Chapter Text
The desert at night was unforgiving.
You kept at your pace steady, bootfalls silent on the cracked earth, scanning the dark beyond your headlamp. Sand and grit clung to the hem of your coat. The cold was setting into your bones, wrapping around the edges of a day that had been too long, too dry and too quiet.
You didn’t like the quiet.
Quiet meant there was no one to save.
And even now - after everything - some part of you still felt like you were supposed to be saving people.
Your fingers tapped absently on the edge of your medpack, checking for the familiar outlines of syringes, bandages, medgel canisters, adrenaline pens. You’d packed them the same way every time since Zurich - muscle memory was one of the few things you had left.
Once upon a time, you were a part of something. Not quite Overwatch, not officially, but close enough that you’d seen the good, the bad, and the classified. A combat medic embedded with the strike teams, always one step behind the gunfire, always stitching together the people who tore themselves apart to keep the world from falling.
Now?
You were just a name on no one’s radar, wandering from town to town, healing what you could, keeping to yourself. You didn’t ask questions. You didn’t get involved.
Until now.
You knelt beside the thin line of blood trailing across the dirt. Looked fresh. You dipped your gloved fingers into it - -still warm, dark, arterial.
You should’ve turned away. The desert can be dangerous at night and you have no idea what or who is out there. You didn’t chase people anymore. You weren’t in the business of heroics.
But training like yours doesn't forget how to follow how to follow a blood trail.
And guilt like yours doesn't sleep easy when you ignore it.
You found him slumped against a sunbaked outcropping of red rock, half-shadowed beneath the ridge. A hat - battered, wide-brimmed, and dust-covered - lay beside him. One leg was splayed at a wrong angle. Blood soaked the side of his coat, seeping slow and steady into the dirt. His chest rose in shallow, erratic breaths.
He looked liked something out of an old western - a gunslinger turned ghost, left to die in the dark.
But his pulse thumped under your fingers. Barely. Enough.
You dropped your pack beside him and pulled out your gloves. “You conscious cowboy?”
A low groan escaped him. You leaned closer.
“Eyes open,” you ordered. “Come on. Give me something.”
His eyelids fluttered, then cracked open. Bleary and his face pale.
“...You a mirage?” he rasped, voice rough with dehydration and pain. “Or just unusually pretty for a buzzard?”
You snorted. “You’re bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, and that’s your first thing you say?”
“Man’s gotta have a little fun,” he huffed.
You pulled the canister of medgel from your bag. “This’ll hurt.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Lady, I’ve had worse-”
The moment the gel hissed into the wound, he cursed loud and colorful, muscles seizing under your hands.
“Warned you,” you muttered. “Definitely a gunshot. Ribs intact. You’re lucky.”
“Don’t feel lucky,” he grunted fist digging into the dirt.
You didn’t respond. Your mind was busy cataloging vitals, field triage steps, possible complications. It was the only thing that silenced the noise in your head. The only thing that ever had.
You worked quickly, flushed the wound, sealed the worst of it, set the leg. He flinched but didnt fight you. His skin was clammy. Breathing shallow. He’d lost a lot of blood, but the bleeding was slowing. Enough for now.
He slumped against the rock, eyes fluttering again.
“Hey. Stay with me.” You tapped his face gently. “Name?”
He opened his eyes, lips twitching. “Dontcha know it?”
You froze.
You looked at him again - really looked. The beard, the battered chestplate, the prosthetic arm. The belt buckle worn down by time, the revolver laying next to him that has seen ore bloodshed than most ever will in their lifetimes.
Cole Cassidy.
You knew the name. Everyone who’d ever worked field ops did. The outlaw-turned-Overwatch-turned-god-knew-what. Some called him a vigilante. Others called him a murderer.
But tonight, he was just a man bleeding in your care.
“...You gonna shoot me?” he asked, head back eyes closed.
“Not unless you try to shoot me first.”
A small smirk forms. “Fair.”
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You didn’t sleep much after that.
He faded in and out while you dragged him onto your old hover-sled before it gave out and towards a cave you’d passed earlier. He groaned once - a sharp, bitten-off sound - as you eased him off the sled and onto a mat you rolled out. You worked by a small fire, keeping him warm, checking for signs of internal bleeding and infection.
You’d done this more times than you can count.
But not for someone like him.
You sat back on your heels and studied him. He looked younger asleep, different from what you’d seen from the old mission reports, though the years had clearly weighed heavy. The lines around his eyes told stories no intel ever could.
He stirred once and mumbled your name.
You hadn’t told him your name.
Your hand hovered over his chest. But he didn’t move again save for the soft rise and fall of his chest.
It was stupid to care. You didn’t know him. He was a wanted man - and you had no idea who he was running from. But you knew what it felt like to be left behind. You knew what it felt like to have your skills used, your name buried, and your humanity stripped down to what you could carry in a bag.
So maybe you weren’t keeping him alive because it was the right thing to do.
Maybe you were hoping that saving someone else might save a little of you too.