MB Short Story: Duel (Ambrosia Version) (Patreon)

Ambrosia Kim was cold.

Not emotionally—although some, her most recent assignment among them, would claim that she’d long lost the capacity to feel compassion. Contrary to popular belief, however, Ambrosia’s inner life was not a frozen tundra, and she experienced feelings beyond the sliding scale that Justice had doodled in the margin of UCRT’s last mission report, which ranged from “Annoyed” to “Asshole” and had been accompanied by penciled cartoons of an angry-eyebrowed penguin which Ambrosia didn’t personally feel that she resembled.

Nick Wiseman was wrong. Ambrosia, if anything, felt too much. But passion was frequently inconvenient given her line of work, so she’d learned to compartmentalize for the sake of professionalism.

Chicago’s winter wasn’t so easily ignored. And Ambrosia Kim, usually a master at ignoring any and all discomfort, was cold.

A polar vortex had hit the city yesterday, plunging the temperature to -10°Fahrenheit. As Ambrosia was currently walking against the wind, it felt even colder. In fact, “cold” was too mild a term. This day was freezing, glacial, frigid, and gelid, and it had turned Ambrosia’s mood similarly biting. Thus, when she walked through Aeon’s front doors to discover her twenty-three-year-old charge engaging in a mock swordfight using a mop with UCRT’s Fortitude (from whom Ambrosia really expected better), something inside her snapped.

She inserted herself between the two men, grabbing Nick’s mop mid-downward swing. The stick stung as it hit her palm, but Ambrosia refused to let it show. She pushed the pain aside, again compartmentalizing until she was alone in her office later and could administer an ice pack.

“I take this to mean that you’ve finished last mission’s paperwork,” Ambrosia said, her tone chillier than the gust of snowy wind that had accompanied her through the door.

Nick gave Gray a pleading looking, but his friend only shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “I already finished my report. This is on you.” Without reinforcements, Nick forced his lips into an unconvincing smile.

“My report is almost done,” he said.

“You don’t get a gold star for filling out your name, Wiseman,” Ambrosia snapped as she suppressed a shiver. The snow outside had gotten past the ankle of her boots, and her socks were beginning to feel wet as it melted. “Finish your job. Act like a child on your own time.”

“It not even eight am yet,” Nick said defensively. “Technically, I’m not on duty.”

“Ah,” Ambrosia said.

“Ah?” Nick looked at him suspiciously, ignoring Gray’s frenetic hand signals to let the matter rest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick demanded.

Ambrosia’s socks were now fully soaked through with melted snow; the sooner this conversation ended, the sooner she could go to his office and take them off. She kept a spare pair in the bottom drawer of her desk. Most people never realized that warm, dry socks were a luxury, but Ambrosia had gone without them enough in her past that she’d sworn to never do so again. She glanced longingly at the elevator.

“What’s ‘ah’ supposed to mean?” Nick repeated.

Ambrosia sighed. “Simply that I should’ve already determined you for someone who’s sense of duty is dictated by the clock.”

“Okay, first of all,” Nick held up a finger to Ambrosia’s face, “it’s called a healthy work-life balance. Look it up. And second,” he leaned in close with a grim expression, “you don’t know me.”

“Just finish the paperwork,” Ambrosia said. She left, pretending not to notice the restraining hand that Gray put on Nick’s shoulder. She had no desire to waste yet more time listening to Nicholas Wiseman justify why he behaved like a child.

Not when she needed new socks.

* * * *

“She’s right, you know,” Gray said as the elevator doors closed behind Ambrosia’s back.

Nick’s eyes flashed with wounded betrayal and a hint of anger. He expected this kind of lecture from his parents but from Gray? He was supposed to be in Nick’s court. It was in The Official Bro Code, which Nick had jokingly written up on the back of a bar napkin one night while drunk but truthfully took to heart even when sober. Tenet #5 (he’d either skipped Tenets #1 through #4, or lost the napkins they were recorded on) proclaimed that bros backed each other up. Gray was supposed to be Nick’s bro.

“You’re taking Kim’s side?” Nick demanded. “Seriously?”

“Not about needing to be a workaholic,” Gray said. “We couldn’t do our job if we didn’t take time to unwind.” He placed their mops back in the janitor’s cart just as she returned to get a new one, Ambrosia having created in a new puddle of melted snow near the entrance. “When was the last time you submitted a report on time?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?” Gray challenged. The lights above the elevator showed that Ambrosia had finished ascending, and he pushed the up button to call it back for him and Nick.

“Mission reports only care about the things we did wrong,” Nick grumbled. “It’s for the insurance company. And filling them out is—”

“Depressing,” Gray finished. “I’m aware. But avoiding doing them properly doesn’t make them go away.”

Nick groaned. “Thanks, Mom.”

Gray didn’t get it. There was good reason that Nick avoided filling out mission reports. How was anyone supposed to enjoy writing a dissertation on every single one of their leadership flaws, especially when even the most minor mistake often resulted in someone getting injured? Mission reports, especially the official mumbo jumbo that Kim wanted him to fill out, were nothing but self-flagellating torture. Repetitive, boring, self-flagellating torture.

This wasn’t to say that Nick didn’t try to improve and learn from his mistakes. He did, constantly. One of the reasons that he and Gray had become such close friends was that they were both usually the last to head home. They spent hours training together and solving practice op scenarios. It was why Kim’s accusation of indifference had rankled Nick so much—because it wasn’t true.

Nick’s problem didn’t lie with putting in the work. It was in the reports themselves. Because reducing the people whom he failed to save into statistics? That killed him. The way Unity determined mission success was even worse than renumerating every one of his in-field mistakes on paper instead of just in his head twenty-four-seven. If UCRT saved nine out of ten victims, and he had to record it as a ninety-percent success rate. As if letting a civilian die at the hands of a Ment renegade earned his team a fricking A.

It didn’t. Kim talked about mission success like it was some sort of graded score, but Nick couldn’t help but view it as a simple Pass versus Fail. Saving nine out of ten people wasn’t a win, no matter what the paperwork claimed. And, yeah, maybe he dealt with that by doodling a few random cartoons in the margins. Kim was a stickler, but Nick had thought Gray of all people would be able to understand.

“Hey.” Gray’s face was right in front of Nick’s, the taller man having bent close while Nick was spacing out. “If I could do your personal mission reports for you, I would. You know that, right?”

Then again, maybe Gray did understand. Maybe that’s why he’d taken over all the other paperwork and post-op tactical evals without Nick asking. He met Gray’s eyes, and his friend wordlessly nodded.

Yeah. Gray understood.

Nick grinned and grabbed back his mop from the janitorial cart. He pointed its end at Gray’s stomach. “We have five minutes until Kim comes back down to chew us out again,” he said. “En garde!”