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The doctor still gets flashes in the back of his mind: his teammates’ throats laid bare under his knife, opening gurgling wells of cherry-bright blood.
It happens after the adrenaline begins to fade, when the stress of battle sends tremors through his ribs and the Medigun feels heavy enough to crush him. He returns his teammates’ empty smiles and pretends that he still has their trust; that the scars under his hair are from shrapnel in a foreign field instead of leather straps.
He convinces himself that what he sees out of the corners of his eyes isn’t memory so much as a hazily-remembered dream. There is a rational explanation to what they all saw during those weeks, he thinks; and though he had said otherwise, he remembered all he did.
It was a mercy, a mercy, he tells himself. They were all dying. He doesn’t like showing weakness, but mercy is something he understands.
He thought they too would understand. He was merely hastening the inevitable. But how much of that rational side had remained when the blood had flowed like gasoline to fuel the fire?
Since last October, the Engineer has kept his distance, and Amelia has barely spoken to him. Even Ulyana gives him worried looks between battles. His entire team seems wary to cross him, and Otto can’t blame them. Part of him even takes pleasure in their fear.
He wonders if Ulyana can feel how his heart pounds when he lies there awake, unable to sleep for the scratching he hears in the walls. He can feel the rustling of brittle, black feathers in his bones.
One stormy evening after their return to the desert, the doctor wakes to find the strange beaked mask on his desk. Beckoning.
He doesn’t mention that he kept it.