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Rep didn't like the infirmary. At all. His time spent there the last few weeks had been the most miserable time he'd spent in his life. He hadn't even been ill, simply watching over Harrison while he lay, never moving on the bed. It had been harrowing and soul destroying. He hadn't expected to be back so ******** soon, nor in such dire circumstance. A sun hunter in the domain of moon and life tended to get treated like a bit of an idiot, and a lot of his actions bore this out. He was on bed pan duty which mostly meant scrubbing various horrible things out, cleaning up messes and generally dealing with the kind of bodily fluids he never wanted to think about.

He'd managed to break a few things by accident too, simply by sheer inability to control his own strength. He'd been told they'd come off his wages. He stood in an apron someone had fished out for him, he doubted it was standard issue, it had ******** magnolias on it. And was wearing a pair of rubber gloves while scrubbing determinedly at a silver pan with a brillo pad while trying very hard not to look too hard at what he was dealing with.

Every now and then he had to look away and take several deep breaths to suppress his urge to gag. He did not like cleaning. At all. He was fine to live mired in filth, that didn't bother him, it was a dirt based coexistence. Being forced to evict said dirt was a whole other matter.

Rep didn't notice anyone else was in the room with him at first, he was in a mental place beyond mockery, and his paranoia had fizzled out after he realised most of the people in the infirmary had actual jobs to do. Once they got their meathead jokes out of their system they'd left him to his task and occasionally topped up his workload.

He was absolutely miserable, dreaming of the gym and the training field as he tried not to think of what horrendous halloween diseases he could catch from this awfulness, and determinedly trying not to touch anything. It was fine to gut and skin animals and pick all the awful things off a hide that showed up, but when it came to people, actual ill people, he was in a land of disgust.

It was only when Melvin didn't move that Rep's brain drew it to his attention and he glanced round, ready to snap and ask if the other person wanted a ******** photograph. When it dawned on him who it was, the colour - what little there was of it - drained out of his features.

For a few horrible moments he relived the other Melvin's last moments.

He didn't even notice he'd stopped scrubbing.

Rep had no idea what to say, how you even said sorry for something the other person might not even remember. As far as he was aware, only the people who'd been there remembered anything about what happened in that other world. But it didn't change the chill of anxiety at the way Melvin also seemed to freeze. The sharp edge to his words were like a splash of cold water that knocked him out of his daze. He blinked and looked at the gloves and then the apron.

"Ehh. I didn't ask to wear this. It's what they gave me, you can thank your ******** life chums if it's no fashionable." his aggression was defensive more than anything else, and everything about his body language was deferential and submissive. "I'm here because I'm on ******** bedpan duty because of a training accident."

Rep bristled at Melvin's tone. Normally he'd have been able to ignore it, but part of him remembered distantly the title Underboss, the rank, the respect. The other Melvin would never give him this kind of attitude. His posture changed, standing taller, more defiant. "Oh aye you'd like that eh? ******** heels. Your ******** division does nothing but troll the s**t out of people and make my life pretty miserable. So I'm no going to be nicey nicey to them."

At the comment on accidents, there was a crunch as the pan he was holding buckled under the clench of his hands in anger, and he dropped it as if it had burned him, eyes wide. Whatever he'd been going to say in retort to Melvin died on his lips and he hurriedly tried to bend the edge back into shape in minor distress. "A..aye well. Whatever. Think what you want."

Rep frowned at the pan and set it aside, a little more dented than it had been. "I didn't say some of them don't actually do their ******** job. I've had my ******** life saved by the people here." when he didn't have a weapon, no less. "But it doesn't change the fact they are ******** trolls and wind me up constantly. So you don't need to give me a ******** lecture."

He snorted. "Aye us suns man, all we do is train all day till we either collapse from exhaustion or can't do any more. We have it so ******** easy, we don't save lives or anything, we just have to throw our own on the ******** roulette table and hope for the best that our number doesn't come up. Forgive me for my ******** ignorance, I'm sure you have such a hard time weighing minipets and ******** stitching up pansies."

Another pan got scrubbed with resentment, the comment about Harrison stung. He hadn't wanted to make him do any work so soon. He couldn't even snap back at Melvin about that one, the guilt ran deep already and he was just voicing worries Rep had already had. It was enough that it made him properly uncomfortable.

"Don't you have someone else to be bitching at?" he snapped.

Rep listened to Melvin but seemed to have stopped reacting, his expression freezing into a very blank stare. He wasn't sure how to react, still stung from the comment about making Harrison work so soon after his recovery and didn't trust himself to be civil.

"Jerry does more damage than me." But not to people. That was the key factor wasn't it?

He inhaled sharply through his nose at the order, every single authority resenting part of him bristling at being pushed around by someone who didn't normally outrank him. But the gloves were whipped off one at a time and thrown onto the sink.

Moving to stand expectantly next to him, he said nothing at all.

Rep didn't like hearing the truth, it bothered him a lot, it was true wether he liked it or not that he seemed to injure the most people with stupid mistakes out of all of the suns. Maybe when he'd first come to Deus he might have taken that with pride, a badge of honour, these days it was sloppy, stupid childish errors he should have grown out of.

He did as he was instructed by Melvin - most of it anyway - he wasn't sure what fitted or flat sheets were or what the differences were. So he did his best to guess.

"No that it's any of your ******** business." he growled. "But aye actually I have. I spoke to my ******** division leader about it, and he helped me out. I practiced with Ace how to control it, figuring out how strong it was, crunching the numbers and s**t. It basically concluded my charge was too ******** strong and I had to focus it down or not use it against weaker people. I was losing to Deryk, he was fighting ******** great, so I figured he could handle it. It was a lucky hit and he couldn't, end of."

He chucked the pillowcases on the pile. "Now I'm banned from sparring with weapons at all. But I deserved it, it was a bad ******** call. I did my research, I tried to fix it and I ******** up, what do you want me to ******** do? I'm here doing you guys busy work aren't I?"