#hey doc

The smell of gunpowder stuck to your body as another heavy blast shattered the wooden panels by your head. Panic shot adrenaline through your veins, burning your body with a light striking through your every root and stem. Your heart thundered violently in your chest, yet no matter how hard your soul screamed at you to run, your body simply would not respond. ‘Run, run, run,’ you begged yourself to no avail. Your feet stamped perfectly in place, huddled and crouched against the dusty floor no matter how much you pleaded with your body to move.

A marine. 

You were a marine. 

And even before you were a marine, you were from a warrior island bred and built for fights and battles bigger than this. 

You should be used to the panic and heat of battle, but there was something about this particular fight that had you stationary and stagnant in responding to your logic. Perhaps it was your lack of sleep, your lack of strict routine in running your area of proficiency on your ship, or the fact your breakfast wasn’t nearly as nice as you’d hoped it to be. Regardless, this fight had every area of training you’d received flee your body and leave your frightened soul behind in its absence. 

Every passing moment hit you with the full force of devastation the longer you remained still. A friend, a colleague, a unit leader: three lay dead beside you while shrapnel of the splintered wood dug its way into their flesh and took their home in their bodies the way a seed would sprout after the conditions of scattering them. As a farmer would shuffle crops from grain in their hand to the earth below in a gentle shake, your comrades in arms slowly slipped from their grasp on life to their final heart’s beating place. 

They were all dead. 

Your unit was dead or dying. 

The family you’d left behind would be laughing at you now for the extreme panic splitting your mind in lightning-like fragments. 

If you had injuries, you could not feel them or even process them due to the ringing in your ears from the many blasts of cannon fire. ‘Move, move, move,’ you cried to yourself, only to feel your feet gently shuffle in place instead of taking the thick strides you yearned for. ‘Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle,’ you asked instead, almost pathetically laughing at yourself as you did. Your big toe moved, prompting the other to scramble ahead. 

Another blast ricocheted off the panels beside you, but your body did not respond in fear this time. No, you told your body to ‘shuffle,’ and shuffle, it was. Shuffles then turned into steps. Slow and gentle steps away from the harsh burden of warfare. Hells, you could not remember what your unit was doing here or fighting for, just that you were there on orders. Suddenly ‘orders,’ didn’t feel like a good enough reason to wait around to die. 

This was not a fair fight, this was an execution. This was a bloodbath signed by office dwellers in fancy suits that had forgotten the feeling of being a true marine. This was an act of one marine with his head so far up his superiors asshole, his own head attempting to crawl out of their mouth and bellowing: ‘Huzzah for me and my brilliance!’ And you had had enough. 

“Watch out!” you heard before another blast clipped your cheek and gashed your flesh sharply. You only reacted by reaching down and finding whatever blade was protruding from your fallen comrade’s spine and tore it from their body. They wouldn’t be needing it anymore, and you needed something to survive. 

It felt thick: both the handle and blade were far larger than you had handled prior. ‘I can use it as both sword and shield,’ you nodded internally while flourishing it in front of your face. Suddenly the training you engaged in with specialist studies in: ‘manning adrenaline by closing your eyes’ was coming in handy. You closed your eyes and listened for the next blast, turning your new blade towards the incoming iron and deflecting it away from your body and towards a large boulder beside you. You cracked a smile before inhaling deeply, still with your eyes tightly shut to protect from any debris. 

If you’d had the time, you might have wrapped your eyes entirely to stop yourself from reacting to any horrors you may have seen. For now, keeping your eyes shut was stopping you from running away in a panic and maintaining a placating calm. You used your adrenaline to react now, almost ordering it to the places you needed it the most. 

“Oi, we got a live one, lads!” you heard ahead of you, “Hah! And they got one of yer bastard blades too, commander!” You responded by scrunching your nose up in disgust and flickered it in front of your face before butterflying it out in a flourish. You felt the dust settle against your skin and slowly waft away from your lips and mouth before breathing deeply and opening your eyes to check the damage in front of you.

You dared not look at the ground beside you. You could feel the damp floor and squishy limbs beside you enough to know there was a body laying there. If not the feeling of your feet, the scent of iron and soldering smoke could’ve informed you regardless. Narrowing your gaze, you focussed on the taller one of the two. He was at least seven feet tall, far taller than you. You had already deduced you could use your adrenaline to use his body strength against him, toppling him into the other and taking to a sprint into the sea. That was until-.

“Oi, watch out, marine!” the blue haired man barked, closing the distance between you with incredible speed, covering your body with his own as another blast of cannon fodder shuffled overhead. You allowed his body to completely engulf your own, holding you protectively before he shuffled to the ground beside you. “I’m Heat,” he sniffed out in a soft chuckle, extending his hand to you. 

“I’m just a d-,” you began, your voice cut off by another timed blast. Heat chuckled and shook his head, waiting for the blast to settle before gesturing to the other obvious pirate beside him to shuffle back. 

“Alright, marine,” he chuckled, “Gimme yer name later. Fuck-,” he reached over and cupped your ears to save them from another close blast to your head. You barely caught the ‘This fucking guy,’ from his mouth. You closed your eyes once more to halt the fear from properly taking seed, but in the inhale meant to calm you, your nose picked up the blood from your fallen comrade in front of you and you couldn’t stop the rise. 

“Ey, ‘ey, none of tha’ now,” Heat said beside you, moving his hands down to your shoulders and engulfing them in his large palms, “Yer a marine, right? Fuckin’ be one. ‘At ease,’ or whatever the fuck yer meant to say.” That caused another smile to crack despite the horror laying in front of you. “There ya go,” he chuckled, “Alright, marine. He’s calmed his fuckin’ blasting this way. It ain’t one of us, and given yer fuckin’ ranks are… Not gonna be much help.” As you attempted to move up, you were promptly put back down into the ground by Heat once more. 

“What’s the plan then, pirate?” you harshly whispered, “Play fucking dead?” 

“Won’t need to play nothin’ if ya get up too quick and draw his fuckin’ interest, marine,” he chastised you plainly, “This thing. This thing seems fuckin’ faulty or some shit.” Heat looked down at the blade you clutched in your hands and back out towards the large unit overhead, “I haven’t seen anything havin’ cannons, guns, or swords shootin’ from its body. Just a single blast hurts like a motherfucker or ends up killing you. You know how to use that, or…?” 

“I can use a rapier, but spears are what I’m proficient in when I need to fight,” you nodded towards him, “This is a little larger and thicker than what I’m used to.” 

“I bet it is,” he hummed while smirking towards the hill. He took a moment to think, mulling something over in his mind before speaking. “Look, marine,” he turned towards you, “I only came over here to get my sword back, but you look like you still got some life in ya. If ya can use a sword: kick that ‘fight or flight’ shit that’s got ya in a gridlock, and listen to me.” You didn’t have the capacity to be offended by anything he’d said in the past thirty seconds. Nothing is taken to heart in times of war, and you understood one's attachment to a weapon. 

“Okay,” you nodded, “I can kick it. Just tell me what to do.” You steeled your grip on the sword and readied yourself for a harsh sprint, just as you did mentally moments earlier in planning to end him. Only this time, it was to listen to a foreign commander to a governmentless unit of unruly pirates. 

“I’m going to cause a diversion, and yer gonna fuckin run over that hill towards where Disc J was,” Heat nodded towards where he ran from, “He’s waitin’ with Reck, and Reck will offer me coverage to get out of here. You-, wait-, hang on...” He reached into his belt pouch and tugged something from his person. Instead of handing it to you, he hesitated and held it in his hand. “If I give this to you, it means yer one of mine,” he informed you, “Means ‘I got you,’ and means I’m responsible for you. No more ‘marines,’ just me and mine under our captain. If you take it and do what I’m tellin’ ya, you can’t go back to doin’ this shit. You good with that, marine?”

Taking a moment to dart your eyes between his, you examined his features and found no lie in them. Not in the smile embedded in his face, nor the splits on his cheeks, or the hollowed features depicting a lifetime of pain and triumph in battle. You weighed that up against the likelihood of him either killing you or leaving you in this place to die, and found yourself reaching for it. 

“Means you ain’t no marine no more, marine,” Heat warned you one final time, “Means yer gonna have a bounty, be hunted down by everyone you love, and become a pirate until living the life of one finally takes us.” Heat’s eyes grew both steely and saddened by speaking the truth, something you would have to thank him for later. 

“Everyone I loved was right here or dead to me,” you uttered so soft he nearly missed it. Giving you a look of understanding, he handed you a rounded object that had a face of its own. Two eyes, a nose, and a Glasgow smile held in the face of a medallion, something that was almost funny to think held so much meaning. 

“Get ready to fuckin’ leg it, deserter,” he chuckled. You moved onto your toes, preparing your sprint with the sword in your hand. 

“Aye, commander,” you nodded in affirmation. He smiled at that and took a deep breath in. On his exhale, a large ball of fire ballooned and escaped his lips up and towards the doom and destruction that cost you your entire unit. On a direct queue, cannons immediately shot towards the ball of flame, spiriting you on in your sprint to where Heat’s former associates lingered prior. 

You had never ran the way you did in that moment. Your limbs screamed for you, joints compressing into a cruel grind that had your mind yelping on every condensed thud against the rubble and bodies scattered at your feet. Every time you thought you found solid ground, it seemed there was something made specifically to trip you up. Yet, you didn’t. You kept going on, leaping and jumping in a way that you would need some serious warming down and stretching afterwards or your body would take it on permanently. 

Making it to the other side of the hill had two arms waiting to catch you in a tight grapple. It was not the waiting arms of the man you expected, nor was it the other you anticipated would create a diversion to aid in the rescue of your rescuer. 

No.

This was something else entirely.

This was just a kid. A kid with flaming red hair and blast goggles strapped to his forehead as if he was going to thunder a hammer at an anvil to create weapons of war. And this kid, was none other than-.

“-Captain Kid!” a feminine voice called to the side, a plump, crown-like hat on her head stuck down to cover her frothy tangerine hair, “You got the marine!” Before you had an opportunity to speak, this person, barely a man at all with lean arms and a slender build snarled in a grimacing bark at you.

“Is Heat alive?” he growled in your face, his eyes both holding care, panic, and extremely violent rage, “Answer me!” Your lips stuttered and hands quickly thrust the medallion into his face with a clear and even tone.

“My commander is alive.” 

“Fuck,” he snarled, “Alright, let ‘er rip, Quincy. You and Reck draw its attention, and Wire get ready to fuckin’ catch him. You.” Kid turned his attention back to you, “Yer not a marine no more, got it? Yer a pirate, and yer a Kid Pirate at that. No fightin’ on my ship, so get this into yer head fuckin’ quick or one of us’ll kill ya.” You nodded and moved the bastard sword to your side in surrender. 

“There won’t be any fight from me,” you affirmed him, “Despite having specialist combat training as a fucking marine and being from an island where fucking war and battle training is its whole fucking identity, it’s not what I am, asshole.” 

“Eh?” Kid queeried, moving both you and himself away from the battle, "Ain't you a little sunshine, sunshine". The way he trusted his crew to handle the fight, yet still remaining in view enough to step in if needed, already had you on his side further than anything else. He put you down and checked you over, narrowing into the injury on your face and moving his hands up to cup your face. He swiped his thumb over his tongue before placing it on your wound to clean it, caring for you softly while asking you the dreaded question. 

“What are you?”

You furrowed your brows and allowed the young man clean you as best he could before you finally spoke. Using the medallion to focus on steadying your voice, pressing into it hard enough to indent into your palm, you nodded your head and smiled.

“I am a doctor.”

“Hey Doc,” Heat knocked at your doorframe despite it being open, “You got a minute?”

“I’ve got a whole lot of them, Heat,” you shook your head and squeezed the small piece of metal in your hand. 

Clutching the medallion in your hand now as you did then, thumbing over the smile in its face and reminiscing of events that happened far longer ago than you cared to ever dream about. There were reasons you needed others to steal medical research documents from marine bases for you, and your newfound family kept that knowledge extremely close to their chests. They even managed to take your thesis back and pass it between them, despite half of them never having the patience to learn how to read. 

Hells, you were there for everything. You were the hand that ensured they lived. You were their doctor, and they were your family. 

“You know how we told Disc J to stop shelving his stash and smoke it like the rest of us-?”

“-I suddenly have a whole lot less of them, Heat,” you cut off the commander and pinched your brow with the same hand holding the piece of metal your commander gave you long ago. Heat was about to refute your interruption, stopping only as he looked to your hand. 

Stepping closer, he reached for it and gently moved it away from your nose and out flat in front of you both, he tilted his head to the side and looked back towards you. 

“You… Still have that?” he asked you in that soft and sweet voice he would only bring out in rarities, “After… Shit, after how many years?” You shrugged and thumbed over the face once more. 

“I figured if Wire wears his on his chest, I should get to have mine in my lab coat,” you admitted, “Unless I’m not in my office. Then it’s usually in my pocket.” Heat’s eyes rounded and softened to an extremity you hadn’t seen him wear in a while. Not while being the disciplinarian aboard the Victoria Punk, that was for sure. 

“I almost forgot that you were…” Heat placed his hands both above and beneath your own, cupping the metal piece into your hand, “...It just feels like you were always meant to be one of us. Even when we raided that base to get yer stuff back, you know? Just felt like… You were meant to be here… Be one of mine… You know?” 

“I know,” you nodded gently, “And I am still one of yours.” You placed your hand atop his own and thumbed over his significantly larger knuckles, “Just like the rest of us that wear your jolly roger. I’m your Doc, and that’s not going to change.” Heat smiled at you and let himself linger in the silence before you arched your brow and lowered your voice in warning, “And the condition of Disc J…?”

“Oh yeah, shit,” Heat chuckled and retracted his hands from your own, leaving the medallion in place and gesturing to the door, “Yeah, he’s stuck on the loo and said he’s got a growth happening that hurts somethin’ bad.” 

“Hemmeroids from shelving something fucking stupid will do that to you,” you nodded, reaching for your lab coat and throwing it over your shoulders. Placing the medallion into your pocket, you gestured on, “Alright. Lead on, Commander.” 

“Hey, I don’t want to see that shit!” 

“No, no,” you clarified, “No, commander, you’re involved now, Heat. You need to be a second pair of hands for me.” You chuckled and kicked him out of your office, following behind and closing the door as you did so. “You may be my commander, but I am your doctor. I am higher ranking than you, and you should do well to remember it.” Heat groaned and rolled his head on his shoulders, pouting and placing his hands at the nape of his neck as he did. Letting out a gentle sigh, he shook it off and led you on towards Disc J.

“Fine,” he said, nudging you with his hips, “But I’m gonna complain about it the whole time.” 

“I’m looking forward to ignoring it.”