Scout finds it hard to wake.
Truth be told, he doesn't want to face the day. It's another set of hours closer to the inevitable, to the rest of his life, and while that should be inspiring…it terrifies him. But he doesn't have the means to rise above it, or some kind of plan„ so he rises anyway, with enough grit for the morning alone, willing to wait for the world, or at least, his own circumstance to change.
They don't immediately, so he turns onto his back, feeling quite wonderful. Maybe it's that he's woken when it's light, and it's nice enough to see sunlight, even if it's cold. It takes him many moments –longer than it should, to notice the steady and careful stream focused on him from the medigun. He wonders if it's necessary, but knows better than to doubt it.
The air is still and quiet. The fluidity of his memories sharpens, and the word is in crisp, clear sense-making focus. Next to him, still silent as he's ever known her, Moira is sprawled out in the space he hadn't been lying. Against the vast desert of expansive sheets, she looks so much smaller, and more insignificant. A detail, an afterthought. Yet, at the same time, enormous, too. Much bigger than the concept he had her assigned just days before.
That's the trouble with concepts. They're never an adequate size, or clarity, and they miss out so many details.
After a while, he stands up, with a shockingly relative ease, straightening out his back, standing full and proudly for the first time in many months. It isn't that Scout is particularly grand or tall, but to see the world as he used to, that inch or so higher than before, does make all the difference.
The rest follows easily, and he manages a stroll –Jesus, how long has it been since he has been able to just goddamn stroll? There's a mirror across the room, and he walks over to it, leisurely.
Before he reaches his reflection, though, Scout pauses. He wonders if it will matter what he sees. There are two edges in the sword of seeing a ghost, seeing who he was, but just as many fault lines on the ground of who he is. He takes the last few steps, though, not out of vanity, but purely out of curiosity. He thinks, maybe, the man in the mirror will give him some idea of how he is doing.
Is it ever that simple?
The first thing to catch Scout's attention, the one that caters to all of those fears he had, is the neat slice at the bottom of his stomach, closed by Medic's engineering faster than time could dream, but held fast just in case with surgical staples. It's every part as gruesome as he figured, but satisfying, too, in some small way.
A tentative finger runs over the incision –soon to be a scar. His eyes travel higher, over skin that hasn't seen the sun. His skin has forgotten Teufort's summer in all of it's stridency, fading like a polaroid to a sad off-white. There are, much to his surprise, no signs of the jagged and ugly marks up his sides as there were before. It's hard to believe, and somehow even more baffling as he checks, with his hands.
He certainly doesn't look the same. Boy, what he used to be. Scout had never once thought of himself as strong, not next to men like Heavy, but he had been. Especially compared to what faces him, softer legs and even softer arms, no hint of definition or use.
Maybe it's the light, too, but his hair is longer and –and greyer, somehow. He swears it was once this attractive dark blonde or so, where now, it looks duller, and just as silver as his breath is. The reflection looks world-weary, certainly. But the world has shifted so much, and will still. Is he foolish to hold out hope?
It's the quietest kind of crisis he's ever had. On the table, across, somebody has brought down some clothes. Not the jersey Scout wanted, but old, washed clothes that were his uniform. It feels nice to dress, sure, to put armour to his vulnerabilities but finds even just the shirt stifling, and a little tight.
He feels smaller, but none of his clothes fit. His wallet is overflowing with cash and cards and receipts –no photographs or keepsakes, but he's working on that.
His reflection looks less and less like himself the more he stares –no trace of home on him, not trace of Fenway, Rex Sox, spitting off bridges –no sign of asphalt, dirt track, having something to cry about. At home, he used to fit in, learned how to talk out of the side of his mouth and how to hold a lean while he was waiting.
Scout waits too much here. He's got nothing to say, so suddenly.
"Up, so early?"
Caught, he turns, as if afraid, only to find his fear fall away at the sight of Medic. He seemed so salient and steady just yesterday. He looks tired, now, but not in the same way Scout is. Their suffering is by no means alike. The way Medic is looking at him reminds Scout of girls on the subway, secretaries who only ever wore heels. The clackers, he called them, had blisters but still smiled serenely.
"I suppose," The man continues, patiently. "You never were the most restful patient."
Scout laughs at that, quietly. "I don't see what I got to be restin' for." Because he doesn't. It feels to him that there is nothing left. After waiting so long, for what feels like most of his life, on what was yesterday, time is robbed of it's value.
He goes to sit back down on the edge of the bed, narrow as it is. He doesn't disturb his girl sleeping. Firstly, because he doesn't want to seem foolish to Medic –to seem attached in the least. Partly, though, is because of the serenity in her expression, sprawled and languid. Scout has watched a fair few people sleeping, usually next to him, and it isn't especially nice, usually. Not like this.
After a partial silence, Medic sits, too, and that's the only warning Scout really gets. "You must be glad to see your old uniform."
Scout looks at his feet. He shrugs "Yeah, I guess I am." It won't do to be like this: not to Medic. Even if he knows it's going to hurt, and the kind of fall he's got coming might not be one he recovers from, it doesn't do to sound so despondent. Scout amends his statement. "Certainly I do." He manages. "It'll be—…"
Medic looks up, beautiful, and cut into a thousand piece. Jesus, this man knows suffering, and he can see through Scout, but doesn't say anything. In one glance, it's clear Scout might have hell to pay, or the devil on his back, but Medic trusts him to shake it off.
"Scout, my…mein junge."
The man's voice is glass, trembling, threatening to shatter. "I have wanted to speak to you for a very long time."
Scout tries to give the man his time. Space enough to get the piece out, but it doesn't come very fast, and he is wary of every word that might slip. "Doc—" He murmurs.
"I'm sorry." The man says, quietly. "I know exactly what it is I want to say with you gone."
Scout knows what the man will say. He does, and even still, he isn't ready for it. He won't be ready if the man cries. That's the worst thing Medic could do –fall to pieces and let Scout know how much he has wasted, and how good the man was to him. Treated him with such care. How did Scout dare give him anything less than his best?
But, instead, he just nods. "I realise I ain't very easy to talk to. I know that."
It makes Medic smile, faintly, a light in his eyes glowing faintly. The last flickers of hands clutched around what was 'them', letting go. Truth be told, Scout never was 'his'. Never was anybody's, and that's the trouble. To whom does he assign himself? What can Medic do with a boy that refuses to be his?
Eventually, though, Medic finds those missing words, scrambling for them as if they are diamonds.
"I don't—" He's having such trouble. It's only, through pained deliberation that he manages the sentence. "I don't wish to be a substitute anymore."
Scout is paralysed by that. The guilt, all of it that has been building up, this great wave swelling behind the walls of Medic's tolerance and kindness will finally drown him. The man with his finger in the dam is gone, now. Flooding is inevitable.
"You are not obliged to humour me. Or to oblige me. You might—…"The man shakes his head and laughs desperately, sadly. "You might think that it's a kindness, but it isn't. You leave me –always, spatzi, with such hopes. I know it's foolish, but –but I am foolish. You make me foolish."
Scout's throat is dry. He nods.
"I deserve to have my faith rewarded. Or, at least, given some kind of gravedressing. This -this string of men you wish to have chasing after you –it is poisonous."
There, he has to interject. "I never wanted—…" But with a single glance, the words are stolen from him. Abducted by the wind.
"I didn't ask you what you wanted." It isn't unkind, but he's firm about it, even if his voice is shaking. "Do you suppose I want you to leave me before morning? Do you suppose –suppose that Spy wanted you to have that child?"
He looks at his feet. At his girl, his only doll, Moira, and how peaceful she is. And it isn't the world he wanted her to stay sleeping to –it is to men like him. So Scout shrugs. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody…" He whimpers.
Medic shakes his head. "I know you didn't. But you did." He coses his eyes, for just a second, to save himself the mortification of tears, and sighs. "I love you, Scout. I do."
Scout swallows down a pin-hole throat. "I can't help how you feel, Doc. I never meant for you to feel like that."
"You can help it! You can, by not…not knocking on my door and asking to sleep with me. By not calling me up, when you fly out on whims."
Scout is scared by that. He flinches, wounded, and becomes very defensive. "You never had to say yes. You never had to answer that goddamned—"
Medic gives him a very cold look. One trembling with the horrors of love. It is not a beautiful, delicate thing, it is the lethal injection, the last straw, the parting blow.
Slowly, as if somehow calm, he swallows again and fixes his sad eyes onto Scout. "Every time I think I have finally stopped wanting you. But it never goes." He looks about desperately. "What is it you love? Sniper?"
Scout shakes his head. "No." He says, with such conviction. But his eyes are settling on Moira, trying to resist the urge to reach out an confirm she's really there, and it's caught on.
"Try to understand." Medic pleads with him. "Is there anything you would not do for your daughter?" Scout can't say anything, so Medic does the talking. "You would give her away for her sake, no matter how much it hurts you. What if she would not go?"
He shivers. "It ain't the same." his voice is very still. "It ain't even remotely similar."
There is another pause. Medic looks so damn pained, trying to explain it. He looks at Scout, sadly, and then at his girl. "You would miss her, even if she was in the next room. Just as you would if she was a thousand miles away."
"Don't be cryptic, Doc."
"You must realise that keeping your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you, any less than keeping your daughter far away will not stop you from missing her." His breathing shakes. "It clings to you like a disease."
It's so true, and cuts so honestly and sharply that Scout nods to him. For some reason, he cannot help but think about Medic's hands around his throat, crushing the air from his lungs, burning him up. So he asks. "When you…when you strangled me." There is no way of putting it that would be graceful. The word makes Medic's eyes drop like an atom bomb. "You said something, in German. What did you say?"
For a while, the man is silent. His voice is rusty when he does speak. "I said…that there are two kinds of boy. Obedient, and foolish." The man swallows. "I said that only one was welcome."
Scout goes to him. Goes to him like a lazy sunset, on his knees before the man in the chair and is begged by Medic, eyes full of thunder that could easily turn to tears. "Promise me."
"I'll stay. I'll stay if you want me to-" Scout tries a smile, and that's the worst thing he could do. Medic shakes his head, violently, and takes one of the boy's small, soft hands.
"No." He says again, with such strength. "No. That is not what I am asking from you." He takes the boy's hand and gives it a strong squeeze. "You mustn't stay. You should not even offer. "
Scout tries to be of some encouragement. Nodding like some kind of mania. "I won't come. I won't call you. I can do that, Doc. I'll do that."
Medic smiles at him. Shakes his head like he doesn't believe it, but smiles all the same. "We will always be in close proximity –that is a promise you simply cannot keep. Just promise me -that if it comes to it-...you will not let me take you back."
Scout dips his head. "It won't come to that. It won't, Doc, alright?"
the man smiles again, like some beautiful injury, and stands, shakily. He goes over to his desk to fetch or sort something. Not that he's busy, but that he needs to keep himself so. The silence stretches out like the depth of an entire ocean and Scout realises there's something he owes the man, at least.
"Thankyou." He says, so very quietly, like treason from his lips. It stops Medic right quick, has the man looking at him, head cocked, so confused, all of a sudden.
"For what, liebe?"
It isn't easy to say. Honestly, it's some embarrassing admission to say aloud that some nights, he was Scout's only light, his only friend. That he is the best man Scout knows, the only good one there is. A white knight quietly crossing the board, doing no injury,l and Scout wishes him horses and castles, he really does.
Medic presses him at the silence. "For what?" So he must carry on.
"You were good to me, Doc." He says. "An' without you, I wouldn't have her." Scrubbing his face, he sighs. "I jus' really hope you're happy, now that you're chosin' this."
Struck, and open and honest in ways Scout will fathom somebody, Medic smiles. "I hope so, too." The words linger, though, incomplete, and Medic looks as if he is about to share a secret. "Heavy –he-"
"I know." Scout says. And he does. He always did. Every single half-glance, and cheerful conversation, every game of chess that was too personal, every 'how are you?'. They all knew, but it has never been Scout's place to say. He thinks, if two people would be happy with one another, content for a folly, for some kind of love, it would be them. So he says. "You guys'll be hopeless for eachother."
This is the first time he's really thought about Medic's happiness. What the man wants from life. It's a terrible thing to realise, but it's true. The man can look out for himself now, can look out for his own interests. Scout is no longer his to keep.
Their eyes meet. Honestly? This will not break Scout. This will not leave him suffering. Scout knows he will recover, and continue, because if this year has proven anything, it's that he is, and human beings are, by their nature, intrepid. They carry on. But he knows just as well that this will leave him incomplete, and that the incompletion will gnaw at him, over years and months. Time will ache him when this parting cannot.
All Medic says is. "I think she is stirring." He goes, and makes it to the door, before Scout attends to one last thing.
"Wait, Doc-..." His voice is soft with calm. It isn't urgent, but it presses him. "Y'know what you said, about there bein' two kinds'a boy? An obedient one or a foolish one?"
Medic nods.
"Which one am I?"
Medic does not condescend to him. He couldn't. The words are true, though. Maybe this is their last moment together, and maybe this is the right thing for both of them, but Medic cannot say that is how he feels. It wounds him, but he smiles again anyway because he needs to. "Do you really think you are a boy anymore, Scout?"
With just a question, he leaves Scout silent.
It starts to hail later.
The ice hits the windows so hard that Scout thinks they might well shatter. It's dark for the afternoon, a rank of grey cloud over the sky. He hasn't had the courage to see the rest of them yet, but stays inside, playing with the phone number in his hand. The paper is getting flimsier and more yellow as he manipulates it.
Scout can't call him. He can't call him at all. It's as if he's been hollowed out, his insides gnawed away completely by some guilty mouse, and he lacks anything at all needed to lift the receiver.
What's left of him is occupied entirely by his girl. Scout hasn't known himself to be cautious on the occasion he has known himself in the least, but his hands tremble even near her. Moira is too breakable, and he has left too much destruction behind him to possibly trust himself even in loving her. The smallest of his fingers hovers over the corner of her mouth, and it contents her to no end to suck on it.
Even if she's away, Scout can always ask for her. He thinks of her at Danny's place, balancing on the wooden stool on the kitchen to reach the telephone, and telling him something, anything. About how she did on her spelling tests or how she punched a boy. She has Weiss eyes, and that usually comes with a bloodyminded spirit, whimsical but passionate.
He tires to memorise her as she is. The smallest details included. What Scout wants most of all is some kind of preservation. In Boston, he remembers how every school trip was to the same museum, and how comforting but haunting it was to see the same exhibit at five, and then at fifteen. It makes him wish he could keep some of his own memories in a glass case, and visit them exactly as they are. It makes him wish time did not rot everything. Even hope.
A voice at the door shocks him like a fistful of lightning, and he turns, made nervous.
"What?"
It's only Miss Pauling. Only. She isn't very tall at all, and her voice is the small, quiet kind, and those things together make her somehow even more terrifying. Even now she doesn't have that kindness Scout has seen, but the kind of steely, bleak look that does a poor job or preparing him for some news.
She pushes off the arch of the door and comes in to his room, not quite daring to sit. She looks at Scout's mouth when she speaks.
"I said, it's reassuring to see you recovering." He isn't recovering. Not yet, but Scout nods all the same.
"I'll let you know when I start." He says, quietly, and then leans back, slightly, his eyes on Moira, still trying to copy down every detail, still trying to put her in one of those glass cases. It's futile, he knows, but this moment will be gone soon, and he will have no means of getting it back.
The hand on his shoulder worries him, and he knows he's done for when she swallows, and looks at Moira when she speaks. "I don't know how to phrase this, Scout." She gets out, slowly. "We're moving base in three days. She should be gone by then."
Three days? He thought he could get a little longer, if he didn't call, if he pleaded. If he was quiet about it, and he has been. He will not be able to see her go. He will not bear it. Her hand goes to move to his upper-arm in some gesture of comfort but he clamps down on her wrist and holds it away from him.
"An' what if she ain't?" He says, very quietly. In the way her voice sounds, so tiny, and yet, so deadly, like a drop of blood in a shark tank. His grip is hard, but clumsy, and with a worrisome practise she turns her arm sideways and elbows out his grasp. There isn't any more sympathy in her eyes now.
"If you wish to resign, by all means, do." She says. Not a bit of mastery or control has been sapped from her voice. If anything, it sounds stronger. "But don't for a moment believe that I am here to negotiate with you, Mister Weiss." The woman is iron, heavy, and strong, and cold. It doesn't lessen his anger, but does caution him, and slow the words that are ready to simpler thoughts,
"You don't understand." he says.
"I wasn't sent her to understand you. I was sent to give you notice. This is not a personal visit." It's only then she looks at him, so goddamn injured like he's the one behind the trigger, the ghost she swore off, with good manners and a taste for light beer. "And just so that we're clear, if you lay a hand on me again, you will lose it."
Scout always gets so caught up in his own terrors and mercies. He forgets, just as he forgot about Miss Pauling, and all the unwelcome hands she must have had on her. It isn't his intention to be malicious, because she can be warm and lucid and lovely, if only one remembers to earn it. As she stands, he thinks about grabbing her back, but fears for her more than his own hands.
Thus, as a kindness, he finds his voice. "Miss P-"
She tries to master it, but her injury is clear. Her eyes betray her heart.
It's the first time she gives him some kind of softness. Just like he remembers her, the salient above him, the infirmary light caught above her head like a milky halo and she had been divine in all ways but one. Even now, beneath the iron is a layer of silver, she is beautiful and fragile and human –just like medic, and his sad eyes. Scout has never once suspected, in truth, that he has been surrounded by these complex beings, and not just sad men with their desires. No, she is as human as him, and the rest of them, and her blood says so too.
"I don't want to forget her."
It can't be real when Miss Pauling leans forward, and puts her hands on his shoulders, one moving up slowly to one of his cheeks so tenderly that it's as if proving just how human she can be. There is blood and flesh and a pulse of hers, on his skin, and she looks at him so sincerely, like a secret. Her voice is kind, and life-giving.
"Remember her. Remember this, Scout. It'll be gone soon. Maybe you can."
Her other hand moves, and in just a moment, she's handing him the receiver. It is weightless now. After all, he's only going to remember when the time has passed, only going to cry when she's gone. Only going to truly know what this means to him when she's gone.
Without a word, she goes.
It is said, sometimes, that Scout always gets what he wants.
At least, by some. The same that comes knocking at his door when Scout doesn't join them for dinner, or make any kind of appearance at all. He doesn't care for anything. He can't find the energy. The only thing he can seem to do is smoke most of his cigarettes, and he does.
Really, he knows he should be taking a shower, or doing something worthwhile, but he can't. She'll be gone soon, and it feels like everything he's ever put in the ground is being wrenched from the earth before it could even grow.
But there Is still a polite and quiet knocking on his door, and he knows he has to answer it. Scout has to do many things he doesn't like. Ma used to liken life to a strange restaurant where odd waiters brought you food you didn't order, and mostly didn't want. Whatever Scout's being sold here: he isn't buying.
Eventually, he gets up from his bed and unlocks the door, bringing it open and going to lay back down. He doesn't bother looking to see who it is, and goes straight to lying down once more. He feels the bed dip a little in the middle and realises his company is sitting right by him.
"You 'aven't seen sunlight in days. Are you quite alright?"
He shrugs into the sheets, unwilling to be pulled into a conversation. He doesn't want to talk. A brave hand settles on his shoulder, bold as love, and in the easy touch you can tell that Spy means it truly, and well. If only he meant it on some better occasion.
"I don't wanna talk." He grumbles. The hand on his shoulder pauses, and Spy sighs.
"Would you like to smoke?"
Scout shakes his head.
"Per'aps you would like to-"
He sits up, slowly, and nudges out of the man's touch. "Look," Grumbling, he sighs. "I don't wanna talk. I told you that already."
Spy just laughs at him. He shakes his head like he's heard an old joke, and lights a cigarette. It's clear he isn't going anywhere soon. Instead, he stretches out and looks over Scout, to his girl, with a distant look in his eyes. He doesn't even properly lift his hand before Scout starts on him.
"I don't want you touchin' her, either. Sit still an' smoke."
Spy looks at him, no longer distant, or amused, but generally curious. There's that openness to his face that's rare, but Scout recognises it. It scares him a little. He's not sure he has the stamina for honesty. The man looks at him hard and opens his mouth just a little, murmuring something.
"What?" Scout swallows. "Speak up, for Chrissake."
"I asked you what it is you want." Spy repeats himself awfully slowly. "You 'ave told me all the things you do not want. So, then, what is it you want?"
Scout hears him clearly, but doesn't respond at all, because he is at a genuine loss of things to say. Truth be told, he doesn't exactly know. He wants his life back, but he want his daughter. He wants to stay at RED just as much as he wants to keep her, and wants out of the entire thing, too. And he wants Spy just as much as he knows he needs to be on his own. It isn't so simple anymore.
He turns on his side and shrugs to the wall. Spy smiles like he's won something.
"You cannot even think of one thing that you would like?"
Scout doesn't like that. He sits up, and folds his arms. "Sure, I can. Obviously I can."
"I 'aven't seen you manage to-"
Stuck, he tries to squirm away from the question. "Keep your goddamn voice down, would'ja? I don't want her wakin' up." He makes sure, certainly, not to mention that she woke crying earlier, and he didn't have the faintest clue what to do at all. It is the most terrified Scout has ever been in his entire life. If Spy sees that, somebody else will know, and he doesn't think he could handle that.
Of course, the silence extends for too long, and Spy looks at him. "You cannot think of a thing you want."
Scout shrugs. "I wanna be on my own. I wanna drink."
"No," The man entreats him. "Real things. What is it you want to be, Scout? What is it you want out of life?"
Weakly, he tries to get out of it one last time. He doesn't feel like talking, and when Scout doesn't feel like something he can rarely bring himself to do it. "What is it you want?"
Spy leans back on his hands and takes a long, graceful, drag. His eyes are incredibly still and calm, but when he talks they wander, like an ocean, or a spinning sky. There really is so much more. "I would like to retire early." He says. "And spend the rest of my days in Champagne."
"The drink?" Spy laughs.
"The place. The region of Champagne. I would like to spend my days there, without any obligations. That is what I want out of life."
It's an answer. Scout has not made any plans, or put anything in the ground. It seems that the day his entire life has been for has passed, incidental and inconsequential and now he is left trying to find another purpose. Spy smiles because he has it all figured out, and touches Scout's upper-arm again, softly. "So, cher, there must be something you want?"
Scout isn't through with life. But that's only because life isn't through with him. He thinks about his own helplessness; saying not a word to which front his own daughter goes, or to where he might end. He wants to remember what it is to be uncorrupted by experiences and society, but does not have the means to hold on.
"I want to own a place." Scout says, very quietly. "It's really dumb, alright? But I want a place that's mine. And people come 'cause they wanna see me. I want one a' those tacky porch-swings, an' some apple trees." He sighs. "An' if a bastard comes to me, I can tell him to get the hell out. 'Cause it's my place, y'know? That's..."
Scout looks up at Spy, as if for confirmation. "That's what I want outta life."
But everything comes at a cost. He knows that, he does, even when Spy looks at him warily, and nods. "I think it is a fair enough trade."
"What?"
"The girl, for your future." Spy pauses. "That is, if you wish to make that decision."
Eventually, Scout wishes him goodnight and all,feigning tiredness. But he winds up lying there, in the darkness with his eyes wide open, not daring to mention that his place was home in Fenway. His place has Johnny Walker, Jim Bean, record collections, the hot Boston temper.
His place has many rooms, and one of them is for her.