someone’s skull in enough times for him to commit it to memory. So he’s not entirely surprised to hear that their hockey team has gone cuckoo.
“I supposed I had offended them somehow,” Kazuha hums, “and they were attempting to exact revenge. Truly, I have not a clue. Perhaps it may have something to do with the turnout of yesterday’s game, which—“
“Hold on a second,—“ Scaramouche interrupts, “you mean to tell me… you’re part of Northwood’s hockey team. You.”
“I play Center,” Kazuha smiles.
Scaramouche squints, racking his brain for the little hockey knowledge he’s retained. While goaltender is arguably hockey's most difficult position to play and excel, particularly as the level of play accelerates— the center's role is the most important to the action on the ice.
Centers are involved with most faceoffs, and are consequently supposed to have an idea where they want the puck to go from those faceoffs, how to move the puck forward for offensive scoring chances and devote just as much protecting against those goal opportunities on their team's defensive end.
In normal terms, this guy is incredibly good at hockey.
Someone honks their horn, some random car on the street that’s speeding down the road at a rate that’s probably illegal. The noise snaps Scaramouche out of his thoughts.
He scoffs, tugging his eyes away from the stranger. He was supposed to head to Michigan Reed Hospital and scrub in, get in a few more hours as a makeshift trauma nurse and then hit a few hours of sleep before his classes tomorrow. It’s not a healthy schedule, but it’s one he can rely on.
He’s never missed his weekly hours at the hospital, and he’s not about to start now; not on the account of some soft hearted delinquent hockey player sitting in his car. Either Kazuha walk home from the hospital, or he sits in the lobby and waits for Scaramouche to finish his hours to drive him home, or he walks home now.
“I’ll walk,” Kazuha replies, when Scaramouche tells him such; “truthfully, I don’t want to burden you more than I have today. Thank you— truly. Most people wouldn’t have helped a stranger.”
I wouldn’t have either.
“You fail to forget that I am just as much of a stranger to you as you are to me. I could have kidnapped you if I wished. I still could.”
Kazuha pauses while opening the car door. “I would hardly consider us strangers. It would be hard to maintain anonymity with someone after you’ve engaged in a car chase with them.”
Amber red meets sapphire blue, and Kazuha offers him a slight smile. “I’ll see you around campus, then.”
Scaramouche pulls the car away at the speed of light, because fuck that. It’s almost four in the morning now, and his class is at nine— he has enough time to get his hours in.
He feels a little bad as he drives the car down to Michigan Reed Hospital– about making Kazuha walk, but they’re strangers. They’re strangers and Scaramouche owes him nothing.
Right.
It’s day one of his final year, and it’s time to go out with a bang. And if it tells tales that his first day was accompanied by an impromptu car chase and a fire alarm, it’s his business.
Even as Scaramouche scrubs in, exchanging his thin shirt for the standard blue scrubs and the spare black turtleneck he keeps in his locker for this purpose specifically. The operating room was generally cold– colder than most of the hospital, though sometimes it’s warmed up in light of a specific procedure. He grabs most of what he’d need. Through fast paced, hours long shifts and organized chaos as a result of nurses and surgeons trying to keep their patients alive, it’s difficult to head back to grab something he’d forgotten.
Thankfully, it’s a slow night in the hospital. Usually big accidents flood them with patients, but it looks like someone has taken mercy on Scaramouche’s cluttered mind and blessed him with something more quiet for the next few hours– the shift report he got from the night nurse was blessedly more stable and slow, though he’s well aware that it could change at any second.
He knows that more than anybody. It’s hard for him, on days, to walk by the same areas and the same spot where he felt like his soul was ripped from him. But he gets by. He has to get by.
“Quiet board today, Scara?”
Scaramouche looks up. Venti is smiling bashfully at him, cheeks pulled back in a charming smile with a dimple.
“Tighnari’s trying to get me to do charts.” Venti fake-gags, his eyes twinkling in a way that only he can in the midst of a hospital in the dead of night. “I am not doing charts.”
Scaramouche ignores him. He’s known Venti for a while now– he would go as far as to say Venti probably has seen the worst of him. He met him on his first few days of residency and left a disastrous impression on him. Still, as bizarre as it was, they formed an unwilling friendship, which only got closer after the incident. He supposes Kazuha was right in that regard; it’s hard to keep anonymity with someone who was with you when the world burned down.
He can’t remember exactly what pushed him to pursue something in the medical field– maybe it was just an option on the table that didn't sound as bad as the others.
Saving lives– making himself useful. Proving his worth. It didn’t matter that he never really excelled in those areas in school or that the ones he did excel at were of no use beyond what was required for survival in any given society. He had a knack for figuring out the right balance of chemistry, anatomy, and biology– all the things most people would be interested in finding useful.
Miko hadn’t cared what he did, so long as he wasn’t a bum living in the basement. And his mother… she didn’t care, but she never did. Scaramouche often wondered if she even knew his name. He wouldn’t be surprised if she forgot by now– as much as he could tell himself he didn’t care, what he would miss most about his life before he moved into this apartment is a lack of memories from his home.
It’s not like it mattered much in the grand scheme of things. The only person who could have made a difference in his life was dead now, anyway.
“-- Level three trauma response. ETA ten minutes.”
“And there,” Venti bashfully smiles at the intercom overhead, like it could see him, “goes your quiet night.”
“Spare me,” Scaramouche replies dryly. “I had to deal with some delinquent in my car– Childe’s car. Needed to get away from some guys or something.”
The Trauma center is bustling with people putting on newer surgical masks, and Scaramouche himself weasels himself into the non-surgical medical gown. Venti walks with him, though he’s not generally meant to be on the same level as the operating rooms. Venti works more with the pediatric center.
“Was he cute?”
“Venti, I am not having this conversation with you.”
Surgical nurses and paramedics roll the stretcher in, a bloodied and heavily injured young man laying on the makeshift bed. The wheels, the breathing, the heavy beeping– it’s background music to Scaramouche.
A surgical nurse makes eye contact with him. “Paramedics found him unconscious. Mechanisms of injury are unknown. Take his vitals— quickly.”
Scaramouche snaps into action, pushing past the cluster of nurses and surgeons crowding around the guy. It’s stressful enough when he’s doing it on his own, but more so as he wrestles his way to strap the machine onto the guy’s arm.
“Scara, was he cute?”
“Venti, this is not really–” Scaramouche grits his teeth through the bustle, addressing the doctor in the room. “Tachycardic in the 140’s, BP holding in the 90’s. Respiratory effort… absent breath sounds on the right. Air bubbling on the side of the wound. Get him intubated— did the paramedics place occlusive dressing over the wound?
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“Did the paramedics place occlusive dressing over the wound?”
The paramedic stutters some answer that Scaramouche doesn’t bother to hear, pulling his bloodied gloves away from the guy. The intercom is alerted again– this time with more incoming trauma. MVC with a 30-minute extrication time.
So much for his quiet evening.
“Raiden, there’s a chest contusion and a head CT is showing a depressed skull fracture– temporal epidural hematoma. He needs to be moved to the O.R.” Someone says, and Scaramouche drags his eyes away from Venti, who is still in the room.
Scaramouche’s breath is heavy as the patient is strapped securely on the stretcher, rushing out the door and to the operating room. Scaramouche stands still for a second, remembering the words of the head surgeon. He has to get to the operating room. The patient’s GCS is 14 in the field, probably 12 by now– his motor exams are intact. He can be saved, if Scaramouche and the rest of the trauma team act fast.
Even so, he pauses in the doorway and meets Venti’s gaze, who smiles at him.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I guess he was.”