Chapter Text
A human shows up at the Maverick Hunters' base one day. She has curly black hair, a business briefcase, and the stubbornness of a mule when Signas uncomfortably tells her no, they're not looking to hire someone like her right now.
36 hours later, Dr. G's got her own office and her first patient: a young Reploid who looks no older than her son. He smells of burning metal, and his faded paint-job looks like it might’ve been green once.
Despite all the good the Navigator's done, he still feels guilty he survived the first war when his partner didn't. He picks at his gloves, eyes downcast. Guilt, grief, shame.
Dr. G spends the rest of the day with him.
No one spreads news faster than a Navigator, and word of Dr. G travels quickly. More patients cautiously visit her. Slowly, Dr. G's calendar fills with appointments. Most suffer from survivor's guilt, or some form of PTSD. It's unsurprising when so many were sent to war so young.
What does surprise her is when X walks into the office one day. Dr. G's heard many good things about X from her other patients, and he lives up to expectations. X thanks her for helping his fellow Hunters, asking about her background and motivations for joining Maverick Hunters HQ. Though X was older than her by a century or so, in her nearly 30 years of practice, Dr. G had come across many patients like him. She indulges X, answering his questions and making polite conversation until there's a comfortable lull.
She asks X to sit down.
After a tense moment, he does.
The media always described X as a courageous hero, an unwavering symbol of hope in the ceaseless battle against Sigma and his Maverick army. As she listens to X talk however, all Dr. G can see is a young man with more responsibilities and pressure than anyone has a right to bear. Dr. G is reminded of the myth of Atlas, a titan condemned to carry the weight of the sky, and thinks his burden is preferable to X’s. He doesn't need to voice his thought aloud for Dr. G to see how time twisted his noble self-appointed duty into an endless cycle of despair and death.
There’s a slight quiver in X's voice, in his conviction, like a warning tremor before an earthquake. He pauses, and Dr. G can practically see his walls rise as X abruptly apologizes for oversharing. Despite her attempts to coax him back, X departs with a poor excuse and a strained smile.
When Mavericks attack Hunters HQ, it’s the Navigators—pale-faced and terrified—who dig Dr. G out of the rubble.
Lifesaver doesn’t get to practice on humans too frequently, and there's a brief moment of terrifying uncertainty before he gets to work. They make do with what they have.
Dr. G wakes up in medbay two days later. She allows herself a minute as the gravity of her situation sinks in, then practicality takes over. Pinging Lifesaver, she politely requests someone help paint her prosthetics. An hour later, nearly all her patients show up with paint cans.
X visits her some days later, his tightly restrained sorrow more apparent than usual. Before he can so much as open his mouth however, Dr. G raises a hand and firmly tells him he’d better not apologize. She motions to a chair and asks him to please sit down and shush. Based on his look of surprise, clearly no one's ever told him to "sit down and shush" before.
Bemused, X does.
War is synonymous with tragedy, and Dr. G saw her fair share. She never expected to survive the first war, let alone the second or third. Many of her loved ones—human and Reploid alike—hadn't. That was the problem, wasn't it? No matter the casualties, someone was always left behind. It was always the survivors who suffer most. The pain dulls, but it never fully heals like it should. Survivors were left to mourn—but so rarely did they grieve for the ones who need it most.
“It’s alright, you know,” Dr. G says kindly to X as she gently squeezes his hand. “You're allowed to grieve for yourself too."
She wonders just how long X had waited to have that permission, to hear those words as she soothingly pats his back, his soft sobs muffled by the hospital bed sheet as he buries his face in them. The world's suffering drained his boundless compassion; rarely did X spare any for himself.
Patient as a mountain, Dr. G waits.
She remembers her son, remembers her own heartbreak. Remembers the weeks and months and years spent mourning a memory.
Grief waits poised like a panther in a corner of her own heart, just as patient. Dr. G allows it a fleeting glance before it passes, as shadows always do. Sorrow is not a sin, but it’s an old companion she no longer needed to cling to.
After a few minutes, Dr. G blithely jokes about not having to worry about arthritis in her right arm and leg anymore to lighten the mood—and realizes this was, perhaps, in poor taste when X starts crying harder. But eventually the tears give way to hiccupped laughter, and X acquiesces as she pushes a paintbrush into his hand. She holds out her arm, the prosthetic nigh indistinguishable from the graffitied alleys of Abel City thanks to her surprisingly artistic patients. X looks at the rainbows and stars and roses painted across it with a gentle smile on his face. He carefully turns her hand over, and on her wrist writes two simple words in elegant black strokes:
Thank you.