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"He ain't right, is all I'm sayin'," Fred grumbled, a terribly thin and small screwdriver held between two thick fingers as he finished rebuilding the mechanical eyeball cradled in a shop towel on his worktable.
Virgil huffed, shaking his head. "When's he ever been right, Fred?"
The engineer shot a look to his friend, the one-eyed sniper currently hogging the only chair in the workshop. "You know what I mean. Moreso'n usual."
"You know how close he and Gabe were. They were as married as two men can get. A heavy and his medic; it's awfully romantic."
"Awful is right," Fred chuckled, joined in a laugh by Virgil. "That's the thing, though. Ever since that explosion, he ain't been the same. Gabe dead, me ripped in half, Bea's eye. That op couldn't've gone worse if we'd tried. An the bossman losin' his husband; I think that might'a finally pushed him over the edge."
"He'd been teeterin' as long as I've know him."
"Exactly. He's been awful cagey about jobs now. It's either sure things or the most outrageous shit, never nowhere between. The worst part is how spooked he's gotten."
"Spooked?"
Fred finished reassembling the eye and wiped it clean on the towel . "Here, should be good to go," he said, hand ing it to Virgil, who stretched open his eyelids and popped the thing back into his empty socket, letting the nerve linkup inside grab hold and reattach, restoring use of the thing. He almost wished he'd asked for an off switch for the damned thing this time. Seeing through everything, even his own eyelid, had been deleterious for his ability to get any rest. But having the ability to turn it off would mean he'd use it, and it would make him lazy, and an easy target. Best to just deal with it, he supposed.
"Back in working order. As you were saying?
"When I can get him talkin', it's... he can't let go of death. Ain't never bothered him none before; we're mercenaries, we know what we're gettin' into. What we're riskin'. But ever since Gabe died, he can't shake it. Keeps talkin' about how we're gettin' older. Gettin' slower. Gettin' weaker. We're some of the best damn mercenaries there are, but even we can't stop Death from comin' callin' sooner or later. I don't think he can figure out how to reconcile it."
"It is a lot to take in; losing someone that important to you," Virgil offered, thinking back to the year prior, when he'd seen the explosion from his perch , when he'd seen Fred get torn in half, his legs basically paste, his intestines strewn from his open, gaping torso, blood everywhere. It was a sight he'd never shake. He'd splattered more brains and pierced more hearts than he could remember, but it was different when that gore, those guts, were someone who mattered to you. "Changes your perspective in some fucked up ways."
He was just grateful they'd managed to save Fred, and that the canny engineer had been able to retrofit one of his father's old designs for prosthetics. Though it had required a bit more biological knowledge than he truly had the depth of understanding for, and without Gabe around to help anymore, it had been a long, taxing, infuriating process to get right. All the while their heavy was going mad in grief and couldn't be consoled by anyone.
Bea had just wrenched the shrapnel from her eye, bandaged her face, and gone about her day. Hard woman, she was. She terrified Virgil, which was no mean feat.
"I'm just concerned he's gonna do somethin' stupid. He's angry, and hurt, and it's gettin' him more 'n' more riled every day, and one of these days he's gonna snap, and it ain't gonna be good for any of us."
"That new medic isn't helping with it, either."
"That absolute fruit loop is gonna get us all killed even faster'n the boss if we ain't careful. I know a mad scientist when I see one."
"I'm thinking more the boss is gonna kill him first."
"Half thinkin' we should let 'im. Maybe it'll blow off some steam," Fred laughed.