It had been a very long battle that day. It had also been a long week, full of long battles that should've ended quick, but instead had dragged on. It was a recurrent theme whenever they were attempting to grab enemy intelligence. Scout would run across the bridge into the base, manage to hop through the grate to avoid the BLU Engineer, race into the hallway, grab the intelligence, run back up the spiral staircase, only to meet the entire BLU team aiming their weapons directly at him. Every. Single. Time. The same would happen to the BLU Scout. Teufort really sucked like that.
The battle ended at about 20:00.
Scout was too darned tired to do anything other than chuck off his shoes, hat, and ear muffs, and plop himself face first into the bed in his small room. It was only about 20:30. His body felt tired. He felt like he'd been put through the highest settings in a washing machine. His limbs could've doubled for cooked spaghetti noodles. And yet, despite that, his brain was still going 50 miles a second.
He turned onto his side. Then, he turned onto his back. Then he turned onto his stomach again. Then, he turned on his left side, just to change it up a little. He looked up and checked the clock to find that only 10 minutes had passed. He just couldn't sleep. It was ridiculous. Someone should've found a way to fix this kind of crap by now. He stared into space, eyes resting on the red numbers of his digital alarm clock, considering if he should wake the doc up to give him something. In the end, he decided against it. Medic had looked completely beat, and had gone to bed as soon as they'd gotten back to their living area, not even stopping to eat dinner.
Scout really didn't want to have a very cranky, angry Medic to deal with.
So, he could either lay there in bed, getting progressively more irritated as he failed to fall asleep, or he could go watch something on TV. He mentally grumbled to himself for a few minutes before hauling his tired body out of bed.
The base was practically dead quiet. Just about everyone was tired enough to head off to their respective sleeping areas. The only sounds were humming from some of the lights that had been left on.
The living room was hardly a living room at all. It was incredibly small, much like their bedrooms. It only had one door entering, as if it had once been an office. They could just barely all cram into the room, though it was a rare occurrence. The only time he could recount them ever all being in the living room together, instead of the kitchen or some other area, was because of a particularly important news update that had aired on the small, still black and white TV.
Regardless, it was the perfect size for one person. He opened the door to the room, and was ready to throw himself onto the beat up, old sofa, when he saw that the TV was already on. The room was empty. The only thing playing on the screen was a commercial for a car. He could already hear the Administrator now, calling them to yell at them for the unnecessary power usage from leaving the TV on.
Scout shut the door behind him, half threw himself onto the sofa, and grabbed the remote. He was about to start flipping through channels when the living room door opened. His peripheral vision only saw some sort of blob. He yelled, and threw the remote as hard as he could at the figure in the doorway.
The remote smacked Pyro right in the chest. The terrifying blob was apparently just Pyro dressed in a pastel blue onesie that had little rainbows all over it, as well as a pair of pink, knitted gloves. Their mask was still intact as it always was.
For a second, the two just stared at one another. Scout was both embarrassed and terrified at the same time. He wondered if he was going to go through respawn, or if he was going to have to wake the doc up and explain why he had third degree burns.
Like all seconds, though, this one passed as well. Pyro merely picked the remote up and plopped down on the couch beside Scout, who scooted over a bit to put some space between them.
He was about to make some sort of comment, an apology maybe, when a show began to play.
"Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It's five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before."
Scout groaned. "This is that nerd show right? Star Trek?"
Pyro immediately turned their head to look at him, empty, plastic-covered gas mask eyes staring into Scout's own. They were clearly annoyed at the remark.
"Alright alright, I'll watch it," Scout grumbled, flopping back.
Pyro, satisfied, returned to staring at the screen.
Well, at least a boring nerd show would help him get to sleep quicker. Or, so he thought.
It started out boring enough. A bunch of guys in shirts of lighter and darker shades of gray were sitting in what appeared to be some kind of control room.
"Is that the captain?" Scout asked, pointing at a guy in a lighter gray shirt sitting on a chair in the center of the room.
Pyro nodded while making an "uh huh" sound through their mask. They then pointed at two other guys who were talking to the captain while signing something with their hands.
"Sorry man, I don't know any of that ASL stuff," Scout said, apologetically. He made a mental note to finally get around to letting Engineer start teaching him. The entire team had slowly been learning so they could communicate with Pyro, but he kept finding reasons to get out of it. He'd spent too much time in classrooms, idly fidgeting and cracking jokes, to do it again. Clearly, though, learning ASL was going to be a must.
Pyro made a sad sort of noise before waving their hand, as if to say, "it doesn't matter."
The three guys kept talking. A close-up soon revealed one of the guy's pointed ears.
"Oh man, that guy's an alien," Scout remarked. "I bet he's got all kinds of alien powers."
The show continued with Scout making little comments here and there, which were either confirmed with a nod, denied with a head shake, or hmmed at by Pyro. Sure, the show started out a little slow at first, but the next thing Scout knew, the starship was in danger. Then, the captain was jumping all over the place, using fighting moves on the bad guys that would never work in real life.
"Look at him go!" Scout commented, as the captain did a bizarre running jump off a wall in order to kick one of the bad guys.
Pyro was getting excited too. They clapped their hands a bit and nodded repetitively, occasionally pointing at the screen and signing with their hands.
The captain and his two buddies had just destroyed a super computer when the action stopped. The captain began to speak. "We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers… but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill- today!"
What the captain said turned around in his mind. He hadn't realized how… absorbed he'd been in thought until Pyro tugged on the sleeve of his shirt, head tilted as if asking a question. The episode had ended, with another boring car commercial taking its place.
"That's a weird show man. Does it come on same time next week?" he asked. There was something just a little special about it. He had to see another episode.
Pyro clapped their hands, delighted at Scout's interest, and nodded vigorously.
"I guess I'll uh, come watch it then," he replied. He got up off the sofa, intending to head to bed. "G'night, Pyro," he said as he headed out the living room door. Pyro waved back, but made no move to leave the room.
When Scout got back to his room, he figured that he may as well put his jammies on since he was up. His jammies were basically just a white t-shirt with a few holes in it and a pair of boxers. He got dressed. He then perched on the edge of his bed, thinking a bit.
He killed today. He'd have to kill tomorrow. It was his job. People without his job were going kill the next day too. And the next. He'd been told it had always been that way, and that it always would be.
He laid down on his stomach again, shutting his eyes. Maybe, though, just maybe, it wouldn't be that way one day. Maybe, one day, they'd decide they weren't going to kill. They'd decide it every day.
He fell asleep.