Copy-paste from AO3, I completely forgot to upload it here. Huh.

Inspired (strangely) from Spy's Engineer domination line when he calls him a 'toymaker'. Guess whose mind got going, and boy, does Helmet Party sure need a nice, big AU. Too bad this is a slow-build one, haha.

Right, so as I said, it's heavy on the character real-names, so I'll take this chance to announce them-don't forget, I have genderbent a few classes for happy-happy balance! (also because i'm totally queer for femmedic shhhhh)

Spencer - Scout
Gustav Petrenko - Heavy
Patricia - Fem!Pyro
Elise Vogler - Fem!Medic
Amélie - Fem!Spy
Bunny (short for Bernadette) Mundy - Fem!Sniper

The evening had started the way as it had always done.

The sun whispered its goodbye behind evergreens as the last rays of golden shine peeked through gaps between swaying leaves of the apple tress in the orchard in the cool evening air, the sky turning into a soft hue of mauve and blue and black as wisps of orange disappeared from view behind the hills.

Silently, out of sight, the day gave way to night as the stars awoke from their slumber and their brilliance began to shine through the darkness of the black night. Crickets woke up from their sleep, stretching their wings by the bank of the pond as they began to play their evening songs.

Summer was ending, the world was singing as the symphony of cricket song harmonised with the rustling of leaves in the cooler wind, Autumn's time is soon to come, whispered the moon as it floated high in the sky.

Summer's imminent end, and Autumn's late arrival was also on his mind, as he limped out the front door of his home and onto his porch, his cane thudding dully against wooden planks and his leg sounding off with a muffled thump as he followed the little girl out of his house.

There were flying termites buzzing around the lone, flickering web-dusted light bulb he had installed outside. One fell to the ground next to the girl's feet but she didn't react at all to it.

"You sure you're not stayin'?" he asked her, his voice thick with his Southern drawl he had never lost even before the war, and she shook her head daintily, the scarf wrapped securely around her head and face creasing slightly at places near her neck, the orange light of the bulb casting soft shadows on her cloth-covered face.

"I don't want to bother you, Mr. Conagher," she replied, her little voice muffled by the cloth around her head to a blurry sentence, but he understood what she had told him anyway.

He felt tired, he thought to himself, sighing as he bent down to gently pat her head.

"Summer's ending," he told her, "It'll be autumn soon, and you're going to freeze your little behind off." He stroked her head on top of the soft cloth he knew was one of the town's doctor's cashmere shawls gently, and he somehow knew she smiled up at him gently.

"I'll be fine, Mr. Conagher," she assured him, before turning to leave. "Good evening." She bade him, before walking down the stairs off his porch into the dimly-lit cobblestone street.

"Take care, Patricia," he called after her, watching her walk away, before shaking his head, slowly settling into a rocking-chair he had made himself on the porch. He put his cane aside against the rusty railings with its off-white paint now chipping off its bumpy, coppery surface, as he let out a deep breath, rocking himself gently back and forth in the chair as he silently felt the cool night air kiss his calloused skin.

Dell Conagher was a tired, lonely man. Silence was his companion during lazy summer days, coldness his bed mate during long winter nights, even ever since the World War began. Still, he pushed for happiness; he was little town of Teufort's resident mechanic-slash-toymaker who preferred the latter work over the earlier, living every day to bring smiles to the town's children. All the children in that tiny little town had a little toy he made especially for them, a treasure they kept with them throughout the years of their youth.

Well, all of them save for one: little Patricia, the orphaned little girl that had wandered into Teufort a week after the war had been declared over, carrying with her bundles of little matchsticks in a tattered bag, a scratchy flour sack serving as a cover for her little head as she stumbled into town, little fingers shaking and tiny feet all blistered and bleeding.

He remembered the day he saw the little girl: she had been a little shivering bundle of cloth in Dr. Elise Vogler's arms, the German woman, all still prim and proper even in her lovely peach-coloured nightgown and long, braided hair, the sleeves wet with rainwater and her slim, small shoulders dotted with water drops as she stood at his porch, the little girl in her arms, an umbrella awkwardly sandwiched between her right arm and her torso, at an angle and dripping with water, some rolling off its smooth, black surface and landing with silent splashes on her shoulders.

There were rushed knocks at his door that evening: it had been the first rain of the autumn season; the rain that brought out the alate termites to their first flight of the season. It poured heavily in large inch-wide droplets, splashing loudly on the roof above Dell's head as he read a book quietly by a lamp in the first floor. The knocks were hardly audible over the crashing of the rain, but Dr. Vogler's calls for his assistance certainly reached his ears, and he raced to the door as fast as his leg and limp could carry him.

When he saw the little girl in Dr. Vogler's arms, there was no way he was going to turn her down.

Doctor and mechanic quickly took her to his bedroom, and unwrapped the flour-sack scarf to reveal her heavily disfigured face—healing burns and cuts and bruises littered her skin, ugly black and brown blooms of healing flesh covering her cheeks, her quivering, sickly, hypothermic lips. Her hair, red, like the Scot woman who used to work at the nearby pub with her husband the barkeep, was in tufts—strands left strewn here and there, half-burnt, half chopped off. Her eyes were delirious with her high fever and cold. Dr. Vogler's muttering as she checked over the little girl's situation faded into background noise, drowned out by the sound of Dell's heart breaking in his chest for the little girl lying sick on his bed.

Since then he and the doctor had tried convincing her to move in with one of them, but she had refused their offers, not wanting to inconvenience her saviours. She had been so used to abuse and loneliness because of her face that she was now learning to live on her own, to avoid having to feel the pain of the loss of family all over again.

It had aggravated him to no end—his worry for the little girl regularly populated his mind, and it had been far too long since he had been thinking about the welfare of a young girl.

"You're imprinting your daughter on her, Dell," Dr. Vogler had told him, one evening during the week of Patricia's recovery in his house. "She's not your child."

"I know," he replied, but she shook her head.

"You're still not over Margaret and Elizabeth," she sighed, patting his shoulder with her small hand. "Margaret's long gone, Dell—you have to accept that, my dear friend."

"I have," he protested, but she resolutely stared him down.

"You haven't," she pressed, before looking down at the girl sleeping in his bed. "This girl is not Lizzie, Dell, don't forget—she's her own self." Her tone dropped to an apologetic whisper, "She's not your stillborn."

"I know," Dell snapped at her, and immediately Dr. Vogler stood back defensively, calmly waiting for him to calm down. The man shook his head, sighing heavily as he lowered himself down onto a seat near him, setting his cane against his bed. "I'm sorry, Elise, I shouldn't have snapped at you."

"It's alright," she nodded at him, before turning her attention to the child. "When she recovers, one of us will have to take her in." she said, and light lit up in Dell's eyes. She didn't miss it—a light had lit up in her friend's tired blue eyes, and she smiled at him gently. "Are you alright with that?"

"Of course," he replied, nodding, and his doctor smiled at him slightly, before making her way to the door.

"I'll see you again tomorrow, Dell." She bade, turning the knob to leave—

"Elise." She turned to look at him, and he—once again in a long time, she noted—was smiling at her, tears of gladness in his eyes. "I'll take care of her, I promise." He said, "I'll take care of her—like, like I would have with Lizzie."

She smiled, returning to his side and taking his hands, patting them gently, before kissing his forehead tenderly.

"That I'm very sure of, mein freunde," she told him, "Good night, Dell."

"G'night, Elise." Dell replied, and with a small smile and a wave, Dr. Vogler left him alone in the room.

Patricia had kindly refused his offer to her when she had recovered, shyly already reaching for Dr. Vogler's shawl to wrap around her head to cover her face the moment she was allowed to. She told him she had her own reasons, none of which was his fault, but as he watched her leave his house for the first time as a lonely orphan as lonesome as he was and not his daughter, he couldn't help but think to himself how it was his fault anyway.

Had he been too overbearing? Too daunting?

He didn't know what he had done wrong—there was only so much loneliness a person could take.

The sound of raindrops dropping against the handlebars of his porch's railing shook him out of his thoughts, the light clinking of water against metal like light music to his ears as he found himself watching the water fly from the sky to the ground in a gentle, cool motion, tiny droplets first whispering their hellos to the earth and cobblestone and metal roofing, followed by large raindrops crashing into the earth they hurtled at.

It had rained like this, when he first met her.

The sky was already dark, and the moon hid behind nimbus clouds releasing their heavy grey load onto the world below. There was hardly any moonlight in the area; only the light from lonely-looking streetlamps and Dell's porch's light bulb pierced the darkness of the street before him.

Quietly he thought about little Patricia—where was she now in this rain, he wondered, hoping that possibly she had managed to find shelter to sleep in before the first few drops fell. It was a difficult time to be stuck stranded outside in, with autumn fast approaching and the winds growing colder as the days passed by. The nights were slowly growing longer, as the days grew shorter, the apple trees bursting with red fruit and the grapevines heavy with its purple fruit. The wheat field behind the town's general store was golden yellow in the day—tonight; the wheat tastes their last fresh rainfall before the incoming harvest.

Surely she was somewhere safe and dry; the inn's roof jutting out over its entrance was large enough to be good shelter in this rain—it was like his own porch's roof, anyway. He had made that himself with her in mind.

The last of the flying termites had dropped to the ground.

"I'm a-fixin' to get some shut-eye, I think," he spoke up to no one in particular, slowly getting up from his seat, gripping onto his cane tightly until he was standing upright. "Yeah," he sadly sighed, looking back down the road Patricia went one last time, before begrudgingly entering back into his house. "I'm-a get some shut-eye…"

As he closed the door behind him, thunder rumbled in the distance, light flashing across the fields, highlighting a police car speeding down a highway less than a kilometre away from Teufort, as all the lights in the village plunged into darkness, the lone bulb outside Dell's house the last light left in the blackness of that story night.

The night was deep; the forest even deeper, the rain blurring all their lines and borders together into an undistinguishable mess of black, brown and dark green. The road was slick with mud; dirty and slippery, saturated with rainwater, as the automobile sped down the road, the wheels protesting with creaks as tyres slipped over brown sludge.

"Slow down," the man in the back growled. His hands were cuffed together beneath the end of his army uniform's sleeves, his white gloves bunching up at the junction of his thumb and his palm to accommodate the metal around his wrists. His blue eyes were deep-set, heavy with dark rings beneath them, his skin was clammy and his body quaked slightly despite the thick cloth of his uniform on him.

The two police officers in front ignored him; an accused murderer was someone one should exercise caution around, after all—they were under orders not to speak with him, no matter what.

"I mean it, slow down," he bit out at them, his eyes fierce, his thick eyebrows knotting together in frustration as his hands balled into fists in his lap. "Or we're going to—"

There was no one around to hear the sound of tyres squealing, metal creaking, tearing and folding, glass shattering, three bodies hitting the undergrowth at the side of the road—the snap of a neck, the wet sound of metal piercing the heart, and a groan of protest that sounded at the same time as the chink of handcuffs, but just because no one was around didn't mean that that accident didn't make a single sound.

To retired Sergeant Jane Doe, however, each sound pounded his ears like drums—everything was too loud as his head spun: the beating of the rain down on his face, the sound of mud flowing through his short hair and into the creases in his skin, the sound of the car creaking in protest to the elements all around him, the sound—or lack thereof—of breathing from the two wardens.

They were dead, he thought to himself as he laid in the mud, dumbfounded—

And a grin of relief spread across his face.

But he was not.