pho·to·ker·a·ti·tis |ˈfōtō-ˌker-ə-ˈtīt-əs|
1. a usually temporary loss of vision and inflammation of the conjunctiva and cornea, caused by exposure of the eyes to bright sunlight and ultraviolet rays reflected from snow or ice; see snowblind.
The one merciful thing about Coldfront was the locker room and respawn lacked most of their distinctive ozone-and-gunpowder smell, thanks to the cold. As Dell settled his hardhat on his head and wrapped his scarf around his neck the next morning, he didn't need to contend with familiar reek distracting him from his newest goal: finding the RED spy.
He had to find the bastard, it was simple as that. Figure out what his angle was. Trouble was finding him if he didn't want to be found, though—and if he did want to be found, the trouble would be getting the edge on him. It was going to be trouble either way.
It'd be easier with the Pyro, Dell reflected, and then grimaced. He hadn't seen her at breakfast. In all honesty he'd figured she would have forgotten his outburst by morning. She always had before.
Maybe he'd gone too far.
When he looked around the locker room, he didn't see her. He looked again and spied her behind Heavy, sitting quietly on a bench and polishing the head of her axe with a spotted cloth. Well. Let her be, he thought, as the sirens began to sing.
Twenty minutes later he had set up shop around the corner of the huge stony outcropping near the middle point: dispenser, teleporter, and a mini-sentry scanning the territory. They had taken their second point back quickly enough, and the fighting had moved off to mid in a diagonal, closer to RED than BLU.
His teammates came and went, swapping idle words as they zapped in through the teleporter or collapsed against his dispenser. Sniper—the real Sniper—spent a while just leaning up against the cliff in the dispenser's range, propping his rifle up on a rocky protrusion and taking a few shots before uttering a low "Hmm," and loping off toward the other end of the warzone.
When the Pyro first dragged herself up, clutching a gaping hole in the side of her suit and limping heavily, she went right past the nest. Dell watched in silence as she staggered past him, face fixed steadily toward the home base. Blood trailed her. Once she stumbled, and before Dell could make up his mind to help her she righted herself. She finally looked toward him, for a heartbeat. Then she returned to her slow, pained-looking trek toward base.
The second time she came up from the field again, after he'd respawned once himself and had to rebuild his nest further back. Now with one foot twisted in the wrong direction and missing the lower half of her left arm, she still didn't go to his dispenser at once. Instead she stood some ten feet away from the nest, watching him carefully, and he acted like he didn't know she was there. After a while she slunk up to the dispenser, dragging her flamethrower behind, and dropped next to it.
Dell watched her from the corner of his eye for a minute or two. He'd almost decided to talk to her when his thoughts were interrupted. "Move it, willya, 'ey, c'mon, quit hoggin'."
He turned to find Scout, sporting a brilliant black eye and sans half his left ear, scrambling over the Pyro to perch on top of the dispenser. His teammate heaved a long sigh as the dispenser ebbed into him, and started reloading his scattergun. He looked ridiculous with his sweatshirt and his tossle cap, it made Dell colder just looking at him. Dell stepped away from his teleporter, turning his ice-cold wrench over in his hands. "News from the front, boy?"
"Yeah, their scout's a shit-f'brains doorknob what couldn't hit a broadside on a barn if it held still." Scout spat out a tooth as a new one began to grow in. "We're doin' okay. Heavy and Demo got 'em pinned on fourth right now, an' Sniper's pickin off anyone tryin' to sneak out. I dunno where you've been," he finished, peering down at the Pyro. She didn't respond. "Ah, whatever, whatever. What's the deal with the mini, hardhat?"
"Tryin' new strategies," Dell answered, and thwacked Scout on the side of the knee with his wrench. Scout yelped and jerked his leg away, nearly falling backwards off the dispenser.
"Lay off, shit, ow, I ain't a spy!"
"Got to be sure," Dell murmured. "Anyway. Been trying to fix the mini, ain't been quite right since I built the thing."
Scout scooted back to the middle of his perch, rubbing his knee. "Oh yeah hey uhh, what was it, was it Goldrush? Goldrush it friggin' exploded an' lost us the round?"
Dell pocketed the frozen wrench, fighting off a shiver as the wind started to whistle. "It didn't—yeah. Yeah, that's the one." He cast a glance at the half-size sentry. "I made it too delicate. Can't put it together right half the time."
"Then why the hell you usin' it if it don't work?"
"The big sentry ain't winnin' us anything, is it?"
Scout had opened his mouth to answer when an ear-splitting roar boomed across the battlefield, coupled with the howls of men. His face split into a grin and with a whoop he was off, catapulting off the dispenser and bolting for the action.
The wind hissed through Dell's clothes again, and he pulled his scarf tighter around his neck, tightened the front of his coat. The Pyro stayed exactly where she had slumped, her hands curled against her stomach. When he drew closer to her she didn't move. Her axe was missing and her flare gun's muzzle had been shattered, and though her flamethrower lay beside her its propane tank was completely gone. Scorch marks and soot streaked the weapon's tubing and metal, and how she'd lost her arm suddenly became clear.
This close he could see the regrown limb, unprotected against the cold. The tips of three fingers were missing, still bloody, but the rest of her hand looked whole and uninjured, the olive skin unbroken by wounds. She was using it to hold up the bottom of her mask, which he could see now had been halfway ripped off. Through the tear he could see her jawline.
"Hey, Smoky," Dell said. All she did was look away. "Pyro, c'mon."
Nothing. Dell chewed his lip, looking her over. "Look," he started, and crouched down beside her. "I didn't … I'm apologizin', okay? I lost my head yesterday. I'm sorry I yelled."
Still nothing.
Dell sat there in the snow, watching her. With a sigh he tried again. "You got to be cold in that getup. Didn't I tell you that you need to be wearin' more under that thing out here?"
She shrugged, a faint roll of the shoulders he almost missed. Dell pressed on. "Here, look. Take this," he said, pulling off his scarf and holding it out to her. The Pyro moved her head enough to look at it, and then at him. "Put that on. Go on back to base, get yourself a spare mask. Okay?"
The sounds of fighting had begun to fade. The Pyro still just looked at the scarf Sniper had given him, unmoving, and Dell was suddenly very aware of his exposed back. He looked behind himself, and found the Heavy was coming toward them.
The Pyro still hadn't moved when he looked back at her. He put the scarf in her lap and turned to meet Heavy. As he got to his feet, his knees creaked and complained the whole way up. He stretched out his spine and groaned. "Mornin', big guy."
"Good morning, Инжeнер."
"No Medic today?"
Heavy scowled. "Not now. Respawning now. You hear the explosion? RED demoman laid trap—a good one."
Dell glanced over where the fighting had been, where Scout had run off to. "How's it holdin'?"
"Soldier and Scout, they are defending. I must go back quickly." Heavy glanced around the nest and the frozen field around it. "I have not seen Pyro. Have you? Even изверг must help."
"Izverg?" Dell said, glancing back down at the Pyro. "Pyro's—"
The Pyro was gone, scarf and all.
"Monster."
"Come again?"
Spy gave Dell the briefest of glances, instead only shifting a tenth of a degree in the armchair he sat on. "Изверг? As a noun? Monster. Hell-hound, fiend. Has roots in the Russian word for 'miscarriage,' I believe." His gaze dropped back down to his book.
Dell stared down at him, letting himself process the answer to his question. "… That so. Well, then. Thanks."
"Mm. Do ask Heavy to provide his own translations in the future, please. I'm hardly a dictionary."
Today they had taken their own territory back, and nearly pushed RED out of mid, but before they could properly sort out their last rush the end-war whistles had blown, and it was dark out. Back to another stalemate.
Now, after dinner, most of them had taken to the common room. It remained the most pleasant place in Coldfront when night drew on, boasting a fireplace and warm lights. Behind him Dell could hear Scout and Soldier trying to out-talk one another, with Demo interjecting whenever there was a lull to stir them up again. The rest were out in the kitchen, last he knew, save the Pyro. He hadn't seen her since she'd taken his scarf.
Monster, Heavy had said.
His teammates' racket gnawed at him. Dell left for his room, though not before detouring to double-check that the door to his workshop was locked. When he turned the last corner he half-expected to find the Pyro, sitting and waiting for him like she often did, but she was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't shake the memory of her trudging past him and his dispenser, bleeding, as he tried the handle.
It was locked, as it was supposed to be, but he slid open the cover on the security pad to check the inside anyway. As he punched in the numbers it occurred to him that he hadn't told anyone of the RED spy's infiltration, and moreover, he didn't feel especially disposed to do so. But security breaches were as much his responsibility as anyone else's, Dell reasoned as he opened the door. His attitude was just the cold and the long mission getting to him. He'd let everyone know in the morning.
The electric lock beeped and turned green, but before he could reach for the handle again, footsteps drew his attention. He looked up in time to see the Pyro round the corner. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him.
"Hey," Dell said after a second or two. The Pyro took a step back, drawing her shoulders up and lifting her hands in a show of appeasement. "Oh, now come on, I said I weren't mad at you no more."
"Yhhu hrmnt?"
"'Pologized and everything. What, you get killed on your way back to base?"
She shook her head. "Hhi mmndt hye hhdy."
"You what now?"
Slowly, like any sudden movement might make Dell snap at her again, she reached up and popped the filter on her mask. "I didn't, didn't die today. You're really not mad?"
Dell shook his head, opening the door to his workshop. Cold air rushed out to meet him. "No, I'm not mad. What'd you do with my scarf?"
"What?"
"My scarf, Pyro, the one Sniper made me, the one I gave to you today." He snapped on the lights and stepped back from the chill, leaning against the doorway to face her.
She folded her arms across her ribs, both hands curling into the suit. Dell waited as she rocked back once on her heels. "I don't have that."
"You didn't lose it, didja?"
"I don't have it, I didn't have it. I didn't," and she paused mid-sentence to take a deep breath. Her next words came out all in a rush. "I didn't come see you with your machines today because you were mad at me and you told me to go away so I didn't, just, I saw you once when I had to go home but I pretended like I didn't. Sorry. I'm sorry."
The words poured over Dell and he stared at her, not understanding. Slowly, her meaning began to knit itself together. "You didn't come by my dispenser today."
"No because—"
"I know why," he said. "So you were never there. You were never there at all, dammit, damn it, I am a—a blind old fool—"
He twisted on his heel and stepped into the workshop, ignoring the Pyro when she called him. A few seconds later she was peeking into the workshop, but not coming inside. "Engie?"
Dell didn't hear her. He stood fixed in place, eyes locked on the neatly-folded, blue-and-gold scarf that lay upon his workbench, and the crisp lines of the note set atop it.