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Natasha made sure the door to her small office was locked before she collapsed onto the small cot shoved between two bookshelves. She ripped off the red ribbon tied around her arm and the glass vial she wore as a necklace, tossing them haphazardly onto her pillow. She pulled her hair down, and scratched her scalp with one hand while tugging on the buttons of her outfit with her other. The clinic never closed, but she had enough nurses watching over the patients in the front that Natasha allowed herself a few hours of rest every once in a while. Above her, the singular lightbulb in the office flickered and cast weird shadows across the walls.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the dingy mirror she had set on one of her shelves, and cringed. When was the last time she washed herself? Or slept a full 8 hours? The second Natasha thought about properly sleeping, her mind reminded her about the piles of paperwork on her desk out in the clinic as well as her other duties. Not that the Underworld required any of the bureaucratic reportings or filings that the Overworld’s clinics did, but Natasha liked to remain organized. She had to be organized. The Underworld deserved the best. They deserved better than what they’d had. Natasha rubbed her face and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of rubbing alcohol and latex that clung to her leather glove before carefully pulling it off. She allowed herself to take her time completely disrobing, and carefully hung her white coat and insulated undersuit up on small hooks she had nailed into the wall some years ago when she took over the clinic from… from him.
There was a knock on her door, as if whoever dared disturb her few moments of solitude just knew that Natasha was freshly naked. She groaned. “Who is it?”
“Just another delivery, my fair lady!” The voice beyond the door was light, self assured, and not at all fearful of any consequences that could come from knocking at this hour of night.
Natasha wrapped her single blanket around her shoulders to make herself decent, and unlocked her door to crack it open. “Sampo, do you know what time it is?”
Sampo put his hands up defensively, but his lips curled into a mischievous smile. “I was just leaving.”
“No, you can stay.” Natasha didn’t know why she was opening her door further. She pulled it open just enough that Sampo could step in if he wanted to. His expression changed, his eyes went to the clothing on their hooks behind her, and while his smile didn’t change- Natasha noticed the way his eyes creased and his eyebrows furrowed.
“Miss Natasha, are you well?” He asked quietly, almost too quietly. She appreciated him not asking loud enough to alert the others in the clinic just beyond him. She found herself shrugging, and Sampo finally stepped inside her office.
Natasha shut the door behind him, and sat herself back down on her cot, pulling her blanket tighter around her. Sampo sat himself down on the floor in front of her, and leaned back on his hands. He looked around at the shelves filled with old books, at the small desk mounted against a wall overflowing with equipment meant for making medicines.
“Do you live here?” Sampo asked.
“I do, it makes responding to an emergency easier,” she said. “I actually moved in here not too long after an incident with Oleg.”
“I heard about that, glad you were here, huh?”
Natasha nodded, and reached over to grab the items she’d discarded on her pillow. Sampo watched as she moved them over to a small space on her desk.
“Any news from the surface?” Natasha asked.
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” Sampo asked back.
“As soon as you leave.”
Sampo frowned at her. Natasha wasn’t used to him frowning. Had she ever seen him frown before? He looked back at her desk. “Do you… want me to leave? Or- let me ask, are you actually going to rest if I leave?”
Natasha opened her mouth to answer, but Sampo gave her a look, and she shut it. He sighed, stood with a small grunt, and gestured for her to hand him her blanket. If it was any other person, Natasha would have refused. She could count on one hand the amount of people in her life who had seen her in any state of undress, and on her other hand the amount of people she would usually allow to see her in any state of undress - Sampo Koski was not on either of those lists. And yet, she removed her blanket, and handed it to him.
He motioned for her to lay down. She did, and Sampo quietly draped the blanket over her before pressing the button near the door that controlled the lightbulb above them. The room went dark, the only noise was the sounds from the clinic being muffled through the door, and the sound of Sampo moving around. Natasha felt him sit back down on the floor, and lean against the cot.
“Just close your eyes, and get a few hours of sleep. Ol’ Sampo will stay awake for you, alright?” He whispered.
Natasha wanted to, she really did, but when she tried to shut her eyes, they just drifted back open. Her mind was still too wired, filled with too many tasks. She needed to write to Luka to see if he was keeping up with his newest physical therapy plan, she needed to organize with Oleg about another supply run to Rivet Town to grab supplies before vagrants or Fragmentum monsters destroyed her caches, she needed to reach out to Hook’s father and see if the miners were still struggling with squatters deep in the fissures, and then she needed to check on why-
Sampo stood, and even though in the near-total darkness of the office, Natasha could make out his silhouette standing on one foot, and then switching to the other. Sampo then sat himself down on the cot, and laid himself down next to her. The blanket still acted as a barrier between them, but the cot was small and Natasha felt crowded against the wall.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“You can’t save lives if your own withers away.” He sounded serious, more serious than Natasha was used to from him, but a serious she had expected given his earlier behavior. “I care too much about this place to let anything happen to you.”
“I wish there were more people like you, if that is how you feel. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so…” her voice trailed off.
Sampo rolled over onto his side, facing her. “There are, I promise. You’ll meet them any day now, I just know it. They’ll get us out of this mess for sure, maybe even make the whole planet warm up while they’re at it.”
Natasha shifted onto her own side, facing him. “The last time someone promised me a solution to the Freeze, I banished them from the Underground.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that simple.”
“Nothing is ever that simple, we just simplify things to save energy.” Natasha sighed. “How do you do it? How do you make everything look so simple?”
She could basically hear Sampo smile. “Well, simply put- I understand that nothing is simple. I focus on what I can change, I accept what I cannot change, and I make sure I know the difference. Read it in a book once, it’s not a bad philosophy in practice.”
“That’s-” Natasha paused. “I already do that, so what am I doing wrong?”
“Are you trying to control things that are out of your control?” He asked.
“I don’t think so?”
“So then are you trying to control too many things at once?”
Natasha hummed softly. “Well, I have the clinic, and the orphanage, and even though I split the Wildfire responsibilities with Oleg, I do handle a lot of the logistics myself.”
“Aha’s left cheek! There’s your problem!” Sampo laughed.
“Pardon me, who’s-”
“- riddle me this, Miss Natasha: why does Wildfire exist?”
Natasha paused again. “Wildfire exists to serve the Underground, and protect it in place of the Silvermane Guards.”
“So if the Silvermane Guards came back, there’d be no need for Wildfire, right?”
“That is the goal we’re working towards, yes, but with the surface being overrun with the Fragmentum, that could take years.”
Sampo hummed. He hemmed and hawed. He then tapped a finger on the tip of Natasha’s nose cutely. “Okay!”
“Okay?” Natasha stared at him as best as she could in the dark.
“Okay! I’ll bring back the Silvermane Guards for you, free of charge!”
She scoffed. “And how are you going to do that?”
Sampo giggled. “Don’t you worry one bit about that, Miss Natasha, Sampo Koski will handle all of it.”
Natasha didn’t believe him. She couldn’t. She’d heard the stories about him from other smugglers, about how he was a notorious scam artist in the Overworld and relied on appealing to the desires of his marks to rob them of their Shields and goods. But in the Underground, Sampo was trusted, he was well liked. The kids trusted him to help them find their lost things, the miners depended on him finding ways to move supplies across the border, the clinic most of all relied on Sampo to stay afloat. And yet, the idea of one man from Qlipoth knows where just deciding to upend the blockade was just too much. She would go to sleep, wake up, get back out on the clinic floor, and another few years would pass with the Underground getting smaller and smaller.
Natasha pulled her blanket up to her chin, folding her legs up so that it covered her whole body still. “Why? Why do you promise such things? Do you think you can get my hopes up that easily?”
Sampo shrugged as best as he could while laying on his side. “I specialize in all manner of trade, Miss Natasha, especially in hope. It’s like I said, I care too much. I want all of my customers to be taken care of. If I can get you some hope, then I’d be satisfied with that. You of all people deserve it.”
She sighed, and shifted closer to him. Sampo always ran warm despite the openings in his clothing, Natasha often wondered if it was genetic or if Sampo had access to some other means of warming himself. A dark part inside of her wondered if Sampo’s natural heat had something to do with the name still on the clinic’s sign outside, if that man was somehow able to fulfill his mad goal. She banished the thoughts from her mind, appropriately. Natasha relaxed her body, and closed her eyes. She was tired, almost too tired. Being too tired was dangerous in the Underground, too many of her patients and their family members would go to sleep and never wake up. Natasha wondered if that was the better alternative to living in the Underground sometimes. It was impressive how the dark thoughts always crept in when she tried to clear her mind. Sampo adjusted her blanket so that it covered her back, and resettled into bed next to her.
“Just get some sleep, Ol’ Sampo will take care of everything.”