Chapter Text
There was a man on the other end of the fishing line. He looked awfully unhappy to see him.
Sniper nearly toppled out of his seat in surprise when he first saw it, spluttering curses under his breath and fumbling to keep the rod from slipping out of his hands. He'd only been standing at the lakeside for a few minutes, and been rather excited to snag something this early into casting his line; curious then, when an inspecting tug revealed the weight on his hook to be much, much heavier than any fish he'd been expecting from this lake. Then, when he reeled it in a bit further and a scrawny, sallow, distinctively human face popped out of the water as if to greet him—well, suffice to say he'd been caught off guard. The cigarette perched in his mouth flopped down onto the pier and fizzled out against the soggy wood with a hiss, swiftly and thoroughly forgotten.
He sat motionless for a time, blinking profusely and briefly rubbing his eyes as if it could all be somehow just a trick of the light. It was definitely a man's face, or at least it looked like one from what he could see of it, obscured as it was by the murky water and the sopping dregs of its grey-streaked hair. Its high cheekbones and sunken eyes remained about as motionless as he did, each of its skeletal features completely frozen in a glassy, wide-eyed glare; after roughly mirroring the expression in bewilderment for a few seconds, he frowned, his brain tentatively coming to grips with what he was seeing and the fact that he had likely just reeled in a corpse.
It wouldn't be that out of the ordinary, really—shovels and gravel came cheap these days, but large, dark bodies of water had always been free—and it certainly wouldn't be the first time he'd been treated to the sight of a rotting carcass in an unexpected place. Now that the shock was wearing off, he found himself feeling rather disappointed, if anything; he'd really been hoping for some kind of lunker. As he slowly moved to grasp the reel, he couldn't help but think it was still a bit odd, though. He'd never seen a corpse look so... mortified?
His fingers brushed the reel handle. It was at that precise moment that the corpse's eyes widened—and suddenly, the spell was broken.
The man-corpse-creature-thing turned and dove back into the lake, vanishing in seconds beneath the algae-riddled water before he could so much as pull it closer. Sniper would have called out if not for the fact that his rod was still hooked onto it, and that he was already sitting far too close to the edge of the shoreline for comfort, and that suddenly his entire body was yanked forward and the surface of the lake was getting much closer to his face than he would've liked it to be and—
Shit, he had just enough time to think. Then the whole world turned blue.
He bit back the panicked gasp that threatened to tear out of his chest, kicked up and twisted about in place trying to reorient himself; water stung the lining of his nose and prickled at his eyes when he forced them open and tried to look toward the sunlight but the sunlight barely breached the water in any direction he looked. Had the lake always been so cloudy?
No—that was fine. This was fine, he told himself firmly. Nothing was attacking him, he still had a lungful of air, he was fine. He just needed to relax, sit tight, wait till he floated to the top, and as long as the large, tapered mass he could feel slinking along his leg didn't try anything funny—
Oh, bugger him.
He whipped around to try and catch it before it could constrict him, but all he could make out was a single long, inky-black tendril sprouting abruptly from the endless blue. More of it soon followed, latching onto different parts of his body and adjusting their grip as if making sure he wouldn't slip out of their hold—one around each wrist, one around each ankle, two around his waist... and then no more. He glanced vainly around in the darkness for some kind of movement, any kind of hint as to what they were planning to do next, his pulse hammering in his chest.
It was only when they started to pull, yanking him down and further into the deep with a force strong enough for his joints to make disquieting noises, that he finally began to panic.
He made a muffled noise of alarm and tugged frantically at his restraints as water rushed past his face, into his nose and his mouth and his lungs. The tentacles gripped like a vice and pulled like a riptide, stringing him helplessly along like a ragdoll in the current, and oh God he wasn't ready, he wasn't ready to go out yet, not like this—respawn was never on over the weekend, he never told anyone where he was going, no one was even going to know until they mailed his parents to tell them they couldn't find the body—
The water broke. Fresh air hit like a slap to the face.
He gulped it down for all he was worth as he was sent sprawling out over dust and sand, pausing between breaths to hack up seaweed and attempt to wrestle off whatever was still holding him. He pried the tentacles off his skin with a series of small wet pops, grimacing to himself even as he stomped down again and again on the more persistent ones until they too slinked away like a pack of frightened snakes, leaving him sopping wet, heaving for breath, coated head to toe in dirt and sand and algae but alive, still, thank God.
Alive, still. It was a thought so trivial while on the job that most of the time it just annoyed him, when it got in the way of an opportune sacrifice or subjected him to more pain via open wounds and further attacks—and yet now it felt like that was all he could think about, the only thing his panic-addled mind was able to consciously parse. He was still moving, still breathing, he was still alive and not dead, alive and not dead, alive and not dead alive alive alive he was alive. He was alive!
He was so busy rediscovering his love of breathing oxygen and having a heartbeat that he almost forgot the creature was still around; he turned and looked to see it slithering back into the lake, just barely able to catch a glimpse of lean, scarred muscle on a shirtless torso just before it disappeared beneath the water again, thankfully not taking him with it this time. He sat and stared long after at the trail of wet sand and algae it had left along the length of the shoreline, waiting patiently for his heart to climb back up from his stomach and his brain to finish processing what in the bloody hell had just happened to him. He'd been through some odd shit before, but that—that was certainly new.
No. No, it was more than just new. Ass-clenching terror of a near-death experience aside, it was interesting.
He stood up tentatively and dusted himself off, patting himself down to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be. His clothes were completely soaked through, and there were some conspicuous red dots along the skin of his arms and legs in the places the tentacles grabbed him, but other than that everything seemed alright enough to get roughly back to living his life. He even still had the hat.
He trudged back to the dusty old pier he'd been standing on and took inventory of his things, casting a wary look over the lake's murky surface. The water was completely still now, no trace of anything that could have just broken it or fallen in left behind. Whatever the creature that he'd reeled in was, it must have known better than to hang around.
So what was it, then?
He pursed his lips, squatting down on the pier and scanning for his fishing rod. Some kind of octopus-person was the first idea to spring to mind. Cecaelia, he recalled from a brief fixation on cryptozoology back in high school: a mythical race of people with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a cephalopod, usually depicted as some kind of malicious sea witch with a penchant for destruction. But if that was the case, then how come it brought him back to the shoreline? Had it simply gotten lost on the way to the bottom of the lake to drown him? Seemed unlikely for a fish-person. He supposed he probably could have asked it what it wanted when it was still around to see if it could talk, but in his defense, he'd been preoccupied.
He was so caught up in his musing that it took a few moments to notice the fishing rod was nowhere to be found. He frowned, glancing back to where the creature dropped him off at shore, but it didn't seem like he'd left it there either. Strange. He never misplaced his things even in a panic, and it wasn't like it could have just fallen into the—
Ah.
He slumped, and turned to look over his shoulder at the lake again. A few solitary bubbles rose and popped against the water's surface, as if someone in the depths below were quietly laughing at him.
Piss.
"Herr Sniper, are you feeling quite alright?"
Sniper jumped despite himself, wheeling around to face the team's doctor in a show of atypically visible surprise. He schooled his features into the usual scowl just as quickly when he saw who it was, turning back to face the desert opposite the base's shabby porch. "I'm alright. Why ask?"
"Because this is the first time you've come back from an off-base trip without seeing me for injuries afterward," Medic admitted, scooting forward and leaning on the crumbling wooden fence beside him. "Quite frankly, I'm curious."
"Curious? About what, not havin' an excuse to carve me open on the operating table soon as I get back for once?" Sniper scoffed, taking a long drag from the cigarette between his fingers to mask the ruddy red flush of embarrassment quickly rising to his face. Did he really get beat up that often?
"I—no! No, pshh, of course not." Medic looked offended for a moment, then guilty, then an odd combination of the two as he flapped a dismissive hand in the other direction, his voice pitching up just high enough to be noticeable. "I was just wondering what it is you were up to this time that seemingly... didn't involve putting your life and wellness at risk, is all. Surely I'm allowed to wonder that?"
Sniper eyed him at an angle, weighing his options. It wasn't as though Medic wouldn't believe him if he told him what had happened outright; matter of fact, he'd probably be ecstatic. The doc had a bad habit of getting incredibly excited about things he should probably be terrified of, and was perfectly happy to poke his nose into things he figured he could get away with knowing if he was able—so much so that Sniper had more reason to worry about him venturing off to see the beast in person the moment he got a whiff of its existence than any real consequence to himself, especially considering how many people were banking on him showing up to work and not resting in pieces at the bottom of some deserted forest lake.
"Just out fishing," he said after some time, avoiding Medic's gaze. "Nothin' too extreme. Weren't any crocodiles or anything."
Medic blinked at him, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "We live in a desert."
"Deserts have water," Sniper retorted, growling in annoyance when Medic only narrowed his eyes further in response. "There's a forest there out woop woop, found it on a hunting trip. Didn't think it’d be as lush as it was, but it ain't the strangest thing to pop up out here."
"Hmm." Medic stroked his chin, looking Sniper over like a particularly intriguing specimen. Said specimen was very quickly starting to regret remaining in the conversation. "Hmmmm."
"Doc." His voice was a warning monotone. "I don't have time for this."
"And yet you have time to fish? Curious..." Medic's eyes narrowed even further. He leaned in uncomfortably close to Sniper in a gesture that might have seemed menacing to him if it didn't also make him substantially more annoyed.
"No, no it ain't. It's Sunday, I had free time, I spent it fishing. Simple as." Sniper briefly considered making a break for the door, or maybe for the van, then scrapped the thought. Medic was like a wolf in many ways; by far, the most notable was that he only closed in when you started to run.
"Fishing for what? Eels? Piranhas? Stingrays? Krakens?" Medic was pacing around behind him now, eyes narrowed so much it was unlikely he could actually see out of them anymore. Sniper pointedly refused to turn his head and follow the motions. "What, exactly, were you searching for in this so-called 'lake'?"
"Fish, doc." Sniper took another drag. He was so tired. "Carp, salmon, whatever—just fish. You know, the kind you eat?"
"And ab-solutely nothing of note occurred?" Medic quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head in what many on base liked to refer to as his 'calling your bullshit' face, though this time it lacked the accompanying pen and clipboard. "No animal attacks, no mysterious strangers, no mythical beasts attempting to communicate with you? You're certain?"
"...yeah." Sniper fought the urge to react to any one of the scenarios listed. As of now, he couldn't be too sure about any of them anyway. "Yeah, I'm certain."
"But are you really certain?"
Sniper met his gaze and leveled him with a look that alone could have razed a building to ashes. Medic courteously withered under the force of it, shrinking away and pouting as if he'd been physically scorned.
"Very well, then." He pushed back from the fence and gave an exaggeratedly disappointed sigh. "I suppose I'll see you at pregame time tomorrow?"
"Reckon." Sniper didn’t take his eyes off him. Medic huffed indignantly, but at least he could tell when he was being turned away.
The hem of his coat swept briefly against Sniper's leg as he turned on his heel and started for the door. Sniper watched as he stepped inside, throwing one last suspicious look over his shoulder just before he left, and shook his head. Drama queen.
After a few more minutes of enjoying the silence, he flicked the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his heel. There was work to do tomorrow, and it wouldn't do him well to sit here mulling over the creature he fished up in a desert oasis with time he could be spending getting ready. That was something he could deal with when work was over.
...and when he was sure that Medic wouldn't try and hitch a ride to the lake the next time he went. Crafty, that one.