Let Them Go
Based off a very sweet song
' But you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go..'
It had been a dusty morning in the Badlands when they finally broke up, the dry wind guttering low round the patched-up corners and through the narrow cracks of the ramshackle buildings that Mann-Co. currently called their team barracks.
The pair had split up after a large fight, but this one was no different than the regular fighting. They'd just had enough of the screaming, their throats scraped dry like the dusty tarmac of the desert highway.
Three years of fighting and ripping each other apart for their contracts, and a further two of soft whispers and tentative laughter hidden by darkness had been slowly eaten away by temper and violence; leaving nothing left between the two parted mercenaries except a bloodthirsty lifestyle and a common robotic enemy on the horizon.
After going back to feeling confident again and having the space they wanted to breathe, Scout had gone back to his regular routine of flirting unsuccessfully at Ms Pauling. Soldier, in turn, had thrown himself into his managerial duties, and came back plastered nearly every night with his Scottish friend slung round his shoulders; both grinning like the inebriated madmen they were together as they stank out the base with their foul breath and rowdy voices.
It was over. Not even a friendly hug between them, in case it seems like something they once often shared.
But in the months after that, as they continued to work together on contracts, eventually the anger and residual resentment faded away with the stigma. The two began straying further towards the other; sometimes in a joined conversation, or even a drawn glance. Always drifting close, but never enough.
They were over now -and they both knew it. Just as they both knew too well that nothing was worth re-living the unending screaming matches and the sound of muffled sobbing that soon followed behind closed doors.
They respected that. So when they had been told that they had only three days to live, they did not move that extra inch closer. Scout laughed and bragged away the increasing panic in his voice -a little too loud to those that listened-, and blustered through the meetings; Soldier staying by his side- but not for his sake. For anybody else watching, it was just a spot at the table.
He didn't need to tell him that he'd be there alongside him. He'd always been a man of his oath.
When he had found out that Scout had a date with his old crush some time later, he was thrilled despite himself. Giddy as he imagined his once-lover's elation. Content..he'd realised, as he spied on the two of them talking through the security CCTV. He was going to die happy...
Then it turned out that bread could mutate into monsters. And after all the fun of that amazing discovery, it was with pure adrenaline pumping through his veins and acceptance lifting his heart that the man let go and went to his death with a manic grin.
Of course, finding out that you're still alive in the stomach of a giant bread abomination after the death clock has stopped and your ex-lover is there holding your boss close in a final embrace before your eyes is a confusing turn of events. And it turned out that they weren't dying either. Huh.
It would be a good few days after that incident that the pair would find themselves sitting together on the rec room couch, guffing and braying at some old Chaplin re-run. The same as a long time ago..
Sitting together at mess again, and chatting with Pyro over assault strategies and conspiring on other mad and ingenious schemes that the likes of the French tart would probably find 'imbecilic'; it felt like a second chance almost.
It would be a good few days more, with the assault team back together on the front lines, and a whole other year later after that, before the aging mercenary would be sat down in a seedy Blackburn diner, idly kicking his well-worn jackboots back against the cherry vinyl booth.
Less than a month after his whirlwind lover-cum-fiancée had become more enamoured with exploring the world and a brighter future, than spending it with an aging man with decrepit lodgings and no 'cleaning sense', leaving him standing quietly with a large and placating hand on his shoulder.
Good old Komrad. Always stepping up to share the burdens of others.
He wasn't sad anymore though. Silly tears and picking splinters from bloodied fists had only reminded him of other times. And everything else that came with it.
It seemed funny, but as he heard the door to the diner swing open, with it's bell tinkling softly above it as it fell back onto the latch, Soldier felt he'd been thrown back into the past. Back to the moment that he'd wished would never end.
The day when he had seen Scout smiling for the 'last' time. With a mirrored feeling of familiar warmth flooding back into his veins, he grinned right back at the man walking up to him wearing the exact same bucktoothed smile.