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Chapter Text

Margo could not confidently say she was getting the best of grades.

That wasn’t to say she wasn’t understanding things, but proving it was another matter entirely. Margo understood bodies. She understood how to handle injuries, how to treat viruses. She had practiced her sutures and how to pack wounds and labeled body parts until her head spun. Margo understood how to take care of people. 

But Margo did not do well on tests. Practical application she excelled at. And perhaps some of her ideas on methodology were a bit… concerning. But she was still trying her best, and she desperately wanted to pass. 

She hadn’t come two thirds of the way to quit, anyhow. Not like the boy who’d briefly been her neighbor. Was he still living there? She wasn’t sure. 

The scarab next door in the dorms had quickly fallen in with the wrong crowd. He was still enrolled, for now, but Margo wasn’t sure she ever saw him go to class. She hadn’t even caught his name, for how little she’d seen him. She knew everyone else in the hallway. She kept up to date with them, letting them come to her with little scrapes and scratches like the elected floor mother. She didn’t mind it. It was practice, after all.

That was how it had been, up until the night Margo was studying for her finals and found her window being forced open from the outside. She watched in stunned silence as the beetle hovered at her window, wiggling it open and mutely climbing in. He must have counted the windows wrong, because he looked absolutely shocked when he looked up and met her bright pink eyes with his hazed yellow. 

Margo did not scream. Margo was a composed, relaxed individual who kept her calm under every circumstance. She did, however, tilt her head to the side curiously. “Lost, are we?”

The beetle swore quietly under his breath but he just slid the window shut as quickly and quietly as he could manage. “Get the lights off,” he rasped to her, sounding urgent and, dare Margo say it, scared. 

Something about the look of him made her do it immediately. She lunged across the desk for the lightswitch. Her dorm room plunged into darkness and the beetle huddled by the window to wait for… something. 

Margo couldn't help herself. She sidled up next to him to watch out the window as well. The beetle was taller than her by quite a bit, she was able to slide in beneath him to see. He held his breath, and she could hear a quiet concerned sound. 

Margo watched with him as a group of mobians and humans ran by, shouting to one another. They didn't pause by the dorms. The beetle let out the breath he was holding and deflated a bit. 

Margo could smell blood. She looked up at the beetle- not much older than herself. In the dark she could still see his eyes. Bright and reflective, built to catch the light. He must’ve been able to see pretty well in the dark. “I'm Margo,” she told. “Got a name?”

The bug stepped away from her and the window. “Sorry about that,” he said instead of answering her question, flicking the lightswitch back on. “Won't happen again.”

Margos' expression remained carefully neutral. “It's alright,” she said evenly. “I like helping.” Neither one of them moved for a moment, but Margo was fine with that. She took the opportunity to scan the bigger mobian down, looking for the source of the tinny scent.

She found it pretty easily once she knew to look. His shoulder was torn open, like he'd barely avoided being fully shot. He held himself ridgedly, careful not to put much strain on it. His body language read out the pain he was in. Must have been deep. “Do you want more help?” asked Margo, pointing to the bloodied limb. 

Beetles and other mobians had plating in certain areas, but it could still be broken. It wasn’t like a real exoskeleton. Stitching it was a bit odd but doable. Margo had practiced on fake patients. 

Margo hadn’t ever practiced on a real patient before. 

The bug just looked at her. “Ferrell,” he said after a moment. “No hospitals. They'll be looking for me there. They know they tagged me.”

Margo motioned him forward and grabbed her practice suture kit. “No hospital,” she agreed easily. “I'm a med student. I can handle that.”

Ferrell moved slowly, sitting on the floor against the bed where she directed. He stared at her with undisguised bewilderment. “Why are you helping me? I just broke into your room,” he rumbled, but let Margo pull up her chair and lay his arm across her lap. 

“Well, I believe you were trying to break into your room,” she reasoned, fishing a first aid kit out of her bags and grabbing a lighter. “You were running away from someone, anyways. You weren’t looking to hurt me or you’d have done it already.” Step one: stop the blood. 

The injury was just deep enough that she wasn't confident it would heal without stitching. Still bleeding, as well. Margo slathered her hands in hand sanitizer after pulling off her gloves and pulled gauze from the kit to press over the long, messy injury. 

Ferrell didn't flinch despite the pressure she applied. He stared at the wall, and heaved a sigh that felt too weary for someone so young. “I was,” he said. “Trying for my room. Yeah. Got into some trouble…”

“I get it,” Margo said, waiting patiently as she held firm. “Trouble happens, no matter where you go. I figure I can either whine about it or help people when it comes around.”

Ferrell smiled a little at that, and Margo realized his face wasn't as harsh as she'd thought it was. He was big and the carapace on his head was all sharp angles, but the smile softened him significantly. “Thanks,” he said, and he sounded sincere. 

“Don't thank me yet,” Margo said airily. “We've only just started. We haven't even gotten to the fun part yet. You might not wanna come back after that.”

Farrell's expression slipped into light confusion but he didn't argue. He let Margo hold the gauze for the next little while in silence.

He sighed again. “You're… really not going to ask any questions?”

“I mean, if you want to talk about how you got shot, be my guest,” Margo replied, starting to peel the bloodied gauze back. She hummed softly at it, pleased with the now sluggish and lazy rate at which it was bleeding. 

That would work. 

Step two: disinfect.

Ferrell was staring at her again as she pulled peroxide out of her first aid kit. “Really?”

“You're hurt,” Margo said plainly. “I don't care how it happened, I'm gonna fix it.”

“Even if I deserved it?”

He must have thought that would throw her off. She just shrugged and poured a generous amount of the disinfectant over his arm, letting it drip onto the carpet. He hissed in surprise- Margo knew it stung. 

“Even if you deserved it,” she echoed. “I'm not a cop, I'm a doctor. Or, I will be. My job is to keep people alive and well, not to decide if they get punished for what they did or didn't do.”

Ferrell nodded slowly. “So are you gonna… call the cops?”

Margo shrugged again. “All I see is a guy bleeding in my dorm. I don't think the cops need to know,” she said, watching the peroxide bubble away. She smiled and picked up her lighter. 

Step three: sutures. 

Ferrell just stared at her as she passed the flame over her needle and hemostats. It wasn't an ideal way to sterilize but it'd work. She threaded the needle and leaned over his arm. 

“Now, try not to move around,” she said. “This'll pinch.”

Ferrell watched intensely. Margo considered telling him to look away but decided against it. His face blanched a bit when she started piercing the skin. Plated skin wasn't completely hard- her professors had compared it to sewing leather or something similar. Margo needed to apply more pressure than she'd usually like to get the needle through his skin at all. 

“Sorry,” she found herself saying, but when she looked up, his head was lulled back against the bed. His face was pale. His breathing even and slow. 

He'd fainted. The big, scary criminal scarab that lived next door had fainted. Margo huffed a breathy laugh and went about her work, pretending it was just another row of practice stitches.

She was actually pretty happy with the row of 6 knots when she was done. It didn't look too bad at all. She threw a generous slather of antibiotic cream over it, covered it up and wrapped it well before Ferrell started to stir again.

He didn't move at first, his yellow eyes fluttering as he squinted at the ceiling. Margo had already gone back to her textbook. “Do you want some water?” she asked when she heard him finally move. Ferrell just stared across the dorm room at her. Slowly, he nodded. A cup was placed in his hands, followed by a fistful of basic painkillers. 

“What happened?”

“You fainted,” Margo supplied lightly. “I finished up while you took your power nap. Probably for the best.” Ferrell sipped the water and swallowed the pills, eyeballing Margo’s wrap job on his arm. He lowered the cup and started to stand. “Move slow,” Margo warned. “If you fall over it's gonna hurt.”

He listened at least, rising up to his full height slowly enough that he didn’t sway. He looked down at Margo. “What do I owe you?”

“Dinner might be nice,” Margo rattled off immediately. “Or more coffee, I have finals coming up. Oh, I could go for a pizza–”

“You saved my butt and all you want is pizza? ”

“I mean, you weren’t gonna die from that,” she reasoned. “Just a little thing, don’t worry about it.”

Ferrell stared at her, gestured a bit with his uninjured arm. Margo just smiled at him. “We could start a tab instead if you want,” she mused. “I work cheap. Look out, I might ask you for two pizzas.”

Ferrell just stared at her, looking like he was doing math in his head. He worked his jaw up and down a couple times and tilted his head to the side. “I guess that works,” he said slowly. “If I… need a hand again, can I come back?”

Margo thought about it. Free practice, and he wouldn’t go complain about her work to anyone because he was hiding in the first place. She smiled at Ferrell and stuck her paw out. “Anytime, darling,” she said easily. 

They shook on it.

Chapter Text

He was true to his word. The scarab returned with pizza and when Margo asked if he wanted some he looked genuinely surprised and then sat on her floor and ate it while making small talk. 

And with that, a routine was established. Margo didn't pry into his likely illegal activities, and Ferrell showed up with pizza, coffee, and other snacks regularly. He’d sit on her floor and they’d talk about shows, about Margo’s tests. He’d help her with flashcards and read over her homework, even if he didn’t know much about what it was on. It offset the times he showed up with usually minor injuries that he'd ask her to take a look at. 

It went on like that until Margo flunked out of school. Her parents were unimpressed and made it clear she was  not welcome back home, but Ferrell was standing there outside the dorms with coffee. He’d watched her drop her luggage and bundled her into a hug she hadn't known she desperately wanted. Margo had balled her fists in his tank top that day and sobbed into his chest until she could finally take a breath without shaking. 

Ferrell hadn't even flinched. And when she'd finally managed to get off him, wiping her face on her sleeve, he'd offered her… a sort of job. He'd come clean, laying all his cards out there and then. Telling her in a soft voice exactly who he was and what he was doing. Apparently he was caught up in a mob war of sorts– and he had his eye on the throne. He wanted to get to the top of the pile, and he plainly asked if she wanted to give medical care to folks who couldn't go to hospitals for one reason or another. 

Margo knew she should have walked away then. Margo knew this was a bad, bad , idea. That going down this road with Ferrell would mean she couldn't turn back. 

That he was in trouble, all the time, just like she suspected. A criminal. A thug. Likely even a killer, and if not, he'd become one. He was probably moving drugs. He was probably selling illegal weapons. Who knew what else he was up to. Margo certainly didn’t know. 

And yet, when she looked at him, promising that he'd do everything to keep her safe so she could just help people, she believed him. She saw the man who'd looked utterly shocked that he was being offered kindness. So maybe, just maybe, if she followed him down into the dark, she could see that look again on new faces. Help people that wouldn't even try to get help otherwise. 

After drying her eyes and cleaning the fog off her glasses, she'd agreed. 

And that was that.

Years flew. Under Ferrell and his growing gang's protection, Margo found a place to live that would have enough space and started up something you could maybe call a practice. Certainly not a legal one, but her clientele didn't care about silly things like laws. They cared about getting their various bullet holes stitched up by someone who didn't ask questions and took cash instead of insurance they didn't have. 

Margo learned to order drugs from questionable sources and check those drugs upon arrival. She got Ferrell to help her manage getting the fake info she needed to order what equipment she figured she'd need to do her bare minimum of care. She learned to never go out empty handed, and ended up putting a scalpel in a guy's throat when he tried to jump her. She never had seen that one's face, and she hadn’t cared to go back. 

By the time that happened her morals had already slid far to one side. 

Ferrell still came by often. He brought food, shipments and patients. He threatened those patients if they got aggressive with Margo at all, and it always made her mouth twist into a grin. It was a weird thing, but she could see the care he had for her in those threats. He helped her install straps on her main work table so that she wouldn't get punched a second time by someone she was operating on. 

He held the ice to her jaw the first time, after she'd finished her work and he'd had to hold someone down bodily so that nothing else happened to her. And if he'd kissed her that night, no one needed to know. She might even have kissed him back. Who's to say?

Margo Crobar, 2/3rds a doctor and now the main medical care for Ferrell's growing slice of the underworld of Mobotropolis, was happy. She was taken care of, and she got to take care of people. And as years passed, she could start to see the long game Ferrell was playing. Her scarab was ambitious and sharp. He’d keep taking territory until he had it all, at this rate.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who saw it. 

It was pouring rain outside. Margo could only tell because she could hear it pounding on the metal roof of her home, tucked conveniently in the heart of Ferrell's terf. No one was in, she had no one to be looking after, it was just her, a cup of hot chocolate that she may have put a little something special in, and her bed. 

Margo was warm, comfy and content. Nothing could ruin this night as she laid there in her silk nightgown, sipping away at her drink and flicking through TV channels. Only one thing could have improved it, and he was out doing who knows what that Margo didn't particularly want the details of. 

And then, as if summoned there by the mere act of thinking about him, Ferrell was banging on her door. She already knew it was him because they had long established a specific knock, though she'd never heard it pounded quite so hard. 

Margo was moving through her home before he'd finished. A pit of dread opened up inside her stomach, making the alcohol tinted hot chocolate churn. It was late. It was far later than Ferrell ever turned up for a social visit. Someone must have been hurt. Someone must have been dying in his arms as he dragged them to her doorstep. Maybe it was one of those guys he called friends– Kurt? Lance? Someone else? Reaching the door felt like it took too long, even as she scurried through the halls. 

Margo unlocked the several deadbolts Ferrell had installed for her and pulled the door open. The sound of the pouring rain hit her first, lightning flashing behind the figure on her patio. Her immediate question of who was injured died on her tongue because it was just Ferrell standing in her doorway, leaning against the frame like it was the only thing keeping him upright. He was breathing hard, gasping breaths like he’d run here from halfway across the city. 

Ferrell's eyes found hers and lit up with relief. He started to move forward towards her, but his eyelids fluttered and his irises rolled back as he tumbled forward onto his face in Margos front room. It was at that point Margo realized he was trailing a frankly obscene amount of blood behind him.

Margo did not scream. Someone did, she could hear it distantly ringing in her ears– but Margo was a calm, collected, composed, relaxed individual who kept it together under every circumstance and there was no way that she screamed about a little blood. Or a lot of blood.  She would handle this the way she handled everything that came her way. 

Step one: get him inside. 

Margo had to catch her breath. That foreign sound ringing in her ears, it sure sounded a lot like someone freaking out but that couldn't have been her. She was busy. She was grabbing Ferrell's arm and looping it around her shoulders and someone was saying his name over and over and almost begging him to wake up but that wasn't productive at all so–

Inch by inch, she managed to drag him out of the rain and clear of the door. Dropping his arm again, Margo scrambled back over to the door and threw it shut, flipping the deadbolts as quickly as her hands would move. Turning around she was faced with the same kind of problems as she'd just solved: huge patient. No help to move him. He was dead unconscious and unresponsive.

Step two: improvise?

Margo nearly tripped over his arm on her way across the room to tear her way into her main workroom. Ferrell wasn't moving, she'd just have to bring everything to him then. Blood. There was a lot of blood, she'd need to stop the blood first but before that she'd need to figure out where it was coming from. 

The room blurred around her as she mechanically rifled through her supplies, grabbing up rubber gloves and antiseptic and as much gauze and bandages as she could carry. Her face felt wet. Why did her face feel wet? Didn’t matter–

She was back in the foyer. She was kneeling on the floor, noting that the backless tank top and the back of his shorts he usually wore was particularly soaked. Breathe, Margo. Breathe. Find it. Margo started pawing him over, but she didn’t see anything immediately. A cursory search found that the blood was mostly on his back– no. No , it was dribbling out from under his shell on his back, oozing thickly out from between the slit that ran vertically down his spine so that he could open it up and use his…

His wings.

Margo had not wanted to puke looking at an injury in years. She hadn't even seen it yet and already her stomach was twisting, threatening to make more problems for her to solve. She didn't have time for that. She swallowed down the bile in her throat and swiftly cut away what was left of the shirt, throwing it aside. His carapace had hinges at the top, along his shoulders– she'd never had to force it open before but she was already digging her claws under the rim and putting all her weight into hefting the left side up. It was like opening the hood of a car. If the car was your best friend-maybe-more-but-thats-not-getting-addressed and also bleeding profusely. There was a pop that was louder than Margo liked and then she was able to pull up and reveal whatever was waiting for her.

It was like opening the world's worst birthday present. There was the amount of blood she expected, and more. A lot more. Too much. She had to duck her head under his carapace and lean across his back to start packing the wound. His shell hung over her head, apparently willing to stay propped up. Her hands were not shaking. Margo’s hand didn’t shake about things like this.

She didn't look too closely at the damage, her vision blurred. Not yet. She'd have to look at it later, get it closed. For now she just kept piling on gauze, swearing under her breath to herself. Her entire front was slicked in his blood now, uncomfortably warm and sticky. 

Her stomach twisted again as it soaked into her nightshirt and started to dampen the fur along her belly and chest. She reached back and grabbed a large adhesive bandage– this could hold her work in place while she did the other side. She tore the wrapping open with her teeth and peeled it out, she didn't hesitate to smooth it over the wound. All the gauze, slowly soaking red. 

Rinse and repeat. Pop the other side of Ferrell's shell open like a car hood. Pack the wound. Adhesive bandage. 

There was a lot of blood on the floor now. On Margo. She leaned back, having at least stopped the flow of scarlet into the carpet, and leaned over her friend to gently pat his cheek a couple times. Then not so gently a few more times.

Maybe he'd wake up. For just a moment. So she could move him somewhere better. His breathing was shallow, and a lot faster than Margo would've liked. Behind his eyelids she could see his eyes moving, and his face was wrinkled up in pain. His jaw clenched every now and again. He wasn't even really sleeping. He'd just lost too much blood and was in too much pain to keep on being awake. Margo cupped his cheek for just a moment, barely a second, before hauling herself to her feet and sprinting back into her workroom. 

Her brain felt like an overclocked engine. 

Blood loss- Margo didn't know his blood type. That didn’t matter. O negative, she had that in spades, it was all that she kept. IV line- supplies. She tore through her cabinets without care, she was pretty sure something glass hit the floor and shattered but she barely heard it. The supplies for the IV were tossed onto one of her rolling cards and she scrambled across the room to heft an oxygen tank over as well. The lines for that joined the pile of supplies. 

Stitching– he’d definitely need stitches– she’d probably need to cauterize some arteries– Her suture kit was thrown onto the cart, and she grabbed the cautery pen as well. Was that everything? She still had bandaging in the other room. 

That’d do for now, she already didn’t like how long she’d been away from him. 

Margo unlocked the brakes on the cart and shoved it towards the door, going only as slowly as she had to to not knock everything off as she went over the threshold. She was unsurprised, but a little disappointed, to find that Ferrell hadn’t moved at all in her absence, but she parked the cart and got back to work. 

She got him on oxygen first and then knelt down to flip his arm over for an IV. Ever constantly, she found mobians with thick skin (insects, reptiles, the like) annoying to work on. Finding a vein was tricky with the density of their epidermis and Margo could feel the seconds slipping by as she traced along his inner elbow and up to his wrist. Suddenly her gaze flicked up to his back– exposed because she’d forced his shell open, the flesh it covered not thickened .

As long as he didn’t move around unexpectedly, it’d do. She changed targets and got a clean stick on her first try, grinning maniacally and feeling like a genius despite the situation. She hung the saline drip on the cart and mechanically got everything secured and ready. Hung the blood next to the saline drip and clamped this and that, got everything plugged in for his blood transfusion–

Back to the injuries. The bandages were holding, but Margo could tell it wouldn’t last. That’s fine– it hadn’t been applied to last, just to stall. She’d need to get everything properly sealed or that blood transfusion would run right out of him onto the carpet with the rest of the blood he’d lost.

Margo uncapped a bottle of alcohol and generously poured some over her hands before snapping on new rubber gloves. She picked a side and started pulling the bandages back, undoing her work bit by bit to reveal the wound. Antiseptic would hopefully keep him from getting an infection– she did her best but with what she had to work with it still happened quite a bit. 

She started in with her cautery pen, identifying the worst areas and burning them sealed with only slightly unsteady hands. Margo felt a bit like her body was on autopilot. Her hands moved but she didn't really watch them. Her head was spinning because as she worked, inspecting and fixing and burning, she had to look at the long, ugly wound along her patient's shoulder blade. 

Margo had seen a lot of injuries by now. Stabbings. Gunshots. A guy who came in with his thumb cut off. She knew how to ID incidents without being told what happened. Her stomach was rolling again. These weren't the neat wounds of a sharp knife. Or even a dull blade. She steadied her hands again, forcing herself to take a breath as her vision threatened to spin. 

This was a tear . This was two, ugly, messy, disturbing tears along the joints where his wings used to be. How did this happen? Who did this? Why?

A drop of water plinked onto her glove as she worked and she froze a moment to stare at it. Her face was wet again. The sound was back, someone was–

Margo clamped down on that thought, that feeling, and stuffed it down. Down as far as it would go. Swallowed around the lump in her throat and steadied herself. 

It was going to be a long night. She didn't have time for that right now. 

It took ages for Margo to piece his destroyed flesh back together. That was probably the most stitches she'd ever put in one person. When she'd finally been happy enough with her work, she'd slathered on antibacterial gel and stuck fresh bandaging over each side. 

The blood bag had run out by then so she switched him back over to saline and gave him a once over, scribbling down the time and his vitals on a clipboard. She hadn't recorded what he'd had when he got there, but she felt confident saying it was… marginally better. 

Better enough that she ran a painkiller through the IV before going and dragging all the throw pillows off the couch and starting to stuff one under his head. He'd probably hopefully wake up sometime soonish and she could get him into a proper bed. But for now, this would do. 

Margo’s fur felt sticky. Her body ached and her spine complained at her for the way she'd had to sit to treat the wounds. She needed to clean herself up. She knew that, somewhere in her foggy mind. But she found herself laying down another pillow and curling up by Ferrell's face. 

His breathing had leveled out. The hard lines on his face had slackened, smoothing into proper sleep. The painkillers were working. 

Her hands were clean, at least, the gloves had made sure of that. She stared at him as he slept, and ghosted her hand over his cheek again. “Be okay,” she whispered, hating how strained and small she sounded. “Please… be okay.”

Chapter Text

Margo must have fallen asleep. She woke up startled, awareness drilling its way back into her brain and body, lurching upright. Sound hit first, she quickly clocked the barely strangled noise Ferrell was choking on. His gaze tracked her from where he lay, his jaw tight and his eyes bloodshot. 

He was awake– what time was it? 

“Don't move–” Margo blurted, her hand shooting forward to grab his shoulder. The touch worked, any attempt at motion was stopped. “Don't move. Rate the pain.” He swore at her. She'd meant a number but that worked fine. “Don't move, I'll fix it.”

Margo didn't wait to see if he'd listen, she was on her feet again and grabbing the vial off the cart. New syringe. Draw the dose… he was so big. Margo ran a little generous with it.

She didn't hear anything to indicate he was moving against her orders, at least. He'd even kept his shell up and out of the way– good because she could easily see the IV line still secure and working. “Okay, should start easing up in three,” she told him. And really just hoped he'd understood. 

She proceeded with dosing him, and watched as he took a shuddered breath and his body untensed a touch. She set the syringe down and returned to where he could see her, sinking down on her hands and knees in front of his face. 

He looked so tired . Pale and washed out, but he was steadily melting into the floor as the pain was smothered. At least the drugs would smooth out whatever worries he felt for now as well. He drew in a ragged breath. “Why'm I on th'floor…?” His voice sounded awful. Hoarse and crackly, like he’d been screaming and– Margo didn’t want to think about that. “Did I lose bed privileges….?”

Margo couldn't help it. She laughed a little hysterically and gestured to him. “It’s just ‘cause you're really heavy, idiot,” she replied, her voice a bit thick. She scrubbed at her face with the heel of her palm, relief washing over her. “If you think you can get up, I'll take you to bed.”

“Buy me dinner first a’least,” Ferrell mumbled halfway into his pillow. Another little hysteric giggle slipped out of Margo and she thumbed her hand over his cheek, fixing his oxygen line. He looked up at the touch, confusion crossing his features as he seemed to actually look at Margo this time. His brow furrowed slightly. “Ya look gross.”

“You're bad at flirting,” Margo replied flatly, even if he was right. Her fur was crusty, she could feel her hair falling out of its bun and the nightgown felt vaguely stiff and crunchy from all the dried blood all over everything. She might have looked a bit like a murderer. She could deal with that after she got him settled. “I'm gonna pull your IV, we can move it to your arm once you're settled.”

Ferrell just stared back at her. “Who said I was flirting?” Margo just sighed and stood up again, walking around him to the side of his back where she'd put the IV in. He tried to follow her with his eyes, frowning. “Why'd you put it in m’spine?”

“I didn't put it in your spine,” Margoe corrected, giving herself a glob of hand sanitizer and getting new gloves on. “You were kinda bleeding to death and I didn't have time to play guessing games- your veins are hard to find on your arms.”

Ferrell was quiet as she pulled the tape off and removed the catheter. While she was at it she gave his bandages a quick check and decided he could wait a bit longer before they needed changing. Once she leaned out of his space he was looking at her again. “Can I drop my shell back now?” he asked quietly. “Feels weird jus’havin’ it popped open.”

Margo nodded a little. It would provide protection for his injury sites, as well. Useful, even though this entire situation was awful. “Go ahead,” she said with a little gesture. “I didn't hurt you pulling them open right?”

Ferrell lowered his wing covers back into place. With them closed, you couldn't even really notice that he was hurt, and the pained way he held himself would fade as he healed. “Can't tell,” he mumbled. “Prob’ly not you that hurt me. I wasn't fightin’ you...”

Margo swallowed hard around that implication and set it aside for when she'd gotten him moved. Or later. Much later. “We're gonna move slow,” she said instead, coming up to his shoulder. “Start with just sitting up and then tell me how you feel.” She hooked her hand under his arm and started guiding him up as he pushed one of his elbows beneath him to leverage himself upright. Margo hovered, which was a little hilarious because if he went tipping over she wasn’t going to be able to do much to stop him. 

Luckily, although he moved a bit like an old man, he was steady. The blood transfusion had done its job, he no longer looked like a raisin even if he still looked pretty pathetic. Ferrell sat there on his knees and stared groggily at Margo as she fussed and pulled the oxygen tubing away from his face. 

The tank was empty. If he needed more, she'd get it, but for now she just set it all aside. “Feel good still?” Ferrell nodded drowsily and Margo managed a tiny smile. She patted his head. “Good then, up you get.”

It was slow going but Margo was fine with that. She shuffled him along down the hall, passing her couple of guest rooms and herding him straight for her own room. Ferrell didn't comment right away, just stumbling along next to her. She watched the way he walked intensely, studying him. “You’re not walking straight, is it pain or just woozy?” She asked, opening her bedroom door. 

“Are you implyin’ I'm drunk?” he grumbled back at her, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. Woozy then. Ferrell squinted and stopped suddenly at the doorway. “This isn't your guest room.”

“No,” Margo agreed easily. “But if I can't make sure you haven't croaked on me I'm never going to rest.”

Ferrell squinted at her harder. “You don't babysit your patients like this…”

Margo just pulled him forward by the wrist, rolling her eyes. “You're not my usual patients. Now go sit down before you fall down.”

Blessedly, he complied, trailing after her into the room and sinking down onto one side of her absurdly large, for a single ferret, bed. Margo stood in front of him, pulling the blankets out of his way. “Good,” she said gently. “For now you have two jobs. Sleep and tell me if anything hurts.”

Ferrell stared at her with his glazed, drugged eyes. “I can probably manage that,” he mumbled, not resisting as Margo gently pushed him back on the bed. “Can I lay on my back?”

“Lay whichever way is most comfortable,” Margo told him. He gingerly laid down, favoring a side. He seemed to be able to relax fully into the bed and Margo pulled the blanket over him. “I'm going to go get you a new IV setup.” Don’t move, okay?” Ferrell silently pointed at the TV remote and Margo put it in his hand. “Good.”

He was exactly where she’d left him when she returned, flipping channels with half lidded eyes. He was quiet and cooperative as she went through the obnoxious process of getting an IV in his arm and even huffed a quiet thank you once she released him. 

Margo was fairly certain that he’d fall asleep soon. Which meant she could deal with the fact that she was still covered in blood. So she did exactly that, and once she was clean and mostly dry, she crawled into her bed next to Ferrel to wait until he woke up and needed something.

The hours crawled as the first few days passed. Margo kept him on the drugs, making sure there wasn’t a gap in the pain management just yet. Mostly, he slept. He allowed Margo to feed him light foods– mostly crackers and little bits of fruit and whined at her about her lack of professionalism, which sent them both into spiraling cackles. 

He behaved when she needed to change the dressings on his wounds, sitting on the bed with his hard shell held up so she could work. Margo didn’t comment on how it was looking beyond that it was healing. It was messy, and she knew that wasn’t her fault. The way it had looked when he got to her, there was no way she could have put it back together without it being a mangled looking scar. At least it was somewhere nobody would see.

But Margo saw. She smoothed medicine over the stitches and pressed gauze over his shoulder blades and thanked Chaos or whoever was there that he’d survived this. She ghosted a kiss on his forehead once or twice as he slept, resisting the urge to demand he never pull something like this again because she couldn’t take it if she had to see him like that ever again. She proudly stared up at Lance and Kurt when they came by looking for him and said that he was doing great, and that he’d see them as soon as he was ready. 

And between all that she slept, curled on her side in a nest of blankets and watching Ferrell breathe until she managed to drift off herself. They settled into a schedule of drugs, food and wound care. It was predictable and boring and Margo was just fine with that. 

It was because she was so close, her hand loosely on top of his, a finger to his wrist so she could feel his heart beating, that she was able to catch it so quickly when he started having the dreams. She felt him tense first, halfway awake quickly snapping to fully awake. Her glasses were tossed on the desk, but she moved towards Ferrell instead. “Hey,” she began, gripping his arm, feeling the way his muscles strained. Even without her glasses she could see the creases in his face as it pulled into an ugly grimace. His breathing was speeding up, air pulled in in tiny gasps between strangled sounds of what Margo was pretty sure was pain. She shook his arm, leaned over him. “Ferrell, what hurts? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer, trying to yank his arm away instead. He was a lot stronger than her, he easily broke her grip. “O– Off– ge’off–” he cried out, his eyelids fluttering before snapping fully awake and lurching in a way that nearly sent  him off the bed. Margo had her fist balled in his shirt, trying to stop him from falling. He was shaking . Margo hadn’t seen him scared since that first night he’d crawled into her dorm room. Even then, this seemed worse. He blinked at her, swallowing hard, a hand pressed over his heart as he tried to catch his breath. 

Margo couldn’t see the clock on the other bedside table without her glasses, but by her best guess, he wasn’t ready for another dose yet. She didn’t remove her hand from his shirt, just holding his stare. “Are you hurting?” she whispered. “What happened?”

Ferrell’s eyes slowly left her, wandering around the room as if he’d forgotten where he was. He let out a long breath, drawing his knees up and curling forward on them. Making himself as small as he could. “Dream,” he replied hoarsely. “I was back there.”

Margo let go of  his shirt and moved her hand to his knee, scooting closer. “You’re not there,” she murmured. “You’re safe. You’re healing. I’ve got you, until you’re back on your feet.”

He didn’t look up, his brow pinching. “They– They called me a roach ,” he breathed out. “A pest. H–held me down and they–” His voice caught, cracked a bit. He pulled at one of his antennae. Margo pressed into his space, draping her arm over him and gently pulling his hand down so he wouldn't hurt himself. 

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to,” she breathed out, nuzzling her face into his shoulder. She felt his cheek rest against the top of her head, felt the tremble of his frame. Listened to the shaking way he forced himself to breathe. “Your boys came asking after you, I wouldn't be surprised if they dealt with whoever did this by the time you're outta here…”

“It was Roulette,” he admitted. Margo tensed a bit at that. Roulette was one of the oldest mob bosses in the underworld, and as Ferrell's circle grew it made sense that he'd catch her attention at some point. Margo hadn’t realized. “They're not gonna be able to deal with her. I'm gonna have to scrape together some sort of deal or somethin’…”

Margo shushed him softly, trailing her fingers down his nape. “Don't hurt yourself thinking so hard,” she said softly. “That's a problem for when you're better. Right now, you're resting. You'll come up with something.”

Ferrell just nodded, closing his eyes. He felt heavy against her, sagging like the weight of the world was on him. Margo curled her tail around his ankles and held him up. He didn't try to say what exactly they'd done again. Margo didn't need him to.

She had enough of the mental image without him elaborating. She already knew that the spider had her goons pin Ferrell and rip his wings off. It would’ve been easier to kill him, that hadn’t been the point. This had been to send a message. If her goal had been to shake him, it had worked. Ferrell had never seemed so small in all the time Margo had known him.

Margo didn't get involved in that side of Ferrell's business, but tonight she considered it. For just a moment, she considered doing some very nasty things to that spider woman. Margo was creative with medicine, with the body. She could get payback. Margo figured she didn't need all those legs…

Ferrell making a snorting sound and slumping against her side brought her back to reality. Where, despite not having a license, she tried to do no harm unless she absolutely had to. And she'd continue to hold to that as best she could. 

Margo settled him as much as she could, shifting around until his head was in her lap with his arms slung around her waist as he slept. Turned on the TV and laid back, gently tracing shapes with her claws on Ferrell's back as he slept. 

Stood guard to keep his nightmares in check. 

Margo started easing off the meds a week later. With clarity of mind came the full reality of what had happened. Without the euphoric effect of the morphine, care got a bit harder. 

Her… Ferrell was a bit rough around the edges. He always had been. But he'd also always been gentle to Margo, and that softness had been what pulled her in. She had to hang onto that as she worked, because in the wake of losing his wings– losing two limbs, an entire mode of movement, he was having a hard time being soft. But he was trying. She could tell.

Ferrell was hurt far beyond the ugly marks on his back. He was processing something enormous and Margo knew it would take a while for him to come to terms with everything. That was okay. She could wait, she was patient. 

She stood outside the bathroom, leaned against the wall and scrolled on her phone as she waited for him to finish showering. He was finally steady enough that she’d allowed it, though she'd put plastic film over the wounds and capped his IV port before covering it as well. And despite his confidence that he'd be fine, she stayed nearby, listening for him.

Just in case. 

The water shut off and she heard him moving around. The walls weren't exactly thick. He sounded like he was fine but she kept waiting anyway. Finally the door opened and he leaned out to look at her. He looked a lot less ruffled now, wearing sweats and letting his towel hang around his neck. 

Margo smiled at him. “Bet that feels better,” she said softly. “We'll change your bandages and then I'll leave you alone so you can sleep.”

Ferrell made a face but followed her down the hall. Now that he wasn't in danger of dying or sprouting an infection, he'd asked if she wanted him out of her room. Margo had just shook her head. She'd smoothed away bad dreams with quiet words and a hand on his back too many times in the last week to send him away. Honestly, she could have probably sent him packing by now with painkillers in a pill bottle, but she wouldn't say that. 

Ferrell could stay as long as he wanted, even if he got a little terse when she was taking care of the surprise amputation sites. She had long developed tough skin. She knew that he didn't mean it. She knew Ferrell. 

The door creaked as it swung open and Ferrell sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Margo silently collected the supplies and walked up to the bedside, laying her things out on the sheets where he could see. 

Without the high of the drugs, this was so hard for him. Margo let him look over everything, and let the implication that she'd ever do anything to hurt him roll harmlessly off her back. It wasn't personal. And she wouldn't take it that way. 

“I'm going to get up on the bed and move behind you, okay?” Margo asked after she'd given him a moment. He nodded silently, and she hefted herself up onto the bed and crawled behind him where she knelt. “Gonna touch your back,” she announced, before resting her hand against his outer shell. She felt him jolt a little bit as she put her palm against his shell. “Deep breath, hon.”

“I'm not a child,” he snapped, but the tone was already trailing off into regret before he'd even gotten all of it out. He took the breath she'd asked for and let it out slowly. 

“I’m gonna move,” she murmured. Margo gently ran her hand across his back, along to his side where the lip of the shell was. 

They had hurt the joints that let him open his shell. It had taken being on lighter meds for Margo and Ferrell to figure that out. Wrenching him open when he'd been fighting to keep his back safe had done some sort of damage to the hinges, damage that Margo couldn't really assess without some sort of internal scan. He could still use them, but it had weakened the mechanism. It was hard for him to lift them on his own, whatever was wrong sent pain shooting up his neck and across his shoulders. Margo could alleviate that by helping, taking some of the strain and weight off of him. 

Her helping made him anxious, though. Margo didn't take that personally either. The last people who had handled him like this hadn’t been kind. It didn’t matter that it was her, the feeling was likely sending him right back to where he’d been a week ago. 

“Right side,” she told him instead of worrying about him snapping at her. He grunted an agreement and they moved together, Margo simply supporting the motion instead of forcing it. “Left,” she said, and they repeated the movement. 

At least the muscles that let him lock the hinges in place without pain still worked. Ferrell took another deep, intentional breath, and his fingers tangled in the fabric of the sheets at his sides. 

It had only been a week . A week since he’d been thoroughly traumatized, and Margo was certain he’d probably pass a PTSD screening with flying colors. Margo was the person he trusted most in the world, and even her being in his space like this set him on edge. But he allowed it. And despite the fear, Margo could still see his trust through any harsh words he had for her.

“Touching,” Margo murmured, returning her paw to his back, now the uncovered section. She'd figured out that starting away from the actual wound freaked him out less, let him adjust to the feeling. Beetle's backs were rarely touched in the first place. And now his had been mutilated. Margo doubted anyone would ever be in his personal space like this, other than her, ever again. She waited until he got his breathing back to an even pace, but she didn't say anything about it.

The first night they'd had trouble changing the bandages she'd tried to talk him through the fear, the anxiety. She'd ended up getting yelled at and things had rapidly disintegrated into a panic attack from there. 

That had been a bad night. 

Margo let him work through it without words now, simply staying there and not moving. Once he'd gotten a grip again, she informed him that she'd be working on the left side first and then let her hands move that way. Found the edges of the protective film and let him know this would probably pull a bit. 

Margo delicately peeled it off where in the past, on other patients, she'd have yanked it off fast like a bandaid. With Ferrell she used a little rubbing alcohol to dissolve the adhesive, trying to keep the pulling sensation to a minimum. “And… Got it,” she said, tossing the used film aside. “Medical tape coming off now.” 

Rinse and repeat. Gentle, so gentle. Careful not to yank too hard. Talking to him as she did so, keeping him updated on what she was doing in his blind spot. The only reason this worked was because he knew she would be honest with what she was doing. The only reason this worked, even with all the hoops they jumped through, was because Ferrell trusted Margo.

She finished removing the gauze and bandages, throwing them on the floor and out of the way. “This is healing really well,” she said to him. “I think we can remove the stitches in about a week, if you keep on track. No signs of infection, thank Chaos.”

“How's it look?”

Margo froze. He hadn't asked that yet and she hadn't said anything about it. She sighed softly, picking up the bottle of antiseptic and pressing a cloth just below the wound to catch the liquid. “Cleaner incoming,” she said, beginning to douse the area. “It… it's not my best work, actually. It was really… Traumatic injuries like this are difficult to put back together neatly, Ferrell.”

He huffed out a breath, but he didn't move from under her hands. “Was kinda hoping it looked better than it felt,” he mumbled.

“You've got my record for most stitches used,” Margo said. “I'm not gonna tell you how it looked when you got here, you'd throw up. We'll just say it was like… a really nasty 5000 puzzle that I had to put together at high speed.” Ferrell just sighed, deflating a bit. Margo let the silence hang for a moment, wiping off the bundle of healing flesh. “Do you want to see?”

Ferrell's body tensed under her hand. She informed him that she was reapplying the medicine that was doing such a good job of keeping infection away and then started doing just that. “It can wait,” he said after a moment. “I'll… look when it's more healed. No sense making myself lightheaded.”

Margo gently squeezed his shoulder. “Whatever you want,” she said.

It went on in mostly silence from there, only broken up by Margo narrating her work. That was fine. 

Margo knew Ferrell. And she knew he’d get through this, like everything else he’d gotten through in life. 

Another week passed. They sat in Margo's illegal OR and she talked her entire way through removing sixty four stitches from Farrells back. He apologized under his breath for the few times he flinched under her touch, laying on his stomach on her table with his shell propped up. 

He'd offered to let her use the restraints. Margo had vetoed that immediately. She didn't need to make him feel trapped while he was allowing her to work on his weak spots. She didn’t need to make this more like what had happened.

It went just fine, if a little slowly, and when she was done Margo snapped a picture on her phone like he asked so he could finally look at the damage. The scars were a bit thick already. Margo knew that would likely get worse as they healed up. 

Ferrell handed her phone back and gave her a weak, tiny smile. “I think I owe you more than a pizza for this one,” he said. “For… all of this.” That was about as close to an apology for any mean words that had slipped out as she was going to get. Crime lords weren't good at apologies. At being gentle. At love, at trust. 

That was okay with Margo. She knew him well enough to hear what he didn't say with words. She had his love, his trust, because she'd seized those things long before he'd become a crime lord. Margo saw the parts of Ferrell no one else saw, like the scars where he'd lost his wings and his heart.

Margo laid her hand over his and squeezed it tight.  “It's okay,” she told him. “Make it two pizzas and a coffee and we'll be even.”