(apologies for slow devices. I haven't been around last week, and won't be for another five days. after this, all i have left to write is an epilogue. this started out as a distraction and has become a consuming passion, so a great thanks to all of you who have motivated me and shared my passion. endless props to pyroness for a sensitive and incredible fanmix 'to love a ghost' which i'll link at the end. i love you all. )
They know Scout is suffering, and at first, he supposes nothing will be done.
But that's the supposed truth about love. It can be filled with resentment, and distance, and nonchalance, but still blaze like a wildfire, spreading like violence. Love is a lot like violence, even when it is not the passionate sort, but instead, one from good intentions. A year ago, Scout wouldn't have believed it, too young, too set on polarity, and the thing that opens his eyes is instigated with only three words.
At some indeterminate time, sniper tells them all, "He's not eating."
It's true. Scout spends the rest of the day alone, because any kind of touch will burn him, and any conversation will poison his ears. He doesn't cry: mostly because he can't, out of dehydration and resignation. There is some kind of peace in him, or maybe he's just delirious. None of them see him, not for dinner, or at all, and it's what he needs.
At some point in the night –Scout can't tell when because he has no clock, he hears Medic pausing at his door with a very gentle voice.
"Scout?" His voice is very slight, as if unwilling to disturb, but pressed to be sure that Scout is still there, somehow. Do they think he is a suicide case? Jesus, he really could be, but doesn't feel like killing himself as much as trying to erase the world and all it has done wrong to him. He doesn't feel like anything, let alone answering Medic's call.
"Scout, are you there?" Of course, if he doesn't, the man will just keep calling, and might even come in. If he sees Medic's glistening, lovesick eyes he'll probably burst into tears, so Scout finds his voice among the rubble, somehow.
"Yes." He says, quietly, voice sore and pathetic. "Yeah, I'm here."
For a second, Medic pauses, probably surprises that Scout still has it in him to talk. What was it the man said? About their proximity not lessening his affections? That toxic love is still there, somewhere in his voice, but the man is good enough not to open the door.
"Are you going to eat something?"
Scout rolls onto his side to face the wall. After many months of having to lie on his sides, it's become a habit. It's no longer comfortable to do anything but stretch out of his left. It reminds him, quite awfully, as everything seems to.
After a while, he sighs. "I'm not hungry."
Medic doesn't argue with him on that. The man always bows to his whims without much of a fight at all. Should Scout have to come up with some sort of idea for infatuation, he'd use that. Still at the door, Medic stays suspended for a second. He seems to be considering each move in the conversation like some great chess game where the stakes are high.
"Will you eat something when you are hungry?"
Scout rubs his eyes. "Sure." he says, woodenly. "Certainly I will. I jus' ain't hungry now, Doc."
There's another silence, heavy with breathing and conspiracy. Scout feels weak. He feels terribly weak, and torn open and empty. Something is missing: he knows what but cannot say, and it pains him like an amputation. Like only phantom limb can. He has been alone before, and lonely, too.
There is no word for this. He doesn't feel like a human being so much as spare parts.
"Scout." Medic says again. He doesn't mind the name. It's the Weiss part like a bad luck charm that nobody ever says, thankfully. And it's the way Medic says it to. The man can see who he likes, can move on, and probably will. But if he ever says Scout's name in the same breath as any other man's, they will never taste the same. "Scout, I cannot begin to imagine how you are, but please..."
It hurts him to hear it.
"Do not be reckless with yourself. You are still very much healing from an exhaustive process."The man swallows. "It may not seem possible, but you will heal from this eventually. Allow yourself the chance, lieb-...Scout."
He knows he should be tender to Medic in return. Kind, even, but everything is tasteless, and the air might as well be carbon monoxide. Scout has no motivation to consider other people's mortality, or survivability.
"I'll eat when I'm hungry." He says, blandly. There's no explanation needed for that.
"As you like it." Medic says. "I won't bother you."
Scout thinks it will end there.
At breakfast the next morning, he goes down to the mess hall for a drink only. Water: clear, cold water to waken his rusty insides.
Medic is right: he's still healing, and weak, and the surgical staples have yet to come out, but Scout has chosen his life and doesn't intend to fail his physical. He's used to being greeted by the smell of hot food: the kind that makes you sick so early in the morning. It's a custom in the same way Engineer likes to fry his food, and Scout only notices it now. It's absence.
Not a soul is missing from the table. They all have their solitary morning drinks, and are armed with magazines, newspapers, and letters from home. But none of them are eating.
Scout stops short and pales. He can't quite stomach even the water, suddenly.
"Are we out of food?" He asks, to the room in question. All eyes fix on him, frosty and glazed.
"No," Sniper is the one to answer him. Drops his back-issue of national geographic from his face and looks plainly at Scout, and through him. He can see every treacherous bone in Scout's body, and knows how he cried: knows it like none of the others. "No, we got food." The man says. "But I jus' ain't hungry."
Scout stares at them all, injured. He cannot be sure he isn't being mocked until Spy's voice pirouettes over to him as if gliding over an entire ocean, still in it's miraculous repair, fluid and the hard iron of a barnacled umbilicus.
"I am not hungry, either." Spy gives him a sad smile. It overwhelms Scout. There is nothing between them, in that they are universes apart, and in that nothing can possibly separate them.
"We got plenty a' food." Engineer's voice comes stronger, and less sympathetic. If they're trying to make a point, then Engineer is the discipline to Spy's cold affection. Scout dares to look at the man for a second and no longer, intimidated. He will not be bullied into anything. What does he care if they go hungry for some crusade? His insides are ash: it has been a thousand years since food has sustained him. "None of us are hungry, would you believe it."
Scout's jaw snaps shut. "That's a hell of a thing." He says, completely hollow.
He drinks his water, and spends the rest of the morning packing for Dustbowl.
Base is quiet as the western front for the rest of the day.
None of them eat anything. Not for fear of being caught by the boy, but as some kind of act of solidarity. A team, Soldier was always saying, was a well-oiled machine made up of parts. The machine worked together, so they did: eating, resting, suffering. The strange breed of love spreads faster than a Santa Cruz forest fire.
Spy shaves in the bathroom. It is curious why he stands in front of the mirror, as he never looks anywhere but his eyes, shaving through guesswork. Those eyes, to him, are neutral territory, it seems. He doesn't notice right away when he is joined by a rambling man.
"Are you busy?" Medic's voice catches him at an odd moment, but his razor does not jump from it's straight line. Spy continues to stare at his own eyes, so when he speaks, it's as if he's speaking to himself.
"Not at all." He says, quickly. "Not in the slightest. Though, if I wanted every sad German 'ound to watch me shaving, I'd-"
But there's this look in Medic's eyes that begs for solidarity, in softness, and another, more implicit kind of hardness that tells him there is a higher calling. That's the trouble with people: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and too often they find themselves part of the few.
So Spy sighs, still staring into his eyes and letting the blade of the razor move, independently of his own ministrations. "What is it you want, Docteur?"
The man sits down on the stool besides the sink, as if to stay for a while, and while spy has a million protests to his privacy being invaded, he doesn't want to man to up and leave, one-two-three, just like that.
"Have you seen him eat yet?" Medic stares bleakly at the man's bare feet.
"I 'ave barely seen 'im speak." Spy continues to shave. "Give the boy some time, would you? The wound is still fresh."
Medic shakes his head. "Time is not what he needs." His eyes flick up from spy's feet to his mirror, staring at the razor when he speaks. "I fear that time would do nothing."
Spy snorts. "What makes you say that?" He pauses, for a moment, to lift his cigarette from the soapcatch in the sink, and relight it. "If you'd like to know the truth, I think 'e's less sensitive than you imagine."
Medic glares at him. "You think that everybody is made out of iron."
"I don't." Spy laughs. He comes to lean against the basin, his body curling an little. He turns from the shoulder's up to look at Medic. "I don't think that at all. But after this, the boy will have to be."
"If he survives." medic pleads, uselessly. "What can we do? There must be something, there mus-"
"That's the trouble with you 'elpers." Spy sighs. "You can't 'elp 'elping. What would you have me do for the boy?"
Medic doesn't pay any mind to being interrupted, but instead begins tapping his upper-lip nervously, as some men do. The man is lost for a moment, rep[laying all of the things he knows about Scout –the real things, at least, in his mind, but can only find true love for Scout in the way the boy squints after he sneezes, the way he blows out candles, the way he breathes.
There's nothing left of Scout to him.
"If only-" Medic laments. Cold, Spy continues to shave, continues to smoke.
"Mm, constructive." He murmurs. It would be easy to be given pause to strangle the man, and if anybody knows how to bleed a man to death using a razor, it'd be Medic. Conflicted, distant, he pulls out a long breath.
"If only I could get one of his brothers on the telephone."
Spy looks around at Medic, but this time, not far and unimpressed. For once, struck, really caught off guard by something real and true, some silver lining in this mushroom cloud. He nods, minutely, and speaks slighter, gentler. Maybe Medic's right, and Spy tries to consciously remember: the man really isn't made out of iron. Hell, even Spy's insides are copper and he'd kill to make them gold.
"Yes." He says, after a heartbeat or to. "Yes, that might work. Which one?"
Medic looks at him, all wooden and stiff with a horrible taste in his mouth. "You've read his dossier, Spy. I'm-" The man swallows. "I'm afraid to say you know him better than I do."
It's just sad enough that it warrants some of Spy's deepest sympathies, even reluctantly. He knows what it is to love a ghost, love some idea of a man but to never quite reach out and grasp for him. He couldn't say five things –real things about Sniper. He couldn't. People persist in being, and their crooked hearts insist on betraying them all the same.
Finished with the mirror, Spy wipes his razor down and picks up his cigarette, nearly out. "And 'ow intimate the details are." He wipes his face with a towel and sighs. "Damn you, I'll get one of them on the phone."
Medic smiles at him, wearily.
"Now get the 'ell out of the bathroom."
Spy cannot manipulate his love for Sniper, or for privacy. Some things are constants, you see, and others are variables.
The others spend their time packing for Dustbowl. Scout continues to train.
The hunger strike is something he tries not to pay any mind to, because, honestly? He isn't hungry. All he can think about is that thread bleeding into his fingers, and Danny's hands –Danny's hands –Danny's hands like a goddamned fairground ride he shouldn't even be on; he needs to get a strategy. On his surly dorm floor there is enough room, about, for him lying, so he does press-ups until his arms and trembling and numb, and his breathing is all funny.
When the feeling fades, he does the same thing again.
He doesn't eat: they don't eat, he trains. This keeps up for a few days until the dorm drives him mad to look at.
Scout finds his pair of running shoes in the back of his RED regulation closet and slips them on. He stretches in the room and slips down the stairs out out back the narrow corridor, into the cold vastness of the badlands, so open and wide that he feels no longer a prisoner but a pilgrim of some sort. There is so little to distract him, and the space seems enough to contain his anxieties, for now.
He starts to run, sheepishly, more of a jog, simply to test his legs. They have never once failed him, and yet, now he feels like an amputee running on somebody else's. It has been so very long. The weightlessness is the strangest part. There are no rocks in his stomach to make him slow and heavy, and yet, he remains at an average pace. It kills him.
He is about to charge forward a little faster when he hears footsteps behind him, the heavy, deliberate kind, and he throws a glance over his shoulder to see who it is.
Hair pulled back, looking so gaunt that he has to look twice, miss Pauling is coming up behind him with surprising determination and alarming tenacity. She looks quite terrible: frail to the point of breakability, her face a shocking sickly white, cheeks harder and more accentuated, eyes cut and sharp.
"What're you doing?" She catches up just behind him and presses forward, face hard, and says not a word. "Christ, what're you doing, anyway?"
"Running." She says, very breathlessly. "Why? What are you doing?"
"I-" Scout tries to get some more air in. he shakes his head. "You can't run with me, Miss P."
"Why not?" She wheezes. "Why can't I run with you?"
He tries to keep his eyes forward but invariably ends up looking at her. Miss Pauling is a very beautiful woman –objectively, and all of the men at base can attest to that. She fits everybody's idea of a pretty girl, certainly, but looking so weak, and tired, and starved, for Christ's sake, Scout can only find it in him to pity her.
"I'm goin' out far." Scout says. "Too far for you."
"Try me." She hisses.
If there's something he doesn't want to do, it's try her.
So Scout keeps on running, aware of how ghastly she looks, but never quite daring to ask for fear of what she'll say. Her breathing is very irregular, and while he doesn't doubt Miss Pauling is probably a finer runner, and probably tough enough, she's sick, or weak or starved as hell.
"When was the last time you ate?" She doesn't look at him. At least, not right away. Sickly perspiration is dampening her brow, and her lips are a funny kind of colour. Her eyes roll in her purple sockets. "I'm serious, Miss P. You look like you're about to pass out. Go back."
She keeps right on with him.
"Go back right now! An' eat something, for Chrissake!"
She looks at him then, furious, or passionate, like some kind of martyr, twice alive. "I'm not hungry. I can't just work up an appetite because you want me to." Scout can't imagine how she knows to say that. Or why they're holding out hope that guilt will shove something down his throat.. Maybe Scout wants to die. Maybe he doesn't care if they suffer for it: they have yet to learn even the distinction between loss, and sacrifice. "Will you come back if I do?"
Scout says, "No."
"Will you eat something if I do?"
"For Chrissake, leave it alone!" he hisses, trying to break away from her, running faster, keeping his breathing elevated and purposeful. She struggles to match him, even though he's nowhere at his fastest., and shouts.
"Do you want to die?" She gasps out.
"Maybe I do." Scout runs harder and faster. "Maybe I want exactly that."
A few minutes of silence pass between them. He feels like he might be cramping up in the left leg, but the pain passes after a while, and all that's left is the sound of Miss Pauling gasping behind him, still fighting to keep up, not for Scout's sake anymore, or for some argument on his behalf but because of her own pride. She is just as human as he is.
It's chilly out, the kind that nips at the sweat on his skin and leaves him both too hot, and too cold. Scout already feels weary, and this is something he is supposed to be used to. Every so often, he looks over at Miss Pauling to check that she's still alive, and close to him.
"Wanna call it a day?"
She glares hard at him and has to summon oxygen to speak. "Don't you test me." and she sounds so goddamn weak.
They continue to run for a long time. Scout doesn't let up his pace, ruthlessly, and her breathing becomes more and more scattered until she is wheezing through strides, helpless and proud: he has never known a woman other than Ma to be like this. They're pretty far from base, too, and it isn't even a speck on the horizon.
"You alright?" Scout throws it over his shoulder. He's starting to feel very weak, and even his legs are trembling noticeably. Somewhat behind him, Miss Pauling is even more pale, frightfully so, and bent double. She is barely there, lucid as a floodlight and ghostly. He goes to her, slowly, still shaking. "Miss P-"
Still bent double, she wretches, and vomits into the dirt: mostly a blackish bile, suggesting how long it's been since she has eaten solid food, or any at all. It's awful, and she's trembling worse than he is. Fragile, she lifts he left hand and places it onto Scout's shoulder, head bowed, still very much facing down.
She lifts her right hand towards her face, and her fingertips barely grace her brow before her body curves like a bow, and thus with a little gasp, she faints.
She wakes, sometime later, with Scout besides her. At first, he can see she's groggy, but recognises the coolness of the Infirmary right away, sitting up slowly.
"Mind," Scout says, croakily. "You got a drip." As if to test reality, she lifts her right arm and inspects the intravenous drip. The clearness of the liquid suggests saline, and she does feel an awful lot better for having something in her blood. "I got one, too." Scout raises his own hand, both of them tethered to drips like sad kites. "Didn't want you to feel left out."
"Shut up." She says, with her characteristic certainty. She places her hand on her head and blushes, that soft rosy colour that becomes her so fantastically. Scout thinks, if he wasn't as fearful of her as he is, he'd probably fall in love with a woman just like that. He's need to. "This is terribly embarrassing. Did I really faint?"
"An' how." He moves closer. His voice is very quiet. "You really should eat something'."
"I'll eat when you do." She says, very quickly. Doesn't have to reach far for that. It's awful to hear, and Scout has to bite down something nasty to get out reasonable words.
"Why's this so goddamned important to you?" He sighs.
It looks like she wants to say something right away, but dissuades herself from doing so. Slowly, she comes to sit herself up on her elbows, and then fully. He legs swing over the little bed until she's sat up facing him. When she lifts out a hand to take his chin, Scout thinks he must be dreaming.
When she slaps him fully, he knows he is very awake.
"I gave my patience, and you waste my time!" Her voice is grown now, and stronger. "I could have fired you when you were in Chicago. I'm starting to think I should have."
"Miss P-"
"When I think of all the trouble you have caused me. Getting on a goddamned train to Boston. Making half of your team go on a hunger strike. Having to find you a damned replacement..." She turns on him again, eyes blazing. "You want your daughter back. I might not claim to be able to understand that, but I appreciate it all the same. But why do you deserve her?"
Scout's face is very hot. He talks to the floor. "What the hell are you tryin' to say?"
"I'm saying-..." She sighs. "I'm saying that you aren't entitled to your daughter, no matter how strongly you feel you are. You aren't entitled to anything. I don't owe you this position. Your brother does not owe you a chance to change your mind."
"Then what the hell would you have me do?"
"Earn it." She says, very seriously. "Do this for her. All of it."
Slowly, he gets up, disconnects his drip and goes out of the room. Her words halt him at the door, just like the pain of every step as the dogtags around his neck jangle.
"Where are you going, now?"
He smiles to her. Sadly, finally weary after so many days of silence. "To eat." He says.
The drive up to Dustbowl is incredibly short.
It takes Scout less than twenty minutes to unpack, so he ends up sitting on his bed for a very long time. To others, it would appear he isn't doing anything, but Scout is not inert to the world, and continues to keep thinking. Not just about what Miss Pauling had said, but about his team, too, his friends, who gladly starves for two or three days, just to try to console him. Most of scout's brothers aren't so kind to him.
He sits, for a very long time, aware that in the afternoon, he has his physical.
The first thing he does is shower. The water does wash away everything, and he wants it to. It is too easy to be unhappy. It is too natural, and he is bored with it and tired of it. He will not resign himself to it. Scout tries to wash all of his hatred from his skin, and wash the worst parts of himself from his body, before drying off.
The old uniform is packed with him, and he slips on his RED shirt sheepishly. Oh, man, what he used to be. The fit is very natural, after his days without food, and while Scout doesn't look half as healthy, or even as quick, there's something very empowering about the shirt alone. The polyester blend socks are even of some comfort, and the shoes like old friends.
He does it for her, ever second. He learns to be like a soldier.
The finishing piece is the set of tags. He can't bear to hide them in some drawer. Every time they knock eachother and jingle, it serves as his reminder. Scout doesn't want to forget –he doesn't think he could, but this way, he will always be reminded, even out on the field, that he is not entitled to his job, his life, or anybody's love.
Sniper was right: the world doesn't owe him anything, it doesn't. It was here first.
Miss Pauling greets him outside, look a lot more hale and hearty. Her smile is genuine, and there is gladness to it. She looks him up and down and goes to say something, but stops short, and laughs.
"You know," She says, "The tags aren't part of the regulation uniform."
He doesn't know exactly how to put into words why he wears them. It's exactly the same way he wears the scar that's left, now the staples are all out. Sometimes, scars speak more loudly than the sword that caused them.
They start with routine things. Bleep tests. Speed tests. Core, arms, accuracy, and every time. He hears the tags rattling and tries to jump higher or run faster or shoot sharper. It feels to him that he is slower, and weaker, and less accurate, but goddamnit, he tries anyway, throwing himself at everything she asks until he's weary and done, gasping for breath on the surly ground.
Miss Pauling is looking at him very conflictingly. Everything is documented by her, and when she finishes her writing, she looks at him for a long time before speaking.
"Is that it?" Scout asks he, in a tiny voice.
"That's it." she says, softly. "That's it." And she swallows, her lips pursing for just a second. "You can go no, Mister Weiss. Expect a reply in the morning."
So he goes.
In the night, he has trouble sleeping, but stays firmly in bed, seeking no love from Sniper, or Spy, and doesn't have the malice in him to go to Medic. He goes down to the mess hall to make himself a drink of something, anything, really, and then watches television for half an hour to still his mind. He's still exhausted, but worse than that: he knows for certain that he has failed his tests.
After a while, Pyro joins him on the couch, ever-hidden in the same clothes, and ever-quiet. They sit, both silently watching for a few minutes, before Scout pipes up.
"Y'know, I got a phonecall from my brother yesterday evenin'." He says, softly. "Jeb. I ain't heard his voice in ten years, I swear to you. An' he called me." Pyro cocks it''s head at Scout. Scout cocks his back. "Crazy, ain't it? I don't know how the hell he got the number, but Medic called me down, an' he asked me how I was, an' what I was up to."
Scout laughs.
"What a bastard, I swear. Then he-...then he told me he was proud a' me. Didn't say what for or nothin'. Jus' that he was proud. That I turned out alright, in the end. That was it." Again, softer, he laughs, and shakes his head. "What a bastard."
The mercenary makes some kind of noise at him. Scout interprets it as Pyro wondering if Scout is alright.
"It was nice." Scout says. "I'm glad I spoke to him. Glad I did that." He yawns, and stretches out onto the couch. "Glad I'm here, too."
The sun does not hesitate in rising in Scout's behalf. He wakes, when the rest of them do, and puts on his uniform, out of show. He doesn't want the others to know he won't be joining them and their colours. He doesn't want their disappointment.
They are all glad to see breakfast. It's not a meal Scout enjoys, but he has a slice of toast for their benefit, and waits about, anxiously, for some bit of paperwork to come through, or for Miss Pauling to appear in the door. When she doesn't, and it's time to start manning the front of base, Scout lingers back, waiting for a sign, waiting for anything.
Eventually, she comes to him in the locker room. But for the ticking clock, they are alone.
"Shouldn't you be joining the rest of RED out there, Mister Weiss?" She asks him, purposefully cryptic. You can hate her for that, if you want. But you can love her, too.
"Like hell I should." Scout laughs, bitterly. "I failed all a' your damn tests."
She doesn't look the least bit perturbed. "Put your headset on."
"But-"
"Put your headset on, Scout. Your team needs you."
He does what she tells him, with haste, and dusts down his uniform before looking at her, serious solemn, and very confused. "I don't understand." He says, after some time has passed. "I failed that damn physical, and you know it."
Miss Pauling smiles at him. There's no way to tell if that's for his benefit, or if the happiness has genuinely been pulled from her. Scout doesn't want to question her, but presses, because he must.
"Miss P-" He flounders. "I failed. Aren't you supposed to –I don't know, send me home?"
She places her arms akimbo, and shrugs. "What I'm supposed to do is none of your business." She says, firmly. "Of course you failed. Certainly you did. Now get going."
Scout laughs. "What does that mean?"
She nudges him with her clipboard. "It means 'get to work, Mister Weiss. I'll most likely fire you in the morning'."
At her word, then, he goes. He goes out into the terrible sunlight and does his job for the beauty he is hopelessly impaled by: by Moira, and Miss P, and the rest of them. He has his future, and his girl will be waiting. Every day, she tells him, she'll most likely fire him in the morning.
But, you know, she never does.
(fanmix can be found here, along with a stunning graphic. especially stunning to me because it incorporates my favourite line from this entire piece 'look at me now'. what's yours?)
