It had started in the early evening. The cabin in the clearing, not much of a house. The windows were boarded up and it was freezing inside, but they managed a fire, and sat on the fire by the hearth. The radio spoke to them, sang to them, and Spy had wine and Egyptian cigarettes and all of the charm Scout could have ever wanted.
They were just talking. That's all they had been doing. As with the night before, of memories and ghosts, and loose girls from Rome, and baseball, Boston, broken-hearts and Bordeaux. Scout was laying closer, close enough that they kissed sometimes. Spy had an arm around him the whole night, and Scout felt like he was wearing eternity, he felt for once that he had things in order, that he wasn't going to be left alone in a desert of his own navigation.
He had been happy. Deep-down happy.
The only light in the room was the fire. And maybe Scout was a little tired, and a little drunk, and maybe the Egyptian cigarettes were a little strong and exotic. Usually, he is social and surrounds himself with many people, but the solace, the small scrap of heaven was enough for him, then. They were painted golden in the firelight, lips red from the wine, eyes shiny from seeing too much.
They stayed late into the night. Of course, Scout was going to follow Spy when he left, and not a moment sooner. At least for that night, he put his decisions and trust in Spy, and the man would do what he would with him. Which meant too many 'je t'aimes', and too many cigarettes, and too much history, and kisses that said more than his words could, said lovers but meant friends, better off this way.
Spy's hands never fumbled. With immovable grace, he had talked all of Scout's clothes off, and he shivered under the scrutiny of wiser eyes. Scout was lying on the carpet completely exposed in every sense, his eyes closed, his breathing taught. And Spy had taken the boy's face with a gentle hand and murmured, "Peace, boy. Eyes on me."
When Scout had opened his eyes, there was a constellation of tears on his lashes, and stars falling like suicide down his cheeks. He was not afraid, by paralysed by this universal feeling of defencelessness. What Spy desired was not in the snowy skin of Scout's body, and not in the soft pink his lips, but something deeper, and much harder to get at.
With the firelight hanging over his shoulders, and a river of wine rushing inside of hi, he made these promises, the stroked up Scout's thigh's and promised him all without any words, to please him and to comfort him, and soon enough, they were both walking a path to higher ground, out of their skin, and through the clouds. They were cast adrift for hours, red skin, lesser white throats, vying for dominance, and lust and something else, Scout didn't cry any more, he wailed, electric like a live wire, his skin the colour of the blitzkrieg as he called out, the entire clearing with freedoms other men had not and never would know.
And for what was an eternity abridged, Scout become voiceless, robbed of his most powerful weapon and could only beg and sigh his way through the motion of Spy's hips, his promises, and the 'eyes on me'. When at last the boy came, his white face red like strawberries in the summertime, he was followed into a darkness starry with diamonds. Because for wherever they found themselves, Spy was back in the game, and that was better than fireworks, forty-fourths, the storming of the Bastille, better than revolution, better than sex and secrets and crack, smack, cocaine...better than life, breathing, better than sunsets, night skies, better than the blood of every BLU.
And afterwards, Spy had looked at him and said, "You are very beautiful,"
Whatever Scout chose to believe on the matter, he kept it to himself and shrugged. "I think I was,"
"Was, cher?"The cigarettes were exotic and talk of a class Scout would never achieve, not even in his daydreams.
Vanity did not possess him but something else, just a human, but less bitter and nasty, less superficial. He placed a limp hand on his stomach, where the red fabric was tighter and stretched. "Yeah, I was, but I ain't no more," Spy was still looking at him even long after he was done speaking, so Scout just shrugged and sighed. "What do I care?" And he allowed himself a small smile. "I'm havin' a kid-"
That is when the glass of the old windows bursts. That's when the place lights up with fire, with the burning passion of intolerance, and flames catch on the old boarding, the dry wood of the building like violence and scornful, mocking laughter shakes Scout's meanings from his words. In the midst of a sudden blaze, he can hear his enemy.
"Don't ya get th' joke?" it cuts right through the shattering of the glass. The BLU Demoman has no quarrel with hem, but he isn't alone. Scout knows laughter when it comes from his hometown. The place is smoking in less than a second, and Spy grabs Scout, pulls him down onto the ground, and holds him fast, eyes darting around for a way out. Already, the air is hot and heavy with fear.
It's the meadow all over again when they jeer once more. "It's a funny one, y'know," The enemy Scout is close enough to have to shout to be heard. Eh sounds so pleased. Despite it being out of hours, despite having no quarrel with them as people, but with their colours, and their loves.
"Faggots go on the fire,"
Scout turns inwards and looks hard at spy, whose face is bereft of any hope. And Scout searches his eyes hard for something, but there is only the tragedy of habit, of having been places like this before. The walls are burning up, and the board on the windows are catching. The place is unstable enough, and beams from the roof creak in age and complaint. When the first comes crashing to the floor, alight with cinders, catching the other side of the rug they're laying on, Scout is pulled to crouching in a hurry, and Spy runs across the burning rooms, and towards the back door. He gives it a tug.
"Merde!" His hand comes away shiny and pink, but worst of all, the door budges not an inch. Scout would throw himself against it to batter it open but the air around it shimmers with heat and glows with the kind of steam that would melt him to paraffin wax.
"That's not going to help you in there." The BLU Scout is laughing, his voice thick with amusement and it chokes the faith Scout has in people until he is left desperate for air and some kind of hope, desperate not to burn to death, because from all the times he has endured this fate, it has always been chronic and agonising and horrific.
Scout turns his face to Spy once more, and looks at him, face white. There is no hope there. There is just basic will to live. To survive. When Scout goes to speak, his mouth is burning with the air and he doubles over, choking, his lungs like tissue-paper, catching fire from the spark of hatred that is burning the sanctuary around him.
"Stay low," Spy whispers to him. His own voice is like glass cracking under the intensity of the temperature. He nurses his hand briefly, but disregards the obvious pain he's in, and leads Scout, still crouching under the thick smoke forming back into the living room.
The voices outside remain, and they jeer still. "You're going to die in there!"
Inside is a vision of hell. The curtains have caught, as with the rug, and there' no way to cross it without burning. The air shimmers. Glass textures the floor. The walls have turned combustion-black. The ashes linger. There is no air. There is no oxygen, only shimmering, only the swelter of nitrogen, and Scout can't get anything into his lungs, he can't breathe, he can't swallow.
Spy crosses most of the way still-crouched, and tries to lead Scout, who has gone stock-still in terror. Above them, the wood groans. "Now, Scout," But the boy is in paralysis. His mouth is open, and his eyes are burning like white dwarf stars. He is bound to the fence all over again. He can't move. He can't be seen but for the diamond trails cutting through his face that is turning to coal-black. "There is no time,"
In this tiniest voice Scout has ever spoken in, he whispers, "I don't want to die."
This isn't like before. This isn't like seeing the darkness, and then the hard lights, and a comrade's face, and the headache of an unscathed body. This is real death, this is that instant where your life flashes before your eyes, that instant death that chars Scout's skin and bleeds him of his fluids and his lungs light up in his chest. He will breathe no more, move no more. His body will become a corpse, his words memories, his actions past tense-...
Spy clamps a hand over the boy's mouth and muffles the noises that emerge. His face is unreadable when he speaks. "And you won't. You won't," The sobs turn to violent coughs. "Come quickly. There's still the front door."
Spy runs across the room, and Scout follows him, but he's slower, and in the half-a-second between them, the wood groans, one gives, the cinders catch on his shirt, but worst of all, the second beam collapses, and floors him, taking Scout out.
He screams out in pain.
Spy turns, and his face loses all colour, but it's already too late and Scout is crying hard now, trying to get out from under it. The cinders are burning deep into the flesh of his thighs, and he is paralysed by the familiar smell of home in all of this chaos: the smell of sunday roast. He falls onto the burnt-out rug, and it engulfs his left side, all up his arms, and even on his face, blood-blistered patches still burning by the time Spy has manages to heave him out from under the seam.
He knows it but he won't say it. Scout can't even walk.
Spy crouches in front of him, coughing violently into his fist, face turning grey from the smoke. He tries to have Scout up once more and speaks so quickly. "You're going to be fine," But there's no Medic, and no medigun, there is no respawn, and Scout can feel his nervous system beginning to fail, he can feel the lightning between each receptor blink into nothingness, and despite the pain he is overcome with numbness.
"It's no use," He mumbles, voice strong with calm. Scout isn't getting any oxygen, and maybe that's the reason he can feel panicked fluttering inside of him that make him nauseous. Vision from his left eye is failing. Spy is still trying to drag him across the cabin, but the fire is getting worse and the smoke is getting thicker and neither of them can see a way out, and Scout whimpers, "It's no use!"
And Spy looks at him, utterly swung open.
"There isn't a way out," Scout's voice is tiny. He slumps onto his good knee, leaning lower to find some kind of air, sucking in breath and letting it back out in hoarse cries of pain. He can damn nearly see the bone in his thigh.
Spy shakes his head. "Don't say that, cheri, we'll be fi-"
Scout shakes his head uselessly. He knows Spy. He knows the man isn't graceful deep down, and that he'll go out kicking and screaming if he has to. For the first time Scout is tired, he's so tried, and if these are his last moments on earth, he doesn't want to spend them in fear. He doesn't want to go into the dark afraid.
Spy lays him down, and tears off part of his shirtsleeve to wrap around Scout's leg. The boy stops him. The room is deafening with the crackle of fire and the soot obscures Scout's memory of the salient but manages a smile. "You're badly hurt-"
Scout shakes his head. "Don't fret," He still manages to smile, and looks up at Spy deliriously. He heard once that before you freeze to death, you begin to feel delirious with warm, and the pain is dying as he becomes more lightheaded. Maybe it's like that. "Don't –don't leave me..."
Spy shakes his head. Grabs Scout's hand and squeezes it. "We'll be fine," He promises. "I'm not going to leave you, but you need-"
Scout closes his eyes for a second. He can feel that hold on him, that tug, to go without a fight, with utter resignation, and he could slip peacefully into death, he really could. "It don't hurt," He says, softly. "It don't hurt no more,"
He feels himself evaporating. Spy's voice is a train-wreck, and he looks to be melting under the firelight. His face is blitzkrieg yellow and the droplets of sweat that sully his face make him appear waxy in composition. He says the worst thing Scout can think of. "It's okay. We're going to get out of here,"
The focus of the world grows softer. His face grows hotter. The dull thrum of pain doesn't ease up, but Scout doesn't mind it. He lifts a hand and smiles, standing up, his entire body wracked with a nervous tremble. He tries to appear nonchalant.
Spy pays the injury no mind. He doesn't notice the plasma-yellow blood thinning down Scout's thigh as he limps towards the other door, half-crouched and coughing up blood. Everything in shining with gold and the pain flickers in and out as his the switchboard of nerves power down, one by one. He keeps telling himself that he'll be fine, that Spy is right, and that they'll get out of there alive.
Scout always thought that when he died, he'd be old and loved and surrounded by grandchildren and a beautiful, sobbing wife and three, happy and grown kids like in the movies. That he would go down swinging his hardest, and hold on long enough to finish all of his business, to have nothing left unsaid when he expired. But here and now, the flames surround him and Spy does not love him and dying shouldn't feel this lonely. Dying shouldn't come this soon, without warning or apology.
But it has.
He treads barefoot across the molten shards of broken glass and treads them, half-carried, to the door that has been barricaded. And Scout watches the very last fragment of light in Spy's eyes go dark and smoky, like a flame sundered, and the man throws himself against the hard wood again and again, but it moves not an inch. It's that look on his face, rooted deep in his eyes, which are now the only think shining through his coal-black visage. You never forget the sense of losing you last hope.
Scout chokes, and in his delirium, he can feel every liquid in his body evaporating from the exposed skin, from the exposed injury. He raises a hand to his blistered skin and drops. He can't even keep himself up, and collapses, coughing up even more dust-black into his hands.
Spy is at his side in a moment, and goes still in shock, finally realising the gravitas of Scout's injuries. "You-…you're hurt,"
He whimpers as Spy tears off his tie and binds it messily. It being red in colour, there's no way to tell how much of his blood stains it, but even after the makeshift tourniquet is bund, he can feel something awfully warm and sticky dribbling down the side of his thigh. The pain is indescribable, and it doesn't lessen. He feels as if he is falling deeper and deeper into an ocean, the air becoming scares, his vision swaying like water.
"I didn't-" Scout shakes his head and manages to smile. "I didn't wanna slow you down,"
It breaks Spy. Scout can see, even if he's young, and he's delirious, that the smile he's staring into is tight, and through the cracks he can see tears spilling like water tearing through a dam. It won't hold for much longer, but it's what he needs. "You fool." Spy whispers. "You needn't have done that…I could've-"
"There ain't any pain," Scout assures him, and leans his head back, smiling serenely. The world feels cooler. He notices not the heavy storm of smoke above him or the smouldering of the walls, but can smell saltwater and hear something off distantly, and suddenly he could be back fifteen years, to the family holiday in Cape Cod. "Man, that breeze is nice," He murmurs, and Spy shakes him.
"Don't-" The man's voice is all pinched. And if this is where Scout goes, he wants to go out peacefully. He doesn't want to scrap like a schoolboy, but go gracefully, head into the dark never doubting he was wanted or loved. "Stay with me," Spy is pleading with him, but he's addressing the wrong man. Scout's eyes flicker, but never open fully, and he manages a small laugh.
"I always did, y'know." He murmurs. "Even when ya didn't want me,"
"What?"
Scout smiles a watery smile. Spy's outline and eyes are clear, but everything else has become soft and irrelevant. His eyes are not dissimilar to Sniper's. "You remember-" He coughs again, yacking up black blood onto his torn shirt. "You remember the first time I won us a fight?"
Spy is unable to speak, or his composure will break and the love and rage inside of him, the likes of which are too powerful to be contained, will burst forth and Scout will see him cry. He remains strong.
There's a small crackling noise, and he realises belatedly, that Scout is trying to laugh. "I wanted to impress you. To show that I was…was useful." The boy swallows. His own face is clear from tears, and the liquid from the wound has soaked through the tie. There's nothing else that Spy can do for him but listen. "An' everybody else was congratulatin' me. Tellin' me I was-…"
Oh Christ. Crucified Christ, he looks so fragile, his arms thin and brittle and his eyes sunken and dark. "But you-" The boy raises a trembling, bony finger. "You were starin' at Sniper. I figured it was 'cause you hated him." The boy sounds so damn hurt, even now, after all of this time, and Spy realises that maybe these nonsensical comments and stories Scout tell have been earned. That he means something to the boy. Right now, he is the only comfort and joy the boy has. "Everybody else was lookin' at me, an' he was starin' right back at you…"
Scout leans his head back and breathes out everything he regrets. "Ain't that a beautiful sunset?" He remarks, eyes closed, voice raspy and pathetic. "Ain't it beautiful?"
A fat, hot tear cuts Spy's resolve right down the middle, and through gritted teeth, he manages to keep his voice in a straight line. "Yes, cheri, it's beautiful,"
Scout laughs aloud, eyes still closed. "Couldn't you just die here?" And then, much smaller. "Couldn't you die happy here?"
Off in the distance, hope comes through the desperate screams of a foreign tongue. "Helfen!" Scout doesn't even rouse, consumed by the ecstasy, but Spy raises his head, unsure if he is hallucinating his own escape. "Feuer!"
Spy leaves the boy rambling about the breeze in Cape Cod, and staggers blindly through the thick fog. The fire in the heart is dwindling, and discarded besides it is the poker. He wraps his sleeve around his hand and grabs the handle, feeling it burn right away, but knowing that Scout is suffering worse and suffering harder.
The last window on his side of the room is boarded like the rest, but hasn't caught. The room is hot and heavy with disaster, and he crawls towards it, gritting his teeth against the agony of the white-hot metal in his grip. Hard and fast, he tries to chip at the wood, and it splits, but not nearly enough to make any real progress. The coll air is stark on his black face and he chokes, dropping the fire-poker and trying to worsen the hole he has left in the wood. It is no bigger than a grape.
And out in the snow, things are worse.
Medic is sprinting down the top of the clearing, stumbling, desperate. Despite him being only half-an-inch tall in the distance, Spy can hear him screaming. Even above the roar of the flames and the flickering smoulder, he can heart the tragedy. Medic is not alone, and Heavy is following after him. There is not a hint of BLU.
"Doctuer!" Spy shouts for him. He needs to get their attention. To prove their alive. A flare, a signal, a sound, anything. But Scout is out cold and from across the room he can see the boy blanching, the life dripping from his flesh. If he were conscious, he would sob in delight, because Medic's heart is like a stallion, and Scout loves it more when it's broken. "Docteur, we are-"
As Medic nears the house, he is tugged back by his Heavy, who pulls hard, face just as white, distress reading as clearly on the volume of his face. "Doktor, no-"
And in all his days at RED, Spy has never seen Medic cry.
But now he is a train-wreck of sobs, fighting with this inhuman strength, battering against Heavy;'s enough arm around him, throwing punches and battering his legs wildly, assaulting the man in his native tongue. All the while, fat, shameful tears make his protests martyrdom, and Heavy just takes it. He remains still and keeps Medic from running into the flames. Because if Scout dies right now, to the boy's bones the Doctor will crawl.
He still fights heavy, spluttering his tears like an angel choking on it's own halo.
"Lass mich gehen, sie wertlos narr!" Medic snarls. He has no medigun with him, not a friendly drop of anything medicinal, but he has his hands, and this love, the likes of which terrify spy, and sadden Heavy. "Ich kann nicht einfach weggehen! Ich muss - ... Ich habe ihn zu retten..."
Spy throws himself against the cheap wood but it doesn't budge and inch and singes the fabric on his shoulders. He shouts again on a broken voice and a broken soul. "Doctuer, we are in here!"
In a second, Medic goes from fighting to a mess. He collapses into the snow, and tries to stagger forward, still held back by Heavy. "Is he with you?! Spy, sie müssen ihn raus-..."
Spy sucks in the small amount he can get to. Across the room, Scout's mumblings have turned to silence and his breathing is so slight that it may as well not even be occurring. Is it too late? Jesus, what if he lives, and Scout dies here, so young, with so much left to see and hear and experience? How could Spy go on living with Medic's eyes on him, with Sniper staring at him, but with what behind his eyes?
"You 'ave to hurry!" He shouts. "He is dying." So is Spy. But he doesn't say that. Somehow, it doesn't seem very important.
And Medic goes to stagger forward again, weak and nervous and crying, Jesus, that grim sarcasm he usually wears is in tatters now. But as he rises, a large hand is pressed over his heart, and it stops him. "Stay, Doktor."
Heavy makes towards the burning building like a man torn.
The smoke is only getting thicker, and Spy has to move fast across the room to avoid being caught like Scout was, under the falling debris of the deteriorating cabin. The boy is still out old on the floor, where Spy left him for just a moment. His face is still oily with tears and youthful. Despite the world becoming distant and soft and faraway to Spy, too, he manages to slip his arms around the boy's molten body that even feels like paraffin wax, and hold him. He feels so tried, but keeps telling himself, it will be over soon, that he will survive this He can survive this. He says not a word about Scout.
On the other wise of the room, there is an enormous crash, and harsh winter wind makes an attempt to part the veil of fog. An enormous shadow paints the fire a darker shade of tragedy and Medic's cries comes together with the crackling of the flames to create the theme song of the ailing. Heavy moves fast across the room. His eyes are cast downwards and when he sees Scout out cold, he moves even faster.
In a swift movement, the man throws Scout over one shoulder, and Spy over the other.
The next thing Scout recalls is the snow. The vast white Snow, and then somebody's coat. The cold cuts through him suddenly, and he shivers violently. He thinks about his mother. About Cape Cod. Breaths in. breathes out. The snow is so vast. In the night, it's so blue, and behind him ignorance burns down his only scarp of heaven, the snow is so blue, blue like the ocean, blue like Medic;s eyes, like Mercy.
Medic carries him to the barracks. The man is stripped down the his waistcoat, trying desperately to keep Scout alive, and conscious. At points, he is spoken to, or maybe he speaks, and at some point, he blacks out. The thing that stays with him with much clarity is Medic's wordless gaze, still wrecked with tears and hopelessness. Medic watches him with this peculiar expression. Scout looks back, damn near smiles, but Medic's eyes seem fixed on something behind Scout, something macabre that has already drained the blood from his face, and the light from his eyes.
Scout remains still, to afraid to turn and see. He knows, of course, there is nothing there.
They stare at eachother from what feels like miles away. Just looking, which is more than words can speak or touches can feel. Scout isn't sure how it ends, he doesn't remember. Maybe Medic looks away first, or maybe he passes out. But in his memory, they just remain there, looking at eachother forever.
-
Scout is surprised when he wakes. He had been dreaming of Cape Cod, and of the sunsets there. The only deep red in the sky of his eyeline is the blood-sullied shirt he is sleeping. It hasn't been changed, and while there are holes burnt and torn and burnt through the fabric, and stains that make the fibres heavy, the skin beneath remains snowy and smooth, unscathed by the fires.
Scout is glad to be alive.
His eyes open a little wider, expecting to be blinded by the sheer lights in the Infirmary, but finding only a milky lamp on a bedside cabinet. He is in somebody else's quarters, but from the choice of decoration, cannot tell right away. There's nothing superfluous or indulgent. Still, the bed itself is comfortable enough, so Scout sits up.
He just sits in silence for what has to be ten minutes before anything happens. His face is hot with the same of putting his team through hell, and the shame of being persecuted for daring to love others. And he's so caught up in the revelations of recent, of his own values, that he jumps when he's joined.
In a croaky voice, the first thing Scout says to Medic is, "Where's Spy?"
The older man makes certain not to give him eye contact when he speaks. Medic goes to the other side of the room, to the RED standard desk, and shuffles around in a drawer until he pulls out a stethoscope. "He's having lunch," Is the only things Medic says. Not a word on his condition, or implied recovery. Scout owes them both for saving his life, and is sorry to both, more than he could say. But he doesn't think he deserves punishment.
Medic walks over to him. His standoffishness has returns, and he stands just as straight as he did, and his face is just as hard as it was when they first met. Confused, Scout looks at him. He made him cry. HE reduced the man's steel resolve, one forged of practise spanning years, into frantic tears. Medic is looking back, and behind his eyes is this childish fear. It disappears when he swallows, and puts the stethoscope into his ears, pushing Scout's back with a gentle palm. The metal is cold against his spine, but Scout doesn't complain.
"Take a deep breath in." Scout does. "And out," his breathing shudders. After all of that, and he finds it ironic that he has the temerity to be cold. All the while, neither of them look at eachother. "Repeat,"
It doesn't take more than ten seconds. And Medic drapes the earpiece around his neck and finally looks at Scout and they could kiss then, Jesus Christ they could kiss then and Scout could affirm this belief that he is wanted, that this means something, and that even if he doesn't speak German, he knows that Medic really means when he speaks. They could close the gap between them and then they'd be somewhere, and the silence wouldn't matter.
Medic says, "Lift up your shirt, bitte."
The thing that is the most funny and horrifying is that Scout never gives his pregnancy a second thought. He does have to; so far, nothing has changed, and everybody treats him the same. The funny and awful thing is that he hasn't cared too much. But when Medic says that all he can think of is about the smoke igniting his lungs about the flurry of movement within him. He can't feel anything at that moment, and he starts to get choked up, because what if he never feels anything again? Scout becomes nauseous thinking about death inside of him, but worst of all, thinking about failing Medic, who dares love him better.
But Scout doesn't say that. Instead, he lifts up his shirt, and shuts his eyes. What falls out his mouth is, "I'm sorry." When he looks up, Medic's face is focused, by there is the ghost of a smile. "I didn't mean to hurt it or anythin'-"
Medic shakes his head again. "I don't care,"
"What..?" The signals are mixed. The Medic that Scout envisions isn't like this. The man he thinks he knows is austere, and more than a little cold, and would put the world before Scout. Yet here, he's proven wrong. "I thought you were upset because you wanted-"
Medic looks surprised. "Your version of me is monstrous," he murmurs. "I was upset because I care about you."
Scout coughs. "I care about you, too-" He doesn't get to finish his half-hearted sentiment because Medic consumes him completely in his arms and holds so damn tight, like he's afraid that Scout will dissolve. The man's breathing is the kind of ragged that suggests nerves: he doesn't so this much. Nobody ever knows how he feels, because he doesn't display it, and to have Medic being this direct means something. Only very few have earned this before.
That's when Medic kisses him. He kisses him, and thumps him on the chest with a limp wrist. "Don't you ever do that to me again, saukerl." and his voice is like a tremolo. Scout barely has the audacity to look at him, overwhelmed by the sudden profession of love, or lust, or something.
"I won't," he mumbles, in a small voice. That isn't good enough.
"Not 'you won't'. You can't." The man swallows. He leaves the sermon there For a second, he looks as if he'll say something else, but never manages it, so he droops next to Scout and holds him close. Scout likes it fine, this closeness. He could stay there, safe in the knowledge that whatever he dared to dream would have to fight medic off first. Safe in the knowledge that he is welcome here.
Despite what Medic has said, the man lays a hand on Scout's stomach anyway, and keeps it there. The gesture seems defeats the purpose of his speech, but Scout doesn't mind. Who isn't a paradox at heart?
Medic might be half-asleep by the time Scout speaks, flinching in the sheets, a hopeful smile colouring his features. He asks, "D'you feel that?"
In the next room, there are flowers for the guy. There are two friends making a mistake.
"It isn't over," Says the first.
And the second says. "It has to be."
