Chapter Text
The air lays warm within the hot stoned cafe. The atmosphere was light and calm as customers filled the seats in the cozy environment. All seeking the warmth and tame lighting the owner had set in the building. Brown wood like pallets that tells the mood of a comforting space for anyone who stepped in.
It was nice. A simple place for any kind of conversation between folks, and a perfect place to seem like just ordinary people between Laswell and Price.
The place was usually used as a free ground for the two to converse about most things. Their mutuality was solid and was held together by their love for brewed drinks and old timer jokes.
Laswell sat on the opposite seat facing Price, arms tucked together as she looked eagerly at the waiter who swiftly delivered her a warm cup of caramel latte with a soft air of steam. Price however on the other side didn’t bother getting any drinks or desserts the place had to offer.
His face was buried in such an irritated manner, brows furrowed and lips tucked in stiffingly. His mind was running over the same issue he’s been bringing up to Laswell for weeks on end. The matter was utterly ridiculous and the situation proved to not be getting any better.
He was tired of asking for solutions and was growing ever so irritated as time went on, if not handled quickly— the general will be sharing a taste of his wrath upon his very head.
“I never asked for miracles Laswell, but something's gotta be done with these recruits,” the dark bearded man confessed as he leaned back on the soft cushions, soaking in what bit of rest he could get despite the common complaints.
The exhaustion hung clearly on his face like an overgrown and tired bear. A few customers took small glimpses in concern of Laswell, likely running their minds with barbaric thoughts of what they believe is going on.
Price had spent months voicing the same quiet frustration in reports and multiple conversations. Always noting that while his team could survive gunfire, cold, and impossible odds, what they could not always survive was the long stretch of time between injury and a proper hospital, where small mistakes in treatment became permanent consequences that they could no longer deal with.
Many lives were lost due to the lack of quick action. So many friends and brothers of arms whose eyes were closed and cast away as a result of insufficient proper medical care.
The military itself was known for putting a slap on the wrist for most situations like this and calling it a day.
“Hell, I’d even take a baby holding a scalpel and sticky tape than this. Its all sunshine and rainbows one day and the next the whole flock is down with something and these fellas can’t provide a single fucking clue on what's going on.”
Laswell’s hands skimmed over the same reports for the past month. The stats only covered the loss of men in a few mere weeks.
She who listened more than she spoke remembered everything worth remembering, she had filed those complaints away without comment, which usually meant she was already searching for an answer.
She couldn’t stand the loss of the people in her hands, especially with one with a problem that should be so easy to solve yet for some reason no working person was able to use their brains to wipe the issue off the face of the earth.
“There's no better help at the moment. The new medics are still in training and can’t be launched to different units until after proper examinations,”
Hesitance lies in her voice, with her eyes struggling to keep focus back at Price. She took a notable pausing stare at her drink, the latte art already swirling away from its optimistic and encouraging design.
The person she was thoroughly thinking of recommending never regulates in professional standards of the military despite his skills. Always up to something, getting carried away or even performing unsightly actions.
“...I got someone that’s useful, but he’ll give you a hell lot of trouble if you don’t have a swift hand against him.” She took a long sip in her mug before letting it hit the table one more. The thud carried a sense of attitude and displeasure, her fingers held a tighter grip on her mug , eyes folded in conflict as a deep sigh made its way out.
She rarely puts out recommendations unless necessary and also not lightly. Price knew that better than most people. Because when she finds someone of great potential, she just has to put them on the playing field and let their talents and skills merge with the world.
It was ever so rare to even find someone that was even as strong and mighty as the task force she helped mount together. Already perfectly forged weapons for the world that has barely gotten to see them shift ideals.
Yet it was precisely why they were there in the first place, to ensure commands and the order promised was filled to the highest efforts.
“Honestly, if you aren't careful at all, he could take you all down with whatever he cooks up with those frittering hands of his..”
Price looked hesitant as she let out those words, he looked back up to meet her eyes, but all he can see is her frustration and how much she wished to bite back from it. He thought this person seemed like a nuisance if he had Laswell displaying such a look on her face.
“N’ why could that be? You make it sound like he's some criminal.”
“In his own right he could be..” Commented on a flat tone as she surfs through her bag in search of possibly classified files and papers.
“He’s a good man, can get any kind of medic job done in a matter of minutes so long as he has the materials at his disposal, well on some occasions he can make them on his own. Quite crafty.”
She looked out the window in their seated section, she recalled a few memorable moments she shared in correspondence. Her shoulders quivered as if caught in a draft, like she lived in the terror of the man’s own personal pleasures and unshaken desires.
“But his skills are undeniable… just doesn’t help with how much trouble it is to tame him. Always up to something crazy with his words and actions. To put it lightly he’s not really the type of person you can have a lil chat with, always up to something…weird and sciency.”
Price scoffed lightly with his small but notable smirk that glowed on his side. He didn’t take her too seriously with her tone, more so attempted to deem it as a light joke.
“Please, all the medics are like that first. Once he lays arms next to my men he won’t be thinking otherwise.”
Her eyes shifted back to him, staring at him like he was some dumbfounded animal that happened to sit right in front of her. Yet her face remained still towards the window, the feelings in her eyes changed and set dead as if recalling what she saw within the man.
“It’ll be wise of you to not underestimate him. He lacks what it means to have someone by his side, it’ll be obvious once you really meet him.”
And Price took that with a grain of salt. Why bother delivering such a guy to his doorstep if his trouble can be this much?
He took the look in her eyes as a fair warning with utmost seriousness. He’s getting the real deal, one that can cover all his whining and groaning but with a large cost.
“I won’t force you to take him… but your team’s needs will benefit from his experience, he’s the one you would want for that job.”
She stretched her arms across the table to hand over the soldiers' classified papers.
“Be careful.”
The moment Price had a single grip upon them, he could feel the heavy tension from Laswell with her tight grasp creating forms of crumple and creasing on the edges of the files.
“...If you’re offering him up to me, then he's got to be worth it…lemme see what he’s got with my own eyes.”
He understood immediately that this was not a regular person he will be dealing with. It should be normal to have strange people in the military, but the fright he saw in Laswell was enough to make him step back and construct himself properly.
And that whatever waited inside the attached file was meant to solve a problem he had nearly accepted as unavoidable.
Price listened while she outlined the candidate’s historical record. Down to advanced medical specialization, trauma research, surgical proficiency, credentials impressive enough to belong in a major civilian hospital rather than anywhere near a battlefield.
What concerned Price more was not the education but the repetitive transfer history, a consistent pattern of short assignments and incident reports that read less like criticism and more like uncertainty from commanding officers who had not quite known what to do with someone simultaneously indispensable and deeply unsettling to have within a team.
It all came down to similar phrases. That he was sick in the head, too straightforward, and an utter maniac.
With so much they say on paper, Price could only picture him as some plague doctor with a sort of sickly manner. He crossed his face in confusion as he looked back up to Laswell.
“…you're sure I can trust him with their lives?” It was the right question to ask, his boys were the closest to what he could consider as family.
It matters because of how they treat each other. A bond only they understand and can show vulnerability towards one another. Yet their lives were already balanced on a knife’s edge through every hour and passing day.
Laswell answered with a pause just long enough to acknowledge the risk, she straightened her posture which was as firm as her response. “More than another failure for a medic.”
Silence followed, heavy but thoughtful, the kind that meant the decision had already begun forming even before the evidence finished presenting itself.
“With all this, It would be stupid of me to not even put him in the unit.” Price confessed while skimming over the extra details in the files, filled with all sorts of information and a set of skills that make you really wonder what sort of person this medic truly was.
Laswell could only smirk in full appreciation of her findings. She turned a page over in one of the files, and grabbed her slightly lukewarm cup of tea for a small sip.
"In fact I recall a time when he really flaunted both his skills and mind. One that most people remember him by.”
She seemed quite excited to go on a babble on one of her treasured yet dangerous assets, because official records rarely captured the moments that defined a soldier’s true value.
Back when he still belonged to a different unit, one that learned very quickly how strange their medic truly was. His professions and skills weren’t exactly well noted at the time, yet he was quite useful when the time calls for it. His personal behavior however was just out of the ordinary.
He was a ticking time bomb that they had to keep secured at all hours of the day. Creating all sorts of exaggerating experiments that had him flagged and disciplined on multiple occasions. There was even a time he scared off one of the visiting generals with a glass jar of fully functioning human eyes.
No brain or anything to support its function, it was quite fascinating to a miniscule amount of soldiers at the moment. However the poor general didn’t take the sight and collapsed after the first 2 minutes of the horrifying medics rambling. As punishment, he watched his greatest work burn to ashes right in front of him.
But that is not where the story takes place.
The mission he was deployed with along with his crew had already gone wrong, though not in the way most new flesh soldiers were trained to expect. This was the kind that bled time instead of noise. Extraction has been delayed, communication is unstable, and many have fallen victim to an unexpected explosion.
The explosion wasn’t the roaring fireball that soldiers had imagined when they heard scraping screams of the word 'rocket'. It was sharper than that…violent, sudden, and wrong in a way that left the air ringing and the world briefly silent afterward.
Shards of shattered casing tore outward through dust and darkness. Most struck stone and structures. One struck the captain and he went down without a sound.
The blast had been too quick, the night too loud with echoes. But when they reached him and saw how still and carefully he was trying to breathe.
Rain filled the area in a matter of minutes, it sheds its weight on each and every soldier that just stood in standby as their captain can only imp out a sound of help. His breath was barely caught between each millisecond, his chest drops in quivering motions, the pain and fear he felt at that moment outmatched the fear of his fellow men before him.
All barely having a single understanding of how to even use practical first aid to assist with this.
The blood oozed out of his neck and chest like a pack of water ready to give out after one spike. The rocket motor broke in multiple shards that attacked vital weak spots of the captain's body, without quick and proper evaluation, this man will find himself lying his bed on the grounds of buttfuck nowhere.
Panic began to spread in tight, suffocating waves. Cold crept through broken concrete while dust lingered thick enough to taste. Someone kept urging him to stay awake, voice fraying at the edges. Someone else whispered about the evacuation that wasn’t coming fast enough.
A few panicked with repetitive vomiting escaping their throat. Everyone there understood the same unspoken truth. If the captain died here, the mission would stop mattering.
Someone called his name, scrambling about which was just an obvious show of someone who lacked any idea of what needed to be done. Someone else shouted for a medic even before realizing the medic was already there.
Because he always was.
He pushes through the circle of soldiers, dust clung to his uniform. He didn’t rush and didn’t shout. He simply moved forward with confidence that could waver many. There was a weirdly unbiased look in eyes, as if he was not as bothered to be in this current situation like everyone else was in their little men boots.
He moved as if he’d finally been handed something interesting to do, a soft, almost pleasant smile rested on his face. It looked completely out of place. It should have been comforting. Instead, it unsettled everyone watching.
He stood confident in a manner that was a complete contrast to the current atmosphere. Hands twiddling with his uniformed collar as he took a rushed measurement of the situation. Assessing what was available to him and brainstorming a few pathways to solve their current predicament.
He knelt beside the captain and seemed to take in everything at once. The uneven breathing, the fading awareness, the subtle signs most soldiers never noticed. His hands moved with careful gentleness, as though he were handling something fragile rather than a wounded officer in the middle of a failed operation.
Breathing was shallow and careful. Uneven in a way that suggested something deeper than the pain coursing through the body.
His eyes tracked small details most people would miss; the way the chest tried to rise but couldn’t fully, the faint change in color at the lips, the quiet strain of a body working too hard for each breath.
Understanding settled over him quickly and completely. This wasn’t something an evacuation could fix in time. Waiting would mean losing him, yet around him, tension spiraled.
“Evac’s minutes out—”
“He won’t last minutes—”
“What do we do?”
No one had an answer, none but him.
“Alright,” he said softly, almost conversational.
“Keep your fucking voices down, it's embarrassing,”
The tone was light and gentle. Completely at odds with the reality in front of him. His voice was like caramel whipped cream that lay itself so still and proper on a serving of hot coffee.
Despite that many were shocked to hear such an attitude from him especially, the one they always assumed to be an aloof chaotic scientist. A singular guy scoffed, irritated by what he thought was a random fellow trying to make a downplay on their dilemma.
“We don’t know shit on how to help him, so don't go saying crap–!”
“For a bunch of soldiers, you lack proper focus, proving you completely useless in this current period of time. And time right now isn’t something we can waste.”
A few soldiers stared, caught between comfort and disbelief.
The captain, barely conscious, focused on that voice like it was the only steady thing left in the world. His expression told the young medic that he was ready to make his way to meet the heavenly father. The body was slowly losing its color, and the breath grew dry and raspy.
The medic’s expression shifted. The smile stayed, but everything warm behind it vanished. The battlefield disappeared from his awareness. Once he spoke again, his voice was calm enough to quiet the crowd without force.
“You,” calling out to a flimsy and meek character of a soldier. Stumbling forward to his side,
“Help me keep him still,” he said softly, propping the captain underneath him to stabilize the next following actions.
“And try not to quake. It makes everything messy, we need to keep his body warm and help him regulate breathing.”
The words were gentle, yet the implication wasn’t. Because everyone understood what he was saying without saying it: Waiting would kill him.
“We don’t have time to be looking for excuses for why we can't save people, Evac or not,”
Noise, fear, even time itself, narrowed down to one fragile equation. The important thing was to keep the air flowing into him and his blood pumping. What he did next didn’t look like basic field care to some of the others, it’s not like they were so fully versed into what they can do when it comes to actually being on the grounds of death.
“We’ll craft our way through and make our own saving.” Motivation filled the stems of his body as he prepped the materials within their inventory.
Supplies were limited, tools were incomplete and conditions far from sterile. And yet his movements carried the quiet certainty of someone who understood the body not just in theory, but in instinct like a map memorized down to the smallest hidden road.
He prepped the saline, gauze, and a pair of tweezers in hand to carefully pick out the smaller and not-so-significant shards that had punctured the body.
The captain's body jumped at each plucking, the freight that flared through his eyes as he watched the young-looking medic tend to his body like it was a simple warm-up of the night.
He assessed a direct plunged shard around the area of his lungs, likely scrapped one and is the physical evidence for why breathing was now the captain's hardest chore.
“You're quite jumpy aren’t you, cap? Don't you worry, I’ll be as gentle as a bee on a flower…”
His eyes formed narrowly due to the molded honey of a smile that was on his face. keeping a calm gaze with his superior.
“Hopefully we don't have to replace parts of your respiratory system, especially your lungs, but I think that’ll be a fun team building activity, don't you think?”
Hearing a bewildering question like that brought mixed comfort and concern for the captain. Yet it was a small conversation with the medic that brought him enough strength to keep holding on.
His consciousness wanes through the procedure, only so much time is left to stabilize the body and create less harsh conditions. The medic worked with careful precision, adjusting position, stabilizing breathing as much as the moment allowed, making decisions in seconds that would take others minutes.
He already assessed what was required at this moment; Without a regulated pleur-evac system, a makeshift "water-seal" drain was constructed. A length of sterile plastic tubing, found within the vacant stores of the ruined streets, and is now submerged in a bottle of sterile saline.
This allows air to escape the chest with every exhale but prevents outside air from being sucked back in, maintaining the negative pressure required for the lungs to stay inflated.
As he works, a few of the others worked a small makeshift tent with the materials that surrounded the area. Keeping the rain from damaging his work in progress, evac was still a long while away by current calculations, there's no telling when they'll arrive and if they can provide the urgent service thai young medic was committing to.
Every motion was deliberate, precise, almost impossible with the limited supplies he carried. His improvisation didn’t look desperate or messy; it looked intentional, as though he could already see the path forward and was simply guiding the body toward survival.
Minutes passed in near silence. No one dared interrupt. The earlier panic had transformed into something stranger, watching, waiting, hoping, while an uneasy thought crept through the room. They all stood awkwardly like visitors in the hospital waiting room.
How does he know how to do this here?
At one point, someone whispered whether he was guessing. Another answered just as quietly that he wasn’t guessing at all. Every action had purpose will be wasted. The soldiers around him fell silent without being told.
Because interruption felt impossible, like speaking too loudly might break the hold he had on the situation. Each change met by another calm correction, his hands steady despite the pressure closing in from every side.
He murmured quiet reassurances, not dramatic, not loud, but steady enough to anchor someone drifting too close to the edge. Avoiding any jokes that could push the lungs into another state worse than it already is.
Honestly just a quick chuckle or silent giggle is ends meet for the captain, yet he still kept his uncanny like smile across his face, the captain is left to assume there was something mentally wrong with this particular medic. Who wouldn’t?
No one understood how he could remain so calm. How he could look almost…peaceful, how deceiving. As if this narrow space between life and death was somewhere he had stood before. Somewhere that seemed familiar and natural to him.
Time stretched thin as the captain’s breathing wavered, steadied, then wavered again. Each change was met with calm, measured adjustment, the medic’s hands steady as if he were pulling someone back across an invisible line.
The gentle smile never left his face. Somehow, that made it more unnerving.
The captain’s breathing eased yet still weak, but no longer slipping away. The desperate strain softened into something that could survive a little longer. Long enough.
The medic exhaled slowly, like he had been holding that breath for both of them. “There we are,” he murmured, voice quiet with satisfaction rather than relief.
“Stay with me, sir. I’m not finished with you yet.”
“Bloody hell,” the soldier muttered, voice low with awe and unease. “You brought him back like some kind of… witch.”
“How could he possibly do it in this shit hole of a mess we’re in?”
Later, when extraction finally arrived, all they saw was a ring of silent soldiers and one medic kneeling calmly at the center. One of the soldiers watched the medic quietly cleaning his hands, humming under his breath as though nothing unusual had happened.
He looked prideful in his work as if keeping someone alive under impossible conditions were the most natural thing in the world. Once the grounds were cleared, he pocketed the pieces of the motor found..Twirling the object into the sky for a better glint. The blade almost ripping through his medical gloves.
He wondered how engine scrap would taste with tainted blood. He could only draw the object closer to his lips yet barely reached any physical contact with it.
The captain survived surgery miles away from that ruined structure, the story spread through the unit in low, disbelieving voices. Not about the explosion or the mission’s success. Instead about the haunting medic who had looked at something hopeless… and treated it like a problem already solved, with an uncanny smile smacked on his ever so charming face.
One soldier told the story first, with sweat dripping over his face/ he was once one of the the witnesses upfront to the whole ordeal. He was speaking with all of his mouth, half-joking, uneasy, with his arms spread across the table like a man ready to put the last pin on the bulletin board, the final puzzle to the lost case.
“For fucksakes it doesn't matter!… he didn’t save him. He pulled him back. l–like a witch, straight from hell!”
“All shits n giggles, he treated the cap’n like a fun side puzzle!”
“His stupid smile got wider at his groans each time, he's crazy…”
“He’s a fucking witch, all that he is.”
The name stayed. Because none of them could think of a better explanation. In awe of who they thought to be a mere medic who could barely keep chatter amongst groups, not capable of keeping his mouth shut around his superior, a supposed freeloader, who allowed his unreasonable experimentations to continue with no end or limitation.
No disciplinary ruling had ever fully condemned the decision, largely because the captain had lived, yet no report had ever sounded entirely comfortable with how calmly the outcome had been achieved under conditions that should have produced complete failure.
It was known after that the captain grew quite favorable of the medic, rewarding him with much of what his power could. Whenever a conversation of his favorite medic was brought up, all he could do was boast and glaze the young one with everlasting praise, you’d assume he was practically talking about his own son.
As Laswell wrapped up the story telling, Price understood that Laswell was not trying to persuade him emotionally, only presenting the reality that the modern battlefield punished hesitation more harshly than risk.
By the time she finished speaking, the question was no longer whether the medic was unusual, but whether Task Force 141 could afford not to use someone like him.
A rough sigh escapes his lips, with his hands rubbing from his hair down to his face.
“You really know how to choose them don’t you.” He had a hint of fear with the way he spoke, caught with shock of the pure experience and the onset skills the medic had. He wanted him badly and needed the textbook of his mind served on a silver platter to his team right away.
Laswell shared smugly “Only the best ofcourse.” taking a nibble out of the butter biscuits that was served earlier, pushing the full plate closer to price, a small polite gesture.
Yet he pushed them right back her way. “You ordered all these, now ye tryna shove them down my throat?”
“Oh come on, You’re face looks like it's sinking inside its own fucking skull, put something in your mouth, you’re scaring everyone here,” She plopped the whole plate back to his reach plus a cup of water she also asked for while he didn’t notice. So sneaky.
“Don’t look that bad, yer pushing it..” He rubbed around his face as that would change his old grouchy look. Looked like a homeless thug trying to beg change from a simply well put lady. She could only raise a brow in retaliation.
“Anyways, send me the file in full. I’ll see to it that a meeting is put together for the team to know the lad better.”
Price finally asked, voice steady in the way it became when he had already accepted responsibility for whatever answer waited on the next page, and Laswell complied without further commentary because she trusted him to recognize significance without guidance.
He exhaled once, thoughtful rather than doubtful, already aware that men like this rarely belonged in ordinary units and almost always ended up in his.
By the time Laswell forwarded the final authorization line, the last page of the record displayed the identifier that mattered more than ranking as lieutenant, education, or reassignment history, printed in stark black letters centered beneath the photograph of a man whose expression revealed nothing easy to categorize.
A smile that shall deceive all who face it, and a look that will capture any possible partner he shall choose. Yet his eyes darkened by experience, tells a different story. With this face of his, he could easily pull down a whole nation of women—no, probably even more than that. His facial structure is no where in par to the regular soldiers that pass by daily.
Just at first glance, even Price grew a tiny bit of affection before it was smutted to the mud.
The only name they shall see in person and on paper.
WITCH.
Only three days had passed since the last private conversation between Laswell and Price, yet the decision already felt older than that, heavy with the quiet inevitability of something set in motion long before either of them spoke it aloud.
Today would determine whether the man in the file would become part of Task Force 141’s routine, or the disruption that changed it entirely. An early morning conference had been called with the core members of the team, the kind that carried no official announcement yet still demanded full attention. It was better to get the team's perspective on him before attempting to move forward.
Price stood at the head of the table. He looked a lot more cleaned up than last time, no sunken eyebags or a messy beard. His head hung low, still thinking over the information he had uncovered on Witch’s files. He had a definite feeling that he wasn’t going to be welcomed at their little circle, at least not entirely.
When he finally took his time to think of his personality and how it could've meshed with theirs, it felt genuinely odd to even process. He could only hope he made the best decision he could for everyone.
As Price remained stuck in his mind, across him towards the end of the table, Soap and Gaz were busy bickering over something unworthy of even bringing up. Something about braiding each other's ass hairs which was only something Soap can bring up at an odd moment like this.
He kept gesturing with his hands how efficiently he could ‘braid’ with Gaz trying to push his dry rustic hands away from him with a twitch at the corner of the mouth, as if suppressing a gag.
Ghost leaned on the pale office walls with the stillness of someone waiting for confirmation rather than explanation, watching the empty doorway with indistinct degrees of curiosity. He ignored the other two's conversation and took a glimpse over at Price. He wasn’t sure if he should've been angry or understanding.
Price came up to them earlier to mention the possibility of a new guy making his way in, he didn’t exactly believe it but then also should’ve expected it in correspondence to their current circumstances. He wasn’t ready to trust another person right now, and definitely didn’t want some guy to worm his way into their place.
The door creaked open with an extra squeak to it and in came Laswell, arriving a few minutes later yet composed as ever, carrying a thin folder that looked far too small to hold the weight of the decision inside it.
“Alright, gentlemen,” she began evenly, setting the folder down between them,
“Hope your captain brought you up to speed on things. All about your newest addition to the team, I'm giving you a one and only properly serving Field Medic and medical personnel,"
She opened the folder and spread its miniscule contents across the table in careful, deliberate silence.
“However, to be called into the field, he requires a few specific circumstances to be met before he can deploy with you.”
Skills were listed with unnerving precision, some so advanced they felt misplaced in a combat record, others annotated with brief notes that implied outcomes no one had bothered to describe in detail.
They all quickly gathered to take a look, except Price. Soap eagerly swept up a piece of paper or two as he quickly got to reading the contents.
Yet the longer the team looked, the more the room’s atmosphere shifted from casual skepticism into something quieter and harder to name. It wasn’t necessarily disbelief but a case of discomfort while realizing the contents on these files might actually be accurate.
Soap broke the silence first, leaning back slightly with a crooked grin that only half-hid his confusion.
“What kind of name is Witch for a bloke?” he chuckled. “You sure this isn’t a lass in secret, aye?” His eyes linger longer than needed at the picture in front of him.
“Fuckin gotta be, look at his face.” Gaz leaned closer to one of the lingering papers on the table.
The photograph clipped to the top page did little to answer the question and instead complicated it further, capturing a face almost unfairly gentle for someone attached to so many sealed reports.
His hair fell in soft, careless forms that looked more blessed than styled, and his eye were bright, open, and disarmingly warm that held the type of kindness that belonged in sunlight rather than war.
Nothing in the image suggested dange or the quiet unease threaded through the rest of the file. If anything, he looked like someone people trusted too easily.
“You’d be surprised how many he’s already charmed with that face alone,” Laswell replied calmly.
“But back to the matter at hand. He is without exaggeration, one of the most capable medical specialists currently in service. Doctorate in medicine, advanced trauma research, surgical—”
“oh, you’re fucking jokin,” Soap cut in under his breath.
“Doctorate?” Ghost’s voice followed, low and unreadable behind the skull mask, though the slight lift of his brow betrayed genuine surprise. “We’ve got a scholar now, do we?”
“Eleven years of medical training,” Laswell continued, unfazed. “Ask him any symptom, any presentation, complication..he’ll give you a diagnosis and treatment in seconds.”
A faint smirk touched her lips, subtle but unmistakable, the expression of someone placing a winning card on the table without needing to announce it. Every operative she recommended carried skills others couldn’t replicate, but this one felt different even to her, obviously not safer but rarer than any gem found in the ground.
The praise alone left most of them quite confused. Is someone like that truly skilled enough to warrant being here despite the differences they see? It was enough to shift the room’s mood because Laswell did not exaggerate, and everyone there knew that.
Still, Ghost’s posture remained rigid with quiet resistance, the instinctive caution of someone who trusted patterns more than promises. Eyes skimming the papers. New operatives were risks by default. Ones with incomplete histories were worse, as if he was any better.
He pushed himself off the wall and straightened his back, angling his head ever so slightly towards the rest of them. “What circumstances is he even talking about?”
The other agreeingly looked back, for someone new to immediately start making accommodations for themselves, and not even physically here to speak up about the conditions, They were very interested to hear what he even dares to ask for.
Laswell shoulders slumped a bit with the sheer amount of eyes, she could only just sigh.
“Well… it's more so a request from your base's medical department. Senior Medical specialists request that Witch remains the main leader for regular surgical needs in your medic branch within your unit.”
“Wait what.” Soaps mouth almost hung out dry, till Gaz gave him a nip at the cheeks.
Laswell laid her hands on her hips. “This means, he’ll be in charge of training the medics and collecting any sort of assessments on whether or not a soldier has met medical standards.”
“But why? It's not like there’s nothing wrong with the current lead medic. Haven’t heard nothing going on down over there but it’s fine, well despite what's happening right now…”
Gaz, scanning further down the report, felt that unease sharpen. “Multiple misconduct reports… two altercations with comrades…,” he paused, expression tightening,
“‘Smiled and giggled at the body of a deceased lieutenant, under consistent watch for self-experimentation?’ We wanna actually trust this?”
One of the side notes given from the previous soldiers in the medics unit, the body was going through an autopsy search in hopes of shifting the power imbalance during a mission.
Witch just so happened to be one of the few to contribute to the autopsy yet his sheer reaction was quite eerie and bothersome to the other medical bodies.
Gaz’s eyes narrowed back to Laswell, a horrible setting of first impression lies set in stone now.“You make him sound all great, but i’m not sure I even wanna leave my body near this guy.”
“Second dat.”
The words settled heavily across the table. Gaz’s eyes lifted toward Laswell almost immediately, searching for context that wasn’t written on the page.
“Fucking hell…” Ghost’s stare hardened beside him, silent and cold, a wall of judgment forming before the idea of a medic had even entered the room.
Laswell drew in a slow breath before answering, her voice measured but firm. “I know exactly how this reads. His record makes trust… difficult. But make no mistake, he delivers results no other medic has matched,”
She looked back and forth between the two, all too tense to even measure the qualities with his mental instincts as they chosen to see it as. She gazed back at his photo.
“Life is no joke to him, bleed infront of him and you’d be plastered with bandages and security for weeks. What he does with his personal instincts can't even compare to the amount of lives he’s saved, the chances he gave them to fulfill their duties, passions at that.”
She stood more confidently, clenching the files of piling papers in hand but not notable to others. But her eyes burned cold and firm with every word. Acceptance didn’t matter with their current situation.
“Haunting as it may be, this Witch was more so an angel of sorts. Besides, I've already asked him to review the medical situation affecting your base before I arrived, another request from your senior officer.”
As if summoned by the statement itself, her phone buzzed softly in her hand. She checked the screen, and for the first time since entering the room, a small, unmistakably pleased smile appeared.
“Perfect timing,” she said. “He’s sent an analysis and a solution.” She set the phone down and played the voice message.
“Good day to you, Miss Laswell!… and the other few individual bodies around, Lieutenant Witch reporting for duty.”
The voice that filled the room was bright, lilting, almost musical in tone, far too gentle for the subject matter it carried, and unsettling because of how pleasant it sounded. Beneath that softness coated with thick cavities of honey, however, lay unmistakable precision with certainty rather than casual cheer.
“I’ve reviewed the symptom progression logs, fatality timing, environmental exposure data, and regional epidemiology surrounding your base,” he continued lightly, as though discussing routine paperwork instead of a deadly outbreak.
“The presentation aligns most closely with acute Chagas disease, very likely transmitted through oral contamination rather than direct insect bite.
There was a confirmed military outbreak in Colombia in late 2021. eleven infected, two fatalities, all traced to food contaminated with Trypanosoma cruzi from triatomine vectors.
Acute febrile syndrome, rapid systemic involvement, survivable only with early antiparasitic treatment. Seven lived. Two didn’t.”
A quiet pause followed, and when he spoke again, the warmth in his tone had cooled into something far more controlled.
“What concerns me,” Witch said softly, “is not the disease itself. Chagas is predictable when ofcourse handled correctly. This outbreak was obviously clearly preventable!”
No one in the room moved. You could somewhat hear the snarky-ness in his tone. Like he was trying to make a show of how redundant and oblivious the task 141 were of their own surroundings.
“I would like,” he continued with eerie politeness, “to speak directly with whoever is responsible for food procurement, storage, and distribution on your base. I would also like a conversation with every other medical officer overseeing surveillance and response protocols within the base. it’s obvious the current member holding that position isn’t fit to even take care of the lives of soldiers.”
They could hear the arrogance yet full force of command within his voice. As if he was holding himself back from insulting whoever the person in charge indeed was.
“And that is not later, it's when I arrive. Because failures like this are rarely accidents,” he added gently. “They are usually systems being ignored.” Paper shifted faintly on his end, the sound intimate enough to feel like proximity rather than distance.
“The good news is that your situation is still recoverable! unfortunately so…,” Witch went on, brightness returning in a way that felt almost unnatural after the coldness before it.
“Benznidazole treatment during the acute phase has excellent survival outcomes when administered quickly.Implement strict food sanitation controls, begin active surveillance for insects in and around living quarters, screen immediately for febrile symptoms, deploy antiparasitic therapy without hesitation, educate personnel on avoiding locally prepared juices or unsecured food sources, and. I say ideally, adopt a coordinated One Health monitoring approach across environmental, animal, and human vectors.”
A soft, thoughtful hum. “If you do all that,” he said, almost pleasantly, “your mortality rate drops dramatically!” Then, quieter and calm enough to feel like a promise rather than reassurance.
“And I do prefer my patients alive.”
The pause that followed stretched just a second too long. “I’ll be on-site in three days,” Witch finished gently. “Please try not to let anything else deteriorate before then…hmph.”
At that, the recording lays to an end with a swift click.
‘What the fuc’ was written all over Soap's face as he stood dumb founded at what he just heard. This definelty was not the same man these files were talking about, in fact this is an entirely different person at best, well to a certain degree.
Price was the first to finally move, fingers dragging the folder back toward himself with a slow scrape against the table that sounded far louder than it should have. He didn’t look at anyone when he spoke, eyes fixed instead on the underlined callsign stamped across the top page.
“Three days huh,” he said quietly. Not a question. Not a complaint. Just a statement weighed down by implication. “That’s when he gets here.”
He didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by the ending note of Witch’s ramblings. If anything he seemed ready to accept more of his behaviour, given the fact it allows the problems they have to quickly get solutions.
Laswell nodded once, arms folding loosely across her chest. “Three days,” she confirmed.
Soap let out a low whistle, shaking his head as he leaned back in his chair. “Right,” he muttered, half to himself. “So he’s not even here yet, and he’s already fuckin read us for filth over a voice message.”
He glanced around the table, attempting humor and failing to find it. “Got to say, that’s a first.”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Gaz said after a moment, voice measured but firm. He tapped a finger against the medical charts still spread across the table. “Food handling’s been a bit sloppy since the last rotation. We all knew it. No one really pushed hard enough.”
Soap grimaced. “Yeah, well, I didn’t expect the telling-off to come from a bloke who sounds like he’s smiling while sharpening a scalpel.”
That earned him a look from Price. A brief sharp warning not to underestimate what they’d just heard and to refrain from any more ridiculous comments.
“He didn’t ask,” Ghost finally spoke then, his voice low and even, cutting cleanly through the lingering tension. “He said.”
He only spoke with such intent as his unbreaking stare remains at Witch’s files. Telling there's this uncanny ability that he holds, the way he looks can only fool others but not Ghost, never him. Surely not.
Yet he still knew that his eyes definitely belonged to someone who gaved up providing normal human reasoning. Like he was someone that he says he is but is that so true? Why would someone of such abilities that can serve better lives, be Laswell’s gaze shifted to him, one brow lifting slightly at his statement. “About?”
“About wanting to speak to command. About food distribution. About medical oversight,” Ghost continued. “That wasn’t a suggestion. That was intent. Sounds like he’s gonna force his way right through us for some shit that’s putting the sick boys in their mothers beds.”
His tone carried no sense of annoyance towards Witch, if anything it can be counted as a slightly tinted shade of praise from him.
Price leaned back slowly, exhaling through his nose. “Good,” he said at last.
Soap blinked back in disbelief. “Good?” Scrapping himself up from his chair while he looked at Price as if he just set spiders to crawl into his pants.
“We don’t need another medic in charge who nods along and works around problems,” Price replied, finally lifting his eyes to meet the others.
“We need someone who’ll tear into them before they kill more of my men.” His jaw tightened just a fraction. “If he’s angry about this outbreak, that means he’s paying attention, as stupid as the problem is, it's affecting our men and we need it gone.”
“Your telling me other medics are too fucking dense to figure out this issue right away but he can?” Gaz eyes widen a tad, conflicting with confusion and the ever growing wall against trust within him.
Price scoffed, “It’s not just that fool.” Gaz didn’t bother questioning what he said at that moment, but the way he gripped his own folded arms showed there was more talking they would have to expand on after this.
Laswell’s lips curved faintly, not quite a smile, but close. “That’s exactly why I sent you his file,” she said. “He doesn’t tolerate negligence. Not from enemies. Not from allies.”
Gaz hesitated, “And the… other notes in his record?”
Laswell didn’t look away, though she relieved a breeze of a sigh lying within her. “Uncomfortable,” she admitted. “It’s disturbing I get it, depending on who’s reading them,” She paused, scaling her gaze firmly at them all.
“But he’s all but incompetent.. Every incident ties back to him doing his job too well in situations that made people uneasy. Fraternizing is not his forte, yes, but he’s somewhat able to make some changes if the environment needs to be.”
Soap huffed softly. “That’s reassuring. In a deeply unsettling sort of way.” He sunk back into his chair, appearing like a rejected spoiled child.
Ghost’s head tilted slightly, just enough to suggest thought. “Men like that,” he said slowly, “we’re just going to need 'em more than ever..”
But at what cost is what he wondered.