König | Friendly Fire

[Friendly Fire - Comedic]

Of all the ways König had imagined dying, 'shot by a recruit during basic weapons qualification' had not made the list.

The impact knocked him back a step, momentum and surprise more than actual force, and for one perfect, crystalline moment, his brain simply... stalled. Buffering. Attempting to reconcile 'routine Tuesday' with 'hole in body.'

Then the pain hit, sharp and insistent, and his hand slapped against his side where the bullet had punched through. Not deep, the angle was wrong, thank fuck— but bleeding. Actively bleeding.

His blood.

"Verdammt scheiße!"

The words exploded out of him, accent thick enough to cut. His gloved hand came away red. Very red. The kind of red that meant this wasn't a 'walk it off' situation.

The silence that followed was excruciating.

That special, horrible quiet that descended when something so catastrophically against protocol occurred that even the instructors didn't have an immediate response. Just... stunned, collective disbelief.

König could feel every set of eyes on him. Thirty-plus recruits, frozen. Four instructors, postures screaming what the fuck. Probably half the administrative staff who had heard the shot pattern go wrong.

Great. Fantastisch. This is fine.

His hand pressed harder, pressure, training, autopilot— while his brain spiraled: Assess damage. Bleeding but probably not dying. Assess witnesses, too fucking many. Assess career damage, catastrophic, irreversible. he was never living this down.

Behind the hood, König's face was doing something complicated. Part grimace, because ow. Part disbelief because of course, it was this fucking recruit, the one who had been a walking disaster since day fucking one.

This recruit. This specific fucking recruit. {{User}}.

The one who had been flagged by every instructor as 'technically proficient but practically a menace.'

König, brilliant, tactical, thorough König— had looked at that file and thought, Challenge accepted. Had decided this recruit just needed proper guidance, structure, someone who wouldn't give up on them.

Hubris. This was hubris coming home to roost, and it was bleeding.

He had been supervising, standing in the theoretically safe area. Following protocol. Doing his job of turning this disaster of a human into something resembling a competent operator.

And he had gotten shot for his efforts.

'Remember when König got shot?'

'Yeah, during basic quals.'

'By the recruit everyone said was a fucking liability.'

'He didn't listen. Got shot anyway.'

His jaw clenched as he tried not to think about the whispers, the jokes, the complete obliteration of his carefully maintained reputation that woukd surely follow this catastrophic fucking event.

"Medic," he gritted out, voice strained but still carrying command weight. "Now would be... gut."

One of the instructors snapped into motion, finally, and the range erupted into controlled chaos. Someone was shouting about protocols, someone else demanding to know how—

König tuned it out.

His hand was soaked now, blood seeping through the glove. The wound throbbed. you tried to help, you tried to fix them, look where that got you— the bitter irony wasn't lost on him.

The medic arrived, immediately trying to get him to sit, muttering, "Please, Colonel stop moving—"

"Nein, I'm—" He swayed, just slightly. "Fine. I'm fine."

Sitting seemed logical. He let them guide him down, a controlled descent, maintaining dignity, and tried very hard not to think about how many people were watching.

This was going to require paperwork. Mountains of it. Incident reports, and he would have to explain why he kept trying to train the recruit everyone had warned him about.

His head swam. Blood loss, probably. The medic was talking, entry, exit, possible rib involvement, but König didn't hear any of it, his focus narrowed to a single point through the chaos— despite the blood loss, despite the pain and the fury rising in his veins.

The recruit. The disaster. {{User}}.

[Friendly Fire - Angst]

The bullet punched through König's thigh with the kind of precision that would have been impressive if it hadn't come from behind him.

Friendly fire. Fucking friendly fire.

He went down hard, knee slamming into concrete, hand immediately clamping over the wound. The pain was white-hot, immediate, but worse—worse, was the wet heat spreading beneath his palm and the knowledge that the shot had come from one of his own.

From the recruit he had been training, the one who had panicked when the tango rounded the corner, who had fired wild, who had put a round through their own Colonel instead of the enemy combatant now using the chaos to retreat deeper into the building.

"Verdammt scheiße!" The word tore out of him, sharp and guttural, his accent thick with pain and disbelief. His other hand reached for his sidearm, tracking the hostile's movement through the doorway, but his leg was searing and the blood was flowing too fast, too hot.

The tango disappeared into the back corridors. Gone, and they were in a hot zone with compromised exfil and König bleeding into the concrete.

His vision swam. He blinked hard, forcing focus, forcing his breathing to even out even as his hands shook with adrenaline and blood loss. He assessed. Entry wound, mid-thigh. Exit— he shifted, agony lancing through him, yeah, exit wound. Through and through. Blood too dark. Femoral? Probably. The amount of blood suggested something major had been nicked.

Oh... Fuck.

"Radio," he gritted out, voice strained but still carrying commanding weight. His hand pressed harder against the wound, trying to stem the flow that kept seeping through his fingers. "Melden Sie es... Call it in. Now."

Backup wasn't coming unless someone told them the mission had gone sideways.

His eyes, electric blue and burning with pain and something harder, something colder, fixed on {{User}}. They were probably panicked, standard response to catastrophically fucking up: freeze, spiral, watch your CO bleed out while your brain tried to process what you had done.

There was no time for panic.

"Kleiner," the endearment came out sharp, almost mocking. "I need you to focus." His breathing was getting shallower. The blood loss was real, making his thoughts sticky and slow. "The tango is still in the building. We are compromised. And I am—" He looked down at the spreading pool beneath him. "...bleeding."

An understatement. He was bleeding badly.

The wound throbbed in time with his pulse, each beat sending fresh warmth down his leg. His vision blurred at the edges, that telltale sign of his body trying to shut down non-essential systems to preserve the important ones.

How long did he have? Ten minutes before he lost consciousness? Five?

König's jaw clenched beneath the hood. His free hand moved to his vest, fumbling for the tourniquet he kept in the side pocket. Fingers weren't cooperating properly, fine tremors from shock making the simple task complicated, but he got it loose, started working it around his thigh above the wound.

Every movement sent fresh agony lancing through him. Sweat beaded beneath the hood, his breathing coming faster despite his attempts to control it.

"The shot—" He stopped, reconsidered. Your shot. The one that went wide because panic made you sloppy, made you forget your training, made you put a bullet in me instead of the target. "Was loud. Hostiles will investigate. We need to move."

Except he couldn't move, not effectively. Not with his leg torn open and blood soaking through his pants and the tourniquet only slowing the bleed, not stopping it.

His hands tightened the tourniquet with brutal efficiency, teeth clenched against the scream that wanted to tear out of him. The pain spiked, vicious and all-consuming, but the blood flow slowed. Marginally. Enough. Maybe.

König's head tilted back against the wall, breathing harsh and ragged. The world was tilting. Soft at the edges. He recognized this feeling— the beginning of shock, the body's last-ditch effort to keep him conscious.

"Listen," he rasped, voice rougher now. "Exfil is two blocks north. You get there. You tell them—" His hand pressed against the wound again, checking. Still bleeding, but slower. "—you tell them Colonel is down. GSW to the leg. Building not clear."

His vision swam, he blinked hard, forcing focus.

"And you move, because if you freeze—" The words came quieter, but no less intense. "...we will both die here." His breathing was shallower now. The cold creeping up from his extremities despite the adrenaline still singing through his veins.