Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

According to the wall-mounted clock it is somewhere in the mid-afternoon.

It has been nearly three full circles of those analogue hands tick-tick-ticking across the dust ridden face of that clock – two nights and coming up two full days since her cots were taken up. Time could not be more irrelevant.

Three patients were downed by gasoline poisoning. They are draining her saline supply. At first, she’d taken to rapid infusion of the drip-rate to ensure they received fluids but even with the intravenous rehydration now at its much safer milliliter-per-hour, it does not change that her supply is being depleted by triple. The silver lining is that their blood and urine tests are coming back clean, their burns have been treated, and two of them are conscious enough for antibiotics to be administered orally.

The third patient has yet to wake up. They are on a ventilator.

All being said, it is an incredible stroke of luck that this was a mild case of poisoning (as far as Underworld standards are concerned.) Natasha is far from equipped to deal with a scenario any worse than this: her stomach pump has been out of commission for months, nor does she own the equipment for an endoscopy or bronchoscopy. Had the situation worsened, she’d be looking at three corpses in need of burning.

It’s not much of a silver lining. The third patient is stable enough for her to consider using her ‘gift’ the next time they are conscious. It’s not something she takes lightly but needs must. She makes a mental note to give them another day to wake up on their own before taking matters into her own hands.

With each year that passes in the Underworld, a part of Natasha’s younger self crumbles away with it. How she’d look at herself now, appalled to know that ‘patient consent’ is often suggestive at best with how dire things are down here. More often than she should, she wonders what her past self would think. Eighteen, ready to barrel head-first into Belobog’s College of Medicine, certain that she’d hold every patient’s hand and remember every one of their faces. That she’d remember they are human. Twenty-five, watching Cocolia’s reign descend as a clawed fist over Belobog, struggling to cope with the deaths on her hands as the social climate takes another turn for the worse.

Twenty-nine, rushing for the last train down to the Underworld because if not I, then who?

She has yet to get a clear story of how her patients came down with gasoline poisoning, though it isn’t impossible to guess. That, and Natasha had Oleg delegate a few members to looking into the issue anyway. It’s not an uncommon issue given the nature of the Robot Settlement. What is uncommon is for it to be a concern of consuming gasoline – as is the case with the third patient, as opposed to the usual respiratory concerns.

Common issues aren’t normally to this magnitude, either. It leaves her chewing the end of her pen, stumped.

A quarter-hour of ticking later, Natasha rises from her chair with a groan and leaves her notes at the desk. She stretches halfheartedly for the ceiling before sighing. Her hand strays to her back as she approaches the cots. It’s time to swap out their fluid bags.

As she is detaching the empty bags from their hooks and drips, a muffled voice slips from behind the double-doors. Natasha notes it passingly, an idle wondering of what has Seele so worked up that the sharp pitch of whiny adolescence can be heard through the clinic’s thin walls. As far as Natasha recalls, the girl had stomped through without so much as a glance – more importantly, with no one accompanying her.

Maybe Seele’s imaginary friend has made a return. It had taken her longer than most children her age to grow out of that phase. Hm.

Her mules clop measuredly across the tiles to the doors leading into the back of the clinic. She’ll soon root out the cause of Seele’s frustrations; she has to put these empty saline bags in the recycling container anyway.

It’s a shame there’s no way to reuse saline bags, she thinks. But then again, it’s not like she’d have a way to guarantee sterilization if there was.

Her thoughts have long since worn a familiar circle into her mind. It becomes more and more difficult to think of anything else as time passes. Even as her feet carry her down the short corridor to her office, even as her eyes take note of the office door left ajar, even as her ears listen to the half-hushed sound of Seele hissing – it takes actually stepping into the office to push Natasha off course.

Seele, with her shoulders hiked up like a startled alley cat, is not a surprise. Being that she’s been benched from Wildfire (for reasons yet to be determined), she hadn’t been in the mood to do more than mope. She’d slinked off to the office about a half-hour ago and never came back out.

Natasha pretends the dumped training gear in her granny chair doesn’t bother her.

Not anymore than seeing Sampo in the office does, which is to say a passing irritation she has no energy to lend towards, and at best mild curiosity. Remember Seele’s stormy entrance she may, but Sampo’s evidently much quieter one – she doesn’t.

Get out of that, that’s not yours! Natasha’s mind unveils to her. The muffled voices from earlier. An argument, she surmises. A rather one-sided one, undoubtedly.

The scene is comical in any other context. Being no more than one-hundred pounds wet, the meanest thing about Natasha’s self-emancipated charge is her right hook. Seeing her try and corner a man almost twice her height, hackles raised like she stands a chance, is almost enough to make Natasha laugh.

And she would’ve, if this wasn’t Seele’s first chance of meeting Sampo in person. In an ideal world, Natasha would’ve been more awake and Sampo would’ve kindly informed her of his arrival; to have been there from the very beginning means this conflict may have been avoided and eased their official introduction.

As it stands, it’s obvious that Seele is not pleased with the renowned rat Koski in the clinic, let alone the clinic’s private office.

“Just what do you think you’re doing looking in that special book?” Seele hisses. She hasn’t clocked the third presence in the office yet.

“Well, I was writing in it until someone ripped it out of my ha–” In a blur of movement, coattails flying, Sampo twirls. The large desk pushed against the back wall catches him, landing as if he’d been casually leaning against it all along.

Another blur tears across the office. She catches herself on the filing cabinet with less grace. And a grunt. She pivots, darting across the space once more. A gloved hand presses down on her head, keeping her a firm arm’s length away from Sampo as she swipes at the air and grinds her feet against the floor.

Natasha meets the man’s eyes. He smiles at her serenely, greeting her in his usual singsong: “Miss Natasha! Just the woman I was looking for.”

She takes a moment to breathe. Her eyes roam the office in all of its overcrowded glory, from the rolling trolley to the second desk across from it, the stuffed cabinets and overladen shelving, the papers scattered on the floor. A familiar duffel bag sits on the floor and a red hardcover journal has been tossed haphazardly. Nothing seems to be leaking or broken, thankfully. What Natasha would do if damp seeped into this room, she doesn’t know.

Over Seele’s cursing and eventual flop into a chair that had been seating a box of bandages, Natasha nods. “Sampo, what a surprise. Coffee?”

Dumping her empty saline bags into the receptable by the trolley, she meanders over to the hotplate mounted on it. It’s funny, really. She never remembered to cart it back into the front of the clinic; the amount of coffee rings crusted on its stainless-steel surface, as well as the sticky patch where she always rests the bag of sugar, are all but proof of how long the trolley has sat in her office. The number of cups it has held – and still holds, discarded mugs waiting to be washed – is embarrassing.

A low hum, enticed. “Oh, if you’re offering, it’d be rude to say no…” His tone is light but hopeful. “Perhaps with a pinch of sugar? Just a little?”

Natasha ignores him, dumping three spoonfuls of instant coffee into each of their mugs. She learned her lesson last time she agreed to such a request. She sets the kettle on the hotplate and pointedly ignores the way Sampo wilts.

“You’re offering him a drink?!” Seele barks out. Natasha flinches from the sudden noise, not having seen the girl slink up to her side.

Rubbing her temple, she readies herself for more protests as soon as she says, “Yes. Sampo is an associate of the clinic –”

“Bullshit! ‘Associate’ is just a long way to say ‘ass’ –”

Sampo crosses his arms. “Hey now, is that really how you want to –”

One would think steam comes out of Seele’s ears with how hard she hisses. “I’m not talking to you. Like I’m gonna believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth.” She turns to Natasha, hair whipping behind her from the force. Her blue eyes are wide with betrayal, not unlike a kitten whose tail got stepped on. “Nat –” Her hand curls into the rolled sleeve of Natasha’s lab coat – “Why is he even here?”

Aww, babochka, Natasha wants to croon. It’s the same face she used to get whenever Seele tried to worm her way out of punishments for fighting with other children. Tough. Should’ve thought about that before you let your anger guide you.

She pinches Seele’s cheek like she did back then, ignoring the groaning and whining until she pries the girl off her. In her peripheral, she watches Sampo take the kettle off the hotplate before it can whistle.

“First and foremost, the clinic is neutral ground unless I decide otherwise. On that basis alone, I won’t be hearing any complaints about who I chose to associate with.” After a stern look, Seele drops her gaze to the floor and scuffs her boots. Natasha continues, “Second, Sampo has been… generous, helping to support the clinic where he can.”

“Generous,” They scoff. Natasha’s not sure who says it first, just that Sampo didn’t intend to be heard beneath Seele’s outburst.

Gloved fingers brush her own as he presses a full mug into her hands. He pulls back just as quickly, smiling behind the rim of his own cup, the steam obscuring the look in his eye.

Natasha’s careful sip of coffee is – less strong than she was prepared for. The bitterness is cut by something creamy, not overly sweet. She blinks in confusion, checking over her shoulder to take in the bottle of nondescript creamer sitting between the bag of coffee granules.

It had not been there before.

Seele’s grumbling nearly sweeps over Natasha completely, busy trying to dissect the edge of Sampo’s smile and where his amusement draws from more: endeared to Seele’s aggression already, or by continuing to slip beneath Natasha’s notice? Like it’s a game.

She supposes it might be, a breath of laughter wafting steam away from her cup.

“I just don’t see how you can trust a conman,” Her charge huffs, “He’s a liar and a cheater. He screwed over Cook last week!”

Natasha hums. She wishes she cared more about this kind of thing but life in the Underworld grinds one down after a while. “Everyone has to make a living,” She says neutrally.

Seele glowers. “Then he can do it honest like the rest of us.”

A sigh. Natasha shares a look with the man in question. They decide not to tell her just how honest some of the people in the Underworld really are – what they resort to in order to get by because the pay slips aren’t coming through anymore, because people are hungry, because they are desperate. If Sampo Koski is the pinnacle of evil to Seele, then all she can think is better him than someone truly despicable.

It’s a naïve thought. Like many others, the polished veneer of the world will eventually shatter around Seele as it does everyone. While she argues that it already has, that she’s grown, that she knows what the world is coming to… her skin isn’t as thick as she’d like to pretend it is.

Sampo turns back to her ward, coy smile and teasing notes to his voice. What he says next gets some kind of huffy reaction from the girl.

Natasha isn’t listening too hard. What she doesn’t tell Seele goes unspoken, as does what she doesn’t tell Sampo. He is slippery and enjoys misdirection; she has long-since clocked a pattern in those he rips off and plays dirty. For not being around for very long, he’s certainly not stupid.

Case in point: her ledger. If anything is a testament to his keen eye and head for numbers, it is that red journal. (Musical numbers, maybe, Sampo had joked. Everything is just patterns, rhythms. Natasha hasn’t been able to unsee it in him since.)

Her back twinges as she bends down to pick up the ledger. She dusts the cover off on her skirt before opening it to the most recent page. She almost spills her drink doing so – perhaps she ought to wait a while longer on her patients after all, given the way her hands are clumsier than normal. There is a harsh line of ink that indicates the book being snatched out from beneath him mid-scrawl.

She places the journal back on the table, turning to find Seele has skulked over to the hotplate and is using the last of the hot water to pour herself a cup of hot coco. It’s chalky powder with too much sugar, but it’s not as if Seele has ever known anything else. Not like Natasha has, and how wonderful a dash of chili powder and a cinnamon stick do to wake up the senses. Not like she ever will, is the bitter afterthought, not with how tightly sealed the entrances to the Overworld now are.

Seele keeps a tentative distance from Sampo, though has no qualms on spitting at him with her venom: “Why do you get to write in the special book, anyway?”

“Hm?” A pink sliver of tongue over his lips before it vanishes, eyebrows lifted and head tilted in innocence. “Oh, that? just to keep track of stock for Nat, since I’m changing it up so much. You know how busy it gets in here. Ol’ Sampo likes to lend a hand where he can.”

The sly quirk of his mouth gets the reaction he was fishing for. Seele scrunches her nose at him and makes a disgusted noise. That seems to be the extent of it, however, as she slurps her coco and thinks. It doesn’t look like she has a good rebuttal even if she is suspicious, seen by the way her eyes keep squinted and her brows remain furrowed.

Natasha can’t help but smile at her puffed out cheeks. And she wonders why no one takes her seriously at the ripe age of sixteen.

“What’s in the bag?” She asks, her voice low and – Natasha takes a long sip of her coffee to keep from laughing. The thought that Seele is trying for intimidation is too much. The way Sampo seems to be humoring her doesn’t help. “How do we know you haven’t brought one of your shitty bombs in here or something?”

Sampo raises a bemused brow. A beat passes before he clutches a hand to his chest, sharp intake of breath, eyes wide – “Stars, you’re right! What if I did pack a live bomb in there?!”

An angry flush crawls up Seele’s neck. She bares her teeth, and her own eyes bright with indignation. “Don’t you mock me, Koski! I’m in my rights to –”

Sluuuuuurp.

Sampo smacks his lips together a few times and swills his coffee around in his mug like a wine connoisseur. “By all means, I consent to a luggage search, Officer Seele!” He then softens. “Nothin’ super interesting, just whatever I could get my hands on – part of me and Nat’s agreement, you understand, of course.”

It’s not, actually. The agreement is a trade of intel. Whether it is because he thinks it’ll grease her wheels or get him into her good graces she doesn’t know, but the supplies are free. No-strings-attached, free. Natasha likes to think it’s due to Sampo being in possession of a conscience. Qlipoth knows how he gets his hands on any of it.

With great reluctance does Seele shuffle towards the luggage bag. After nudging it with her foot – after it doesn’t explode – she drops into a crouch and unzips it.

What she pulls out are the somewhat standard gifts: rolls of bandages and needles in sterile packaging, a new box of latex gloves, a bottle of dark povidone-iodine. It takes a while to pull out the additional item, a long, rubber tube with a bulge in the middle and a funneled end.

Pleasantly surprised, words escape her for a moment. Seele’s confusion has her face scrunching up as she dangles the long tube in front of her.

Mistaking the silence for something else, Sampo drums his fingers on his cup and ekes out, “It’s a liiittle old fashioned, but it would’ve taken me way longer to tinker on your machine pump than to just hook you up with a makeshift one.”

Shaking her head, she looks over to the man. “No, this is – more than enough, Sampo. I appreciate that you thought of it at all.” She reaches over and takes the tube from Seele’s hands, hooking it around the head of the bear she keeps attached to her belt.

(Junjun, as a certain one of Natasha’s charges have taken to calling it.)

“But of course! Only the best – ah, best that I can, that is – for the good doctor.” He hums, tracing his finger around the rim of his mug. “Speaking of which, ol’ Sampo needs to try and squeeze in time between clients and commissions. It miiight be a while before I get around to your stomach pump, and that’s if I can get my hands on –”

Finally having enough of ping-ponging her head back and forth like a match spectator, Seele butts in. “What, so you can break Nat’s machine even more?”

A hand to his forehead, Sampo acts aghast. “Such cruelty towards my craft! I’ll have you know I’m –”

– good with my hands, Natasha mentally finishes. One of his favorite innuendos. She finishes her coffee to hide her knowing smirk, regardless of the fact that she’s the only one noticing Sampo’s brief pause.

He continues seamlessly, chin hefted up in theatric haughtiness – “A very good mechanic, trained under one of the most prestigious out there!”

Seele grunts. “You sold a faulty ‘bot part to Dominik and it blew up. In his hands. He couldn’t tinker for weeks.”

Natasha tilts her head. Familiar as she is with the vagrant, she doesn’t remember him visiting her for that injury in specific. A nasty one it would’ve been, too, most likely blistering and potential loss of the fingers depending on how tampered the part had been.

With both sets of eyes on him, Sampo looks down at his fingers (nails, were he gloveless) with an air of disinterest. He flexes his fingers out and the joints pop quietly. “Well, what can I say? My clients pay for the quality of what they’re buying.”

He stands and settles his empty mug back on the trolley, then pivoting to drift closer to Natasha. It takes her a second to realize he’s interested in the ledger by her elbow, careful with the pages as he smooths them out, pen twirling in hand. She’s not sure when he picked one up, doesn’t recall him reaching to grab one from one of her many pockets.

A frustrated groan draws Natasha’s attention back to her charge, watching her gape and flurry her hands at Sampo’s back in a see? see? manner. The disbelief is palpable in the way only a teenager can make it, down to the stroppy body language and way she harumphs before allowing curiosity to win her over. Not a breath between Seele questioning Natasha’s choices and stomping her way over to leer over Sampo’s arm.

She’s too short to peek over Sampo’s shoulder, even on her toes.

Why do you get to have nice handwriting? Natasha hears her gripe.

She can only be thankful that Seele isn’t trying to gnaw his ankles off. While it may take a while for the two of them to meet on the same page it’s certainly not the worst foot Seele’s ever started on with someone. Even if she can tell it gets under Sampo’s skin a little (almost literally, the way his eye twitches or a muscle in his jaw clenches, his real feelings are writhing under a polite mask,) to not win her over so quickly. Seele’s habit of pushing buttons and boundaries isn’t something Natasha has managed to rein in, not in all the time she has known her.

Leaving Sampo to the ledger, her mules clop softly on the floor as she makes her way to her chair. Only then is she reminded of Seele’s training gear piled right on top of it. Worn knee and elbow pads, braced gloves, helmet and face guard. Her bo staff leans against the armrest.

Sighing, Natasha opts to busy herself with another cup of coffee. She grabs the kettle and reaches over her desk to the steel drum sitting in the corner of the room. It strains her back to reach for the spigot to fill the kettle with water, has her rubbing her knuckles into her lower back once she’s done. Twisting slowly from side to side to try and alleviate some of the soreness, she catches Sampo looking at her. He turns back before she can ask. The pensive gleam in his eye probably wasn’t for her to see.

Returning the kettle to the hotplate, Natasha asks, “How did training go, Seele?”

All she gets is a long, tired groan. Shuffling. She glances over her shoulder and watches as Seele leans back on her elbows on the table, her feet sliding further across the floorboards as paper sticks to the heels of her boots. Her head is lolled back. Her hair gets in the way of Sampo’s writing. When the man flicks it away, she purposefully tosses her hair further over the ledger.

Those big blue eyes fix on her, pleading. “Do we have to talk about it right now?” She angles her head in Sampo’s direction.

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “If not now, then when? You’ve already avoided me twice this week.”

Seele slides onto the floor completely, her sprawled legs an uncaring tripping hazard. Red is creeping up her neck again and her bangs flopping in her face have her looking particularly mulish.

“It’s just not going anywhere!” Seele huffs after a moment. She grinds the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Oleg’s tryna teach me these different styles, I dunno, ‘n none of them feel like they fit. It’s annoying.”

Nodding along, Natasha dumps a couple spoonfuls of coffee granules into her cup. “How come?”

Seele’s head thumps against the filing cabinet. “It’s just – stiff. And it’s hard to remember all the moves and then I screw them up because I’m too busy trying to remember a specific move instead of just fighting. It makes everything clunky and – and awkward.” There’s the sound of something flopping, presumably her hands dropping back into her lap. “Like, I like the bo staff, but I don’t like how I have to fight with it, there’s all these specific moves separate from when I’m fighting with my hands, and I get them all mixed up. Oleg wants me to fight like a – a soldier, or somethin’.”

She keeps quiet during the pause, only the clinking of her spoon stirring as she pours water in her cup to accompany the few choice words the girl has for Oleg’s style of teaching. Given none of it is targeted, more to vent her frustrations, Natasha mercifully lets it sail over her head.

“So it just. Y’know, kind of sucked. I want to learn how to fight. Not all this complicated… stuff.”

Tap. Tap. Tap. The soft click of Sampo putting the cap back on the pen makes Seele startle. “Sounds like another pair of eyes might be useful. I could mosey on down, see what Oleg’s missing,” He offers lightly.

It’s an olive branch if Natasha’s ever heard one from the conman. It goes over Seele’s head, how he aligns himself to her ‘side’ of the matter, if the way she snorts dismissively is any indication.

“Ha! You? Fight?”

The pen twirls across Sampo’s fingers. He looks down at her with a lidded look. “To spar and observe, but sure.”

His smile is a little tight as she inevitably asks how someone like him would know anything about fighting. Or sparring. Seele doesn’t hold back her punches, even her verbal ones: “Everyone knows you go running with your tail between your legs every time someone thinks to get their money back. Sorry if I don’t believe an oily rat.”

“Oh, give me a little credit, Miss Seele!” Sampo says through his teeth. His voice remains light. Natasha is the only one who sees the way his jaw doesn’t move when he laughs airily, “A man like me has to know at least a thing or two, no? You think the gift of the gab saves me every time?”

Seele’s nose scrunches, too busy mouthing gift of the gab to herself in judgement. Sampo continues before she can retort. “Besides, you’re not the first freestyle fighter that’s struggled to get along with their coach!”

He playfully brings up his fists and lazily mimes punching the air. The way his shadow ripples over her, fluid, makes Seele crane her neck to look up at him. Once her attention is back in his hand, Sampo leans his elbow against the table and crosses one ankle over the other. His smile has gentled again.

Natasha hasn’t been blind to the man’s obvious discomfort around children. It’s still there, if she looks. The subtle tension in his shoulders, the way he starts shaking his foot to a tune no one else can hear. Anything to keep him busy, as he keeps Seele’s attention carefully in his palm. Coaxing her, Natasha thinks. Warming her up like one does molding wax.

“Freestyle isn’t all that popular on Ja–” He runs a hand through his hair – “Ah, in the Underworld, yes? Dear old Oleg used to be a captain, didn’t he? I’ll bet you he’s still trying to teach Wildfire recruits the Silvermane style of fighting. Though we can’t be too hard on him, of course.”

Neither of them is paying Natasha any mind, which is a good thing. It keeps them unaware of the way she stiffens into alertness. Even as Sampo’s gaze drifts into the middle distance and he taps his pen unassumingly against his chin, there is no helping the way the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise. He hums, murmuring something else that Seele likes the sound of, but Natasha is too busy biting back questions.

How he knows of Oleg’s ex-military status is – it’s unfathomable. There’s no feasible way Sampo could’ve learned this information; she hasn’t even introduced them, let alone mentioned Oleg more than in passing. It makes something tighten in her chest like a winded breath.

When he meets her eyes, Sampo tilts his head to the side. The innocence is not put-on this time. He doesn’t know why she’s staring at him so hard.

With a heavy sigh, Natasha simply shakes the thought from her mind. Another mystery for another time.

In the end, the one-sided tension is put aside in Seele asking, “Can I think about it?”

“Why, of course! As much time as you need, Miss Seele,” Sampo agrees. The way his smile turns self-satisfied as the girl stands from the floor, however, tells Natasha that he is confident in her answer.

At least it’s not a no. That’s a good sign to Natasha.

A week later sees Seele bursting into the clinic.

Flushed from exertion and mid-way through shucking off her training gear, a power in her stride that’s been absent since she started spending her afternoons under Oleg’s guiding hand. The light in her eyes brings a warmth to the clinic that has been missed.

Sampo follows behind her, ever the shadow to Seele’s eye-catching entrances.

They find Natasha in a brief moment’s peace in the clinic.

The cots are empty of patients. Her gasoline-poisoned victims from the week prior have been treated, allowed to continue resting at home, reduced to check-ups once a week given their improved states. The third victim, of whom had been the worst case of poisoning via ingestion, did not end up needing Natasha’s healing touch after all – a recovery accredited to the nasogastric tube that had been thoughtfully donated.

All the children are upstairs settling down, the sound of Taylor’s voice reading bedtime stories muffled through the ceiling. It is a charitable act for her to have stopped by and relieved Natasha of her child-minding duties for the day, one that is gradually increasing in frequency – much like many things as of late. With each day that passes, the week has felt easier to bear. A novelty.

Natasha can only wonder when it will all come crashing down. A worry for another time.

Belatedly, she remembers that today marks the first time Seele has attended her training with Sampo accompanying her. Whether there will be a repeat of this afternoon, Natasha can’t say just yet.

As Seele drops into one of the spinning desk chairs, she takes a moment to look her over. Her chest heaves with a long sigh. Her face carries no trace of anger or upset; more so tired-out, contented like a cat after a long day chasing butterflies. She has yet to finish shedding the rest of her training gear, bo staff laid across her lap and fingers intertwined behind her wild head of hair.

It is unsurprising to see Sampo hardly having broken a sweat. He cocks his hip against the desk Natasha is seated at, not a hair out of place. The only thing notably off is his focus, the tapping of his foot softly rocking his body as he drifts in thought. In his hands are three styrofoam cups – a novelty in the Underworld – with wooden spoons taped to their lids.

“Soup for Miss Natasha,” He says ambiguously upon noticing Natasha’s attention. He doesn’t say from where or go on his usual spiel of how he oh-so generously procured it for them.

A pleasant surprise, nonetheless. She thanks him and opens the cup he gives her.

The urge to cry hits her instantly: she is carried back to her childhood as soon as the cap peels off.

Having expected the unappetizing bluish green of wild herb soup commonly sold by vendors, watery and gritty with a distinctive mineral smell, the difference is all the more jarring. What sits in the cup is very much not wild herb soup. The contents are violently red with beetroot, chunks of meat and vegetables floating around, a fast-melting dollop of sour cream and finely chopped dill to garnish.

It looks and smells delicious. It is overwhelmingly nostalgic. She is back to sitting at the dinner table with her parents, with Vache – a lifetime ago. A bowl of borscht in front of her with slices of rye bread and a glass of herbal kvass to wash it all down. It is a taste she couldn’t possibly forget.

She is struck with such strong longing that it gets stuck in her throat. Sitting in the too-big mahogany chairs and picking at the plush-coated arm while waiting for Mother to place a steaming bowl in front of her, barely tall enough for her head to be seen over the edge of the table and the silken green tablecloth pooling in her lap. Natasha or Vache would inevitably spill their soup – then laugh without fear, for all their mother had to offer was a fond sigh before leaning over to dab at their messy faces with a napkin.

“C’mon now, Natasha,” Comes Sampo’s voice, cutting cleanly through her reverie. A knife through softened butter, painless. “The soup isn’t that bad! No need to give it the eye like that.”

Looking up, looking around, she is back in the clinic. The fluorescent overhead lights shine down on her, their glare eased by the warmer light of the floor lamps. Her dull reflection stares up at her from the shining surface of the soup.

It takes a second for her to realize she’d zoned out. Seele is already scraping the bottom of her cup, ever the voracious teenager. Beetroot stains her lips pink and stringy cabbage sticks to her cheek. The sight of it brings a wistful sort of smile to her face as she thinks of a younger Seele; as messy an eater at sixteen as she was at six.

Oh, what am I going to do with you, babochka?

Thanking Sampo once more, Natasha digs into her own serving. She is once again taken away, this time by the flavor – rich, tangy, dense with pork broth and chopped root vegetable. Carrot, she thinks. Carrot and potato. It’s not the same as how Mother would’ve made it but perhaps it is for the best.

It not being her mother’s cooking doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Her mother’s borscht was always a little sweet, meat substituted for salo and always reluctant to be so heavy-handed with the vinegar. Whoever made this borscht is closer to how it is traditionally enjoyed in Belobog, more sour, the creaminess of the sour cream curbs the acidity of the other ingredients. She can’t get enough of it.

While eating, Natasha listens to Seele ask, “Where did you get it from, anyway? It’s so good.”

Sampo holds his own portion close to himself. It is an odd position, making him look like he’d hide the cup away in the cradle of his ribs if he could. Cagey, if she had to name it. He tilts his head one way, then the other. A singsong hum for each way his head bobs. His eyes dart back and forth in tempo. “Ah, nowhere special. Now that you mention it, I’m not suuure…”

He pauses all movements and purses his lips. His gloved fingers drum on his cup. “Hm. You’ll have to forgive ol’ Sampo, his memory’s not what it used to be, a-ha.”

With a scoff, Seele reclines in the chair with her legs sprawled in front of her. She tosses her styrofoam cup into the wastebasket and lazily whoops when the cup lands. Natasha finds herself more curious in Sampo’s evasiveness, his apparent air-headedness this afternoon. She prods a little, “You didn’t stop at a stall along the way? One of the ones down the steps, if not Turner’s on the corner?”

“We stopped by some old shack he’s stayin’ in.” Seele shrugs. Her voice strains as she stretches her arms above her head. “Won’t tell me where he bought it from, though. Just that he had leftovers, ‘n I was hungry, n’ who’s gonna say ‘no’ to free food? So.”

This only confirms her suspicions that the soup wasn’t bought so much as made.

Boots squeak on the floor as Seele sluggishly drags herself back up onto her feet. Through a jaw-cracking yawn, Seele announces that she’s going to get changed. After collecting her discarded gear, she shuffles off through the double-doors into the back of the clinic.

The stairs creak and there’s a hissed curse as something clatters. There is some more creaking: down, then back up. Probably dropped something.

“The cups were a nice touch,” Natasha tells Sampo.

He just looks at her from beneath his lashes and smiles simperingly. Why he wants to hide his cooking skills from Seele, she’ll never know. He glides across the space to take the chair Seele had previously occupied, cup still untouched in his hands. Perhaps not to invite expectation, Natasha thinks. Perhaps because he already revealed one trick this week.

Sampo doesn’t have a reputation for fighting, or any ability to defend himself; a mangy stray who cowers before he’ll lash out at people. And so, shattering this image of himself puts him at a disadvantage if it gets out.

Natasha is tickled pink by the idea that he might be trying to buy Seele’s secrecy. With soup. Undermine this discovery with another one of his many tricks: bribery.

Admittedly, it’s not a bad idea. Food will get you many places with Seele.

It’s as she’s thinking that Natasha notes his avoidant posture. He sits facing the expanse of the clinic, making it so she stares at his profile while lost in thought. A light bulb flickers in her mind.

She allows him his idle chatter as she turns to face the desk, pulling some stray papers closer to her – not until after she’s placed her styrofoam cup in the waste basket, that is.

His gloved hand overs over the lid of his cup as he asks, “How’s the clinic been, doc?”

Natasha grabs a pen and skims over the papers she’d grabbed. A prescription list and a careplan for a patient recovering from a bad fall in the mines. Simple, mindless enough to fill-out. “Without jinxing myself by mentioning it, things have been… quiet, lately.” She is pleased to catch the sound of a lid being peeled off a cup as she continues talking, “Taylor – one of the young women in town – came by and is putting the children to sleep for me. I sent off a few patients this afternoon, nothing all that interesting. Yes, it’s been quiet.”

There is a pause as Sampo eats his soup. While her hand automatically fills out the list she has a dozen times before, she can’t help but notice how he seems to drink the borscht more than eat it. Shoveling it down his throat like he doesn’t even care for the taste.

She frowns. When was the last time he had a full meal? She shakes her head (scribbling a line out and rewriting it when the shape of Sampo pauses in her peripheral); he is a grown man at the end of the day. His dietary habits aren’t of interest to her unless he makes them so.

Between swallows he recites his usual complaints about lack of profit and other business metaphors he uses to veil his deeper meaning. Natasha has gotten used to them since Sampo first piped up almost two years ago; has gotten used to the barbs and the way he rubs his hands together like a disgusting little gnat at the thought of reaping in more credits. And that, too, is how she figured out that this is Sampo’s complicated way of expressing his care for her clinic.

The Underworld does not have the means to move on from shield to credits. Down here, Sampo profits from trade like everyone else. It is not that he cares about Natasha earning from this profession – it is that he believes in reciprocation. This is where they do not see eye-to-eye.

They’ve never argued about it, thankfully. In all the ways that matter, Sampo defers to her every single time. It never changes the rest of his tirade, though. Never does. Even now with red staining his teeth viciously, his green eyes are doeful and his smile is lopsidedly honest. “No one does it like you do, Nat. Sticking it out like this, in such a world? I think you’ve got everyone beat.”

Natasha merely hums. She scrawls her signature down at the bottom of the page and blows strands of hair out of her face. “I’m just doing what’s right, Sampo.”

If not I, then who?

Sampo chuckles to himself. It has a sordid edge to it. When she looks over, his gaze is far away again, smile hollow.

The double-doors creak open and Seele strides through. She’s dressed down in her sleepwear, a loose shirt and sweatpants so old they’re starting to fray at the seams. One wouldn’t be able to tell they used to be purple with blue hearts at a glance.

Seele bristles as Sampo coos at her, simply ad-or-a-ble, because of her hair being up in a ponytail. “We’re not friends just ‘cause you sat your fat ass in one of my sessions,” She grunts.

Finally, Natasha asks how said session went. She’d been the one to convince Oleg to allow Sampo to ‘sit in’, as it were. Not that it took much convincing, if anything her letter was more a warning in advance than explicitly asking for input on the matter. But that is as far as her knowledge goes. Most of the time, she is content with leaving the training to Oleg. He is the one with field experience after all.

Allowing Seele the stage, Sampo stays quiet and bounces his knee. He rests his face against his palm.

There’s a gleam in her eye that speaks more of excitement than Seele wants to admit. She lounges casually on the desk Natasha and Sampo are seated at, picking at her nails nonchalantly – an amusingly familiar move, though it’s a question of whether Seele knows where she picked it up from – and shrugs. “Oh, y’know,” She sighs. “Just training. No big deal.”

Reclining in her chair with her arms folded, she gives Seele a look.

She’s practically vibrating. “Okay – it was… better than normal.”

Her excitement finally bursts, and she rushes up from the desk to stand in the middle of the floor. She begins miming some of the new sets she’s learned this afternoon, with significantly more control and confidence than the last time Natasha had seen her try. “Oleg said ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ today. Then Koski did some of the old moves with me and – I dunno, I guess it showed Oleg the difference – and then we did some new moves.”

She switches into a new set, one that doesn’t seem much different to Natasha at first until she notices that Seele is moving her center of gravity more than she used to. No longer overreaching to land a hit on her opponent. More movement in her legs as well as her upper body.

“And you like this way more?” Natasha checks.

Seele pauses to look at her, shaking out her arms and stretching them across her chest. The smile she gives is much like a cat with the cream: satisfied. “Yeah.” She nods, “Yeah, it – feels better. Fits better, I think.”

Natasha nods, also satisfied. It seems like accommodating for Seele’s smaller stature and prioritizing both speed and power rather than simply the latter is a good move. No doubt conserving energy, too.

“And we talked weapons.” Seele scratches her cheek, lips screwed to the side. At her encouraging hum, the girl shrugs. The glow leaves her quickly and her brows knit together. “The tools the other guys use aren’t cutting it. I like my bo staff but it’s still not… right.”

She crosses her arms tight across her body with her cheeks puffed out. Then she glowers, curling her lip, “Don’t look at me like that, you creep.”

Natasha glances over to see the issue. Sampo hasn’t moved. He continues to lounge in his chair, unperturbed by Seele’s griping, looking the most focused he has since stepping into the clinic. The intensity of his gaze is harder to ignore when there is no smile to gentle its edge.

Ignoring her, he asks, “The Underworld doesn’t have a lot of ammo lying around anymore, right?”

Seele squints at him in confusion. Huh?

It’s evident that the gears are turning in his head. Whirring away, his imagination no doubt crafting something Natasha wouldn’t even be able to begin guessing until it had already come into fruition.

“No,” Natasha says after a moment. “I make my grenade launcher rounds from compounds and explosives that I… ahem, borrow, from the mining equipment stores. But no, there’s no real way to access artillery down here. What we had was used up in the first –” She takes a second to think about it. Taps her fingers against her cheek. “The first year and a half, I believe. Not that it did us a whole lot of good.”

Seele nods sagely. “Gotta stick to picks and shovels, sharp things that’ll chip into fragmentum ‘n shadewalkers.” Then she scrunches her nose, her eyes steely as she squints at him. “Shouldn’t you know this? You were down here with the rest of us when they locked us all down here.”

Sampo draws from the middle distance with a sharp blink. His smile returns like he flipped a switch, false levity in his voice as he laughs. He runs a hand through his hair. ”Ah, what did I tell you earlier? Ol’ Sampo’s memory –”

“You’re not even as old as Nat.” Seele rolls her eyes. “And Nat’s, like. Old.” At a scoldingly raised eyebrow, Seele mutters a quick apology under her breath but doesn’t correct herself.

This is, unfortunately, a mistake Seele has yet to learn when it comes to Sampo. Now hooked on his line, he reels her off topic with an amused grin, “You think Natasha’s old? And to wonder what you think of poor, dear old Oleg!”

“C’monnn,” Seele groans. “You know that’s not what I meant! And he’s, like, old-old, anyway.”

Nodding along, he drums his fingers on the desk. “Incredibly sophisticated metrics, Miss Seele, I must say! ‘Old’, and ‘old-old’, I do wonder what you’ll come out with next!”

“Alright, you two,” Natasha cuts in. “Quiet down or you’ll wake up the children – and I will make you two deal with them.”

It does the trick.

They never do get clarification on what Sampo is thinking. He finally looks away from Seele to give Natasha a silly wink. With that, he stands from his chair, adjusting his jacket and the clasps on his tattered remains of a shirt to keep it from flying up in the cold.

“It’s been fun, but I’ll have to bid you both adieux. Hands to shake and credits to earn, you get it. Thank you for the hospitality, Nat, as always.” 

“Get back safe, Sampo,” Natasha says to his back. He’s already mostly out of the door and does not hear Seele’s begrudging bye Koski.

Once assuredly gone, Seele sighs. She adjusts her ponytail. “I dunno what Koski gets out of this.” Her blue eyes are on Natasha, searching. “It kind of has me on edge. You can never tell what that guy’s thinking.”

Beginning to collect loose papers from the desk and stacking them into a neat pile, she only nods. Seele continues after a moment, leaning against the desk again. “Y’know, he knew more than I was expecting. About fighting, I mean. Sparring. Whatever. Bet I could still knock him on his ass, though. He was too much of a pussy to square up against me.”

Another beat passes with held breath. Seele stares out into the same spot that had held Sampo’s attention earlier, but the frown is heavy on her face, tilting her head this way and that, still unable to comprehend what he was seeing in that moment. A sigh blusters out of her. Bringing her knees to her chest makes her look small, has Natasha wanting to reach out and squeeze her shoulders. She refrains only at the last second, knowing all too well how Seele hates being coddled. She watches instead as Seele rolls a lock of hair between her fingers.

“I feel like I’m missin’ something. But what?”

There is little she can say to assuage Seele’s fears. This is the part of adulthood that Seele has yet to learn – that she won’t for many years yet, she reckons: having to take chances without being sure of the landing. “I’m not sure, I’m afraid. But, if it’s any consolation, he isn’t one to hold onto debts from people he wants to be allied with. You shouldn’t worry too much.”

In the quiet, one could mistake Seele’s voice for small. “How are you so sure you know him, Nat?”

She puts the papers down. Sits next to the girl on the desk and gently bumps their shoulders together. An ache squeezes her heart tightly at the knowledge that Seele doesn’t fit against her side quite like she used to.

“I’m not,” She says at last. “But if I want a fruitful partnership with him, then I need to have faith. Not everyone in this world is wholly good, but they’re not all bad, either.”

They spend the better part of an hour sitting like that. Long enough to see the streetlamps turn from their day-cycle white to night-cycle orange through the window. It’s been a long time since it’s been just the two of them – rarely has it ever been truly so, given the orphanage housing more than just Seele – that Natasha wishes it’d last just a little bit longer. Then, she wonders just how little sleep she’s gotten to be so… sentimental today.

Having enough, Seele stands and stretches. “Heading to bed?” Natasha asks.

“Nah, body’s tired but I’m still awake, y’know? Maybe I could –” She rubs her arm, mumbling the rest into her shoulder – “Help out a little?”

Natasha smiles. She sets her charge to work on organizing the cabinets and taking note of stock for the day. This, of course, spurs on a competitive itch under Seele’s skin. Thinking herself sly, Seele tries to nonchalantly ask how long such a task normally takes Sampo to complete; in the same breath, she bets that she can beat Sampo’s record.

“Well, you best get to work, then.”

She does not beat the record best. Writing in the ledger and working the numbers was her downfall.

In the days following, the clinic sees a revolving door of people. Busy, but quiet for the clinic. Fractured wrists and minor rotator cuff tears across many. None being so severe as to need surgical intervention. An outlier in the routine presents in a case of pneumoconiosis.

It struck fear into her for all of an hour. (Fear that they were finally beginning to see the side effects of long-term geomarrow harvesting. That there’d be no way to avoid it – that this was patient zero of an incurable and near unpreventable disease. Geomarrow lung, she’d worried, an urban whisper spoken into rotten fruition.) Until it was determined to be a case of talcosis, that is.

General inhalation of talc particles while mining. Still terrible, still life-altering, but simpler, easier for Natasha to relieve some of the symptoms with her ‘gift’. Alleviate: not cure.

The use of her healing touch has sapped the life from her. At most, she can ‘undo’ the worst of the scarring on her patient’s lungs to improve their breathing somewhat, over small sessions of healing. No matter how hard she has tried in the past with similar cases, Natasha cannot restore their lung capacity to how it was when the patient was younger. It does not make her efforts wasted, of course. No matter what others might think.

Culture down here dictates that no matter how incapacitated one becomes, they will find a way to return to work. Then, one may wonder, why does Natasha even try? If her patient will only return to the very site that caused them harm to begin with, if they are only going to breathe in more talc and dust and geomarrow residue – what is the point?

Someone must try; she can’t help but believe. Someone must be here to prevent the inevitable. If the inevitable were to come so quickly then what would there be left of them?

If not I, then who?

Just this first session alone has left Natasha exhausted. A tremor carries in her hands, worsening with random bursts of pins and needles whenever she tries anything requiring fine-motor skills. Hands of a miracle-worker, a witch, she thinks numbly. Her head is thick with fog and prescription plans keep getting lost in her wandering train of thought. She must restart over and over. Coffee has been the only thing that keeps her going.

She is retreating into the back of the clinic when she hears it: humming. A sad, dreamy tune she doesn’t recognize. It lures her into her office, shifting into something jauntier that matches the clop of her mules on the floorboards.

To find that it comes from none other than Sampo is hardly surprising, even to her wearied senses. What is surprising is to find him sitting at the big desk pushed against the far wall. Perched is perhaps the better word. He is cattycorner to it, back to the wall. There is a languid display in his flexibility in how he perches, legs to the side of the chair like one would drape them over an armrest but tucked so that his toes dig into the edge of the seat. As if he is ready to lunge from the chair at any second. The rest of him faces the desk. He seems to be scribbling away at a little notebook.

“Why, if it isn’t Miss Natasha!” He greets with his placid smile.

She doesn’t let her steps falter. Nothing can stand between herself and the hotplate on the trolley. “Good evening, Sampo. Are you well?”

She feels the man’s eyes linger on her as she grabs a mug and halfheartedly dumps instant coffee into it. Two, then three. Four. Five. For good measure.

No longer engrossed in his notebook, he twirls his pencil over his knuckles like a knife trick. His gaze is like a blade pressing against her skin until she looks back at him – only to then whistle and find the ceiling tiles so very interesting.

He doesn’t give her a verbal answer, only a nod, his attention drifting between herself and his notebook idly. It’s difficult to tell from upside down but it appears as though he is annotating a diagram of sorts. Lots of construction lines on the pages.

There isn’t a lot of talking between them. Contrary to his chatterbox reputation, there often isn’t. Especially in the later hours. Together, they share a deep appreciation for a warm drink – even if all she can offer is hot water – in seclusion of this tiny office. It’s something she hasn’t fully confirmed yet has multiple reasons to form said conclusion.

He doesn’t talk until she’s set the kettle on the hotplate and sank into her granny chair with a pinched expression. She adjusts, trying to pad the hard back of the chair with the cushion she normally sits on. It is old, threadbare, hardly an inch thick from the years of stuffing beaten out of it. The effort is futile.

His question is simple, safe. “Long night?”

Natasha sighs and feels deflated like a balloon after. “Somewhat,” She admits. Her eyes are so sore. Her back is so sore. Everything is so sore. “It’s… these last few days have taken more out of me than I was expecting, trying to keep the place running, that’s all.”

The answering hum is a deep note, something from deep in his chest. Not a note Sampo hits often. Low, commiserative. When she glances over, he’s placed his pen down and rests his temple against his fist. The weight of his attention is softer than earlier – heavier, but warmer. Like some kind of weighted blanket.

It banishes any reluctance she had to burden him. Everyone needs to let off steam every now and then, right?

As she waits for the kettle to boil, she shakes her head and chuckles mirthlessly. She tips her head back against the chair, eyes closed. Just for a minute.

“Patients can be ever so difficult,” She starts, and murmurs for far too long about the kind of people walking through her doors – patient confidentiality be damned. Each time she pauses, unsure whether to continue, she’ll look and find that Sampo is nodding along for all of it. There is an unknown quality to being listened to like this. Frustration easing with each anecdote, she can’t help but try to recall the last time she talked to someone so casually.

How sad, to think her interactions have whittled down to the people who share a roof with her. Not even to chat about stubborn patients. When was the last time she spoke to someone and the conversation wasn’t about their prescription and dosage, physio exercises, Wildfire?

It’s because of exhaustion, Natasha excuses when she can’t find the answer. Headaches, trouble focusing, memory problems, increased clumsiness are all symptoms of lack of proper sleep. Never mind why she hasn’t been sleeping.

She peters off, having run out of steam. Her eyes are getting harder and harder to open. She rubs fingers against her temple until they spasm from the pressure. Gritting her teeth against the stiffness, she stretches her hands out in her lap as best as she can.

Here, she braces for Sampo’s usual distaste for her lack of profitable service. A beat. It doesn’t come.

After waiting for her vision to come back into focus, she looks over to see what has him so quiet. He may not talk much in their moments together – but rarely is Sampo entirely silent. Humming, tapping, constantly in-motion.

In the dim light of the office, one could mistake his face for being eerily blank. It makes the hair on her neck rise despite the lack of fear or spike in her blood at being on the receiving end of such an expression. Were it not for the curious tilt of his head and the way green darts back and forth, she’d think he had zoned out.

She follows his gaze to her hands. To the way she rolls her wrist and flexes her fingers, the way her nerves fizzle and leaves a fine tremor in their wake.

To the unprofessional eye (and even to the professional, really,) there is nothing special about her hands. Maybe she has less callouses than others her age do, maybe her skin doesn’t cling to scarring the way other’s do – at least in this area, where her healing touch is concentrated most. She’s always had tree-knot knuckles and prominent veins warping the surface of her skin. Her nails on her bare hand are trimmed short.

Nothing else stands out. Or nothing should.

And still, with his clearwater eyes fixed on them, he asks, “Can I try something?”

It is such a simple question. She wonders what he thinks he sees – what he thinks he can help – but grants him permission with a nod. There is no harm in humoring him. Mostly.

Still, it is an odd feeling to be at the receiving end of this approach. Natasha feels like a patient as Sampo stands in front of her, guards up and a small frown on her face. He narrates to her much the same way she would: I’m gonna take your glove off, okay? and I’m gonna touch your hands. Ample pause for her to refuse.

The strangeness persists as she is poked and prodded at. His own gloves remain on even as he sets hers aside. The leather is worn-soft, and the curve of his nails press against the tips of them subtly. It is with great care that he makes sure the metal accessories don’t catch her skin. Natasha finds herself watching with mild curiosity as he tilts his head one way, then the other, slowly turning her hands over. Again, his eyes must see something that hers don’t.

With firm, painless pressure, Sampo palpates his thumbs from her elbows to her fingers. Perhaps cynically, she wonders what he thinks he’ll do that Natasha, a doctor, hasn’t already done –

A-ha, Sampo mutters. In a decisive movement, he massages his thumb deep on her outer-arm and continues downward in circular motions. The same is repeated for her other arm. To her morbid fascination, something changes beneath his ministrations. Her eyes are glued to the way his fingers follow a specific course down her limbs, and she realizes it’d been the same path he’d been mapping with his own eyes earlier. Just what does he see that Natasha cannot?

Fascination is followed by incredulity. Tension draining and warmth flooding in after it, there’s no accurate way to describe the steadiness that returns to her hands. The feeling. The texture of the world around her sharpens like a lens wiped with a cloth. The closest comparison is like improved circulation.

And yet, Natasha had already thought of that. Carpel tunnel, ulnar neuropathy, nerve entrapment – hells, even dysesthesia! All of them ruled out.

Well, except for the carpel tunnel. But that’s only in her dominant hand from how much she writes.

Sampo withdraws completely, leaving her to adjust to the changes in her condition. She flexes her hands with a touch of marvel. Gone is the prickling numbness of pins and needles; episodes like these normally last her weeks after using her gift. It is likely that they will return after her next session with her pneumoconiosis-ridden patient but the relief at this moment is a novelty yet to wear off.

She’s still frowning, she realizes. Sampo is pretending not to look at her, though looking at her all the same. He folds his clasped hands close to his body and doesn’t fidget.

“Thank you,” Natasha breathes. She spreads her fingers again. Transfixed. “How did you do that?”

He sighs and his body sags with overexaggerated release. His hand waves at her half-heartedly. “Ah, what can I say? I’m good with my hands.” At her wry look, he shrugs. “I’ve always got a trick or two up my sleeve!”

With apparently nothing else to say for himself, Sampo curls back up in his chair. It doesn’t creak when he sits on it.

Natasha bites back a yawn as she pulls her glove back on. The pillow did nothing for her back, evident when she moves to stand and feels the familiar stiffness and twinging of her muscles; her exhaustion is obviously to blame when she considers asking if he can do anything for that, too. She doesn’t.

No sense in looking a gift-horse in the mouth. Everything comes at a cost, and while she can manage the burden of her own gift well enough alone, there’s no telling what toll it takes on either of them for Sampo to do any more than he has.

It takes too long for the more sensible precaution to stumble to the forefront of her mind. That everything with Sampo should come at a cost. She’s gotten everything for free so far, though the question always hangs overhead: when will his generosity run out?

Figuring that she should probably prepare her cup while she waits for the kettle to boil, she asks over her shoulder whether her guest would also like a drink. He agrees, asks for sugar, and Natasha ignores him as usual.

She leaves the cups ready for hot water on the trolley and reluctantly takes her seat once more. The tick-tick-ticking sound of the clock accompanies the passing hour and the susurration of organizing papers on the desk blankets the noise only slightly. Before her lay careplans and prescription lists from over the past few weeks, filled from margin to margin in her increasingly shaky handwriting. Still legible, though a notable difference all the same. They’ve piled up enough that Natasha reckons it may just be time to update her patient journal – it has been far too long since she has been able to.

As she holds one of the stray fountain pens left on the desk, the ease of uncapping it makes her double-take once again. The comfort of the pen in her grip, her considerably strengthened pincer-grip. Really feeling the cool metal barrel beneath her fingertips. Likewise, once she pulls her patient journal out from beneath a box of bandages. The frayed spine. The rough, water-stained texture of the cover. The glide of the pages interrupted only by past tears or creasing from numb fingers heavy-handing the paper.

It takes a few seconds of scribbling to get the ink flowing. Her lettering is steady, clear, and precise.

Perhaps it is an overreaction to be so affected by this. Natasha was not born disabled and developed at the same pace as most other advantaged children: it is not so surprising for her to be able to write. She’d been educated like many other Overworld citizens, if anything it is expected that she’d be capable of doing so.

Slowly, with care, she rolls the pen between her forefinger and thumb.

She puts the tip back to paper and refuses to think about it in greater detail. What is there to linger on, really? There is so much in the world to be focused on than whether her brief episodes could truly be considered a disability. It’s not as if anything would come of it. There is no compensation or support for those with struggling conditions in the Underworld. There is only those that work, and those who don’t.

Whether it should be that way or not is beyond her control.

There is no telling how long has passed by the time she’s finished with her second patient entry. Much of the time was spent in companionable silence, only the scratching of pens on paper and a quiet yawn or two to disturb them. It’s as she is taking a second to rest her sore eyes, she thinks to ask: “What are you drawing?”

Glimpses of it hadn’t meant very much to her. Some kind of schematic diagram, full of construction lines and annotations. An inky web in his small notebook she hadn’t put much thought into, beyond the errant thought of he knows better than to design a bomb in my clinic. Natasha can only hope that Sampo wouldn’t incriminate himself so blatantly.

Thankfully, the answer is simple. “Hm? Just a project.”

With the heels of her palms pressed into her eye sockets, Natasha waits for more. When there isn’t any, she blinks the light spots from her eyes and looks across the desk.

It’s evident that the man is more engrossed in his ‘project’ than she realized. What she’d thought to be a suspicious vagueness is only due to distraction. She finds herself smiling. Just a little.

“Is that where you’ve been? Busy working on this project?” She prods.

A furrow forms between his brows as he scribbles out something. He bites the tip of his tongue, a tiny sliver of pink between his perfect teeth. “Yeah,” Sampo says after a moment, as if her words reach him through a fog. “Yeah, I was using my friend as a soundboard. She’s real good with the technical stuff… has a whole workshop.”

A friend from the Overworld, then. No one has a technical workshop down here; it is all parts and scraps and trade. Natasha places her pen down and brushes stray hair out of her face. Even this long into knowing Sampo, it is a bewildering concept that he can skulk between here and the surface – he has his ways, yes, but one must wonder the risk.

Sampo finally looks up from his sketchbook. He gives her an apologetic smile.

Natasha can’t deny that it is… endearing, seeing him so absorbed. It’s not often Sampo lets his guard down in the company of others – she isn’t foolish enough to think this means anything significant, just that he seems younger when he lets himself indulge. It’s evident that tinkering and building things have always been of interest.

If she thinks about it too much, it reminds her of Vache.

They are hardly anything alike, and yet her tired mind draws connections where there are none. The same brilliant mind and avid imagination, a little dark-haired boy sitting across from her. Peeling through homework at the dinner table. Swamped in his med-student notes at his desk. Falling asleep face-first in hospital reports after he graduated.

Then, in that very spot, in that very chair. Books upon books stacked so high, the corkboard pinned full of experiments and results, hypotheses with no grounding. Pages full of a shorthand that took months for Natasha to decode – time she couldn’t afford to be wasting. A stain on the wall behind the filing cabinet where Vache threw one of his failed tinctures.

She shakes it off, subdued. She doesn’t know Sampo well enough to make that comparison even if there are similarities on the surface. But, a wistful part of her insists, they have the same crooked grin.

It has been so long since she saw it on Vache’s face. A lifetime. Almost four years ago.

Something must show on Natasha’s face. Sampo tilts his head. “You look tired, doc. Anything I can do?”

She appreciates that he doesn’t just tell her to go to bed. Her voice strains as she stretches her arms above her head. “You’ve done more than enough, Sampo. Really.”

The look he gives is reminiscent of the foxes she used to see on the surface. Their white fur blending in with the snow, leaving only their judgmental beady eyes to squint at her at a forty-five-degree angle as they cocked their heads. The way he pulls his lip is similar too, the air of disinterest in her deceit. For them, it was because she had no scraps to share. For Sampo… well, Natasha must wonder how high he values the debt he owes her now.

And really, he’s been the only one counting.

Sampo sighs and shakes his head. “Alright,” He acquiesces, mild, “If you’re sure.”

It is certainly the sleep deprivation that has her imagining big, pointed ears atop his blue hair, flicked back in obvious displeasure. She snorts. “I’m sure.”

They fall back into silence and, already sleepily meandering, she can’t help but think about what Sampo’s family life must have been like. It is with her heart aching for home that she muses on whether he was born in the Overworld or the Underworld. If he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, if he was more familiar with having to share what he had.

Her hunch suggests the latter. She can’t quite put a finger on it. There is, of course, the question of his family: if he still has family waiting for him to come home – if there’s any left. People suffering loss aren’t uncommon in the Underworld. Sampo speaks like someone who knows what it takes to survive; and yet, speaks like he knows of luxury too. That could just be from his affinity for shiny trinkets and their resale value.

Does he have siblings? How he behaves with children in the clinic doesn’t make the answer any clearer. Natasha thinks back to the way he tip-toes around them as best as he can, allowing them to approach him at their own pace. There’s painstaking care in the way he talks to them, handles them, an underlying hesitance that shapes each interaction. As if he is unfamiliar, or else touched by grief.

In the next breath, he is happily singing silly songs and playing along with their games of pretend without a hitch. Like he’s a natural – like he’s always known how to make children laugh.

Did he have a good relationship with his parents? He never talks about them. Never hints at missing anyone. Not that Natasha is entitled to such conversations with him.

She taps her pen against her chin and watches the man across from her. He switches his own pen between his hands depending on the area of the page he’s writing on. Fine motor skills come naturally to him, so much so that he can perform them with ambidexterity. Something uncommon among people in the Underworld.

Very few of them write, stitch or sew because of the wear and tear of their hands – that is why the those that can often make it into a business, or a form of trade. Even Natasha, with her surgeon-steady hands (most of the time.)

The borscht he made would’ve called for such skills. How finely chopped the dill and onions had been. Does Sampo hold onto family recipes? Heirlooms, memories of his loved ones. Is there space in his mind occupied by memories of his mother teaching him to drain the canned tomatoes, how to chiffonade the dill. Did she cradle his hand in hers when showing him how to properly hold a knife? There’s a sense of mysticism in what a kitchen in Sampo’s childhood home must have been like around dinner time.

Or if he had a home at all. Natasha is biased in this regard, after all.

“I charge for photos, but I’ll throw in an autograph for free just for you, Nat,” Comes an amused voice. She blinks – finds Sampo raising an eyebrow at her – and realizes she’s been staring. Must have gotten lost in thought.

Her curiosity gets the better of her. “How’d you get into engineering, anyway?”

She notices that he’s on a new page of his notebook now. Even with thick leather gloves on, his lines are delicate.

He avoids her. “Mechanics, more accurately speaking.”

Once more, Natasha is reminded of why she rarely bothers with personal questions. Still, she waits him out. Gradually, she is learning that patience is Sampo’s enemy. Most don’t have any for his pedanticism. It’s not like Natasha is going anywhere.

His eyes drift down to his notebook. They look translucent when the light from the door hits him just right. Sampo shrugs after a moment. “… You grow up surrounded in it, it becomes part of your life’s work, y’know? A-ha.” 

It’s obvious that his weak laugh at the end is supposed to brush her off. The simplicity of his answer isn’t the whole truth and omits any insight she could’ve gleaned from such a statement.

It only makes her curiosity grow. A sapling stretching to drink up sunlight. What else was Sampo ‘surrounded by’ growing up for to be a core part of who he is now?

And it’s not as if she doesn’t understand. Sometimes she wonders if she chose her career path solely because of her foster parents’ professions. While she has no regrets – well. Natasha doesn’t regret becoming a doctor. Whether she’s always made the right choices are not, who’s to say?

The scratching of Sampo’s pen fills the silence. She rocks away on her granny chair until her eyes grow heavy and her thoughts collapse into a mulch-ridden heap. Somewhere, someone begins humming softly. Her eyelids grow so heavy she can’t open them.

Natasha wakes up with a blanket thrown over her and a post-it note stuck to her hand. It takes far too long for her vision to clear. A headache pounds at her temples as she stares down at it. next time, u should turn on the hotplate if u want coffee. get some rest doc.

She never heard the whistle go off for the kettle, she realizes. Twisting in her chair, Natasha stares at the trolley. The two cups she prepared still sit there. Instant coffee and no water.

With a yawn, Natasha reaches over and flips the switch for the hotplate. She is certainly overdue for a cup.

The weeks stretch by like the dragging of reluctant heels against the ground. A haze of day-cycle white and night-cycle orange through the window that changes nothing when the clinic’s front room lights never turn off. The wall-mounted clock tick-tick-ticks away and Natasha has long since stopped keeping track of the hours. At this rate, she’ll hear the passing hands around the analogue face in her dreams.

Not that she’s been sleeping much. Worse than usual, a worry in the back of her mind, much like a pea beneath a pile of mattresses that keeps her tossing and turning on the rare nights she can lie down. A circle would’ve been paced into the tiled floor of the clinic by now, if not for the fact that they have always been warped and uneven.

It has been three weeks since Sampo has shown his face around the clinic. This in itself is not unusual. In his own words: he is a man of ways and means. Should clients and ‘schedule conflicts’ keep him away, they’ve never been obstacles keeping him from dropping off a supply box or two in the interim. Having no shipment with a post-it note floating around is odd.

He has not been spotted in his usual haunts around the Underworld either, according to Seele. Though, if anyone asks, no, she didn’t miss him, and she wasn’t pouting!

Natasha, privy to afternoons Seele spent moping around the clinic and rummaging through cupboards, cabinets, and drawers as if she’d find a certain conman squeezed in there like a magic trick, only smiles and nods indulgently whenever Seele protests. The experience is akin to a pining cat who sits in wait for their friend to return, if only to be prepared to swipe at them angrily for being gone so long.

Three weeks is a long time, even for someone like Sampo. He is incredibly elusive when he wants to be. Silence from a man who is constant noise and motion is… a tad concerning. She likes to think they’ve become companionable over the last few years. She’s allowed to worry.

Therefore, when she catches a glimpse of a familiar maroon jacket in the doorway, Natasha smiles. It’s a shame that Seele isn’t here to welcome him back – hissing and spitting and claws. It’d be amusing for Natasha, at least.

All amusement of Seele’s grumpiness fades at the sight of him in full.

Looking anything less than his best has her raising her eyebrows. Her eyes scan him up and down for ill health. There is nothing out of place – at most, a singed mark on the hem of his pantleg. It is highly possible that she can only tell Sampo is – tired? – from being so used to trying to dissect him, understand him, short of putting him in a petri dish and sliding him beneath a microscope to watch him squirm. Or perhaps he simply has no energy to hide it.

The man carries a melancholy she is unused to. Snippets of it she’s only heard through a wall before it switched into a happier tune upon receiving her attention; almost oblivious to her presence, the humming does not change pitch this time. There is no pepping his step to some rhythm she can’t hear. He hums to himself, sad and longing in melody.

In all fairness, she can barely hear it over the creaking of the door and the rusted whining of the sack truck he’s lugging around. Even deep in thought, Sampo wears that same bland smile.

She stays quiet, unmoving. The urge to hold her breath has her pursing her lips. Qlipoth knows where he got the sack truck, let alone how he ferried several large boxes on it from the Overworld without being caught. How curious. It groans like it’ll fall apart any second.

He brings all the boxes inside, most likely to avoid someone snatching them. She can’t imagine all of them being full of medical supplies. She doesn’t mean to just sit and stare, but she finds herself trying to make sense of what’s in front of her – no injuries, maybe a little tense. Tired. There is no flare to action, no voilà! with a bow and flourish.

He doesn’t call for her attention at all, doesn’t greet her like he normally would. It is becoming more probable that he hasn’t even noticed her given she is still lingering by the double-doors, out of the immediate eyeline of the clinic’s entrance. Natasha doesn’t think to greet him in return.

How strange it is to see a man who, for all intents and purposes, acts like he’s in his own little world most of the time – be absorbed in it.

It doesn’t seem like the happiest place to be. Then again, neither is the Underworld.

Natasha counts eight boxes. Sampo sighs as he places down the last one, he stares down at them with his hands planted on his hips. It is as he turns his back on her completely, involuntarily, that he perks up. Only for a second, before he claps his hands together and twirls on his heel.

Like a switch is flipped, his grin is back in place. Faux-upbeat, like he hides a lightbulb behind his teeth. “Ah, Miss Natasha! Just who I was looking for.”

With little reason not to, she plays along with his song and dance. “Sampo,” She welcomes, a slight smile on her mouth that she doesn’t quite feel, “What can I do for you?  I trust these boxes are here for a reason.”

She refrains from asking where he’s been. There’s no telling if she’d get an answer.

“Why, I am so glad you asked!” He crouches down for one of the boxes and sets it on the desk closest to him. “Go ahead,” He encourages, “Have a look.”

Natasha approaches and opens it. None of them are sealed all too securely, just a strip of tape to keep the flaps from bouncing open.

It is definitely not an explanation, but she’s not too concerned about his avoidance when she opens the box. She makes a soft noise of surprise and sinks her hand in.

Awaiting her inspection are folded clothes. Scarves, gloves, hats, sweaters, boots. A few bundles of socks. Their material is varying quality, most of it with holes riddled along the hems of items or warped stitching that would dock their sale value.

As she is noticing how small the items are, Sampo continues, “The rest of the boxes are the same. Two are specifically for the clinic, you see, ah –” He watches her hold up a sweater before glancing away, clearing his throat – “For the children. But the rest is whatever I could get my hands on. Figure beggars can’t be choosers!”

She refolds the sweater, glancing down at the tag at the neckline. She recognizes the label as from one of the charity shops in her youth; most of the clothing is likely to be from the dumpsters out back due to the quality. But, as she brings it to her face to test, she finds that it smells clean. Fresh. Could it be that he went through the effort of washing it all first?

“What a generous donation,” She thanks. Sampo wrinkles his nose and rocks on his heels, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Why all of this? What aren’t you telling me?”

He grimaces. A hand combs through his hair, then adjusts it back in place. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, doc, but ol’ Sampo heard on the grapevine that the storm is worsening on the surface.”

The grapevine is undoubtedly Sampo himself. Natasha frowns and regathers her hair into a ponytail as she thinks over the news. The Underworld has never been especially warm, but it’s never been without warmth either – not in the same way she imagines the Overworld might be. The concentration of geomarrow from the Great Mine emits enough warmth to prevent frost forming until you reach Boulder Town, which has enough generators and heaters to keep the central area in a similar state.

They aren’t comfortably warm by any means, but their water supply isn’t at risk of freezing over and the constant coal emissions insulate populated areas enough to trap moisture and keep their few plants dying of shock. Most households have a heating pillar similar to the one situated in the clinic, or else a coal stove in the few factories-turned-apartments.

This leaves the Robot Settlement and one of the Underworld’s few open ceilings. It is where most of this side of the Underworld’s ‘weather’ coming from, the Settlement and Svarog’s mansion being a portion of the surface that survived crumbling off and sinking into the depths a few years before vagrants swarmed it like flies to discarded fruit. There is no way back up to the surface, but as it is not protected by the rocky ceiling that the rest of the Underworld is, they are one of the few corners that wind, rain, snow, and hail can funnel through.

Most of the poor weather doesn’t reach beyond the Robot Settlement itself, but that doesn’t protect the surrounding villages and campsites from the ice carried on the wind. Cold snaps tearing through Boulder and Rivet Town are no walk in the park.

“I see,” Natasha says after a moment. “Thank you for warning us, Sampo. It’s very thoughtful of you to do all of this.”

He waves a hand at her lazily. “Ah, don’t mention it! Needed my own cozies anyway, frostbite’s a pain in the ass to shake off.”

She huffs, amused. “I didn’t take you to be adventurous enough to cross paths with frostbite.” Though, she realizes she’s wrong as soon as she says it. Another veil he hides behind.

He laughs like it’s true. “I’m not!” He lies, “I like my fingers where they are. And my nose – why, I couldn’t do to be without, it really brings my face together, no?”

“Of course it’s your face you’re worried about.” Natasha rolls her eyes.

“As if I could afford not to,” He insists. “It’s my money-maker.” At her dubious silence he gasps dramatically and clutches at his chest before sinking against the desk, whimpering about how cruel she is to his fragile ego. Seemingly for his own amusement.

Natasha bites her lip and busies herself with pressing the tape back down on the box to hide her smile from him. It wouldn’t do any good to fuel said ego, she thinks.

“What are you going to do with the rest of the boxes?”

“Hm?” Sampo leans his elbows on the desk, chin resting in his palm. He blows his bangs out of his face. “Leave these two with you. Actually, doc, I need your opinion –”

They spend the better part of an hour deciding where to distribute the remaining six boxes. A map of the surrounding boroughs gets doodled on the back of a draft flyer Natasha was writing up, crosses and circles and question marks littering the page as they carefully narrow down the prime locations for pick-up. They are indeed sizeable boxes, packed heavy, but finite resources are only that: finite. It would do no good for someone as opportunistic as Sampo to snatch them up and sell the contents as wares.

A part of her questions why Sampo himself isn’t doing as much – even for trade or favors in return – but he doesn’t seem to even consider the idea. In the lull where he lists vagrants who are at suspicion of leaping at the chance to extort others and marking where they have been lurking as of late, Natasha finds herself watching him.

The way his hands talk more for him. Sharp, decisive movements, cutting through the air. His smile slips off his face when he focuses; pinched is the only way to describe his expression. Irritated. Teeth bared a little with each enunciation.

It’s fascinating, admittedly. For a man so unserious and lukewarm to the hardships of others when he has something to gain, there are many moments like this where one cannot think of him as anything but kind.

“You’re very passionate about this,” Natasha interrupts.

Sampo’s eyes are narrowed when he pauses, lips parted as the words die on his tongue. “But of course!” He clears his throat. “Of – of course. A-ha, call me a romantic, but I’ve got no respect for people who don’t do their part in upholding the dignity of others. “

His gaze lays heavy on her skin like a knife. Straightening up with his hand braced against the table, there’s a harried quality to the way he seems to search for words, before he sighs and drags a hand down his face. After a steadying breath and another airy chuckle, he smiles bitterly. “Ol’ Sampo’s gotta secure his meal tickets somehow, right? What’s a guy to do if the only people stupid and detestable enough to fall for an old dog’s tricks freeze up like a popsicle?”

Natasha hums, unsurprised by his immediate contradiction. He never like revealing his hand so blatantly. In a way, she’s lucky he’s so passionate to have slipped up in the first place.

“I’m glad we’re of the same mind, then.” Natasha ignores the second part of his ramble entirely. It’s not as if she disagrees, necessarily, it’s just not relevant. Another one of his many hooks to snag people on.

We’re of the same mind, he mouths to himself. Then he throws his head back and laughs.

She flinches at the sound, loud and barking, and frowns. That was… not the response she’d been expecting.

“Oh, quelle horreur!” He chuckles between breaths. A gloved hand flicks an imaginary tear from his eye. “I needed that.”

Only able to nod, Natasha takes a seat in one of the rolling desk chairs. Just when she thinks she’s figured him out… she shakes her head. She moves the box from the desk to by her feet on the floor, intent to make a list of the boxes’ contents so that she can keep track of what is handed out to whom later.

Sampo plucks up the rough map they’ve drawn and takes care to match up the edges before he folds it up and tucks it into an inner pocket of his jacket. He perches on the edge of the desk, braced back on his hands, ankles crossed one over the other. “Where are my manners?” He muses softly, “How have you been, Nat? It’s been a minute.”

“It has,” Natasha agrees. Then she shrugs, reclining back in her chair. “The clinic’s been fine, nothing out of the ordinary as of late. I was in the middle of writing up some notices, trying to reach out to absent parents, though I have a feeling it’ll be to no avail.”

 She looks up to find him scrunching his nose. “What are you, your work?”

“It certainly feels like it some days,” She admits. “But I don’t have anything else to share. I doubt you want to hear about me updating stock and trying to teach the children basic math.”

He shakes his head. His tongue pushes against his cheek as he stares at the fluorescent lights overhead. “When are you gonna start asking for help?”

They both sigh this time. Natasha rubs at her temple and braces herself for the tirade to come. Well – perhaps ‘tirade’ is an overexaggeration. Still, her answer does not change: “I will not ask for payment from our community, Sampo.”

“It doesn’t have to be money! You’re tellin’ me it’d really hurt to ask for volunteers? Or rounding up a group of people, teaching them how to deal with their non-emergencies at home?” She opens her mouth, but he continues, “So much goes into Wildfire and nothing goes into the clinic. How are you planning to sustain your soldiers if you can’t sustain yourself?”

Tired already by the repetitive nature of this topic, Natasha redirects. “You’re awfully cynical this afternoon – is something wrong?”

A moment of silence passes. He kisses his teeth in disapproval but willfully drops it, as he normally does. Another moment. “Nothing’s wrong, why would anything be wrong?” He asks, pointedly lighthearted in tone. “Just been busy.”

“Three weeks’ worth of busy. Forgive me for worrying.”

Confusion sweeps across his face before it’s gone, examining his nails (hidden by gloves) in an act to appear nonchalant. He doesn’t seem to understand why she’d be worried in the first place.

She sighs, long-suffering, and pries. “You looked down when you arrived. That song you were humming, it was a little sad, wasn’t it? I’ve never heard it before.”

“You wouldn’t have, it’s –” Sampo pauses. He shakes his head. “Ah, well. It’s an old song.” The reminder of earlier makes him wilt like a rose, eyes covering his hair. He fiddles with the band around his forearm. “It – do you remember my friend who owns a workshop?”

It takes a second, but Natasha nods. It’d been a while since he’d mentioned her, or the project he’d been working on. “We aren’t friends anymore. Which sucks, but life goes on. She’s doing me a favor, anyway, ol’ Sampo won’t be held back.”

Natasha doesn’t believe him for a second, though opts to keep such opinions to herself. It doesn’t escape her notice that when he continues – it is not mournfully, nor does he linger on their actual relationship. Only of his project. “It’s almost finished,” He tells her, “But I’m no engineer, I’m just the guy with the parts to spare. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a bolt and a screw! My fri – my ex-friend is the brains, kind of like a doctor for machines, y’know?”

He looks at her from the corner of his eye, rocking back and forth with a singsong voice, “She was teaching me a thing or two, is what I’m saying. How to see when things are broken, why they don’t work, the likes. Taking people under her wing and showin’ them what they need to get by… really takes a load off her back.”

Narrowing her eyes at him only serves to make Sampo grin and shrug. Worth a shot, he mouths.

“Until she fell out with you, that is,” Natasha points out.

“Still have the skills I learned, no?”

It is a question of how much of this is a fabrication to prove his earlier point. He’s not above lying to her face, and lying by omission is one of his favorite games of wordplay. And yet – this seems beyond his usual wiles. Sampo calls everyone a friend, a colleague, an associate; he is a man with connections all over. It could very well be that this is a tall tale of pettiness.

She can’t shake the feeling that this is real. Her companion is far from authentic, but it’s there when he looks up again, tucked away deep. When he squirms away from her gaze, when he shows the whites of his eyes like a guilty dog.

If there’s anyone in the world that can fake loss, it’d be Sampo. Natasha is inclined to believe this is not fake.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your friend.” She finds that she means it.

The placid smile slips off his face and he goes quiet again, like he doesn’t know what to do with the sincerity. He stares down at his shoes for a long moment.

“Don’t be.” Sampo stands from the desk. “It was in the cards.”

It must be hard to keep friends given his choice of income. As much as he may pride himself on being ever-loyal to his growing customer base, Natasha is not deaf to the rumors of how easy it is for him to sell them out for the right price. Perhaps not as often as the distrustful whispers make it seem (hardly anyone can afford to out-pay a competitor in the Underworld, after all,) but certainly enough to make all the difference. It is where his reputation of being a rat, a snake comes from.

But what of his friends, she wonders.

She watches Sampo heave the remaining six boxes onto the sack truck; he pats down his pockets, runs a hand through his hair, and smooths down his tattered shirt. He wishes Natasha a good evening and lugs his cargo out of the clinic. Leaving her to finish dropping off his thoughtful, kind contributions to the rest of the community.

What about his friends? Those who aren’t just business, those he won’t admit to caring about. She wonders what they think of him. Whether she counts as a friend. What makes a viper strike his own? Fear? Self-sabotage?

The door swings shut, and the air is bitingly cold on her face.

A couple of nights into the frigid cold snap has Seele bounding into the clinic with a bright-eyed fever and a pickaxe-like weapon that’s nearly double her height. She almost takes out a light with it.

Only after several minutes spent bickering, Natasha manages to convince the girl to lay her weapon flat out on one of the desks. No words will express how thankful she is that the children are outside, playing, eating, engrossed in their games enough to have missed Seele and her new toy. Keeping the weapon out of reach of one unruly teenager is difficult enough, never mind out of the reach of curious, delicate fingers.

Now seated on one of the cots, Seele’s irritable mood has her protesting at every turn. First it was having a cup of water. Then it was batting Natasha’s hand from her forehead. Holding a thermometer under her tongue is apparently the end of the world; she fusses and groans as she finally holds her mouth shut long enough to get a reading.

She yanks the thermometer out when it beeps. “It’s not even a fever; my temp is ninety-nine.”

Ninety-nine degrees by itself isn’t terrible, no, but pairs poorly with the fact that Seele is no doubt dehydrated and exhausted from pushing herself all week. Natasha avoids mentioning that she watched her trip over her own feet not long ago, if only to avoid further conflict.

Her supply cabinet is woefully empty. The outbreak in flu has had many patients on the clinic’s front steps asking for something, anything, to help them power through the illness in favor of work. ‘A good night’s rest’ is very rarely what the people of the Underworld want to hear. With little else to offer other than blue lamp umbrella capsules for migraines and body-aches, and vitamins to aid the immune system, her cabinet has emptied far quicker than she was prepared for.

It’s not like Natasha can send anyone out for foraging right now. Not for blue lamp umbrellas. Not for anything really. At the very least, she finds a bottle of vitamin C sitting on the back of a shelf. “I’m prescribing you two of these a day until you get better,” She informs over Seele’s protests, “It’s just to give your immune system a bit of a boost.”

“I’ve got a stronger immune system than half of those old bags of bones –”

“You’ve got more energy than half of our older population, but your stubbornness will not get you out of this. I’ll know if you don’t take these.” Natasha tucks the vitamin bottle into Seele’s hip pouch and ignores the pout on her face. In an attempt to distract her, she asks, “Where did you get that – thing, anyway?”

As expected, her charge perks up immediately. Natasha slips a handful of shield into her pouch while she’s not looking. It’s not a lot, only enough for a bowl of wild herb soup, but it’ll warm her up better than the fever will.

It doesn’t surprise Natasha at all to hear: “I dunno, but it’s cool right? Koski had it.” It feels like he’s been everywhere and nowhere lately.

Seele continues, “I saw him with it against ‘weavers in Rivet Town, when I was on my way back from training. It looked cool.” She reaches out towards the weapon though makes no effort to stand up and retrieve it. “It fits in my hands real good, like my bo staff. Even had this old guard bracer around the bottom of it – think he was usin’ it as a grip or something but look! It fits me like a glove, literally.”

She glances over to see that Seele was actually trying to show her said bracer. It’s a little less well-fit than a glove, though that just means there’s room for her to grow into it. Black vambrace, a fur cuff around the wrist and another around the elbow, protective metal in a half-gauntlet fashion reminiscent of the older armor models. A flash of purple catches Natasha’s eye; the inner lining has been replaced with a nonstandard… colored nylon of sorts.

Natasha frowns thoughtfully. “Sampo gave this to you?” She checks.

Crossing her arms, Seele huffs. “Sure, I mean. Didn’t give Koski a chance to haggle me for it. No hassle or nothin’.” A pause. She mumbles, “He didn’t seem to care about it that much when I took it.”  

“You took it? Seele.” Natasha redirects her gaze to the weapon when Seele just rolls her eyes. It sits on the desk innocently enough. An old rifle appears to be built into it somehow, the military bolt-actions that were left over from the last artillery shipments pre-closure. From this far away, it’s difficult to make heads or tails of it; how strange it is to see a rifle planted between two ends of a pickaxe head. “You can’t just be taking a foreign weapon off someone without at least understanding how it works,” Natasha scolds, “Who knows what it could d–”

“It whacks things just fine.” Seele scowls, flicking the thermometer at her.

Catching it, the fight leaves her with a sigh. “That’s not the point. Just… be careful, please.”

Very rarely do ‘common sense’ and ‘teenagers’ belong in the same sentence. Natasha doesn’t even know why she tries a lot of the time with Seele, barring the responsibility of making sure she doesn’t do something as silly as nosediving off a cliff. At the very least, she knows she’ll never have to worry about Seele following her friends off a bridge if they all started jumping.

Mostly because Seele doesn’t have a lot of friends.

An attempt to check Seele for other symptoms is like pulling teeth. After the third question and trying to feel her lymph nodes, her charge sticks her tongue out before burying her nose in her scarf in lieu of an answer. “Your hands’re cold. Stop touching me.”

“Well, if you want to be a brat, then you can take yourself up to bed and I’ll nurse you like I used to, hm? How does that sound?” She is hardly an imposing figure, even with her hands on her hips, but it does the trick.

Natasha is no stranger to Seele’s stubborn need for independence, nor her desire to prove herself capable of looking after herself. It’s why Seele ‘moved out’ to the vagrant campsite in the Great Mine when they – that is, the majority of Rivet Town – had to relocate when the fragmentum became too much to handle. There is no easier way to shoo her off to bed than to threaten babying her. As if it is some great affront to Seele’s survivalist instinct to have someone support her.

Teenagers.

As expected, her charge stumbles to her feet with wide eyes and a truly bone-chilling glower (note the sarcasm). “I can get just as much sleep in my tent,” She grouses, “Less kids around. More time to spend with my new whacking stick.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. Holding up Seele’s hip pouch – that Seele noticed had been unhooked from her belt, definitely – she repeats: “Two vitamins a day until you’re feeling better. Get a bowl of soup on your way back.”

“Whatever. See ya, Nat.”

“Get back safe. Sweet dreams.”

She doesn’t bother mentioning the ‘whacking stick’ still lying on the desk when the girl leaves. Eager as she was to escape Natasha’s dreadful nagging, no doubt, she forgot it in her haste.

Alone with only the hum of the geomarrow heating pillar and the overhead lights, her gaze is drawn to the weapon once more. Largely unimpressed by Seele’s forgetfulness, not to mention Sampo’s apparent lack of argument in handing over a glorified rifle to a teenager, Natasha drifts over to it. The longer she looks at it the more unreal it appears.

A closer look reveals that it’s not built like a pic, but like a scythe.

The blades are large and styled for cleaving and hacking; a thinned sharp edge that entails slicing, rather than the sturdiness of a pickhead that’d be better suited for harsh impact. They remind her of Sampo’s knives – that is, the scarce glances she’s had of them. Made from the same purplish-platinum material with an iridescent glimmer to it. Almost… alien in how it looks, and too, how it feels.

With great care Natasha trails the fingers of her bare hand over the blade’s surface. There are few words to describe its texture. Cold in a nontangible sense, much like she dipping her hand into a vat of liquid nitrogen. The illusion that she should be holding onto solid ice, only for it to slip through her hand. A soft tone thrums through the metal if she traces shapes into it, unlike anything Natasha has ever heard before.

If it shoots bullets, then it’s genius. If it doesn’t, also genius. No one should be giving an impulsive teenager a firearm. As if summoned by the thought, Natasha catches her fingers on a piece of paper tucked beneath the ricasso of the larger blade.

Plucking it out, it reads: no bullets til ur eighteenth bday.

Of course, the elegant, swooping script could belong to only Sampo.

She snorts and rolls her eyes. Natasha places the note back where she found it.

An hour tick-tick-ticks by slowly. It’s not until Natasha is wiping down her worktables and collecting all her biohazard waste into a bucket that she hears from the man himself.

There are no shutting doors or footsteps to signal his arrival, but that sharp-edged stare is on the back of her neck again. She is learning that there is only one person in the Underworld who can make her feel like she’s under a scalpel. Perhaps a more sensible response would be to find it threatening. She doesn’t.

Before he can say anything, she beats him to it: “You’re a lot kinder than you give yourself credit for, Sampo.”

It has been on her mind for the past hour. For the past week. From every secretive wink to every sly smile hidden behind a drink, from his aversion to being thanked to the supplies he provides without being asked. The borscht. The spare clothing. The nights spent doing nothing but keeping her company. Every act of charity juxtaposed by someone griping about his latest con, complaints filed to Wildfire about the rigged engines set to explode, or even himself leaned against a wall counting his shimmery-blue credits with a smirk.

She uses every method she knows. Keeps her back to him – ignores him, really. Goes back to what she was doing without pause. Gives him a second to pick his words.

Only once Natasha is placing her full bucket by the double-doors and straightening up to rub her sore back, only after it has been long enough for the normal person to forget what they’d said. Only then does he speak.

“But of course, Miss Natasha!” Sampo simpers.

His voice is a perfected cadence, something buoyant and carrying the tapering notes of a melody, attention-grabbing without being startling or brash. Bright like a sun, an entertainer. His presence swells up to fill the room. “Kindness makes the world go around, you know how the saying goes.”

There is no way to point out his avoidance without scaring him off. It feels like any of her words would be like throwing knives at a spinning target: always missing, until there is a silhouette of a man against the board made from embedded blades. Picking the right words has never been so troublesome.

Instead of agonizing, she just nods along mildly. “Generosity begets abundance.”

A pause. She turns to look over her shoulder, finding him lingering near Seele’s weapon.

“Generosity begets survival, only if returned threefold.” It’s a rehearsed line, perhaps something he has learned to live by. As an adage, it is foreign – certainly not a saying she’s familiar with. He looks up at her with a shrug, “But not a lot of people can afford to be kind, and so…”

He pats the head of the scythe. She hears what he doesn’t say: survival will come about through other means.

A bitter reminder of the Underworld’s circumstances. Not even charity can be free when every little thing counts. Everything has a cost even if not everyone is privy to it. In such an environment, it makes the nature of her clinic even more vital to their way of life.

“Besides,” Sampo sighs. He stretches nonchalantly; his shirt strains against his hollow stomach. She frowns. “Not like I was gonna get anything out of pawning it off –” It takes a second to remember he’s talking about Seele’s newest gift – “No one who’d want it would do more than have it as a display piece! And isn’t that just a waste of such beautiful craftmanship?”

“Where did you get that metal, anyway?” She asks, curious.

The man picks up the scythe like it is weightless, strolling himself to the empty center of the front room. In his own hands, the weapon barely reaches his chin; she can’t say it doesn’t suit him, but the sense of ‘rightness’ only comes to mind when remembering how it appeared in Seele’s grip. There is less life in it when Sampo holds it.

He swings it around in graceful arcs and lazy parries. Evidently, he is familiar with the fighting style no matter his disinterest. “You’re asking for trade secrets there, doc,” Sampo teases, “Stronger than any other metal here, though. It’ll slice through shadewalkers and fragmentum like butter.” It hums again as he runs his gloved finger along the thinnest edge. “Lightweight but sturdy – you could hack at geomarrow with it, and it wouldn’t break!”

The confidence exuding from him in such a statement has her realizing why there are so many people who fall for his ploys.

This doesn’t feel much like one, though.

Sampo rests the scythe against the wall so she can clean up the last desk. Through the windows, the streetlamps flicker from day-cycle white to night-cycle orange and their shadows draw long across the floor. He shoulders a familiar duffle bag from its spot close to the door and she picks up her waste bucket and stack of papers from their place by the doubled-doors.

When Natasha invites him to a hot drink in her study, he is all too eager to agree. And that – she chooses to believe that isn’t fake either.