Chapter Text
It was strange to think about. A villain, having a place on an INSUPA team. But Joseph didn’t know all that he had done. The medic deserved to know what he was getting into.
Wolf fidgeted with the healing bite on his hand. Two days without him agitating it had let it heal enough that he couldn’t make it bleed just by messing with the bandages over top. He didn’t know how to tell Joseph everything.
(How broken he was; the worst that Smith and Anders did to him. How useless he was; senses so easily overwhelmed. How undeserving he was; he had destroyed so many innocent lives, people who just needed help, who just needed to get away from INSUPA - and he could only do that by killing them.)
The thought made his heart ache. Joseph kept giving and giving and he needed to know who he was as giving it too.
But how to tell him? How to force his tongue to cooperate past the fear and grief and shame to explain the simple truth that Wolf was and always would be a monster? For a moment, he wished Joseph was like Smith. (That he could get under Wolf’s skin, sink into his thoughts and instantaneously know the pathetic and horrible man he treated with undue kindness and softness.)
Maybe he could write out a confession? Maybe he should just force it out himself, one painful word at a time? Either way, he couldn’t stand the thought of the medic’s too-kind eyes boring into him. Why couldn’t he understand that Wolf was undeserving?
Tears started to prick at his eyes. What if this place didn’t want him? What if his past was too bloody, reintegration with civilian society impossible - what then? Would they lock him up? Send him away? (Send him back?) The monitor next to him was trilling loudly as he spiraled, trying to calm himself down.
He had cost them so much money, so much time. All of this equipment and medications and supplies had to be expensive. He didn’t deserve that. There was a reason that INSUPA hadn’t wasted it on him. Joseph deserved to know it. (He didn’t want to go back.)
Wolf glanced at the empty pudding cup on the table, lingering hunger transmuted to nausea. How could he just accept that? Just steal that luxury from Joseph and the people in this house who really needed it? He kicked down the extra blanket until it was piled at the end of his bed. (Maybe a bad idea - the stitches in his thigh throbbed, his hip ached, and tensing his core made the fresh graze in his side burn.) He didn’t deserve to be comfortable, much less painless. What a selfish idiot he was to let himself accept such luxuries.
The gown felt far too thin, but he let the air burn his bare legs. He pushed the table away, sending his water cup into the far corner of the room. It was okay; he deserved it. Now, he just needed to figure out how to put his damn bed back down. Wolf fumbled with the call light, scanning the buttons - he didn’t want to accidentally summon Joseph, but sitting up comfortably was starting to make him sweat. (He didn’t want to use a luxury he didn’t earn, didn’t need, didn’t deserve - )
The bed lurched forward, then backwards, finally. He winced as it went down, jostling his injuries. That was better. It didn’t matter that it made breathing a little harder. Wolf gasped for a few breaths, the pain of his aching ribs compressing already strained breaths. It was fine. It didn’t need to be easy or comfortable, not for him. Tears beaded in his eyes, arms wrapped over his chest as though the gentle pressure would ease the electric agony winding around his lungs.
It burned, his breathing becoming more labored as he tried to pull air in. The monitors started to blare even louder, alarms dinging.
Oh. That wasn’t good. Wolf tried to breathe the way Joseph showed him - deep and slow and steady. But it felt like there was a weight on his chest, forcing every breath to be shallow no matter how slowly or carefully he tried to breathe. Not good. (Fucking idiot now they were going to try and waste more resources making him comfortable when he didn’t even deserve to live - ) He could heard voices outside in the hallway, plastic rustling and crinkling. They were coming, and he was going to be in even more trouble…he needed to show he was sorry.
No. No no no he didn’t want to bother them he hadn’t meant to be a burden he needed the machines to shut up and tugging at the wires wasn’t helping as much as his oxygen starved brain hoped it would. He grabbed the bed rail, pulling himself upright with a white knuckle grip. (Breathing didn’t hurt as much, even if his breaths were still to shallow.) He clumsily threw a leg over the bedside, then the other. He needed to get down off the bed, wires and tubes tangling as he slid to his knees. (He didn’t deserve the softness of a bed - Joseph complained about his bed being uncomfortable and if anyone deserved a nice bed it was Joseph.)
He screeched as he pulled at the catheter, feeling the burn spreading up his groin. Breathing was hard and it hurt, and now it hurt more, and he couldn’t go anywhere, and his hands were barely supporting him as he hung over the floor, and it hurt. Tears started to roll down his cheeks has he imagined the punishment for this. Joseph said they didn’t do that, but who knew about Henle. And did he really deserve this?
Wolf keeled over his knees, the small, thin gown twisted and crumpled. He felt held strangled by own lungs - the wires and tubes wrapped around him like tangled puppet strings only made the illusion of being hanged more vivid. He kept trying to pull the trappings, at least to make their pressure around his body lessen, but it only made the screaming machines louder and the panic in his blood burn brighter. (Joseph told him to use the call button if he needed something and he needed to have these unnecessary luxuries stripped away so he could remind himself who and what he was. And Wolf had blatantly disobeyed.)
He could hear the door starting to slide open, and a panicked wail fell out of his mouth. Why did he always have to mess everything up? The place in his arm where his IV had been was bleeding. His pelvis pulsed with pain, chest heaving up and down as he tried to get air in. Someone squatted down next to him, voice low and familiar.
“Wolf, kid, what’s going on?”